Describing ethnicity based deportations and gulags as “”““prisons””“” is one hell of a stretch
Ethnicity based deportations were in fact not prisons, and they were a deplorable and unjustified episode that I wholeheartedly condemn and must be never repeated again. The GULAG system was literally prisons though, it’s just the acronym of the prison system at the time.
As for the rest of your comment, yes, bad policy and mistakes were made during the hardest times of history. We could have a calm conversation and discussion about those, and honestly, I haven’t seen more honest criticism of failures of policy than that in Marxist-Leninist discussion, because people actually bother getting informed and reading about the topic instead of reproducing CIA propaganda. “Goolag hundred million deaths” is not good analysis.
The Soviet Union had its successes and it had its abject failures
Yes, and you’d be surprised how much debate there is about the problems of the USSR in actual Marxist-Leninist circles. The fact of the matter is that it still was the most emancipating socialist experiment up to its day, the first state in the world to achieve collectivization of lands, it empowered hundreds of millions of people to fight against western imperialism, and achieved all of this while living in a world dominated by western imperialism and under constant threat and the most refined and well-funded strategies to topple it.
My main contact with ml circles were a reading group some years back and hexbear. Unfortunately, I missed the lively debate there.
Sentiments like “if you suffered under the Soviet Union, you deserved it, because only fascists suffered” were much more common than any discussion of how fucked up the ethnic cleansings of the party were under Stalin. Or how the great purge in general weakened the Soviet Union.
The prison system was bad. As were many other prison systems at the time. It’s undeniable that they were used for political intimidation and sometimes even petty personal revenge (see the whole Lysenko-affair). Shutting down the discussion around with "“Gooolag hundreds million dead” isn’t helpful either.
As for repealing for example the decriminalization of homosexuality, this was done in the interwar years between the civil war and WW2.
I don’t think it’s reproducing CIA proganda to say that Stalin’s leadership had a negative impact on the project of the USSR.
Ethnicity based deportations were in fact not prisons, and they were a deplorable and unjustified episode that I wholeheartedly condemn and must be never repeated again. The GULAG system was literally prisons though, it’s just the acronym of the prison system at the time.
As for the rest of your comment, yes, bad policy and mistakes were made during the hardest times of history. We could have a calm conversation and discussion about those, and honestly, I haven’t seen more honest criticism of failures of policy than that in Marxist-Leninist discussion, because people actually bother getting informed and reading about the topic instead of reproducing CIA propaganda. “Goolag hundred million deaths” is not good analysis.
Yes, and you’d be surprised how much debate there is about the problems of the USSR in actual Marxist-Leninist circles. The fact of the matter is that it still was the most emancipating socialist experiment up to its day, the first state in the world to achieve collectivization of lands, it empowered hundreds of millions of people to fight against western imperialism, and achieved all of this while living in a world dominated by western imperialism and under constant threat and the most refined and well-funded strategies to topple it.
My main contact with ml circles were a reading group some years back and hexbear. Unfortunately, I missed the lively debate there. Sentiments like “if you suffered under the Soviet Union, you deserved it, because only fascists suffered” were much more common than any discussion of how fucked up the ethnic cleansings of the party were under Stalin. Or how the great purge in general weakened the Soviet Union.
The prison system was bad. As were many other prison systems at the time. It’s undeniable that they were used for political intimidation and sometimes even petty personal revenge (see the whole Lysenko-affair). Shutting down the discussion around with "“Gooolag hundreds million dead” isn’t helpful either.
As for repealing for example the decriminalization of homosexuality, this was done in the interwar years between the civil war and WW2.
I don’t think it’s reproducing CIA proganda to say that Stalin’s leadership had a negative impact on the project of the USSR.