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Like I said, I'm a pedant not an apologist. The USSR was a miserable failure, but it was not a totalitarian dictatorship prior to Stalin's rule... "merely" an
by losteric 9y ago
Like I said, I'm a pedant not an apologist.
The USSR was a miserable failure, but it was not a totalitarian dictatorship prior to Stalin's rule... "merely" an authoritarian oligarchy. The Bolshevik's ideology did not align with their actions - they didn't destroy the state, they built it.
Their best achievement was scaring the US into going to the Moon.
- arethuza 9y agoI'd have thought the USSR's greatest achievement was doing most of the fighting in the defeat of the Nazis.
- varjag 9y agoRevolutionary sailors in Petrograd would stop a tram and execute the passengers that did not have rough hands of factory workers.
- baursak 9y agoWas this during the revolution, or much later? Do you have a source?
- varjag 9y agoDmitry Likhatchov memoirs. Early months of revolution, hence still Petrograd. Class struggle is no joke if done properly, this isn't your typical plastering of Che posters in the campus these days.
- baursak 9y agoSo then blaming communism for these actions is a bit of a stretch. It's like blaming capitalism for any atrocities committed by rank and file US soldiers/agents.
- varjag 9y agoI specifically replied to the claim that Bolsheviks were some mild, Singapore-style autocracy in their pre-Stalinist period. They were not, this was systematic, and of course it didn't get much better once Stalin assumed power.
- losteric 9y agoWhat does that have to do with this discussion?
- varjag 9y agoYou were downplaying pre-Stalinist regime, suggesting it was not near as bad. I contrasted it with one of thousand factoids to give a taste of zeitgeist then.