Bolshevism
Posted by TheIronzombie39@reddit | greentext | View on Reddit | 98 comments
Posted by TheIronzombie39@reddit | greentext | View on Reddit | 98 comments
Succubia@reddit
This whole thread does show to which side the common redditor leans toward.
Russia after Stalin was a corrupt, wrecked mess. Soviets brutally forced the country to Industrialize, killed hundred of thousands of farmers who owned their lands. Culture and science were heavily censored and aimed to sponsor the state..
It wasn't all bad, but one can't help but think at least Russia would have somewhat been better off with the Tsar?
lefeuet_UA@reddit
Yea but it was also indebted and quite a decent part of it's gdp was foreign owned, also the tools of oppression were quite unrefined compared to the soviet system of breaking up not just the dissidents, but also their entire perception of the world
NighthawK1911@reddit
What I'm tired of is the narrative that it's only ever Communism vs Capitalism that factors into success of countries. Why is it always either "you own nothing" and "throw everybody to the wolves"?
Russia could've been not communist and end up the same way. There's factors outside political structures that dictate whether they'll be successful or not. For example, if you have massive oil reserves, then you can be a country that contributes nothing to the betterment of mankind but still be rich lol. Just look at commie countries that don't have oil versus ones that do. Natural resources and a way to keep a hold those resources is a better metric.
notoriouslydamp@reddit
It is a hilarious indictment on communism that it can only survive when the country has a valuable resource that capitalists desire
NighthawK1911@reddit
It's not as if capitalists would survive without natural resources either.
This is not an indictment of communism, but a fact of life. If you don't have resources, your country dies.
You gotta have something to eat, or something to trade to get food.
Asscrackistan@reddit
Dawg, Japan exists.
NighthawK1911@reddit
Dawg, Japan has natural resources
Asscrackistan@reddit
Japan was technologically behind before America showed up. They invented the Katana because their iron was in such short supply/low quality. Japan lacks oil in any appreciable quantity. Japan’s mountains hinder agriculture, forcing them to ration fertile land. They lack rubber and even had to import firearms for the longest time.
Japan only caught up as a civilization once they opened up to foreign trade in decent volumes, and then they felt the need to invade half of Asia to secure resources directly. They invaded the Dutch East Indies for their oil/rubber, Manchuria for metals, etc.
Uri_BaBa@reddit
You're right but look at South Korea they barely have any resources and yet they went from one of the poorest to richest
Mundane-Style4111@reddit
And they’re currently in a supercharged demographic crisis because that system is currently breaking their society.
Korea manages to somehow both demonstrate the pitfalls of communist and capitalist regimes at once.
MrCattsDad@reddit
south korea is a company barely disguised as a country that turns raw materials into samsung products
fishIsFantom@reddit
They survived not on their own. They relied on usa resources. So upper comment point still apply
notoriouslydamp@reddit
You are glossing over the fact that that natural resource for a communist nation only matters if theres a capitalist market present, which is what makes it an indictment on communism
NighthawK1911@reddit
that's dumb.
that's like saying communists don't eat, get clothes etc.
you are working on the false idea that communist countries don't consume anything at all.
notoriouslydamp@reddit
No im not. Im working on the true assumptiom that its impossible for communists to operate an efficient natuon without capitalism existing alongside communism. The scarcity will always return due to an inability yo forecast, produce, and price products. Without capitalism respurcr scarcity in communist mations always returns and most likely worse, resulting in largr populations starving
oni_no_onii-chan@reddit
Did you know best conditioned african countries are the ones with the worst resources?
There must be something happening, a power that hungry for resources destroy everything on its way I guess.
notoriouslydamp@reddit
You guys are like the “but i ate breakfast” meme. Youre ignoring the connection to the fact that the resource rich communist nation still relies on an external capitalist structure to survive
2kLichess@reddit
Venezuela?
NighthawK1911@reddit
Not communist. It's bolivarianism. So if anything it shows that there's other political ideologies other than communism and capitalism.
Also I said it needed "a way to keep a hold those resources".
Advanced_Court501@reddit
“factors outside political structures” yeah like being from the balkans
NoblePenguin24@reddit
Sound fair, idk. Im 5'9
Osky_gon@reddit
*Industrialisation made Russia stronk
Fixed it, literally the main reason for why the revolution was supported and occurred. Due to the promise of more goods and "luxuries" for cheaper (food, electricity, running water, etc), which arguably wasn't even implemented "properly" until and post Stalin.
Asscrackistan@reddit
Austria-Hungary isn’t exactly a high bar op.
oni_no_onii-chan@reddit
Peak delusion. The power that once brings down another superpower like nazi germany in its newly industrialized state can't even finish ukraine right now.
