6 ms·

> our American NATO allies which seemed to prefer to refer to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”. It wasn't an entirely inappropriate term, given the Holodo

by zeveb 7y ago

> our American NATO allies which seemed to prefer to refer to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”. It wasn't an entirely inappropriate term, given the Holodomor, the Katyn massacre, the massacre of the Cossacks, the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Wall, the gulag system, the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan &c. The U.S. was imperfect too, of course, but most of the badness was non-policy like the My Lai massacre, or evil or wrong policies (e.g. segregation) which pale in comparison, and anyway whatboutism isn't really wise: one should call out misbehaviour anywhere it rears its head. It's fair to say that even in its kinder, gentler post-Lenin and post-Stalin form the Soviet Union was a malign force in the world. 'Evil empire' was a fair shorthand.

billfruit 7y ago
I would'nt be so cocksure as that. Much of western peoples view of Soviet Union is coloured by the cold war propaganda still.(Witness the recent HBO series Chernobyl, even West based Russia-scholars feel that it gives a very inaccurate portrayal of Perestroika era Soviet Union. Even it was made with no Russian/Ukrainian talent either in the front or rear of the camera. Imagine a drama of Three Mile Island, made entirely by Russians, with a wholely Russian cast and crew, how preposterous it would be.). There was much incompetence surely, but pure malice, I think is yet debatable.
- gkilmain 7y ago
  Interesting. I work with a bunch of older Russians and they say it was very accurate.
  - billfruit 7y ago
    See this opinion: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/if-chernobyl-was-made-by-russians-119053101715_1.html https://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/if-chernob... And this too: https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/ https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/ May be RT is not the most reputed organ, but that particular article seemed written with an authentic motive: "These elements of Soviet life may seem like the background to the central human stories, but in fact they dictated how each scene shown in Chernobyl unfolded in real life. And although occasionally the show hits upon the right note, perhaps when it sticks closest to a verbatim recreation, it does not seem to realize it. Most of the time, those involved act wrong on the wrong motivations, talk about the wrong things, and say them in the wrong order with an alien cadence that is more than just a different language." "The most jarring scene is a Soviet minister bargaining with coal miners at gunpoint to persuade them to dig a tunnel under Chernobyl. Moscow mandarins did not negotiate with those 10 rungs below them – they sent down orders and didn’t need bullets to enforce them." "Mazin’s party officials are more like sullen gangsters protecting their own patch – they bully, shout, laugh ostentatiously, and bang their fists on the table. Stellan Skarsgard’s senior cabinet minister threatens to throw Jared Harris’s renowned academic off a helicopter, then to shoot him, but the conversation is as implausible as it would be if it were shown between Vice President George H.W. Bush and physicist Richard Feynman, to pick two contemporaries."
  - kiliantics 7y ago
    Are they Russians in Russia, who supported the Soviet Union? Or Russians that left Russia because the Soviet Union nationalised their land? Most cases of "I know Russians and they say X" or "I know Cubans and they say Y" are claims in the West that are informed by the fleeing bourgeoisie that would of course be critical of the regime change.
    - Koshkin 7y ago
      > because the Soviet Union nationalised their land I don't think they were that old.
meagain3 7y ago
It's interesting how for most of the people the nazis and the germans are two distinct entities, like they have nothing to do each other.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lucian1900 7y ago
The Holodomor is Ukranian fascist propaganda popularised by the Nazis, the Katyn massacre was done by the Nazis, the Cossacks weren't massacred, the 1956 Hungarian revolt was led by local fascists and friendly socialist countries were called to help fight them (not just the USSR), The Gulag Archipelago is fiction, Afghanistan's socialist government asked for help from its ally agains the US-backed local fascists. You're literally repeating fascist and Cold War propaganda. Consider that perhaps the rulers of the US have a material incentive to lie about the kind of politics that threaten their profits. The US is the evil empire, murdering millions across the world to this day.
- davidgay 7y ago
  Lies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
  - lucian1900 7y ago
    Indeed, lies. Wikipedia is full of them. https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/15/news/history/book-grover-furrs-mystery-of-the-katyn-massacre/ https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/15/news/history/book-grover-...
    - macspoofing 7y ago
      Heh. How can you think a fringe, extremist and ideologically-based organization like the "Communist Party of Great Britain" is objective and credible about the USSR? These communist organizations have a vested interest in lying about the humanitarian and economic disaster that 20th-century experimentation with communism was. I suspect you're in that boat as well, in that you couldn't support these communist regimes if the mainstream historical account of their societies is true - right?
      - lucian1900 7y ago
        Do capitalist organisations not have a vested interest in lying about socialism? It's very frustrating that the economic system that vastly improved the material condition of my ancestors is casually slandered by Westerners. Capitalism was imposed on Eastern Europe and now my country is worse off than when my parents were my age. Capitalism is only good for the exploiter, but a disaster for the exploited.
axguscbklp 7y ago
>The U.S. was imperfect too, of course, but most of the badness was non-policy like the My Lai massacre, or evil or wrong policies (e.g. segregation) which pale in comparison I disagree. The biggest badness was support for murderous dictators and paramilitary groups in Iran (1953-1979), Chile (1973-1981), Iraq (at least from 1980-1988 or so), Nicaragua (during the 80s), and numerous other places. This was completely intentional, calculated policy that led to the death of thousands of people.
- vkou 7y ago
  I find it mildly amusing that the parent poster mentions the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as one of an evil empire's many crimes, but in your counterpoints, the now-failed US invasion of Afghanistan is not brought up. (The Soviets had a great, ah, excuse for doing it - they were 'just' trying to combat religious extremism and terrorism... And were 'definitely' not playing balance-of-power games in the Middle East.)
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It just leads to even more and even worse, as it did below. This is why the site guidelines ask people not to post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22534609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22534609.
- zeveb 7y ago
  I don't think that's very actionable direction, because every post, no matte how dryly factual, can trigger someone who reads it. No doubt there is someone reading right now who would react violently to a post about an experiment with statically-typed programming languages, and someone else who is still really unhealthily incensed about the War of Jenkins's Ear. All one can do is apply a reasonable-man standard: would a reasonable man think that a post is starting or perpetuating an ideological flamewar? I don't believe a reasonable man would think that about my post, which I believe falls well within the guidelines.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by zeveb 7y ago

