Okay, cool, so the USSR was, by your words, less prone to creating a wealth disparity. And lets just not talk about the several million that died under Stalin. Now, the USSR may not have funneled wealth, but in the end, it still collapsed on itself. It did not last, and this was largely due to internal affairs.
As per the second part, sure, I’ll concede to you the pedantic semantics of the word utopia. My point still stands. Don’t get me wrong, if someome were to ask, “Would you rather live in a functioning capitalist society, or a functioning socialist society,” I would choose and tell others they should join the socialist one. My point is that, at some point, that government is still going to go to shit, just because people are people. Though, please do not take this as any sort of statement like, “don’t even try,” because a better life is a better life. If it’s feasable, go for it. It’s just that the core problem (human nature) isn’t going to be solved by a political ideology, rather, human nature will eventually fuck that ideology up.
And lets just not talk about the several million that died under Stalin
Let’s also talk about the tens of millions that were saved under Stalin from Nazi extermination, and about the tens of millions that were saved from hunger, poverty and treatable disease under Stalin, who took over a Soviet Union with a life expectancy of 27 years and died with a Soviet Union with a life expectancy of 60+ years. If you run the numbers, by any reasonable metric, the Soviet Union saved easily 30-40 million people in those years.
just because people are people
That sounds like a sophism, not like any real argument. What’s your point? Socialism fell not because it’s not sustainable, it fell because it appeared in a backward feudal country 100 years behind the capitalist west at its inception, and couldn’t keep up with the progress and technology that the industrialized west + colonies were able to put out. This is changing now, as the biggest communist country is China and it has already overtaken the west in terms of economic output, and it’s a matter of time before communism finally spreads to the rest of the world.
Cool, people were saved, even if you put it to a ratio of dead to saved, it’s still a shitty ratio. And again, it still fell.
I don’t give an ass’s arse that you think it sounds like sophistry. Human beings will fuck an ideology up, full stop. And while China is definitely doing well, modern China isn’t communist.
Cool, people were saved, even if you put it to a ratio of dead to saved, it’s still a shitty ratio.
Is it? Europe at the time was full of colonial powers carrying out genocide in India, Southern Asia and in many places of Africa, the USA was a colonial power emerged out of the genocide of native Americans keeping the entirety of Latin America underdeveloped… The USSR never had a colony and it was a self-sufficient system that didn’t rely on colonialism or neocolonialism, both of which kept and keep billions impoverished and overworked in the global south. Take those things into the ratio, compare countries, and you’ll find that there hasn’t been a country as moral and fair as the USSR.
I don’t give an ass’s arse that you think it sounds like sophistry. Human beings will fuck an ideology up, full stop.
“This may sound like I’m making shit up, but I’m very sure of it, full stop.”
modern China isn’t communist
Chinese people often call it “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. You don’t wanna call it like that, that’s fine, it’s just terminology. The point is that it’s a fundamentally different economic and political system, and I think it’s measurably better than the west in many metrics. If you agree, then you probably agree that we should pursue a similar system, whether you decide to call it communist or not?
Workers in those regions had the same rights as workers anywhere, had self a representation in the government and local administration, and received massive boosts in quality of life through state investment in infrastructure, which ensured similar amounts of hospital beds per capita all over the country. You literally don’t know what “colony” means, there’s a reason why Central Asian countries for example overwhelmingly voted in favour of maintaining the USSR in the 1990 referendum.
Now that those regions have gone back to capitalism, a form of colonialism has returned, leading to disastrous conflicts like the Chechen War and the defunding of local infrastructure in favour of Moscow. Go open a book.
If you think that creation of USSR destroyed the tsarist culture of oppression, your education system has failed you.
Workers in those regions had the same rights
Provided they were Russian or Georgian.
self a representation in the government and local administration
Provided they were communists that spoke Russian.
You literally don’t know what “colony” means
A place that the core country exploits for resources and financial gain while abusing and exploiting their people?
Yeah I do. I live in a former one.
Central Asian countries for example overwhelmingly voted in favour of maintaining the USSR in the 1990 referendum.
And why didn’t they?
Now that those regions have gone back to capitalism, a form of colonialism has returned, leading to disastrous conflicts like the Chechen War and the defunding of local infrastructure in favour of Moscow.
