Yeah, the Soviet union is not a place I would have liked to live in during its time in power, and from stories I’ve gotten from family that fled during Stalin’s time it is a safe assumption to have as those who remained did not have a great time during the Holodomor.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism in the USSR. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries.
I am living in post Soviet times, but if you mean in a totalitarian regime in Russia pre USSR, during USSR, or post USSR they all sucked, be it Trotsky’s terrible decisions which, had he been appointed as the head of state after Lenin’s death would most likely have led the Soviet Union to war against western europe, including Nazi germany, years ahead of time and united them all against the Soviet union, to Stalin destroying crop yields due to bureaucratic inefficiencies to be charitable or a genocide similar to what happened in Ireland or India in the 1800’s due to profit extraction and to quell popular uprisings. And those are just pre WW2 events, that doesn’t condone any of Tzar Nicholas 2nd’s terrible decision making but the Soviet union was doing at the end of the unions existence what the US government is doing now, allowing for seniority to rule leaving a less vibrant and more entrenched political elite who doesn’t need to deliver anything to the people to keep their power.
If you want communism to work you can but only on small scales like Kibbutzs or Co-ops where the workers actually own and control the means of production in a meaningful manner, but the Soviet Union, or any other communist government by name has people who don’t know the intricacies of how a certain field works dictating not only regulations but quotas which are only truly fulfilled on paper. Also I find it rich that people who support anti colonialism and think America or Israel have done some bad ethnic cleansing, to put it mildly in America’s case, ignore the continual Russification of all places Russia can, be it in Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Hungary, or even within its borders in areas which had a large non Russian population more similar in culture to Mongolians; they did it during the time of Ivan the Terrible, Katherine the Great, when they took Saint Petersburg from the Sweeds to have a Baltic port, under all the Tzars, but not just them under Lenin and Stalin Russian became the de facto language of all nations part of the Warsaw pact and they suppressed other languages, that’s why Crimea doesn’t have the Tartars anymore for example. I would not like to live in a Russian occupied nation until Russia has true democracy and reduces its corruption issues, these issues having been in place since they were part of the Kievan Rus, and didn’t go away under the Soviet Union.
Kibbutz in Israel are elements of settler-colonialism. Cooperatives are not communist either, but communalist. Communism is a system of collectivized production and distribution, and cannot work in small scales as what we know as communism. The idea that administration and management is incompatible with local inputs is a sheer mockery of socialist economics and is straight from Ludwig Von Mises, quack economist disproven by steady and stable economic growth in socialist countries.
Secondly, the USSR was not “Russified.” It was a federation of multi-national ethnicities, which were protected by the soviets. Tsarist Russification was stopped by the soviets. Advocating for a common writing system and language was done alongside vast literacy programs and protecting ethnicities and languages. National liberation was taken incredibly seriously by the soviets.
You’re also hinting that you think the genocide of Palestine is overblown and that Israel has a right to exist, which is full-blown Zionism.
Kibbutzs existed before Israel for one but if you can say it is an element of settler colonialism on one hand and say that the USSR and Warsaw pact countries weren’t russified on the other with a straight face while knowing about Russian backed separatist movements in Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova at a minimum, not to mention the large Russian population in Baltic nations, what happened to Crimea during the Soviet Union, and why Kazakhstan has a large Russian speaking population you have a very weird set of double standards. As for the Soviets wanting National Liberation within the Warsaw pact you might want to look at the history of what happened in Hungary in the 1950’s, in Ukraine and Poland before world war 2 and during where they were forced to join the USSR by military occupation, what almost happened to Finland, why Romania and Yugoslavia set up defenses against land invasions from the Soviets and the list goes on, not to mention the border disputes with China, or what are called the color revolutions during the last years of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a colonial empire but not like that of the US or the UK but more like that of the mongols, Romans, or Chinese, cultures who expanded their borders not just for resources, but to implement their culture and defensive borders. Yes the US has a somewhat homogenous culture, but much of that can be attributed to Hollywood and mass distribution of media (and the genocide of indigenous peoples in the 1800’s), Communists had those too but also controlled all media, enforcing propaganda and language norms, such as forcing the Magyar and ukranian languages into lower positions within their own countries in comparison to Russia for everything from education to government processes, similar to what france did in the last 300+ years with its internal languages and cultures, and China has been enforcing the dominance of the Han culture for close to 2000 years and has been getting rid of local languages for decades now to promote Mandarin.
Yes, I can say with a straight face that genocidal Zionist settler-colonialism is entirely different from soviet literacy programs, because the goal of Zionism is the eradication of Palestinians and the goal of the soviet literacy programs is the ability to read and communicate.
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
To the contrary of your claims, Ukrainian identity was propped up and defended by the communists, along with other ethnicities. The USSR did not run based on resource extraction or cultural erasure, but by promoting both national liberation and proletarian internationalism. Same with the PRC, minority languages and ethnicities are protected, given special protections such as exemptions from the One Child Policy and affirmative action style policies, and have greater proportional representation than Han Chinese in the NPC.
You’re seriously wrong about your claims, to the point of trivializing actual genocide and cultural erasure, including that done by the genocidal US Empire and the Zionist entity.
