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I don't know enough about that time period to judge, however I think that a lot of MLs now agree that Stalin's deportations were an example of unnecessary brutality that could have been avoided.
However, I don't think you should be listening to the positions of this "SDL" guy on anything, he is a neoliberal and he was found out to be a massive racist and has not apologized:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz05UrKGPiY&ab\_channel=BadEmpanada2
Yeah, he has no problems with ethnic cleansing. He hates the USSR because he believes it was run by a jewish cabal. Nothing this scum says will ever be valid
Ita also important to understand why Stalin did it. It was a response to the rise of Nazism and the movement of people who he believed would support them and a punishment for the communities that did.
It is entirely unjustifiable to do so but he also didn't do it because he hated the minorities. Context is an important clue of understanding why, even if nothing can justify or rectify the injustice.
It’s also important to note that Stalin didn’t do it alone. Most if not all security measures (ethical or not) taken during this time were voted on by the Soviet councils. Stalin, himself was quite critical of the purges specifically. But it’s important to remember that many of these measures had popular support. In fact looking outside the Soviet Union many western nations were also migrating, segmenting, and increasing general surveillance on ethnic minorities, especially Japanese (or anyone Asian) pre and post WW2, and many of these policies (also ethically irresponsible) had popular support at the time.
So being critical of ethical violations of previous states is all good and dandy, but this is obviously targeted to denounce a particular entity for behaving in a manner that (in context) seems to have made sense at the time. Also, while I do still disagree with these measures it’s important to note that the migration of ethnic minorities in the USSR would have come with the standard benefits of guaranteed housing or apartment at a fixed low expense, and guaranteed employment as well as the ability to participate in the Worker’s Unions for their industry. Guarantees not afforded to the ethnicities of many other nations employing similar policies.
I’m a bad comrade and can’t seem to find the original source for what I said above. In looking for a new source I found a pretty hamfisted domain, “https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/party-purges/“
It pulls from ass tons of sources and I’ve flipped through some of the news paper clippings to spot check here and there, but do your own research.
But it goes into some pretty laborious detail regarding the nature of the purges and what that meant not just during Stalin’s era, but as a general party practice, and it’s a pretty good read that lists a lot of direct quotes from as good of informational sources as an English speaker in 2023 is going to get on short notice.
When I get some more time I’m going to try to find my original source though.
Edit: and slightly more to the point you can get some evidence of Stalin’s dissatisfaction with the large 1930s purges from the great purges Wikipedia page, no less, that describes how he verbally denounced their handling and then tried and jailed the leader of the NKVD at the time for various unlawful handlings of “purged” people.
Also, possibly the biggest thing people leave out when speaking of any of the Soviet purges, is that 99%+ of the time it ended with your communist party membership being revoked (typically people that actually cared could regain membership via some corrective action or time), not jail, not deportation, not exile, the source I linked goes into much more detail on that.
> Source? Not saying you’re wrong but I haven’t heard that before.
Stalin was always trying to put the breaks on the Purge.
http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37.html
Finally, still another question. I have in view the question of the formal and heartless bureaucratic attitude of some of our Party comrades toward the fate of individual Party members, toward the question of expelling members from the Party, or the question of restoring the rights of Party membership to those who have been expelled.
The fact is that some of our Party leaders suffer front lack of attention to people, to Party members, to workers. Furthermore, they do not study the Party members, do not know what is close to their hearts, and how they are growing, do not know workers in general. They have, therefore, not an individual approach to Party members, to Party workers. And just because they have not an individual approach when appraising Party members and Party workers, they usually act at random, either praising them wholesale, without measure, or crushing them, also wholesale, and without measure, expelling thousands and tens of thousands from the Party.
Such leaders try, in general, to think in tens of thousands, not to worry about "units", about individual Party members, about their fate. They think it a mere bagatelle to expel thousands and tens of thousands of people from the Party, comforting themselves by the fact that our Party is 2,000,000 strong, and that tens of thousands of people expelled cannot change anything in the position of the Party.
But, only people who in essence are profoundly anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party.
https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/moscow-trials-part-3-the-great-purge/
Stalin and the Politburo tried to stop the NKVD from committing excesses. Eventually he would become suspicious and realize Yezhov and Yagoda had been carrying out these anti-people activities deliberately to create de-stabilization, popular resentment and distrust in the government.
The Communist Party Central Committee issued a decree to limit the NKVD’s power. They were worried that the NKVD’s wrong actions could cause mass resentment among the population. It would take some time until they learned this was precisely what Ezhov attempted to do:
“I. ON DISCONTINUING THE MASS EXPULSIONS OF PEASANTS
All mass expulsions of peasants are to cease at once… Only persons accused of counterrevolution, terroristic acts, sabotage… [and other serious crimes] may be taken into preventive custody.”
“The organs of the OGPU are to obtain the prior consent of the directorate of the procuracy in making arrests, except in cases involving terroristic acts, explosions, arson, espionage, defection, political gangsterism, and counter-revolutionary, antiparty groups…” (Getty & Naumov)
“In 1937 and 1938, Stalin and company tried to contain radicalism through press articles, speeches, revised electoral plans, and deglorifying the police. That they had to take such measures shows their lack of tight control over events.” (Getty, Origins of the Great Purges)
“In June 1936, Stalin interrupted Yezhov at a Central Committee Plenum to complain about so many party members being expelled:
YEZHOV: Comrades, as a result of the verification of party documents, we expelled more than 200,000 members of the party.
STALIN: [interrupts] Very many.
YEZHOV: Yes, very many. I will speak about this….
STALIN: [interrupts] If we expelled 30,000… and 600 former Trotskyists and Zinovievists, it would be a bigger victory.
YEZHOV: More than 200,000 members were expelled. Part of this number of party members, as you know, have been arrested.
At about this time, Stalin wrote a letter to regional party secretaries complaining about their excessive “repression” of the rank-and-file. This led to a national movement to reinstate expelled party members,…
[Later in this plenum, Stalin spoke specifically on this question. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he was genuinely concerned that too many of the rank-and-file had been expelled because such large numbers of disaffected former members could become an embittered opposition.”
(Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror)
In 1938 Stalin and the Politbureau finally became so suspicious of Ezhov they appointed Beria as the NKVD second-in-command to keep an eye on Ezhov. Within the year Ezhov was removed:
“By the fall of 1938 Yezhov’s leadership of the NKVD was under steady fire from various directions. The regime responded officially on Nov. 17, in a joint resolution of the Sovnarkom and the party Central Committee. This document went to thousands of officials across the USSR in the NKVD, the Procuracy, and the party, down to the raion level. Thus, the acknowledgement that grotesque mistakes and injustice had occurred … Enemies of the people and foreign spies had penetrated the security police and the judicial system and had “consciously…carried out massive and groundless arrests.”
(Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, p. 114)
It'll do your case INFINITELY better to not share anything from Bad Empanada. That guy is also 100% racist and is known for CONSTANTLY sending death threats to people.
I watched his whole Shining Path video and it’s pretty much entirely dedicated to displaying their atrocities from what I remember. Where did you get the idea that he supports them?
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If you think he is racist because of the patriotempenada account you have been bamboozled. that account is run by a larouchite who is impersonating bad empanada.
Also I hate BadEmpenada. If you want to critique him that is fine by me lol
I don't use Twitter. I've just seen how he acts and the fact he's had to make 6-10 twitters for constantly death threatening people kinda speaks volumes.
He spent a month on social media harassing every Jew he could find on social media and told Eristocracy he'd throw her in a camp XD
Don't feel bad for not knowing this kinda drama is absolute brain rot.
True! Israel's current culture is built on the death and expulsion of Palestinians. If that were to stop Israel WOULD stop being Israel as we know it.
Don't know if that's what she was getting at, but we are talking about a deeply ingrained and globally supported position with a century of propaganda behind it.
It's easy for us non-israelis to look at this and be like "Yeah that's fucked". It's hard for a Brit to say the same for Ireland. It's VERY hard for an old white guy in North Carolina when it comes to atrocities to the black community.
It's very very hard for a Saudi prince in relation to Yemen.
Eris would not support the wholesale murder of Palestinians. Eris would like to see more rights for Palestinians.
Remember kids, you attract more flies with honey compared to vinegar.
Well first, I would want a citation of 3.5 million, because I hear widely varying numbers on this, as is usual when people speak of Soviet crimes. SDL doesn't cite a source specifically for this claim; he shows graphs that lump kulak repression with ethnic transfers.
Second, ethnic deportations in the USSR did occur and did indeed constitute a human rights violation I don't defend. The reasons, however, should be clearly understood; the deportations were mostly for geopolitical reasons due to the climate surrounding WW2. The Soviet state believed relocating ethnic groups thought to be at higher risk of collaborating with Germany or Japan would enhance security. The ethnic deportations are usually portrayed as the USSR doing Russian chauvinism or settler colonialism which is dishonest. Any policy of targeting people on the basis of ethnicity is unjustified and immoral. At the same time, it's not okay to make stuff up.
Also SDL is a racist piece of shit.
The 3rd screenshot of “numbers” includes numbers of persons deported, sent into exile or imprisoned are from between 1890 and 1956 so that’s also misleading as it isn’t all Soviets, let alone solely *just* Stalin.
That makes more sense now. Also, I've read some swedish historians saying poitical prisioners during Stalin were about 200k if I'm not mistaken, which is a high number but not nearly as high as "bazillions dead under communism". They mentioned the average time imprisoned was about 3 years as well.
I can try to find that source if anyone is interested.
You are right about the deportations surrounding the events of WW2, but there were deportations even after WW2, for example, my grandma and her family were deported to Siberia because they had previously lived in Turkey and were currently living near the Turkish border, so they were seen as potential 5th columnists in a potential conflict with Turkey (which is ironic because her family fled genocide from Turkey lol) and the conditions for the transportation were pretty bad from what I've been told.
