this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Did they support liberation movements in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland etc etc?
Bit of a cheap pivot, isn't that? Not all nationalist movements are good, many are highly reactionary, even fascist in nature. On the whole, Soviet foreign policy was cleary in the interests of the working class, from helping Cuban workers liberate themselves from the fascist Batista regime, to helping Algeria throw off the colonizing French, to helping Palestinians resisting genocide, to assisting China with throwing off the Nationalists and Imperialist Japan.
Moreover, it directly compares, say, the Soviet treatment of Estonia with the fascist slaver regime over Cuba that the Soviets helped overthrow, or the Israeli treatment of Palestinians via genocide. It equates what can't be equated. Further, that means that the US Confederacy should have been allowed to leave purely on the basis of wanting to. It's not a real point, it's cheap.
Soviets also played a big role in helping India achieve independence which is one major reason why relations between India and Russia are so good to this day. https://actofdefiance.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/soviet-support-for-indian-independence/
I don't think it's a cheap pivot at all. If you want to say "look at all these places where the people there wanted freedom!" While completely ignoring that they were violently surpressing those same scenarios within their own annexed territories? That's just willful blindness.
How familiar are you with, for example, Estonian nationalism? How familiar are you with its treatment within the USSR? These were not at all the same conditions as, say, Algeria.
My grandmother died in a Siberian labour camp for being an academic.
There's a lot of historical inaccuracy here.
Harry Truman had this to say:
Poland. The Nazis invaded Poland, and then the Soviets waited and tried to get the Western Powers involved. They did not, so weeks later the Soviets went in to prevent the Nazis from taking all of Poland. Of course, the Polish people saw the Soviets as aggressors, but at the time the Polish government had already collapsed, there remained nothing more than to be overtaken by the Nazis.
Social services. I think it's very silly to complain about feeding those who need it. There were stores, and there were farms as well, and to fill in the gap there were social services. The US has also had Bread Lines, this isn't an especially evil thing to do. Moreover, the Soviet Economy had stable and unceasing growth until its dissolution, outside of World War 2, despite having 50% of dwellings destroyed by the genocidal Nazis.
No idea what you mean by "made everyone distrust everyone."
Again, the Soviets and Nazis hated each other from day 1. Read Blackshirts and Reds, you only need the first couple of chapters in an already short read.
Checked with my friend and checked few other sources on this. Friend, who studied history, knew about these - other articles also mention that such tries were held, and the Nazi hate towards communists is known to me, however the reason why it failed is different for each point of reference I have so I am unsure what to make out of it. Still, learned something new. Thanks.
Western Powers did, in fact, take offense. But it was too little, and Poland fell quicker than anticipated. Also, Polish goverment didn't collapse so wtf are you talking about - it went into hiding but was still very much active. And it's kinda hard not to see Soviets as aggressors when they also attacked and massacred Polish side and were comfy enough to, after "freeing" land on their way to Warsaw, just sit outside it and wait for Nazis to do their cleanses. -.-
Feeding those who need it? That's why people died of hunger under USSR? Yeah, in Russia they took care about theirs. Every country other than Russia was, however, at best ignored, at worst plundered. And yeah, there were stores - famously empty stores. I heard about them from my family members, about the lines, waiting whole day, about exchanging goods for favors among people. Also, I am not from US and trust me, I am not seeing them as paragon of virtue either.
People were incentivised to basically snitch on each other for any and all hints of not following what the "glorious" USSR wanted. So it was common that people used them to go higher in standing or get what they wanted. Especially folk who liked the newfound power that USSR granted them over their neighbours.
I know they hated each other and never said otherwise. But they cooperated to fuck everyone else. Only after Nazis attacked USSR, did USSR move against Nazis.
I encourage you to dig deeper, western countries had business ties with the Nazis and did not want to ruin that.
I need to know more about what you mean by "slaughtering Polish people." Seriously, the way the Soviets and the Nazis treated the Polish was night and day different. The Polish government had abandoned the Polish people, that counts as a collapse just like Assad fleeing Syria counts as a collapse.
Mass Starvation ended in the USSR outside of World War 2, following collectivization. There was common famine in the Tsarist Russia, and this continued until collectivization. Here's CIA intelligence saying as much. Again, I am not going to dock the Soviets any points for feeding its people, rather than letting them starve like they do in the US.
Without concrete examples of what you are talking about, I don't really know what to say. It's a fact that Western countries tried numerous times to infiltrate and destabilize the USSR, which has just as much responsibility for said Paranoia.
No, they did not cooperate. They signed a Non-Aggression pact to bide time until the inevitable war between them. The Nazis killed their allies in Germany immediately, fascism and Communism are immortal bitter enemies. Read Blackshirts and Reds.
I admit I had to learn more about USSR during our convo. And however much I hate admitting this, it would me insincere of me to not admit USSR had more sensible politics internally than I thought when it comes to food. They were, however, still insanely brutal and sadistic regime while dealing with anything comparable to opposition to their goals. So yeah, thanks for broadening my horizons, but please never state USSR was in any way or form good guys. They massacred, murdered, invigilated and abused, not unlike Nazis, at least in Poland.
Katyn is debated, actually. There were Nazi bullet casings that predated any chance for the Soviets to come accross them, children were included in the victims (something the Nazis did regularly and was practically unheard of for the Red Army), and the bodies were stacked in a manner the Nazis were known to do. The origin of this massacre as a Red Army crime? Joseph Goebbels, I kid you not. As for the Polish government, I wouldn't say it "tried its hardest." The results were clear the second the Nazis set foot on Poland, either all of it would go to Nazi Germany or some would go to the Soviets if they got involved.
1946 was a direct result of World War II, surely the year can tell you that alone, right? The Nazis scorched and burned everything they could, 50% of housing was destroyed by their genocidal invasion. Food stabilized as they built back.
Fair enough.
As for your closing paragraph, I recommend you read Blackshirts and Reds. The Nazis and the Communists are in no way comparable, and doing so originates with Double Genocide Theory, a form of Nazi Apologia and Holocaust Trivialization. Out of all the major world powers, the Soviets were by far the best and most progressive, and it isn't close. From Nazi Germany inventing industrialized murder and trying to colonize the world, to Britain intentionally starving 4 million Bengalis, to French colonialism of Algeria, Vietnam, and more, to US colonization of Cuba, genocide against Palestinians, Koreans, Iraqis, Vietnamese, and working directly with the Nazis before and after World War 2, and more, the Soviets were consistently the most progressive and most correct.
As a Pole, yes, we were all literally saved by the Soviets so you can take your genocide denial and stuff it in your nazi whitewashing ass.