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My favorite part of Mongolian history is when their head refused to mass kill monks... I mean fight with the enemies of the people, so he was invited to Yalta (

My favorite part of Mongolian history is when their head refused to mass kill monks... I mean fight with the enemies of the people, so he was invited to Yalta (or some other resort?) and killed. And a new head was appointed instead. Say what you want, there are countries that achieved way more than USSR, not to mention Mongolia, without mass killings, man made famines, slavery camps, serfs (1960s was the year when Soviet "collective farmers" were salaried for the first time and got a right to get a passport and leave their "farms").

nickserv 5y ago
The communist countries typically enslave parts of their own population, the capitalist countries typically enslave other populations. So obviously it's nicer to live in a capitalist country. "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, communism is the inverse."
nosianu 5y ago
I grew up in East Germany. I was part of the mass events leading to the wall coming down, so you can tell what side I'm on. Still, I hate it with a passion that anytime someone dares to mention some good points of what happened in the "socialist" Eastern countries, and on a purely human level there is plenty even on the system level, comes up with this whataboutism normally thrown at others. Yes those systems had to go. But there was plenty of good stuff there, and rebuking anyone who dares mention some is unhelpful. It's such a random uncontrolled reflex.
- nickpp 5y ago
  Now imagine someone saying what you are saying, but about the nazi death camps: that there was plenty of good stuff there!!! Do you even realise that you are talking about an inhuman sistem that killed millions and shaped the lives on countless others in horrific ways? Please have a little respect for the victims. And it's not a reflex to remind the world how communism really was: it's a duty. Because every time we see a soviet apologist we can see his agenda, his hidden motives and perverted thinking. The propaganda machine did not die with the soviet empire, it is alive and well serving the new master in the East. And the "useful idiots" are all busy digging in the turd of the past to uncover the rare jewels with which they are hoping to blind the world to the horrific truth of what really happened.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > Now imagine someone saying what you are saying, but about the nazi death camps: that there was plenty of good stuff there!!! Nope. The original comment wasn't about death camps. It was about the whole of the country. > Do you even realise that you are talking about an inhuman sistem that killed millions and shaped the lives on countless others in horrific ways? Yes. We do realise that. Probably significantly more than you can imagine. > Please have a little respect for the victims. Ah yeah. A little respect for the victims by... ignoring and disrespecting literally everything else. > Because every time we see a soviet apologist we can see his agenda, his hidden motives and perverted thinking. Every time I see a comment like this, I realise I'm talking to a person completely ignorant of history. Also, history is hard. You can't say "this was all bad, bad, bad, millions dead, nothing good can be said about it". Just as you can't say "this was all good, good, good, nothing bad can be said about it". You insist only on the former. The original comment didn't even begin to approach the latter.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Praise be to Godwin. There's always one, and often several.
    - cxfame 5y ago
      Godwin's law does not apply to the situation when Stalin is mentioned and someone introduces a Hitler comparison. They were both evil but Stalin had the ideological framework that presented him as good.
f6v 5y ago
There’s always this guy on the internet that thinks in absolutes. The world is black and white for him, without any historical context. It’s all about strong words like “man-made famine”, “slavery camps” etc., all feelings and no thinking.
- qlzand 5y ago
  Yes, let's adopt a more flexible stance and call it "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". /s
anovikov 5y ago
Lies. They got passports in 1974 only. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1147485 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1147485 (that pertains only to Kolkhoz workers. Sovkhoz workers were free and had passports from the very beginning, but there were many times fewer of them).
- simonh 5y ago
  A statement can be inaccurate or incomplete without being a lie.
  - anovikov 5y ago
    lol it was a joke! I mean, "good old" Soviet Union was a prison for all of it's population throughout it's existence, but it was also a prison within a prison for 37% of it's population till as late as 1974. Human existence there could hardly be called a modern life at any point of it.
    - simonh 5y ago
      My apologies then, of course. I have seen bald accusations much like that here that were clearly serious so I'm somewhat sensitive to it.
geraneum 5y ago
> Say what you want, there are countries that achieved way more than USSR, without mass killings, man made famines, ... Slavery, colonialism, war mongering, etc. not exclusive to USSR. Well they lost the competition and the winning side likes to warp the reality. I don’t want to take any side. It’s just that I really don’t believe in absolutes.
- ta_ca 5y ago
  > Well they lost the competition and the winning side likes to warp the reality someone posted this[0] a few days ago. [0]https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
  - geraneum 5y ago
    That's an interesting read.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  > I don’t want to take any side. It’s just that I really don’t believe in absolutes. Do you believe that absolutely? On a more serious note, how can you lump the Soviets (and socialist regimes like the CCP) with everything else? It's like conversing with someone who, having been told that Bob murdered Alice, responds by saying that everyone makes mistakes and that, on a good day, Bob could be a nice guy. Communist regimes were at a whole different level of evil. The sheer number of people murdered, the social and cultural destruction and dysfunction it wrought, the deeply warped wordlview it imposed through the tyrannical apparatus of the almighty and pervasive state. The list goes on. I guess dissidents were just being ungrateful, eh? They didn't appreciate the good parts! I will agree that Americans and others should engage in more self-criticism because American culture and its establishment are degenerate and share some eerie similarities with their Soviet counterparts. But this sort of whataboutism doesn't dismiss the glaring truth about the Soviet regime. For someone who says he doesn't believe in "absolutes", you basically demonstrated that you actually do. We're talking about different magnitudes and variety of evil here. People made lasting friendships in concentration camps and gulags, they even found their calling in those awful places[0] in a kind of metaphor for life in general, but no one would say "Eh, you know, it wasn't so bad. There were some good things in those gulags. And after all, American public schools are traumatic and soul-destroying, so..." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ciszek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ciszek
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads into total flamewar hell. I realize that the USSR remains a difficult and polarizing topic in a lot of ways, but the GP commenter was posting in a human way and you responded with the internet equivalent of guns blazing. That's not cool. We're trying to have curious conversation here, not smite enemies. I'm sure that you have excellent reasons for feeling the way that you do on this topic. Nevertheless it's not cool, on this site, to rush into ideological or political battle when strong feelings are activated. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. If you or anyone want more explanation, this set of past comments might be helpful for understanding what we're looking for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

