Travis scott avi gets u the Bukharin treatment here

Anybody fw "The Deprogram" podcast?

personally don’t like podcast that try to cover a variety of topics and rather just listen to one podcast that goes super depth into a topic. Rev left only one i listen to that covers a variety but that’s only once in a while and if they have an episode about a topic i’m into

Stalin could kill the revolutionary (liberal), but not the revolution (Khrushchev regime)

If you consider the Soviet Union under Khrushchev onward to be socialist then Belarus is definitely a socialist country lmao

The USSR if it was around in 2023 would resemble an even more liberalized version of Belarus

My country so finished man

are we really suprised it’s kkkanada after all

USSR under Khruschev was not socialist

It wasn't socialist under Stalin either

The USSR was socialist until the day the flag was lowered for the last time

Socialism can just go wrong and did under Khrushchev, in part as a poorly executed reaction to the worst exploits of Stalin's socially reactionary leadership

What your favorite Soviet Premier says about you:

• Lenin: Based and objectively correct choice
• Stalin: Weird
• Malenkov: Based
• Khrushchev: Liberal
• Brezhnev: Liberal
• Andropov: Based
• Gorbachev: Fascist

So you just like aesthetics and having a team to root for got it

No I just don't expect socialism to go perfectly or even well but to still provide a better way of life for the majority of citizens

Humans f*** up. Capitalism itself is mangled from its orthodox framework

Khrushchev was bad

The USSR from 1934 onward was a form of reactionary socialism

But it was still socialist

Stalin was perfectly fine economically but was a political opportunist who set in motion a lot of the forces and contradictions that would lead to the demise of the USSR, albeit unintentionally and perhaps indirectly.

So what changed the minute the flag came down that suddenly made it not socialist

Surely you’re not implying that a radical change in a society’s economic base is able to happen over night

Soviet socialism had been compromised ever since 1921 and began to degrade itself in 1934

The difference in 1991 was the pursuit of socialism was openly abandoned and bourgeois class dynamics were completely reinstated. The difference was massive even despite how vulgarized Soviet socialism had become prior to Gorbachev

Isn't it surprising tho that as conditions get worse they seem to get MORE conservative

what are some examples of his political opportunism

stalin's political opportunism examples:

shifting alliances with the west (1930s)
the great purge (late 1930s)
cult of personality
eastern bloc dominance post-WWII
support for north korea in korean war

expand on the first throughout the 30s he tried to ally france and england but they both kept toying with him
how is the great purge an example of political opportunism
he actively denounced his own cult of personality until ww2 when he was willing to do anything to help him defeat the nazi. he did create a cult of personality around lenin tho.
i don’t much about eastern bloc dynamics to comment on
North Korea yeah i can see the political opportunism there then at least he still backed the chinese with giving them discounts on military equipment

in the 1930s, stalin indeed sought alliances with france and england, but they were hesitant to commit fully. this reflects his willingness to adapt his foreign policy based on the changing international landscape.

the great purge, in which stalin purged rivals and dissenters, allowed him to eliminate threats to his power and consolidate control, a classic example of political opportunism.

you're right that stalin initially downplayed his own cult of personality but later embraced it during ww2 for propaganda purposes. he did, however, foster a cult of personality around lenin.

stalin's support for north korea and discounted military aid to china demonstrate his geopolitical opportunism during the korean war.

I don't blame him for the western alliances given the Nazi threat. The purge was hit or miss.

The bureaucratization of the Communist Party, disempowering of the workers councils, and cult of personality were his most damning examples

The Eastern Bloc one is weird because he relied way too much on party politics to get most of the Soviet republics and satellites acquired after WWII, but at the same time he avoided these territories falling into the hands of the west and kept the republics under Bolshevik influence and alliance in a way better economic state than for republics that went the "third way", i.e. Yugoslavia which I don't even consider a socialist country. I see it like an overall good though because at least communists were brought into power, though again, how this was done helped build the contradictions that would lead to the unraveling of the Eastern Bloc

And Soviet support for NK was good