• Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    I don’t actually think Stalin disliked them as much on a personal level as he did Trotsky. His sidelining of Kamanev and Zinoviev was a power play and a consolidation of power but until the Ryutin affair it doesn’t seem like he wanted to do much more than marginalize them as political rivals

      • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        20 hours ago

        The great purge was in many ways a tragedy and a great crime, both for the loss of life involved but also for the loss of talent within the soviet political and bureaucratic sphere. That said I have a hard time crying many tears for the old bolsheviks who were so willing to go along with power plays, purges and clique/factionalism bullshit but then ended up on the wrong end of it themselves.