nickserv 5y ago

The communist countries typically enslave parts of their own population, the capitalist countries typically enslave other populations. So obviously it's nicer to live in a capitalist country. "Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, communism is the inverse."

nosianu 5y ago

I grew up in East Germany. I was part of the mass events leading to the wall coming down, so you can tell what side I'm on. Still, I hate it with a passion that anytime someone dares to mention some good points of what happened in the "socialist" Eastern countries, and on a purely human level there is plenty even on the system level, comes up with this whataboutism normally thrown at others. Yes those systems had to go. But there was plenty of good stuff there, and rebuking anyone who dares mention some is unhelpful. It's such a random uncontrolled reflex.

nickpp 5y ago
Now imagine someone saying what you are saying, but about the nazi death camps: that there was plenty of good stuff there!!! Do you even realise that you are talking about an inhuman sistem that killed millions and shaped the lives on countless others in horrific ways? Please have a little respect for the victims. And it's not a reflex to remind the world how communism really was: it's a duty. Because every time we see a soviet apologist we can see his agenda, his hidden motives and perverted thinking. The propaganda machine did not die with the soviet empire, it is alive and well serving the new master in the East. And the "useful idiots" are all busy digging in the turd of the past to uncover the rare jewels with which they are hoping to blind the world to the horrific truth of what really happened.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Now imagine someone saying what you are saying, but about the nazi death camps: that there was plenty of good stuff there!!! Nope. The original comment wasn't about death camps. It was about the whole of the country. > Do you even realise that you are talking about an inhuman sistem that killed millions and shaped the lives on countless others in horrific ways? Yes. We do realise that. Probably significantly more than you can imagine. > Please have a little respect for the victims. Ah yeah. A little respect for the victims by... ignoring and disrespecting literally everything else. > Because every time we see a soviet apologist we can see his agenda, his hidden motives and perverted thinking. Every time I see a comment like this, I realise I'm talking to a person completely ignorant of history. Also, history is hard. You can't say "this was all bad, bad, bad, millions dead, nothing good can be said about it". Just as you can't say "this was all good, good, good, nothing bad can be said about it". You insist only on the former. The original comment didn't even begin to approach the latter.
- simonh 5y ago
  Praise be to Godwin. There's always one, and often several.
  - cxfame 5y ago
    Godwin's law does not apply to the situation when Stalin is mentioned and someone introduces a Hitler comparison. They were both evil but Stalin had the ideological framework that presented him as good.

