Yeah my familly left the USSR in the 20s less because of oppression and more because of their incorrect beliefs that America was a golden palace. My grandpa used to laugh about how his dad would complain that food costs money and that the company town was basically feudalism in America. Yet here I am, working in the coal mine just like my ancestors. Part of me yearns for the mines, and enjoys it more than my days off. My depression keeps me from feeling anything but hard work is still satisfying.
A guy I know, real nice guy but super liberal, was telling me how his Cuban grandfather suffered under Castro. Sure enough, when he got into more details, it turns out his grandfather was a wealthy landlord whose farmland got collectivized and he only had to go to jail after he got very vocal about trying to get people to oppose the revolution (in which he was very much the minority BTW, his own friend turned him in)
Reminds me of when a Finn told me about how the Soviets killed his grandad…and I was like…yeah? 😏 how come? 🥺🥺🥺
I have a relative that lived in the USSR and they didn’t complain about being imprisoned or questioned, they complained that Nazis destroyed their old village, they complained that there was not as much food (note: as much, not none)during the war, issues that people face during war, not during times of poor leadership.
Can I have a serious question? Are you guys real? Or am I just not on the joke?
I do not like US, but being someone from country controled by USSR. There were ton of people arested just for publicaly saying “Goverment bad”.
Please don’t discredit me, compared to US, I would be considered socialist and by US right wing maybe communist, but claiming that USSR or current Russia are your friends seems insane.
claiming that USSR or current Russia are your friends seems insane
The USSR is gone. It’s not around to be anyone’s friend. This means that communists who talk highly of the USSR are analysing the USSR and concluding that it was the greatest experiment in raising living standards in history. (Maybe that’s now China, but it’s going to be a difficult and possibility incoherent comparison.)
Compare the standard of living before and after the Soviets gained power. Success is the only word for it, even if they’re are valid criticisms. (Do not do that silly thing where you compare life for the average person at any time in the Soviet Union with the life of the most decadent and rich person in the US. That’s not logical.)
I doubt there are many communists who see Russia as a friend. What you see instead are communists acknowledging that Russia is fighting US imperialism. Considering how much death, tragedy, and destruction the US brings and has brought to the world, any work against the US is a net positive for humanity.
(To preclude misunderstanding, no I am not saying that people dying in the Ukraine war is a good thing. Except die hard Nazis. They can get fucked. It’s up to the reader to decide where they think the Nazis are.)
I want to emphasise and follow up something that KiG V2 said:
What these countries do crack down on is when fascists, capitalist opportunists, and foreign intelligence agents work actively to try and destroy, divide, and sabotage them.
Liberals tend to read things like this and say that it is a ‘conspiracy’. But think about it like this: if we know one thing for a fact, it is that “capitalist opportunists, and foreign intelligence agents work[ed] actively to … destroy, divide, and sabotage” the USSR until they won. The capitalists won. They got what they wanted. They got what the communists were saying that the reactionaries wanted all along—the end of the USSR.
Now we have 30 years of evidence of how capitalists would run the regions of the USSR differently. If you can compare what life in the USSR looked like before and after the Soviets gained power, you can also compare what life was like before and after the Soviets lost power.
So what happened after the Berlin wall fell? Can you honestly look at the statistics, the records, the economy, the stories, and say that life got better?
If you can, I’d ask you to look again at all segments of society, not just the lucky few in the middle and upper classes. If you think life got worse after the USSR (it did—living standards plummeted), ask: what changed? You, too, will answer that for all it’s flaws, the change was from socialism to capitalism and that socialism was by far a superior system for the mass of people.
(PS using ‘insane’ as a way of criticising something is ableism.)
I’m sorry but you need to consider that you simply have been lied to about your own history.
Fairly criticizing the government in the USSR–just like in China, just like in North Korea, and so on–is not illegal.
What these countries do crack down on is when fascists, capitalist opportunists, and foreign intelligence agents work actively to try and destroy, divide, and sabotage them.
The vast majority of people the USSR killed or imprisoned (a number far smaller than what we are told), were actively trying to destroy the USSR, and all the lives of millions of common people who were benefitting from this new system. Why when capitalists kill whoever they see fit, they can call them “traitors”, “treasonous”, or “terrorists”, but when socialists do something far more restrained and humane they are seen as devils?
