3 ms·

Perhaps you are making the fallacy of comparing early 20th century communist regimes with today's capitalist society. If you compared them with early 20th centu

Perhaps you are making the fallacy of comparing early 20th century communist regimes with today's capitalist society. If you compared them with early 20th century capitalism or colonialism they start to look much more benign.

int_19h 4y ago
They really don't, though. You can even look at quality of life in Russia itself - conveniently one of the more oppressive capitalist societies at the time - before and after the Bolshevik revolution. (There's this myth that's popular with some lefties that Soviets weren't really that oppressive until Stalin. It's not true - mass executions were already in full swing in 1918.)
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  This is simply untrue. Mass executions of (certain subsets of) the middle and upper classes, alongside electrification and land reform for the rural poor and trade unions and healthcare for the urban poor, meant an extremely significant improvement in the average quality of life for the Russian population.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Have you ever heard the words "prodrazvyorstka" or "kombed"? Bolsheviks literally robbed the peasants - who, to remind, was the actual majority of the population by a factor of 4x of so - blind at gunpoint to feed their forced industrialization in the cities, triggering more than one famine in the process (Holodomor being the most famous). If you look at early Soviet history, it's littered with peasant uprisings for this exact reason. In my hometown in Russia, such an uprising was big enough that Soviets decided to use chemical weapons against the rebels; ironically, I used to live on a street that was named after the guy who signed that order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion
rob74 4y ago
...or comparing communist regimes with the (capitalist-supported) German Nazi regime.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  ... or the brutal capitalist South-American dictatorships sponsored by the US so that South America could be saved from "brutal communist dictatorships" (or agrarian reform, or anything that could harm the profits of American companies).
  - mc32 4y ago
    I don't think there was much United Fruit action in SouthAm. They did worry about losing influence to the Soviets though -the old Domino theory.

int_19h 4y ago

They really don't, though. You can even look at quality of life in Russia itself - conveniently one of the more oppressive capitalist societies at the time - before and after the Bolshevik revolution. (There's this myth that's popular with some lefties that Soviets weren't really that oppressive until Stalin. It's not true - mass executions were already in full swing in 1918.)

wikfwikf 4y ago
This is simply untrue. Mass executions of (certain subsets of) the middle and upper classes, alongside electrification and land reform for the rural poor and trade unions and healthcare for the urban poor, meant an extremely significant improvement in the average quality of life for the Russian population.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Have you ever heard the words "prodrazvyorstka" or "kombed"? Bolsheviks literally robbed the peasants - who, to remind, was the actual majority of the population by a factor of 4x of so - blind at gunpoint to feed their forced industrialization in the cities, triggering more than one famine in the process (Holodomor being the most famous). If you look at early Soviet history, it's littered with peasant uprisings for this exact reason. In my hometown in Russia, such an uprising was big enough that Soviets decided to use chemical weapons against the rebels; ironically, I used to live on a street that was named after the guy who signed that order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion

rob74 4y ago

...or comparing communist regimes with the (capitalist-supported) German Nazi regime.

rbanffy 4y ago
... or the brutal capitalist South-American dictatorships sponsored by the US so that South America could be saved from "brutal communist dictatorships" (or agrarian reform, or anything that could harm the profits of American companies).
- mc32 4y ago
  I don't think there was much United Fruit action in SouthAm. They did worry about losing influence to the Soviets though -the old Domino theory.