Bookmark1995
Banned
My mom thinks they'll be a 1960s-style social revolt over the next few years, and she believes it might result in a new era of government intervention.
The Great Crusade (Reds! Part 3)
- Thread starter Aelita
- Start date
My mom thinks they'll be a 1960s-style social revolt over the next few years, and she believes it might result in a new era of government intervention.
I'm quite curious how design (industrial, graphic, what-have-you) has developed in the modern communist world. I get that Constructivism and similar avant-garde is a big thing early on, but I find the succeeding trends not much touched on as far as I know. Anyone have a guess on how American aesthetics differ from Soviet ones?
(that being said, I'm most fond of the Lenin-era aesthetics evident in St. Petersburg's House of Soviets, this thing and the early socialist realist paintings compared to the gaudier and tackier Stalinist, Maoist (along with its more localized derivatives) and Juche works later on, would American styles at the time of the revolution would have affected its development?)
(that being said, I'm most fond of the Lenin-era aesthetics evident in St. Petersburg's House of Soviets, this thing and the early socialist realist paintings compared to the gaudier and tackier Stalinist, Maoist (along with its more localized derivatives) and Juche works later on, would American styles at the time of the revolution would have affected its development?)
Last edited:
Very similar to the "harsh style" of the 60's.
In general, in the old version of lay out something similar to this -
I mean something similar to the late Constructivism / very early "Stalinist style" with an emphasis on the components of Art Deco (Soviet architecture of the 1930s is extremely eclectic). And probably will remove any sculpture - we with the Red Star quarreled because of my admiration for the ancient sculpture ... and critical attitude to some Japanese samples from the anime.
What about Functional Art-Deco with more colors especially in the Latin members of the Comintern? By the 90's and 2000's more 'cybernetic' or 'green' designs similar to some of the offices in Silicon Valley.
Bookmark1995
Banned
I'm thinking the immediate postwar era will see the construction of cheap, brutalist monstrosities. Think of a mixture of Pruitt-Igoe and those Khrushchev apartments.
I was half-expecting someone brings up Calatrava (or someone similar).
I just showed the samples of what was being built in the Soviet Union in the sixties.
I could still see something like the Alamillo Bridge or this Belgian station tbh.
(I'm just shoehorning this guy in the discussion I just really love his work)
I don't think that this is the right direction - the USSR is important for the communist movement like the Paris Commune. This does not mean that we should constantly praise the Union (or vice versa). This means that we must study and understand the Soviet legacy in all its unevenness.
Perhaps, but in the short term it can be a bit off-putting for people just getting into socialism The Paris Commune makes for a better introduction. Studying the faults and achievements of the Soviet Union usually follows after.
I found something - the picture you provided is called "Our locomotive". The artist - Revold Vladimirovich Baryshnikov. The date is 1973. Therefore, the crane reminded me of the "Severe Style" - it was drawn with a snap to the beginning of the 60's
Some questions:
- Did the ATL League of Nations lift the arms' restrictions and bans imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles as a consequence of the Second American Revolution, so that: a) the Reichsheer already had a legally sanctioned Panzerwaffe and mechanized forces and a growing and developing artillery branch; b) an also legallized growing and advanced Reichsmarine; and, finally, c) legal air forces in the form of a Neuer Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte and a Marine-Flieger Abteilung, when ATL Adolf Hitler rose to power?
- Which are the flags (national, war and air force flags and naval ensign and jack) of the Socialist Republic of China and how do its aircraft roundel (s) look like?
- Which are the main military suppliers of the Socialist Republic of China besides its indigenous defense industry?
- Finally, the military of the Latin American Socialist Union is a unified one or each member-State has its own independent military, just with a common defense industry and under a common High Command and a common Supreme Commander?
The War for Oil
All future updates will take the form of vintage Usenet posts
Excerpts from Usenet soc.history.what-if post “RE: Turning point of WW2?”
Post by jbaptise@ens-paris.edu.ec
Alors, there’s a whole lot to unpack here (j’aime cette phrase!)
kwaters@cambridge.edu.ec wrote:
>I understand there is a lot of historical debate about the ‘turning
>Point of WW2. A lot of which is dragged down into the mire of Cold
>War politics, with AFS and Comintern historians both having their
>respective horses in the race.
Absolument! While who ‘won’ the war is of little consequence to the
present struggle, academics still succumb to nationalisme.
