this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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El Chisme
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Would you maybe elaborate? I think most westerners here, when not shitposting out of frustration at our own media ecosystem, do actually have nuanced views of the USSR and post-Soviet states, if you look at the more serious discussions. Maybe that's wrong and we need to hear some criticism, in which case we only learn if you express your thoughts.
*no pressure, I should add, you don't have to respond. I'm just saying if you want to I'm all ears
Do we really have to "both sides" everything when talking about former and present socialist states? "Sure, Jakarta was fucked up, but did you know that the USSR was no angel?"
Maybe in certain contexts? I don't know what this person's perspective is. But when someone says I'm ignorant I like to hear them out because I often am.
Mind clarifying a bit? This reads like vagueposting
You can look through my comments about Russia and I laid out my critiques of the attitude very clearly,I'm curious to see what exactly you mean by this
Well,my criticisms mainly extend to modern day Russia
I have little bad to say about the USSR as a whole,barring some Romania specific stuff like giving the Ukrainian SSR it's coastline and Bucovina,and of course the chauvinism that remained both in it's internal arrangements and in it's relations with it's "allies",which were more akin to satrapies than partners
That being said,I recognize it's historically progressive role and will always acknowledge it's role in liberating us from the nazi scourge and uplifting mainly agrarian nations into at least somewhat industrialized nations
Of course,this development wasn't completely even,and many mistakes were made,and I do agree we need to move away from the ghost of communism past,but I firmly believe Eastern Europe without them would have been a much more tragic place
You want me to wax poetic about pinchuk or abramovich? Or how kazakhstan is three mining agglomerates in a trench coat? Or that immigrants from tajikistan are treated despicably? Or that uzbekistan was in arrested development for 50 years, including ussr period? Or fun stuff about armenians/azerbaijanis cross ethnic cleansing each other for 100 years? Or poor, always forgotten, turkmenistan?
How is that relevant?
Honestly, I agree. I feel like this is the big problem when we talk about the USSR. It's not the time in the darkness that really defines them, but their time in the light. And let's just say their time in the light has served to call a spade a spade. So it's not for us to say whether the house of cards is more than the sum of its parts because the proof is in the pudding.
When I think of Marx and his teachings, they influenced the USSR. Not in the way you'd expect because it came down to do or die and they came out of the water with less light and more darkness from my point of view. If you took away Marx it might still be the USSR, but you'd also have to consider an entirely different denominator for the situation and I honestly feel like you folks aren't ready for that sort of dialogue.
I think it’s actually very easy from grand simplified economics perspective for russia/ukraine, they both were extremely similar trajectory through the 90s (racketeering, wild wealth outflows, privatization, internal incohesion (more relevant to russia, but ukraine had crimea), broken supply chains, sometimes intentionally by western interests (airplanes/electronics).
But then chechen wars/size of russia/inability to get into eu/nato sharply diverged state-affiliated capitalist class interests, so russia softly silenced oligarchs (they still stole the money to europe, ofc, they just weren’t allowed to own means of propaganda), ukraine gone hogwild.
In the interest of any self respecting capitalist is to smear ussr (this is true throughout baltics/poland/yugoslavia/czechia/ukraine/russia/caucasian countries), so they all remembered (put in history books) bad shit ussr did + “life before communism”(tm)+excised anything positive ussr did, resulting in varying degrees of virulent nationalism with notes of collaborators acceptance (less so for czechia/former gdr).
The more western dream diverged for russia the more they have to go back to natural ussr geopolitics/the less they can outright smear them, thus soft stalin acceptance. While for ukraine, that didn’t hold (dnepro mafia didn’t exist in ussr, teehee), so they were slowly teaching new generations until average ukrainian under 30 is more mad about ussr than nazis (anecdotal, sample 5 people, 3 mad about ussr), same is true about extreme lib russians tbh.
Students/it guys/football fans (for oligarch money (kolomoyskiy, akhmetov, pinchuk, probably some odessa dipshit i don’t know)) were natural fertile soil to propagate eu dream (tm), while supplanting blame of material realities of ukraine (bunch of grifting oligarchs, tfw no oil) to russians aren’t allowing us into eu, cause they are evil and been evil for 500 years. Bada boom, bada bing.
I know they aren’t all nazis (and try to push back when I see such claims, that’s for israelis), but also significant part live in some kind of rapture land of being accepted into eu being some holy grail of country, and noticeable part do be like ooh bandera, liberator (strange they don’t take up makhno, wonder what’s the difference). Nato support I can’t even, mr z-man does his mi6 job since covid (it wasn’t a natural fusion of eu/nato, before 2014 support was like 20-30%, while eu always polled high)
*maybe a little jumbled, cause
, feel free to correct timeline from ussr self destruct button (started in the 60s, so whatever)
I honestly think you'd be hard-pressed to find more nuanced analysis of the failures of the Soviet Union than in tankie communities like Hexbear because, you know, people actually do their reading here.
You can simultaneously understand the shortcomings of a socialist project (poor education in socialism/anti-imperialism and poorly directed nationalism, less than ideal development equality in different regions, excessive repression of religion, macroeconomic stagnation after the 70s...) and praise it as one of, if not the most successful, emancipatory, anti-imperialist and morally consistent socialist projects in history.
If the criticism feels short, you should feel free to open up some criticism in some socialist-topic community. The best way to do so, in my opinion, is to be open-minded and to open criticism towards one specific topic at a time. This encourages reading, discussion of that topic, and it's a valuable learning tool for me at least.
Thanks for your answer, I appreciate it. I also focus on my history. I'm a Spaniard.
The history of my country basically starts with Roman imperialism, it goes on with feudalism, it pioneers colonialism in the Americas and the murder of hundreds of millions, it slowly wanes, and when there's hope for a proper socialist/anarchist government in the country, the fascists destroyed all hope of that in a coup and civil war, and after 40 years of fascism, now it's back to capitalism and western Imperialism.
Believe me, I would love to be able to say I have studied deeply the century of socialism in my country, but sadly, I can't. I focus on Cuba, I focus on the Soviet Union, because those are examples for me to learn from, to criticise and to discuss. Hell, during the fascist coup in Spain and the ensuing civil war, which country was the only one providing support to the antifascists in Spain? It was the Soviet Union, and its citizens have my eternal gratitude for that and for ultimately defeating Nazism in Europe.
The Soviet Union wasn't exclusively an inwards country, it was the beacon of socialism and anti-imperialism in the previous century. It's impossible for me to analyse socialism and anti-imperialism without considering the role of your country.
Furthermore, I'd be happy to hear discussion and criticism of Fascist Spain, the Spanish Empire, or contemporary capitalist Spain. Why do you feel negative towards analysis, praise and criticism of your country? I'm being honest BTW, not trying to be belligerent or telling you how to feel, it's an honest question.
expand on this
Every dunk on youtube shitlib have to be 50 pages elaboration full of bothsidism so we are not seen as "campist" apparently, bonus points for sparking an exhausting debate.
I am a proud DPRK apologist
We could be living like this but instead we're demonizing the DPRK
Westerners ironically think that living like this and having the house provided for YOU FOR FREE IS A BAD THING
I agree that people over-blow how many Nazis there are in Ukraine