f6v 5y ago

There’s always this guy on the internet that thinks in absolutes. The world is black and white for him, without any historical context. It’s all about strong words like “man-made famine”, “slavery camps” etc., all feelings and no thinking.

qlzand 5y ago
Yes, let's adopt a more flexible stance and call it "you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs". /s

anovikov 5y ago

Lies. They got passports in 1974 only. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1147485 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1147485 (that pertains only to Kolkhoz workers. Sovkhoz workers were free and had passports from the very beginning, but there were many times fewer of them).

simonh 5y ago
A statement can be inaccurate or incomplete without being a lie.
- anovikov 5y ago
  lol it was a joke! I mean, "good old" Soviet Union was a prison for all of it's population throughout it's existence, but it was also a prison within a prison for 37% of it's population till as late as 1974. Human existence there could hardly be called a modern life at any point of it.
  - simonh 5y ago
    My apologies then, of course. I have seen bald accusations much like that here that were clearly serious so I'm somewhat sensitive to it.

geraneum 5y ago

> Say what you want, there are countries that achieved way more than USSR, without mass killings, man made famines, ... Slavery, colonialism, war mongering, etc. not exclusive to USSR. Well they lost the competition and the winning side likes to warp the reality. I don’t want to take any side. It’s just that I really don’t believe in absolutes.

ta_ca 5y ago
> Well they lost the competition and the winning side likes to warp the reality someone posted this[0] a few days ago. [0]https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/ https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
- geraneum 5y ago
  That's an interesting read.
bobthechef 5y ago
> I don’t want to take any side. It’s just that I really don’t believe in absolutes. Do you believe that absolutely? On a more serious note, how can you lump the Soviets (and socialist regimes like the CCP) with everything else? It's like conversing with someone who, having been told that Bob murdered Alice, responds by saying that everyone makes mistakes and that, on a good day, Bob could be a nice guy. Communist regimes were at a whole different level of evil. The sheer number of people murdered, the social and cultural destruction and dysfunction it wrought, the deeply warped wordlview it imposed through the tyrannical apparatus of the almighty and pervasive state. The list goes on. I guess dissidents were just being ungrateful, eh? They didn't appreciate the good parts! I will agree that Americans and others should engage in more self-criticism because American culture and its establishment are degenerate and share some eerie similarities with their Soviet counterparts. But this sort of whataboutism doesn't dismiss the glaring truth about the Soviet regime. For someone who says he doesn't believe in "absolutes", you basically demonstrated that you actually do. We're talking about different magnitudes and variety of evil here. People made lasting friendships in concentration camps and gulags, they even found their calling in those awful places[0] in a kind of metaphor for life in general, but no one would say "Eh, you know, it wasn't so bad. There were some good things in those gulags. And after all, American public schools are traumatic and soul-destroying, so..." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ciszek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ciszek

dang 5y ago

Please don't take HN threads into total flamewar hell. I realize that the USSR remains a difficult and polarizing topic in a lot of ways, but the GP commenter was posting in a human way and you responded with the internet equivalent of guns blazing. That's not cool. We're trying to have curious conversation here, not smite enemies. I'm sure that you have excellent reasons for feeling the way that you do on this topic. Nevertheless it's not cool, on this site, to rush into ideological or political battle when strong feelings are activated. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. If you or anyone want more explanation, this set of past comments might be helpful for understanding what we're looking for: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...