It doesn't have anything to do with Lemmy. American education has always given a pass to Stalin, probably because he was an extremely helpful ally in WW2. We are taught in America that WE saved the world when we entered WW2, but the reality is that the Soviet Union lost many, many more lives at the hand of the Nazis than the other allies, including America. The Soviet Union's contribution was easily as significant as America's. When the Soviets finally defeated the Nazis in Russia, and started marching toward Germany, one Nazi general said "If they treat us half as bad as we treated them, were in big trouble."

So coming out of the war, school curriculums taught about the current cold war propaganda, but Hitler was the bad guy they focused on, not the guy that helped us beat him.

the thing I love about tankies is they hate the US as much as I do 🥰

I don't think any "tankie" is going to have their minds changed by this post. Unless they're a 90 year old Russian who has gone out of there way to avoid "western propaganda" they've already heard all these points a million times over.

If anything posts like these reinforce their identity because they can dunk on them with their prepared rebuttals to all of this.

This. Even in my psychology of genocide course in uni, a lot of it was focused on Hitler being the worst, and not much about Stalin.

Sort of related sort of not, I learned in the last few years how awful the British were, too. Different levels of awful, but I'm thinking because Canada is a commonwealth country and was pretty much run by the Brits back in the day, the Brits excluded from our education the bad things they did, ie to native Americans/First Nations people, Africa, etc. I didn't learn about any of that.. So I think what they wanted people to learn and what they wanted people to forget shaped what was taught in Canadian schools.

So, like many others, I was awed and excited by the royals. Now that I know what they've been trying to hide, meh.

Israel weaponized the Holocaust and drilled two falsehoods into everyone's head:

1. Jews were the only victims.
2. The Holocaust is a special genocide that hasn't happened before or since, is the worst crime in recorded history, and no one should dare question that.

This allows them to genocide Palestinians while calling everyone who questions their ethno supremacist expansionist colonial project a Nazi.

6 million Jews were murdered, out of 17 million victims.

Genocide of Indigenous Americans (1492–1832): it is estimated that 90% of the indigenous population, amounting to over 55 million people, died due to violence, forced labor, and disease after European colonization.

Mao Zedong (China, 1958–1961/1966–1969): Historians estimate that between 30-70 million people died due to famine, persecution, and forced labor during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Mongol Conquests (13th Century): Under Genghis Khan, it is estimated that 30-60 million people were killed, representing about 10% of the world's population at the time.

To name a few... Hitler was a monster, but he was hardly the worst monster.

Definitely this. This is what they chose the curriculum to cover more.

It's a natural pendulum moment. We are flooded with anticommunist propaganda, so when you start lifting up the curtain and seeing more and more of the lies, you can start wondering what else was a lie.

That's the moment all sorts of ideologies jump out of the woodwork to recruit you, and given most of your education was a subjugating lie you probably don't have the tools to distinguish them that well.

And that's how you end up with people denying the holocaust or thinking covid is fake or saying Stalin wasn't so bad actually.

So as we're dismantling capitalism we're going to have to constantly help people find their footing in reality, including helping them reaffirm the parts of capitalist propaganda that were true enough.

Yeah, the Western world preferred to export violence, not keep it home-grown

*how bad a straw man version of communism is

There’s a spectre haunting stoly

To be fair, having authoritarian government means you'll absolutely have an oppressive regime at some point.

If anything, Stalin was the one to cement authoritarianism as the system of power in USSR and make sure it cannot be reverted without massive issues in the form of separatism, civil disobedience, and more. The subsequent leaders could only open the valve of democracy so much without breaking the country apart.

So, it's not just leaders, it's the system of authoritarian power and imperialism. Communism and socialism must be democratic and directly managed by worker's councils, bottom to top (i.e. Soviet in its original sense), lest you fall into the same trap with any leader eventually.

Any actual notes?

Damn, you sure showed them! Got any other galaxy brain zingers in there, Megamind?

Adolf Hitler? The art student?

I'm sick of these kind of characters. I think we should kill Hitler.

Are US Americans even aware of this, though?

Very briefly during the second world war, but beyond that period, both before and after, the Soviets were considered an enemy of the US and co.

In addition, the USA supplied weapons and materials to the Soviets and the fucks used them against Finland.

False. The war with Finland happened in 1939 and the lend-lease program didn't begin until 1941. There wasn't even a supply route connecting the USSR to the other allies until the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, also in 1941 (which was one of the main reasons for the invasion).

and the fucks used them against Finland.

but why?

