Stalin the mysagonist

That's not what the science says btw. If you go to Russia and ask old people about how they feel about the USSR, they are significantly more likely to have favourable views of the USSR than young people who didn't experience it. If you are interested, you can also look at Generational and Geographic Effects on Collective Memory of the USSR.

Checks out with what I have heard, when I lived in a city of the former East Germany
- Sure. People like to romanticize the past and the Wiedervereinigung was a shitty process that fucked many people over. But it is nice, not to live in a Planwirtschaft, to travel to other german cities without being shot at or running through mine fields and not to have a quarter of your neighbourhood spy on you to be brought to one of the Stasi torture prisons for not being socialist enough.
  
  Wow, that sounds horrible, I bet there were a lot of prosecutions of the people who carried those things out once the government reunified!
  Oh, and the physical evidence and documentation of those torture dungeons after the wall fell, there must be so much evidence of all the horrors committed!
  And all the violence the evil communist government must have done to keep itself in power and prevent reunification must have been really evident, I bet we can find newspaper clippings and even video on the widespread violence that happened in an effort to hold on to power.
  Wait, I'm getting reports that none of those things actually happened, fuck. It would have lined up so nicely with the narrative taught to me by American education and popular media, that's a real bummer.
  
  Who needs evidence when you have it repeated in so many western movies?
  
  Wow, your education system really has failed you.
  
  Please link me to sources then.
  
  https://www.bundesarchiv.de/en/stasi-records-archive/
  Mate it's right there.
  
  Cool than you'd be able to share things from the archives that meet those specified criterion?
  
  Yes sure let me just get an eight hour train to Berlin to work on your assignments, random person on the internet.
  
  Okay so you are claiming that there is proof but we would have to go to Berlin to find proof? In the age where internet archives exist?
  If neither of us are willing to physically go there than why did you cite it as a source to support your claims?
Old people in Russia will not remember the Stalin era, but the Khrushchev era (the post-gulag era, famous for de-stalinization) and the Brezhnev era. Old people also tend to romatisize their youth. And romatisizing the Soviet Union is mixed with ethno-nationalism in current days Russia.
I consider myself a socialist, but stalinism is dog-shit.
- The world owes Stalin and the people of the USSR a debt that can never be repaid for being the only country to try to stop Nazi Germany before the war and the country which bore the brunt of the casualties and hardship.
  Any "socialist" who shit talks them is suspicious as fuck in my book, chauvinist at the very best and probably a snitch.
  Khrushchev was an opportunist piece of shit and the world would have been better if he had been kicked out of the party.
  
  Oh yes. The only country. the people who stood up and fought for their independence from that murderous shit hole just were brain washed by all those western capitalist comforts and luxuries. Ups sorry no they were even worse off with the capitalists because they really were enslaved and unhappy and taken advantage of.
  but alas at least they chose. Socialists chose for you. If you don't like the choice fuck off to the gulag.
  
  The soviets saved the world, but Stalin was a monster ntl.
  
  You're joking, right? Never heard of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Funny fact: all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
  
  The non-aggression pact that was signed well after Nazi germany had signed pacts with Britain and France? The one that was signed after Stalin's pleas for an alliance against Hitler's Germany fell on deaf ears because Western powers were still dreaming that Germany would attack the USSR first and succeed where they'd failed immediately after the 1917 revolution? That one?
  Historically illiterate westerners read a single fucking line and memorize it and think that's an earth-shattering gotcha like we haven't seen your cookie cutter shit a hundred times. Serious socialists who actually read history can contextualize history, and I'll repeat it: fuck anyone who diminishes the sacrifices of the Soviet Union against the Nazi tide, it's barely notch above outright holocaust denial.
  all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
  Back up your claims with a serious source. I'm sure such a comically extraordinary claim will have hard evidence behind it and not just a vibe.
  
