Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union(theamericanconservative.com)
theamericanconservative.com
Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/howling-in-unison/
50 comments
I was born in the USSR, and I have read a great deal about this period (and have read works of all writers mentioned), so i think i have a very clear pictire of how things were at that time... And that's why I'm very opposed to today's 'woke' culture, because it is so much alike the totalitarian USSR society that caused so much harm. Sure, some of the proclaimed values are different, but methods are almost the same.
To me one of the scariest things is Twitter wokeism.
It echoes Honeckers DDR. Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Some of it due to personal revenge, some of it to provide cover for their own shortcomings, some true believers.
Honecker did it for power and oppression. These people gleefully enlist voluntarily, attacking enemy and friends and each other to prove who the better dehumanized human is. Goddamit, it’s sad.
It echoes Honeckers DDR. Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Some of it due to personal revenge, some of it to provide cover for their own shortcomings, some true believers.
Honecker did it for power and oppression. These people gleefully enlist voluntarily, attacking enemy and friends and each other to prove who the better dehumanized human is. Goddamit, it’s sad.
> Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions.
Does this happen often on Twitter?
Literally every example I've ever read about on Twitter is one of the following:
1. some poster completely unknown to the person in question-- either revealing content of old Tweets or aggressively responding to a recent utterance. Then that goes viral.
2. some victim of assault makes an accusation as a last ditch effort to stop a monster from continuing to assault victims.
I know plenty of examples of Facebook's instigation algo ripping at the seams of otherwise close-knit communities. But those are cases of a nasty divorce spilling out into public posts, or a political disagreement suddenly turning into, "Someone should burn so-and-so's house down!" Weird shit.
I've never witnessed any people who are friends or neighbors with each other attempt police each other's minor transgressions on Twitter.
Does this happen often on Twitter?
Literally every example I've ever read about on Twitter is one of the following:
1. some poster completely unknown to the person in question-- either revealing content of old Tweets or aggressively responding to a recent utterance. Then that goes viral.
2. some victim of assault makes an accusation as a last ditch effort to stop a monster from continuing to assault victims.
I know plenty of examples of Facebook's instigation algo ripping at the seams of otherwise close-knit communities. But those are cases of a nasty divorce spilling out into public posts, or a political disagreement suddenly turning into, "Someone should burn so-and-so's house down!" Weird shit.
I've never witnessed any people who are friends or neighbors with each other attempt police each other's minor transgressions on Twitter.
There have been several cases of exactly this, e.g. students ratting out their professors for some kind of ideological heresy, or journalists agitating for coworkers to be fired based on what they publish.
But even when the first finder is a stranger, it's the people you know who have to do the damage. Some Twitter mob gets after your company to fire you. Only works if your boss, i.e. someone you know, folds to the mob. So in the end it's always friends and neighbors turning on each other.
But even when the first finder is a stranger, it's the people you know who have to do the damage. Some Twitter mob gets after your company to fire you. Only works if your boss, i.e. someone you know, folds to the mob. So in the end it's always friends and neighbors turning on each other.
For a recent example, a woman in her 30s was asked to resign from Teen Vogue because her colleagues weren't comfortable with a joke about East Asian eyelids that she tweeted as a teenager. Even though her coworkers weren't the one who uncovered the tweet, if they didn't take the bait she'd still be working there
> Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions.
Neighbors denouncing their black, Mexican, LGBTQ what have you neighbors. Then other neighbors denouncing the denouncers - this latter part seems to be where you start having a problem with it.
Incidentally, the US government surveils its citizen's phone calls etc. far more than the DDR under Honecker ever did.
Neighbors denouncing their black, Mexican, LGBTQ what have you neighbors. Then other neighbors denouncing the denouncers - this latter part seems to be where you start having a problem with it.
Incidentally, the US government surveils its citizen's phone calls etc. far more than the DDR under Honecker ever did.
I was also born in USSR and old enough for Komsomol when it disintegrated.
Nope, it wasn't much similar to woke culture, mainly because it was rather rigid top-down command hierarchy of values. The current brands of values and socialist morals were rationalized in the Central Committee, then propagated through Republics committees, then oblasts and regions down to town administrations into individual organizations, factories and schools (and sometimes police stations).
