I’m gonna stop engaging with your “I know better than empirical evidence approach based on my vibes of who controlled what”. Enjoy bootlicking the corporate overlords that plunge your country in imperialist war, at least now you have bananas and soda, even if people can’t afford housing.
Really committed to the bit, I see
The Hungarian Revolution didn’t need to be fascist to justify the use of tanks, but yes, the fact that Hungary suffered a US-supported coup is worthy of tanks. The horrors lived in Eastern Europe as a consequence of the dismantling of socialism in the name of “freedom” are unspeakable. Millions of lives lost to unemployment, alcoholism, lack of healthcare, suicide and a myriad more of reasons. Those don’t matter I guess, since they’re victims of capitalism.
“America bad” by itself almost justifies the use of tanks. Joining the Western World in imperialism, unequal exchange and ultimately genocide, is a crime against humanity, and history books of the future will reflect this. History won’t be kind to those who exploited the billions of people of the global south for the selfish gain of a few capitalist overlord.
I don’t know if I would classify him as a POS
What does it take for you to classify a war criminal as a POS?
Doesn’t mean you should suck dictators’ dicks
Why the homophobic comment though
pejorative term for people who supported Kruschev’s use of tanks
Funnily enough, didn’t it come out two weeks ago from JFK papers that the leader of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters of the Hungarian Revolution was on CIA bankroll? Wow, tankies have been vindicated etymologically? Who woulda thunk
Fuck tankies and fuck commies
…said the citizen whose decaying world is governed by the sworn enemies of communism: fascists.
A few kinda solved it, namely Soviet Union and Cuba. And libs will never forgive them for it.
Any stats about USSR and shares of income, inequality and such are bullshit
The elites didn’t formally own anything - well, neither they do in Russia today, but they do control that property and use it freely.
This word [kulak] is a propaganda marker
training technicians to work as bad engineers. Training as in “training dogs”. Because the industrialization required some kind of engineers.
Essentially half of your rebuttal is unsourced “no bro, that’s not true”, when I’ve given you my sources for the information. You’re just showing cognitive dissonance. I was too considerate in my original comments assuming that you’d listen to actual evidence and data. Income inequality figures are bullshit, elites didn’t own and they dont own today either (false, oligarchs in modern Russia do own their companies), kulaks didn’t exist (Do you think peasants in 1917 majorly owned the lands they were working??), university studies weren’t real (I guess the first satellite and human in space and the pioneering research and military industry were just false too)… You’re just desperately denying and holding on to your propagandised version of the reality of the Soviet Union, with your greatest issue being that you couldn’t buy the soda you wanted, and discarding things like guaranteed housing, while ignoring most of my previous comment.
My bloodline’s male part on the Jewish side mostly vanished on the frontlines
My utmost respect to your ancestors who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism. I hope you’ll show more respect to them and to the emancipatory project they defended with their lives.
it was approaching something like US south at the same time
Lmao, so essentially slavery, just without the racial component of the US. Please, tell me again: what percentage of the farmers owned in 1917 the lands that they were farming. Oh wait, I forgot you don’t care about data.
Why didn’t this happen in Finland?
I already explained but here we go again: the USSR was a shining example of what socialism could achieve, right in Europe. If Finland had been colonised, they would have risked a socialist revolution there.
As I said, conversation over. You’re not willing to listen.
I’m learning the language, I’m not proficient yet. Anyway, feel free to respond to the actual contents of my comment instead of ad-homineming your way
Cool, good to see that we’re on the same page, sorry for the aggressive tone in my first comment.
I didn’t express any political positions, just informed you of history
“My vision of history isn’t attached to a political ideology” is a telltale of libs. Tell me, are you a russian oppositionist or not?
The possible alternative to USSR is some other development, not no development at all
That’s the problem with libs: you truly don’t understand the nature of imperialism. Ask Iran under Mosaddeq how much they were allowed to develop. Ask Chile under Allende. Ask Guatemala, or Argentina, or Haiti how much they were allowed to develop. Ask Vietnam whether US interference did anything to their country. Go ask Korea how many people died in the struggle against imperialism. For fuck’s sake, I’m Spanish, my own country had a US-adjacent fascist coup in the 1930s under a liberal government and while Nazis and Italian Fascists bombed the antifascists, the rest of the world stood to the side because a fascist regime is better than the possibility of socialism. Well, the rest of the world except your brave ancestors of the USSR, the ONLY country in the world that supplied weapons, tanks and planes to the anti-fascists. Sadly it wasn’t enough, and instead of enjoying a socialist state, my country fell into fascism. Seriously, Russia was under-industrialised (on par with Argentina at the time of 1917). There’s no country of such characteristics that industrialized under a capitalist liberal-democratic government, with only a few exceptions such as Japan (US-subsidized colony). There is NO POSSIBILITY of an alternate history in which Russia miraculously rid itself of French/English capitalists and industrialised by itself instead of becoming a source of cheap labour and natural resources for western Europe.
