Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 September 9

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September 9

Multilingual (fr/it) WW1 postcard?

File:Guerre_14-18-Humour-L'ingordo,_trop_dur-1915.JPG is in use in the article Wilhelm II, German Emperor where it is claimed to be an Italian poster. The file description on Commons says it is a postcard from the French military propaganda. Which is it?

I also find it weird that the text uses two languages. L'ingordo is Italian for "the glutton", trop dur is French for "too hard", so it is not a translation; and although I am in no way an expert on WW1 history, I doubt the French would give a German foe an Italian nickname. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 13:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

It looks to me more like a postcard than a poster, though the poor image quality doesn't help. The Italian text is largest, so probably it was mainly for the Italian market... AnonMoos (talk) 14:00, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict, and no hard evidence, but ...) The caricaturist, Eugenio Colmo aka Golia is Italian and, from what I could tell, he worked in Italy for Italian publications during WWI. The Italian word "ingordo" was certainly less familiar or understandable to French people than "trop dur" was to Italians. French was still a widely understood language among educated people at the time, and "trop dur" is very close to the Italian "troppo duro". All this leads me to believe that it was originally published in Italy (whether as postcard or poster is another question). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Aha, I did find: "L'ingordo (...) a famous image of the Kaiser attempting to devour the world, was created by the Italian Eugenio Colmo (1855-1967) but arguably found its widest audience via mass-produced French postcards." (Richard Scully, "The 'Kaiser Cartoon', 1914-1918", in The Great War and the British Empire: Culture and society, Routledge Studies in First World War History, Taylor & Francis, 2016, ISBN 9781317029830) The same text also emphasizes that the Allies of WWI shared Kaiser cartoons among themselves, and that this was facilitated by "the unprecedented development of networks of communication and information that the war brought into play and that the industrialisation of printed media made possible." ---Sluzzelin talk 14:21, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Good job Sluzzelin - I edited the Commons description page to reflect this. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 08:18, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Resolved

Spanish Civil War Communists

Our Article on the SCW includes the paragraph "In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragon and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and peasants collectivised land and industry and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government.[380] This revolution was opposed by the Soviet-supported communists who, perhaps surprisingly, campaigned against the loss of civil property rights."

Why? Why would the communists support civil property rights?

Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 14:48, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Realpolitik ? In this case, meaning they didn't want to align themselves with what they worried would be the losing side, but would rather wait and see, then try to influence the winning side. The Soviets would be more interested in spreading their influence than their economic theory, keeping in mind that the Soviet Union wasn't really about equality for all, that's just what they told the peasants so the fat cats could have all the money and power they craved, and massacre their enemies with impunity. SinisterLefty (talk) 15:20, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

. I mean, no question Bolsheviks were bad guys, but fat cats could have all the money and power they craved, and massacre their enemies with impunity, like some sort of mafia, seriously??? Gem fr (talk) 16:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Please read The Great Terror (particularly its Reassessment second edition) by Robert Conquest, or even the transcript of Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" if you really doubt that this is the case. The idea that Stalin would abuse power for his own ends was foreseen by Lenin; see our article on Lenin's Testament. Nyttend (talk) 22:27, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

See Secret Speech. SinisterLefty (talk) 04:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Great Purge and Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin covers some of this. ("Excess mortality" is quite the euphemism for genocide, but I suppose they want it to sound neutral.) SinisterLefty (talk) 04:16, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Is that supposed to prove they were just mafia-like, without political goals? because, it does the very opposite. Gem fr (talk) 08:36, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

How so ? The murder, imprisonment, and torture of millions of common people obviously wasn't going to create the "workers paradise" they promised. On the other end, those in power had plenty of luxuries denied the commoners. I suggest reading Animal Farm, for an analogy on how it all went wrong. In Russia, once the Mensheviks were wiped out, there wasn't much hope of making life better for the peasants. For a closer approximation of a "workers paradise", I suggest looking at the Nordic nations, which paired a strong "welfare state" (here welfare means "for the welfare of all", not the program in the US for poor people only) with true democracy and respect for human rights. Take a look at the List of countries by Human Development Index to get an idea of which nations are getting it right (Russia is doing much better now than under Stalin). SinisterLefty (talk) 10:40, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