In other words it was very much the opposite direction. Now you can liken woke culture to mob rule (tho I think that'd be exaggerating) or whatever, point is it's nothing like the Soviet system.
Nope, it wasn't much similar to woke culture, mainly because it was rather rigid top-down command hierarchy of values. The current brands of values and socialist morals were rationalized in the Central Committee, then propagated through Republics committees, then oblasts and regions down to town administrations into individual organizations, factories and schools (and sometimes police stations).
In other words it was very much the opposite direction. Now you can liken woke culture to mob rule (tho I think that'd be exaggerating) or whatever, point is it's nothing like the Soviet system.
I wasn't talking about how did these two systems come up with their values, but about how similar they are in enforcing them.
Any grassroots attempt to challenge the system values (what you would call "woke") was met with the full repressive force of the system. It only softened in the last 3-4 years of decay but even then was still sporadically enforced.
Wokeness is certainly among the strongest movements in developed Anglophone countries,
having a huge discoursive power, and embedded in structures of authority for quite a long time. Last 7-8 yrs it became more visible simply because its demands are growing more radical, and it started to fight a wider circles of opponents.
It can be a powerful movement on its own without being anything at all like Soviet authoritarianism. I seriously fail to see the point in this comparison except as a cheap rhetorical device. Let's find parallels to the crusades or Inca human sacrifice, am sure it's just as relevant.
Well, you probably didn't read the text. There are very fine-defined points to compare, nobody draws any wild parallels.
Gulag? Forced psychiatric internment?
Advancing in society by demonstrating your commitment to the proclaimed values, through ratting out your less committed neighbors, or even falsely accusing them of being less committed.
Do you think it makes a difference, though, if in one case the system was installed and enforced by a minority in a top-down fashion without general population having a say in it, whereas in the other it appears to be organically arising in society?
It may appear to you to be organically arising in society, but to many people, it seems to be actively encouraged by propaganda efforts — "anti-extremism training", "diversity training", and the like — and the embrace of those in power, whether governmental or private, even extending to asymmetrical enforcement of laws based on the wokeness of the violators.
These are mostly coming from the same demographics that imposed the systems of power in the first place. Don't confuse well-meaning but misguided efforts by people trying to do better than people they share identities with for efforts from the people they're trying to be better for.
What I recall from my history lessons is that the top-down system you refer to was the end stage of a revolution that arose organically across the population just a few decades earlier.
Well, "organically". As all such things go, there were real problems affecting a lot of people, but once the movement to fix those problems gained steam, it got quickly leveraged and taken over by various political and economic groups around the world. In the turmoil that followed, one of the groups that co-opted the banner of the initial movement managed to take over Russia, and give birth to USSR.
The point being, USSR did not come out of the blue. What you want to compare the current social trends to is what Russia looked like in the decade prior to the October Revolution.
Well, "organically". As all such things go, there were real problems affecting a lot of people, but once the movement to fix those problems gained steam, it got quickly leveraged and taken over by various political and economic groups around the world. In the turmoil that followed, one of the groups that co-opted the banner of the initial movement managed to take over Russia, and give birth to USSR.
The point being, USSR did not come out of the blue. What you want to compare the current social trends to is what Russia looked like in the decade prior to the October Revolution.
I believe, while the general population’s suffering has clearly contributed to the original cause of the revolution, it did not in case of the subsequent forced top-down censorship system, which was established purely by and for the new elites to maintain power. I like to think that distinguishes it from the current “woke” culture, but maybe I’m mistaken and not able to notice a coordinated manipulation of public opinion by some hidden force. It smells of a conspiracy theory, though.
> while the general population’s suffering has clearly contributed to the original cause of the revolution, it did not in case of the subsequent forced top-down censorship system, which was established purely by and for the new elites to maintain power.
Agreed. We're not there yet, and perhaps (hopefully) we'll never be - that's why I alluded to the times before October Revolution, back when USSR itself didn't exist yet, but the culture that gave rise to it did.
