Former Volunteer Biography: Brian Basgen

Former Volunteer Biography

Brian Basgen (1997 - 2007)

Political Views: Brian's politics are moderately left/libertarian, with a strong antipathy for authortarianism within both the right and left. His political views reject radical politics in general and Marxism in particular. While he was with MIA, he generally advocated a critical view of Marxism through the promotion of people like Rosa Luxmeburg, who vehemently opposed Bolshevism.

Brian believes that Marxism is a complete failure as a form of government, and that Marxism is also a failure as an ideology of a political party. Brian particularly loathed Bolshevism and vanguardism, citing unethical government and politics where the ends justify the means.

Motivation for Volunteering: After creating an independent Soviet History archive in 1996, Brian merged his site with MIA in 1997. Brian became interested in Soviet history due to a rejection of cold-war era Soviet history. Brian's view of Soviet history closely correlates with the modern work from Yale University Press in their Annals of Communism series. Furthermore, he worked to shift historic focus from the Soviet political system to the subject of Soviet society, culture, and people.

Brian's rendetion of an apolitical Soviet history was challenged on several occasions because he believed in promoting the history all participants of history, regardless of their political views. Some MIA volunteers objected to Brian's emphasis on primary sources, and suggested that Soviet history should instead be explained within an ideological context.

MIA Work History: When Brian joined MIA in 1997, the organisation was going through a fundamental shift in direction. Brian worked to establish a political groundwork that reflected his beliefs, which can be found as core principles in the MIA charter: (1) free access to information; (2) non-profit status; (3) consensus and democracy; (4) full disclosure and transparency; (5) political independence; (6) focus on primary sources; & (8) easy access to information.

In these ways Brian helped establish the foundations for the organisation by way of the Charter and Bylaws. He also paid particular focus to architecture and presentation of the archive (directory structure, style sheets, design, function, etc), helped bring in new volunteers, worked on several committees, performed systems administration, and helped run the day to day operations.

During Brian's tenure with MIA, traffic to MIA increased from 9,000 unique visitors per month to over 1,000,000 unique visitors per month. The organisational apparatus grew from a core group of seven volunteers to a body of 62 dedicated volunteers, representing 33 countries around the world and a very diverse set of political views. The archive grew from having all texts in English, to representing 45 different languages. Finally, the size of the archive expanded from 23 Megabytes to 29 Gigabytes.

In his time with MIA, apart from his role in administrative work, Brian created the following archives: Soviet, France, Cuba, Algeria, Afghanistan, USA, and Historians archive, Painting and Marxism, Student's Section, Audio Books, Guevara, Castro, Kruschev, Kennedy, Malcolm X, Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu, Einstein, Darwin, Adam Smith, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Makhno, Keller, Bellamy, Wells, & Sinclair Reference archives. In 1999 Brian created the Encyclopedia of Marxism, initially as an aide for common terms in Soviet history. At various times he administrated the Rosa Luxmeburg, Che Guevara, Lenin and Marx/Engels archives, and assisted with various others.

Departure from MIA: Brian left the organisation due to his opposition to Marxist politics. While he leaves behind a legacy of a moderating influence, he was ultimately unable to convince the organisation of the failure of Marxism as he saw it.