this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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I'm not into that authoritarian stuff. Worshipping a fascist authoritarian state is not a leftist make.
Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
What in the everlasting embrace of god. Soviets, who - I'll admit - simply chose to work people to death painted as the good guys? The same soviets that starved, beaten and let people freeze to death? The same that put people in cattle wagons and rode them out to syberia in nothing more than clothes they had on their backs?
The USSR was perhaps the single most progressive movement in the entire 20th century. It was not free from flaw, of course not, but in total it was a massive leap forward for the Working Class not only within the Soviet Union, but its very existence forced western countries to adopt expanded social safety nets (along with the efforts of leftist organizers within these countries).
From a brutal, impoverished backwater country barely industrialized, to beating the United States into space, in 50 years. Mid 30s life expectancies due to constant starvation, homelessness, and outright murder from the Tsarist Regime, doubled to the 70s very quickly. Literacy rates from the 20s and 30s to 99.9%, more than Western Nations. All of this in a single generation.
Wealth disparity shrank, while productivity growth was one of the highest in the 20th century:
Supported liberation movements in Cuba, Palestine, Algeria, Korea, China, Palestine, and more. Ensured free, and high quality healthcare and education for all. Lower retirement ages than the US, 55 for women and 60 for men. Legalized, free abortion. Full employment, and no recessions outside of World War 2. Defeated the Nazis with 80% of the combat in the entire European theater. Supported armistice treaties that the US continuously denied.
The bad guys won the Cold War, and they did so by forcing the USSR to spend a huge amount of their resources on keeping up millitarily, as the United States had much more resources and could deal with it that way.
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.
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.
If you look at the holodomor I think it's hard to continue painting the Soviet Union as having uplifted the proletariat. Soviets starved their people to achieve rapid industrialization - a tradeoff that most of those who died would probably not have agreed with. IIRC most historians say that collectivization was a horrible failure and was not good for the working class.
First hand accounts of life during stalinism make it clear that people had to develop weird mannerisms to avoid making it seem like they were disloyal/anti-party; basically everyone walking on eggshells all the time.
What most historians agree on is that the famine happened, and that collectivization was botched. Kulaks burning their crops and killing their livestock, rather than handing it over, certainly accelerated the issue. However, outside of World War 2, where the Nazis took Ukraine (the USSR's breadbasket), this was the last famine, and as such life expectancy doubled. I am sure that if anyone could go back in time and prevent the famine from happening, they would. The fact that famine went from common and regular to stable food supplies and no more going hungry is an important one.
Moreover, again, this is just one aspect of a country where the working class saw free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, a dramatic lowering of wealth inequality with a dramatic raising in wealth, doubled life expectancy, lower retirement ages than the US from the State, women participating in the highest rungs of government, and more cannot be erased either.
Taken in total, again, there wasn't a country better for the working class in the 20th century, certainly none that did not owe part of their existance to the support recieved from the Soviets, like Cuba and China. There were many far worse, such as the US Empire and Nazi Germany, and the Soviets opposed both.