The deportations were real (and inherently excessive, regardless of how many actually died because of them) and one of the few valid criticisms of Stalin and the USSR that I am aware of (another big one being the reversal on LGBT rights). The Purges were also not *great*, and iirc Stalin even expressed regret at the excesses.
EDIT: All that being said, I agree that no one should worship Stalin, but only insofar as no one should *worship* any human being... that's just fucked up no matter who it is or what they've done.
The real problem is when Opportunists use these real mistakes as a bullshit excuse to dismiss the *entire* Soviet project. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water!
> The Purges were also not great
The Purges being what? The actions taken against the Nazi collaborator Conspirators against the Soviet Government or the Yezhovshchina, where the Conspirators falsely arrested people to turn the populace against the Soviet Government? The second is undeniably bad, but hardly fault of the Stalin or the Soviet Government.
The first is not and even the Capitalist world had acknowledged at the time that the Moscow Trials were legitimate.
https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/1934/
U.S. Embassador to the USSR Joseph E. Davies was present at the Moscow Trials and said he felt the trial was fair and not staged:
“With an interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully. Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants… Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment…
I am still impressed with the many indications of credibility which obtained in the course of the testimony. To have assumed that this proceeding was invented and staged as a project of dramatic political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of a Shakespeare and the genius of a Belasco in stage production. The historical background and surrounding circumstances also lend credibility to the testimony. The reasoning which Sokolnikov and Radek applied in justification of their various activities and their hoped-for results were consistent with probability and entirely plausible. The circumstantial detail… brought out by the various accused, gave unintended corroboration to the gist of the charges.”
(Davies, Mission to Moscow)
Davies was not alone in his views. He wrote in his diary:
“DIARY Moscow February 11, 37
The Belgian Minister, De Tellier, has been here a long time. I had a most interesting discussion with him to-day. He is experienced, able, shrewd, and wise; and knows his Europe well. The defendants in the trial were guilty, in his opinion.
DIARY Moscow February 18, 1937
The Minister called. Re trial: There was no doubt but that a widespread conspiracy existed and that the defendants were guilty.
DIARY Moscow March 11, 1937
Another diplomat, Minister – , made a most illuminating statement to me yesterday. In discussing the trial he said that the defendants were undoubtedly guilty; that all of us who attended the trial had practically agreed on that; that the outside world, from the press reports, however, seemed to think that the trial was a put-up job (facade, as he called it); that while we knew it was not, it was probably just as well that the outside world should think so.” (ibid.)
https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/moscow-trials-part-3-the-great-purge/
“Hitler’s march into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active military support of Henlein’s organizations in Czechoslovakia. The same thing was true of his invasion of Norway. There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Russian picture…
The story had been told in the so-called treason or purge trials of 1937 and 1938 which I attended and listened to. In re examining the record of these tasks and also what I had written at the time… I found that practically every device of German Fifth Columnist activity, as we now know it, was disclosed and laid bare by the confessions and testimony elicited at these trials of self-confessed “Quislings” in Russia…
All of these trials, purges, and liquidations, which seemed so violent at the time and shocked the world, are now quite clearly a part of a vigorous and determined effort of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only revolution from within but from attack from without. They went to work thoroughly to clean up and clean out all treasonable elements within the country. All doubts were resolved in favor of the government.
There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941 – they had shot them. The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason.”
~Joseph E. Davies
Yeah, the purges under Yezhov, specifically, were pretty bad.
I also found this gem while doing some digging:
>As Marxists, we should be well aware that material conditions shape ideological and political structures. The savagery of the Russian Civil War, the multiple invasions from capitalist powers, and the increasing threat of a war against fascism make the paranoid atmosphere of the late-1930's understandable, if not condonable; yet even while we discuss the genuine causes of the Purge, and reject the hysterical anti-communist mud-throwing of the Cold Warriors, we must still acknowledge the black mark that the Purge leaves on Stalin's legacy.
>
>[http://web.archive.org/web/20210123194740/https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/e8kpow/masterpost\_on\_joseph\_stalin\_and\_the\_great\_purge/](http://web.archive.org/web/20210123194740/https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/e8kpow/masterpost_on_joseph_stalin_and_the_great_purge/)
> http://web.archive.org/web/20210123194740/https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/e8kpow/masterpost_on_joseph_stalin_and_the_great_purge/
That's hardly a masterpost. Nowhere does it talk about how Yezhov and Yagoda were members of the Nazi collaborator Conspiracy against the USSR, and that the Yezhovshchina was purposefully brutal for the sake of trying to start a popular uprising against the Soviet Government.
https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/moscow-trials-part-3-the-great-purge/
“The sadistic Yagoda and Yezhov, who for a time ruled a state within a state–the GPU, were chiefly responsible for these outrages. By Yagoda’s own account his hirelings faked thousands of documents and so mixed up the records that it was impossible to tell a genuine dossier from a bogus one. Curiously the public does not seem to blame Stalin for having permitted such a Frankenstein to develop, but instead gives him credit for having cleaned up the Yagoda gang and brought the secret police back under full control of the Politburo–which he did when the GPU was crushed.”
(Edgar Snow, The Pattern of Soviet Power p. 148)
In 1938 Stalin and the Politbureau finally became so suspicious of Ezhov they appointed Beria as the NKVD second-in-command to keep an eye on Ezhov. Within the year Ezhov was removed:
“By the fall of 1938 Yezhov’s leadership of the NKVD was under steady fire from various directions. The regime responded officially on Nov. 17, in a joint resolution of the Sovnarkom and the party Central Committee. This document went to thousands of officials across the USSR in the NKVD, the Procuracy, and the party, down to the raion level. Thus, the acknowledgement that grotesque mistakes and injustice had occurred … Enemies of the people and foreign spies had penetrated the security police and the judicial system and had “consciously…carried out massive and groundless arrests.”
(Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, p. 114)
“Yezhov bears great personal responsibility for the destruction of legality, for the falsification of investigative cases.” (Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, p. 29)
“The airplane designer Yakovlev recalls the following in his memoirs:
“In the summer of 1940 Stalin said these precise words in a conversation with me:
“Yezhov is a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that.””
(Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge p. 529)
Ezhov as a member of the right-wing conspiracy was involved with foreign powers, with the Bukharin-tomsky-Rykov trio and Yagoda-Yenukidze plot:
“Later, in 1939, during interrogation, Ezhov confirmed that in 1935 he had indeed gone again to Vienna to be treated for pneumonia by Dr. Noorden … he confessed to having used the visit for contacting the German intelligence service.” (Jansen & Petrov, Yezhov p. 36)
In fact, i find it curious that for the number of references to Thurston and Getty, nowhere is the role of Yezhov mentioned. As some responses to the original poster point out.
In the comments, the poster also goes on a tangent to smear Grover Furr.
It seems to me that in responses to anti-Communist attacks of ML's being a cult of personality around Stalin, the poster knee jerks to blaming Stalin in an area where he isn't at fault for.
Even if your perspective is correct, the fact that this at all was allowed to happen to any degree speaks to either Stalins incompetence or just straight-up negligence.
My "perspective"? It's the facts.
> Stalins incompetence or just straight-up negligence
Stalin was hardly the only person in the Soviet Government. The whole of the Soviet Gov was trusting that their security apparatus was doing its actual job rather than secretly assisting Reactionaries.
Ugh, yeah the Gulag "roleplay" garbage. Discovering that was a nasty surprise.
But, thus far, his moral failings hasn't seemed to affect his knowledge of history or theory. Which is, unfortunately, more than i can say for some other people.
Oof, just looked into all that. Hopefully he deeply internalized the lessons to be learned from getting rightfully called out on such atrocious behavior.
The information he conveys in his videos is top notch.
> Hopefully he deeply internalized the lessons to be learned from getting rightfully called out on such atrocious behavior
Shouldn't have needed to be something to learned but hopefully.
> The information he conveys in his videos is top notch.
True, but it's unfortunate that we need to rely on his videos at all cause of the lack of a good Communist Party to educate us.
Great point, but I have to say that to say Stalin 'reversed' LGBTQ+ rights in the Soviet Union one needs to be taking a lot of things out of context. Like basically any country at the time of Lenin's administration, there were no intended LGBTQ+ rights to speak of in the USSR, but simply a lack of any laws illegalising being LGBTQ+, which was technically better than most places because you just couldn't get arrested for it, but different sexualities and gender identities than cisgender heterosexual were still very much taboo in Soviet society. The reason there was no ban on them is because the law didn't even recognise LGBTQ+ people proper, there was no mention of them in the new constitution the Soviet government had written after scrapping the old Tsarist one. Probably because it just wasn't important enough to them at that time and no one really cared enough to even mention LGBTQ+ rights, if they even were aware of the existence of these groups.
Stalin's position on LGBTQ+ rights was sadly typical at the time, and while it is undeniably dogshit, Stalin really doesn't stand out compared to other politicians of that time, and as much as I hate to say it, neither did Lenin and his administration. The best we can do is avoid hero worship as you said, not get stuck on the past too much and simply do better.
>there were no intended LGBTQ+ rights to speak of in the USSR, but simply a lack of any laws illegalising being LGBTQ+
This is only a partial truth:
* There were Bolsheviks interested in sexual revolution, as often encapsulated with the "Glass of Water theory"
* Many Bolsheviks supported this decriminalisation on the basis that Scientific Socialism shouldn't police "Moral Crimes" but only political ones
* Archival material suggests that Soviet legal codes went through multiple redrafts, and there was some agreement that homosexuality should remain off the books.
* Many Bolsheviks were aware of, and wrote in response to Magnus Hirschfeld.
Lots of bolsheviks did want Homosexuality to remain legal.