  A user just moved the goalpost to the time when the U.S.S.R. traded some raw materials in exchange for firearms and other machinery (which it later used to help defeat the Axis). One can imagine another counterarguing that this credit deal hardly enabled the Third Reich’s bellicism; that, if anything, it likely only lead to the Axis’s defeat as it allowed the Soviets to prepare for the armed conflict. Ask yourself if that sounds identical to the liberal bourgeoisie’s appeasement.
  The Third Reich’s trade with the Kingdom of Romania between January and November 1940 surpassed its trade with the Soviet Union. I would be surprised if the Soviets did indeed deliver ‘about 75%’ of the Third Reich’s imports: only 34% of the Third Reich’s oil came from the Soviet Union; it looks like the Kingdom of Romania was a much more important source of Fascism’s black gold.
  The non-aggression pact that was signed well after Nazi germany had signed pacts with Britain and France?
  While not directly related to the pacts, the British Empire exported significant quantities of scrap to the Third Reich. In fact, the British Empire served as the Third Reich’s primary source of imported raw materials in the 1930s. I cannot say much about pre-1940 France’s economic relations with the Third Reich, but you sparked my curiosity on that subject.
  fuck anyone who diminishes the sacrifices of the Soviet Union against the Nazi tide, it’s barely notch above outright holocaust denial.
  Added to this, 75.3% of Europe’s Jewish refugees found refuge in the Soviet Union during World War II, Lithuanian Jews welcomed the Red Army in 1940, which had the highest number of Jews of all the Allied armies, and (my favourite) Soviet policies lead Transnistrians to resist antisemitism, even during Axis occupation.
  
  You do know that the USSR signed a trade deal with Nazi Germany even in 1940, right? When the rest of the world was already blockading Nazi Germany for... being Nazi's. In fact, in 1940 the Soviet Union delivered about 75% of Nazi Germany's imports, mostly in oil & steel. Stalin could've joined that blockade, and not supplied the necessary materials for the Nazi war machine -- but he didn't.
  You can acknowledge that, and still acknowledge the USSR took the brunt of the force fighting the Nazi's. It's not a sports game, you don't have to pick sides.
  
  Check Wikipedia/Хронология советской цензуры and references 45 and 46 there. I don't particularly like mixing here several topics together as interchangeable statements: soviet people sacrificed greatly to stop the nazi aggression. Stalin is another great woe of soviet people. Stalin was very much on the same page with nazis when it came to dividing the territories, bad that the leopard ate his face.
I won't deny the scientific studies.
I am speaking from personal and family experience
- You literally are, that's what you're doing right here. You are saying your experience trumps the data.

Vaguely hates communism because that's been the western cultural norm for the last century
Decides to talk to some people who have actually lived under communism; every single one confirms that your view of communism is wildly inaccurate and states their preference for communism
Goes back to hating communism anyway because both sides or something
- The funniest shit I read today, the guy was sooooo fucking close.
I think you should use your experiences in Azerbaijan as a push to confront some of your biases, and re-examine your understanding of Socialism in the Soviet Union. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't "totalitarian" by any stretch either. The benefits of the Socialist economic structure are pined for precisely because they worked, and did so for the common people. There are improvements that can and have been made in other Socialist countries, but these improvements would not have been possible without the brave Soviet people pioneering Socialism as it exists in the real world.
- Not totalitarian you say?
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
  My experience in Azerbaijan also included tales of when they were children passing curds to starving prisoners through chain fences in Kazakh gulags. The Soviet Union did more harm than good to the leftist movement and is used as the scary example every single time someone begins to think twice about the capitalist system they live under. Socialism is forever tainted by the USSR and severely struggles to remove that image. Fuck the USSR.
  
