The problem with this line of thinking is that it privileges the 45 years of communist rule in understanding these countries over the rest of their histories and even projects a post-communist understanding onto the pre-communist era, for example an entire system and way of life was also overturned - far more dramatically in fact - when communism was imposed and it also causes chaos and poverty, this is how revolutions work in the near term

Also the post is weirdly racist?

I'm with it

Saw a flick at a stark Soviet era cinema in Prague and it was cool, in an I can picture dissenters getting tortured down here type of way lol

I can’t really discriminate against British people after playing Bloodborne, tbh.

Stop hatin on the mandem you bloody wanker

British people aren't real
Stay woke

That it doesn't look more like s*** is a testament to the lingering influence of the Soviet Union civilizing the mongrels that inhabited Estonia and the other s***holes around it who were willing to side with the Nazis

Budapest pre Soviet occupation

Housing

Is

Good

the walks they really think they IT

Bullshit jobs are better than being unemployed and at least the bullshit job is helping put people into homes lol

And Soviet corruption was obviously a problem, but corruption happens everywhere

Yeah and they were Nazi allies exterminating Jews by the thousands

What's your point? Is the Holocaust good if the people doing it have terraced roofs?

Soviet occupation of independent E. European countries opened up a slew of contradictions and imo endangered the health of the Soviet revolution itself, and I don't defend it in the cases of Poland and Czechia

Everywhere else they occupied was a fascist rathole that deserved to be occupied by socialists

undeniably. it should ideally not look like that though

Disgusting post @op

I think you meant British “people”

I like this guy

i mean no disagreement about criticism but i do disagree that much places were overtly better before soviets in eastern europe. The second polish republic was overtly anti-semitic and close to Nazi Germany and even collaborated with them during the 🇨🇿 crisis taking a city with a polish minority. Of course how much better each area differs among area but it isn’t straight these places got much worse. it’s a more complicated picture the ussr was basically an affirmative action empire and the myth of the minorities taking away resources from russian played a role in the dissolution of the ussr, a myth u often still see today within relation to majority nationality to minority nationality

To get to my main point i don’t think you can anyway institute that the relations that the soviets had with their eastern european states let’s say puppet states is anyway comparable to the west and their colonies which unleashed unspeakable amount of death and destruction of social organizations

It’s also not to say that the soviets are perfectly innocent they have done inexcusable things as well like ethnic depositions of national minorities like Kazakhs and Koreans under the excuse of national security but the soviets also provided worker rights, ethnic minorities languages being taught in schools that didn’t exist in Tsarist russia, and minorities were represented in the government

I mean I can't argue with that

But I also wouldn't say it made the former USSR "look like s***" either. Seeing people in warm homes is a beautiful sight

Do genuinely feel for Poland and Czechia though. Neither were fascist, both got utterly f***ed by the Nazis during WWII (and Poland to a drastically lesser but still significant degree also got f***ed by the USSR during World War II), and got caught in the crossfire. I think they should have been allowed to independently charter their own courses even if it meant not becoming socialist if revolutionary conditions weren't ripe yet. I think trying to force socialism puts the system at risk

finding someones accent or diet funny isn’t discrimination

i just scrolled up and holy smokes how do we get from british accents to this

But if you allow fascism to rise in your country you've lost the right to self-determination and should be taken over by socialists

But I'd also keep my distance from those places because you can't slap a red banner on an ex-fascist country and suddenly change the general populations/governments fundamental values

It's KTT2 and I'm Skinn Foley

That's how

the relation of the great purge to the military must rest on the case how true were the rumours of a fifth column with the soviets, even the czech were warning the soviet government about Tukhachevsky being a nazi collaborator. The great purge ultimately did absolutely insane amount of damage to the military but you also cant win a total war without trusting the people u work with.

Also lol that the soviets would be wiped out by the Nazi the great purge made the soviets the blackest box of all, the nazis were suprised by soviet industrial capacity and lost at Stalingrad before most of the land-lease even came to play a role, the turning point where even the nazi had to admit in there propaganda there now fighting on the defensive end . The soviets did more for the west for taking forcing the nazi to move there reserves from the western front to the eastern front making it easier for an amphibian assault . The land lease did play an important role in regards to how fast the conflict would end which ultimately means amount of lives not sacrificed to the war which is one of the rare good moments in america history, but at end of the day the soviets did the heavy lifting , but back to the Nazi they were doomed from the start.

yeah like shock therapy never happened