Brother they're still living in soviet made blocks. It's fucking 3 decades since there is no more soviets. And they can't even renovate the houses once soviets BUILD!
chethelesser@reddit
The houses are being renovated. Source: I lived in one.
But no one in their right mind would replace the existing houses if they're in ok condition, same in many countries in central Europe, including Poland and Germany.
Howragnes@reddit
The soviets must have been really powerful. What happened to them?
qwertyalguien@reddit
Gerontocracy. Being governed by ancient old dinosaurs disconnected from the present and handling the Youth's future is never good.
CerifiedHuman0001@reddit
Hey that sounds awfully familiar
oni_no_onii-chan@reddit
Don't worry, we can make the world's stroke ridden leader talk via ai generated videos.
Just as hideo kojima predicted in mgs 2
RinTheTV@reddit
Really funny how the guy in MGR talks about "memes being the DNA of the soul."
It's actually funny ( and a bit scary ) how accurate Metal Gear predicted ( and talked about ) some aspects of the information warfare being waged.
Aged like fine wine.
PassivelyInvisible@reddit
Are the memes what train AIs to be believable?
qwertyalguien@reddit
I think it's more about how they shape collective though
drunkinmidget@reddit
This is the root cause. I'm glad someone said it. The rest of the issues all come down to this.
Rising up in the party ranks to eventually lead is all good and dandy until you realize that its a recipe for extremely old people on top. It was a fatal weakness.
IamWatchingAoT@reddit
Something not as bad as what's happening to the US right now
AntiProtonBoy@reddit
They had some clout, but much of that was also a facade. Everything they made, built and touch was gold plated shit.
ThatFuckingGeniusKid@reddit
Gorbachov, whatever happened there.
Cloudsareinmyhead@reddit
Gorbachev at least tried. He was willing to make changes that none of his predecessors would've even dreamed of aside from maybe Khruschev
etdmdju@reddit
Gorbachov sacrificed the Soviet Union to pizza hut.
NighthawK1911@reddit
I argue it's the Chernobyl Accident.
That really put the pressure in the soviets and what I think caused their collapse. The massive cleanup effort alone set them back and likely the reason how their political system deteriorated.
tukatu0@reddit
Its both the Afghan war and chernobyl. The reasons nations fall is never really one thing.... Well you can summarize those two into "they spent too much money".
Something something 1960s space +vietnam equaled 1970s gold bla bla
And right now america kind of has a problem printing 14 trillion dollars since 2019. Good luck to all. Something something tarr if
oni_no_onii-chan@reddit
Inside treasonary? It's a super common thing when masses became unaware and apolitical.
America must have the most stable democracy and buerocracy. Why it's destroyed right now till a state where its nearly worshipped constitution not cared by the ruling power?
StrawberryWide3983@reddit
Political instability. The thing that usually kills most superpowers of their era
Legiyon54@reddit
Literally anon's point. That commies handicapped Russia instead of alowing it to develop neturally like normal countries, which it was doing before commies, just at a gradual pace (tho it wasn't even frasual by 1910s, it was rapid)
What you see in Russia today is the results of nightmare Soviet economy that prioritised raw results, heavy industry, and pretty projects, instead of building a healthy long term economy
a_burnt_potato@reddit
Lmao I doubt Russia would’ve survived the invasion making it even more handicapped which to be fair is probably what anon would’ve wanted.
The Ruskies basically had to develop an agrarian shithole into an industrial nation. The only two countries that I know of that managed this same rapid industrialization are South Korea and Singapore.
Singapores doing fine since it’s basically an East Asian tax haven but South Korea due to those policies is basically heading towards demographic collapse.
t2958@reddit
Yes indeed industrialization helped alot, but even with it soviets lost too many of their soldiers, weapons, people and manufacturing centers to the Germany during the first/second year of the war, mostly because of Stalin deciding to purge majority of his officers that had experience in both WW1 and civil war, USSR had a lot of resources such as military equipment and a large amount of manpower, but no competent leaders and officers, which led to Hitler's Germany pushing Soviets to Moscow, only by sacrificing large amounts of soldiers and the resolve to fight to the last did they succeed in defending it, and turning around the tide of war (Stalingrad battle was also very important, but if soviets had lost Moscow there was a great risk of Japan and Turkey entering the war on Hitlers side)
Also one of the reasons Hitler named, and which made him more confident in being able to successfully stage war against the USSR was... large purges of the officer ranks, if hypothetical non-soviet Russia during ww2 had more capable leadership, whilst having less-able technical and manufacturing ability , it's hard to tell if they would've done much worse, possibly even better, USSR had an advantage in some types of military equipment, but most of it was lost and destroyed during the sudden advance and consequent retreat, although having developed industrial capability made it possible to recover from the losses, they were still massive and mostly due to unpreparedness, useless doctrine and horrible leadership from inexperienced commanders and officers
nicehotcuppatea@reddit
中国
Head-Alarm6733@reddit
singapores also a little bit of a dictatorship
Matiwapo@reddit
South Korea was also a dictatorship during its industrialisation. Fast, targeted progress is not really possible under democracy. This is why it took Britain and the US centuries to achieve the same level of industrialisation which the Soviets, S. Korea, and Singapore achieved in decades.