Because the tsar has returned and so will the repression? Or maybe, because they can’t let more colonies leave them because the ones that did are doing so well?
Go open a book.
Yeah, you too. But maybe next time read something good and not something that defends a dead, failed state that brought misery to millions?
Spicy, first time I’ve seen anti-georgian nationalism. Funnily enough, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were Ukrainian, I guess that’s not political representation to you?
A place that the core country exploits for resources and financial gain while abusing and exploiting their people?
This is literally not what happened. I already provided you information about things like hospital beds. Furthermore, every republic had the right to determine its own official language, people had access to education in their language up to 18 years of age (some universities also taught in the local language), most published books and newspapers by number were in the local language, all regions got industrialized though some were at a much more backwards starting point… If your metric for colonization is “extraction of resources”, then surely in the period between 1955 and 1990, in which the USSR was a net exporter of raw goods and hydrocarbons and net importer of industrial goods in the Eastern Block, Poland and Czechoslovakia were colonizing the USSR?
Because the tsar has returned and so will the repression?
Exactly my point, the tsar returned because there was no Tsar in the USSR. That’s why wealth inequality rose through the roof in all former republics after the change ro capitalism.
No, it’s something taken from Stalin’s purge of the military. He removed most of the people who weren’t Russian or Georgian.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev were Ukrainian
Nope:
Both Khrushchev and Brezhnev had Russian parents.
Khrushchev’s father (Sergei) according to family tradition* had apparently been sent away from the family farm when he was old enough and ended up in Yuzhovka. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man, His Era.
Brezhnev’s family apparently migrated to the region as the industrial jobs were opening up in the 1880s or 1890s**. Paul J. Murphy, Brezhnev: Soviet Politician.
some universities also taught in the local language
And some absolutely did not:
Postwar Soviet policies allowed for an ethnic Lithuanian nation, while pushing rival Belarusian conceptions toward oblivion. Right after the war, an interwar Lithuanian communist took the reins in the Lithuanian SSR, and a Lithuanian-language university was established in Vilnius. The Belarusian Communist Party was meanwhile Russified, and wartime suffering became the basis of standard Soviet Belorussian history. By 1970, when a modern narrative of Lithuanian history was thoroughly institutionalized, national history had all but disappeared from Belarusian curricula. By 1980, when most schools in Vilnius taught in Lithuanian, not a single school in Minsk taught in Belarusian. Timothy Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations
all regions got industrialized though some were at a much more backwards starting point…
Their industrialization was often misguided at best and purposefully rigged to fail after dissolution at worst. Most of the countries would be better off had they developed independently.
If your metric for colonization is “extraction of resources”, then surely in the period between 1955 and 1990, in which the USSR was a net exporter of raw goods and hydrocarbons and net importer of industrial goods in the Eastern Block, Poland and Czechoslovakia were colonizing the USSR?
Sarah Paine refers to this as a Doughnut Empire:
Normally when you think of an empire, mother Central is the most developed part. And then there’s the periphery where all the natural resources are taken away. That it was an inverted empire. Russia is the donut. The rich places are places like Czechoslovakia and Poland had been much richer places. And so the Russians – serf owners – are sucking in all the wealth from these places. And I think that’s another reason why the shattering of the Soviet Union when they lost all of their enserfed Eastern Europe, why it was such a mess for Russia, they did not realize, and they still don’t realize the degree to which they were living off the wealth, product produced in the west, the European portions of Russia that since became independent.
But the end result is still the same. If Soviet Union left the Eastern Europe alone, it would be almost as prosperous as the Western Europe is now. They took our best and gave very little in return.
there was no Tsar in the USSR. That’s why wealth inequality rose through the roof in all former republics after the change ro capitalism.
The sad reality of Russia was that the people who were in charge of the dark half of the shadow economy gobbled up most of the former state enterprises put up for sale. They knew how market economy worked and had amassed enough money to buy them out. (Not just rapidly value losing roubles, but US dollars too.) You know, the same shadow economy that you claim was a non-issue.
But at least you’re not simping for Putin’s Russia, so you have that going for you.
The USSR was not self-sufficient for starters, and again, it failed.Because of its own problems. And I’m not making anything up, you’re the one putting massive amounts of spin on things.