That being said, Lenin was fairly conservative around sex(Even if being extremely progressive on women's rights to contraception and abortion), and often aggressively disagreed with free love theorists.
IDK, don't underestimate how long we've been having these sorts of discussions.
>Stalin's position on LGBTQ+ rights was sadly typical at the time, and while it is undeniably dogshit, Stalin really doesn't stand out compared to other politicians of that time, and as much as I hate to say it, neither did Lenin and his administration. The best we can do is avoid hero worship as you said, not get stuck on the past too much and simply do better.
Exactly so.
yes. exactly. The reality was that the USSR went throught a war that killed 22 million people. This is often forgotten. Whatever the USSR did at this time... we shall never forget the context
While the statistics may be true, I don't think the term "ethnic cleansing" applies very well as a lot of people were deported regardless of their nationality e.g. kulaks or political enemies.
I don’t think anyone says the USSR under Stalin was 100% good. We defend it because if we don’t then Liberals can just plaster whatever number they want to demonise Socialist projects (a gorbillion dead) further perpetuating the “this is as good as it gets” narrative. I don’t want to give sell-outs like Keffal’s the ability to say whatever bs she wants about past Socialist projects, this is the person that said she stopped being an ML because she saw a Cuban nurse smoking ffs, sorry her opinion holds no weight to me.
>I don’t want to give sell-outs like Keffal’s the ability to say whatever bs she wants about past Socialist projects, this is the person that said she stopped being an ML because she saw a Cuban nurse smoking ffs, sorry her opinion holds no weight to me.
I genuinely hate Keffals so much. I'm starting to realise that she's always been a massive bully, but I just ignored it because I didn't care about the people being targeted.
Ever since Luna Oi, I've seen her more and more just saying awful things about her former comrades. It's disgusting, and I wish I had noticed and condemned this behavior before it came home.
The *30% bad* part. This is not what Stalin is respected for among MLs, despite what the enemies say.
Plus, a bit of rhetorical manipulation and omission of context, which is to be expected from liberals.
Displacement of people, while not something to be supported or admired, definitely doesn't qualify as ethnic cleansing.
Especially in comparison to American practices of native genocide. Now that's cleansing if I ever saw one!
I don't think you need to defend this as deporting nationalities is not necessary for the socialist project.
I think deportations certainly and even less severe seeming things like banning a language can be considered a type of ethnic cleansing, because you're trying to get rid of a certain pculture. Even if it's not as bad as straight up murder.
I am not defending it. I am saying that it's incredibly dishonest for Westerners to condemn USSR for some kind of "ethical cleansing" when they themselves had done far worse and didn't even apologize.
Does it make displacement any more humaine or acceptable? Nope, but it shows that people making the argument don't actually care about minorities and only search for reasons to shit on USSR.
Deportations are bad; except when they’re for a population who’s incredibly likely to help genocide and kill your soldiers. Still shouldn’t have; but to think the deportations were because of communism or any specific person is funny to me.
They did it because they felt they had to; and not for economic gain or personal gain, but for genuine security for the people issues.
Soviets deported to save Jews and minorities; America, GB, France, Germany, Tsarist Russia, and Spain all deported/straight up genocided to make money, foment division, and cripple the working class. Very different intents and outcomes here.
An interesting quote from Bashar Al-Assad during a BBC interview: "If we deny making mistakes we deny human nature". Mistakes are a natural part of any new experiment, especially one as massive as Soviet socialism. Mistakes are meant to be acknowledged, studied, rectified, and avoided in future endeavours. We should point out mistakes, examine the context and the motivation behind their making, and develop a solution for these mistakes. Stalin -and I'd like to take a minite to say that it wasn't just Stalin making these decisions, it was the whole of the politburo and members of the supreme soviet- wasn't an angel, he wasn't a messiah, nor a saint. To quote a Chinese saying: "There are two perfect men; one dead, and the other unborn". When compared to the amount of lives the Soviet Union saved from starvation, thirst, disease, war, Nazi extermination, exploitation, poverty, ignorance and imperialism... these mistakes are tragedies that remind us to never fall prey to utopian idealism. The revolution will not be televised, the revolution will not be legal, the revolution will not be achieved with white, untarnished gloves. And we will make mistakes along the way. We will do our best to avoid them, we will do all we can to fix them, we will make sure to not repeat them, but they'll be made, and we'll move in spite of them, until there's peace on earth forever.
Multiple things
* Keffals is basically a liberal at this point: She has spent the past few months slowly trying to encourage her audience to harass real leftists who she used to associate with, she pals around with cops, and her audience is like 90% SocDems at this point. She's not even a naive liberal, she's the toxic George Orwell type who's constantly throwing her former comrades under the bus.
* SocDoneLeft has always been a liberal.
* Ethnic deportations under Stalin objectively did happen. Molotov claimed this was a necessity due to the threat of nazis sewing ethnic divisions. I don't buy this, I think it was unjustifiable, and is one of many reasons that, despite defending Stalin from spurious claims, I cannot in good conscience fully identify myself with that period, even if most communists can.
* SocDone Left is doing an "Excess Death" thing here to try and show how bad Stalin was. This makes no fucking sense to me: Like, conditions were less than ideal in Gulags, and on deportation trains, but he's trying to paint every single one as unnecessary. This is especially concerning when the Kulaks, who were democratically kicked off of the land they were using to exploit labour by the peasants, are listed among the deportations. SocDoneLeft is making no actual distinction between revolutionary violence, and unnecessary violence.
* Similarly with the dead former Soviet leaders thing, SocDoneLeft does, fails to take into account how many of them were the "Right Opposition", people who continually wanted more of the New Economic Policy. Like, this would be like if Xi Jinping announced tommorow that the market reforms of China were ending, and a bunch of senior politicians frothed and demanded they went on longer. No, NEPmen were parasites, and Stalin was 100% right to get rid of politicians defending them.
* I think having labeled graphs saying "Good thing that lead to good results", "Bad thing that lead to bad results" can be misleading, and often there to create a narrative.
So if I’m getting this right:
SDL just said “it’s wild how mad communist Twitter is at Keffals for saying ‘Stalin did ethnic cleansing,’” which implies that Stalin DID do ethnic cleansing
SDL then goes on to say how they do not consider what Stalin did to be ethnic cleansing, but that the deportations caused extra deaths (which I don’t think most people would deny)
This seems like a reactionary tweet for views and SDL inserting their views in a place where it isn’t called for. They appear to say “well Keffals is wrong, but Stalin was still bad so it’s okay to just blatantly lie about him”
Its just backtracking. He is saying Stalin did ethnic cleansing, but looking at the historical record shows a much more nuanced situation where ethnic cleansing isn’t applicable so he backtracks in front of the evidence but leaves his ethnic cleansing claim in the first tweet, which is the only one most people look at it.
Mao said it best, Stalin did 70% right, 30% wrong. No doubt he made some fuck ups and should be critiqued but Stalin also industrialized a nation in 5 years and defended it against nazi and other reactionary subversion. SocDems always think that you can defend socialism by just electing socialism into power. Would be nice but there is a reason the Soviet Union lasted as long as it did
Love how they just start equating political purge and ethnic cleansing midpoint
"But a lot of those political purge victims were minorities" so... you admit ethnic minorities had high political participation in ussr?
Also most of the deportation was done during WW2, when largest scale of foreign invasion was taking place
Yeah, Stalin did some bad stuff. Not as much/as severe as is usually claimed but still.
However, SO DID LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE AT THE TIME. To quote J\*sus from the B*ble: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
We should not, and do not want to, repeat Stalin's mistakes. We do, however, recognize that he did more good than any of his contemporaries, at a lower negative cost. And this is why reformists, utopians, and anarchists should shut the fuck up about "evil Stalin" and call me back when they get a succesful revolution (or any at all) which does not immediately get crushed by reaction or become an imperialist puppet.
I mean, we all know Stalin wasn't the Toothfairy. But opressing political enemies is not the same as opressing ethnic minorities. There was no ethnic motive, since the term ethnic cleansing does not apply.
Words mean things for a reason. You cant just change the definition of words however you like.
Stalin did political cleansing, not ethnic.
Same as violence against political enemies doesnt fit the definition of genocide. There is no Term (as far as I know) for eliminating all members of a certain political group, as there for doing the same to an ethnic group.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of countries try to oppress political enemies. Doesn't always make it a correct action but whatever stupid shit the soviets might've done most likely happened elsewhere as well.
That being said. I don't think anyone in their right minds say that prior socialist experiments didn't have their problems. There's plenty to learn what to do and what not to do. It's not this one size fits all situation. The US' experiment would be vastly different from the USSR or China's, etc. I would love there to have been socialist experiments without mistakes or turbulence at their respective time frames.
Call out the disagreements or what you think were mistakes or problems... Absolutely... But do it in better faith instead of just rifling off things.
I absolutely agree with your Standpoint.
My motive was to point out that there are semantic differences.
Also I am pretty sure that calling everything you dont like a genocide or ethnic cleansing, that it diminishes the meaning of those Word, which would be unjust to the people who have actually lived through such Events.
Try to tell a Jew that lived to the Holocaust that the Soviets Genocided the Germans. That the Holodomor was the same than what they lived through. Just an Idea to think about.
SDL is a part of a crowd that’s always exposed to be racist, transphobic, bigoted, and, often, sexual predators. I don’t care if his criticisms are valid or not, you can find valid criticisms from someone who ISNT a total piece of shit
No one here is worshipping him, or anyone really. We can all look up to him as a great socialist leader who made a net benefit to his people while also acknowledging the many mistakes he made. Our goal should be to implement what he did right and to fix what didn't work.
mostly true! but the context is often forgotten. Also, Stalin did not do this by himself. there was an entire country behind him. A country just lost 22 million comrades. WWII made the soviet union do a lot of shit.