Well, because, capitalist propaganda has strangled the world discourse, especially the last 30 years. The United States and its allies have spent the last century not only trying to destroy every socialist state but to muddy the waters, lie, and character assassinate its enemies. Everything from gulags, the Holodomor, WW2 war doctrine, the Great Purge, and everything before and after has been radically distorted by capitalist and fascist liars.
I believe you that in your heart you are a socialist. So please listen to me when I say: do not trust the lies about your socialist brothers and sisters that were invented by capitalist and fascist snakes who want to destroy everything you would build.
Yes, we’re real communists.
Yes, Lemmygrad is explicitly communist.
Countries weren’t controlled by the USSR, they were a member state of the USSR and had input on democratic central planning and decisions. Please feel free to provide documentation if you feel that my worldview is incorrect.
Modern Russia and the USSR are two entirely different issues.
Countries weren’t controlled by the USSR, they were a member state of the USSR and had input on democratic central planning and decisions.
So countries that were forcibly integrated, like the Baltic states, weren’t controlled? Then why couldn’t they leave the union?
They could. Article 17 of the 1936 Constitution (can be found on https://marxists.org > English > History > Soviet Union > Soviet Government) explicitly allowed every Republic to secede from the U.S.S.R.
So why didn’t they? Clearly they never wanted to be a part of the union because prior to WW2 the foreign policy of those countries was neutrality. They created the Baltic entente and at end the of 1938 all three countries passed neutrality laws, Here’s the Estonian law. Furthermore after the union collapse all three countries designated the soviet era as an era of foreign occupation. Which part of of history gives you the indication that they actually wanted to be in the union?
Why don’t you give up Hawaii and Puerto rico which you illegally annexed ? What about Mexcian lands that you stole ? Baltic states were given up by Lenin to Germany in Brest treaty , they were vassals of Germany and became fascistic in later years , why would Soviet Russia give up Baltic states when they got it back from Germany in 1939?
Why don’t you give up Hawaii and Puerto rico which you illegally annexed ? What about Mexcian lands that you stole ?
How about you don’t assume my nationality, my country isn’t even close those areas. Also nice whataboutism.
Baltic states were given up by Lenin to Germany in Brest treaty ,
You do realize that there were wars of independence after that treaty, that ended up with new treaties? There was the treaty of Tartu between Estonia and Soviet union, the treaty of Riga between Latvia and Soviet union and the Moscow peace treaty between Lithuania and Soviet union. The Soviet union recognized the independence of those countries so the Brest treaty is irrelevant.
they were vassals of Germany and became fascistic in later years ,
I know people like you love to throw the word around but authoritarian is not the same as fascist. And I have no idea where you take that they were vassals of German. You’re clearly not aware that the independence war in Estonia and Latvia wasn’t just against the Soviet union, it was also against Germany, more specifically the Baltic Germans who were in the Baltische Landeswehr.
why would Soviet Russia give up Baltic states when they got it back from Germany in 1939?
This is so far into historical revisionism there’s nothing to correct, it’s complete fiction.
Maybe the part where there were still a lot of people even in 1991 that wanted to stay?
(Yes, there were also independence referendums in 1991, but you were asking why it didn’t happen earlier.)
Source: https://www.sudd.ch/event.php?lang=en&id=su011991
I was asking why it didn’t happen earlier because before the Union those countries were “We don’t want to be in the union” and after the union those countries were “We said, we didn’t want to be in the union”. If before the union they didn’t want to be in it and after the union they still said they didn’t want to be in it then why should we assume that during the union they wanted to be in it? The answer is that they didn’t, they simply weren’t allowed to leave.
We said
Who is we? The bourgeoisie or the proletariat? There’s going to be severe conflicts of interest here.
Well, why didn’t they leave? You now know that they could have left. So why did they choose to stay until the whole bloc collapsed? Are you open to the possibility that the people and the leaders of the time wanted to be part of the USSR? And the people and the leaders who got what they wanted when they left:
- Now have the power to be the dominant voice, and
- Continue to say what they used to say now that they had power?
