I’ve already thought of this quite a bit and reached a conclusion, that I like to call “the gulag museum problem”.
As a communist myself: many people were brought unjustly to prisons in the hardest years of the USSR and suffered greatly there, probably hundreds of thousands of innocents. Should there be a museum dedicated to them? Yes.
However, this is focusing on one event in one particular difficult time of history in one particular socialist country. If we start counting the victims of capitalism and colonialism, and compare to communism, we will reach astonishing numbers. The problem is therefore not the existence of the gulag museum: the problem is that for every gulag museum, there should be 20 museums about the victims of capitalism/imperialism/colonialism.
I’m aware
I have 1 big problem with this argument.
Please don’t misunderstand. This is about the argument and nothing else.
This community likes to remind everyone that no communist country was allowed to just be communists in peace. So there was no “proper” communist country.
So if you want to count the death of those people as death due to communism, that is already a questionable decision for some people.
But then you want to compare the relatively short life of “communism” to capitalism and colonialism… that comparison is bad.
Is it like comparing covid with aids by total deaths, there is no way, you will come to any conclusion worthwhile.
I don’t think that is a winning argument for anything.
One problem with your argument here is that we actually do believe that there have been proper socialist countries governed by communist parties, it’s just that we understand that they exist under siege and aren’t “pure” like so many western leftists require. They are absolutely proper, but there is excess and mistakes made by administrative bodies meant to protect socialism that exist out of a genuine necessity to fight counter-revolution and imperialist aggression.
Further, we can compare peer countries by how well each system has worked at satisfying the needs of the people, where socialism absolutely has superiority. Capitalism’s death toll is higher both by rate and by magnitude as well.
Socialist countries
thanks for making my point. Socialist is not communist.
exist under siege […] mistakes […] meant to protect socialist that exist out of genuine necessity to fight
So they weren’t allowed to exist in the same comparable peace than capitalistic nations, and might have been forced to cause more harm due to it.
can compare peer countries
Yes but that is not what the comment proposed and is a different argument and please remember the previous points. And of course, the peer countries comparison doesn’t include the possible long term struggles and issues that the whole history of e.g. colonialism and capitalism can show. But communism (not socialism) doesn’t have that history. And socialism might have more of a history but on a much smaller scale than colonialism and capitalism and again in not the most fair environment. So the argument is very different and the original argument is flawed.
Socialism is pre-communism. Communism itself cannot fully exist until global socialism, but each individual country can begin the transition between capitalism and communism called “socialism.” Socialist states aren’t communist not because of imperialist aggression, but because communism itself is a higher, global mode of production.
Socialist countries exist under siege, but generally commit far less harm than capitalist countries.
Returning to the original comment, you just seem generally mixed up on terms and are drawing false conclusions from them.
I am not mixing up the terms.
Socialist countries aren’t communist, you call them pre-communist which highlights my point.
In my original comment, I make clear that if you want to count these countries as communist countries, you can but then you have to acknowledge the siege (as you call it). In this comment, you agree that they (the socialist countries that you chose to count as communist countries to even get this far into the argument) are under siege and consequently don’t behave as they would otherwise. By agreeing to that, you agree to my second point. You keep repeating the “less than capitalist countries” as if i was arguing that at all. Nowhere i said anything about them doing more or less harm than any other entity.
You should really ask yourself what you are arguing with whom. I mean i could start arguing with you that the earth isn’t flat and act like you said that if that helps you to understand.
Socialist countries aren’t communist, you call them pre-communist which highlights my point.
This is just quibbling over semantics & context. When communists run a state, yes that state is technically socialist/pre-communist. That’s why those states have “Socialist” in their names and not “Communist.” There is never going to be a “communist state,” because definitionally communism’s long-term end-goal is a classless society. And since we define the state as a system which protects the interests of one economic class over others, such a society would definitionally be stateless.
So when someone—assuming they know what they’re talking about—says “communist state/country,” they mean a communist-led socialist state.
I am not mixing up the terms.
You are mixing up the terms
Where? Give 1 example.