"obviously"? obviously, it was. Peasants are not "workers" the way Marx thought them, they had to give way to industry, metal working, machine building, etc.: made perfect communist sense to crush them, both to destroy the old world including killing reluctant people, and to muster ressource (food AND workforce) for the industrialization (including food production industrialization, a Sovkhoz being some sort of a plant) to build the new workers' paradise. Some mafia mob would just had ransacked every one, and that would have been it. Soviets applied Marx plan to enslave everyone (including the rulers, after all, they too were under threat to be purged, punished deported). I like Animal Farm, but he has it wrong: soviet ruler never turned into old-style ruler, as the final scene hints. And a chapter is missing : where Snowball/Trotsky tries to invade the neighbor farm, and gets kicked out. Gem fr (talk) 12:56, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Jee... the source seems to be Beevor (2006) The Battle for Spain, (BTW, the article makes a quite massive use of this source -- appears 116 time in the article. This may borderline plagiarism...). Anyway, our article on Beevor mentions he tapped on newly available Russian archives, this would be the track to follow to catch the real why. Now, looking at POUM article, you'll notice that Nin was detained and tortured to death by NKVD agents in Madrid, and his party consistently labeled as provocateur in Stalinist propaganda.. Likewise, you'll notice that post 1945 USSR taking over of East Europa was somewhat more subtile and more orderly (top-bottom, always controlled, with apparent legality) than the anarchists' ways. Soviets wanted to have firm grip first, then, and only then, have it their ways. So campaigning that anarchists have it really wrong, boo, bad guys, we Soviet will make it right, etc. (whatever works) makes perfect sense and is completely in line with the Soviets' ways. Gem fr (talk) 16:04, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

We have an article, Anarchism in Spain, and in the Counter-revolution section, it says that the Soviet Communists equated anarchism with Trotskyism, for which there was little sympathy in the Kremlin. Alansplodge (talk) 16:09, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I like your understatement little sympathy xD Gem fr (talk) 16:14, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

See English understatement - it's in the genes. Alansplodge (talk) 16:17, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

If you get the chance, read Homage to Catalonia, which gives a first hand account of NKVD's suppression of the POUM. It also explains George Orwell's hatred of Soviet communism. Mikenorton (talk) 16:20, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

• Land reform in Spain (we need an article here!) goes back much further than the civil war period. It starts right back with the Peninsular War and does nothing substantial for a century, although the need for it is increasingly recognised. In much of Western Europe, Britain and Ireland are examples, this reform takes place in a fairly bloodless market-driven fashion after WWI, where the shortage of labour drives up wage costs in relation to land rents and makes the old estates unworkable. Even in Ireland, with this taking place during a civil war, the reforms come about as a consequence, rather than a driving force for the war.

In Spain, reforms begin under Azaña and the Second Republic. These are initially largely economic though, recognising the inefficiencies of the huge latifundia estates, just as a means of organising farming. Yet there is also still the risk of revolution and the rural population is disenfranchised and placed at risk by these estates: reform must go further or else there is a risk of a violent uprising to demand it. The first solid legal reforms have to advance this: the Law of Obligatory Cultivation stops the estate owners being able to turn production (and thus employment) on and off at whim, more as a control of a workforce than for agrarian reasons. Then the 1932 Agrarian Reform Law limits the size of large estates to 23 ha, or they can be purchased and redistributed by the state.[1] The reform law is powerful, but not widely implemented: there just isn't either the funds or the organisation to put it into effect. Only something like 10% of the potential new landowners are benefitted by it. However these reforms are enough to inspire a strongly reactionary element which will in turn become Franco's support.

During the civil war period, the Anarchist groups extended this land reform, although now with little or no compensation for the landowners and also with rather more compulsion to the peasant farmers. At a time when food distribution or sale after production was chaotic, this system often produced an unusable surplus of some crop, punctuated by gaps between crops and ongoing financial poverty. So, some improvement and scope for a long-term reform, but largely chaos in the present.

Communism, particularly in the 1930s Soviet form, takes issue with anarcho-syndicalism and the sort of property reform which was being experimented with in Spain. What it meant there wasn't against "private property" in a particularly broad sense, but really just these large agricultural estates. But these estates were made small and were intended to be largely self-sufficient with a small trade surplus, rather than being the economically trading monocultures which had previously profited the latifundias and had fed the cities. Communism liked these latifundia – they were similar to the structure of the idealised collective farms, they merely wished to change the ownership. A population of independent smallholders would be uncontrollable by a Communist state, and PCE and their Comintern masters wanted none of that! Andy Dingley (talk) 16:18, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

A New Statesman article, Anarchists and Communists in Spain, quotes left-wing journalist and historian, H. N. Brailsford on the subject:

"To grasp this situation one must realise that the Communists now constitute the modern Centre Party in republican Spain. Their propaganda, as skilful as it is pervasive, is almost exclusively defensive. It focuses attention on resistance to Fascism and on a concentrated effort to win the war; it discourages talk about the future, and ridicules its allies’ weakness for “plans and projects”. I have before me a pamphlet by its secretary, Jose Diaz, which defines its objective as the creation of “a domestic and parliamentary republic of a new type.” The novelty of this conception is not easy to grasp, for Diaz goes on to insist that the chief task is to destroy the material foundations of Spanish feudalism – the vast aristocratic estates, the political and economic power of the Church, and the old army based on caste. Something is added, in much vaguer words, about the need for breaking up the financial oligarchy and nationalising the Bank of Spain, but it is obvious that industry will be socialised, if at all, only partially and with extreme caution. The enemy, in short, is feudalism and less certainly big business, but small property, whether in town or country, need have no fear.