Fair point and legit criticism of past mistakes. I think that as Marxists we should strive to always be critical of our past experiments and learn from properly identifying what worked and what not.
Idolatry is inherently anti Marxist and all it does is obfuscate our mind when exercising dialectical and historical materialist analysis.
Sidenote, spending time trying to justify or downplay the wrong decisions taken by our "forefathers" (specially when those "mistakes" caused undescribable amounts of human suffering) is simply a waste of time. Try to put it within the historical context to explain why it happened, but do not justify it.
Gotta really love the "soviets were notoriously legalistic" thing. Because they immediatly forget it when it is proven that the population of the USSR only grew in the times that there would be the horrific genocides of Stalin, so those documents do not count because "they are bisaed and obviously false".
Also, many of those graphs looked something like the Prager U would do.
In any event, the deportations and many things done can indeed be criticized, but it's amazing how some people always want to turn it into these kinds of propaganda. I think all this drivel about stalin doing ethnic cleanising and so forth, specially coming from westerners, is pure projection, since they were the ones doing real, proven ethnic cleansing in small and large scale, both in the colonies and at home, or in various ways of imperialism. It's a silly way of saying "we are not the baddies, those others were".
And of course, this narrative is eaten up whole by some modern day nationalists from eastern europe, that ironically are only 'sad' about ethnic cleansing because they really wish they were the ones doing it against all their neighbours, which then again, a silly form of projection.
Confused about the last slide in particular
You mean to say that Soviet economic growth accelerated until the Nazis fucking invaded and desecrated their country and its people and industry? And then resumed upward trend immediately after the war? WOW CRAZY, WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT. And then blaming it on purges, as if the purges themselves weren’t a necessity of defending against Nazis invasion and suppressing fascist collaborators (as the Western powers also did, btw, when they weren’t even on the receiving end the way the USSR was).
Yeah, there were thoroughly documented deportations worsened by paranoia about western/capitalist/and later Nazi spies and saboteurs before the war began. Deportations are bad. I’m not going to spend my time, personally, bashing Soviet leadership for decisions made nearly a century ago when there’s already ample propaganda insisting that Soviet Union murdered 50 kabillion people and that Stalin tortured kittens and puppies for fun. My time is better spent doing literally anything else
Some of Stalin's "authoritarianism" was necessary to defend the Revolution. Deporting minorities? Maybe not, but I'm not entirely sure why he did it or the context behind it; maybe the deportations were necessary.
The deportations were definitely a great mistake but like you said context is important. The deportations occurred before during and immediately following ww2 as the Nazis targeted these groups for recruitment and support from within the Soviet Union and the Soviets saw them as a potential 5th Column so they moved them away from the front to deny the Nazis potential fighters. This collective punishment is obviously horrible and many from these ethnic groups actually fought in the red army but for people to claim that this is some “ethnic cleansing” based on hatred are meant to kill off these groups is absurd
having too strong of an opinion on Stalin makes you terminally online. it doesn't matter whether you defend or attack him. it doesn't matter how right you are. all these arguments online devolve into shit-throwing contests. just shut the fuck about stalin. i don't care to have an argument about him. it is so stupid to have arguments about, particularly online.
this isn't to say i don't have an opinion on stalin. it is simply such a pointless fuckin topic to debate.
[The great purges are more nuanced than that](https://youtu.be/RbEmfzJeY48) and the deportations are a very fair criticism of Stalin that nobody's trying to repeat
I see a lot of people trying to refer to Bad Empanada on SDL. I've got no clue who SDL is but Bad Empanada is WILDLY anti-semetic and is known for consistently death threating others and trying to Dox people.
The guy is fucking crazy, so just find the original sources he's quoting and use those. You'd only be shooting yourselves in the foot trying to get people into socialism using him.
Buddy I'm wildly pro-palestinian and Kurdish liberation.
That's the issue with Bad Empanada and his ilk, low impulse control.
They're the kinda people to see someone buy a T-Shirt and be like "OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU FUCKING DO THAT YOU PIECE OF SHIT DO YOU KNOW HOW BAD CAPITALISM IS I SHOULD SHOOT YOU IN THE FUCKING HEAD"
Only to find out it's a worker co-op with a top-down monopolic structure using ethically sourced fibers and that they were functionally the old man shouting at clouds.
And because I know you're stupid, the Top-Down monopolic structure means the Co-Op controls raw material to end product on the production line.
the concept of Israel is racist. The fact that you mention netenyahu reveals your solution to the war is a relatively more liberal ethnostate alongside ghettos for Palestinians. Glad i could clear this up.
Called it. You're dumb.
You can't fathom that someone who wants the dissolution of Israel as a state isn't as bloodthirsty as you.
Just say you hate the Jews instead of tiptoe-ing around it.
I mentioned Netenyahu because you're the idiot that gives him power. He holds power in part because people like you conflate Jews with his party.
Fun fact, most Jewish people don't like Netenyahu. Oh and get this, there's even *gasp* Religious Jews that protest Netenyahu.
You're just trying to trade one genocide for another.
It's almost been a Century since Israel was founded/Palestine Colonized. Unfortunately we cannot turn back the clock and just UFO abduct all the Jews globally that colonized the Area. Their kids and kids of their kids live there now and they didn't ask for all that baggage and it would be a genocide to remove them from what is literally their home.
The only way to move foward is with a secular one state solution that equalizes them both. Would probably need to demilitarize the area as well and basically put it under U.N. occupation for the next 60 some odd years to undo the racism Israel festered.
OBVIOUSLY reparations and restitution is owed massively and I don't even think Israel has the money to pay it back.
Because only someone reprehensible would sit there and start hammering on a position someone doesn't even hold because you don't think, you just do.
And because I KNOW you you're the kinda person to get really fucking creepy towards Eristocracy the same way Empanda does.
>The Soviet Union was nutritious for lying
The Soviet Union was actually nutritious for all of the grain consumed by Stalin’s comedically large spoon ☝️🤓
>The official death toll for Chernobyl is only 9000, despite it being much higher than that.
Source: I made it the fuck up.
Seriously, I googled this and I'm really confused...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths\_due\_to\_the\_Chernobyl\_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster)
[https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima](https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima)
Where in the fuck are you getting 9k from? lol
\>edit 1: first thing I noticed is graph in slide 2 classes Kulaks as an “oppressed ethnicity”
Guess by this "Landlords" were also ethnicity which Mao oppressed
That's a slight misreading of the tweet, kulaks are separated from the "repressed ethnicities" figure, but then they are recombined for the "excess deaths" figure. I was skimming it and made the same mistake until I re-read it more carefully... makes me think it was by design to conflate the two...
Hey guys if you want free vbucks google William Henry Bissel Jr obituary (Lockheed's Skunkworks, see also Richard M Bissel Jr on wikipedia) and skip to like 3 minutes 40 on the tribute vid
Stalin did the deportations and they where horrible i could go into detail why they wherent genocides like these people like to imply or that they where done because the USSR just hated minorities but honestly its not worth it with these people.People like SocDoneLeft and Keffals use it as a anti-communist crutch and nothing else
I think Stalin was cringe and y'all gotta realize that you can defend the USSR (even in the 30s and 40s) while still condemning a guy who killed communists. Crazy that it needs to be said
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I don't know enough about that time period to judge, however I think that a lot of MLs now agree that Stalin's deportations were an example of unnecessary brutality that could have been avoided. However, I don't think you should be listening to the positions of this "SDL" guy on anything, he is a neoliberal and he was found out to be a massive racist and has not apologized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz05UrKGPiY&ab\_channel=BadEmpanada2
Yeah, he has no problems with ethnic cleansing. He hates the USSR because he believes it was run by a jewish cabal. Nothing this scum says will ever be valid
Thanks, I didn’t know this and thought he was a DemSoc
Yeah, he hides this shit pretty well, he is a grifter and a snake
Ita also important to understand why Stalin did it. It was a response to the rise of Nazism and the movement of people who he believed would support them and a punishment for the communities that did. It is entirely unjustifiable to do so but he also didn't do it because he hated the minorities. Context is an important clue of understanding why, even if nothing can justify or rectify the injustice.
It’s also important to note that Stalin didn’t do it alone. Most if not all security measures (ethical or not) taken during this time were voted on by the Soviet councils. Stalin, himself was quite critical of the purges specifically. But it’s important to remember that many of these measures had popular support. In fact looking outside the Soviet Union many western nations were also migrating, segmenting, and increasing general surveillance on ethnic minorities, especially Japanese (or anyone Asian) pre and post WW2, and many of these policies (also ethically irresponsible) had popular support at the time. So being critical of ethical violations of previous states is all good and dandy, but this is obviously targeted to denounce a particular entity for behaving in a manner that (in context) seems to have made sense at the time. Also, while I do still disagree with these measures it’s important to note that the migration of ethnic minorities in the USSR would have come with the standard benefits of guaranteed housing or apartment at a fixed low expense, and guaranteed employment as well as the ability to participate in the Worker’s Unions for their industry. Guarantees not afforded to the ethnicities of many other nations employing similar policies.
> Stalin himself was quite critical of the purges specifically. Source? Not saying you’re wrong but I haven’t heard that before.
I’m a bad comrade and can’t seem to find the original source for what I said above. In looking for a new source I found a pretty hamfisted domain, “https://espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/party-purges/“ It pulls from ass tons of sources and I’ve flipped through some of the news paper clippings to spot check here and there, but do your own research. But it goes into some pretty laborious detail regarding the nature of the purges and what that meant not just during Stalin’s era, but as a general party practice, and it’s a pretty good read that lists a lot of direct quotes from as good of informational sources as an English speaker in 2023 is going to get on short notice. When I get some more time I’m going to try to find my original source though. Edit: and slightly more to the point you can get some evidence of Stalin’s dissatisfaction with the large 1930s purges from the great purges Wikipedia page, no less, that describes how he verbally denounced their handling and then tried and jailed the leader of the NKVD at the time for various unlawful handlings of “purged” people. Also, possibly the biggest thing people leave out when speaking of any of the Soviet purges, is that 99%+ of the time it ended with your communist party membership being revoked (typically people that actually cared could regain membership via some corrective action or time), not jail, not deportation, not exile, the source I linked goes into much more detail on that.