Communism is both a mode of production, and a process. Socialist countries run by communist parties are properly communist in that they are building communism in the real world. This is why Marx states in The German Ideology that
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
The point isn’t that socialist countries would be in that higher mode of production if they weren’t under siege, or that they aren’t sufficiently communist, but that they must build up state power to resist this siege, and as a consequence this state power sometimes commits excesses and mistakes.
So you agree with me. Great. Good conversation.
So they weren’t allowed to exist in the same comparable peace than capitalistic nations
I think this logic is flawed. Capitalism isn’t allowed to exist in peace either, and this logic leads to constructs like “Pax Romana” getting credibility. Capitalist countries have also coexisted with the constant threat of other capitalist countries, and carried out repression accordingly.
Not in the same way or for the same reason.
You weren’t a target for being capitalist.
Some people just seem to need the lies to be true 🤷 Back when I was a bog-standard Western liberal like almost everyone else, I believed all the same crap, but at least I didn’t build my personality around it.
trotsky had the right idea - less bureaucracy in the communist party and more focus on international revolution. seriously!
do you really think i should study marxist-leninist theory a bit more and often?
The revolutions in Vietnam and China demonstrate that no, the peasants had revolutionary potential.
The USSR did focus on international revolution, and aided many countries in their revolutions. Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution was based on a distrust of the peasantry, believing them to undermine socialist construction and thus requiring a revolution in western Europe for long-term socialism in Russia. This ended up being false, and moreover, had the soviets not committed to building up heavy industry as much as they had, they would have lost to the Nazis in World War II.
stalin was very suspicious of the peasants, thus proving trotsky’s point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union
Stalin’s point was that it was better to focus on solidifying socialism in Russia over launching a suicidal attack on the peasantry immediately after establishing state power Stalin was wary of the peasantry, but did not follow through with Trotsky’s plan.
Further, there’s no evidence that the USSR would have been better off administratively had they elected Trotsky. The Fourth International itself was a mess, and Trotskyist parties are notorious for their lack of discipline and their tendency to endlessly split, rather than form a unified line and push for it. The Trotskyist parties that survive actually often return to Marxism-Leninism because of this, because Marxism-Leninism is correct.
is “marxism-leninism-trotskyism” (a fusion of ml ideas and trotskyism) possible?
Trotskyism is Trotsky’s ideas of Marxism and Leninism, so no.
If Trotsky’s ideas had been implemented, the USSR would have been ethnically cleansed by the Nazis, and the rest of Europe would have fallen to them, save Italy & Spain which were already fascist.
what about bukharin? if he takes over instead of stalin and his ideas were implemented, what would the ussr be like? the ussr be better off?
No. Bukharin was both a Mechanist and a right-opportunist that rejected collectivization, and ultimately stood against the USSR.
I think it’s better for you to confront the ghost of Stalin than focus on what the USSR may have been had someone else been elected.
maybe Grigory Zinoviev, perhaps?
Why the alt-history focus?
i’m just asking what would the ussr would be like if someone other than stalin (or trotsky) led the country after lenin (like zinoviev)
Learn today when listening to MapleTakes on Twitch (Canada Comrade). Canada has a “Victims of Communism” monument that they put up. Here is a picture of it blacked out like it’s the Epstein files.
They had to black it out because people kept realizing they were all fucking Nazis.
Oh, Canada. 🫣
omg i forgot he did a fist pump while everyone applauded. That man would have loved to kill you in your crib Mr. Z.
Even with all the projection and finger pointing that nazis do, this might be the best synchronicity ever. That’s not to suggest it’s coincidental, which is the best part.
> victims of communism monument
> emptygod tier bit
Should have left those names, but etch a little swastika next to every Nazi.
Ws of Communism
wasn’t there an org that counted nazi soldiers killed by the red army, as well as aborted babies in socialist countries, as “victims of communism”?
Yup, and they’re used as the foundational source for Soviet death toll. Wikipedia uses them, even.
It gets dumber: they also counted soviets killed by nazis in ww2 and the hypothetical children that dead eastern front nazis never had as victims of communism
That would be the Black Book of Communism.