  The Soviet Union did more harm than good to the leftist movement and is used as the scary example every single time someone begins to think twice about the capitalist system they live under. Socialism is forever tainted by the USSR and severely struggles to remove that image. Fuck the USSR.
  The soviet union literally stopped nazi germany from doing a gargantuan genocide on eastern europe, it's quite literally the biggest leftist victory hitherto and even now these eastern european countries still live off the crumbling infrastructure built during the soviet union period.
  Only idiots parrot this narrative that the USSR was unimaginably bad, please educate yourself and purge this comical perception of the USSR, it's only there to make you think there is no alternative.
  
  Oh yes. All alone without help. And they didn't start the whole thing together with Nazi Germany in the first place. And everyone was living happily ever after. Everyone weeped after the Soviet Union collapsed because we now have to live under horribly oppressive systems....
  They continued to commit horrible atrocities after the war ended. On their "own" population so who cares.
  
  All alone without help.
  U.S. capitalism was far more useful to the Fascists than to the Soviet Union.
  And they didn’t start the whole thing together with Nazi Germany in the first place.
  The Empire of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 would be a better starting point, but other candidates include 1935, 1937, 1938, and 1941. There was significantly more fighting throughout the 1930s than the 1920s. An important reason (if not the most important) for WWII was the Great Depression. See the link for details.
  
  Far more useful.... The soviet union was an ally of fascist nazi Germany.
  The allies liberated western Europe and supplied loads of machinery to the soviet union. And thank god they did. And thank god they didn't stop further west.
  
  No, the relations between Fascist Italy and the Third Reich were an alliance. The relations between the Slovak Republic and the Third Reich were an alliance. The German–Soviet Pact was 1.8 years of neutrality, which the Western Axis broke by launching the largest and deadliest invasion in all of history, yet for some reason antisocialists seem far more interested in the Pact than the invasion.
  We can spend all day condemning the German–Soviet Pact to the lowest depths of Hell and overrate its importance to be greater than every other event in history combined. It won’t get us a damn bit closer to understanding the circumstances that made it a likely outcome. Because unlike you, I take tragedies seriously by thoroughly examining their causes as well as their effects. That is why I taught people about the Pact from the Fascist bourgeoisie’s point of view whereas generic antisocialists have bupkes to say about that subject.
  
  So the secret clause was inevitable and necessary. The soviet union had to attack Poland together with Germany and had to do horrible atrocities while doing so? You don't take anything serious other than soviet apologism.
  
  It was no doubt disgraceful that Soviet Russia should make any agreement with the leading Fascist state; but this reproach came ill from the statesmen who went to Munich. […] [The German–Soviet] pact contained none of the fulsome expressions of friendship which Chamberlain had put into the Anglo‐German declaration on the day after the Munich conference.
  Indeed Stalin rejected any such expressions: “the Soviet Government could not suddenly present to the public German–Soviet assurances of friendship after they had been covered with buckets of filth by the [Fascist] Government for six years.” The pact was neither an alliance nor an agreement for the partition of Poland. Munich had been a true alliance for partition: the British and French dictated partition to the Czechs.
  The Soviet government undertook no such action against the Poles. They merely promised to remain neutral, which is what the Poles had always asked them to do and which Western policy implied also. More than this, the agreement was in the last resort anti‐German: it limited the German advance eastwards in case of war, as Winston Churchill emphasized. […] [With the pact, the Soviets hoped to ward] off what they had most dreaded—a united capitalist attack on Soviet Russia. […] It is difficult to see what other course Soviet Russia could have followed.
  — A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, pg. 262
  When [the Fascists] attacked Poland, the Soviets moved into Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, the Baltic territories that had been taken from them by Germany, Britain, and Poland in 1919. They overthrew the [anticommunist] dictatorships that the Western counterrevolutionaries had installed in the Baltic states and incorporated them as three republics into the USSR. The Soviets also took back Western Byelorussia, the Western Ukraine, and other areas seized from them and incorporated into the Polish [anticommunist] dictatorship in 1921 under the Treaty of Riga.
  This has been portrayed as proof that they colluded with the [Fascists] to gobble up Poland, but the Soviets reoccupied only the area that had been taken from them twenty years before. History offers few if any examples of a nation refusing the opportunity to regain territory that had been seized from it. In any case, as Taylor notes, by reclaiming their old boundaries, the Soviets drew a line on the [Fascist] advance which was more than what Great Britain and France seemed willing to do.
  — Michael Parenti, The Sword and the Dollar, pgs. 144–145
  
  The soviet union was an ally of fascist nazi Germany
  Are you writing nazi fanfiction now?
  
