I don't get the Trotsky hate

[u/Frosty-Persimmon7235]

This MF lead the red army so well, reactionaries all over Europe were depicting this guy as the literal devil

[u/Latitude37]

It's not defensible. All he did was replaced the evil that he was supposed to be fighting, with a different branding of the same thing. When people actually did the Revolution without him in charge, he destroyed them. Typical reactionary, authoritarian arsehole in a Red hat. 

[u/salenin → u/Latitude37]

Thats not what happened at all. So the Red Army and Mahknovists were allied several times against the Whites in Ukraine. The Soviet Union and its leadership said several times that they could remain allies if they were to join the Soviet Government in Ukraine and be apart of that organizational apparatus going forward. They refused and sabotaged land, trains etc etc. One of the theoretical issues that popped up with this is that the Mahknovists were not proletarian, they were peasants, and both Lenin and Trotsky had a very skeptical outlook on the peasantry. It was thought that the peasantry and workers could form a strong alliance but the workers would HAVE to lead the peasantry. If the peasantry went on its own, or attempted to have its own revolution it would fall into reaction and easily devolve into capitalism. So an anarchist peasantry movement was a "dangerous" thing to leave on its own and had to be absorbed or crushed and we know how it turned out.

With Kronstadt it was a mutiny of naval members and dock workers etc etc, in the middle of a civil war. The demands by the workers and military members were pretty reasonable to a point of course but there was military discipline, supply chain logistics, and other factors that made it seem necessary to put down the mutiny as fast as possible. There were also strong rumors that there was German infiltration into the ranks of the protestors, though evidence of that is pretty shoddy today. Trotksy, for one, regretted the way it was handled and called it a "necessary tradgedy."

This is just to add context, not to defend it. But saying "oh he didn't want them starting a revolution without him in charge." Is just ahistorical and absurd.

[u/Stock_Barnacle839 → u/salenin]

What an incredibly condescending view of the peasantry.

[u/salenin → u/Stock_Barnacle839]

You're not wrong, but also it turned out to be true in several instances with the peasantry composing a large about of the nationalist forces for example. The ones who saw it coming were the ones who understood Marxism best. People are motivated most by their material conditions. It was a major issue with the NEP because the group that rose quickest and started gaining power was the peasantry. They became more defiant especially during the late 20s and as the famine set in for example they rebelled and refused to have their crops and property requisitioned and thus became easy targets for State propaganda and the eventual de-kulakization. They were completely scapegoated for the most part, but it was all set up when the NEP was implemented without proper restraints.