Trotsky was equally as bad as Stalin actually. He was very good at reframing it after his exile but that doesn't mean he isn't neck deep in blood as well.

The prison system in the soviet union was pretty similar to the system in place by the tsar - gather the problems up, send them to siberia. A new system that gestates in the womb of the old will have to struggle to shake these things, or whatever marx said.

but nah man, stalin invented prisons, go off

Nah, a normal person would have said 'inspired by Lenin'. OP is either dumb as rocks or AI.

The downvotes hint at a general awareness by users that whataboutism is a playground debate technique on par with, "I know you are, but what am I?".

If a point is valid in a vacuum but has no bearing on the topic, it absolutely should get a negative reaction.

That presumes they were trying socialism/communism and not just using it as a cover for their authoritarian ideology.

Adding quotes for reference:

"The Russian revolutionaries believed that the international struggle for socialism could be started in Russia—but that it could only be finished after an international socialist revolution. A wave of upheavals did sweep across Europe following the Russian Revolution and the end of the First World War, toppling monarchies in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire and shaking many other societies. But workers didn’t succeed in taking power anywhere else for any length of time. So the Russian Revolution was left isolated. In these desperate circumstances, Russia’s shattered working class couldn’t exercise power through workers’ councils. More and more, decisions were made by a group of state bureaucrats. At first, the aim was to keep the workers’ state alive until help came in the form of international revolution. But eventually, as the hope of revolution abroad faded, the leading figure in the bureaucracy, Joseph Stalin, and his allies began to eliminate any and all opposition to their rule—and started making decisions on the basis of how best to protect and increase their own power. Though continuing to use the rhetoric of socialism, they began to take back every gain won in the revolution—without exception." / "To finally consolidate power, Stalin had to murder or hound into exile every single surviving leader of the 1917 revolution. Russia under Stalin became the opposite of the workers’ state of 1917. Though they mouthed socialist phrases, Stalin and the thugs who followed him ran a dictatorship in which workers were every bit as exploited as in Western-style capitalist countries." / "..The popular character of the Russian Revolution is also clear from looking at its initial accomplishments. The revolution put an end to Russia’s participation in the First World War—a slaughter that left millions of workers dead in a conflict over which major powers would dominate the globe. Russia’s entry into the war had been accompanied by a wave of patriotic frenzy, but masses of Russians came to reject the slaughter through bitter experience. The soldiers that the tsar depended on to defend his rule changed sides and joined the revolution—a decisive step in Russia, as it has been in all revolutions. The Russian Revolution also dismantled the tsar’s empire—what Lenin called a “prison-house” of nations that suffered for years under tsarist tyranny. These nations were given the unconditional right to self-determination. The tsar had used the most vicious anti-Semitism to prop up his rule—after the revolution, Jews led the workers’ councils in Russia’s two biggest cities. Laws outlawing homosexuality were repealed. Abortion was legalized and made available on demand. And the revolution started to remove the age-old burden of “women’s work” in the family by organizing socialized child care and communal kitchens and laundries. But just listing the proclamations doesn’t do justice to the reality of workers’ power. Russia was a society in the process of being remade from the bottom up. In the factories, workers began to take charge of production. The country’s vast peasantry took over the land of the big landowners. In city neighborhoods, people organized all sorts of communal services. In general, decisions about the whole of society became decisions that the whole of society played a part in making. Russia became a cauldron of discussion—where the ideas of all were part of a debate about what to do. The memories of socialists who lived through the revolution are dominated by this sense of people’s horizons opening up." / "The tragedy is that workers’ power survived for only a short time in Russia. In the years that followed 1917, the world’s major powers, including the United States, organized an invasion force that fought alongside the dregs of tsarist society—ex-generals, aristocrats, and assorted hangers-on— in a civil war against the new workers’ state. The revolution survived this assault, but at a terrible price. By 1922, as a result of the civil war, famine stalked Russia, and the working class—the class that made the Russian Revolution—was decimated." (from the book "The Case For Socialism" by Alan Maass)