billfruit 7y ago

I would'nt be so cocksure as that. Much of western peoples view of Soviet Union is coloured by the cold war propaganda still.(Witness the recent HBO series Chernobyl, even West based Russia-scholars feel that it gives a very inaccurate portrayal of Perestroika era Soviet Union. Even it was made with no Russian/Ukrainian talent either in the front or rear of the camera. Imagine a drama of Three Mile Island, made entirely by Russians, with a wholely Russian cast and crew, how preposterous it would be.). There was much incompetence surely, but pure malice, I think is yet debatable.

gkilmain 7y ago
Interesting. I work with a bunch of older Russians and they say it was very accurate.
- billfruit 7y ago
  See this opinion: https://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/if-chernobyl-was-made-by-russians-119053101715_1.html https://wap.business-standard.com/article/opinion/if-chernob... And this too: https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/ https://www.rt.com/news/460878-chernobyl-hbo-fake-soviet/ May be RT is not the most reputed organ, but that particular article seemed written with an authentic motive: "These elements of Soviet life may seem like the background to the central human stories, but in fact they dictated how each scene shown in Chernobyl unfolded in real life. And although occasionally the show hits upon the right note, perhaps when it sticks closest to a verbatim recreation, it does not seem to realize it. Most of the time, those involved act wrong on the wrong motivations, talk about the wrong things, and say them in the wrong order with an alien cadence that is more than just a different language." "The most jarring scene is a Soviet minister bargaining with coal miners at gunpoint to persuade them to dig a tunnel under Chernobyl. Moscow mandarins did not negotiate with those 10 rungs below them – they sent down orders and didn’t need bullets to enforce them." "Mazin’s party officials are more like sullen gangsters protecting their own patch – they bully, shout, laugh ostentatiously, and bang their fists on the table. Stellan Skarsgard’s senior cabinet minister threatens to throw Jared Harris’s renowned academic off a helicopter, then to shoot him, but the conversation is as implausible as it would be if it were shown between Vice President George H.W. Bush and physicist Richard Feynman, to pick two contemporaries."
- kiliantics 7y ago
  Are they Russians in Russia, who supported the Soviet Union? Or Russians that left Russia because the Soviet Union nationalised their land? Most cases of "I know Russians and they say X" or "I know Cubans and they say Y" are claims in the West that are informed by the fleeing bourgeoisie that would of course be critical of the regime change.
  - Koshkin 7y ago
    > because the Soviet Union nationalised their land I don't think they were that old.