Chinese people often call it “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” You don’t wanna call it like that, that’s fine, it’s just terminology. The point is that it’s a fundamentally different economic and political system, and I think it’s measurably better than the west in many metrics. If you agree, then you probably agree that we should pursue a similar system, whether you decide to call it communist or not?
Yes, I would agree, and I don’t see why you seem to think otherwise. I already stated that given a choice between a functional capitalist society and a functioning socialist society I would choose and encourage others to pick the socialist one. You have very little going for you in this debate, and as a result you seem to be increasingly capitulating towards making me into something I’m not in order to cope.
Right now, China is in a good spot, and it also has the benefit of an absolutely massive population. If they can get 1.4 billion people organized, stabilized, and working together they will be an absolute force to be reckoned with, of which only India could compete (though they suck at getting their shit together, currently.) However, since Deng Xiaoping, China has increasingly embraced tactics from other political ideologies to suit the present needs and find what works. If anything, I would say the way China allows its government to evolve while keeping retraints on it is its strength. Also their soft power strategy, but that’s not a topic for now.
The USSR was from the start banned from international trade for the sin of being communist, only after WW2 did world markets open to it. Even then, it didn’t rely on any country for its energetic, food, material, or industrial needs. You can read about this on Robert C. Allen’s “Farm to Factory” or Alec Nove’s “An economic history of the USSR”. I’m not making things up, this is widely known.
No comment on the China thing. But if that’s the model that works, you should seek to establish a Communist Party rule in your country.
Okay, cool, so the USSR was, by your words, less prone to creating a wealth disparity. And lets just not talk about the several million that died under Stalin. Now, the USSR may not have funneled wealth, but in the end, it still collapsed on itself. It did not last, and this was largely due to internal affairs.
As per the second part, sure, I’ll concede to you the pedantic semantics of the word utopia. My point still stands. Don’t get me wrong, if someome were to ask, “Would you rather live in a functioning capitalist society, or a functioning socialist society,” I would choose and tell others they should join the socialist one. My point is that, at some point, that government is still going to go to shit, just because people are people. Though, please do not take this as any sort of statement like, “don’t even try,” because a better life is a better life. If it’s feasable, go for it. It’s just that the core problem (human nature) isn’t going to be solved by a political ideology, rather, human nature will eventually fuck that ideology up.
Let’s also talk about the tens of millions that were saved under Stalin from Nazi extermination, and about the tens of millions that were saved from hunger, poverty and treatable disease under Stalin, who took over a Soviet Union with a life expectancy of 27 years and died with a Soviet Union with a life expectancy of 60+ years. If you run the numbers, by any reasonable metric, the Soviet Union saved easily 30-40 million people in those years.
That sounds like a sophism, not like any real argument. What’s your point? Socialism fell not because it’s not sustainable, it fell because it appeared in a backward feudal country 100 years behind the capitalist west at its inception, and couldn’t keep up with the progress and technology that the industrialized west + colonies were able to put out. This is changing now, as the biggest communist country is China and it has already overtaken the west in terms of economic output, and it’s a matter of time before communism finally spreads to the rest of the world.
Cool, people were saved, even if you put it to a ratio of dead to saved, it’s still a shitty ratio. And again, it still fell.
I don’t give an ass’s arse that you think it sounds like sophistry. Human beings will fuck an ideology up, full stop. And while China is definitely doing well, modern China isn’t communist.
Is it? Europe at the time was full of colonial powers carrying out genocide in India, Southern Asia and in many places of Africa, the USA was a colonial power emerged out of the genocide of native Americans keeping the entirety of Latin America underdeveloped… The USSR never had a colony and it was a self-sufficient system that didn’t rely on colonialism or neocolonialism, both of which kept and keep billions impoverished and overworked in the global south. Take those things into the ratio, compare countries, and you’ll find that there hasn’t been a country as moral and fair as the USSR.
“This may sound like I’m making shit up, but I’m very sure of it, full stop.”
Chinese people often call it “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. You don’t wanna call it like that, that’s fine, it’s just terminology. The point is that it’s a fundamentally different economic and political system, and I think it’s measurably better than the west in many metrics. If you agree, then you probably agree that we should pursue a similar system, whether you decide to call it communist or not?
Picks up a map.
Siberia? The Baltics? Caucasus? Central Asia? Warsaw pact countries?
