Is it simply over-correcting in response to western anti-communist propaganda? I'd like to think it's simply memeing for memes sake, but it feels too genuine.
"Why is this group so stupid and wrong? No specifics, project your own opinions of stupid and wrong people here."
As an anarchist:
There's no such thing as "stalinism" and whatever you think that word means is some bullshit the US government told you to prevent solidarity among the working class.
There's a wikipedia page for the "holodomor" which is a Nazi conspiracy theory. There's a wikipedia page for the "uyghur genocide" which was made up by the CIA. There's a wikipedia page for plenty of shit that isn't real.
Could it have anything to do with saving the entire world from the Third Reich by being the leader of the only military that actually stood up and ended the Nazi reign of terror, defeated 80% of the Nazi military, marched all the way to Berlin, and through Berlin, before any allies showed up, and liberated the concentration camps?
No. It's probably vibes.
I always enjoy the tankie pivot from being the saviors of mankind to being the victims who couldn't stand up to western bullying whenever the whim takes them, but I do wonder how you lot don't get whiplash from the constantly changing narrative.
Talk about a purely emotional analysis. You have no idea how it's possible to go from winning to losing? Really? That's just something that's beyond you? I guess that's what the commitment to prefigurative idealism does to a mind.
You have no idea how it’s possible to go from winning to losing?
that's not what I said. but don't worry, I know you're not misconstruing what I said, tankies just don't have reading comprehension. it isn't your fault you're an idiot.
the tankie pivot from being the saviors of mankind to being the victims who couldn't stand up to western bullying
That's sounds exactly like what you said. You don't understand how the narrative could be that the USSR won the war to the USSR lost against the West. Maybe you use words differently. I'm open to it. Definitions are unjustified hierarchy. Explain what you mean.
Or, you know, dig in deeper by not having anything of substance to say and just keep trying to win by virtue signalling. That works for your audience, too.
Explain what you mean.
no, I much rather prefer letting you remain in the dark. my words were plain english, if you're not capable of understanding them then that's a problem for you, not for me. besides, if I pointed out what you misunderstood, you might stop doing it, and as I said I always enjoy it.
I will give your struggling intellect a hint though. read the whole fucking comment before you start furiously typing out a reply. dumbass.
yeah, I didn't think so.
the best part of your comment chain here is you immediately did exactly what I mentioned. you're just too fucking stupid to pick up on that, let alone see the irony. for a group that goes on and on about how people should read more theory, I think just reading at all would do you some good.
might I recommend The Very Hungry Caterpillar? its about at your level.
Stalin didnt do it. The soldiers in the soviet union made that happen. Then after the war The Great Comrade purged a lot of commanders who defeated the nazis. heres a great podcast about him. its one of my favorite episodes.
I love this talking point from anarchists and leftcoms because it lays bare their complete commitment to debate perversion and unwillingness to actually think.
If Stalin didn't defeat the Nazis, then Hitler didn't kill Jews, Blacks, Queer folx, Roma, etc, didn't commit genocide, and didn't invade anyone. Bush didn't invade Iraq. bin Laden didn't attack the US. Truman didn't save 10k Nazis. Trump didn't bomb Iran.
But even more so, it also means Stalin didn't starve anyone, Stalin didn't imprison anyone, and Stalin didn't relocate anyone.
This is one of those things that just reveals you for who you are.
Standing up only after you are betrayed isn't quite as impressive as standing up because it's the right thing to do. Soviets would have been happy to sit and do nothing until the Nazis started threatening the Soviets. But, still, yes the Soviets kicked ass
Hitler threatened the USSR over a decade before he invaded. He wrote it in Mein Kampf. It was out in the open. Stalin attempted to get Western Europe to take the threat seriously, but Western European leaders understood that the primary target of the Third Reich was the USSR and they all wanted the Third Reich to win that war. Stalin never believed that the Third Reich would be an ally, and the attempt of people to spin it that way is so intellectually dishonest it boggles the mind.
You can say whatever you want. The fact is the Soviets had a treaty with Nazi Germany and only fought back when forced. And honestly knowing that the Nazis would be a threat to them and still making the treaty just looks worse for them
I'm just gonna copy socialism_everyday's excellent write up
The only country who offered to start a collective offensive against the Nazis and to uphold the defense agreement with Czechoslovakia as an alternative to the Munich Betrayal was the USSR. From that Wikipedia article: "The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused." Poland could have literally been saved from Nazi invasion if France and itself had agreed to start a war together against Nazi Germany, but they didn't want to. By the logic of "invading Poland" being akin to Nazi collaboration, Poland was as imperialist as the Nazis.