meagain3 7y ago

It's interesting how for most of the people the nazis and the germans are two distinct entities, like they have nothing to do each other.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lucian1900 7y ago

The Holodomor is Ukranian fascist propaganda popularised by the Nazis, the Katyn massacre was done by the Nazis, the Cossacks weren't massacred, the 1956 Hungarian revolt was led by local fascists and friendly socialist countries were called to help fight them (not just the USSR), The Gulag Archipelago is fiction, Afghanistan's socialist government asked for help from its ally agains the US-backed local fascists. You're literally repeating fascist and Cold War propaganda. Consider that perhaps the rulers of the US have a material incentive to lie about the kind of politics that threaten their profits. The US is the evil empire, murdering millions across the world to this day.

davidgay 7y ago
Lies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre
- lucian1900 7y ago
  Indeed, lies. Wikipedia is full of them. https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/15/news/history/book-grover-furrs-mystery-of-the-katyn-massacre/ https://www.cpgb-ml.org/2018/12/15/news/history/book-grover-...
  - macspoofing 7y ago
    Heh. How can you think a fringe, extremist and ideologically-based organization like the "Communist Party of Great Britain" is objective and credible about the USSR? These communist organizations have a vested interest in lying about the humanitarian and economic disaster that 20th-century experimentation with communism was. I suspect you're in that boat as well, in that you couldn't support these communist regimes if the mainstream historical account of their societies is true - right?
    - lucian1900 7y ago
      Do capitalist organisations not have a vested interest in lying about socialism? It's very frustrating that the economic system that vastly improved the material condition of my ancestors is casually slandered by Westerners. Capitalism was imposed on Eastern Europe and now my country is worse off than when my parents were my age. Capitalism is only good for the exploiter, but a disaster for the exploited.

axguscbklp 7y ago

>The U.S. was imperfect too, of course, but most of the badness was non-policy like the My Lai massacre, or evil or wrong policies (e.g. segregation) which pale in comparison I disagree. The biggest badness was support for murderous dictators and paramilitary groups in Iran (1953-1979), Chile (1973-1981), Iraq (at least from 1980-1988 or so), Nicaragua (during the 80s), and numerous other places. This was completely intentional, calculated policy that led to the death of thousands of people.

vkou 7y ago
I find it mildly amusing that the parent poster mentions the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as one of an evil empire's many crimes, but in your counterpoints, the now-failed US invasion of Afghanistan is not brought up. (The Soviets had a great, ah, excuse for doing it - they were 'just' trying to combat religious extremism and terrorism... And were 'definitely' not playing balance-of-power games in the Middle East.)

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It just leads to even more and even worse, as it did below. This is why the site guidelines ask people not to post like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22534609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22534609.

zeveb 7y ago
I don't think that's very actionable direction, because every post, no matte how dryly factual, can trigger someone who reads it. No doubt there is someone reading right now who would react violently to a post about an experiment with statically-typed programming languages, and someone else who is still really unhealthily incensed about the War of Jenkins's Ear. All one can do is apply a reasonable-man standard: would a reasonable man think that a post is starting or perpetuating an ideological flamewar? I don't believe a reasonable man would think that about my post, which I believe falls well within the guidelines.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]