Sure. People like to romanticize the past and the Wiedervereinigung was a shitty process that fucked many people over. But it is nice, not to live in a Planwirtschaft, to travel to other german cities without being shot at or running through mine fields and not to have a quarter of your neighbourhood spy on you to be brought to one of the Stasi torture prisons for not being socialist enough.
Wow, that sounds horrible, I bet there were a lot of prosecutions of the people who carried those things out once the government reunified!
Oh, and the physical evidence and documentation of those torture dungeons after the wall fell, there must be so much evidence of all the horrors committed!
And all the violence the evil communist government must have done to keep itself in power and prevent reunification must have been really evident, I bet we can find newspaper clippings and even video on the widespread violence that happened in an effort to hold on to power.
Wait, I’m getting reports that none of those things actually happened, fuck. It would have lined up so nicely with the narrative taught to me by American education and popular media, that’s a real bummer.
Old people in Russia will not remember the Stalin era, but the Khrushchev era (the post-gulag era, famous for de-stalinization) and the Brezhnev era. Old people also tend to romatisize their youth. And romatisizing the Soviet Union is mixed with ethno-nationalism in current days Russia.
I consider myself a socialist, but stalinism is dog-shit.
The world owes Stalin and the people of the USSR a debt that can never be repaid for being the only country to try to stop Nazi Germany before the war and the country which bore the brunt of the casualties and hardship.
Any “socialist” who shit talks them is suspicious as fuck in my book, chauvinist at the very best and probably a snitch.
Khrushchev was an opportunist piece of shit and the world would have been better if he had been kicked out of the party.
Oh yes. The only country. the people who stood up and fought for their independence from that murderous shit hole just were brain washed by all those western capitalist comforts and luxuries. Ups sorry no they were even worse off with the capitalists because they really were enslaved and unhappy and taken advantage of.
but alas at least they chose. Socialists chose for you. If you don’t like the choice fuck off to the gulag.
You’re joking, right? Never heard of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Funny fact: all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
The non-aggression pact that was signed well after Nazi germany had signed pacts with Britain and France? The one that was signed after Stalin’s pleas for an alliance against Hitler’s Germany fell on deaf ears because Western powers were still dreaming that Germany would attack the USSR first and succeed where they’d failed immediately after the 1917 revolution? That one?
Historically illiterate westerners read a single fucking line and memorize it and think that’s an earth-shattering gotcha like we haven’t seen your cookie cutter shit a hundred times. Serious socialists who actually read history can contextualize history, and I’ll repeat it: fuck anyone who diminishes the sacrifices of the Soviet Union against the Nazi tide, it’s barely notch above outright holocaust denial.
all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
Back up your claims with a serious source. I’m sure such a comically extraordinary claim will have hard evidence behind it and not just a vibe.
A user just moved the goalpost to the time when the U.S.S.R. traded some raw materials in exchange for firearms and other machinery (which it later used to help defeat the Axis). One can imagine another counterarguing that this credit deal hardly enabled the Third Reich’s bellicism; that, if anything, it likely only lead to the Axis’s defeat as it allowed the Soviets to prepare for the armed conflict. Ask yourself if that sounds identical to the liberal bourgeoisie’s appeasement.
You do know that the USSR signed a trade deal with Nazi Germany even in 1940, right? When the rest of the world was already blockading Nazi Germany for… being Nazi’s. In fact, in 1940 the Soviet Union delivered about 75% of Nazi Germany’s imports, mostly in oil & steel. Stalin could’ve joined that blockade, and not supplied the necessary materials for the Nazi war maschine – but he didn’t.
You can acknowledge that, and still acknowledge the USSR took the brunt of the force fighting the Nazi’s. It’s not a sports game, you don’t have to pick sides.
Check Wikipedia/Хронология советской цензуры and references 45 and 46 there.
I don’t particularly like mixing here several topics together as interchangeable statements: soviet people sacrificed greatly to stop the nazi aggression. Stalin is another great woe of soviet people. Stalin was very much on the same page with nazis when it came to dividing the territories, bad that the leopard ate his face.
That’s not what the science says btw. If you go to Russia and ask old people about how they feel about the USSR, they are significantly more likely to have favourable views of the USSR than young people who didn’t experience it. If you are interested, you can also look at Generational and Geographic Effects on Collective Memory of the USSR.
Checks out with what I have heard, when I lived in a city of the former East Germany
Sure. People like to romanticize the past and the Wiedervereinigung was a shitty process that fucked many people over. But it is nice, not to live in a Planwirtschaft, to travel to other german cities without being shot at or running through mine fields and not to have a quarter of your neighbourhood spy on you to be brought to one of the Stasi torture prisons for not being socialist enough.
Wow, that sounds horrible, I bet there were a lot of prosecutions of the people who carried those things out once the government reunified!
Oh, and the physical evidence and documentation of those torture dungeons after the wall fell, there must be so much evidence of all the horrors committed!