You said that you would be considered a socialist in the US, soYou probably know that capitalist states are run by a minority of wealthy people. It’s the same in post-Soviet capitalist states, right? (Like Russia, whichwe agreeis a capitalist hellhole like every other capitalist state.)If you’re still with me, could it be that a minority of liberals who complained about ‘conditions’ in the USSR are the same minority of liberals who today praise capitalism and criticise/slander the USSR?
Edit: realised I was talking to a different person.
Well, why didn’t they leave? You now know that they could have left. So why did they choose to stay until the whole bloc collapsed? Are you open to the possibility that the people and the leaders of the time wanted to be part of the USSR?
Are you open to the possibility that the USSR weren’t the good guys and didn’t allow those countries to leave? Because the rest of what you’re saying is on the premise that the USSR had to have been the good guys.
You said that you would be considered a socialist in the US
Maybe the other guy said that? I haven’t said that.
I just realised I was talking to two people and edited my comment.
My other points still stand. You’ve proved my point: there isn’t a ‘right’ answer, there’s only, like always, a class-based answer. If you believe the ruling class you reach one conclusion. If not, you reach a different conclusion.
It’s up to you which side you find more authoritative. For me, I’m skeptical of every word that leaves the mouths or pens of people who keep the working class oppressed and living in shit conditions.
Oh bunch of rus trolls, and us teenagers who think living under cccp was good.
Xddddd
Capitalist tool.
If you like your government, you don’t want anyone to organize against it. And if many people think like you, a truly democratic government would act according to your desires and jail the agitators.
Or, put otherwise, if you use the democratic mechanisms in place, it’s all good. If you protest or demonstrate because you feel you aren’t heard by the government, that’ll usually have an effect. But if, deep inside, you want to overthrow the government, everyone will hate you and you’ll be jailed or worse.
Do you have any proof or detail for your claim? Your claim sound like the many disproven slanders against the Communists that is accepted as fact in the school textbooks and “educational” documentaries in Western European diaspora countries. I know that Venezuela under the former Socialist president, Hugo Chavez, tolerate slanders and baseless conspiracy theories against the Socialist government and that “Putin’s police guards” allow people to freely sing Ukrainian anthem in Moscow without restrainment. The NATO did stage the 1989 False Flag massacre and write a false narrative that contradicts the original photo evidence by their Western European diaspora journalists (https://web.archive.org/web/19970329011405/http://www.cnd.org:8022/June4th/massacre.html) in China alongside the plothole of why the Chinese citizens somehow did not know about the repression before the 1989 false flag terrorism.
They are just scared idiots who are worried about the future of the world and instead of admitting that their is gray to the world they have taken an easy answer of saying the “other option” (because black and white is all people can think in) was perfect and that they could be 100% happy and never complain about anything ever cause surely communism would be perfect.
They are happy to ignore the rough edges because they aren’t actually living it. Not to say it couldn’t be a better system but that it would be one that needs work and effort to be best to its citizens.
Both capitalism and communism arrested its citizens for dissenting against the system they were in but this seems fucking ignorant of reality from people who put in half a thought on this at best.
If there is ‘gray to the world’ does that mean you accept that there must be a positive as well as a negative side to the USSR?
Your final sentence is pure projection.
This kinda whitewashes a lot of terrible shit that happened behind the Iron Curtain. Many Romanians suffered under the tyrannical rule of Ceaușescu, or the Yugoslavians under Tito. For many good honest proletariats, especially during the latter days of the Soviet Union, suffering was about the only thing being evenly distributed.
Now certainly, you can point much of the blame at Soviet leadership of the time who were content to allow these monsters to remain in power as long as quotas were met, as opposed to a particular failing of any political system, but I’d never go as far as to belittle people who were starving.
You can say whatever the fuck you want about Ceaușescu or Tito, but the opinion polls don’t lie, most Romanians and post Yugoslavs today preferred life under socialism, and no amount of made up atrocities seems to have changed their mind on that.
Sorry bud socialist QOL indicators called they want their better food/tech/hospitals/schools/wealth distribution/sex/art//leisure/social progressivism/self reported happiness back.
