Comment on Happy anniversary of the day absolutely nothing happened at nowhere square!
gmtom@lemmy.world 20 hours agoI mean yeah capitalism and imperialism go hand in hand.
But you’re willfully ignoring when “communist” countries do the same. Do you think the soviet oppression of eastern Europe is fundamentally different than the European oppression of Africa
And no, I’m talking about ww2, I’m talk about Holodomor and the Great Chinese Famine. I’m sure you’ll try and find excuses for them like a capitalist would for the bengal or Irish famines.
AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 18 hours ago
If you don’t think they’re fundamentally different it means you’re not what you’re talking about. To this day, university students in Morocco and Algeria study in French, ask a Polish graduate from the 70s what language they used in university.
Look at the material exports not just during the colonial era but today in countries like Burkina Faso, whose 70% of exports are precious metals and 80% of exports go to Switzerland, and compare that to the Soviet Union providing raw goods and fossil fuels at international market prices to countries in the COMECON and importing manufactured, high value-added goods therefore subjecting itself to the short end of the stick of unequal exchange and mercantilism, in an effort to subsidise the industrialisation of said countries.
Look at educational outcomes, life expectancy, working rights in Communist Estonia and compare them to the Belgian Congo genocide or to Spanish invasion of Morocco and the status of moroccan citizens in occupied zones.
The Soviet Union was forced to sacrifice 27 mullion human lives in the war against Nazism, and it successfully rid Eastern Europe of it, saving it from being a German colony subjected to genocide and extermination, slavery, de-industrialization and resource exploitation, and instead industrialised its entire area of influence, eliminated landlords and serfdom, instituted huge unions, and did this all without resorting to the exploitation of people in the Global South. Come on, find a 60 year-old person from the Baltics or from Eastern Europe and ask them about worker rights, healthcare, education, pensions or access to housing during communism. And now go to fucking Libya and ask the same to someone who endured Italian colonisation.
You literally have no idea what you’re comparing.
gmtom@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Oh yeah I’m sure the Polish people are so glad the soviets “saved them from Nazism” after they struck a deal with hitler and invaded their country together. And I’m sure they were even more greatful when the soviet soldiers rated their way through Poland on their way to Berlin.
I’m sure the Ukrainians appreciate the Russians brutally suppressing their independence, forcing them to die en mass against the Nazis, often times not even being armed and sent to the front lines, then having their natural resources stripped, opressed and subject to genocide.
And it’s frankly beyond telling you refuse to even acknowledge my points about Holodomor, because doing so would mean you either have to acknowledge the atrocities committed by the soviets, or go full nutjob conspiracy theorist on it to deny it happened or try and claim it wasn’t actually the soviets fault.
And as for your points about standards of counties, you only have to look at Germany. Wasters Germany still feels the effects of soviet oppression to this day, it’s falls behind the west of thr country in almost every metric. Lookup the Brehznev doctrine that the soviets used to retroactively justify it’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and their policy of “Russofication” which to anyone with eyes is blatant cultural imperialism. There deportations of multiple ethnic groups to wastelands in the east of Russia in order to cleanse those areas and replace them with ethnic Russians while also getting a defacto slave work force.
I fucking hate tankies so much.
AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com 17 hours ago
Polish nationalists are immensely russophobic and reactionary, making that claim is like asking Spaniards (I’m one myself) about the literal golden age of Islam in Al-Andalus: you’ll get a distorted, nationalist, racist and islamophobic account based on vibes instead of the material reality. Polish people can think whatever they want after 35 years of nationalist right-wing propaganda (look at the results of their latest elections): the Soviets saved their fucking guts from genocide and Nazism, and yes I’m saying the Soviets, not just Russians: Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakh, Georgian… All of the people from the Soviet Union did the most immense sacrifice to rid Europe from Nazism. And liberal Nazi apologists like you will never forgive them from doing so.
This is especially funny. Ukraine literally obtained autoctonous political representation and the state of a republic for the first time in history during the Bolshevik revolution. There are literal letters between Rosa Luxembourg (whom you probably love because she didn’t actually defeat Nazis) and Lenin in which Lenin defends the right of Ukrainian self-determination and the creation of a Ukrainian republic, institutions and a sense of nationality, in opposition to Rosa claiming Ukrainian nationalism shouldn’t exist (interesting read if you truly care about the origins of Ukrainian nationalism and the people of Ukraine and you’re not just concern trolling). Ukraine industrialised thoroughly during Soviet times and had very comparable living standards to the rest of the Union, which can’t be said after the perpetual crisis that took place once the Soviet Union was illegally dissolved against the desire of the majority of Ukrainians (71% of them voted for the Soviet Union to remain in the 1991 referendum). Your analysis is vibes-based taking western propaganda as a source and not actual historical events.