As a Spaniard leftist it's so infuriating when the Soviet Union, the ONLY country in 1936 which actively fought fascism in Europe by sending weapons, tanks and aviation to my homeland in the other side of the continent in the Spanish civil war against fascism, is accused of appeasing the fascists. The Soviets weren't dumb, they knew the danger and threat of Nazism and worked for the entire decade of the 1930s under the Litvinov Doctrine of Collective Security to enter mutual defense agreements with England, France and Poland, which all refused because they were convinced that the Nazis would honor their own stated purpose of invading the communists in the East. The Soviets went as far as to offer ONE MILLION troops to France (Archive link against paywall) together with tanks, artillery and aviation in 1939 in exchange for a mutual defense agreement, which the French didn't agree to because of the stated reason. Just from THIS evidence, the Soviets were by far the most antifascist country in Europe throughout the 1930s, you literally won't find any other country doing any remotely similar efforts to fight Nazism. If you do, please provide evidence.
The invasion of "Poland" is also severely misconstrued. The Soviets didn't invade what we think of nowadays when we say Poland. They invaded overwhelmingly Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands that Poland had previously invaded in 1919. Poland in 1938, a year before the invasion:
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"Polish" territories invaded by the USSR in 1939:
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The Soviets invaded famously Polish cities such as Lviv (sixth most populous city in modern Ukraine), Pinsk (important city in western Belarus) and Vilnius (capital of freaking modern Lithuania). They only invaded a small chunk of what you'd consider Poland nowadays, and the rest of lands were actually liberated from Polish occupation and returned to the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian socialist republics. Hopefully you understand the importance of giving Ukrainians back their lands and sovereignty?
Additionally, the Soviets didn't invade Poland together with the Nazis, they invaded a bit more than two weeks after the Nazi invasion, at a time when the Polish government had already exiled itself and there was no Polish administration. The meaning of this, is that all lands not occupied by Soviet troops, would have been occupied by Nazis. There was no alternative. Polish troops did not resist Soviet occupation but they did resist Nazi invasion. The Soviet occupation effectively protected millions of Slavic peoples like Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians from the stated aim of Nazis of genociding the Slavic peoples all the way to the Urals.
All in all, my conclusion is: the Soviets were fully aware of the dangers of Nazism and fought against it earlier than anyone (Spanish civil war), spent the entire 30s pushing for an anti-Nazi mutual defence agreement which was refused by France, England and Poland, tried to honour the existing mutual defense agreement with Czechoslovakia which France rejected and Poland didn't allow (Romania neither but they were fascists so that's a given), and offered to send a million troops to France's border with Germany to destroy Nazism but weren't allowed to do so. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a tool of postponing the war in a period in which the USSR, a very young country with only 10 years of industrialization behind it since the first 5-year plan in 1929, was growing at a 10% GDP per year rate and needed every moment it could get. I can and do criticise decisions such as the invasion of Finland, but ultimately even the western leaders at the time seem to generally agree with my interpretation:
“In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)
“It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.
"One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact's signing)
They treated with the Nazis precisely because it postponed the threat.
And as freagle said, they tried to fight the Nazis first but couldn’t do so without western cooperation, which was refused. Delaying until ready to fight alone was the second best option.
Then why did they not end the treaty when UK entered the war but when the Nazis invaded the ussr?
Stop. That question assumes way too much. So let's unpack it and reverse it on you.
Are you saying that ending the treaty when the UK entered the war would indicate to you that the USSR was a righteous ally of good and true humanity but that not ending the treat at that time would indicate to you that they were actually Nazi collaborators or at best willing to let the Nazis take over the entire world as long as they didn't get attacked (which they knew would happen because again, the Third Reich was abundantly clear that destroying the USSR was its number 1 goal)?
Because if you can think through the answer to that, we can answer your question, which is that the USSR had always known that the UK was not ally, and it knew that because the UK and its allies, including the US, invaded Russia after WW1 to try to stop the communists from forming the USSR. The USSR, however, didn't think the UK would be so evil as to literally turn a blind eye, and even financially support the fascists.
After the USSR sought to ally with the West to defeat the Nazis and they said "nah", even you can see that the USSR was completely on its own to survive and the UK entering the war, while the majority of Nazi forces were on the Eastern front, did not change the strategic landscape enough to make the USSR capable of surviving an open conflict with the Third Reich in the fall of 1939.