"I just discussed this policy with several leading Communists. They justified it mainly on two grounds. Spain is a land of peasants, who own their few acres, save in the south and west, where the great estates predominate. They cannot be driven forcibly to to accept socialisation – an experiment which the Anarchists have tried in Aragon with disastrous results. Again, the support of the small middle class is essential, if the war is to be won. In fact, the country was very evenly divided by the test of votes in February, 1936; the Republic dare not throw away potential support from any quarter. Secondly, it dare not antagonise the Western democracies by unfurling the flag of proletarian revolution. This had the ring of everyday common sense, though I reflected that Lenin brushed aside very similar arguments in 1917".

Alansplodge (talk) 16:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

There is es:Ley de Reforma Agraria de España de 1932.

I don't have a reference but I remember reading that, in some phase of the war, the PCE was the party of law and order, joined by many who were not communists but republicans wanting an efficient running of the republic and the war.

As for Communists and small peasants, land reform in Poland after the war created a lot of Polish smallholders at the expense of earlier German holders. I think that collectivization never went far in Communist countries except in the Soviet territory.

--Error (talk) 20:32, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Without going through all the debate above, the notion that the Spanish revolution was betrayed from within by PCE constitutes an essential Dolchstoßlegende of the modern left. The myth about the war has little to do with the war itself, but corresponds to what people want it to represent. --Soman (talk) 14:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

It's no myth that Stalin considered it a higher priority for the Russian presence in Spain to help the NKVD purge Trotskyists and Anarchists, instead of maintaining the effective fighting ability of the Republican military forces. It's also no myth that Spain's central gold reserves disappeared from Madrid and showed up in Moscow... AnonMoos (talk) 19:06, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

The "instead" is the part of the myth, as is the notion that internal struggles (which surely did not help) were to be blamed on PCE alone. And so is Moscow gold "disappearance" (see article). Gem fr (talk) 07:05, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm sure that Stalin considered maintaining the effective fighting ability of the Republican military forces to be a somewhat worthy goal. However, he considered it more important that purges of Trotskyites and Anarchists be conducted in Spain under NKVD supervision. That's what "higher priority" means. And the "Moscow gold" article you linked to doesn't say that the transfer was mythical, only that some views about it are a simplified version of a more complex reality (something which applies to most historical events that aren't completely forgotten by the public). The name of the article ("Moscow gold") is a little strange, since in the English language "Moscow gold" usually refers to gold supposedly smuggled out of Petrograd, or later Moscow, to support subversion by the various local communist parties around the world. That type of Moscow gold is in fact semi-mythical (as opposed to the gold taken from Spain to the Soviet Union, which is quite historical)... AnonMoos (talk) 13:41, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

It can be argued that Trotskyites and Anarchists actually undermined the Republican military forces, preventing the building of some really effective army: Moscow remembered that the Red Army was ineffective until Trotskytransformed the Red Army from a ragtag network of small and fiercely independent detachments into a large and disciplined military machine, through forced conscription, party-controlled blocking squads, compulsory obedience and officers chosen by the leadership instead of the rank and file, and for this, Trotskyites and Anarchists had to be melted down.

I agree with you that Moscow gold is not a proper title for the Spanish Moscow gold, like yourself I understand Moscow gold as the just as historical, but surrendered by fog and mystery and myth suitable for secret services, money that the NKVD/KGB (but also East Germany STASI etc.) used to support communist and para-communist organizations around the world Gem fr (talk) 14:38, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Trotsky became a real general during the Russian civil war fighting. Stalin's military prowess is much more questionable. Certainly his purges of the Soviet Army in the 1930s did nothing to strengthen it, as revealed in the fighting of the Winter War. And Stalin seemed to do everything in his power to make the initial German attacks against the Soviet Union as big a success as possible, refusing to listen to any of his spies who warned about a German attack, refusing to redeploy Soviet troops to a better defensive posture, and suffering some kind of mysterious nervous breakdown in the week after the first attack, which left his subordinates issuing all the orders. I know of no evidence that Stalin's NKVD-supervised purges in Spain did much to increase to increase Republican military effectiveness -- and even if they had achieved this goal, that would have meant that non-Franco Spain would have ended up as a Stalinist secret-police state... AnonMoos (talk) 09:35, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, like Hitler, he wasn't competent, but his generals were. However, unlike Hitler, who relied on his generals and admirals more at the beginning of the war, and later took direct control, with disastrous results, Stalin gave more control to the generals later, with better results. SinisterLefty (talk) 11:41, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Another film marquee

