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Interesting perspective, Iron.

I guess I consider evil done in the name of good more dangerous and insidious than evil done for it's own sake.

That explains the divide.

And I consider the gulags the single most terrifying thing we have surviving human personal testimonies of.

Frazzled wrote:Which countries had communism without repression?

Ask the CIA

Future War Cultist wrote:Nice intentions, shame about the famines.

Are we talking about communism or capitalism, or both?

The numbers getting thrown around are a bit unrealistic when taking historical accuracy into account. A bit of a more general list that is in more accepted range.

Soviet Union has around 10 million victims in its worst period between 1917-1945ish, this includes the Holodomor (3-5), the NKVD shootings(0.5-1), Gulags (1.5-2), Cheka (0.2-0.5 and absolutly brutal civil war war communism (hard to directly attribute, partly tied to Cheka).

This does not take into account any of the victims it created during WW2, which could be several million depending on how to distribute blame after placing Nazism as fhe primary culprit.

For China it is between 35-45 million. Divided between the Great Famine (30-40) and the Cultural Revolution (1-5). China is a bit more difficult and the numbers fluctuate more because record keeping was worse and officially death tolls are still downplayed by the CCP.

Frazzled is right about Cambodia killing 1/4 of the population which is about 2 milliin.

Another to possibly include is North Korea with around half a million. Although war once again gives a more complicated view, as blame can be attributed for victims of the Korean War.

This leaves out countries such as Vietnam and Cuba, which overall weren't nearly as bad as the above, although they also had serious problems. These numbers are indeed terrible. But the West should not pat itself too much on the back for not having gone through this phase, plenty of less eye catching bloodshed happened in Western colonial empires in the 20th century. It just happened that two of the most populous countries on earth were controlled by terrible people who would climb over mountains of corpses to realize their views.




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 Scrabb wrote:
Interesting perspective, Iron.

I guess I consider evil done in the name of good more dangerous and insidious than evil done for it's own sake.

That explains the divide.

And I consider the gulags the single most terrifying thing we have surviving human personal testimonies of.

While the Gulags were terrible, the majority sent to them survived. Contrast that to the concentration and extermination camps of the Third Reich and I think those qualify more as the most terrifying.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Nazism on the other hand is an inherently bad system.

So is Communism. It makes some hilariously bad assumptions and fails to take into account basic human nature. In order to implement communism, you need the most brutal leaders to enforce it. But these same types of people you'd need to seize power to implement it are the same kind of people who will not relinquish it, thus making the whole political and economic system that is Communism doomed to failure.

Marx to put it bluntly was a total moron, who angry at his lot in life made some desperate and ill thought out ramblings which other people latched on to, and billions suffered as a result.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Nazism on the other hand is an inherently bad system.

So is Communism. It makes some hilariously bad assumptions and fails to take into account basic human nature. In order to implement communism, you need the most brutal leaders to enforce it. But these same types of people you'd need to seize power to implement it are the same kind of people who will not relinquish it, thus making the whole political and economic system that is Communism doomed to failure.

Like with every other socio-economic system, the success or failure of communism depends entirely on how it is implemented. Authoritarianism is not inherent to communism in any way, though authoritarianism does often result from violent revolutions (which only take place in authoritarian societies). However, revolution is not absolutely necessary to implement communism. In a democratic society it could equally be done democratically.
And just to clarify, I was referring to good and bad as ethical terms, not as practical assessments. In practical terms, I don't think communism is a good system myself actually. I would much prefer something like anarcho-syndicalism.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Marx to put it bluntly was a total moron, who angry at his lot in life made some desperate and ill thought out ramblings which other people latched on to, and billions suffered as a result.

Calling Marx a moron is not entirely an accurate assessment of the man and his ideas. Marx is more than just the Communist Manifesto you know. Marx is the father of modern socialism, easily one of if not the most influential political ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries. Apart from that, his other writings and philosophical theories have had a huge impact on many scientific fields, ranging from disciplines like sociology to linguistics to archaeology. Our world would not look quite the same without Marx, so calling him a moron means calling a very large part of the world's political and scientific community morons. Which is evidently not true. Just because you don't like his ideas doesn't make him a moron.

Calling Marx a Moron is demostrating one own ignorance.

Karl Marx wrote the best analysis and critizism of the Capitalistics and Western society that even today still applies to our world.

Even if I myself think ideologies and other modernist ways of thinkings are outdated and incorrect, and that the Marx's analisys of capitalism was very accurate but his solution (Socialism and Communism) was totally inviable, I can recognise him as one of the greatests Philosopher and thinker of the XIX century.

 feeder wrote:
I'm saying if intention is what counts, then the birth of communism is something to be celebrated. At birth, the USSR had good intentions.

I dispute this. At its heart the bolshevik movement was a ruthless, naked grab for power. Everything else was secondary to that, especially equality. Afterall, if the real goal is equality then you would attempt it by raising the wealth and power of the average person. Instead the bolsheviks achieved their 'equality' simply by stripping rights from the formerly privileged, dragging them down to the same level as everyone else, and took all status and privilege for themselves.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Like bringing electricity and education to the poor?

Lots of countries managed that without murdering anyone.

Aye, the Bolsheviks did many things that were bad.

Directly executing more than a million people, and killing another 20 to 40 million more die through mass (often planned) starvation and other such ruthless policies is not 'many things that were bad'. fething hell.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
That is not true. Do you know how many people have been slaughtered by your government and its predecessors? Did you forget your own civil war already?

When we talk about the slaughter of the Soviet regime, it doesn't even included the Civil War. It's actually just counting the millions of citizens who were killed in deliberate government programs in peacetime that we're counting. And in that regard, yes, the Soviet Union is unique in directly executing about a million people, and counts itself among a very rare few countries in creating policies where the deaths of millions was either not a concern, or in some cases a desired outcome.