Between 1939 (UK declaring) and 1941 (USSR declaring), the Red Army quadrupled in size. The idea that the USSR should have just decided to fight in 1939, when it was 25% the size it was when it eventually won is literally the same idea as the USSR should have lost the war but done so while adhering to your definition of morally good. It's daft.
My point is just that the ussr was not some righteous world hero, as was seemingly being alluded to
So did the USSR not defeat 80% of the Nazi military, liberate every territory East of Berlin that the Nazis had captures, capture Berlin, and liberate the concentration camps? Or did they do that but you need to make sure everyone is aware that they only did that to protect themselves and shouldn't be considered heroes?
I mean, cuz what it sounds like you're saying is that defeating the Nazis isn't enough, you actually also have to be morally good according to a standard that you will never admit the USSR into but also could never apply to any country in the history of the world.
Enough for what? Extreme gratitude, yes. But the post is asking why so many people on the left seemingly ignore the faults of the Soviet Union. And no, winning ww2 does not justify turning a blind eye to any fault of the Soviet Union, that's ridiculous, as it would be for any nation. And especially so when they entered the war out of necessity.
I wonder, did any other countries have non-aggression pacts with Germany at the time?
as an anarchist who has organised with meatspace MLs, the topic of Stalin never comes up on its own. it comes up online more often because we're not doing anything more important than just talking.
Stalin comes up in meatspace when some liberal confronts an ML and demands to know if they're 'Stalinist' and what they think of the 'Holomdor'. then the ML explains how 'Stalinism' isn't a thing, they primarily read Marx, Engels and Lenin, and how Stalin was the leader of a team not a dictator and even the CIA's own profile on him says exactly that, and then explain the ongoing threats the Soviet security state was protecting against and the cultural and economic trauma of losing 15% of their population in World War II, and the climatological history of the Southern regions and how the famine impacted more than just Ukraine and how famines were common in the region, and how the Ukrainian kulaks, protesting that their lands were being given to the serfs, burned crops and equipment and salted the land, and how famines were ended in the region under the USSR, and then ask the liberal if they care about famines under capitalism.
then the liberal says 'yeah but Stalin was basically Hitler' and then we in this group of anarchists, ML(M)s and syndicalists chase this fucking wrecker out into the street so we can get back to work.
i think any strong opinion on Stalin as an individual is already wrong, because you're falling for the Great Man of History fallacy. i think Stalin is irrelevant unless you're an ML cadre who needs to learn from the successes and mistakes of the USSR, but i think the history of the USSR is also important to any communist.
when you see an ML defending Stalin, it's almost always because someone is criticising MLs based on an uninformed claim about Stalin, or they're criticising Stalin from an uninformed position. and i don't blame them: i'm all for criticising mistakes, but we don't need to make shit up to do that.
i get that as anarchists we're suspicious of statist leaders, but i don't get why it's so hard to understand that statists would defend a communist state. even if you see them enemies, you would benefit from reading their theory to understand their position rather than going 'uhhh, why do statists defend states so much? must be they can't read, or they're just stu~pid lol must be because they have daddy issues lol'
All I’m hearing from that is in meatspace the mls you meet defend Stalin?
And after browsing your history, you uh seem to go and bat for statist mls more often than you ever fight for or promote anarchism… not to start on the HexBear emojis.
Lmao you sound like a cia interrogator going through someones posts while they're handcuffed to a chair naked
everybody you know is cia. your cat? cia. your mom? cia. that rash you got on your privates after fucking that bottle you found on the ground? also cia.
just you, then?
hey, you need any tips on getting rid of that rash, I know a good cia agent who can write you a prescription.
not to start on the HexBear emojis.
what is the charge? using an emoji? a perfect Hexbear emoji?
spoiler
not my fault they have so many good emoji
When people talk about "Stalinism," they usually mean one of 2 things:
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Marxism-Leninism, the synthesis of Marxism with the advancements made by Lenin. Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism, so this gets called "Stalinism" despite Stalin's minor contributions compared to Marx and Lenin.
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The policies of the USSR while Stalin was General Secretary of the CPSU.
The former, Marxism-Leninism, is the largest tendency of Marxism by far. This is because it has proven its utility in practice, establishing socialism in many countries with varying local conditions and contexts. Lenin's contributions to Marxism are near universally accepted by Marxists, and Stalin did not change from them in synthesizing Marxism-Leninism.