Yep, was expecting to see the BBoC mentioned.
Emphasizing the part in that wiki page where they mention two of the co-authors disavowed the book as the main author was apparently ‘desperate’ to increase the number of counted victims in the ridiculous ways RiverRock mentioned.
Also worth emphasising that Wikipedia still uses the Black Book as a source in its anti-communist articles
I wonder if anyone has a number on how many people capitalism has killed.
At least 10 million every year from starvation and preventable diseases.
Most of the people not alive today… sometimes the torture is spread out over 80 years or more. It’s a horrible tragedy of needless human suffering.
Can we get a victims of capitalism memorial foundation?
The names wouldn’t fit
One of the beauties of socialism is that they do construction well. The CPC would be able to do it.
Ever see the African Renissiance monument build by the DPRK in Senegal? A world class piece of art
Massive statues like that give me the creeps but I can’t deny that it is awesome.
Also many victims just permanently disappeared from history
Yes, but not until after the revolution.
Sure, the USSR did kill a lot of Nazis. But to claim all of the victims of communism were Nazis is bullshit
Lol, I didn’t have to read the URL to know what that link was going to be. Wikipedia continues to be The Holy Scripture to western shitlibs
You should really counter point with your own source if you’re going to tell someone their source is insufficient
This dead horse was already beaten half a day ago in this thread.
No. That’s not remotely how that works.
I would argue that Wikipedia while not a great primary source has pretty stringent guidelines for providing sources in it’s articles. So you’ve answered with a thought terminating cliche and refused to elaborate. In other words you’re incorrect and to fragile to admit it.
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Shitlibs when the Holy Scripture is questioned.
It is the academic consensus even among western scholars that the Ukrainian famine was indeed a famine, not an intentional genocide. This is not my opinion, but, again, the overwhelming consensus even among the most anti-communist historians like Robert Conquest who described himself as a “cold warrior.” The leading western scholar on this issue, Stephen Wheatcroft, discussed the history of this in western academia in a paper I will link below.
He discusses how there was strong debate over it being a genocide in western academia up until the Soviet Union collapsed and the Soviet archives were open. When the archives were open, many historians expected to find a “smoking gun” showing that the Soviets deliberately had a policy of starving the Ukrainians, but such a thing was never found and so even the most hardened anti-communist historians were forced to change their tune (and indeed you can find many documents showing the Soviets ordering food to Ukraine such as this one and this one).
Wheatcroft considers Conquest changing his opinion as marking an end to that “era” in academia, but he also mentions that very recently there has been a revival of the claims of “genocide,” but these are clearly motivated and pushed by the Ukrainian state for political reasons and not academic reasons. It is literally a propaganda move. There are hostilities between the current Ukrainian state and the current Russian state, and so the current Ukrainian state has a vested interest in painting the Russian state poorly, and so reviving this old myth is good for its propaganda. But it is just that, state propaganda.
Discussions in the popular narrative of famine have changed over the years. During Soviet times there was a contrast between ‘man-made’ famine and ‘denial of famine’.‘Man-made’ at this time largely meant as a result of policy. Then there was a contrast between ‘man-made on purpose’, and ‘man-made by accident’ with charges of criminal neglect and cover up. This stage seemed to have ended in 2004 when Robert Conquest agreed that the famine was not man-made on purpose. But in the following ten years there has been a revival of the ‘man-made on purpose’ side. This reflects both a reduced interest in understanding the economic history, and increased attempts by the Ukrainian government to classify the ‘famine as a genocide’. It is time to return to paying more attention to economic explanations.
I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy. – I. V. Stalin, 1943
Victims of Communism is a specific propaganda campaign from various right wing orgs. Hence the capitalization. It attempts to draw an equivalence to mass murder performed by right wing regimes in order to delegitimize left alternative. All the while pushing right wing agendas. It’s also why such memorials often feature nazis as victims. A recent example.
Yes, there was a famine in the 1930s. It was largely due to adverse weather conditions, coupled with the bourgeois farmers called “kulaks” killing their livestock and burning their crops to resist the Red Army collectivizing agriculture. However, to paint those who died as “victims of communism” when the communists were the ones that finally ended famine in a region where famine was historically common and regular is hardly genuine.