"Partisans of the free market point to the failure of Soviet planning as a reason to reject, out of hand, any idea of an organized economy. Without entering the discussion on the achievements and miseries of the Soviet experience, it was obviously a form of dictatorship over needs, to use the expression of György Márkus and his friends in the Budapest School: a nondemocratic and authoritarian system that gave a monopoly over all decisions to a small oligarchy of techno-bureaucrats. It was not planning itself that led to dictatorship, but the growing limitations on democracy in the Soviet state and, after Lenin’s death, the establishment of a totalitarian bureaucratic power, which led to an increasingly undemocratic and authoritarian system of planning. If socialism is defined as control by the workers and the population in general over the process of production, the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors was a far cry from it. The failure of the USSR illustrates the limits and contradictions of bureaucratic planning, which is inevitably inefficient and arbitrary: it cannot be used as an argument against democratic planning. The socialist conception of planning is nothing other than the radical democratization of economy: If political decisions are not to be left to a small elite of rulers, why should not the same principle apply to economic decisions?" / "Socialist planning must be grounded on a democratic and pluralist debate at all the levels where decisions are to be made." (from "Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative To Capitalist Catastrophe" by Michael Löwy)

A most interesting theory, comrade. Perhaps you would like to give a speech further exploring your ideas in the basement of the secret police headquarters?

I think you could make the same argument with just about any economic policy. Free market capitalism has never existed in reality and every time it was attempted, it turned out to be an abstract of colonial imperialism.

It ends up billions of apes are hard to govern in a way that excludes usery and violence.

Cuba?

It did exist, it's just that in the past, the real socialist revolutions were crushed by the authoritarians.

Humans are the problem. Any system we come up with will be corrupted eventually.

The "tribal savage" attitude/behavior is created/reinforced by capitalistic societies/interests. We need to actively create an alternative system and it will reshape society as we go.

"The world as we enter the 21st century is one of greed, of gross inequalities between rich and poor, of racist and national chauvinist prejudice, of barbarous practices and horrific wars. It is very easy to believe that this is what things have always been like and that, therefore, they can be no different. [...] The anthropologist Richard Lee [said]: "Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millennia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations." In other words, people shared with and helped each other, with no rulers and no ruled, no rich and no poor. [...] Our species [..] is over 100,000 years old. For 95 percent of this time it has not been characterised at all by many of the forms of behaviour ascribed to ‘human nature’ today. There is nothing built into our biology that makes present day societies the way they are. Our predicament as we face a new millennium cannot be blamed on it." (from the book "A People's History Of The World: From The Stone Age To The New Millennium" by Chris Harman)

-

"Is it true that our human nature is “survival of the fittest”, greed, competition; that we can't really think about the benefit of the whole and that it's all about the individual - “if I can survive, if my family can survive, that's fine, I don't care about anyone else”? Or maybe it's human conditioning, a second nature, which means a condition that's been practiced for so long that now it seems like it's innate. Because when you think about it, from a very early age we go to school, and the main purpose of this is to basically propel us into the “real world”, where we need to find a job, get a career, and try to survive as isolated people in separate houses, with the family, the car, and all that. But it's a very isolated experience, where you try to build wealth only for yourself. And that's what we're pushed to do, that's what we're encouraged to do, that's our definition of success. But who says? We don't come up with these ideas when we're born, we learn these ideas." (from the book "How To Change The World" by Elina St-Onge)

-

"Ownership of things in common was so universal throughout the American continent when the Europeans arrived that even the cooking pot, Columbus noted, was available to anyone who wanted to take from it, and this even in times of starvation. Two centuries later, Thomas Morton could also say of the Five Nations inhabiting New England that “although every proprietor knows his own . . . yet all things, so long as they will last, are used in common amongst them.” The idea of ownership of land was so alien among Native Americans that individuals made no effort to secure for themselves the lands they occupied, frequently moving grounds, and readily sharing them with newcomers. As Kirkpatrick Sale writes, “Owning the land, selling the land, seemed ideas as foreign as owning and selling the clouds or the wind.” William Cronon too comments, “This relaxed attitude towards personal possession was typical throughout New England.” [..] No effort was made to set permanent boundaries around a field that a family used, and fields were abandoned after some years and allowed to return to bushes. What people possessed was the use of the land and the crops; this is what was traded, and this usufruct right could not prevent trespassing. In fact, different groups of people could have claims on the same land, depending on the use they made of it, which might not be the same. Several villages could fish in the same rivers recognizing their mutual rights. And when one left the clan they left everything they had possessed. Yet, these unattached, nomadic tribes had a far deeper communion with the land and agriculture than the privatizing Europeans and so much respect for it that though “they had taken their livelihood from the land for eons, hunting, foraging, planting, fishing, building, trekking,” at the time of the Europeans’ arrival “the land of North America was still by every account without exception a lush and fertile wilderness teeming with abundant wildlife in water, woods, and air.” The result of this lack of attachment to private property among the Native peoples of America was a communal outlook that valued cooperation, group identity, and culture. [..] The dislike for individual accumulation was so strong that they invented the ritual of the potlatch, that is, a periodic redistribution of wealth, to free themselves from it." (from the book "Re-enchanting The World: Feminism And The Politics Of The Commons" by Silvia Federici & Peter Linebaugh)

I'm curious how you define socialism, what you think humans aren't ready for, and what alternative do we have and why

Socialism plays just fine with self-interest and greed, it just limits what you can do in its pursuit.