>One text I read put the turning point at Moscow in 41; Colonel
>Durand argued that when the Heeresgruppe Mitte failed to take
>the city, the Nazis lost any chance of winning the war. Macksey
>differs, arguing that the successful Iberian operation closed the
>door on victory by squeezing Hitler with a second front. And
>Guderian himself argued that Hitler’s failure to secure peace with
>Britain after the astounding victories of 42 was the decisive moment.
>These men are all well respected in the field, and I’m sure there
>are half a hundred other competing theories about the turning
>point. What say you, SHWI?
I say ‘all of the above’ and more. Industrial warfare doesn’t give us
Austerlitz or Waterloo. The war was not won by decisive battles
or campaigns. Part of Durand’s thesis, which I agree with (not
merely because he is from my alma mater) is that the war was largely
fought over control of the resources that would be used to fight it:
_oil, steel, coal, aluminum._
I’ll focus on the oil because it is _super_ important. It’s also something
neither Germany nor Japan had much native access to. It’s fair to
qualify WW2 as a war fought between those who controlled oil or its
access and states that didn’t.
Hobsbawm noted that Germany in particular had an oil deficit of
_millions_ of tonnes per year in 1940. All of that oil had to be imported;
much of it came from Rumania, which wa producing like 8 million
tonnes per year, and ramping up more with German investment. The
rest came from overseas, either in Italian Libya or from the world market.
Germany’s military success depended on the vaunted panzertruppe, the
motorized echelons of the army, and the Luftwaffe, and those all required
oil. Additionally, the Kriegsmarine required huge amounts of heating oil
for any offensive operations, and even the much more important u-boats
were diesel hogs.
I would argue that your could divide the European theater into two distinct
phases. The first, from May 1940 until roughly May 1943. Let’s call
this time the oil boon; Germany could gain access to whatever oil it
needed from the world market. Either enriching its allies in Rumania
or Italy, or shipping oil from Iraq/Kuwait, Arabia, Venezuela, or Canada.
While France and Britain were still neutral, much of this oil importation
would be facilitated by their shipping. After February 42, things got
somewhat complicated. But the Royal Navy did not have the means to
enforce a true blockade, especially with Spain still being neutral, and just
so happened to inherit a large amount of merchant shipping from occupied
Europe.
During this period, the German military had the dash and elan we remember
in popular history. Because their tanks, lorries, and planes had petrol; never
quite enough, but certainly sufficient to pursue mobile combat operations
while maintaining large strategic reserves.
Was there a sudden turning point? I don’t think so; the Comintern had
proved their mastery in the east by then. But with the end of Spanish
neutrality the oil situation got a lot worse. Nazi desire for autarky had
already sunk a lot of money into coal-to-oil tech, but it was not going to
make up for the lack of imports. After Stalingrad, and the Iberian Campaign
the OKW was forced to grapple with major shortages of oil. They took
a defensive posture in the East, limiting offensives to operational counter-
strokes, dramatically cut pilot and tanker training, ended what little civilian
fuel use that had remained, and tried to squeeze more blood out of the
Rumanian stone.
Germany put the last of its strategic oil reserves into July 1944’s Byelorussian
Campaign. Manstein used up the last of the country’s reserves attempting
an ultimately futile ‘backhand blow’ against the Comintern. From that point
onwards all military operations were constrained by the ever dwindling
production available, and that meant huge allocation issues.
Merde! I almost forgot to mention the loss of Libya and access to the Med,
Hitler wresting with his generals about strategy w/ re: the Caucasus!
Another time, I think.
~J. Baptiste
---
C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie.
(Happy April Fool's Day!)
Excerpts from Usenet soc.history.what-if post “RE: Turning point of WW2?”
Post by jbaptise@ens-paris.edu.ec
Alors, there’s a whole lot to unpack here (j’aime cette phrase!)
kwaters@cambridge.edu.ec wrote:
>I understand there is a lot of historical debate about the ‘turning
>Point of WW2. A lot of which is dragged down into the mire of Cold
>War politics, with AFS and Comintern historians both having their
>respective horses in the race.
Absolument! While who ‘won’ the war is of little consequence to the
present struggle, academics still succumb to nationalisme.
>One text I read put the turning point at Moscow in 41; Colonel
>Durand argued that when the Heeresgruppe Mitte failed to take
>the city, the Nazis lost any chance of winning the war. Macksey
>differs, arguing that the successful Iberian operation closed the
>door on victory by squeezing Hitler with a second front. And
>Guderian himself argued that Hitler’s failure to secure peace with
>Britain after the astounding victories of 42 was the decisive moment.