The latter, Stalin's policy positions, are largely either contextualized and explained, rather than actively defended, or are genuinely good feats. For example, under Stalin, literacy rates skyrocketed from ~30% to 99.9%, life expectancy doubled, education and healthcare were made free at all levels, jobs were guaranteed, and much more. Genuine faults, like criminalizing homosexuality, are recognized as such by Marxist-Leninists.
As Weng Weiguang says, The Evaluation of Stalin is Essentially an Ideological Struggle. Marxist-Leninists don't idolize Stalin. At the same time, Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism, and oversaw the world's first socialist state during its most turbulent period. The CPC rates him as 70% good, 30% bad, and this rating is roughly orbited by most communist orgs. Those who denounce Stalin entirely, also denounce the USSR, and existing socialism.
Stalin was a committed Marxist-Leninist, and oversaw the world's first socialist state for the overwhelming majority of its most tumultuous period. He was no saint, but at the same time was no monster either. He is remembered by liberal historians as far worse than comtemporaries like Churchill who in actuality were far worse than Stalin.
As Nia Frome says, we can either distance ourselves from Stalin, and by extension the USSR and actually existing socialism, or we can fight back against bourgeois narratives about Stalin and the USSR, acknowledging their faults while being able to uphold their tremendous successes as examples of the possibilities of socialism in power. Historical nihilism, and throwing Stalin and by extension much of the early soviet union under the bus, was ultimately what allowed for liberalization within the USSR and partially contributed to the death of socialism in eastern Europe.
If you want an intro to Marxism-Leninism, check out my new basic ML study guide!
Mhm. I get that your country is hostile to the world and its own citizens. I do. But that doesn't make Stalin - or any era USSR - good. This dichotomy of white vs black, good vs evil is the most USian brainwashing that is afflicted on your people. From your post I can see you preemptively dismiss any critisizm or argument and while you said MLs don't idealise Stalin, it seems that you do.
Those who denounce Stalin entirely, also denounce the USSR, and existing socialism.
I'm from Poland. To us, to a country betrayed by the Allies and sold to Stalin, their occupation did not bring prosperity, or equality, nor socialism. We were systematically robbed by the USSR from the wealth, intellect and industry (as noted by then governments and listed as a plea for USSR to stop), and even lives. We were made to take loans to invest in the Empire, while staying a satelite country and tying our planned economy to better native Russian territories. We did call then the Red Army - Red Locust. You need to realise that when you glorify it, you automatically dismiss our traumatic past. It is like getting told by a stupid child that if we're hungry we should eat cake.
Since USA wages war outside its territory and was never invaded nor conquered, you might not know that trauma - especially from war and being a conquered nation, worse nation - is transgenerational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma
Were there people who thrived under USSR occupation? Yes, but they are thriving currently too, both politicians and capitalist leeches. Did Poland progress under the occupation? Yes, like every damn other country in Europe. We would progress more as free people, no historian thinks differently.
The latter, Stalin’s policy positions, are largely either contextualized and explained, rather than actively defended, or are genuinely good feats
When I read your comments I can't not see you as anything else than a guilt feeling nepo baby. Or at least someone so privileged, that they never ever thought about other people lives outside of statistics. An empty headed academic.
Tl; dr; the revolution was made into abomination of itself and claiming otherwise is blindness
Mhm. I get that your country is hostile to the world and its own citizens. I do. But that doesn’t make Stalin - or any era USSR - good.
The USSR was good based on its own progressive merits.
From your post I can see you preemptively dismiss any critisizm or argument and while you said MLs don’t idealise Stalin, it seems that you do.
I don't.
I’m from Poland. To us, to a country betrayed by the Allies and sold to Stalin, their occupation did not bring prosperity, or equality, nor socialism.
I've spoken to people from Poland that have the opposite to say. The fall of socialism in Poland brought a dramatic collapse in any kind of left, which is why Poland is so far-right today.
We were systematically robbed by the USSR from the wealth, intellect and industry (as noted by then governments and listed as a plea for USSR to stop), we were made take loans to invest in the Empire, while staying a satelite country. We did call then the Red Army - Red Locust. You need to realise that when you glorify it, you automatically dismiss our traumatic past. It is like getting told by a stupid child that if we’re hungry we should eat cake.
Again, I've heard much the opposite. That's why anecdotes are terrible measures of truth. The collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe brought skyrocketing poverty rates, prostitutuon, drug abuse, homelessness, and 7 million excess deaths.
