this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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For those interested, Dessalines' "what would be X like under communism" is a helpful aggregated of discussions regarding this: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#what-would-x-be-like-under-communism
Hey! Literal communist propaganda. Honestly, the better thing to do instead of this is just ask someone over 50 who lives or lived in Eastern Europe.
"Did people in the USSR hate their governments?" - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-citizens-of-the-soviet-union-dislike-their-government
"Did the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries have functioning democracies?" - https://dessalines.github.io/essays/socialism_faq.html#did-the-soviet-union-and-the-warsaw-pact-nations-have-functioning-democracies
It's also interesting how people who's 50, who would have been around 18 when the USSR collapsed or their country seceeded and would have spent their entire adulthood and potentially a part of their teenhood bearing the shockwaves rocking every part of their country under the newly established capitalism (their supposed liberation and salvation and who their new governments claimed would fix literally everything and make them not miserable anymore) that nearly destroyed plenty of Eastern European countries, are overwhelmingly against the USSR, but the trend goes to far more favorable of the USSR the older you get. I'm sure it's just nostalgia though, the oldest people are just behind on the times and their opinions don't count.
Edit: I fixed a miscalculation I made regarding how old people were when the USSR collapsed. My bad.
The USSR collapsed in 1991 so you would be 18 then if you're 50 now. It very much depends on where in the USSR you were, the countries resisting their imperialism got the worse of it. In the baltics most older folks lost family or friends to the occupation so their views on it aren't actually favourable, especially if they remember the time before occupation.
The economically left in Russia are also socially conservative (unlike in most western countries).
Tell that to Ukraine and Kazakstan!
Would Chinese people tell you they hate their government? Is Chinese authoritarianism a good thing just because the people within China don't complain?
Most don't, supported by a Harvard study of all things, not the CPC or Chinese media: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
Harvard even discusses their methods of gathering honest information from locals and how they try to ensure people aren't lying because they're afraid of retribution. Surely the most famous and prestigious university in the US would have thought of that.
Damn good read. Thanks
Here there is a cesspit of inexperienced communists. That means you are dreaming of something written in books or explained by other dreamers but haven't yourself experience the "superior" lifestyle of the "new man".
I haven't read all the links in detail but at least the statistics concerning my country are total bullshit. They aren't faked but the results are misrepresented in a more perverse and I dare to say "comunist way" (meaning the same practices that dominated my country and society for 45 years).
L.E.: it seems my comment hit a sensitive spot. Thank you!
If capitalism destroyed Eastern Europe, it's news to Eastern Europe
Do you think your silly comments serve a purpose besides to make you appear foolish?
Cope and seethe, tankie fascist
Tankie fascist? Are we just fully using words we don’t what they mean now?
I just like short circuiting auth scumbags who worship dictators. Tankies and fascists are two sides of the same coin, after all.
I think the only one who is short circuiting is yourself. You make no sense and sprout nonsense
Lmao ok tankie
As I said, go back to your Fox News. You use the term tankie unironically so if you think that any normal person cares what you have to say, I mean, I don’t think I even have a response to that
LMAO I don't watch Fox News, tankie trash
You clearly do as you have fallen for their propaganda
0 days since I've had to trot out this article from a mainstream Jewish holocaust scholar on why equating communists and fascists is holocaust trivialization.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
"Everything I don't like is holocaust denial: a dishonest child's guide to political slander"
Stalin also committed genocide, and he killed even more of his own people than Hitler did. He was also Hitler's ally until he was betrayed by that ally. Tankies and fascists are two rotten peas in the same pod.
Are you calling a mainstream Jewish holocaust scholar a dishonest child doing political slander?
If he's saying that criticism of the USSR is holocaust denial, that is the camp he's placing himself into.
He isn't saying that though, he is saying equating communists and fascists holocaust trivialization.
Equating and criticizing aren't the same thing. You're equating.
So he's minimizing the Holodomor, and all the other forced relocations and summary executions of undesirables under Stalin and other Soviet despots.
You're literally doing the nazi propaganda he is talking about.
"refusal to minimize genocide is Nazi propaganda"
Stalin murdered even more people than Hitler. History equates them. I just recognize that reality. If you seriously think that's holocaust denial then you're a fucking joke.
That's certainly a new one, where'd you get that statistic from, stormfront?
Stalin's regime is estimated to have killed ca 20 million civilians during his time in power. Hitler, it's around 12 million or so.
You can argue the figures because if you go by official government records it only comes to about eight million, but even if you believe the USSR about their own atrocities and not contemporary estimates, they're still in the same ballpark as Hitler's regime.
Where did you get those numbers from? Because over 26 million people died from the nazi invasion so the 12 million number is immediately false.
Civilian casualties, kiddo. And remember, Stalin helped Hitler start WW2, and was his ally at the start of the war, so, he doesn't get a pass on military deaths during the war. It's not like the USSR gets a pass like countries like France do.
Well soviet civilian casualties were something like 17 million people on their own, and 11 million people were killed in concentration camps, so...
You do realize that the USSR signed a pact after the British and French rebuffed them and had already signed appeasement pacts with Germany right? (Including allowing them to size czech territory, which gave Germany much needed personnel, industry, and a fleet of really good early war tanks) And after they invaded Poland they dedicated resources to moving minorities out of the way of a nazi invasion they knew would come?
France literally signed pacts with nazis and did even worse appeasement than the Soviets did.
Yes. I am aware that Stalin tried to get Allied approval to invade and annex Poland or turn it into a puppet state and was rebuffed. That was his whole goal - conquering Poland.
Okay, so you aren't aware of the USSRs attempts to create an alliance to stop nazi Germany, got it.
Do you get your political knowledge from the history Channel or from Prager U? Or a little bit of both?
No, no, you're totally right, I bet the guy who jointly invaded Poland with the Nazis as their military ally wanted to station Soviet imperial troops on the Western border of Poland out of charity and not his thirst for conquest
Stalin did none of that. Perhaps try reading a fucking book. Stalin signed a treaty with Hitler, just like all the countries in Western Europe. The difference is that Stalin first tried to get the Western European countries to ally against Hitler. They refused of course, because they love their fascism. Equating Stalin to Hitler is very fascist behavior.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/24/75-of-russians-say-soviet-era-was-greatest-time-in-countrys-history-poll-a69735
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1128057/russia-opinion-on-dissolution-of-the-ussr-by-age/
It's unsurprising that many Russians look back fondly to the time when they had imperial domination over more than a dozen foreign countries, looting them for resources and using them as military puppets.
You said:
Are you backing down on that statement now or are you saying that Russia isn't in Eastern Europe?
Russia is sometimes included in that, I wasn't. My apologies for being unclear. Russia is the former imperial center of the Soviet Empire, so they benefited dramatically from the labor and resources of their colonies. They also never adopted the kind of modern democratic capitalism which was a competing ideology to communism during the Cold War, instead adopting a form of fascism, so I thought it was obvious to anyone that when making the comparison between capitalism and communism in Eastern Europe, a good faith participant in a discussion would look at Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, etc.
Silly of me the think that someone who lived in Russia during the USSR would know what it's like to live under communism
When you're contrasting communism and capitalism, it's strange to do it by asking someone in a fascist kleptocracy whether they miss being at the heart of a massive empire
Russia is about the only former communist nation which is worse off now, excepting perhaps Ukraine - blame Russia for that, too - and it's because they're Russia, not because they're ex communists.
Non-russians especially in Central Asia voted to not dissolve the USSR at a much higher rate than Russians in 1991, so claiming it was a Russian empire is a bit nonsensical.
Check out the sources on this Wikipedia article
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
Mm hmm.