  The soviet union was an ally of fascist nazi Germany.
  aight 😂 i must've imagined the war then
  
  Aight must've imagined Molotov Ribbentrop pact.
  
  Now cite every single other pact signed with Nazi Germany. Or are you just gonna talk about the one the Soviets did to buy time to be able to beat the Nazis?
  
  Let me put this clear, if countries go to war with each other, are they allies or enemies?
  
  I am aware of the Soviet Union expelling fascists and Tsarists from the party, and punishing those found corrupt, criminals, or had been members of the White Army. I am aware of the GULAG administration that formed the early Soviet prison system, read Russian Justice for more on how that functioned. I am aware of the famine in the 1930s. I have read these articles, as pretty much every Western Communist has had to, these are not "gotchas."
  The real truth of the matter is that the western anti-Communist "Left" that denounces the USSR and every real attempt at building Socialism plays into the hands of the US Empire. The Soviet Union was a massive victory for the working class, the first real Socialist state in history, and with it came dramatic improvements in key life metrics and working class dignity.
  Life expectancy doubled.
  The economy was democratized, following the method of Soviet Democracy
  Wealth inequality shrank, while economic growth boomed:
  
  Large expansions in social safety nets were made, such as free and high quality education and healthcare.
  Housing rates skyrocketed, and literacy rates over tripled to 99.9%.
  Food security was achieved in a country that was always food insecure.
  The Red Army defeated the Nazis, with 80% of the combat of World War II on the Eastern Front.
  The Soviet Union supported countless liberation movements, such as in Cuba, Algeria, and more.
  And many, many more achievements. People who denounce the USSR maintain unstated approval for the other Great Power, the United States, which without the USSR would have been entirely unopposed. The US, which committed Imperialist slaughter and even genocide in Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Angola, Palestine, and many, many more countries, was opposed primarily by the Soviets.
  The Soviet Union was by no means perfect, nobody asserts that, but to claim that the Soviet Union did "more harm than good to the Leftist movement" is ludicrous. This is the sentiment of Western Chauvanists that don't want to support Socialism unless they are the ones who acheive it. Jones Maonel was spot on in Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, but not Real Revolution.
  You should read Dr. Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds, or at the very least the sections on "Left" Anti-Communism.
  
  u dropped this 👑
  
  Doing my best as a baby ML 🫡
  Always love and appreciate your comments, comrade!
  
  You're appreciated
  
  Thanks!
  
  "Tens of millions died, but lines went up!"
  You know, you'd probably make a better capitalist than you think.
  
  Tens of millions? I suppose it was the USSR's fault that the Nazis declared war and committed genocide? Or are you crying for the Nazis? Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
  
  You're right it was only about 5 million. The tens of millions was from Mao.
  
  So it was maos fault that the yanks and japanese invaded china? FUCK THE YANKS DEATH TO YANKS BUSH DID 911 TO HAVE AN EXCUSE FOR GENOCIDE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD
  
  Keep peddling debunked Black Book of Communism mythology, I guess.
  