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 djones520 wrote:
Seriously, there is nothing to celebrate about the 1917 revolution. It only ended up plunging the world into a near century of war.

I agree that there's nothing to celebrate in the 1917 revolution. But I'm not sure there's much value in assigning blame for the subsequent wars on it. The Nazis are to blame for the war they started. And sure, one of the reasons the Nazis gained power was fear of communism, but it wasn't as though the anti-communist elements were motivated by the awful human rights abuses of Soviet Russia, it was the income equality thing that freaked them out. Reactionary movements freaking out about the actual good parts of communism must be accountable for their own atrocities, including WWII and the holocaust.


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 Freakazoitt wrote:
I don't agree that. Many many deaths could be avoided. The reason they died is a Stalin's paranoia. He killed all the revolutionaries to rule at his own and then started terror. There were some crimed commited by Lenin too, but was thinking of saving revolution, not making himself another tsar.

Lenin was also a murderous gak. And so was Trotsky. The fact that Stalin was an even more murderous donkey-cave doesn't in any way reduce the crimes of other Soviet leaders.


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 whembly wrote:
At least Helicopter Pinochet™ had the right idea againsts the commies.

Its fundamentally weird to simultaneously take a moral position against the murders of Soviet Russia, and at the same time celebrate the murders commited by an anti-communist.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
And let me guess? All of those nations also happen to all have been stable democracies that belonged to the wealthiest nations in the world already?

Nope. Let's just start with India as an example that started from a much lower base, with far bigger ethnic rivalries, and shifted to a modern country in shorter time without having to murder millions of its own citizens.


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 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Seems like "Somehow it gets worse" is the perfect way to describe the future of this thread...

I have to admit I didn't see the defence of Soviet Russia coming. Even when I saw this thread had three pages since I saw it yesterday, I didn't suspect it was because someone would be trying to mount a defense of Soviet Russia. I've read the thread now, and I'm still not sure I believe someone was trying to defend Soviet Russia.

For being so focused on what Stalin and the Gulags contributed to the dark part of history, lets not forget that from the start Lenin and his Cheka weren't so 'friendly' either.

Absolutely.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
50 million dead? That is like a third of the entire population... I call bs on those numbers. It is pure propaganda that can only be gotten to by blaming every single death on communism, even deaths that really aren't due to communism.

Yeah, seeing a number you don't like the sound of and rejecting it is precisely why your politics are in the place they are. 50m is on the higher end of estimates, but there are plenty of decent estimates that put it over 60m. Lower estimates go down to 20m. If we take a rough middle we get 40m, higher than the 50m quoted but within the ballpark.

And your measure against population is bad. We aren't talking about a mass murder over a single year, but a year on year set of policies, almost all between 1917 and 1940. Forced starvation over that period can quite easily kill that many people in a country as large as Soviet Russia.

Oh dear Dog, I agree with Sebster.

 sebster wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Seems like "Somehow it gets worse" is the perfect way to describe the future of this thread...

I have to admit I didn't see the defence of Soviet Russia coming. Even when I saw this thread had three pages since I saw it yesterday, I didn't suspect it was because someone would be trying to mount a defense of Soviet Russia. I've read the thread now, and I'm still not sure I believe someone was trying to defend Soviet Russia.

I once spend a while on FB arguing with a very delusional German on how Mao was a mass murderer. All the while he kept arguing how Mao modernized and industrialized China and how well he did to make that transformation happen. Ignoring 40 million something deaths and the small amount of effort that can actually be attributed to Mao for making the Chinese economy what it is today was pretty staggering. I got blocked for providing references for the inconvenient truth

 sebster wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
50 million dead? That is like a third of the entire population... I call bs on those numbers. It is pure propaganda that can only be gotten to by blaming every single death on communism, even deaths that really aren't due to communism.

Yeah, seeing a number you don't like the sound of and rejecting it is precisely why your politics are in the place they are. 50m is on the higher end of estimates, but there are plenty of decent estimates that put it over 60m. Lower estimates go down to 20m. If we take a rough middle we get 40m, higher than the 50m quoted but within the ballpark.

And your measure against population is bad. We aren't talking about a mass murder over a single year, but a year on year set of policies, almost all between 1917 and 1940. Forced starvation over that period can quite easily kill that many people in a country as large as Soviet Russia.

Just out of curiosity, where are those numbers from and what part is attributed to the civil war? Recent historical works don't tend to come to 20 million if not including a large amount of civil war and ww2 deaths (not that I disagree about including part of those).

 Grey Templar wrote:
Marx to put it bluntly was a total moron, who angry at his lot in life made some desperate and ill thought out ramblings which other people latched on to, and billions suffered as a result.

You are wildly, hopelessly ignorant of Marx. I am not a defender of communism, but assuming it was the creation of Marx is a huge mistake. I am also not a defender of Marx' own Labour Theory of Value, but calling it the work of a moron is nonsense. And beyond all that, Marx' contributions to economic history are huge, he provided amazing insights and methods that played a direct role in the creation of that field - not the work of a moron.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Oh dear Dog, I agree with Sebster.

Don't worry, it'll pass.


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 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I once spend a while on FB arguing with a very delusional German on how Mao was a mass murderer. All the while he kept arguing how Mao modernized and industrialized China and how well he did to make that transformation happen. Ignoring 40 million something deaths and the small amount of effort that can actually be attributed to Mao for making the Chinese economy what it is today was pretty staggering. I got blocked for providing references for the inconvenient truth

It is staggering what people will deny, or rationalise. But then, that's a big part of how these things happen in the first place.