The term “Holodomor,” the right-wing theory describing a man-made and intentional famine, was created by Ukrainian nationalists in the 80s. It was named as such to draw direct connection to the Holocaust, and as such is a form of Holocaust trivialization. Archival evidence proves that there was no such intentional famine, but it is used politically to demonize socialism in the real world, wielded like a club.
It was named as such to draw direct connection to the Holocaust
Interesting conspiracy theory right there. It’s spelt “Голодомор” in Ukrainian. Etymologically it is based on two Slavic words: “голод” (hunger) and either “мор” (mass death caused by disease) or “морити” (to exhaust / to tire / to wear out).
The term itself comes far after the actual 1930s famine and the Holocaust itself. Famine is already a word in Ukrainian, and was common before collectivizing agriculture. The term itself was coined by Ukrainian nationalists that opposed the socialist system and drew on Nazi propaganda.
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If you’re going to make up bullshit, you should first try learning at least the basics about what you’re talking about, so you don’t completely give away that you’re making up bullshit by making blatantly wrong mistakes like thinking Kulaks are an ethnicity.
The Kulaks’ “culture” was to slave-drive peasants into farming their land for them. That’s culture that should be killed just as the Confederates’ “cuture” was.
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Lol. Nice try, but you already revealed you know jack shit about the subject - to the point you thought Kulaks were an ethnicity. So stop trying to make up more bullshit.
Ukrainian culture was preserved. Bourgeois farming was replaced with collectivized farming, and those who fought the red army and made the famine worse were targeted. Russians did not replace Ukrainians nor did the soviets incite a famine, adverse weather conditions started a famine and the kulaks made it worse by torching their farms and killing their livestock to protest collectivization.
You are parroting literal Nazi propaganda. I know Canada has a thing for Nazis, but this is beyond the normal levels.
It’s okay .ml, someday you will return to reality with the rest of us and look past the decades old propaganda.
This from the dumbass who thought Kulaks were an ethnic group.
You keep repeating literal Nazi propaganda, unsourced. I’m already in reality and am looking past decades old Nazi propaganda, you should try it sometime.
no u
The irony of saying this as someone ensconced in human history’s biggest propaganda bubble to people who have gone to the time and effort to educate themselves through primary sources is staggering, what color is the sky in this reality of yours?
Kulaks were not an ethnic group, but a class of bourgeois farmers. That’s like saying the US outlawing slavery “killed Confederate culture.” The famine was not preventable, and there’s absolutely no evidence that the soviets wanted to replace ethnic minorities, the opposite is true. The soviets tried to preserve Ukrainian culture while establishing a common “soviet identity,” in line with being a multinational federation.
The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.
Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Comrade Kosior!
You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation invillages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?
Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.
Sincerely, J. Stalin
The origins of such a story of forced starvation came from the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter in 1933. Völkischer Beobachter reported on it as intentional, and then spread the story around further. We are not qustioning the legitimacy of the famine, but whether or not it was intentional, which all evidence post-opening of the soviet archives points to it not being intentional.
The Kulaks killed by the Soviets were primarily Ukranian, and many farmers who weren’t Kulaks were still branded enemies of the state to deport them and kill off Ukranian independence and culture. It is clear they were not trying to preserve Ukranian culture, but to subvert and replace it and use the valuable agricultural land.
If that was the intent, why were they given their own Soviet Socialist Republic and not just folded into the Russian one? Would-be conquerors don’t give statehood and political autonomy to the people they’re trying to erase and absorb.
Clearly this process was not successful. If the Soviets were not trying to directly control the land and people to slowly assimilate, why wasn’t Ukraine a satellite republic like Poland?
Because “soviet” isn’t a nationality, but a multinational federation of socialist republics.
The slave owners killed by the northerners were primarily white southerners that tortured and killed slaves. Kulaks were not an ethnicity to be targeted for eradication, but a class that often violently resisted collectivization. Kulaks that complied were largely left alone.