Hyperversum@reddit
At the cost of sounding like a fedora wielding idiot, it just makes sense. I don't think many in SK remember that period of their history in the same way as the Western remember 20s/30s european dictatorship.
The fundamental difference is that a government like, dunno, the oligarchic dictatorships that appear from colonies that break free from foreign powers or that topple a previous monarch of some kind are highly unstable it just makes sense that power will be centralized into a few individuals for a period before it stabilizes. Hell, the famous French Revolution that people usually herald as one of the stepping stones of democracy in Europe didn't at all to a stable democracy, not even before Napoleon walked in. Nobody sane is surprised that the first decades of the Soviet society wouldn't be democratic with everyone voting every 4/5 years. Lenin fully expected his big shots to take the "throne" of the country to lead it towards the future of socialist society later on.
This is entirely from how Mussolini and Hitler ammassed power from struggling democratic societies but ended up just slowing down their recovery even further, apart from the investment into the military. Or even just Stalin who killed any actual chance of Russia not being an autocratic hellhole. Which is even more funny because Lenin explicitely wrote to make anyone the leader but Stalin.
But Russians apparently just love licking the cock of autocrats
The_Almighty_Demoham@reddit
Nothing wrong a lil dictatorship as treat every now and then
DaDurdleDude@reddit
"Develop neturally" no idea what this means. If you mean "naturally" there's no such thing, and if you mean "neutrally" there is also no such thing. Foreign troops got involved in the Russian Civil War and if they had stopped the Reds from winning, I'm sure Russia wouldn't have been a utopia vs the Soviet outcome.
chengiz@reddit
Are you upset Russia isnt full of suburban American women?
CloudySpace@reddit
LET ME SHOUT THIS IN CAPSLOCK BECAUSE PEOPLE SEEM TO BE DEAF.
THE COUNTRIES IN THE SOVIET “UNION” DIDN’T WANNA BE IN IT. THEY WERE OCCUPIED BY FORCE BY THE BACKWARDS SAVAGES WHICH ACTED NO DIFFERENT THAN THEY DO ACT TODAY: RAZE, RAPE, PILLAGE, OPPRESS, DEPORT, DECULTURE, AND MURDER.
EVENTUALLY THEY GAINED ENOUGH MOTION TO SPLIT.
SOVIET UNION DIDNT “COLLAPSE”. IT WAS AN OPPRESSIVE REGIME THAT PEOPLE RESISTED AND EVENTUALLY LEFT, AT A COST OF LIVES.
Darkwrath93@reddit
Yugoslav General Dragoljub Mihailović said on his trial: "It will be easy for you (communists) to build your new state with youth that was educated and raised in the Kingdom. I’d like to live long enough to see what kind of state your communist youth will leave behind." It turned out he was right. Maybe it was not because of that tho, but I guess we'll never know
GuyNamedWhatever@reddit
Russia will never really be back because they keep shooting their workforce. It’s the political equivalent of hitting your girlfriend because YOU slammed your dick in the car door
Dont_Touch_My_Nachos@reddit
I thlammed my penith in the car door
CerifiedHuman0001@reddit
No single power could have defeated Nazi Germany. It was the allies, collectively, that defeated them, not singularly the soviets. Russia’s current state is the result of the kind of leadership communism encouraged.
Communism works on a small scale, where individuals can easily be held accountable by the collective, but when you’re working with millions of people and a government consisting almost entirely of faceless names it becomes insanely easy to abuse. Communism isn’t any more functional than capitalism is.
Matiwapo@reddit
You are somewhat overstating the power of Nazi Germany. They had less industrial capability and a smaller economy than the British Empire. Let alone the US.
You forgot that the British Empire fought the Germans to a stalemate over the channel and in Africa. As the war dragged on, Britain kept receiving support from the US and across its empire while Germany's resources and manpower continued to dwindle under the pressure of war and British naval blockade.