even politically reforming (that’s how Bolsheviks were a legitimate party)
That’s an insane thing to say. The fact that the February revolution even happened is due to the decades of agitation, propaganda, unionization and struggle for the rights of the workers that the Bolsheviks carried out. Without that, there wouldn’t have been a possibility of mutiny against the Tsar. It’s not a few smartasses like Kerensky who did nothing in their entire lives for the people except somehow enter a liberal-bourgeois government representing the interests of the rich and the russian nationalists who wanted to continue WW1. It’s the decades of agitation, of death sentences, of exile in Siberia, and of deportation, that Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries suffered out in Russia.
the revolution I blame on both these sides, Bolsheviks and proto-fascists. Neither is better than the other.
“The fascists who kept people enslaved under the Kulaks and the nobles were just as bad as the people that freed the people from them”. Truly one hell of a take. Your country is now starting to suffer the consequences of actual fascism, how’s your healthcare going? How’s education? How are the rights of women and of minorities? How’s inflation? How’s the price of housing? How are salaries going? Wonderfully aren’t they?
You simply don’t know what you are talking about
Surely you know better, Mr. “I believe that through the power of love, Russia would have been allowed to industrialize unlike any other underdeveloped country in the world. After all, we’re white, not like those browns in the global south, we’d have done better”.
Finland wasn’t.
Finland was precisely allowed to be a western developed and industrialized country BECAUSE of the existence of the Soviet Union. It was this beacon of worker rights, of antifascism and anti-imperialism, and of improving living conditions, that forced the rest of Europe to give their citizens the rights that the USSR pioneered: 40h week, universal healthcare and education, state-subsidized pensions, and the entire welfare-state apparatus. All of that is historically developed by the Soviet Union, and then mimicked by the West in order to prevent possibilities of socialist revolutions in those countries. The USA being not in Europe and relatively far away from the reach of socialism is exactly the reason why they have extremely shitty welfare state, healthcare, education, pensions and worker rights. It’s the red scare that repressed workers and unions against the possibility of carrying out such improvements. Europe was FORCED by the USSR to have such good quality of life to prevent internal stress and revolution.
Those troops were there to defend their economic interests, like Odessa port, Far East ports
That’s EXACTLY what I meant. You see? The economic interests of the “allied western countries” in Russia were AGAINST the industrial development of the region. That’s why they wanted to control the ports: for exports of cheap raw materials and grain, at misery wages for Russians. The whites were willing to defend those interests of the west. Thank you for acknowledging it.
USSR did just that, only its colonies were called Central Asian republics
That’s insultingly ignorant, not gonna lie. The Central Asian republics were republics of their own right: people got to study in their own language (unseen before and still unbelievable in many modern colonies and post-colonies, I have Moroccan and Tunisian coworkers and they studied in French), the number of hospital beds per capita was the same all over the Union, as was the number of teachers per capita; these regions were industrialized to a degree never seen before, and the Soviet Union liberated them from the yoke of Russian Imperialism under Tsarism. There’s a reason why these Central-Asian regions were overwhelmingly in support of the Union, as seen for example in the 1991 referendum to maintain the Soviet Union: 
: these regions were LIBERATED by the Soviet Union, and developed to levels not seen anywhere else in Central Asia. For reference, compare the Human Development Index of Central-Asian Soviet Republics such as Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan to those of non-Soviet countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan: 
. If it wasn’t for the Soviet Union, people like Alexandra Elbakyan, the Kazakh scholar behind the SciHub project (and proud communist), simply wouldn’t have had access to an education AT ALL, let alone in their own language. Again, proving once more that you have not the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.
I’ve roasted you enough with actual knowledge, rather than your vibes-based analysis whose entire premise is “we could have been an exploitative capitalist imperialist country like those of western Europe, trust me bro, somehow without the centralized industrialization drive and the redistribution of wealth that made the country the most egalitarian of history up to that point, we would have defeated western imperialism and Nazism”. You made no mention to my point on Nazism because you simply can’t: the USSR saved you, your ancestors, and the rest of Europe from Nazism; and liberals will never forgive it for that. I’ll now extract myself away from the conversation. I’ll save these two comments to respond similarly to other Russian libs (that I may encounter) in the future.
