Marxist-Jezzinist posted:

The better world died with the Kronstadt sailors. Thanks, Trotsky and Lenin

Bolsheviks were the real counter-revolutionaries

Ardent Communist posted:

pro-Nazi Ukrainians

ate all the Oreos posted:

lol

Ardent Communist posted:

They had a lot of prisoners during and after WW2? How the hell could that happen?
And what's your documentation for so many dying in the GULAG? Most info I've read said the highest casualties were during the war, when they reached 20%. However, I'm forgiving because they were locked into a struggle to the death, and allocating all your resources to stave off Hitlerism is a pretty reasonable choice. Otherwise, the rates were high during times of general starvation in the country.
What's more, rates of starvation were pretty severe throughout the country during those periods. There was no specific plot to starve Ukrainians, and the Holodomor was Nazi-propaganda that only gained credence in the West in the 1980s, as pro-Nazi Ukrainians used it to drum up support against the Soviet Union. It's a shame so many of the brave anti-communist fighters supported pogroms and massacres. But I guess you align with that side, so what are you going to do?


Haha, the Bolsheviks were counter-revolutionaries, because they were the only party to advocate pulling out of the war, and then launched what could have been a bloody affair to overthrow the supposedly revolutionary government that supported staying in it. Well, that's not entirely true, there were other socialist parties that also supported them, but then they successively left the government when it was forced to make hard decisions to ensure the survival of the revolution. Things like giving into German demands because the army was disintegrating, or requisitioning grain because people in the cities were starving.
This is because, as a wise man once said, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

Ardent Communist posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banderites

Uh, yeah. You know, the guys that the current Ukrainian state is buddy-buddy with?

Weaponized Autism posted:

Ardent Communist posted:

I know some. They usually explain those actions as an attempt to make allies where they could, against the Soviet Menace. However, they decided to ally with Hitler, someone who wanted all of them dead, versus Stalin, who only wanted class enemies dead. This leads to hilarious mishaps where thousands of Jewish and Polish citizens are executed, and the Banderists are forced to defend their villages from Germans trying to execute them all, and still pursuing alliances with the German forces and focusing on future fighting with the Soviet Union. Oh wait, that's not hilarious, it's loving tragic.

Paladinus posted:

How about starving to death because your country is considered too ideologically unstable to trust it with grain? Or being shot by NKVD because your neighbour wanted to have your cupboard shelf in the communal kitchen?

It's cool to laugh at capitalism and want more socialist policies enacted, or hell, even desire complete overthrow of capitalism. What is extremely uncool, however, is to be dumb enough to think that Stalinist USSR or Maoist China were some beacons of socialist ideals where things were significantly better than in capitalist states of the time. They weren't.

Ardent Communist posted:

I know some. They usually explain those actions as an attempt to make allies where they could, against the Soviet Menace. However, they decided to ally with Hitler, someone who wanted all of them dead, versus Stalin, who only wanted class enemies dead. This leads to hilarious mishaps where thousands of Jewish and Polish citizens are executed, and the Banderists are forced to defend their villages from Germans trying to execute them all, and still pursuing alliances with the German forces and focusing on future fighting with the Soviet Union. Oh wait, that's not hilarious, it's loving tragic.

Paladinus posted:

if we look at percentages, America right now has 666 (heh) prisoners per 100,000 citizens. USSR had 1200-1500 in the 1940s.

Graphic posted:

those glorious nordic welfare states still support themselves by selling fossil fuels that destroy the planet and by exploiting the third world, directly and indirectly benefitting from imperialism. scandinavia is an example of how the first world can save itself, but under capitalism it necessarily means the rest of humanity has to be enslaved.

Paladinus posted:

It wasn't better either. And not just because people died in droves in gulags at unprecedented rates (only rivaled by literal nazi death camps), but if we look at percentages, America right now has 666 (heh) prisoners per 100,000 citizens. USSR had 1200-1500 in the 1940s.

Ardent Communist posted:

What are you even saying? This isn't Twitter, you can express full thoughts. If you have an opposing viewpoint I'd be happy to hear it. Were the anti-communist fighters in the Ukraine not supporting the progroms against Jewish people? Was the Holodomor a planned exercise to starve political suspect Ukrainians, or just part of a famine that the Soviet Union attempted to reduce in effect by allocating food?

And I should point out that I'm not American, thank god.

Pirate Radar posted:

Do you think Ukranians should base their opinions about whether it was good to fight the Soviet Union on whether the deaths of millions in the Holodomor were intentional?

EdithUpwards posted:

You should have bolded this, the most important bit, for emphasis.

Up until, like, 49 Stalin was still trying to get the polish SS tried in The Hague.

Chomp8645 posted:

You know I always thought there was a perverse irony in the fact that during the time period in which the US actually had to (sometimes) defend itself, it was called the Department of War. Then right around the time it became obvious that there was no realistic scenario in which we could be invaded, and that most/all conflicts would be abroad and probably instigated by us, it became the Department of Defense.

Is there any way I can blame capitalism for that?

Ardent Communist posted:

No, but I think they shouldn't take their propaganda whole-sale from the Nazis. First off, I don't think they were right to fight against the Soviet Union. Especially when the alternative is Hitler's Germany. Clearly their aims were counter-revolutionary, so they don't have much sympathy from me for that.

If you are Ukrainian, how do you feel about the supporters of Stepan Bandera taking a large role in the EuroMaidan, and fascist militias being integrated into the Army?