> but maybe I’m mistaken and not able to notice a coordinated manipulation of public opinion by some hidden force. It smells of a conspiracy theory, though.
I'm not claiming that either. You're right - it would be a conspiracy theory. I don't believe there's any large-scale coordination at play. But I do believe in lots of small-scale coordination in fierce competition - another similarity to pre-revolution Russia. Much like back then (and always, in general), people aspiring for power and/or money try to get ahead on the platform of whatever is the most heated social issue. They co-opt the movement, adopt the banners, and compete against both the establishment / countermovers and other upstarts ostensibly on the same side. I think we can see this today, with how politicians, media and corporations get involved. It's not because they want to achieve the original goals of the movement - they want to use it to gain power and/or money.
I think the above is somewhat obvious and universal point - politics and economy seems to always work like this. The banners change; the behavior, not so much.
Thinking more about it, I see one similarity between current "culture war" and the USSR, which may be why 'Andrew_nenakhov compared the current situation to USSR, and not to Russia at the turn of XX century. Even in USSR, the censorship and behavior policing wasn't binary - either you're a Good Commie or on a train to a gulag. More commonly, if you weren't red enough, you would find yourself denied opportunities and dignity. Not in the Party? Your kid won't get into the university. Someone said you're not fully committed to the Fatherland? That job in the factory is not for you anymore. Oh, and your neighbors don't want to talk with you now - mostly because they're afraid to be tarnished by association. Yes, there was a lot of violence and torture and death involved in policing the citizens, but also a lot of such softer pressure. Perhaps even more of it in the Soviet satellite states.
Where it connects to the modern "culture war" is that the same social policing seems to be using the market instead of top-down state control. In the USSR, your foreman would kick you out because they're afraid of the head of local Party branch, who was afraid of their political officer, and so on, all the way to Stalin, in a top-down hierarchy of threat. Today, people fall in line because they're afraid of getting fired because of a Twitter mob; their employers are afraid of the Twitter mob causing the company to lose investors or market share.
This is a new factor. A distributed, stochastic, persistent threat. Arguably not possible before social media. There's no central coordination required, but the effects are as predictable as if there was an actual dictator on top of things.
Agreed. We're not there yet, and perhaps (hopefully) we'll never be - that's why I alluded to the times before October Revolution, back when USSR itself didn't exist yet, but the culture that gave rise to it did.
> but maybe I’m mistaken and not able to notice a coordinated manipulation of public opinion by some hidden force. It smells of a conspiracy theory, though.
I'm not claiming that either. You're right - it would be a conspiracy theory. I don't believe there's any large-scale coordination at play. But I do believe in lots of small-scale coordination in fierce competition - another similarity to pre-revolution Russia. Much like back then (and always, in general), people aspiring for power and/or money try to get ahead on the platform of whatever is the most heated social issue. They co-opt the movement, adopt the banners, and compete against both the establishment / countermovers and other upstarts ostensibly on the same side. I think we can see this today, with how politicians, media and corporations get involved. It's not because they want to achieve the original goals of the movement - they want to use it to gain power and/or money.
I think the above is somewhat obvious and universal point - politics and economy seems to always work like this. The banners change; the behavior, not so much.
Thinking more about it, I see one similarity between current "culture war" and the USSR, which may be why 'Andrew_nenakhov compared the current situation to USSR, and not to Russia at the turn of XX century. Even in USSR, the censorship and behavior policing wasn't binary - either you're a Good Commie or on a train to a gulag. More commonly, if you weren't red enough, you would find yourself denied opportunities and dignity. Not in the Party? Your kid won't get into the university. Someone said you're not fully committed to the Fatherland? That job in the factory is not for you anymore. Oh, and your neighbors don't want to talk with you now - mostly because they're afraid to be tarnished by association. Yes, there was a lot of violence and torture and death involved in policing the citizens, but also a lot of such softer pressure. Perhaps even more of it in the Soviet satellite states.