I'm not going to say that Britain definitely would have defeated Germany alone, but in a war of attrition it's conceivable that they might have. The US probably could have defeated Germany alone as well if it had not needed to fight the Japanese at the same time.
Osipovark@reddit
Brother i don't think you understand what is happening right now. It's not looking pretty for Ukraine.
so?
what are you smoking? three decades should be nothing for a building.
what?
CerifiedHuman0001@reddit
The first point is more that if Russia was as big and scary as they want everyone to think they are, Ukraine would never have lasted this long.
poclee@reddit
With or without USA lend lease?
UnfoundedWings4@reddit
Allied lend lease. British planes were flying in the soviet union within months of barbarossa
Defiant_Orchid_4829@reddit
Lend Lease was about 30% of the Soviet Air Force. The other 70% was made in the Soviet Union. Lend Lease was important, but industrialization was more so.
mattmcguire08@reddit
That's a weird measure of success. So does Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, China and major US cities are full of similarly aged block buildings.
Apprehensive_Town199@reddit
What the USSR did was apply industrial technologies and modernization trends developed in Western Europe and the US. Many places in Asia and Latin America did the same, achieving acceptable levels of life expectancy and living standards. This is nothing special.
As OP mentioned, Russia was a major power - according to Wikipedia, its economy was the 3rd largest in the world, behind only the UK and the US. It was already modernising fast in the years preceeding WW1.
Compare it to Brazil, for example, who had a very backwards economy, which was about 6% of the Russian empire. Still, it managed to modernise and industrialise, raising living standards and life expectancy. While there were a couple dictatorships in the XX, nothing compared to the brutality of the early Soviet Union.
Fact is that that Lenin and Bolshevism was a poison financed by the Germans to destroy Russia, and it did that with a lethality that far exceeded whatever the Americans did in Japan. Without the Bolsheviks, Russia would emerge as a victor in WW1 just one year later, with a strong alliance with the French to keep the Germans in check.
Instead, it got defeat in WW1, then a civil war that was even worse than WW1, Stalin and the purges. Instead of cooperation with France and the UK from the beginning, which would be natural if Russia had remained in the triple entante, it had a catastrophic conflict with the nazis, which was the worst thing to ever happen in the history of the earth, the Eastern front in WW2. Followed by investing everything they got in an arms race with the US, which they lost.
t2958@reddit
"One more year and le epic Russia would've won" No? Russia was losing and bolsheviks were a minority right untill provisional government decided to keep fighting Germans instead of making peace with them like majority of the people and soldiers wanted, they were tired of war and this made them incredibly unpopular, whilst one of the main bolsheviks promises was to end the war, Russia was losing badly, moral was extremely low and desertions were widespread, this is nonsense
The_Shittiest_Meme@reddit
Russia's economy existed via sheer force of mass. It population was mostly uneducated peasants doing labor by hand like they had done for hundreds of years even into the early 1900s.
Ridenberg@reddit
At least those peasants were alive, which was not the case during Lenin, and especially not during Stalin regimes. Communism created the biggest famine to ever happen in Russia's history. And it was man-made: peasants had food, they just had to give tremendous amounts of it to the government for it then to export to make Stalin's insanely rushed industrialization plan to happen, all while Collectivization happened a few years ago, during which most peasants were violently forced to join their village's Kolhoz (village's collective farming association), where their animals and crops became the property of the Kolhoz and no longer belonged to them. That meant the peasants had to work the fields for food that they couldn't even eat and instead were forced to sell to the government for miniscule prices. So they just didn't work the fields. And instead of surrendering their animals to Kolhoz, they just slaughtered them for meat and sold it, because even back then they knew crisis was brewing. As a result of Collectivization, in Kazakhstan, the most animal-centric Soviet Republic, the animal count dropped from 18 million to 3 million.
Soviet Union's government policy was a joke. A very, very dark one.
Ozuge@reddit
I like the way you explain this in a way that reads as it being the farmers own fault for starving. The government makes a rule -> peasant farmers decide on their own not to farm -> peasant farmers starve. I don't think even the most rabid stalinists could come up with this.
Ridenberg@reddit
If farmers farmed more crops then the USSR would just export more and buy more heavy machinery. Farmers themself would not be able to eat them. Which body part of yours did you read my comment with?
The_Shittiest_Meme@reddit
Mostly Stalins fault for ignoring the Kulaks become too big a problem by ignoring them. If he either broke them while they were still small or accepted them there be no issues with collectivization. Like a moron he didnt do anything about it.
