amber (she/her)

i can’t even tell who they want me to vote for

Glad to hear it! If while reading you have any questions, I’m sure people at [email protected] or [email protected] would be willing to help. I assume Hexbear has similar communities as well, but idk about those ones.

You are conflating a dictatorship of the proletariat and a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Please read The State and Revolution as soon as possible, I think it would do you a lot of good.

Just finished submitting it to libgen, I think it needs to be accepted first before it’s available publicly but for now I think you can download it from here? If the download link on this page is no good let me know and I’ll try uploading it somewhere else.

Edit: OK nevermind on that link, I just realized that page is password protected well here’s a link that should actually be visible to anyone while we wait for the libgen submission. https://gofile.io/d/OdIZlc

The full pdf is on Anna’s Archive for those who can’t buy it, I couldn’t find an epub for free though. I’m probably gonna buy the epub from Monthly Review and share it myself soon though, since it definitely seems like a worthwhile read.

I would also be interested in more sources on this topic. The wikipedia page on Vavilov links this source on the Soviet view of genetics, but it has a very clear anti-communist bias and some obvious nonsense. I only realized this most of the way through typing my comment but apparently the author joined the USSR branch of Amnesty International in 1981, and was the chairman from 1985-1988. My favorites are claiming 10 million peasants were arrested and exiled or shot during collectivization (source: Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4) and this line:

Thus, Party leaders began doing what scientists always tried to avoid: turning scientific sessions into forums for resolving political tasks.

Anyways, the article is interesting even if I’m skeptical of it’s accuracy. It seems as though there was a lot of debate around genetics in the Soviet Union at the time, which makes sense to me from a layperson’s perspective at least. From what I understand, modern genetics was a relatively new science at the time, and considering the role of eugenics and Social Darwinism in Nazi ideology, I think it’s reasonable that some Soviet scientists were skeptical. If I am incorrect here, I’d appreciate it if someone could correct me.

Vavilov himself certainly spoke highly of Soviet science. Here’s a telegram he sent to The New York Times:

The lie about Soviet science and Soviet scientists conscientiously working for the cause of socialism has become the specialty of certain organs of the foreign press…. On many occasions I gave reports in the press and orally in many cities of the USA about Soviet science, about the exceptional possibilities granted to Soviet scientists, about the role of science in our country, and about the tremendous progress of science during the Soviet period.

From a small institution during the Tsarist period—the Bureau of Applied Botany—the Institute of Plant Industry that I am in charge of has grown during the Soviet period into a most prestigious scientific institution having few equals in scale in the world. Its staff of about 65 people during the Tsarist period at the present time has reached 1,700 when all its branches in the outlying areas are included. The institute’s budget has gone from 50 thousand rubles to 14 million rubles…

We argue, discuss existing theories in genetics and in selection [plant breeding—V.S.] methods, we summon each other to Socialist competition, and I have to tell you frankly, this is a great stimulus, which significantly increases the level of work…

I more than many other people am obliged to the government of the USSR for its great attention to the institute I head and to my personal work.

As a faithful son of the Soviet country, I consider it my duty and good fortune to work for the good of my native land and give my entire being to science in the USSR.

Sweeping aside as vile slander of dubious origin your report about me and the fabrications that in the USSR intellectual freedom allegedly does not exist, I insist on the publication of the present telegram in your newspaper.

Academician N. I. Vavilov (1936).

As for his imprisonment, it seems like he was arrested for foreign espionage and sabotage? It’s pretty difficult for me to find a more concrete answer than this, as this story seems to be an anti-communist favorite and there are tons of articles propagandizing about Stalinism around it. Again if anyone has better sources, or if @[email protected] wants to link a source, I’d appreciate it. I got sucked into this and spent more time on it than I wanted to already.

Prolewiki has an absolute beginner’s list that should be valuable to you. +1 to Blackshirts and Reds, personally I would read this before anything else. The State and Revolution is definitely a must read for all socialists, but I think I agree with the beginner list that it would be better as a followup once you’ve got a working understanding of marxism.

idk about the other stuff but i had problems with buttons like the next page one not working like you are describing. are you on an iphone? for me it was an issue with safari being out of date, and updating my phone fixed the issue. maybe try next.hexbear.net as well.

reminds me of this classic

Listen, I’m all for dunking on shitlibs, but if someone’s literally asking for reading recs on communism, I think we should at least try and give them something. Maybe I’m just being naive or my sealion detector is bad or something, but this to me seems like a good faith request, even if it’s very ignorant.

The only gang in Aurora is the Aurora PD

Yeah I got to that comment tree and blacked out for a bit, knew it was time to close the thread. Just unbelievably vile people

I just finished The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and now I’m reading The Mystery of Marie Rogêt. I don’t know if you can call stories about crime “politically agnostic”, but they’re short and not theory at least. I’ve been getting more in to mystery fiction lately, I’ve always liked mysteries in other mediums but never really branched out towards them in books before.

By the way, does anyone here use BookWyrm?

biden deserves worse. i hope every day like this is torturous and that he lives another 50 years like this

there’s a really good port of dodonpachi daioujou on the iphone app store, idk about android. sorcery is another good one, based on an old steve jackson gamebook

grow a fucking spine

It seems unlikely to me that they’d use covid as the excuse considering how hard they try to pretend that the pandemic is over and that Biden defeated it

Link for the lazy

Not killing an animal in the first place seems like the most effective way of minimizing egregious pain and suffering within practicality to me