Just out of curiosity, where are those numbers from and what part is attributed to the civil war? Recent historical works don't tend to come to 20 million if not including a large amount of civil war and ww2 deaths (not that I disagree about including part of those).

How soon is now? I'll admit the last time I paid any really close attention to this was in the late 90s, when we saw the last of the studies done after Russia gave some access to its archives. If work done since then has lowered the total, I'd be happy to admit my figures were out of date.

 sebster wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Just out of curiosity, where are those numbers from and what part is attributed to the civil war? Recent historical works don't tend to come to 20 million if not including a large amount of civil war and ww2 deaths (not that I disagree about including part of those).

How soon is now? I'll admit the last time I paid any really close attention to this was in the late 90s, when we saw the last of the studies done after Russia gave some access to its archives. If work done since then has lowered the total, I'd be happy to admit my figures were out of date.

The last decade really. If including figures from the civil war and WW2 it averages around 20-30 million in most works. 10 million I gave earlier, which is the bottom end of the scale, can at least be directly attributed to murder and starvation policies outside of the two wars, although that leaves out at least another 10-15 million in my opinion (but including wars always leads to endless arguing about what 'counts').

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The last decade really. If including figures from the civil war and WW2 it averages around 20-30 million in most works. 10 million I gave earlier, which is the bottom end of the scale, can at least be directly attributed to murder and starvation policies outside of the two wars, although that leaves out at least another 10-15 million in my opinion (but including wars always leads to endless arguing about what 'counts').

Interesting, thanks. I'll look in to that to update my understanding.

Continued here...

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/210

 sebster wrote:


Yeah, seeing a number you don't like the sound of and rejecting it is precisely why your politics are in the place they are. 50m is on the higher end of estimates, but there are plenty of decent estimates that put it over 60m. Lower estimates go down to 20m. If we take a rough middle we get 40m, higher than the 50m quoted but within the ballpark.

And your measure against population is bad. We aren't talking about a mass murder over a single year, but a year on year set of policies, almost all between 1917 and 1940. Forced starvation over that period can quite easily kill that many people in a country as large as Soviet Russia.

50 million is an absurd number and perfectly reasonable to be sceptical about, even the notorious propaganda book "The Black Book of Communism" puts the USSR death count at 20 million, where do you get these 60+m estimates from?

I have to admit I didn't see the defence of Soviet Russia coming.

Well not that odd considering most people still base their view of the USSR on cold war propaganda, as we have seen displayed in this very thread. Dont get me wrong, the USSR was a failure, but it was not Mordor.


Also many people in this thread seem a bit dishonest in their arguments. If communism is responsible for famine deaths (even though famines stopped happening under it), why isn't capitalism responsible for the millions of people who have died under famines and lack of drinking water and continues to every year in capitalism?

 sebster wrote:

 feeder wrote:
I'm saying if intention is what counts, then the birth of communism is something to be celebrated. At birth, the USSR had good intentions.

I dispute this. At its heart the bolshevik movement was a ruthless, naked grab for power. Everything else was secondary to that, especially equality. Afterall, if the real goal is equality then you would attempt it by raising the wealth and power of the average person. Instead the bolsheviks achieved their 'equality' simply by stripping rights from the formerly privileged, dragging them down to the same level as everyone else, and took all status and privilege for themselves.

Did you ever actually read a history book? The Bolsheviks massively improved the living standards of the average person. Like really really massively.

 sebster wrote:
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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Like bringing electricity and education to the poor?

Lots of countries managed that without murdering anyone.

All of which were stable and wealthy democracies, not feudal states that were ruled by a despotic autocrat.

 sebster wrote:

Aye, the Bolsheviks did many things that were bad.

Directly executing more than a million people, and killing another 20 to 40 million more die through mass (often planned) starvation and other such ruthless policies is not 'many things that were bad'. fething hell.

Thanks for once again just pulling numbers out of your ass. Even if you attribute many deaths to them for which the Bolsheviks' actual responsibility is questionable (such as war and famines) you only get to like 10 million. And calling the starvation planned is just ridiculous. Famines in the early Soviet Union were the unforeseen result of radical experiments with agricultural collectivisation, and one of the things that made Lenin think "Oh maybe this isn't such a good idea after all" and basically turn back the whole collectivisation thing (before it then got forced through under Stalin, but at that point you can't blame the Bolsheviks anymore because Stalin killed almost all of them).

 sebster wrote:
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 Iron_Captain wrote:
That is not true. Do you know how many people have been slaughtered by your government and its predecessors? Did you forget your own civil war already?

When we talk about the slaughter of the Soviet regime, it doesn't even included the Civil War. It's actually just counting the millions of citizens who were killed in deliberate government programs in peacetime that we're counting. And in that regard, yes, the Soviet Union is unique in directly executing about a million people, and counts itself among a very rare few countries in creating policies where the deaths of millions was either not a concern, or in some cases a desired outcome.

Yes, and your country is unique in that it can pride itself on being one of the few, if not the only, countries to successfully exterminate not just one, or two, but countless entire peoples. The Soviet Union seems innocent in comparison. Also, your numbers are just way off.

 sebster wrote:
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 djones520 wrote:
Seriously, there is nothing to celebrate about the 1917 revolution. It only ended up plunging the world into a near century of war.

I agree that there's nothing to celebrate in the 1917 revolution. But I'm not sure there's much value in assigning blame for the subsequent wars on it. The Nazis are to blame for the war they started. And sure, one of the reasons the Nazis gained power was fear of communism, but it wasn't as though the anti-communist elements were motivated by the awful human rights abuses of Soviet Russia, it was the income equality thing that freaked them out. Reactionary movements freaking out about the actual good parts of communism must be accountable for their own atrocities, including WWII and the holocaust.