And all the violence the evil communist government must have done to keep itself in power and prevent reunification must have been really evident, I bet we can find newspaper clippings and even video on the widespread violence that happened in an effort to hold on to power.
Wait, I’m getting reports that none of those things actually happened, fuck. It would have lined up so nicely with the narrative taught to me by American education and popular media, that’s a real bummer.
Who needs evidence when you have it repeated in so many western movies?
Wow, your education system really has failed you.
Please link me to sources then.
https://www.bundesarchiv.de/en/stasi-records-archive/
Mate it’s right there.
Cool than you’d be able to share things from the archives that meet those specified criterion?
Yes sure let me just get an eight hour train to Berlin to work on your assignments, random person on the internet.
Old people in Russia will not remember the Stalin era, but the Khrushchev era (the post-gulag era, famous for de-stalinization) and the Brezhnev era. Old people also tend to romatisize their youth. And romatisizing the Soviet Union is mixed with ethno-nationalism in current days Russia.
I consider myself a socialist, but stalinism is dog-shit.
The world owes Stalin and the people of the USSR a debt that can never be repaid for being the only country to try to stop Nazi Germany before the war and the country which bore the brunt of the casualties and hardship.
Any “socialist” who shit talks them is suspicious as fuck in my book, chauvinist at the very best and probably a snitch.
Khrushchev was an opportunist piece of shit and the world would have been better if he had been kicked out of the party.
Oh yes. The only country. the people who stood up and fought for their independence from that murderous shit hole just were brain washed by all those western capitalist comforts and luxuries. Ups sorry no they were even worse off with the capitalists because they really were enslaved and unhappy and taken advantage of.
but alas at least they chose. Socialists chose for you. If you don’t like the choice fuck off to the gulag.
The soviets saved the world, but Stalin was a monster ntl.
You’re joking, right? Never heard of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Funny fact: all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
The non-aggression pact that was signed well after Nazi germany had signed pacts with Britain and France? The one that was signed after Stalin’s pleas for an alliance against Hitler’s Germany fell on deaf ears because Western powers were still dreaming that Germany would attack the USSR first and succeed where they’d failed immediately after the 1917 revolution? That one?
Historically illiterate westerners read a single fucking line and memorize it and think that’s an earth-shattering gotcha like we haven’t seen your cookie cutter shit a hundred times. Serious socialists who actually read history can contextualize history, and I’ll repeat it: fuck anyone who diminishes the sacrifices of the Soviet Union against the Nazi tide, it’s barely notch above outright holocaust denial.
Back up your claims with a serious source. I’m sure such a comically extraordinary claim will have hard evidence behind it and not just a vibe.
A user just moved the goalpost to the time when the U.S.S.R. traded some raw materials in exchange for firearms and other machinery (which it later used to help defeat the Axis). One can imagine another counterarguing that this credit deal hardly enabled the Third Reich’s bellicism; that, if anything, it likely only lead to the Axis’s defeat as it allowed the Soviets to prepare for the armed conflict. Ask yourself if that sounds identical to the liberal bourgeoisie’s appeasement.
The Third Reich’s trade with the Kingdom of Romania between January and November 1940 surpassed its trade with the Soviet Union. I would be surprised if the Soviets did indeed deliver ‘about 75%’ of the Third Reich’s imports: only 34% of the Third Reich’s oil came from the Soviet Union; it looks like the Kingdom of Romania was a much more important source of Fascism’s black gold.
While not directly related to the pacts, the British Empire exported significant quantities of scrap to the Third Reich. In fact, the British Empire served as the Third Reich’s primary source of imported raw materials in the 1930s. I cannot say much about pre-1940 France’s economic relations with the Third Reich, but you sparked my curiosity on that subject.
Added to this, 75.3% of Europe’s Jewish refugees found refuge in the Soviet Union during World War II, Lithuanian Jews welcomed the Red Army in 1940, which had the highest number of Jews of all the Allied armies, and (my favourite) Soviet policies lead Transnistrians to resist antisemitism, even during Axis occupation.
You do know that the USSR signed a trade deal with Nazi Germany even in 1940, right? When the rest of the world was already blockading Nazi Germany for… being Nazi’s. In fact, in 1940 the Soviet Union delivered about 75% of Nazi Germany’s imports, mostly in oil & steel. Stalin could’ve joined that blockade, and not supplied the necessary materials for the Nazi war maschine – but he didn’t.
You can acknowledge that, and still acknowledge the USSR took the brunt of the force fighting the Nazi’s. It’s not a sports game, you don’t have to pick sides.
Check Wikipedia/Хронология советской цензуры and references 45 and 46 there. I don’t particularly like mixing here several topics together as interchangeable statements: soviet people sacrificed greatly to stop the nazi aggression. Stalin is another great woe of soviet people. Stalin was very much on the same page with nazis when it came to dividing the territories, bad that the leopard ate his face.
I won’t deny the scientific studies.
I am speaking from personal and family experience
You literally are, that’s what you’re doing right here. You are saying your experience trumps the data.