To be fair they had a civil war going on
In the 1920’s, sure. The US also has had some rough times, like when that economic bubble burst, and they went from the Roaring 20’s into the Great Depression, there was a dust bowl, it was horrible. Yes, let’s be absolutely be fair to the Soviets and judge them on a quality of life standard for the extent of the regime.
which was initiated then bankrolled by the west.
I’m sorry what? How, exactly, does Europe start a civil war in Russia?
But even ignoring that germany by then was one of the most capitalist nation of western europe, and it was they who sheltered then arranged passage for the communist leadership back into russia then the west bankrolled the unpopular white movement with direct & indirect support in a civil war that decimated about 10 millions russians.
Okay, I see what you mean but that doesn’t take responsibility away from the Bolsheviks. Europe shipped the Bolshevik leadership back to Russia, and sold them arms. Lenin led the revolution. Russians loaded those arms and squeezed the triggers. So there’s a body count of 10 million already. I’d like to point out the Kulaks are included in that number, a class of landowners who knew how to manage farms. They didn’t resist, they were just slaughtered for having too much money and influence. Then there was a famine, in part because nobody knew how to manage farms. Because they were dead. Because the Soviets killed them.
But for the vast majority of russians even if you ignore all of the typical soviet propaganda life must have been better after the five year plan, as there was a general increase of life expectancy, gdp per capita, literacy and a rapid urbanization plus what you said about workers being equals this must have benefitted women the most.
There was an increase in life expectancy, was there? I guess that’s true if you remove all the ones that starved or were named enemies of the State. GDP per capita? Well yes, there were all of the technological innovations that were increasing that the entire world over. Plus if we cook the books and add the GDP produced by slave labor, without including the slaves in that “capita,” that definitely helps our Soviet cause, does it not? And you’re not going to convince me that women benefitted from this. Were they brought to the same level as men? Sure, by lowering the standard for everyone. Under the Soviet Union, women were equal slaves to the State alongside the men. Not in the gulag, though, which they had an equal shot at enjoying a tenure in. In the gulag, they got to do the same amount of work as the men, plus be raped by the guards.
The police state already existed under them, as did the gulag camps, political repression, arbritary execution, early form of collectivization ect ect
Police existed. Not a police state. I believe a labor camp existed. The Soviets built a network of hundreds. Of course arbitrary execution is never justified, but it’s a poor argument to say “The Tsar did it first!” That the Soviets did it at all is still a human rights violation, and that they did it more is a travesty. The most interesting part, though, is the political repression.
Vladimir Lenin was an outspoken Marxist and rabble rouser, and was kicked out of university for his trouble. He continued to speak against the Tsar, and was exiled to Siberia for three years. Just three. Was that three years hard labor? No. He was given a furnished house, he had books, he wrote letters. The only difference was, he was physically removed from the other rebels and it was cold outside. He later toured Western Europe until he was ready to go home and overthrow the government. In contrast, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a… let me check… a university student leading an anti-Soviet protest? No, that’s right he was an artillery commander, fighting the Nazis. What was his crime again? Oh, he was corresponding with a guy who had elsewhere suggested the Soviets might not be as great as they’d hoped. He got ten years hard labor for it. Thrown into a camp where you were as likely to die of starvation, cold, disease, or a work accident as you were to finish your sentence. Not for public protest, but for writing private letters. Oh, that was after the torture. Yeah, they didn’t just rubber stamp you and send you off to cut pine trees in Siberia or build a dam on the Volga. They tortured you first, until you gave up the co-conspirators they assumed you had.
Everything the Nazis did to the Jews, with exception to gassing, the Soviets did to their own people, ten times over. The cattle cars, the starvation, the beatings, the rapes, it was all done in Russia before the War, during the War, and long, long after the War was over. For many of those victims, gas would have been a mercy.
I’m not an ignorant ‘Murican with the sleeves cut off of my denim jacket and a “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper sticker on my lifted truck. I know we have our own set of national sins to contend with. We built our own concentration camps here in the US during WWII, against recommendations from the Congressional investigation, threw our entire Japanese immigrant population in them, and let their neighbors steal their land. We made dirty deals with the indigenous tribes, and went back on our word several times. Worst of all, that blight on our conscience, we participated in chattel slavery in direct contradiction to our founding principles, long after we knew better and failed to integrate those freed slaves into our social fabric and share our inheritance with them. However, when we tried to build a wall it was to keep drugs and criminals out, not keep regular citizens in. I’m glad the Finns here love Finland, I’ll even support the Canadians in their love for Canada, but I personally still love the US. Sometimes despite itself. But you’ll never convince me Russia was ever better by any measure.