Why this fucking focus on Ukrainians? Belarus lost literally 1 in 4 people in the war against Nazism, how come you don’t make the same claims about Belarusians? The answer is because your analysis is ahistorical and not based on actual events, but on anticommunist nazi-adjacent nationalist russophobic propaganda. You’re using literal Nazi propaganda of “the unarmed human wave tactics” that featured in Nazi posters during the war after the defeat in Stalingrad, YOU ARE SIDING WITH THE NAZIS.
What part did I not acknowledge? There was a hunger episode in the early 30s in areas of the Soviet Union as a consequence of land collectivisation policy, is that not enough for you? Or do you need to fabricate genocidal intent because of your obsessive victimization of Ukrainians, completely disregarding the millions of Russian and Central Asian deaths in the hunger because they don’t suit your political nazi-adjacent agenda?
Eastern Germany is less developed economically than Western Germany due to two reasons: the first is that Eastern German industry was thoroughly dismantled after the reunification in favour of Western German companies. The second is that Western Germany developed in much more favourable conditions due to the access of cheap resources and labour extraction from the Global South that western capitalist countries have no problem performing and that for some reason you don’t care about, which is frankly immensely racist. Who cards if West Germany developed, like the rest of western Europe or North America, on the backs of literal BILLIONS of exploited people in Central and South America, Africa, Middle East and Southeast Asia, right? Who cares about the west performing unequal exchange? After all it’s black people, Muslims and Asians who are being exploited, and those aren’t worthy of your attention unlike white Ukrainians or Poles who enjoyed immensely better conditions BY LITERALLY ANY METRIC thanks to socialism.
That’s because half of your ideology is indistinguishable from that of Nazis
gmtom@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Again ignoring the fact that Russia fucking agreed with hitler to invade Poland, and the mass rapes and lilling of polish civilians as they “”“liberated”“” them because it doesn’t align with your narrative so you just fucking ignore it, then you wonder why I’m not taking you seriously?
Yes they obtained limited authority…then the soviets marched their army into Ukraine, brutally suppressed any resistance and then took away that autonomy. And you just ignore the whole invasion thing because it doesn’t align with your narrative.
Yes, I could make that argument with the Belarusians too, thank you for making a great point for me. The Russians sent other people to die for them then claimed as if it was the entire soviet union that suffered these losses when the vast majority of them were non Russian eastern Europeans, and to answer your question I mentioned ukraine, 1. Because they lost 10,000,000 people. And 2. Because we were talking about Ukraine.
No I’m not siding with the nazis, but you know who did? The fucking soviets when they agreed to invade Poland together. Also look up the Russian penal battalion and order no. 227 they forced “punishees” to charge en mass against enemy positions while the red army set up blocking battalions behind then to stop them from retreating, sometimes even executing soldiers that would try to retreat. This is well documented and not something you can just randomly claim didn’t happen. But I do expect you to ignore it as usual since it doesn’t fit the narrative.
All of it? You’ve just ignored it entirely this whole time.
Fucking lmao, thank you, this was exactly the kind of insane mental gymnastics I was expecting. Calling a man made famine a “”“hunger episode”“” fucking hell.
What? Eastern Germany saw collasal investment after they were reintegrated? You are right about the west developing in favourable conditions though, because they weren’t fucking brutally opressed by the soviets. Something that is also very very well documented but that you choose to ignore and deflect by talking about the global south as if the soviet union didn’t exploit materials and cheap labour in exactly the same way. Which is again an inconvenient truth to you, so you just pretend it didn’t happen.
Oh yeah the classic tankie reaction of losing an argument of “anyone that disagrees with my authoritarianism is a nazi” that’s still used by modern day Russia to do things like justify it’s invasion of Ukraine. And ironically enough is basically just the Nazis “cultural marxism” bullshit in reverse. But yeah keep glazing for the totalitarian undemocratic state that opressed its people performed ethnic cleansing of minorities and invaded it’s neighbours while calling other people indistinguishable from Nazis without a hint of irony. This is why sensible and smart people hate you boot kicking troglodytes, because its still just authoritarianism, but wrapped in a red an yellow wrapper, and you people are so incredibly fucking stupid you actually fall for that. Honestly it’s a miracle you lot don’t straight up support hitler since his party had “socialist” in its name, but I guess the decades of soviet propaganda can override raw stupidity.