Russians don't need an American to tell them what is to be celebrated or not. In Russia, the revolution and communism are celebrated, and there are many good reasons for doing so. 1917 is the year where Russia began its journey from a backwards land of peasants and feudal lords to a modern nuclear, spacefaring superpower with great achievements in the fields of education, healthcare, arts and science. That is definitely something to celebrate, even if the Americans choose to be ignorant of it.

 sebster wrote:
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 Freakazoitt wrote:
I don't agree that. Many many deaths could be avoided. The reason they died is a Stalin's paranoia. He killed all the revolutionaries to rule at his own and then started terror. There were some crimed commited by Lenin too, but was thinking of saving revolution, not making himself another tsar.

Lenin was also a murderous gak. And so was Trotsky. The fact that Stalin was an even more murderous donkey-cave doesn't in any way reduce the crimes of other Soviet leaders.

The big difference is that the crimes of Lenin and Trotsky were committed as part of the civil war. Wars, especially civil wars aren't clean. Sometimes things must be done to win the war. Stalin is different because he had no such excuse. He killed people in peacetime, and not just political and ideological opponents either.

 sebster wrote:
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 whembly wrote:
At least Helicopter Pinochet™ had the right idea againsts the commies.

Its fundamentally weird to simultaneously take a moral position against the murders of Soviet Russia, and at the same time celebrate the murders commited by an anti-communist.

Will you be celebrating Thanksgiving in a few weeks?

 sebster wrote:
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 Iron_Captain wrote:
And let me guess? All of those nations also happen to all have been stable democracies that belonged to the wealthiest nations in the world already?

Nope. Let's just start with India as an example that started from a much lower base, with far bigger ethnic rivalries, and shifted to a modern country in shorter time without having to murder millions of its own citizens.

And India is still far from being a developed modern country. A significant portion of its people still live in slums and have to scavenge their food from garbage dumps. It also was a part of Great Britain, so not really useful for comparisons.

 sebster wrote:
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 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Seems like "Somehow it gets worse" is the perfect way to describe the future of this thread...

I have to admit I didn't see the defence of Soviet Russia coming. Even when I saw this thread had three pages since I saw it yesterday, I didn't suspect it was because someone would be trying to mount a defense of Soviet Russia. I've read the thread now, and I'm still not sure I believe someone was trying to defend Soviet Russia.

That just goes on to show how little you actually know about Russia and Russian history, and how much you have been brainwashed by decades of American anti-communist propaganda. There aren't many Russians here on Dakka, but what few Russians there are are celebrating and defending the Soviet Union. Maybe that shows that you need to update your understanding of the success and failures of the Soviet Union.

 sebster wrote:
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 Iron_Captain wrote:
50 million dead? That is like a third of the entire population... I call bs on those numbers. It is pure propaganda that can only be gotten to by blaming every single death on communism, even deaths that really aren't due to communism.

Yeah, seeing a number you don't like the sound of and rejecting it is precisely why your politics are in the place they are. 50m is on the higher end of estimates, but there are plenty of decent estimates that put it over 60m. Lower estimates go down to 20m. If we take a rough middle we get 40m, higher than the 50m quoted but within the ballpark.

Just dream on with your imaginary numbers. Most of those numbers were just made up by Western anti-Soviet propagandists. Since the fall of the Soviet Union a lot more accurate estimates have been possible, and they aren't even close to being that high. But hey, if you want to keep living in the Cold War, we won't stop you. I don't know then why people say it ever ended though.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

I once spend a while on FB arguing with a very delusional German on how Mao was a mass murderer. All the while he kept arguing how Mao modernized and industrialized China and how well he did to make that transformation happen. Ignoring 40 million something deaths and the small amount of effort that can actually be attributed to Mao for making the Chinese economy what it is today was pretty staggering. I got blocked for providing references for the inconvenient truth

Even with the famine, life expectancy rose by one year per year, for forty years. That's a humanitarian achievement only rivalled throughout history by the Soviet Union. Not like Western technological and social development was bloodless. Colonialism has murdered millions in the name of conquest and resource extraction and is why some Western countries were wealthy in the first place. Industrialisation displaced and impoverished millions so the factories owned by the rich would have workers. How many have died as a result of that, do you think?

Most every time someone says "communism killed so-and-so many people" the numbers are based on repetition of CIA propaganda and the metrics, often undisclosed, are never applied to capitalist countries. When there's a food shortage in a leftist country that's the fault of communism on a fundamental level as an ideology but when there's a food shortage in a capitalist country that's just how the world works and nothing could have been done to predict or prevent it.

Could we drop the nationalistic fetishism? Sebster's not even American, and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

I've actually been to the Soviet Union.

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 sebster wrote:


Yeah, seeing a number you don't like the sound of and rejecting it is precisely why your politics are in the place they are. 50m is on the higher end of estimates, but there are plenty of decent estimates that put it over 60m. Lower estimates go down to 20m. If we take a rough middle we get 40m, higher than the 50m quoted but within the ballpark.

And your measure against population is bad. We aren't talking about a mass murder over a single year, but a year on year set of policies, almost all between 1917 and 1940. Forced starvation over that period can quite easily kill that many people in a country as large as Soviet Russia.

50 million is an absurd number and perfectly reasonable to be sceptical about, even the notorious propaganda book "The Black Book of Communism" puts the USSR death count at 20 million, where do you get these 60+m estimates from?

20 million even from notorious propaganda comes pretty close to the historical truth with what we know now. Sebster already said 60 million was at the very high end and he was willing to accept different numbers.

 ulgurstasta wrote:

 sebster wrote:
I have to admit I didn't see the defence of Soviet Russia coming.

Well not that odd considering most people still base their view of the USSR on cold war propaganda, as we have seen displayed in this very thread. Dont get me wrong, the USSR was a failure, but it was not Mordor.