Since USA wages war outside its territory and was never invaded, you might not know that trauma - especially from war and being a conquered nation - is transgenerational https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma
I'm aware.
Were they people who thrived under USSR occupation? Yes, but they are thriving currently too, both politicians and capitalist leeches. Did Poland progress under the occupation? Yes, like every damn other country in Europe. We would progress more as free people, no historian thinks differently.
And yet Poland is now in a far-right spiral with far greater disparity.
When I read your comments I can’t not see you as anything else than a guilt feeling nepo baby. Or at least someone so privileged, that they never ever thought about other people lives outside of statistics. An empty headed academic.
Cool story, you know nothing about me. Believe it or not, statistics and historical fact do outweigh simple anecdote, and the idea that I have never thought about people's lives outside of statistics is deeply wrong.
Splitting this to a separate comment because it was too long:
The fall of socialism in Poland brought a dramatic collapse in any kind of left, which is why Poland is so far-right today.
I mean dude, not even close. Polish leftist parties were antiworker from the 90s. Anything further left was dismissed as "USSR was saying the same lies". Fool me once kind of thing.
Add to that the short time where there was upwards mobility in the country when it first became "capitalists", as well as fhe fact that in the past 20 years median personal real wealth grew.
And yet Poland is now in a far-right spiral with far greater disparity
Yup. The current generation is seeing that the wealth is unequally distributed (1% owns 45% of wealth), as well as all those rentier leeches, banks making record profits year after year, and the Facebook/Tiktok ( or generally USA right wing) propaganda is turning like 10% into MAGA-style idiots, and the rest is also slowly radicalizing. We do see that in the below 35 age group the left-leaning is still strongest, but the PIS and Konfederacja are following Repulican party strategies and gaining tracktion.
So in other words, the far-right used the standard red-scare playbook to purge communists and socialists, and now Poland has immense disparity and is entirely controlled by the far-right.
No, don't hyperbolize. This isn't your narrative.
the far-right used the standard red-scare playbook to purge communists and socialists
No. It was everyone in the free Poland. We were rebelling constantly under USSR occupation.
and now Poland has immense disparity and is
No. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI?locations=PL&start=1985 But we do see foreign corporations leeching from us and actively enshittifying. The home ownership rate is decreasing.
and is entirely controlled by the far-right.
That depends what you mean by far right. I'd call the current political landscape of Poland as right-centrist PO in coalition with centrists (the rest of the coalition) vs (oppositon) right-centrist PiS with (growing) republican-clone Konfederacja
What anecdote? I've made no anecdotes? The only person mentioning any anecdotes is you, e.g.
Again, I’ve heard much the opposite
Regarding USSR stealing industry:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0966692307000713#%3A%7E%3Atext=Introduction%2Cby+Soviet+Red+Army+troops.
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grabie%C5%BC_i_przejmowanie_mienia_poniemieckiego_na_Ziemiach_Odzyskanych#%3A%7E%3Atext=Grabie%C5%BC+i+przejmowanie+mienia+poniemieckiego+na+Ziemiach+Odzyskanych+%E2%80%93+Wikipedia%2C+wolna+encyklopedia
(I'm sorry wo don't really translate that to English). But you can try to Google for sources in English.
I’ve spoken to people from Poland that have the opposite to say
You might've spoken to people who remember the late 80's fondly. Not 50-70s. Or ZOMO (secret terror police) or similar, they always had privileged lives.
Unless you were in the Party, Army or Zomo, life was not roses at all, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_October
The collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe brought skyrocketing poverty rates, prostitutuon, drug abuse, homelessness, and 7 million excess deaths.
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Poland is not Eastern Europe
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prostitutuon, drug abuse, homelessness <- you might be confusing that with what is common in the USA.
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Excess deaths https://wol.iza.org/articles/mortality-crisis-in-transition-economies/long#%3A%7E%3Atext=Features+of+the+transition+mortality%2Climited+changes+in+family+stability.
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skyrocketing poverty rates
Not really, no? After we detached from the ZSSR everything had to be restarted and the first decade was hard. We had to start from little, figure out export routes, rebuild a damn lot of industries etc? We were economy attached and made dependant on USSR, how could the split not be hard?
Poland, prior to socialism, was 2/3rds controlled by foreign capital, and was severely lagging behind the rest of Europe industrially. By 1948, Poland's industrial output was 153% of what it had been in 1938. Post-war, the economy grew over 300% from 1945 to 1948.