As I proved to you, the soviets actually supported the preservation of Ukrainian identity, which was oppressed by the Tsarist empire. The soviet union was a multinational federation, it was in everyone’s interests for people to not starve, as you need people to farm. Russians were not trying to replace Ukrainians, a naturally occuring famine was made worse by kulaks resisting collectivization. After collectivization, crop yields were higher, and famine eradicated.
You are parroting literal Nazi propaganda.
many farmers who weren’t Kulaks were still branded enemies of the state to deport them and kill off Ukranian independence and culture
If the USSR was trying to kill their culture, they weren’t very good at it, because Ukrainians are still speaking Ukrainian to this day.
It is clear they were not trying to preserve Ukranian culture
but to subvert and replace it and use the valuable agricultural land.
No shit. That’s the point of socialism: to expropriate bourgeois private property and redistribute it to the masses.
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14·20 hours agoEvery year since 1929 has seen the publication of more books in the Ukrainian language than were published in the whole 118 years before the Revolution.
What a novel way to attempt to wipe out a language, publishing books in it.
If the USSR was trying to kill their culture, they weren’t very good at it, because Ukrainians are still speaking Ukrainian to this day.
Taking this argument in isolation, it’s the same argument used today to say Israel isn’t conducting a genocide. “If Israel wanted to genocide Palestinians, they aren’t very good at it, cause only 70K killed.”
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Taken in isolation, THIS argument could be used to cast the Allied invasion of Italy in WW2 as a project of genocide. They did kill a number of Italians, after all.
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Does Israel recognize the state of Palestine?
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Exactly. Another great example from my country is Milada Horáková who was a member of a movement against nazis and later against communists and was murdered by communists.
Just the other day.
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This is our platform, dummy. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Lemmy
Edit to add:
- German Philosophy professor Hans-Georg Moeller:
This is our platform, dummy.
And boy do they hate that :(
Communists exist whether you like it or not. Communists made Lemmy to begin with.
go back to reddit
It’s not exclusively Nazis. There was a big communist wave in Sweden during the 20s and 30s where some people chose to move to the Soviet Union with the promise of a better life and they paid a high price for it.
https://sverigesradio.se/play/avsnitt/2595324
The common people is often overlooked or forgotten and their voices gets silenced.
- Reads The Gulag Archipelago
- Look inside
- The victims of Communism are it’s is own people
Rather than reading fiction, you could read something like Russian Justice if you wanted to learn how the soviet legal system worked.
See also Carl Madsens visit to a Soviet Prison in 1965 (Excerpts from The Good Doctor, also in there a look at the GDR legal system, which for those that have read Russian Justice will see some similarities.) Potentially Justice in Moscow George Fifer, and for the nerds Soviet Administration of Criminal Law Judah Zelitch.
Great recs, comrade! 🫡
Oh right, also this article Soffiyah Elijah: Lessons from Cuba’s Incarceration Model in which I see similarities to the other books/excerpts I recommended.
Oh awesome! Cuba’s an area I need more development on, thanks for the rec!
Even the author’s wife described the book as “folklore” lmao
‘Ex-wife’
- Reads a book of fiction by a treasonous Nazi sympathizer
Try non-fiction
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Try harder
Calling it nonfiction don’t make it so. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns-exwife-says-gulag-is-folklore.html
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Socialist states do make mistakes, but linking a work of fiction and pretending the “victims of communism were its own people” is just wrong.
The funny part is, I was born and raised in a socialist country and it was shit.
Some were born in a capitalist country that is shit, in fact even more shit than the GDR. What’s your point?
my parents tell me all the time about the slaves we used to have before the reds forced us to leave or be killed
Some of us are as well and there are differences of opinion on that matter. 😄
We’re leftists, that’s exactly our thing.
We’re leftists
Somehow I doubt that one.
I don’t normally consider people that use anti-communist pejoratives like “tankie” to be genuine in their leftism. Especially those that try to pretend works of fiction are genuine evidence against socialism.
Which one
The other Germany.
Damn, how old are you?
Older than the internet.
Yeah, but you’d have to be at least 55 to have lived in east Germany as an independent adult