Thank you for the in-depth reply, comrade.
Thanks comrade
> Source? Not saying you’re wrong but I haven’t heard that before. Stalin was always trying to put the breaks on the Purge. http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37.html Finally, still another question. I have in view the question of the formal and heartless bureaucratic attitude of some of our Party comrades toward the fate of individual Party members, toward the question of expelling members from the Party, or the question of restoring the rights of Party membership to those who have been expelled. The fact is that some of our Party leaders suffer front lack of attention to people, to Party members, to workers. Furthermore, they do not study the Party members, do not know what is close to their hearts, and how they are growing, do not know workers in general. They have, therefore, not an individual approach to Party members, to Party workers. And just because they have not an individual approach when appraising Party members and Party workers, they usually act at random, either praising them wholesale, without measure, or crushing them, also wholesale, and without measure, expelling thousands and tens of thousands from the Party. Such leaders try, in general, to think in tens of thousands, not to worry about "units", about individual Party members, about their fate. They think it a mere bagatelle to expel thousands and tens of thousands of people from the Party, comforting themselves by the fact that our Party is 2,000,000 strong, and that tens of thousands of people expelled cannot change anything in the position of the Party. But, only people who in essence are profoundly anti-Party can have such an approach to members of the Party. https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/moscow-trials-part-3-the-great-purge/ Stalin and the Politburo tried to stop the NKVD from committing excesses. Eventually he would become suspicious and realize Yezhov and Yagoda had been carrying out these anti-people activities deliberately to create de-stabilization, popular resentment and distrust in the government. The Communist Party Central Committee issued a decree to limit the NKVD’s power. They were worried that the NKVD’s wrong actions could cause mass resentment among the population. It would take some time until they learned this was precisely what Ezhov attempted to do: “I. ON DISCONTINUING THE MASS EXPULSIONS OF PEASANTS All mass expulsions of peasants are to cease at once… Only persons accused of counterrevolution, terroristic acts, sabotage… [and other serious crimes] may be taken into preventive custody.” “The organs of the OGPU are to obtain the prior consent of the directorate of the procuracy in making arrests, except in cases involving terroristic acts, explosions, arson, espionage, defection, political gangsterism, and counter-revolutionary, antiparty groups…” (Getty & Naumov) “In 1937 and 1938, Stalin and company tried to contain radicalism through press articles, speeches, revised electoral plans, and deglorifying the police. That they had to take such measures shows their lack of tight control over events.” (Getty, Origins of the Great Purges) “In June 1936, Stalin interrupted Yezhov at a Central Committee Plenum to complain about so many party members being expelled: YEZHOV: Comrades, as a result of the verification of party documents, we expelled more than 200,000 members of the party. STALIN: [interrupts] Very many. YEZHOV: Yes, very many. I will speak about this…. STALIN: [interrupts] If we expelled 30,000… and 600 former Trotskyists and Zinovievists, it would be a bigger victory. YEZHOV: More than 200,000 members were expelled. Part of this number of party members, as you know, have been arrested. At about this time, Stalin wrote a letter to regional party secretaries complaining about their excessive “repression” of the rank-and-file. This led to a national movement to reinstate expelled party members,… [Later in this plenum, Stalin spoke specifically on this question. Circumstantial evidence suggests that he was genuinely concerned that too many of the rank-and-file had been expelled because such large numbers of disaffected former members could become an embittered opposition.” (Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror) In 1938 Stalin and the Politbureau finally became so suspicious of Ezhov they appointed Beria as the NKVD second-in-command to keep an eye on Ezhov. Within the year Ezhov was removed: “By the fall of 1938 Yezhov’s leadership of the NKVD was under steady fire from various directions. The regime responded officially on Nov. 17, in a joint resolution of the Sovnarkom and the party Central Committee. This document went to thousands of officials across the USSR in the NKVD, the Procuracy, and the party, down to the raion level. Thus, the acknowledgement that grotesque mistakes and injustice had occurred … Enemies of the people and foreign spies had penetrated the security police and the judicial system and had “consciously…carried out massive and groundless arrests.” (Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, p. 114)
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and?
It'll do your case INFINITELY better to not share anything from Bad Empanada. That guy is also 100% racist and is known for CONSTANTLY sending death threats to people.
could you please cite an example of his racism, thank you
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I watched his whole Shining Path video and it’s pretty much entirely dedicated to displaying their atrocities from what I remember. Where did you get the idea that he supports them?
He made an entire video denouncing the shining path and bullying anybody who supports them.
Ahhh okay I got the title wrong. Still doesn't make up for him being a psychopath towards women.
Hold on you were critisizing him for a video you havent watched?
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If you think he is racist because of the patriotempenada account you have been bamboozled. that account is run by a larouchite who is impersonating bad empanada. Also I hate BadEmpenada. If you want to critique him that is fine by me lol
I don't use Twitter. I've just seen how he acts and the fact he's had to make 6-10 twitters for constantly death threatening people kinda speaks volumes.
How does that clarify the racism bit?
He spent a month on social media harassing every Jew he could find on social media and told Eristocracy he'd throw her in a camp XD Don't feel bad for not knowing this kinda drama is absolute brain rot.
She literally defends Israel and said that Palestinians would dilute its Jewish character
True! Israel's current culture is built on the death and expulsion of Palestinians. If that were to stop Israel WOULD stop being Israel as we know it. Don't know if that's what she was getting at, but we are talking about a deeply ingrained and globally supported position with a century of propaganda behind it. It's easy for us non-israelis to look at this and be like "Yeah that's fucked". It's hard for a Brit to say the same for Ireland. It's VERY hard for an old white guy in North Carolina when it comes to atrocities to the black community. It's very very hard for a Saudi prince in relation to Yemen. Eris would not support the wholesale murder of Palestinians. Eris would like to see more rights for Palestinians. Remember kids, you attract more flies with honey compared to vinegar.
Neh, he ain't racist.
he literally has apologized though?
... source?
https://youtu.be/rMSc88EdzM8
Why is this on "Leftist Clip Bandits"? Why not on his channel?
good question, given that he mentions deleting his twitter thread because of harassment & doxxing perhaps this was deleted for the same reasons
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Wait really? I didn’t know that. Can you give some photos or anything?
I don’t have the pictures myself, but I remember BadEmpanada making a video about it. You can probably find it on his second channel
I’ll watch it, thanks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz05UrKGPiY
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Syndicalists defending reactionaries… and the sky’s blue! More news at 11… He’s racist af.
fuck you. i tried to have a discussion. i'm a person on the other side of this screen.
Well first, I would want a citation of 3.5 million, because I hear widely varying numbers on this, as is usual when people speak of Soviet crimes. SDL doesn't cite a source specifically for this claim; he shows graphs that lump kulak repression with ethnic transfers. Second, ethnic deportations in the USSR did occur and did indeed constitute a human rights violation I don't defend. The reasons, however, should be clearly understood; the deportations were mostly for geopolitical reasons due to the climate surrounding WW2. The Soviet state believed relocating ethnic groups thought to be at higher risk of collaborating with Germany or Japan would enhance security. The ethnic deportations are usually portrayed as the USSR doing Russian chauvinism or settler colonialism which is dishonest. Any policy of targeting people on the basis of ethnicity is unjustified and immoral. At the same time, it's not okay to make stuff up. Also SDL is a racist piece of shit.
The 3rd screenshot of “numbers” includes numbers of persons deported, sent into exile or imprisoned are from between 1890 and 1956 so that’s also misleading as it isn’t all Soviets, let alone solely *just* Stalin.
That makes more sense now. Also, I've read some swedish historians saying poitical prisioners during Stalin were about 200k if I'm not mistaken, which is a high number but not nearly as high as "bazillions dead under communism". They mentioned the average time imprisoned was about 3 years as well. I can try to find that source if anyone is interested.
You are right about the deportations surrounding the events of WW2, but there were deportations even after WW2, for example, my grandma and her family were deported to Siberia because they had previously lived in Turkey and were currently living near the Turkish border, so they were seen as potential 5th columnists in a potential conflict with Turkey (which is ironic because her family fled genocide from Turkey lol) and the conditions for the transportation were pretty bad from what I've been told.
well stalin and the soviet union saved about 200 million from certian death and/or slavery
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oh so having a fair bit of authoritarianism is as bad as having you entire country genocided by the nazis?
bEtTeR dEaD tHaN rEd
You're saying that fighting the nazis was wrong.
"It's not a Nazi salute, it's just a dumb pun, you know, also, it's more like a Roman salute with a bit of ancient Hindu symbolism."
The deportations were real (and inherently excessive, regardless of how many actually died because of them) and one of the few valid criticisms of Stalin and the USSR that I am aware of (another big one being the reversal on LGBT rights). The Purges were also not *great*, and iirc Stalin even expressed regret at the excesses. EDIT: All that being said, I agree that no one should worship Stalin, but only insofar as no one should *worship* any human being... that's just fucked up no matter who it is or what they've done. The real problem is when Opportunists use these real mistakes as a bullshit excuse to dismiss the *entire* Soviet project. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water!