In the 1930s, Polish life expectancy was ~46 years old. After the introduction of socialism, and improved healthcare, it reached 70. Before socialism, literacy rates were ~80% in urban areas and ~30% in rural areas. With socialism, total literacy rates were 98%. With socialism came legalized abortion and greatly expanded women's rights.
The dissolution of socialism, as I said, brought ~7 million deaths around the world. You didn't dispute that, the argument seems to be on your end that these were necessary for economic growth. What Poland could have done is remain socialist.
Everything else tomorrow, its 1am
The dissolution of socialism, as I said, brought ~7 million deaths. You didn’t dispute that, th
I literally added a link it was 8400. You gave no sources. Trust me bro is not a source.
God, I've been reading your exchange with ThirdConsul and it's painful. I'm sorry you have to endure this shit.
If you want an additional reference to the USSR actually subsidizing the Polish economy, Szymanski's "Is the Red Flag Flying" goes in detail about this, and proves with economical data that 1955 onwards the USSR subjected itself to the short end of the stick of unequal exchange and provided raw materials to the COMECON countries at international market prices and below in exchange for industrially manufactured goods. Some nationalist Poles are to a certain degree aware of this and instead of framing the exchanges as "dismantling of Polish industry" as this clueless user is doing, speak of "the USSR giving us useless iron and taking finished industrial products from us", completely devoid of any understanding of high value-added goods.
Also, the user is outright lying. The USSR absolutely warned Poland not to get into loans with the IMF, and Poland ignored it anyway, proving again Poland's political independence within the Eastern Block.
Here's an .epub for Is the Red Flag Flying? for anyone that wants it! And great suggestion, considering Szymanski is Polish-American and thorough. Also true on the IMF loans.
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I would wager it’s as they don’t read actual historical documents of those who witnessed and survived Stalin, is why. Dude was bloody-minded as fuck, and in a tweenaged subset of the population, death, misery and degradations are “cool”.
The political flip side are the right-wing chuds that join ICE so they can tear families apart and “own” the left.
Off the top of my head, no. (It's been decades since I've thought about any of this, TBH..)
What you can do is branch out and read up on the people he had around him in government, like the Deputy Chair of the Soviet secret police, Lavrentiy Beria. (Now that's a dark hole to look in to, he was feared more than Stalin.)
Stalin was a thug at heart. Angry and conniving, but surrounded himself with even worse people. (Gee, who can we see as a mirror of that today? Yikes..)
Who he chose to do his bidding, that's where the full scope of the horror of Stalin can be found.
you mean the podcast hosted by Robert Evans, the anarchist who writes for Bellingcat which is funded by the anticommunist National Endowment for Democracy which is currently run by former Bush staffers and is a literal CIA front?
In 1986, NED's President Carl Gershman said that the NED was created because "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the 1960s and that's why it has been discontinued".
In a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, NED founder Allen Weinstein said: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
that 'anarchist', who likes to talk over his guests, and his takes on countries outside the US repeatedly mirror the State Department?
as an anarchist, i do wonder if the antistatist who is funded by an anticommunist US government organisation might have a bias…
I've had multiple arguments online with people regarding the Holodomor. They all found some way to blame it on the US or claim it was overexaggerated. Which is interesting, because there is absolutely no proof of either claim. If the US had somehow found a way to starve Ukraine specificially, the Soviet Union could've fixed that quite quickly, with this little invention known as the train.
Why do so many people on the liberal side defend slavery, genocide, etc?
Libs and their fash partners literally worship racistremoveds like washington, jefferson, trump, etal.
There is zero reality or justice in dealing with these creeps.
So, when people attack "stalin" for some tales that they've heard within the empire, it's completely propaganda and highly questionable. Likewise for people focused on Mao or whatever. It's just racist pale skins externalizing their own crimes. It's another example of "every accusation is a confession". It has almost nothing to do with the reality of stalin, mao, etal.
TBH any question about "tankies" can be answered by thinking about the liberals analogue. They're the same thing with different imperial branding.
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Stalinism is not a thing, it is one historical manifestation of Marxism-Leninism. The way a salamander is one historical manifestation of biology
Because they're authoritarians. They think they're leftist because they want to kill people who challenge the state inclusively.
Here's a good question for you, why are you such a reactionary? And why does this comm keep attracting reactionaries?
It is well known and widespread trend that the "antitankeism" inevitably attract fash who try to weasel themselves under the guise.
I expect they're probably victims of some kind of propaganda campaign designed to discredit Marxism.
What, is the US government secretly promoting Marxism-Leninism or something? Big if true.