Also many people in this thread seem a bit dishonest in their arguments. If communism is responsible for famine deaths (even though famines stopped happening under it), why isn't capitalism responsible for the millions of people who have died under famines and lack of drinking water and continues to every year in capitalism?

Dishonest? Hardly, there is a difference in famines. A good one to compare the Soviet or Chinese famine to is the Bengal famine in 1943 iirc. They were all exacerbated by the governments at the time. Famines happen in every system because it tends to be unavoidable in countries that aren't wealthy enough to import. Communism in the case of the SU and the PRC is responsible because the SU kept exporting grain abroad while a significant portion of the population was starving. Not only that, farmers were accused of lying and sabotaging and any scrap of grain they had left was forcibly requisitioned. In the case of the PRC everyone involved in government was basically lying about crop yields and the actual effectiveness of agrarian policies. So again the government forcibly requisitioned food from starving regions because actual production being lower than recorded production equals lying farmers. The harsh truth is that while capitalism is often uncaring about famine, the SU and the PRC actually had a hand in creating and exacerbating their famines. The UK and the Bengal famine is one of those famines that you can actually hold up to the one in the SU (2-3 million deaths versus 3-5)and realize that imperialist countries also engaged in it, key difference being imperialist versus capitalist. But nothing comes close to the horrific Great Famine in pure numbers. Were not blaming communism for natural famines here, its dishonest to argue that.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Could we drop the nationalistic fetishism? Sebster's not even American,

Oh wow. That is so bad on my part. Sorry Seb. Somehow I must have looked at the wrong poster when searching for a flag.
But yeah. We also do not need Australians to tell us what to celebrate or what is good. Nor Swedes for that matter.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

It is anything but immaterial. It is critically important if we want to measure whether the Soviet Union was good or bad and whether or not we should celebrate the revolution.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've actually been to the Soviet Union.

Cool! Where did you go?

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
I once spend a while on FB arguing with a very delusional German on how Mao was a mass murderer. All the while he kept arguing how Mao modernized and industrialized China and how well he did to make that transformation happen. Ignoring 40 million something deaths and the small amount of effort that can actually be attributed to Mao for making the Chinese economy what it is today was pretty staggering. I got blocked for providing references for the inconvenient truth

Even with the famine, life expectancy rose by one year per year, for forty years. That's a humanitarian achievement only rivalled throughout history by the Soviet Union. Not like Western technological and social development was bloodless. Colonialism has murdered millions in the name of conquest and resource extraction and is why some Western countries were wealthy in the first place. Industrialisation displaced and impoverished millions so the factories owned by the rich would have workers. How many have died as a result of that, do you think?

Most every time someone says "communism killed so-and-so many people" the numbers are based on repetition of CIA propaganda and the metrics, often undisclosed, are never applied to capitalist countries. When there's a food shortage in a leftist country that's the fault of communism on a fundamental level as an ideology but when there's a food shortage in a capitalist country that's just how the world works and nothing could have been done to predict or prevent it.

Might want to fix the quote in your post. Life expectancy is a nice metric, but doesn't tell the whole story. The PRC brought stability to decades of war torn China so a rise is to be expected. It still doesn't excuse a famine. Lets take the SU, life got much better right? Yet their famine 'only' claimed 3-5 million lives, so why did 30-40 million have to die in China for the same 'progress'? Wilfully starving your population is not a great humanitarian achievement in my book, certainly considering many if not most of these deaths could have been avoided. Also you're reaching, yes Western imperialism was bad. But countries such as Taiwan, South Korea and West Germany showed you could achieve as much progress with little bloodshed at the same time 40 million Chinese died due to Mao's 'progress'. SK and Taiwan had just as far if not further to climb than China and certainly surpassed it.

Stop putting words in people's mouths. Its not CIA propaganda, its decades of academic efforts and research, also conducted by Chinese and Russian historians. Deriding them as CIA outlets is just offensive. I already adressed the fact imperialism is bad, this isn't a thread celebrating the birth of imperialism. If you want to discuss the dozens of millions killed by colonialism/imperialism I'm perfectly willing to do so, taking into account that most of that didn't happen in living memory like the Great Famine or Cultural Revolution. Also I adressed natural versus constructed famines, its a false equivalance. Under capitalism its often a flaw of external help, in communism two large famines were internally driven and exacerbated. Check my comment up about the UK and the Bengal famine for a similar case.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Could we drop the nationalistic fetishism? Sebster's not even American,

Oh wow. That is so bad on my part. Sorry Seb. Somehow I must have looked at the wrong poster when searching for a flag.
But yeah. We also do not need Australians to tell us what to celebrate or what is good. Nor Swedes for that matter.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

It is anything but immaterial. It is critically important if we want to measure whether the Soviet Union was good or bad and whether or not we should celebrate the revolution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've actually been to the Soviet Union.

Cool! Where did you go?

Moscow and Leningrad.

Visited the Kremlin. Saw Lenin's mausoleum. Went to the Science and Space park. Went on the underground and on a tram. Went to the GUM department store.
In Leningrad I saw the Hermitage Winter Palace, Aurora, and the Summer Palace. The big fortress on an island -- I can't remember its name. The Siege memorial and mass graves.

I stayed in three different hotels. A very modern one called Kosmos in Moscow, then a mid-19th century one called Europskaya in Leningrad, then Hotel Ukraine, a massive Stalinist pile, in Moscow on the way back.

It was great.

This was back in 1979, the year before the Moscow Olympics.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Like bringing electricity and education to the poor?

Lots of countries managed that without murdering anyone.

All of which were stable and wealthy democracies, not feudal states that were ruled by a despotic autocrat.