Ridenberg@reddit
Kulaks were mostly an artificial problem that Stalin created and pushed with propaganda when he realised that the government needs resources. Labeling someone as a filthy Kulak and taking all of their belongings is a great way to obtain money short-term (we all know what happened long-term though). Situations where local forces couldn't find enough "Kulaks" to arrest were punished harshly, but situations where they violently arrested innocent people were not only not punished, but silently encouraged. The OFFICIAL doctrine on who should be considered a Kulak included anyone who owned a horse, anyone who owned a windmill, anyone who at any point used hired labourers or rented out their property to anyone, and, of course, any priest or religious worker. And unofficially, the entire government structure was well-informed that basically everyone was getting Raskulached, even the poor people who barely had any property to take. After 2 waves of Raskulachivanie (each wave was about a year I think?), about 3 million people got exiled.
brinz1@reddit
Equals to an empire that lost to Italy and Serbia
Cake_is_Great@reddit
Is this J Edgar Hoover's ghost still seething over his lost Russian investments?
Sen-oh@reddit
Ah yes, a sure way to know your argument is correct: a strong desire to kill and silence anyone who disagrees with you
scottlapier@reddit
The same people clown on Russia for being backwards....
Electrical-Help5512@reddit
Nah that's dumb. Not a Soviet defender by any means but literacy and industrialization fucking exploded under the soviets.
TheIronzombie39@reddit (OP)
I think anon’s trying to say that Russia would have still industrialized and raised literacy rates without communism.
MagiStarIL@reddit
Between Peter the Great and October revolution 200 years have passed. A lot has happened
ExcitableSarcasm@reddit
They keep having high points followed by rapid institutional rot. Peter the Great -> crap -> Catherine the Great -> le epic Prussiaboo crashout -> Napoleonic Russia the GOAT -> Crimean + Russo-Japanese war meme -> USSR.
I genuinely can't think of any other power that's peaked so many times in such a relatively short span of time (300 years). That's like once every 75 years.
HakosbaelZhusband@reddit
China, but it's entire history. Peak decline peak decline over and over ad infinitum
BraveUIysses@reddit
Ah, yes, the country that keeps getting broken up, rebuilt and broken up again
Ethicalbankruptcy@reddit
Peter III doomed Europe. I will not elaborate
ExcitableSarcasm@reddit
Based and Alexanderpilled
hamarok@reddit
These guys are only used to reading the timeline from a wikipedia page bullet points…
Ulfricosaure@reddit
Russia was an absolute shithole under Nicolas II.
PomegranateHot9916@reddit
it wasn't communism that made russia strong. it was revolution that did it.
just like france in the napoleonic era
or USA for that matter.
china dividing and uniting over and over again. always the strongest right after unification.
why did england become the world hegemon in the 1800s? that's right the industrial REVOLUTION
your nation becomes strong by having competent and dedicated leadership. which revolutions bring to the table by removing the incompetent and corrupt old guard from power. you need to clean out the table from parasites every 100-200 years or your group will become weak and motivated only by greed.
just look at USA and russia today.
Zeranvor@reddit
Stop making me side with tankies but they're right whenever they say this: "Stalin took Russia with horse and plow and left it with an atomic bomb."
Fyrefanboy@reddit
Lol Russia in ww1 was humiliated nearly as much as France in ww2
Sparta63005@reddit
Russia literally LOST against Germany in WW1. Like fully lost, they signed a treaty and lost half their country until the war in the west ended.
mdamjan7@reddit
This
saltysupp@reddit
Russia did not inflict most losses on Germany in WW1 which is a very easy thing to fact check, that and spelling it sciense man idk.
Darkdestroyerza@reddit
I honestly doubt it, the rapid industrialization the soviets underwent in the thirties was instrumental in their defeat of the Germans in WW2. Without it, they most likely would've lost the war and the Nazis would've implemented "generalplan ost" fully which would've seen the genocide of almost 100 million eastern Europeans.
PapaMoBucks@reddit
Sciense.
Przedrzag@reddit
Austria-Hungary’s contribution to science lagged far behind Germany, France, and the UK lol, so saying Russia’s was equal to theirs is not a compliment, especially since Russia had a far greater population
AustralianSilly@reddit
Yeah even if Russia wasnt communist I’m sure they would still be in the same position they are in now and during ww2 and stuff
I mean, there are so many other things outside of how a country is run politically that influence how successful the country is
Osipovark@reddit
I approve this message.
kdavva74@reddit
If they had industrialised before going commie they'd have ended up in a much better place. Russia and China both show you can't just jump from feudalism to communism without millions starving to death.