Sure, you just mentioned “present-day”, and I thought maybe you referred that things have changed somehow. The US has always been imperialist and genocidal in nature, that’s why I got triggered by the “present-day” part of your initial comment and to what I was responding.
“Anyone who doesn’t uncritically swallow US State Department propaganda against China is a “CCP” troll”. Why the need for the homophobia though?
MWAHAHAHA, I live in fucking Russia
Yes, you live in Russia, not in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for you I’m afraid.
Were it a feature it would match the social adverts and state propaganda
You surely don’t expect the material limitations of an industrializing, isolated and besieged economy to appear in propaganda? It was a feature in the sense that it was a known effect of “socialism in one country”, not in the sense that it’s the desired goal. You surely understand that, no matter how good the policy, there are limitations to material reality?
Oh yes, better distribution via acquaintances and relations
Corruption DID happen, unsurprisingly, it’s something that happens in all systems. It’s just that, when it happens under socialism, it’s a scandal, but when it happens in capitalism it’s normalized. In my country there’s a 6 month waiting list for going to a specialist doctor many times in public healthcare, and I could skip that by paying a sum of money to a private physician and getting examined in their private clinic legally. It’s essentially the same concept, except that for some reason it’s normalized and even praised under capitalism (which leads to it being much more prevalent than in socialism), whereas socialism fought against it. Speaking of corruption and propaganda: 
Surely the state with active anti-corruption propaganda and regular purges of its party and social systems was less corrupt than the capitalist states that normalize corruption in economic activity under the guise of “free contracts between individuals”?
parts of USSR far from anything with a sea port people would see something like oranges or bananas extremely rarely
Wait, you’re telling me that an economically isolated country focusing on a self-reliant economy which is located in one of the northernmost regions of the planet, had difficulties with the availability of certain fruits? (bananas are tropical and can’t be grown in the USSR for the most part). This just proves how to you, the default-normal is the availability of produce with origin in exploited regions of the world. Please, go check where the bananas at your supermarket are coming from, and how the workers in the plantation are treated. That’s the problem with Russian libs: you guys don’t understand that NOW your country engages in exploitation of the global south, just like any other developed capitalist country. THAT’s why you have fucking bananas.
Housing wasn’t bought, it was assigned and sometimes given, so talking about cost is useless.
“People had universal, guaranteed access to free or affordable housing, so talking about housing is useless”. Truly a big-brain take. You probably are lucky enough that you don’t have to spend half of your salary in housing as most people are forced to do, otherwise you wouldn’t be making that point.
There were people still living in communal apartments
Yes, a few people after the 70s still were living in such communal apartments, but it was a minority. Most housing by the time the USSR was industrialized were Khruschyovki and Brezhnevki, famously non-communal. I’d love it if you brought me a source telling me how many people lived in communal housing by the 80s, I’ll respond to you with data of 2024 Spain (my homeland) of how many people have to share a flat with one kitchen and one bathroom (and pay 1/3rd of their income in the process instead of 3% of their income).
It was a miserable society requiring more bootlicking than you can possibly imagine to do something you consider a given in your land
Poor Soviets, having the highest unionization rates in the world and being able to actually bargain through their union at work instead of having to bootlick their corporate overlord 8h a day 5 days a week. Wait, we don’t count that right? Being a wage-slave in a capitalist company isn’t bootlicking, we call it “networking” and “corporate culture” it’s actually cool. Fucking hell give me a break.
Building so many tanks that most of them just slowly turned into rust after 1991 is a useless direction of resources in your book?
Are you really Russian? Don’t you understand the absolute fear of another invasion that the Great Patriotic War (after WW1 and after the civil war) installed in Soviet people and leadership? There’s a reason why even many opposition supporters in the modern Russian Federation go to parades in the Victory Day, it’s not because they support Russian Nationalism and the status-quo. It’s because they understand the immense sacrifice of 20+mn lives that the Soviet Union undertook to SAVE EUROPE FROM NAZISM AND FASCISM. If you don’t understand that the USSR was under constant attack by the USA in the cold war, you don’t understand Soviet history. It fucking sucks spending 10-15% of your GDP in military, but siege socialism is what it is, the USSR tried to de-escalate and was met with nuclear weapons in Turkey. You’ve listened to too much “Radio Svoboda” I think.