Where it connects to the modern "culture war" is that the same social policing seems to be using the market instead of top-down state control. In the USSR, your foreman would kick you out because they're afraid of the head of local Party branch, who was afraid of their political officer, and so on, all the way to Stalin, in a top-down hierarchy of threat. Today, people fall in line because they're afraid of getting fired because of a Twitter mob; their employers are afraid of the Twitter mob causing the company to lose investors or market share.
This is a new factor. A distributed, stochastic, persistent threat. Arguably not possible before social media. There's no central coordination required, but the effects are as predictable as if there was an actual dictator on top of things.
Doesn’t the stochastic nature and absence of central coordination give it higher validity than censorship in USSR or China? At least if enough people change their minds, this may work because no one will roll tanks on them.
But yeah, like then, some people are now acting out of fear (or the dreaded value signalling) and self-censoring, which is a sad similarity.
But yeah, like then, some people are now acting out of fear (or the dreaded value signalling) and self-censoring, which is a sad similarity.
Also interrogating offenders without a honest wish for discourse and more to get them to step on one of thousands "bells&whistles" in the minefields and thus condemn them in public for some "thought"-crime and silence them forever with the chill factor. Not everyone has the time and dedication to be a full time culture warriors.
Lots of people will vote to whoever promises to end this madness.
Is it organic if there now appears to be a growing push back?
To me, the nature of originating from and being enforced top-down by a single source (a tiny minority) in order for itself to stay in power is what made the censorship system in the USSR “inorganic”, and so far it seems to me not to be the case with the “woke” culture.
Remember the PBS lawyer who said Republican voters should have their children put in re-education camps?
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-entertainment-corona...
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-entertainment-corona...
I agree that this guy losing his job over something he says at a bar is a prime example of right wing cancel culture.
He lost his job at PBS. PBS is right wing now?
“This is Wesley Yang’s “Dexter rule,” named for the TV serial killer who kills only other killers: Cancel only the cancelers.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/america-ha...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/america-ha...
I wouldn't rule out the possibility.
Yes, I too remember the many people executed by overeager woke committees on Twitter.
Like, seriously? People being shamed into getting fired or quitting is the same thing as death to you?
Like, seriously? People being shamed into getting fired or quitting is the same thing as death to you?
I was going to respond with a joke and quickly realized that the joke is very accurate in US. For a good portion of the population, being out of work is akin to death. Joblessness is a quick way to homelessness and the homeless do not tend to have a long life..
Folks get fired online in a public fashion over this stuff. That's the mob's power play.
Companies research a person's online activities to see if this person is going to be dangerous for their brand image.
This person can no longer find work.
Sure, it's not an execution, but how about you don't have a job for a few years. Lets see how cheery you'll be about it. In dialogues where lack of complete inclusion and split second micro-aggressions are enough to cause catastrophic mental harm to someone... being jobless is considered a backrub?
Companies research a person's online activities to see if this person is going to be dangerous for their brand image.
This person can no longer find work.
Sure, it's not an execution, but how about you don't have a job for a few years. Lets see how cheery you'll be about it. In dialogues where lack of complete inclusion and split second micro-aggressions are enough to cause catastrophic mental harm to someone... being jobless is considered a backrub?
Wokeness is built on networked flexible leadership (which was not possible before the internet) therefore certainly is not as rigid, centralized, or bureaucratic as CSPU. But OP obviously didn't mean structural similarity. It still values ideological higher truth of social justice over empirical truth, and strives to silence those who don't howl in unison.
The structure, motivation, means of execution and persecution were entirely different. But sure, in the super general sense of "things people do about other people" everything is alike.
>which was not possible before the internet
The same game was practiced since French Revolution, it's nothing new and I'm sure as hell it wasn't invented on the net. Following OP's analogies with Russosphere, it's much more like RSDLP (i.e. the pre-revolutionary loosely organized umbrella socialist party with a bunch of very different movements) than the late USSR they are talking about. Many people from RSDLP like Alexandra Kollontai would feel right at home today, for example.
The same game was practiced since French Revolution, it's nothing new and I'm sure as hell it wasn't invented on the net. Following OP's analogies with Russosphere, it's much more like RSDLP (i.e. the pre-revolutionary loosely organized umbrella socialist party with a bunch of very different movements) than the late USSR they are talking about. Many people from RSDLP like Alexandra Kollontai would feel right at home today, for example.