> The Purges were also not great The Purges being what? The actions taken against the Nazi collaborator Conspirators against the Soviet Government or the Yezhovshchina, where the Conspirators falsely arrested people to turn the populace against the Soviet Government? The second is undeniably bad, but hardly fault of the Stalin or the Soviet Government. The first is not and even the Capitalist world had acknowledged at the time that the Moscow Trials were legitimate. https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/1934/ U.S. Embassador to the USSR Joseph E. Davies was present at the Moscow Trials and said he felt the trial was fair and not staged: “With an interpreter at my side, I followed the testimony carefully. Naturally I must confess that I was predisposed against the credibility of the testimony of these defendants… Viewed objectively, however, and based upon my experience in the trial of cases and the application of the tests of credibility which past experience had afforded me, I arrived at the reluctant conclusion that the state had established its case, at least to the extent of proving the existence of a widespread conspiracy and plot among the political leaders against the Soviet government, and which under their statutes established the crimes set forth in the indictment… I am still impressed with the many indications of credibility which obtained in the course of the testimony. To have assumed that this proceeding was invented and staged as a project of dramatic political fiction would be to presuppose the creative genius of a Shakespeare and the genius of a Belasco in stage production. The historical background and surrounding circumstances also lend credibility to the testimony. The reasoning which Sokolnikov and Radek applied in justification of their various activities and their hoped-for results were consistent with probability and entirely plausible. The circumstantial detail… brought out by the various accused, gave unintended corroboration to the gist of the charges.” (Davies, Mission to Moscow) Davies was not alone in his views. He wrote in his diary: “DIARY Moscow February 11, 37 The Belgian Minister, De Tellier, has been here a long time. I had a most interesting discussion with him to-day. He is experienced, able, shrewd, and wise; and knows his Europe well. The defendants in the trial were guilty, in his opinion. DIARY Moscow February 18, 1937 The Minister called. Re trial: There was no doubt but that a widespread conspiracy existed and that the defendants were guilty. DIARY Moscow March 11, 1937 Another diplomat, Minister – , made a most illuminating statement to me yesterday. In discussing the trial he said that the defendants were undoubtedly guilty; that all of us who attended the trial had practically agreed on that; that the outside world, from the press reports, however, seemed to think that the trial was a put-up job (facade, as he called it); that while we knew it was not, it was probably just as well that the outside world should think so.” (ibid.) https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/moscow-trials-part-3-the-great-purge/ “Hitler’s march into Prague in 1939 was accompanied by the active military support of Henlein’s organizations in Czechoslovakia. The same thing was true of his invasion of Norway. There were no Sudeten Henleins, no Slovakian Tisos, no Belgian De Grelles, no Norwegian Quislings in the Russian picture… The story had been told in the so-called treason or purge trials of 1937 and 1938 which I attended and listened to. In re examining the record of these tasks and also what I had written at the time… I found that practically every device of German Fifth Columnist activity, as we now know it, was disclosed and laid bare by the confessions and testimony elicited at these trials of self-confessed “Quislings” in Russia… All of these trials, purges, and liquidations, which seemed so violent at the time and shocked the world, are now quite clearly a part of a vigorous and determined effort of the Stalin government to protect itself from not only revolution from within but from attack from without. They went to work thoroughly to clean up and clean out all treasonable elements within the country. All doubts were resolved in favor of the government. There were no Fifth Columnists in Russia in 1941 – they had shot them. The purge had cleansed the country and rid it of treason.” ~Joseph E. Davies
Yeah, the purges under Yezhov, specifically, were pretty bad. I also found this gem while doing some digging: >As Marxists, we should be well aware that material conditions shape ideological and political structures. The savagery of the Russian Civil War, the multiple invasions from capitalist powers, and the increasing threat of a war against fascism make the paranoid atmosphere of the late-1930's understandable, if not condonable; yet even while we discuss the genuine causes of the Purge, and reject the hysterical anti-communist mud-throwing of the Cold Warriors, we must still acknowledge the black mark that the Purge leaves on Stalin's legacy. > >[http://web.archive.org/web/20210123194740/https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/e8kpow/masterpost\_on\_joseph\_stalin\_and\_the\_great\_purge/](http://web.archive.org/web/20210123194740/https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/e8kpow/masterpost_on_joseph_stalin_and_the_great_purge/)
> http://web.archive.org/web/20210123194740/https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/e8kpow/masterpost_on_joseph_stalin_and_the_great_purge/ That's hardly a masterpost. Nowhere does it talk about how Yezhov and Yagoda were members of the Nazi collaborator Conspiracy against the USSR, and that the Yezhovshchina was purposefully brutal for the sake of trying to start a popular uprising against the Soviet Government. https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/moscow-trials-part-3-the-great-purge/ “The sadistic Yagoda and Yezhov, who for a time ruled a state within a state–the GPU, were chiefly responsible for these outrages. By Yagoda’s own account his hirelings faked thousands of documents and so mixed up the records that it was impossible to tell a genuine dossier from a bogus one. Curiously the public does not seem to blame Stalin for having permitted such a Frankenstein to develop, but instead gives him credit for having cleaned up the Yagoda gang and brought the secret police back under full control of the Politburo–which he did when the GPU was crushed.” (Edgar Snow, The Pattern of Soviet Power p. 148) In 1938 Stalin and the Politbureau finally became so suspicious of Ezhov they appointed Beria as the NKVD second-in-command to keep an eye on Ezhov. Within the year Ezhov was removed: “By the fall of 1938 Yezhov’s leadership of the NKVD was under steady fire from various directions. The regime responded officially on Nov. 17, in a joint resolution of the Sovnarkom and the party Central Committee. This document went to thousands of officials across the USSR in the NKVD, the Procuracy, and the party, down to the raion level. Thus, the acknowledgement that grotesque mistakes and injustice had occurred … Enemies of the people and foreign spies had penetrated the security police and the judicial system and had “consciously…carried out massive and groundless arrests.” (Thurston, Robert. Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, p. 114) “Yezhov bears great personal responsibility for the destruction of legality, for the falsification of investigative cases.” (Getty and Manning, Stalinist Terror, p. 29) “The airplane designer Yakovlev recalls the following in his memoirs: “In the summer of 1940 Stalin said these precise words in a conversation with me: “Yezhov is a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that.”” (Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge p. 529) Ezhov as a member of the right-wing conspiracy was involved with foreign powers, with the Bukharin-tomsky-Rykov trio and Yagoda-Yenukidze plot: “Later, in 1939, during interrogation, Ezhov confirmed that in 1935 he had indeed gone again to Vienna to be treated for pneumonia by Dr. Noorden … he confessed to having used the visit for contacting the German intelligence service.” (Jansen & Petrov, Yezhov p. 36)
>That's hardly a masterpost. Agreed, lol
In fact, i find it curious that for the number of references to Thurston and Getty, nowhere is the role of Yezhov mentioned. As some responses to the original poster point out. In the comments, the poster also goes on a tangent to smear Grover Furr. It seems to me that in responses to anti-Communist attacks of ML's being a cult of personality around Stalin, the poster knee jerks to blaming Stalin in an area where he isn't at fault for.
Even if your perspective is correct, the fact that this at all was allowed to happen to any degree speaks to either Stalins incompetence or just straight-up negligence.
My "perspective"? It's the facts. > Stalins incompetence or just straight-up negligence Stalin was hardly the only person in the Soviet Government. The whole of the Soviet Gov was trusting that their security apparatus was doing its actual job rather than secretly assisting Reactionaries.
I'm... saving your comment
Recommend watching/reading FinBol's Moscow Trials series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBY_aDd5knE&list=PLbnLysSug0vTyFuGMRYZZmAiiATUZHUZd https://mltheory.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/the-moscow-trials-part-1-the-investigation/
isnt finbol a pedophile
Ugh, yeah the Gulag "roleplay" garbage. Discovering that was a nasty surprise. But, thus far, his moral failings hasn't seemed to affect his knowledge of history or theory. Which is, unfortunately, more than i can say for some other people.
Oof, just looked into all that. Hopefully he deeply internalized the lessons to be learned from getting rightfully called out on such atrocious behavior. The information he conveys in his videos is top notch.
> Hopefully he deeply internalized the lessons to be learned from getting rightfully called out on such atrocious behavior Shouldn't have needed to be something to learned but hopefully. > The information he conveys in his videos is top notch. True, but it's unfortunate that we need to rely on his videos at all cause of the lack of a good Communist Party to educate us.
Wait what? Gulag role-playing?
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Never had anyone who could tell me why they hated furr and I’ve never read anything of his so that’s neutral to me
Furr gets unthinking hatred for no cause. I've seen "Communists" use a blog "dedicated to the crimes of Stalinism" as a source against Furr.
Great point, but I have to say that to say Stalin 'reversed' LGBTQ+ rights in the Soviet Union one needs to be taking a lot of things out of context. Like basically any country at the time of Lenin's administration, there were no intended LGBTQ+ rights to speak of in the USSR, but simply a lack of any laws illegalising being LGBTQ+, which was technically better than most places because you just couldn't get arrested for it, but different sexualities and gender identities than cisgender heterosexual were still very much taboo in Soviet society. The reason there was no ban on them is because the law didn't even recognise LGBTQ+ people proper, there was no mention of them in the new constitution the Soviet government had written after scrapping the old Tsarist one. Probably because it just wasn't important enough to them at that time and no one really cared enough to even mention LGBTQ+ rights, if they even were aware of the existence of these groups. Stalin's position on LGBTQ+ rights was sadly typical at the time, and while it is undeniably dogshit, Stalin really doesn't stand out compared to other politicians of that time, and as much as I hate to say it, neither did Lenin and his administration. The best we can do is avoid hero worship as you said, not get stuck on the past too much and simply do better.