Communism - yes, relies on your own self-control and moderation in the face of abundance.

No. Socialism will never be a thing because it's fundamentally incompatible with the evolutionary incentives at the core

I wouldn't say that an alcoholic in his 70s who died from cerebral hemorrhaging was assassinated.

Stalin spent the last 15-20 years of his life getting blackout drunk every single night. He also forced all of his top ministers and generals to join him in this drunkenness.

The full story is wild.

Then when Stalin died, everyone sort of knew that he was having a medical emergency, and they left him laying on the carpet to die for hours.

Which is also a wild story.

Read the book bro, that's not at all what he argues

The enlightened centrist

Free market ain't a fairy tale. It has its limitations, but your claim is piss poor as fuck

Naturally timelines need to be compressed and multiple characters condensed into a single person for runtime and clarity reasons, but it still does a good job.

Now seems like a good time to give a shoutout to this video: History Buffs

It's funny, because we weren't there.

The younger generation doesn't remember it in the first place, due to not being alive. And that is used against them.

It's why it's important to teach students to be critical of their sources. And try to find multiple reputable sources that corroborate the same information.

Usually can't even bring up Khrushchev and De-Stalinization usually since it's not focusing on Stalin enough.

They usually can't bring this stuff up because they have no idea about any of it

I've spent time with a Marxist-Leninist who worshiped Stalin, thought Stalin was a great Marxist theorist, and he also was very fond of North Korea. While I'm not saying you're wrong, I do wonder what you make of someone in a leftist space who was so enthusiastic about Stalin without being prompted to defend him by fascists?

Lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union isn’t the same as thinking Stalin was good. There were several people after Stalin who didn’t randomly disappear people. At least, not as much.

That said, post WWII through the fall of the USSR I’d bet the average Soviet citizen had a better standard of living than the average Russian does today.

"am I so about of touch? No, it's the Russians who are wrong"

Essentially, “He was bad, but not THAT bad, that’s just western propaganda”

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

"Even in Stalin's time, there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the communist setup is exaggerated.".

"tankies" though, amirite?

the list of excuses goes on.

A much more convenient excuse is that the USA is telling the truth about USSR while simultaneously executing millions of communists in South America, Africa, and Asia and lying about pretty much everything regarding anti-capitalism over the past century.

I saw once a dude defending Mao cause "famines happen like great potatoe famine"

except one was on mid 1800s and the other was in 1960s...

These people are mental.

source, pg 493

(see also)

Here is a larger context of the quote, run it through some translator if you don't know german.

The last paragraph is the most pertinent to your question as to his reasoning imo

Mit anderen Worten: diese Jugend anerkennt mit Herz und Sinn das Gebot, die Freiheit durch soziale Verantwortlichkeit zu bedingen, die Demokratie vom Nationalen zu emanzipieren und sie weltweit, universell zu machen, den Frieden auf eine kollektivistische Freiheit zu gründen, deren Ausdruck und Garant der den Nationalregierungen übergeordnete Weltstaat wäre. Die Vorbedingung dafür, jeder weiß es, ist die Verständigung unserer westlichen Welt mit Rußland, die Begegnung des bürgerlich-demokratischen und des sozialistischen Prinzips in der Anerkennung gemeinsamer menschheitlicher Ziele.