Blacksburg, Virginia, 7 November 2010

Marquee inscription:

SAVIORS IN THE NIGHT
     NOV 5  7-11
       NEXT
  SOCIAL  NETWORK

The last line is The Social Network, and I assume "Next" refers to the date given earlier in the line, but what about Saviors in the Night? Google gives me information about a 2009 film of this name (its summary: Marga Spiegel describes how courageous farmers in southern Munsterland hid her family from Nazis), both under this title and Unter Bauern (see IMDB), but I can't find an article about it. Do we really have no article? It seems that we have articles for every other feature film released in the US, so I'd be surprised if this one doesn't have an article. Nyttend (talk) 23:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

• The photo shows NEXT on a line by itself. I've edited Nyttend's transcription to match. This is irrelevant to the question, of course. --76.69.116.4 (talk) 05:53, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

At this moment, it looks like we only have it as Marga on French Wikipedia and Unter Bauern – Retter in der Nacht on German Wikipedia. English Wikipedia has an article on Marga Spiegel where the film is red-linked too. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:16, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The photo hanging in the display case to the right of the movie's entrance ("NOW SHOWING") looks like it's this production still from the movie, so I'm pretty sure you have the right film. ---Sluzzelin talk 08:30, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

A division in Cabinet - Gladstone, Campbell-Bannerman, and Juvenal

In H. H. Asquith's The Genesis of the War, we read (in a footnote on page 19 of the George H. Doran edition) "I remember in Mr. Gladstone's cabinet of 1892-94, which contained a number of excellent scholars, a division being suggested—I think by Lord Rosebery—on the correctness of a quotation from Juvenal, which was keenly disputed between the Prime Minister and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The matter was happily settled by the production of the text: Sir Henry proved to be right." Do we know what the quotation was, and how did the GOM misquote it? Bonus marks for the context - what were the Cabinet discussing that brought the matter up in the first place? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 23:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

No luck yet - no Hansard results for "Juvenal" for the time period. Same incident with similar description is mentioned in the Spectator of 13 Nov. 1913 - so also no details, though before Asquith's book. "He was so well read in the classics that he could hold his own in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, and on one occasion proved right in his reading of a line of Juvenal when all the other big classical guns—including Mr. Asquith—were wrong." 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:01, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

On the frame enclosing the list of impending executions I got inscribed the line of Juvenal—

"Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est"

which was a Roman husband's counsel to his ill-tempered wife when she wanted to crucify a slave off-hand.

Juvenal's line is followed by another one, which is much better known and is not infrequently misquoted, and thereby hangs the story of a dissension in Cabinet. "Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione volontas" said Campbell- Bannerman when, after long discussion, a Cabinet decision was reached. Rosebery suggested that the quotation was inaccurate and that "stet" should be substituted for "sit". A copy of the Satires of Juvenal was sent for and C.-B. turned out to be right. So Asquith told me, and he added that Rosebery covered his retreat by observing that he was sorry that C.-B. showed so accurate a memory about a Satire which schoolboys are not allowed to read! This sort of interlude does not occur in Cabinets nowadays.

Simon, John Allsebrook.(1952) Retrospect : the memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Viscount Simon. London. pp. 208-9. The first line Simon translates as "You can never hesitate too long before deciding that a man must die" and the one in contention as "That I wish, and thus I order—my wish is reason enough".—eric 12:36, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Ah thank you! Kipling misquotes it similarly in The Light That Failed. I suppose I should read Simon's Retrospect, but I'm not sure I can bear to have him in the house. Was there perhaps an edition of Juvenal with it incorrectly printed, that Kipling and Roseberry (or Gladstone) could both have been familiar with? DuncanHill (talk) 12:49, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

One minor quibble - volontas is an Esperanto word which means "volunteer". As stated, there are many misquotations of this phrase, e.g. Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas but they all involve the replacement of one Latin word with another. I doubt that volontas would have got past Campbell-Bannerman. 2A00:23C5:E111:C500:F14D:BCE6:4914:6211 (talk) 14:09, 11 September 2019 (UTC)