USSR’s economy since early 70s was built on selling oil and gas for everything it needed
Uh… If you check the trade balances of the USSR with other countries, you’ll find out that that wasn’t the case. The USSR traded mostly with COMECON countries, and yes, it exported natural resources like fossil fuels or minerals at international prices to COMECON countries and bought manufactured products. Again, it’s a consequence of siege socialism and of not engaging in imperialism. The USSR could have profited massively from exporting manufactured goods and importing raw materials with the global south, engaging in unequal exchange. But it didn’t do so because it understood that that’s immoral, and the exploitation of the global south goes against the very nature of socialism. I’m sorry that your ancestors didn’t pillage and loot the rest of the world as mine did. For a detailed discussion on this, you may wanna check Robert C Allen’s book “Farm to Factory”, or “Is the Red Flag Flying” by Albert Szymanski. I would bet my ass though, that you haven’t read a single book on soviet economic history, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying the nonsense you’re claiming.
All other areas of its economy had negative margin, one can say, and were intended to keep production of strategic goods, like weapons, in place, and the whole system of society.
Wow, an economy oriented towards the necessities of the people and the state rather than the profit of a few capitalist overlords? Disgusting, isn’t it? There’s a fucking reason the entire rural Russia is being depopulated: the state stopped investing in rural areas and people are suffering the consequences. Enjoy your free market.
You live in a post-industrial society where cars are really something one can live without
The Russian Federation, famous for building more public transit than the USSR? I really don’t get your point. If there’s a part of the world that excelled in building public transit, that’s the Eastern Bloc, out of socialist ideals, of intelligent central planning, and of economic necessity (public transit being more efficient than private combustion engine vehicles).
You should have met some of those people whose parents were Soviet hereditary elite
Ugh… really, you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. Hereditary wealth was incredibly less important in the USSR than in essentially any other country on Earth at the time, possibly with the exception of Sweden during some years. I’ll show you a Russian lib source you’ll love claiming as much, hopefully you won’t accuse them of being biased towards communism: 
As you can see, wealth distribution has never been more equitative in Russia than it was during Soviet times. Please, PLEASE, read a book before repeating anticommunist mantra.
It’s “serfs can go fuck themselves” instead of “poors can go fuck themselves”.
The Soviet Union lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty without engaging in economic imperialism or unequal exchange. Life expectancy was below 30 years-old in the 1910s, most people couldn’t read, and most people were essentially feudal serfs under the rule of Kulak and noble landowners. Education became free for everyone to the highest level, medicine was universal and free, men retired at 60 years old and women at 55 with guaranteed pensions, the 45h working week was standardized and people got holidays every year, economic standards rose massively, access to housing became universal, unemployment was eliminated legally and in practice, life expectancy rose above the 60 years of age and kept growing progressively, there were at some point more female engineers in the USSR than in the rest of the world combined… Really, that’s not “serfs can go fuck themselves”, that’s one of the most successful emancipatory experiences in the history of mankind. And the fact that you’re here on Lemmy, instead of breaking your back for your local exploitative English/French/German company that didn’t allow your country to industrialize and develop (or, worse, your bloodline exterminated by Nazis as they openly intended to do), is all thanks to the Bolsheviks.
The UN data appears on my browser for all countries including mainland China, doesn’t it appear to you?
Execution in the PRC necessitates approval from the Supreme Court, so it’s insignificant compared to total incarceration rate (unless we assume that the Supreme Court can oversee millions of cases per year). Unfortunately I don’t speak Chinese so I can’t really find official figures published in English.
Oh wow, a Russian lib in Lemmy, that’s a rare sight. I’ll answer your comment later, but know this: it is thanks to the USSR that you LIVE. If it wasn’t for the Bolsheviks, your country would either be a colony of France, England and Japan and wouldn’t have been allowed to industrialise. That is, if it would have survived Nazism in the 40s. Nazis had the express objective of eliminating the “Asiatic hordes” and the “Slavic Untermenschen”. You can thank your sorry ass that Lenin existed and set in motion what allowed your life to be that of a developed country and not a western colony or a genocided barren German slave field.
Kerensky’s provisional government would either have been ousted by the whites (there were attempts already), or would have become colonised by western powers. Seeing as the whites received half a million troops from western countries to destroy bolshevism, most likely a combination of the two, Allende style minus the socialism. There is no alternative timeline where Russia was allowed to develop along with Western Europe in peace and to exploit the profits of imperialism in the rest of the world.
Removed by mod
I respect farmers as long as they’re not abusing migrant labour at illegal wages… So, I barely respect farmers.
Have you not looked at western media during the GENOCIDE in Gaza? All of them collectively talking about “war in Israel and Palestine”, playing both sides, and curating the truth. For fuck’s sake, the average Republican in the USA lives in a completely different world of covid denialism, and thinks Elon performed an accidental Roman salute.