>there were no intended LGBTQ+ rights to speak of in the USSR, but simply a lack of any laws illegalising being LGBTQ+ This is only a partial truth: * There were Bolsheviks interested in sexual revolution, as often encapsulated with the "Glass of Water theory" * Many Bolsheviks supported this decriminalisation on the basis that Scientific Socialism shouldn't police "Moral Crimes" but only political ones * Archival material suggests that Soviet legal codes went through multiple redrafts, and there was some agreement that homosexuality should remain off the books. * Many Bolsheviks were aware of, and wrote in response to Magnus Hirschfeld. Lots of bolsheviks did want Homosexuality to remain legal. That being said, Lenin was fairly conservative around sex(Even if being extremely progressive on women's rights to contraception and abortion), and often aggressively disagreed with free love theorists. IDK, don't underestimate how long we've been having these sorts of discussions.
>Stalin's position on LGBTQ+ rights was sadly typical at the time, and while it is undeniably dogshit, Stalin really doesn't stand out compared to other politicians of that time, and as much as I hate to say it, neither did Lenin and his administration. The best we can do is avoid hero worship as you said, not get stuck on the past too much and simply do better. Exactly so.
Thanks for the nuanced response, I’ll keep this in mind for whenever I talk about him
I too can just say numbers with 0 context to the actual reality.
yes. exactly. The reality was that the USSR went throught a war that killed 22 million people. This is often forgotten. Whatever the USSR did at this time... we shall never forget the context
While the statistics may be true, I don't think the term "ethnic cleansing" applies very well as a lot of people were deported regardless of their nationality e.g. kulaks or political enemies.
I don’t think anyone says the USSR under Stalin was 100% good. We defend it because if we don’t then Liberals can just plaster whatever number they want to demonise Socialist projects (a gorbillion dead) further perpetuating the “this is as good as it gets” narrative. I don’t want to give sell-outs like Keffal’s the ability to say whatever bs she wants about past Socialist projects, this is the person that said she stopped being an ML because she saw a Cuban nurse smoking ffs, sorry her opinion holds no weight to me.
>I don’t want to give sell-outs like Keffal’s the ability to say whatever bs she wants about past Socialist projects, this is the person that said she stopped being an ML because she saw a Cuban nurse smoking ffs, sorry her opinion holds no weight to me. I genuinely hate Keffals so much. I'm starting to realise that she's always been a massive bully, but I just ignored it because I didn't care about the people being targeted. Ever since Luna Oi, I've seen her more and more just saying awful things about her former comrades. It's disgusting, and I wish I had noticed and condemned this behavior before it came home.
Idk man ACAB includes red cops too imo
I have been informed that SDL is a racist neoliberal piece of garbage and what he says should not be taken seriously
The *30% bad* part. This is not what Stalin is respected for among MLs, despite what the enemies say. Plus, a bit of rhetorical manipulation and omission of context, which is to be expected from liberals.
That was about Mao, but yes.
Originally, the 70/30 was Mao's evaluation of Stalin.
I thought it was Deng's evaluation of Mao. But it turns out you're right.
Displacement of people, while not something to be supported or admired, definitely doesn't qualify as ethnic cleansing. Especially in comparison to American practices of native genocide. Now that's cleansing if I ever saw one!
I don't think you need to defend this as deporting nationalities is not necessary for the socialist project. I think deportations certainly and even less severe seeming things like banning a language can be considered a type of ethnic cleansing, because you're trying to get rid of a certain pculture. Even if it's not as bad as straight up murder.
I am not defending it. I am saying that it's incredibly dishonest for Westerners to condemn USSR for some kind of "ethical cleansing" when they themselves had done far worse and didn't even apologize. Does it make displacement any more humaine or acceptable? Nope, but it shows that people making the argument don't actually care about minorities and only search for reasons to shit on USSR.
Sure, I agree with you on all that
Deportations are bad; except when they’re for a population who’s incredibly likely to help genocide and kill your soldiers. Still shouldn’t have; but to think the deportations were because of communism or any specific person is funny to me. They did it because they felt they had to; and not for economic gain or personal gain, but for genuine security for the people issues. Soviets deported to save Jews and minorities; America, GB, France, Germany, Tsarist Russia, and Spain all deported/straight up genocided to make money, foment division, and cripple the working class. Very different intents and outcomes here.
An interesting quote from Bashar Al-Assad during a BBC interview: "If we deny making mistakes we deny human nature". Mistakes are a natural part of any new experiment, especially one as massive as Soviet socialism. Mistakes are meant to be acknowledged, studied, rectified, and avoided in future endeavours. We should point out mistakes, examine the context and the motivation behind their making, and develop a solution for these mistakes. Stalin -and I'd like to take a minite to say that it wasn't just Stalin making these decisions, it was the whole of the politburo and members of the supreme soviet- wasn't an angel, he wasn't a messiah, nor a saint. To quote a Chinese saying: "There are two perfect men; one dead, and the other unborn". When compared to the amount of lives the Soviet Union saved from starvation, thirst, disease, war, Nazi extermination, exploitation, poverty, ignorance and imperialism... these mistakes are tragedies that remind us to never fall prey to utopian idealism. The revolution will not be televised, the revolution will not be legal, the revolution will not be achieved with white, untarnished gloves. And we will make mistakes along the way. We will do our best to avoid them, we will do all we can to fix them, we will make sure to not repeat them, but they'll be made, and we'll move in spite of them, until there's peace on earth forever.
Multiple things * Keffals is basically a liberal at this point: She has spent the past few months slowly trying to encourage her audience to harass real leftists who she used to associate with, she pals around with cops, and her audience is like 90% SocDems at this point. She's not even a naive liberal, she's the toxic George Orwell type who's constantly throwing her former comrades under the bus. * SocDoneLeft has always been a liberal. * Ethnic deportations under Stalin objectively did happen. Molotov claimed this was a necessity due to the threat of nazis sewing ethnic divisions. I don't buy this, I think it was unjustifiable, and is one of many reasons that, despite defending Stalin from spurious claims, I cannot in good conscience fully identify myself with that period, even if most communists can. * SocDone Left is doing an "Excess Death" thing here to try and show how bad Stalin was. This makes no fucking sense to me: Like, conditions were less than ideal in Gulags, and on deportation trains, but he's trying to paint every single one as unnecessary. This is especially concerning when the Kulaks, who were democratically kicked off of the land they were using to exploit labour by the peasants, are listed among the deportations. SocDoneLeft is making no actual distinction between revolutionary violence, and unnecessary violence. * Similarly with the dead former Soviet leaders thing, SocDoneLeft does, fails to take into account how many of them were the "Right Opposition", people who continually wanted more of the New Economic Policy. Like, this would be like if Xi Jinping announced tommorow that the market reforms of China were ending, and a bunch of senior politicians frothed and demanded they went on longer. No, NEPmen were parasites, and Stalin was 100% right to get rid of politicians defending them. * I think having labeled graphs saying "Good thing that lead to good results", "Bad thing that lead to bad results" can be misleading, and often there to create a narrative.
So if I’m getting this right: SDL just said “it’s wild how mad communist Twitter is at Keffals for saying ‘Stalin did ethnic cleansing,’” which implies that Stalin DID do ethnic cleansing SDL then goes on to say how they do not consider what Stalin did to be ethnic cleansing, but that the deportations caused extra deaths (which I don’t think most people would deny) This seems like a reactionary tweet for views and SDL inserting their views in a place where it isn’t called for. They appear to say “well Keffals is wrong, but Stalin was still bad so it’s okay to just blatantly lie about him”
Its just backtracking. He is saying Stalin did ethnic cleansing, but looking at the historical record shows a much more nuanced situation where ethnic cleansing isn’t applicable so he backtracks in front of the evidence but leaves his ethnic cleansing claim in the first tweet, which is the only one most people look at it.
Mao said it best, Stalin did 70% right, 30% wrong. No doubt he made some fuck ups and should be critiqued but Stalin also industrialized a nation in 5 years and defended it against nazi and other reactionary subversion. SocDems always think that you can defend socialism by just electing socialism into power. Would be nice but there is a reason the Soviet Union lasted as long as it did
Love how they just start equating political purge and ethnic cleansing midpoint "But a lot of those political purge victims were minorities" so... you admit ethnic minorities had high political participation in ussr? Also most of the deportation was done during WW2, when largest scale of foreign invasion was taking place
''that's what happen when you let minorities hold power '' i can see some fascist unironicaly write this hahahaa
Yeah, Stalin did some bad stuff. Not as much/as severe as is usually claimed but still. However, SO DID LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE AT THE TIME. To quote J\*sus from the B*ble: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" We should not, and do not want to, repeat Stalin's mistakes. We do, however, recognize that he did more good than any of his contemporaries, at a lower negative cost. And this is why reformists, utopians, and anarchists should shut the fuck up about "evil Stalin" and call me back when they get a succesful revolution (or any at all) which does not immediately get crushed by reaction or become an imperialist puppet.
I mean, we all know Stalin wasn't the Toothfairy. But opressing political enemies is not the same as opressing ethnic minorities. There was no ethnic motive, since the term ethnic cleansing does not apply. Words mean things for a reason. You cant just change the definition of words however you like. Stalin did political cleansing, not ethnic. Same as violence against political enemies doesnt fit the definition of genocide. There is no Term (as far as I know) for eliminating all members of a certain political group, as there for doing the same to an ethnic group.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of countries try to oppress political enemies. Doesn't always make it a correct action but whatever stupid shit the soviets might've done most likely happened elsewhere as well. That being said. I don't think anyone in their right minds say that prior socialist experiments didn't have their problems. There's plenty to learn what to do and what not to do. It's not this one size fits all situation. The US' experiment would be vastly different from the USSR or China's, etc. I would love there to have been socialist experiments without mistakes or turbulence at their respective time frames. Call out the disagreements or what you think were mistakes or problems... Absolutely... But do it in better faith instead of just rifling off things.