You might want to look at Taiwan and South Korea. They weren't stable or wealthy democracies when they went down the 'tiger' path. Yet it shows that with help a decent level can be achieved. Even the SU was open to foreign help in the 1920's because it was the best way to quickly develop. Yet Mao and Stalin were crazy insular about their states which required a different approach in their opinion. With less murderous leaders similar results might have been achieved with a little more outside help. Granted its what-iffing, but to say you have to start of wealthy or democratic isn't true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

It is anything but immaterial. It is critically important if we want to measure whether the Soviet Union was good or bad and whether or not we should celebrate the revolution.

It is immaterial, in the same sense that convincing African Americans slavery was ok doesn't change if it was good or bad. People are influencable, victors writing history and general level of history knowledge and all that. If Hitler won we would have plenty of people arguing the Third Reich was ok because of popular support and because dead people can't object. Its just a flawed method of declaring things to be 'ok'. It was objectively bad for the most part, which is true for a great majority of human history and government. Everybody in the world has done a fethload of bad stuff, sadly national populations prefer to go for the "yes, but..." approach. For the US its Columbus day/thanksgiving, for the Netherlands its zwarte piet or the VOC mentality comment, its very rose-tinted way of looking at history. Even the Germans had some myths regarding the army in WW2 and 'clean conduct' (mostly dispelled in the 90's), hell we had an AfD politician say that Germans should be able to be proud of the Wehrmacht

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Could we drop the nationalistic fetishism? Sebster's not even American,

Oh wow. That is so bad on my part. Sorry Seb. Somehow I must have looked at the wrong poster when searching for a flag.
But yeah. We also do not need Australians to tell us what to celebrate or what is good. Nor Swedes for that matter.

Why don't we ask the Finns, or the Estonians, or the Poles how great the Soviet Union was, eh?

Or we could drop this ridiculous notion that someone's nationality disqualifies them from discussing the political situation in another country. You know, like I asked.

Any more discounting users' opinions based on the flag beside their name will see the perpetrator out of the OT for 2 weeks. 0 tolerance for that kind of rudeness

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've actually been to the Soviet Union.

Pfft. I've been to Tijuana. What happens in TJ stays in TJ- if you make it back across the border...

Kilkrazy wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Could we drop the nationalistic fetishism? Sebster's not even American,

Oh wow. That is so bad on my part. Sorry Seb. Somehow I must have looked at the wrong poster when searching for a flag.
But yeah. We also do not need Australians to tell us what to celebrate or what is good. Nor Swedes for that matter.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

It is anything but immaterial. It is critically important if we want to measure whether the Soviet Union was good or bad and whether or not we should celebrate the revolution.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've actually been to the Soviet Union.

Cool! Where did you go?

Moscow and Leningrad.

Visited the Kremlin. Saw Lenin's mausoleum. Went to the Science and Space park. Went on the underground and on a tram. Went to the GUM department store.
In Leningrad I saw the Hermitage Winter Palace, Aurora, and the Summer Palace. The big fortress on an island -- I can't remember its name. The Siege memorial and mass graves.

I stayed in three different hotels. A very modern one called Kosmos in Moscow, then a mid-19th century one called Europskaya in Leningrad, then Hotel Ukraine, a massive Stalinist pile, in Moscow on the way back.

It was great.

This was back in 1979, the year before the Moscow Olympics.

Nice. Saint Petersburg especially is a really beautiful city imo.

Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Like bringing electricity and education to the poor?

Lots of countries managed that without murdering anyone.

All of which were stable and wealthy democracies, not feudal states that were ruled by a despotic autocrat.

You might want to look at Taiwan and South Korea. They weren't stable or wealthy democracies when they went down the 'tiger' path. Yet it shows that with help a decent level can be achieved. Even the SU was open to foreign help in the 1920's because it was the best way to quickly develop. Yet Mao and Stalin were crazy insular about their states which required a different approach in their opinion. With less murderous leaders similar results might have been achieved with a little more outside help. Granted its what-iffing, but to say you have to start of wealthy or democratic isn't true.

I agree here. Stalin, although he also did many good things, became a major impediment to the further development of the Soviet Union and of communism. The authoritarianism and later stagnation can ultimately be traced back to Stalin. Not to mention he was a murderous bastard. And the fact that he massively crippled the Soviet army so that it could not resist Nazi invasion. And the fact that he made people worship him like he was some kind of god...
But Stalin's atrocities can't really be blamed on the Bolsheviks or the revolution. The Bolsheviks tried really hard to make Russia a better place, and the atrocities they committed in that process were either part of the general horribleness of the civil war or honest mistakes. It is not the Bolsheviks' fault that Stalin did what he did. They (or at least most of them) actively tried to oppose him when it became clear that his ideas weren't all that healthy. Hell, Lenin's testament even said something along the lines of 'whatever you do, keep Stalin away from power. He is a maniac.' The revolution was needed to remove the old order of Russian society, which was stifling Russian potential and keeping the country backwards for the sake of their own power. Kerensky and his guys tried to do it in a more or less peaceful way but utterly failed. Taiwan and South Korea both did not have to deal with these problems (and despite that they did have their fair share of atrocities, just look at the purges of communists in South Korea or the Jeju uprising). Their government did not deliberately obstruct their path to progress. On the contrary, they received tons and tons of aid on their path to progress and were very willing to improve people's lives exactly in order to prevent a revolution. And that is just the later history. If you go a bit further back, the Republic of China did go down much the same path as the Russian Empire, complete with revolution, bloody civil war and a despotic maniac seizing power. The only difference in fact is that in China, the West succeeded in keeping the old regime alive somewhat in Taiwan. Korea on the other hand is hard to compare, since it was a colony of Japan.

Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

It is anything but immaterial. It is critically important if we want to measure whether the Soviet Union was good or bad and whether or not we should celebrate the revolution.