Yeah, its more the chinese red-guard sort of mob-rule, directed barely by the system-provider.
There are bottom-up movements like BLM, but mostly the woke culture is corporate and "elite" endorsed and therefore top-down.
What the academic "elites" are trying to achieve is clear: The topics create work for the soft sciences and even after a potential revolution their jobs would be safe.
What the corporations are expecting is less clear. They are doing well under a model of capitalism with a woke branding.
A bit of what China is doing with its curious capitalism/nepotism branded as communism model, though I don't think that is exactly the goal of U.S. corporations.
They are doing fine with the current political theater. If the lower classes in the U.S. wake up to actual class warfare, they may find that they overplayed their hand though.
What the academic "elites" are trying to achieve is clear: The topics create work for the soft sciences and even after a potential revolution their jobs would be safe.
What the corporations are expecting is less clear. They are doing well under a model of capitalism with a woke branding.
A bit of what China is doing with its curious capitalism/nepotism branded as communism model, though I don't think that is exactly the goal of U.S. corporations.
They are doing fine with the current political theater. If the lower classes in the U.S. wake up to actual class warfare, they may find that they overplayed their hand though.
From what I gather it starts as grassroots and then the invisible hand reacts anticipating the social landscape change. You may lament this unprincipled capitalism but it was entirely not like that in USSR.
> What the corporations are expecting is less clear. They are doing well under a model of capitalism with a woke branding.
The market isn't unlike a heat engine - if there is a heat difference somewhere, it means there's energy to be extracted equilibrizing that difference. Corporations don't really care about what ideologies are in conflict in the society - they align themselves along the best value gradient and pump it for all it's worth.
In this particular case: lots of people respond to woke ideas, and those people tend to control important marketing amplifiers (Internet media), so being seen as woke is a profitable strategy. For the same reason, you also see a lot of environmental awareness undertones in marketing these days - people who care about it respond to it positively, people who don't care just ignore it, so it's a profitable move to be seen as environmentally conscious.
The market isn't unlike a heat engine - if there is a heat difference somewhere, it means there's energy to be extracted equilibrizing that difference. Corporations don't really care about what ideologies are in conflict in the society - they align themselves along the best value gradient and pump it for all it's worth.
In this particular case: lots of people respond to woke ideas, and those people tend to control important marketing amplifiers (Internet media), so being seen as woke is a profitable strategy. For the same reason, you also see a lot of environmental awareness undertones in marketing these days - people who care about it respond to it positively, people who don't care just ignore it, so it's a profitable move to be seen as environmentally conscious.
It's ironic that you're misusing a term that came out of a community often accused of being filled with communist infiltrators any time they speak up for themselves.
>Since the party line often shifted, one could find oneself accused of errors that, at the time they were made, were not errors at all. The party constantly invented new mistakes, whether in ideas, practices, or phrases, so that one could never free oneself from the risk of humiliation. One sign of this sort of shame culture is the constant creation of new offenses, usually applied retroactively. No matter how many times the cadre manages to overcome his, he must always overcome them yet again.
This sounds quite relevant in 2020.
This sounds quite relevant in 2020.
One of the funniest writers I’ve come across is Daniil Kharms, who wrote absurdist short stories and children's books. He was a victim of the Soviet policies (no doubt influencing his own work) and unfortunately didn’t make it through WW2.
