Remember, the social Democrats sided with the Nazis over the socialists. They’ve done it every time they’ve been given the opportunity, and will continue to do so as many times as people fall for their shtick.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
-Audre Lorde

  • @[email protected]OP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    71 year ago

    Lmao. They murdered their political opponents that were fighting for the working class, and collaborated with the ones who were destroying it. Hmm… sounds kinda familiar. Which party put more money into policing than any other in history when they were most recently elected?

    Which party released a memo (that thankfully leaked or we wouldn’t know) telling journalists and officials not to call for Israel to stop their genocide?

    It’s almost as if they both serve capital and use us as pawns while they make money and kill people both domestically and abroad.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      121 year ago

      Communists famously improved the quality of life for every russian/russian citizen, how silly of me to forget.

      Are you trying to equate american democrats to social democrats of europe? We hate our democrats, they’re just the best option under the first past the post voting system.

      • @[email protected]OP
        link
        fedilink
        English
        121 year ago

        Very nearly, yes. Unironically, look up life expectancy for citizens of the Russian Czardom pre-revolution. It literally more than doubled under Soviet rule. The Soviets had many problems, at least 40 big ones, but they succeeded in turning a peasant and slave society into an industrial society, doubled life expectancy, provided homes to everyone, provided vacations to everyone, and more.

        They had issues, certainly. The criticisms that apply to them often apply to the US also though, and other liberal democracies. For example, the USSR couldn’t have dreamed of having a surveillance state even half as effective or powerful as the one in the United States. The gulag system at its peak, wasn’t even close to the current American prison system, either in terms of per capita or total numbers. And 40% of the population was freed every year. Most of the things we’ve been taught to fear about the Soviets we experience far more viscerally than they did. We have secret police, we just call them “undercover” or “plainclothes”. Hell, in 2020 people were literally being grabbed off the streets by un-uniformed police and stuffed into unmarked black cars. I could literally go on for hours, and provide hundreds of pages of books with data verifying, just the ways that the US is definitively more totalitarian and more violent than the Soviet Union at even its height of oppressive action.

        We couldn’t strive to replicate the errors of the Soviets, but that doesn’t mean we should neglect the successes, either.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          61 year ago

          The idea of the USSR being an objectively better entity than what came before and after itself is a hard pill for many to swallow. Even from a cold, pragmatic, and critical position it can be hard to reconcile, even decades after the Cold War proper.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          41 year ago

          The USSR was better for Russia than what came before, for all the satellite states they annexed and stole resources from they were worse.

          If the US is disappearing people into forced labor camps and working them either close to death or to death now doesn’t make it a good thing when the USSR did it.

          • @[email protected]OP
            link
            fedilink
            English
            3
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            No, neither would be good, certainly. And yes, the US utilizes forced labor in nearly every prison in the country. Likely all of your license plates, and probably much of your office furniture, were made by prisoners. Involuntary servitude and slavery is prohibited, except as punishment for a crime.

            The point is to point out that the belief that the USSR was some unbelievably oppressive society with instant gulags and that did nothing for its people is objectively wrong, and in fact it was at even its worst Significantly less oppressive both domestically and abroad than the current United States. It objectively lifted millions of people out of poverty, though. It objectively lifted the life expectancy in most of the allied SSRs. In fact, the majority of citizens in post soviet states today preferred life under socialism.

            What specific satellite states are you referencing? I’d love to look up more.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              31 year ago

              The baltics are probably the best example of states harmed by USSR imperialism.

              The USSR was unbelievably oppressive, especially to the annexed satellite states, the US being the same seems rather irrelevant, also as I pointed out it mostly benefitted the Russian people, not the annexed states they controlled.

              Also I definitely need a source for the majority of people currently in ex soviet satellite states saying life was better under the USSR. Saying stuff like that here will most likely get you punched because pretty much anyone older than 40 either lost someone personally to the USSR occupation or knows someone who did.

              • @[email protected]OP
                link
                fedilink
                English
                31 year ago

                https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union

                In 2011, a poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 82% of Ukrainians, 61% of Russians and 56% of Lithuanians believed the standard of living in their countries had fallen since the Soviet dissolution, respectively.[11] It also found that a further 34% of Ukrainians, 42% of Russians and 45% of Lithuanians approved of the change from the Soviet command economy to a market economy.[12]

                A poll in 2013 conducted by Gallup found that a relative majority of respondents in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Russia, Tajikistan, Moldova and Belarus agreed that the Soviet dissolution harmed rather than benefited their countries.[13] Additionally, 33% of Georgians and 31% of Azerbaijanis also agreed with this sentiment.[13] Only 24% of respondents in the post-Soviet states surveyed by Gallup agreed that the Soviet dissolution benefited their countries.

                In 2017, another poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 69% of Russians, 54% of Belarusians, 70% of Moldovans and 79% of Armenians claimed that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing for their country.[15] With the exception of Estonia, the percentage of people who agreed with the statement was higher amongst people aged 35 or over.[15] 57% of Georgians and 58% of Russians also said that Joseph Stalin played a very/mostly positive role in history.[15]

                Polling cited by the Harvard Political Review in 2022 showed that 66% of Armenians, 61% of Kyrgyz, 56% of Tajikistanis, and 42% of Moldovans regretted the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

                • @[email protected]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  21 year ago

                  The dissolution of the soviet union caused quite a lot of economic issues in countries more integrated into it’s economy so a poll that says a country was harmed by the dissolution isn’t saying much. I’m pretty sure quite a few German citizens would say they were harmed by the fall of the Nazi regime when it fell, that has no bearing on which was better or even which people prefer. Also in the poll for that source it seems the most anti USSR countries were skipped for some reason.

                  Also the living standards of 2011 Lithuania and Ukraine must have been pretty bad, I’m assuming that would also be the case for countries like Moldova too but that study only covers the 3. Lithuania is a bit of a surprise though but I doubt the numbers are anything close to that now as quality of life in the baltics has improved massively since the USSR.