It is immaterial, in the same sense that convincing African Americans slavery was ok doesn't change if it was good or bad. People are influencable, victors writing history and general level of history knowledge and all that. If Hitler won we would have plenty of people arguing the Third Reich was ok because of popular support (because dead people can't object. Its just a flawed method of declaring things to be 'ok'. It was objectively bad for the most part, which is true for a great majority of human history and government. Everybody in the world has done a fethload of bad stuff, sadly national populations prefer to go for the "yes, but..." approach. For the US its Columbus day/thanksgiving, for the Netherlands its zwarte piet or the VOC mentality comment. Even the Germans had some myths regarding the army in WW2 and 'clean conduct' (mostly dispelled in the 90's), hell we had an AfD politician say that Germans should be able to be proud of the Wehrmacht

That is not a comparison that makes a lot of sense. Slavery was indisputably bad. Just the fact that we are disputing here shows that the revolution and the Soviet Union were not. People's beliefs come from somewhere. If the vast majority of Russians, most of them who still experienced the Soviet Union, perceive it was good, then that is a strong argument that the Soviet Union was actually good. Nobody has convinced them of that but themselves and their own experiences of the Soviet Union. And this is not a case of victors writing history either. Every book on the subject written by historians in the West that I have ever read acknowledges the many benefits that the revolution brought to Russia. It is not a matter of perception, it is a matter of measurable fact. You can just look at the statistics and see it for yourself.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Could we drop the nationalistic fetishism? Sebster's not even American,

Oh wow. That is so bad on my part. Sorry Seb. Somehow I must have looked at the wrong poster when searching for a flag.
But yeah. We also do not need Australians to tell us what to celebrate or what is good. Nor Swedes for that matter.

Why don't we ask the Finns, or the Estonians, or the Poles how great the Soviet Union was, eh?

Or we could drop this ridiculous notion that someone's nationality disqualifies them from discussing the political situation in another country. You know, like I asked.

I don't know how it works in your country, but in Russia and in the Netherlands as well it is considered very rude for a foreigner to come in and tell you how to do things, or that things you do and love are bad.
I am not saying that living in a foreign country disqualifies you from discussion. In fact, as you may have noticed from my flag, I am not even living in Russia myself anymore. What I said is that Russians do not need foreigners to tell them what is good or what is bad. Because this is Russia we are talking about, so ultimately it is only the opinions of Russian citizens that actually matter regarding these internal Russian matters, and they can decide for themselves.
Of course, everyone is free to discuss them. I love discussing events and policies in other countries as well. But for all my discussion and opinions on matters like Catalan independence and the response of the Spanish government, it is ultimately the opinion of the Catalans and Spanish people that ultimately matters, because it concerns them, and not me.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Like bringing electricity and education to the poor?

Lots of countries managed that without murdering anyone.

All of which were stable and wealthy democracies, not feudal states that were ruled by a despotic autocrat.

You might want to look at Taiwan and South Korea. They weren't stable or wealthy democracies when they went down the 'tiger' path. Yet it shows that with help a decent level can be achieved. Even the SU was open to foreign help in the 1920's because it was the best way to quickly develop. Yet Mao and Stalin were crazy insular about their states which required a different approach in their opinion. With less murderous leaders similar results might have been achieved with a little more outside help. Granted its what-iffing, but to say you have to start of wealthy or democratic isn't true.

I agree here. Stalin, although he also did many good things, became a major impediment to the further development of the Soviet Union and of communism. The authoritarianism and later stagnation can ultimately be traced back to Stalin. Not to mention he was a murderous bastard. And the fact that he massively crippled the Soviet army so that it could not resist Nazi invasion. And the fact that he made people worship him like he was some kind of god...
But Stalin's atrocities can't really be blamed on the Bolsheviks or the revolution. The Bolsheviks tried really hard to make Russia a better place, and the atrocities they committed in that process were either part of the general horribleness of the civil war or honest mistakes. It is not the Bolsheviks' fault that Stalin did what he did. They (or at least most of them) actively tried to oppose him when it became clear that his ideas weren't all that healthy. Hell, Lenin's testament even said something along the lines of 'whatever you do, keep Stalin away from power. He is a maniac.' The revolution was needed to remove the old order of Russian society, which was stifling Russian potential and keeping the country backwards for the sake of their own power. Kerensky and his guys tried to do it in a more or less peaceful way but utterly failed. Taiwan and South Korea both did not have to deal with these problems (and despite that they did have their fair share of atrocities, just look at the purges of communists in South Korea or the Jeju uprising). Their government did not deliberately obstruct their path to progress. On the contrary, they received tons and tons of aid on their path to progress and were very willing to improve people's lives exactly in order to prevent a revolution. And that is just the later history. If you go a bit further back, the Republic of China did go down much the same path as the Russian Empire, complete with revolution, bloody civil war and a despotic maniac seizing power. The only difference in fact is that in China, the West succeeded in keeping the old regime alive somewhat in Taiwan. Korea on the other hand is hard to compare, since it was a colony of Japan.

Problem is, Lenin was also a murderous bastard and the security state Stalin had was just a natural evolution of the one Lenin set up. The birth of the Soviet Union and the police state are tied together since the beginning. Stalin took it to extremes so abhorrent that it calmed down significantly afterwards, but the origins of the SU are irrevocably tied to a violent police state. Brutalities in a civil war don't excuse brutalities, war in itself doesn't excuse brutalities. Every government still has to be held accountable for their conduct.