If you like dark absurdist humor, you’ll probably like his work. Here’s one example:
Because of her excessive curiosity, an old lady fell out of the window and smashed into the ground. Another old lady looked out of the window, staring down at the one who was smashed, but out of her excessive curiosity she also fell out of the window and smashed into the ground. Then the third old lady fell out of the window, then the fourth did, then the fifth. When the sixth old lady fell out of the window, I got bored watching them and went to Maltsev market where, they say, someone gave a woven shawl to a blind man.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040907075615/http://www.sevaj....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniil_Kharms
If you like dark absurdist humor, you’ll probably like his work. Here’s one example:
Because of her excessive curiosity, an old lady fell out of the window and smashed into the ground. Another old lady looked out of the window, staring down at the one who was smashed, but out of her excessive curiosity she also fell out of the window and smashed into the ground. Then the third old lady fell out of the window, then the fourth did, then the fifth. When the sixth old lady fell out of the window, I got bored watching them and went to Maltsev market where, they say, someone gave a woven shawl to a blind man.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040907075615/http://www.sevaj....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniil_Kharms
>”Artistry was, at best, secondary to ideological correctness. Cultivating individual talent earned one reproof for “Mozartism” (ever more pejorative “-isms” were always being discovered). Literary critics, who wrote scathing attacks on works that deviated ever so slightly, lorded it over creative talents.”
Don’t deviate from the narrative. I hope we catch ourselves before it’s too late.
Don’t deviate from the narrative. I hope we catch ourselves before it’s too late.
This is an excessively well written article that tells the history as it was (I heard first hand accounts from people who had to emigrate from the Soviet Union).
People in apparatchik-driven open source projects anno 2021 should take note and draw the obvious parallels.
People in apparatchik-driven open source projects anno 2021 should take note and draw the obvious parallels.
I enjoyed the article until the inevitable comparison to current trends. It's like reading a retro article. "Holding people in power to account is EXACTLY WHAT THE COMMUNISTS WOULD Do. DON'T ASK HOW. Smoke Lucky Strike Brand cigarettes for that healthy asbestos glow. Vote Mondale. "
You know Mondale was a pro-labor Democrat [1] who, according to Wikipedia "supported consumer protection, fair housing, tax reform, and the desegregation of schools" [2]. Not sure why you want to set up negative associations around him. Probably the ignorant belief that everything in the past was evil and far-right. I can't blame you; our collective memory is getting fucked with.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/22/magazine/labor-s-gamble-o...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mondale
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/22/magazine/labor-s-gamble-o...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mondale
> Mondale was a pro-labor
Do those laborers include the Nicaraguans (or Americans like Ben Linder) who were massacred by the Contras Mondale advocated funding for so that they could overthrow Nicaragua's democratically elected government?
Do those laborers include the Nicaraguans (or Americans like Ben Linder) who were massacred by the Contras Mondale advocated funding for so that they could overthrow Nicaragua's democratically elected government?
I think that "holding people in power to account is bad because cOMmUnISM" is a disingenuous interpretation. From the article:
"Since the party line often shifted, one could find oneself accused of errors that, at the time they were made, were not errors at all. The party constantly invented new mistakes, whether in ideas, practices, or phrases, so that one could never free oneself from the risk of humiliation. One sign of this sort of shame culture is the constant creation of new offenses, usually applied retroactively. No matter how many times the cadre manages to overcome his, he must always overcome them yet again."
"Since the party line often shifted, one could find oneself accused of errors that, at the time they were made, were not errors at all. The party constantly invented new mistakes, whether in ideas, practices, or phrases, so that one could never free oneself from the risk of humiliation. One sign of this sort of shame culture is the constant creation of new offenses, usually applied retroactively. No matter how many times the cadre manages to overcome his, he must always overcome them yet again."
I don't think a single person who objects to the current parallels to communism would take issue with "holding people in power to account," they just wouldn't characterize the current problem as such. The objection seems to be more along the lines of:
- we disagree with characterizing people as being "in power" in accordance with extremely imprecise identity groups
- we disagree with restructuring liberal society to be instead be focused on reparative justice in accordance with who has most competently argued on behalf of their identity group's victimization within society
- we disagree with constituting consensual economic relationships as abuse of power
- we disagree with the mechanisms by which and degree to which people should be "held to account"
- we disagree with characterizing people as being "in power" in accordance with extremely imprecise identity groups
- we disagree with restructuring liberal society to be instead be focused on reparative justice in accordance with who has most competently argued on behalf of their identity group's victimization within society
- we disagree with constituting consensual economic relationships as abuse of power
- we disagree with the mechanisms by which and degree to which people should be "held to account"