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Ah yes the "enlightened" democracies (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The fact that Nazi collaborators are seen as heroes is a problem. The Communists were in no way comparable in evil to the Nazis, the Communists were a massive force for progress as compared to their peers, while the Nazis invented industrialized mass murder. Read Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti. Further, the majority of Ukrainians actually believe the breakup of the USSR was a bad thing.

The reason is simple, transitioning from Socialism to Capitalism resulted in an estimated 7 million excess deaths globally, a huge spike in poverty and wealth inequality, destruction of safety nets, and a rise in far-right nationalists directly funded and supported by the West. This is why Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera are seeing resurging popularity in Ukraine, and this is a bad thing.

Further, the 1930s famine in Ukraine was by no means an intentional mass murder, such claims originate with the Nazis trying to discredit the Soviet Union. Even the Wikipedia page on Holodomor recognizes that claims of intentional murder are dubious at the most generous:

While most scholars are in consensus that the main cause of the famine was largely man-made, it remains in dispute whether the Holodomor was intentional, whether it was directed at Ukrainians, and whether it constitutes a genocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union.

The truth of the matter is that it was a horrible tragedy that got spun by the Nazis as evidence of the evils of the Soviet Union, as it was free propaganda to paint it as such by the Nazis, and useful for the anti-communist west to spread the Nazi narrative as from a Realpolitik perspective any means of discrediting Socialism was a good means. This is further affirmed by the openining of the Soviet Archives and the wealth of information confirmed and denied by them.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

So the Holodomor was a sign of progress?

Also the Great Purge was not mass murder?

Just saying there were reasons for a lot of people to not like Stalin. You know enemy of my enemy is a friend kind of situation.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The famine in the 1930s was the last major famine outside of wartime in Russia and the surrounding areas until the collapse of the USSR, in a country where under the Tsar famine was regular and common. As a consequence of providing free and high quality healthcare, lowering working hours, improving labor conditions, and achieving food security, life expectancy doubled from the 30s to the 70s. The famine was a tragedy, but the Soviets were also responsible for ending famine and dramatically improving the lives of the working class.

As for the Great Purge, that wasn't something targeting Ukrainians specifically, but all manner of criminals. The purges themselves usually just meant expulsion from the party, but often criminal charges were levied against former members of the White Army, Nazi collaborators, rapists, corrupt officials, and other serious crimes. 700,000 were condemned to death, with many of those condemned being aquitted and not actually executed, though it is true that there was unfortunately excess.

You'll want to read this excerpt from the book The Triumph of Evil, specifically page 74:

The claim that Stalin and other Soviet leaders killed millions (Conquest, 1990) also appears to be wildly exaggerated. More recent evidence from the Soviet archives opened up by the anticommunist Yeltsin government indicate that the total number of death sentences (including of both existing prisoners and those outside captivity) over the 1921-1953 interval (covering the period of Stalin's partial and complete rule) was between 775,866 and 786,098 (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). Given that the archive data originates from anti-Stalin (and even anticommunist) sources, it is extremely unlikely that they underestimate the true number (Thurston, 1996). In addition, the Soviet Union has long admitted to executing at least 12,733 people between 1917 and 1921, mostly during the Foreign Interventionist Civil War of 1918-22, although it is possible that as many as 40,000 more may have been executed unofficially (Andics, 1969).

These data would seem to imply about 800,000 executions. The figure of 800,000 may greatly overestimate the number of actual executions, as it includes many who were sentenced to death but who were not actually caught or who had their sentences reduced (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). In fact, Vinton (1993) has provided evidence indicating that the number of executions was significantly below the number of civilian prisoners sentenced to death in the Soviet Union, with only 7,305 executions in a sample of 11,000 prisoners authorized to be executed in 1940 (or scarcely 600/o ). In addition, most (681,692) of the 780,000 or so death sentences passed under Stalin were issued during the 1937-38 period (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993), when Soviet paranoia about foreign subversion reached its zenith due to a 1936 alliance between Nazi Germany and fascist Japan that was specifically directed against the Soviet Union (Manning, 1993) and due to a public 1936 resolution by a group of influential anti-Stalin foreigners (the Fourth International which was allied with the popular but exiled Russian dissident Leon Trotsky) advocating the overthrow of the Soviet government by illegal means (Glotzer, 1968).