Ardent Communist posted:

No, but I think they shouldn't take their propaganda whole-sale from the Nazis. First off, I don't think they were right to fight against the Soviet Union. Especially when the alternative is Hitler's Germany. Clearly their aims were counter-revolutionary, so they don't have much sympathy from me for that.

If you are Ukrainian, how do you feel about the supporters of Stepan Bandera taking a large role in the EuroMaidan, and fascist militias being integrated into the Army?

steinrokkan posted:

First off, the holodomor may not have been centrally orchestrated, but a country that, through deliberate policies, causes a food crisis to boost grain exports does not get to claim good governance, does not get to claim the famine was unavoidable, and certainly can't be defended with some "they were totes trying to reduce the number of dead" crap. Second, claiming that Stalinist purges were merely oriented at class enemies is transparent bullshit when the class enemies were conveniently defined as the traditional popular classes of ethnically separate and violently annexed peripheries of the Russian empire that never asked to be part of the Imperialist project in the first place. When you start killing kulaks, and conveniently 99% of Ukrainians fall under your definition of kulaks, you are a genocidaire, just like a Nazi who justifies killing Jews with merely killing off an international conspiracy. The only credit Stalin gets is that he didn't go for full extermination, merely for breaking the independent nations his Empire conquered. Third, you don't get to moan about evil Jew haters among your enemies when your greatest idol instigated the second worst hunt on Jews and Jewish intelligentsia after the Holocaust. Fourth, you don't get to claim that entire peoples deserved to be put under oppressive rule, forced relocations etc. because some of their compatriots were politically anti-Communist, especially in countries where the Communists were foreign occupiers because your hero had killed all the domestic anti-Imperialist Communist leaders.

steinrokkan posted:

The Banderists don't define the Ukrainian nation. And there was an alternative to the USSR that wasn't the Germans, it was called an independent Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which Lenin had had crushed, much like the social democrats in Germany had Freikorps crush the nascent German Soviets.

Ardent Communist posted:

They had a lot of prisoners during and after WW2? How the hell could that happen?
And what's your documentation for so many dying in the GULAG? Most info I've read said the highest casualties were during the war, when they reached 20%. However, I'm forgiving because they were locked into a struggle to the death, and allocating all your resources to stave off Hitlerism is a pretty reasonable choice. Otherwise, the rates were high during times of general starvation in the country.
What's more, rates of starvation were pretty severe throughout the country during those periods. There was no specific plot to starve Ukrainians, and the Holodomor was Nazi-propaganda that only gained credence in the West in the 1980s, as pro-Nazi Ukrainians used it to drum up support against the Soviet Union. It's a shame so many of the brave anti-communist fighters supported pogroms and massacres. But I guess you align with that side, so what are you going to do?

SplitSoul posted:

I meant in absolute numbers. Remember, we're comparing a dictatorship where people were being incarcerated in droves for nothing and a country that's supposed to have some semblance of a justice system with presumption of innocence.

steinrokkan posted:

The Banderists don't define the Ukrainian nation. And there was an alternative to the USSR that wasn't the Germans, it was called an independent Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which Lenin had had crushed, much like the social democrats in Germany had Freikorps crush the nascent German Soviets. In both cases the self proclaimed leftists proved themselves to be enemies of the freedom of the proletariat. Anyway, the history and politics of a nation always go beyond the politics of their neighbors, which is something you seem incapable of understanding. The Poles or the Ukrainians weren't agency-less puppets picking which of two sides would control them, with no will and desires of their own, and that you approach their situation in such a way is just a reflection of your own moral shortcomings.

I'm also not an Ukrainian, and I would like to add that the idea of "Banderists playing a huge role in the Euromaidan" is one of those great lies spread for clueless useful idiots to use. The role they played was marginal, but of course people with an agenda only ever cover them. If you want to discuss current events in the region, there is an Eastern European thread in DnD where it would be appropriate, and also it's a good thread without the usual DnD morons.

steinrokkan posted:

The Banderists don't define the Ukrainian nation. And there was an alternative to the USSR that wasn't the Germans, it was called an independent Socialist Republic of Ukraine, which Lenin had had crushed, much like the social democrats in Germany had Freikorps crush the nascent German Soviets. In both cases the self proclaimed leftists proved themselves to be enemies of the freedom of the proletariat.

steinrokkan posted:

I'm also not an Ukrainian, and I would like to add that the idea of "Banderists playing a huge role in the Euromaidan" is one of those great lies spread for clueless useful idiots to use. The role they played was marginal, but of course people with an agenda only ever cover them. If you want to discuss current events in the region, there is an Eastern European thread in DnD where it would be appropriate, and also it's a good thread without the usual DnD morons.

Ardent Communist posted:

Alright, it's apparent that few people want to argue on good faith, so I see little reason to continue at this time.
Lastly, I do not think communism is best served by denigrating Stalin. Saying one of the most well known communists was a horrible monster is playing into the hands of the counter-revolutionaries. Stalin is still extremely popular in the Third World and so called western communists who try so hard to disassociate themselves with him are only internalising their own government's propaganda.
Marxists are not supposed to be utopian socialists. The Soviet Union was not the perfect place. However, it's successes and failures are currently the best example we have of the same difficulties we will have when we launch our revolution, and simply blaming all the failures on one man is both reductionist and prevents a scientific understanding from developing.

ate all the Oreos posted:

I don't think Stalin was ever very popular in the "third world" or they wouldn't be the third world, by the intrinsic definition of the third world

Grevling posted:

Stalin apologia is a disservice to Communism hth.

slippery doc posted:

meanwhile seattle takes a hard look at the homelessness crisis

https://twitter.com/leddder/status/1041859501404508160