It's going to be hard for just about anybody to understand the issue in historical terms without having read either Lenin or Trotsky directly.
The problem with the `apparatus' that Lenin noted was also covered in Trotsky's My Life. It refers to the quasi-colonial bureaucracy that administered the non-Russian territories. About the only equivalent that I can think of was English rule over Ireland and the disasters of injustice that resulted. (I think) this was part of Stalin's plan to take over control from Trotsky and whatever his alliances were with various sectors of the civil service (aka apparatus). In other passages of the diary Lenin refers to the natural Russian bully, and wow did that click. You can sense the continuity of Russian history within those kinds of phrases today a hundred years later under Putin, where the question of autonomy, how much and how little seems to prevail, unresolved. Interesting stuff outside the movie... CG _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