I know Lenin thought Stalin was a real danger, sadly Lenin wasn't that much better for putting Stalin where he was. Stalin might have been a dangerous SoB, but a useful one to Lenin nonetheless. Revolution was likely required to overthrow the ancien regime, but the absolute horrific brutality went above and beyond the required. South Korea and Taiwan had similar problems, they were utterly poor and exploited colonies of Japan, who afterwards were utterly poor and ruled by brutal authoritarian dictators. The point it comes down to is the obstruction part, it shows that progress could be made with relatively little bloodshed, regardless of old connections. Opening up the state instead of turning insular and committing to the communism in one country approach could have provided such an avenue, one that modern day China itself has used. Yet Mao and Stalin felt the need to let an absolute metric ton of people die because they were enemies of progress or the revolution. You have to blame communism for this even if there are exceptions, attempted implementation of communism is what led to these tragedies. You can't just blame Hitler without blaming Nazism/fascism, too many people were involved to blame it on a single person. The ideologies as a whole provided the motivation and opportunity to commit these acts, no matter how misguided from their origins.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
and whether the population of Russia approves of the Soviet Union or not is immaterial, as it is an argumentum ad populum.

It is anything but immaterial. It is critically important if we want to measure whether the Soviet Union was good or bad and whether or not we should celebrate the revolution.

It is immaterial, in the same sense that convincing African Americans slavery was ok doesn't change if it was good or bad. People are influencable, victors writing history and general level of history knowledge and all that. If Hitler won we would have plenty of people arguing the Third Reich was ok because of popular support (because dead people can't object. Its just a flawed method of declaring things to be 'ok'. It was objectively bad for the most part, which is true for a great majority of human history and government. Everybody in the world has done a fethload of bad stuff, sadly national populations prefer to go for the "yes, but..." approach. For the US its Columbus day/thanksgiving, for the Netherlands its zwarte piet or the VOC mentality comment. Even the Germans had some myths regarding the army in WW2 and 'clean conduct' (mostly dispelled in the 90's), hell we had an AfD politician say that Germans should be able to be proud of the Wehrmacht

That is not a comparison that makes a lot of sense. Slavery was indisputably bad. Just the fact that we are disputing here shows that the revolution and the Soviet Union were not. People's beliefs come from somewhere. If the vast majority of Russians, most of them who still experienced the Soviet Union, perceive it was good, then that is a strong argument that the Soviet Union was actually good. Nobody has convinced them of that but themselves and their own experiences of the Soviet Union. And this is not a case of victors writing history either. Every book on the subject written by historians in the West that I have ever read acknowledges the many benefits that the revolution brought to Russia. It is not a matter of perception, it is a matter of measurable fact. You can just look at the statistics and see it for yourself.

Actually the comparison makes a lot of sense. The Gulags, the starvation, the NKVD, the Cheka, the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution were indisputably bad too. Countless people died under horrific and totally unnecessary circumstances. I'm pretty sure if you dig hard enough you can find people disputing slavery was bad, that proves nothing. The point is that most Russians who experienced the Soviet Union experienced the significantly less bad version of it after 1945. Not to mention that those people were that ones that survived the purges, the starvation, the Gulags. The murdered aren't asked for their opinion on the matter. Lets say Nazi Germany existed until the 90's, most of the murdering and atrocities would have taken place in the 40's, far outside most peoples living memory. So those people having live in the post 40's Third Reich would have a completely different opinion than those who lived through and died during the 30's and 40's. Its a matter of perspective. The vast majority of Russians today didn't experience or live through the absolute worst parts of Soviet history. But how many millions died so they could have a 'better' Soviet Union? Declaring the Soviet Union good or bad isn't based on the benefits it brought, its based on the very real existence of a murderous and repressive police state that gave people those benefits.

If you murder a 100 people and divide their money amongst a 1000 poor people, you might have done a good deed in the mind of those 1000. But it is not in any way going to change the fact that to do good with one hand it also murdered a 100 with the other. Benefits don't absolve Soviet history of its atrocities, which is morally bad. Perception is all that matters.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
The harsh truth is that while capitalism is often uncaring about famine, the SU and the PRC actually had a hand in creating and exacerbating their famines.

Disregarding that capitalism definitely creates and exacerbates famines, if you dont care that people starve to death in your system, thats okay, but if you try to alleviate it and fail it's not okay?

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Communism in the case of the SU and the PRC is responsible because the SU kept exporting grain abroad while a significant portion of the population was starving

This happens all the time in capitalism too. No modern famine has been because lack of food it's because of the uneven access to food, which is due food being grown for profit rather then for use.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
key difference being imperialist versus capitalist.

Imperialist isn't in contradiction to capitalism, quite the opposite actually.

This is the dishonesty I'm talking about, you are holding up these two system to two totally different standards. If people starve under capitalism it's just "nature" and doesn't count for capitalism death count, but if the same happens under "communism" then suddenly it's not nature and it's added to the communist death count

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Freakazoitt wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Its like a thread celebrating the birth of Nazism, except of course the slaughter is a magnitude greater.

No, Nazi is an ideology based on eliminating all the people, not belongs to some fiction "aryans". Communism is an ideology of people's equality.

Hey if that makes you sleep better at night. Just be sure to skip over the parts about the dictatorship thing to re-order society, and what the Bolsheviks actually did.

Like bringing electricity and education to the poor?

Aye, the Bolsheviks did many things that were bad. But you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and they did far more good than they ever did bad. Nobody in history is completely good. Virtually every government has committed atrocities (you as American should know that better than most), but overall, despite the atrocities they committed, the Bolsheviks were a force for good. Their good acts outweigh their bad ones.

"Can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs"

40 million eggs, who died for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Why communism isn't treated the same as fascism is a mystery to me. Russia and China have killed 20 times the amount of civilians that the nazis did, and enslaved Eastern Europe. (40 million Russian casualties, over 100 million in China.) Any other ideology would be torn apart if it resulted in such a catastrophe.