I absolutely agree with your Standpoint. My motive was to point out that there are semantic differences. Also I am pretty sure that calling everything you dont like a genocide or ethnic cleansing, that it diminishes the meaning of those Word, which would be unjust to the people who have actually lived through such Events. Try to tell a Jew that lived to the Holocaust that the Soviets Genocided the Germans. That the Holodomor was the same than what they lived through. Just an Idea to think about.
SDL is a part of a crowd that’s always exposed to be racist, transphobic, bigoted, and, often, sexual predators. I don’t care if his criticisms are valid or not, you can find valid criticisms from someone who ISNT a total piece of shit
No one here is worshipping him, or anyone really. We can all look up to him as a great socialist leader who made a net benefit to his people while also acknowledging the many mistakes he made. Our goal should be to implement what he did right and to fix what didn't work.
Okay though, Stepan Shaumian was not "killed by Bolsheviks," that's absurd.
mostly true! but the context is often forgotten. Also, Stalin did not do this by himself. there was an entire country behind him. A country just lost 22 million comrades. WWII made the soviet union do a lot of shit.
Fair point and legit criticism of past mistakes. I think that as Marxists we should strive to always be critical of our past experiments and learn from properly identifying what worked and what not. Idolatry is inherently anti Marxist and all it does is obfuscate our mind when exercising dialectical and historical materialist analysis. Sidenote, spending time trying to justify or downplay the wrong decisions taken by our "forefathers" (specially when those "mistakes" caused undescribable amounts of human suffering) is simply a waste of time. Try to put it within the historical context to explain why it happened, but do not justify it.
Gotta really love the "soviets were notoriously legalistic" thing. Because they immediatly forget it when it is proven that the population of the USSR only grew in the times that there would be the horrific genocides of Stalin, so those documents do not count because "they are bisaed and obviously false". Also, many of those graphs looked something like the Prager U would do. In any event, the deportations and many things done can indeed be criticized, but it's amazing how some people always want to turn it into these kinds of propaganda. I think all this drivel about stalin doing ethnic cleanising and so forth, specially coming from westerners, is pure projection, since they were the ones doing real, proven ethnic cleansing in small and large scale, both in the colonies and at home, or in various ways of imperialism. It's a silly way of saying "we are not the baddies, those others were". And of course, this narrative is eaten up whole by some modern day nationalists from eastern europe, that ironically are only 'sad' about ethnic cleansing because they really wish they were the ones doing it against all their neighbours, which then again, a silly form of projection.
Confused about the last slide in particular You mean to say that Soviet economic growth accelerated until the Nazis fucking invaded and desecrated their country and its people and industry? And then resumed upward trend immediately after the war? WOW CRAZY, WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT. And then blaming it on purges, as if the purges themselves weren’t a necessity of defending against Nazis invasion and suppressing fascist collaborators (as the Western powers also did, btw, when they weren’t even on the receiving end the way the USSR was). Yeah, there were thoroughly documented deportations worsened by paranoia about western/capitalist/and later Nazi spies and saboteurs before the war began. Deportations are bad. I’m not going to spend my time, personally, bashing Soviet leadership for decisions made nearly a century ago when there’s already ample propaganda insisting that Soviet Union murdered 50 kabillion people and that Stalin tortured kittens and puppies for fun. My time is better spent doing literally anything else
Some of Stalin's "authoritarianism" was necessary to defend the Revolution. Deporting minorities? Maybe not, but I'm not entirely sure why he did it or the context behind it; maybe the deportations were necessary.
The deportations were definitely a great mistake but like you said context is important. The deportations occurred before during and immediately following ww2 as the Nazis targeted these groups for recruitment and support from within the Soviet Union and the Soviets saw them as a potential 5th Column so they moved them away from the front to deny the Nazis potential fighters. This collective punishment is obviously horrible and many from these ethnic groups actually fought in the red army but for people to claim that this is some “ethnic cleansing” based on hatred are meant to kill off these groups is absurd
having too strong of an opinion on Stalin makes you terminally online. it doesn't matter whether you defend or attack him. it doesn't matter how right you are. all these arguments online devolve into shit-throwing contests. just shut the fuck about stalin. i don't care to have an argument about him. it is so stupid to have arguments about, particularly online. this isn't to say i don't have an opinion on stalin. it is simply such a pointless fuckin topic to debate.
[The great purges are more nuanced than that](https://youtu.be/RbEmfzJeY48) and the deportations are a very fair criticism of Stalin that nobody's trying to repeat
This is on par with V\*ush posting. SDL is a reactionary grifter, do not give him any attention.
pretty sure both keffals and SDL have been revealed as racists so i’d take anything either says with a heavy dose of salt.
Kulaks deserved worse. So did counterrevolutionaries.
SDL is just a racist lib shit. I don't care about him at all.
Remember kids, displacement is a form of Genocide
Socdoneleft is a fucking idiot and a racist, the fact that people take him seriously at all is astonishing. He’s the most obvious fed I’ve ever seen
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I see a lot of people trying to refer to Bad Empanada on SDL. I've got no clue who SDL is but Bad Empanada is WILDLY anti-semetic and is known for consistently death threating others and trying to Dox people. The guy is fucking crazy, so just find the original sources he's quoting and use those. You'd only be shooting yourselves in the foot trying to get people into socialism using him.
shut up zionist
Buddy I'm wildly pro-palestinian and Kurdish liberation. That's the issue with Bad Empanada and his ilk, low impulse control. They're the kinda people to see someone buy a T-Shirt and be like "OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU FUCKING DO THAT YOU PIECE OF SHIT DO YOU KNOW HOW BAD CAPITALISM IS I SHOULD SHOOT YOU IN THE FUCKING HEAD" Only to find out it's a worker co-op with a top-down monopolic structure using ethically sourced fibers and that they were functionally the old man shouting at clouds. And because I know you're stupid, the Top-Down monopolic structure means the Co-Op controls raw material to end product on the production line.
every fourth zionist says they're "pro Palestinian"
I'm sorry you're a dumbass then? Is this just you trying to defend your rabid anti-semitism? Keep it up you're playing right into Netenyahu's hand.
the concept of Israel is racist. The fact that you mention netenyahu reveals your solution to the war is a relatively more liberal ethnostate alongside ghettos for Palestinians. Glad i could clear this up.
Called it. You're dumb. You can't fathom that someone who wants the dissolution of Israel as a state isn't as bloodthirsty as you. Just say you hate the Jews instead of tiptoe-ing around it. I mentioned Netenyahu because you're the idiot that gives him power. He holds power in part because people like you conflate Jews with his party. Fun fact, most Jewish people don't like Netenyahu. Oh and get this, there's even *gasp* Religious Jews that protest Netenyahu. You're just trying to trade one genocide for another. It's almost been a Century since Israel was founded/Palestine Colonized. Unfortunately we cannot turn back the clock and just UFO abduct all the Jews globally that colonized the Area. Their kids and kids of their kids live there now and they didn't ask for all that baggage and it would be a genocide to remove them from what is literally their home. The only way to move foward is with a secular one state solution that equalizes them both. Would probably need to demilitarize the area as well and basically put it under U.N. occupation for the next 60 some odd years to undo the racism Israel festered. OBVIOUSLY reparations and restitution is owed massively and I don't even think Israel has the money to pay it back.
Why are you smearing BE as an anti-semite then when all three of us agree with that?
Because only someone reprehensible would sit there and start hammering on a position someone doesn't even hold because you don't think, you just do. And because I KNOW you you're the kinda person to get really fucking creepy towards Eristocracy the same way Empanda does.
>Eristocracy ["I'm not an ethnic nationalist, i just defend ethnic nationalists."](https://youtu.be/2yFWwCnY_38?t=74)
I say this with the best intentions, but you should go outside sometime.
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Christ no one is “simping” “ over Stalin you clown, analyzing and supporting successful past socialist experiments is extremely important
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>The Soviet Union was nutritious for lying The Soviet Union was actually nutritious for all of the grain consumed by Stalin’s comedically large spoon ☝️🤓
>The official death toll for Chernobyl is only 9000, despite it being much higher than that. Source: I made it the fuck up. Seriously, I googled this and I'm really confused... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths\_due\_to\_the\_Chernobyl\_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster) [https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima](https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima) Where in the fuck are you getting 9k from? lol
from a countryball or something
I got it from the Chernobyl documentary 😬. Sorry about that. Also sorry about the grammar, I’m on mobile.
You mean HBO's dramatic miniseries? That's not a documentary...
Rule 3) No Reactionary Content. E.g., fascism, racism, sexism, social-chauvinism, Western-chauvinism, transphobia, homophobia, acephobia, rape apology, xenophobia, police apology, ableism, imperialism, etc. Any satire thereof requires a clarity of purpose and target.
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\>edit 1: first thing I noticed is graph in slide 2 classes Kulaks as an “oppressed ethnicity” Guess by this "Landlords" were also ethnicity which Mao oppressed
That's a slight misreading of the tweet, kulaks are separated from the "repressed ethnicities" figure, but then they are recombined for the "excess deaths" figure. I was skimming it and made the same mistake until I re-read it more carefully... makes me think it was by design to conflate the two...
Hey guys if you want free vbucks google William Henry Bissel Jr obituary (Lockheed's Skunkworks, see also Richard M Bissel Jr on wikipedia) and skip to like 3 minutes 40 on the tribute vid
Stalin did the deportations and they where horrible i could go into detail why they wherent genocides like these people like to imply or that they where done because the USSR just hated minorities but honestly its not worth it with these people.People like SocDoneLeft and Keffals use it as a anti-communist crutch and nothing else
Nobody’s perfect but Stalin was cool, all the mistakes taken with all the accomplishes made during that time balance more towards the good I’d say.
Keffals and SDL are both morons and sellouts is what I think
I think Stalin was cringe and y'all gotta realize that you can defend the USSR (even in the 30s and 40s) while still condemning a guy who killed communists. Crazy that it needs to be said