Yeah, the Soviet union is not a place I would have liked to live in during its time in power, and from stories I’ve gotten from family that fled during Stalin’s time it is a safe assumption to have as those who remained did not have a great time during the Holodomor.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism in the USSR. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries.
You should of had to live there in pre-Soviet times. Or post Soviet times for that matter
I am living in post Soviet times, but if you mean in a totalitarian regime in Russia pre USSR, during USSR, or post USSR they all sucked, be it Trotsky’s terrible decisions which, had he been appointed as the head of state after Lenin’s death would most likely have led the Soviet Union to war against western europe, including Nazi germany, years ahead of time and united them all against the Soviet union, to Stalin destroying crop yields due to bureaucratic inefficiencies to be charitable or a genocide similar to what happened in Ireland or India in the 1800’s due to profit extraction and to quell popular uprisings. And those are just pre WW2 events, that doesn’t condone any of Tzar Nicholas 2nd’s terrible decision making but the Soviet union was doing at the end of the unions existence what the US government is doing now, allowing for seniority to rule leaving a less vibrant and more entrenched political elite who doesn’t need to deliver anything to the people to keep their power.
If you want communism to work you can but only on small scales like Kibbutzs or Co-ops where the workers actually own and control the means of production in a meaningful manner, but the Soviet Union, or any other communist government by name has people who don’t know the intricacies of how a certain field works dictating not only regulations but quotas which are only truly fulfilled on paper. Also I find it rich that people who support anti colonialism and think America or Israel have done some bad ethnic cleansing, to put it mildly in America’s case, ignore the continual Russification of all places Russia can, be it in Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Hungary, or even within its borders in areas which had a large non Russian population more similar in culture to Mongolians; they did it during the time of Ivan the Terrible, Katherine the Great, when they took Saint Petersburg from the Sweeds to have a Baltic port, under all the Tzars, but not just them under Lenin and Stalin Russian became the de facto language of all nations part of the Warsaw pact and they suppressed other languages, that’s why Crimea doesn’t have the Tartars anymore for example. I would not like to live in a Russian occupied nation until Russia has true democracy and reduces its corruption issues, these issues having been in place since they were part of the Kievan Rus, and didn’t go away under the Soviet Union.
Kibbutz in Israel are elements of settler-colonialism. Cooperatives are not communist either, but communalist. Communism is a system of collectivized production and distribution, and cannot work in small scales as what we know as communism. The idea that administration and management is incompatible with local inputs is a sheer mockery of socialist economics and is straight from Ludwig Von Mises, quack economist disproven by steady and stable economic growth in socialist countries.
Secondly, the USSR was not “Russified.” It was a federation of multi-national ethnicities, which were protected by the soviets. Tsarist Russification was stopped by the soviets. Advocating for a common writing system and language was done alongside vast literacy programs and protecting ethnicities and languages. National liberation was taken incredibly seriously by the soviets.
You’re also hinting that you think the genocide of Palestine is overblown and that Israel has a right to exist, which is full-blown Zionism.
Kibbutzs existed before Israel for one but if you can say it is an element of settler colonialism on one hand and say that the USSR and Warsaw pact countries weren’t russified on the other with a straight face while knowing about Russian backed separatist movements in Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova at a minimum, not to mention the large Russian population in Baltic nations, what happened to Crimea during the Soviet Union, and why Kazakhstan has a large Russian speaking population you have a very weird set of double standards. As for the Soviets wanting National Liberation within the Warsaw pact you might want to look at the history of what happened in Hungary in the 1950’s, in Ukraine and Poland before world war 2 and during where they were forced to join the USSR by military occupation, what almost happened to Finland, why Romania and Yugoslavia set up defenses against land invasions from the Soviets and the list goes on, not to mention the border disputes with China, or what are called the color revolutions during the last years of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a colonial empire but not like that of the US or the UK but more like that of the mongols, Romans, or Chinese, cultures who expanded their borders not just for resources, but to implement their culture and defensive borders. Yes the US has a somewhat homogenous culture, but much of that can be attributed to Hollywood and mass distribution of media (and the genocide of indigenous peoples in the 1800’s), Communists had those too but also controlled all media, enforcing propaganda and language norms, such as forcing the Magyar and ukranian languages into lower positions within their own countries in comparison to Russia for everything from education to government processes, similar to what france did in the last 300+ years with its internal languages and cultures, and China has been enforcing the dominance of the Han culture for close to 2000 years and has been getting rid of local languages for decades now to promote Mandarin.
Yes, I can say with a straight face that genocidal Zionist settler-colonialism is entirely different from soviet literacy programs, because the goal of Zionism is the eradication of Palestinians and the goal of the soviet literacy programs is the ability to read and communicate.
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
To the contrary of your claims, Ukrainian identity was propped up and defended by the communists, along with other ethnicities. The USSR did not run based on resource extraction or cultural erasure, but by promoting both national liberation and proletarian internationalism. Same with the PRC, minority languages and ethnicities are protected, given special protections such as exemptions from the One Child Policy and affirmative action style policies, and have greater proportional representation than Han Chinese in the NPC.
You’re seriously wrong about your claims, to the point of trivializing actual genocide and cultural erasure, including that done by the genocidal US Empire and the Zionist entity.