>These men are all well respected in the field, and I’m sure there
>are half a hundred other competing theories about the turning
>point. What say you, SHWI?
I say ‘all of the above’ and more. Industrial warfare doesn’t give us
Austerlitz or Waterloo. The war was not won by decisive battles
or campaigns. Part of Durand’s thesis, which I agree with (not
merely because he is from my alma mater) is that the war was largely
fought over control of the resources that would be used to fight it:
_oil, steel, coal, aluminum._
I’ll focus on the oil because it is _super_ important. It’s also something
neither Germany nor Japan had much native access to. It’s fair to
qualify WW2 as a war fought between those who controlled oil or its
access and states that didn’t.
Hobsbawm noted that Germany in particular had an oil deficit of
_millions_ of tonnes per year in 1940. All of that oil had to be imported;
much of it came from Rumania, which wa producing like 8 million
tonnes per year, and ramping up more with German investment. The
rest came from overseas, either in Italian Libya or from the world market.
Germany’s military success depended on the vaunted panzertruppe, the
motorized echelons of the army, and the Luftwaffe, and those all required
oil. Additionally, the Kriegsmarine required huge amounts of heating oil
for any offensive operations, and even the much more important u-boats
were diesel hogs.
I would argue that your could divide the European theater into two distinct
phases. The first, from May 1940 until roughly May 1943. Let’s call
this time the oil boon; Germany could gain access to whatever oil it
needed from the world market. Either enriching its allies in Rumania
or Italy, or shipping oil from Iraq/Kuwait, Arabia, Venezuela, or Canada.
While France and Britain were still neutral, much of this oil importation
would be facilitated by their shipping. After February 42, things got
somewhat complicated. But the Royal Navy did not have the means to
enforce a true blockade, especially with Spain still being neutral, and just
so happened to inherit a large amount of merchant shipping from occupied
Europe.
During this period, the German military had the dash and elan we remember
in popular history. Because their tanks, lorries, and planes had petrol; never
quite enough, but certainly sufficient to pursue mobile combat operations
while maintaining large strategic reserves.
Was there a sudden turning point? I don’t think so; the Comintern had
proved their mastery in the east by then. But with the end of Spanish
neutrality the oil situation got a lot worse. Nazi desire for autarky had
already sunk a lot of money into coal-to-oil tech, but it was not going to
make up for the lack of imports. After Stalingrad, and the Iberian Campaign
the OKW was forced to grapple with major shortages of oil. They took
a defensive posture in the East, limiting offensives to operational counter-
strokes, dramatically cut pilot and tanker training, ended what little civilian
fuel use that had remained, and tried to squeeze more blood out of the
Rumanian stone.
Germany put the last of its strategic oil reserves into July 1944’s Byelorussian
Campaign. Manstein used up the last of the country’s reserves attempting
an ultimately futile ‘backhand blow’ against the Comintern. From that point
onwards all military operations were constrained by the ever dwindling
production available, and that meant huge allocation issues.
Merde! I almost forgot to mention the loss of Libya and access to the Med,
Hitler wresting with his generals about strategy w/ re: the Caucasus!
Another time, I think.
~J. Baptiste
---
C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie.
(Happy April Fool's Day!)
Bookmark1995
Banned
Hello Jello. Happy April Fool's Day to you to.
I really like this part. You touch upon a rarely discussed cause (and factor) in the war: the demand for resources.
The Nazis and the Japanese both sought the resources of their neighbors, but decided-somehow-that psychopathic violence was the best way to get them. Of course, the British and other "civilized" nations weren't much better then this (i.e. the OTL Indian famine of 1943).
Since Red nations see history through the lens of materialism, are they more likely to explore the role resources play in war? Or are they going to stick to black and white narratives of good vs. evil?
I really like this part. You touch upon a rarely discussed cause (and factor) in the war: the demand for resources.
The Nazis and the Japanese both sought the resources of their neighbors, but decided-somehow-that psychopathic violence was the best way to get them. Of course, the British and other "civilized" nations weren't much better then this (i.e. the OTL Indian famine of 1943).
Since Red nations see history through the lens of materialism, are they more likely to explore the role resources play in war? Or are they going to stick to black and white narratives of good vs. evil?