  You would've had the image of leftists destroyed no matter what, the faults of USSR is ever present and has even been maximised to the point of hilarity where it is compared with the Nazis, even if false or inaccurate or misrepresented
  You could see the victories of socialism and communism within USSR and read and learn about it, but also critique the system that Stalin created alongside it which allowed repression, where it lead to millions dying in Ukraine and millions to suffer in prison, but these have been exaggerated as part of western doctrine to deface communism as much as possible, so never take it at face value
  It's extremely unfortunate that communism was cursed as not only the biggest enemy of the developed world as it was just only developing, but also had the misfortune to be lead by a leader who had little regard for democracy or democratic values in politics and which lead to later on revisionism, inefficiencies and the collapse.
  
  but also had the misfortune to be lead by a leader who had little regard for democracy or democratic values in politics and which lead to later on revisionism, inefficiencies and the collapse.
  Yeah, fuck Khrushchev
  
  Things were different in the periphral nations, than in the center. Those who read your comments with heritage from the peripheral will understand you, and the others will not.
There's a saying in the ex socialist republics. "Those who don't miss the USSR have no heart, but those who want it back have no brains." Think that about sums it up.
- I think you just made that up.
  Besides, living standards and life expectancy in the former USSR are just now recovering back to levels they were at when the USSR broke up. It makes complete sense why people would look at the last 30 years and conclude things were better before.
- have u been to romania these days 😅
100% agree : I won't deny the nostalgia factor !

Telling me what to think is totalitarian

totalitarian is when capitalists hold no political power, thus intrinsically evil.

I used to live in Chemnitz, and that’s exactly what o have done, the answers were not as I expected, most people said that, one or two things were better, the quality of life generali has gotten worse.

100% this. Im from Russia and I have heard many horrible stories from older relatives about previous generations and life under the USSR. Life is definitely shitty now, but it's still better than those years

Lol you're not even allowed to have your own personal experiences here, that's apparently in conflict with the glorious Data.
- I'm not surprised lol. For some reason, foreign fans of communism like to ignore how real people actually lived back then. +It's funny that I also quite often came across old people who praised the USSR, but their words always sounded like “yes, we had a terrible shortage in our country, we didn’t have normal clothes, food, or medicine, and my parents were afraid to even talk about politics, BUT ice cream cost three kopecks and was tastier than now!". All the love for the USSR from them is just nostalgia for the times when they were carefree kids
  
  All the love for the USSR from them is just nostalgia for the times when they were carefree kids
  Yeah bro only enlightened westerners are smart enough to recognize why they preferred a certain economic and political system, dumb easterners just want ice cream. They definitely didn't have a better political education than you. Hell, they probably didn't even read Animal Farm!
  Fucking chauvinists I stg.
  
  What? Please learn to read first, this is not at all what I said. I just described my experience as a Russian who talked to a bunch of old post-USSR people about what life was like in those years. And like I said, they described horrible things that I wouldn't want to experience, but some of them looked at them with love because they were younger and healthier then
  "political education" do you mean endless propaganda, life in a country completely cut off from the rest of the world and censorship of literally everything? Yes, in that case I think I have a better political education. At least I studied at a time when Russia was freer than then and now
  
  Their EBIL GOMMUNIST propaganda 🤮
  Our smol bean capitalist education 🥰
  
  Yeah the nostalgia angle sounds tough. And then you have the x-sov states that are backsliding (hungary, a bit of Czechia), I assume, based on some level of love for the authoritarian nostalgia.
  Edit: apparently we can't even accept that hungary has turned into an authoritarian state. Amazing.
  
  No one here like Orban, you're being down voted because that is some of the shittiest political analysis I have seen. You're chalking up reactionary populism to Communist nostalgia- there is no ideological connection between the two.

I don’t think communism and ussr were saints free of all sin but on the other side of the coin I also think there is a lot of things about communism that were made up to make it look worse than it was, I mean capitalism did some propaganda. I used to live in a city that was formerly East Germany and I did ask around what people remember what it was like and what they thought was better, and most of them said they preferred the old system, one or two things are better now but the general quality of life now is worse. Me, being Portuguese, and therefor bombarded with capitalist propaganda since birth was completely 🤯

I'm not sure how this would be considered good, it's still oppression. The result just happens to be desirable but that doesn't justify the way it was achieved.

If we want gender equality, it will have to be forced.