Those were all Soviet colonies. A lot of them still are Russian colonies. Russia is the last colonial empire that refuses to die.
“USSR BAD!!!” picks map from Tsarist Empire
Workers in those regions had the same rights as workers anywhere, had self a representation in the government and local administration, and received massive boosts in quality of life through state investment in infrastructure, which ensured similar amounts of hospital beds per capita all over the country. You literally don’t know what “colony” means, there’s a reason why Central Asian countries for example overwhelmingly voted in favour of maintaining the USSR in the 1990 referendum.
Now that those regions have gone back to capitalism, a form of colonialism has returned, leading to disastrous conflicts like the Chechen War and the defunding of local infrastructure in favour of Moscow. Go open a book.
If you think that creation of USSR destroyed the tsarist culture of oppression, your education system has failed you.
Provided they were Russian or Georgian.
Provided they were communists that spoke Russian.
A place that the core country exploits for resources and financial gain while abusing and exploiting their people?
Yeah I do. I live in a former one.
And why didn’t they?
Because the tsar has returned and so will the repression? Or maybe, because they can’t let more colonies leave them because the ones that did are doing so well?
Yeah, you too. But maybe next time read something good and not something that defends a dead, failed state that brought misery to millions?
Spicy, first time I’ve seen anti-georgian nationalism. Funnily enough, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were Ukrainian, I guess that’s not political representation to you?
This is literally not what happened. I already provided you information about things like hospital beds. Furthermore, every republic had the right to determine its own official language, people had access to education in their language up to 18 years of age (some universities also taught in the local language), most published books and newspapers by number were in the local language, all regions got industrialized though some were at a much more backwards starting point… If your metric for colonization is “extraction of resources”, then surely in the period between 1955 and 1990, in which the USSR was a net exporter of raw goods and hydrocarbons and net importer of industrial goods in the Eastern Block, Poland and Czechoslovakia were colonizing the USSR?
Exactly my point, the tsar returned because there was no Tsar in the USSR. That’s why wealth inequality rose through the roof in all former republics after the change ro capitalism.
No, it’s something taken from Stalin’s purge of the military. He removed most of the people who weren’t Russian or Georgian.
Nope:
And some absolutely did not:
Their industrialization was often misguided at best and purposefully rigged to fail after dissolution at worst. Most of the countries would be better off had they developed independently.
Sarah Paine refers to this as a Doughnut Empire:
But the end result is still the same. If Soviet Union left the Eastern Europe alone, it would be almost as prosperous as the Western Europe is now. They took our best and gave very little in return.
The sad reality of Russia was that the people who were in charge of the dark half of the shadow economy gobbled up most of the former state enterprises put up for sale. They knew how market economy worked and had amassed enough money to buy them out. (Not just rapidly value losing roubles, but US dollars too.) You know, the same shadow economy that you claim was a non-issue.
But at least you’re not simping for Putin’s Russia, so you have that going for you.
The USSR was not self-sufficient for starters, and again, it failed. Because of its own problems. And I’m not making anything up, you’re the one putting massive amounts of spin on things.
Yes, I would agree, and I don’t see why you seem to think otherwise. I already stated that given a choice between a functional capitalist society and a functioning socialist society I would choose and encourage others to pick the socialist one. You have very little going for you in this debate, and as a result you seem to be increasingly capitulating towards making me into something I’m not in order to cope.
Right now, China is in a good spot, and it also has the benefit of an absolutely massive population. If they can get 1.4 billion people organized, stabilized, and working together they will be an absolute force to be reckoned with, of which only India could compete (though they suck at getting their shit together, currently.) However, since Deng Xiaoping, China has increasingly embraced tactics from other political ideologies to suit the present needs and find what works. If anything, I would say the way China allows its government to evolve while keeping retraints on it is its strength. Also their soft power strategy, but that’s not a topic for now.
The USSR was from the start banned from international trade for the sin of being communist, only after WW2 did world markets open to it. Even then, it didn’t rely on any country for its energetic, food, material, or industrial needs. You can read about this on Robert C. Allen’s “Farm to Factory” or Alec Nove’s “An economic history of the USSR”. I’m not making things up, this is widely known.
No comment on the China thing. But if that’s the model that works, you should seek to establish a Communist Party rule in your country.