Stalin initially set a cap of 186,500 imprisonments and 72,950 death penalties for a 1937 special operation to combat this threat that was to be carried out by local 3-man tribunals called ''troikas" (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). As the tribunals passed death sentences before the accused had even been arrested, local authorities requested increases in their own quotas (Knight, 1993), and there was an official request in 1938 for a doubling of the amount of prisoner transport that had been initially requisitioned to carry out the original campaign "quotas" of the tribunals (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). However, even if there had been twice as many actual • executions as originally planned, the number would still be less than 150,000. Many of those sentenced by the tribunals may have escaped capture, and many more may have had their death sentence refused or revoked by higher authorities before arrest/execution could take place, especially since Stalin later realized that excesses had been committed in the 1937-38 period, had a number of convictions overturned, and had many of the responsible local leaders punished (Thurston, 1996)."

This is why relying exclusively on Wikipedia is silly, do some actual reading. A solid rule of thumb with respect to any Wikipedia article on enemies of the US is to look at where the figures and sources come from and analyze them yourself, as you can see Wikipedia made the error of conflating condemnations with executions.

Your entire point, though, relies on painting the Communists as comparable evils to the Nazis, which is quantitatively and qualitatively divorced from reality. Again, the Nazis industrialized mass murder deliberately, and figures like Bandera sided with them deliberately against the Soviets, who were a force for good. Upholding Nazi sympathizers is a bad thing.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Your entire point, though, relies on painting the Communists as comparable evils to the Nazis, which is quantitatively and qualitatively divorced from reality. Again, the Nazis industrialized mass murder deliberately, and figures like Bandera sided with them deliberately against the Soviets, who were a force for good. Upholding Nazi sympathizers is a bad thing.

Just to be clear, as in my initial post:

So a lot of them were initially rather happy about it. That quickly changed though.

I pretty much said that Stalin was mass murderer and did not run Ukraine very well. I do not think any of what you wrote really disproves that. You do not need to be on Nazi level evil, to be evil.

We are also talking about modern day Russia introducing the resolution for a reason. Basically it would be Bandera wanted an independent Ukraine, so everybody who wants an independent Ukraine is a Nazi. If the West agrees with that resolution, then that would be used. This way they choose to be absent, as to not be in that vote.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

The "lot of Ukrainians" that saw the USSR as worse than the Nazis were the far-right nationalists in Ukraine spearheaded by Bandera. A "lot of USians" were certainly upset at ending slavery, to the point of armed struggle, but that doesn't make them correct, either. Bandera was a far-right nationalist that is supported by the modern far-right nationalists in Ukraine, which is why there's a problem with Nazi brigades like Azov increasing in relevance in Ukrainian politics post-Maidan.

Further, again, the Soviets were unquestionably the most progressive force throughout the 20th century, from supporting revolutionary movements in Cuba, Algeria, South Africa, Vietnam, Korea, China, and more, to supporting Palestinians against genocide at the hands of Israel, to being responsible for 90% of the total Nazis killed in World War II and saving the world from fascism, to doubling life expectancies, over tripling literacy rates, democratizing the economy, and dramatically lowering wealth inequality.

Yes, there absolutely were problems faced internally and externally, and there were mistakes and excesses. These pale in comparison to the deliberate acts of mass genocide perpetrated by Western Europe and the US throughout the 20th century and today, all while the USSR was under constant siege and the Western world reaped the spoils of Imperialism.

Bandera and neo-Nazism are tied to Ukrainian politics. Nationalists are in control of politics, and the Banderites make up the majority of Nationalists in Ukraine. This is a sad reality that must be confronted, no matter what your stance on the modern Russo-Ukrainian war is, and it ties directly to Ukraine and the US being the only countries to vote against this resolution.