Ist eine solche Verständigung und Begegnung möglich? Die »Realisten« verneinen die Frage. Ihre Antwort ist Krieg. Ich zweifle, ob sie wissen, was sie sagen, ob sie, ganz wörtlich gesprochen, bei Verstande sind, indem sie so antworten. Ihr Sinn ist dick umnebelt vom Interesse, dem erbitterten und zu allem fähigen Interesse an der integralen und zugeständnislosen Erhaltung der »Freiheit«, die sie meinen, der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsform in ihrer veraltetsten, unangepaßtesten Gestalt. Diese Verstocktheit impliziert den Unglauben an die Entwicklungsfähigkeit anderer Mächte und Systeme, zum Beispiel an diejenige der russischen Revolution, deren radikaler und tyrannischer Kollektivismus der humanen Überlieferung des Westens ein für allemal als der Erz- und Todfeind gegenüberstehen, und deren totalitärer Zwang sich von dem faschistisch-nationalsozialistischen in nichts unterscheiden soll. Wenn kein Unterschied besteht zwischen dem Totalitätscharakter des russischen Sozialismus und des Faschismus, — woher dann, so kann man fragen, die einhellige Entschiedenheit, mit welcher überall die kapitalistische Welt dem faschistischen Schrecken vor dem kommunistischen den Vorzug gibt, ihr offenkundiger Entschluß, lieber den einen anzunehmen als den anderen? - Die russische Revolution ist, wie einst die große Französische, ein historischer Prozeß, der sich in Phasen abspielt, von denen die letzte kaum schon gekommen ist. Es ist so unvernünftig, eine dieser Phasen unter Hohngeschrei mit der anderen erschlagen zu wollen, wie es unvernünftig ist, zu glauben, der Stalinismus bilde die unveränderliche Endform des revolutionären Prozesses. Den russischen Kommunismus mit dem Nazi-Faschismus auf die gleiche moralische Stufe zu stellen, weil beide totalitär seien, ist besten Falles Oberflächlichkeit, im schlimmeren Falle ist es - Faschismus. Wer auf dieser Gleichstellung beharrt, mag sich als Demokrat vorkommen, -in Wahrheit und im Herzensgrund ist er damit bereits Faschist und wird mit Sicherheit den Faschismus nur unaufrichtig und zum Schein, mit vollem Haß aber allein den Kommunismus bekämpfen.

Die Unterschiede im Verhältnis des russischen Sozialismus und des Faschismus zur Humanität, zur Idee des Menschen und seiner Zukunft sind unermeßlich. Der unteilbare Friede; konstruktive Arbeit und gerechter Lohn; ein allgemeiner Genuß der Güter dieser Erde; mehr Glück, weniger vermeidbares und nur vom Menschen verschuldetes Leid hienieden; die geistige Hebung des Volkes durch Erziehung, durch Wissen, durch Bildung - das alles sind Ziele, die denjenigen faschistischer Misanthropie, faschistischen Nihilismus, faschistischer Erniedrigungslust und Verdummungspädagogik diametral entgegengesetzt sind. Der Kommunismus, wie die russische Revolution ihn unter besonderen menschlichen Gegebenheiten zu verwirklichen sucht, ist, trotz aller blutigen Zeichen, die daran irre machen könnten, im Kern — und sehr im Gegensatz zum Faschismus — eine humanitäre und eine demokratische Bewegung. Tyrannei? Er ist es. Aber eine Tyrannei, die das Analphabetentum ausmerzt, kann, ob sie es weiß oder nicht, im Herzen nicht gewillt sein, Tyrannei zu bleiben. Vor einigen sechzig Jahren verspottete Nietzsche, ein sehr großer, nur allzu vieldeutiger Denker, die Volksbildung, indem er ausrief: »Will man Sklaven, so ist man ein Narr, wenn man sich Herren erzieht!« Der russische Sozialismus will offenbar keine Sklaven, denn er erzieht sich denkende Menschen. Damit ist er, beinahe unweigerlich, auf dem Wege zur Freiheit.

from "Thomas Mann Essays - Band 2 Politik" published by Hermann Kurzke pg 310-312

The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation is a three-volume nonfiction series . . .<

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago?wprov=sfti1

The Gulag Archipelago (Russian: Arkhipelag GULag; literally, "The Gulag Archipelago") is a three-volume nonfictional literary investigation. . .<

https://grokipedia.com/page/The_Gulag_Archipelago

It shouldn’t be, because it’s a work of fiction.
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns-exwife-says-gulag-is-folklore.html

I never mentionned Trotsky

I am a real human and I am trustworthy

Mao hid his troops in western China and thanked the Japanese for weakening the Kuomintang. The CCP and PLA murdered over 70 million people and continue to this very day. Stalin played a key role in the Holomodor and it did not end there. .

An amazing competition nevertheless. A real spectacle.

I don't know about all of recorded history but if you're an American or want to counter American myths, check out "A people's history of the United States"

only <checks notes> recorded history western imperialist propaganda

Clearly you've been brainwashed by capitalism.