After studying Russian history, one quote stuck with me; "In Russia, even the rocks are guilty." That land has been home to unparalleled suffering and cruelty on a scale that defies comprehension.
@MrEnglewood78 I can't believe some of you compare Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to USA and other European Democracies. Really? Are you people that Dense?
I’m glad you mention how important it is to remember these awful events in history. Too often I hear people complain how these events put a damper on their life and want to forget it. It’s important to remember even if is hard to hear about.
The main reason is because the Nazis went out in a blaze of glory while the Soviet Union simply fizzled out, so the same people who were in power in the Soviet Union in the 50s were the same guys had the same mindset as those in 80s and 90s
I mean there aren't many Stalinists in the modern historical spotlight, and unfortunately they never got the public defeat that Nazis got, so they've kind of just faded into obscurity on the world stage. Which is very unfortunate, because Putin has been able to turn Russia into a criminal oligarchy which in many ways pays homage to the old Stalinist state. It's sad that after living through the evil of Lenin and Stalin, some Russians lived to see another dictator take over.
My grandmother was taken to Siberia. She was the youngest of 3 children, maybe 6 or so. She was also the only one who came back alive, her teenage sisters and parents all starved to death. They were taken to Siberia in trains used to transport cattle and dropped off at some ramshackle, abandoned village with a few dilapidated houses that had holes on their roofs etc. A small village was located not very far away, but the people there were so brainwashed by the government to believe that these poor souls were their enemies, criminals etc that they didn't help them. My grandmother told me stories of how people would pick undigested grains out of excrement to make food out of them, later on digging up the dead from their shallow graves when things got really tough. Women and children (they were separated from men) went into the freezing taiga to cut down trees all day (they still had to work for the government), many died on their way back because they were so weak and exhausted they couldn't walk, freezing to death where they lay. My grandmother survived, because her mother told her to go to the village and beg for food and one Russian lady had it in her heart to feed her every now and then, that's how she survived. Unsurprisingly, she has mental health issues. Sometimes she gets confused and thinks that it's still soviet times or that me and my siblings were alive back then. She developed a cold personality, preferring solitude and the company of books rather than people, which made it hard for my father (her son) growing up and in turn for us on some level as he had anger issues and such. She's 82 now and still cries to this day when she remembers the things she witnessed. She said that she will forever remember the Russian woman that saved her but is heartbroken because she doesn't even know her name and never got to thank her.
I was always weirded out by the way Russians have cold and stiff personalities in general, and I always it’s probably living in harsh environments makes you like that over generations and it becomes a society trait after a while. But this is probably another reason, the horror and pain russians saw is definitely above anything humans can withstand without changing so much.
John Wayne - youre right, i was exaggerating a bit, its much better now. when uncle joe kicked it things got markedly better, but good lord they hit some horrific lows.
@C D Don't turn it into something to support your ideals. This isn't about communism or capitalism, it's about what happens when psychopaths are given control.
@@CptCool-xt8ht Communist is truly rubbish. Even in Vietnam, after the Vietnam war we tried to exercise Communist ways and it was shit. We can only going so far for a decade, we had enough, for a nation after wars this was too much. Notebooks for food proportion was crazy, economies were shit, only few people works, we even disdain the idea of make thinkers, engineers, workers do farm works, which is stupid, we know that and we stopped it
@@richardsmith9615 yea but it just so happens that everytime communism is implemented a psycopath takes control of the state. Communism is psycopathic in nature because it came from the mind of that true sociopath Karl Marx. Listen to Tomas Sowell's: Marx the Man and tell me he didn't display clear signs of psycopathy. Everything that is grown from the seeds of that evil ideology will bear the same fruit.
I worked with a woman who’s mom had grown up in Stalin’s Russia. She was smuggled across the frontier into Norway in a suitcase when she was 15; she weighed 60 ish pounds. She was my age, and looked 20 years older. Men in uniforms sent her into frightened hiding under her desk. And she hated Stalin with a barely sane rage I have never seen in my life. She was terrified that “they” would come get her, even after the Berlin Wall fell, even after Yelsin took over. She would tell anyone to fear the day our country followed a man rather than our principles. She had food hidden everywhere in her house, even cans of soup under the sink in the bathroom. She knew what it was like to be hungry, and she never forgot. She finally died of a heart condition associated with being starved as a child. RIP, Lana...
It's starting to look like your friends mom was right. It's starting to look like the United States is heading that way. My heart cries for all people who had to suffer through that Hell. Greedy people are a threat to our way of life.
My devout Roman Catholic family (mom's side) came from Eastern Europe. The name "Joseph" is never to be used or even married. It's practically genetic hatred by my generation, because we grew up hearing the stories... What happened if you were in Stalin's reach, in or out of Russia.
It took me 2 tries to get through ‘Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin’ by Timothy Snyder. It was so dark and so depressing that I was having nightmares. A couple years later I picked it up again and got through it. The sheer number of deaths and suffering of people in the Bloodlands is truly horrifying.
I know this is unrelated other than for it being a book it took multiple times for me to read and having nightmares about it, but it was a book called '3096 days' about a girl who was snatched off the footpath and kept by her abductor for years.
Some Man it wasn’t one man. It was an ideology that killed over 100 million in the 1900’s. Pol Pot, Mao, Guevara, Lenin, Stalin, etc. See the common thread yet?
@@surfinalien What are you talking about? Did you watch the whole video? I'm saying the only reason we know about this particular incident is because one man tried to make it public.
J Dineen Stalin murdered at least 30 million people’s and Mao 40-60 million. Strangely, Hitler is known by everyone as the worst mass murderer in history although he was a mere amateur by comparison with his modest 6 million murdered.
@@gulftoad the U.S. government committed mass genocide against the Natives of the continent. They also enslaved and thrived off an economy built off of slavery. Capitalism continues to kill and American imperialism has continued to kill over the past half century. Read more than a high school history text book please.
My grandmother was 5 or 6 when Stalin died. She remembers the day distinctly because there was a woman outside wailing and screaming while tearing at here hair, when she asked her parents why the woman was crying, they told her it was because Stalin died. Even with the horrible oppression he was guilty of, the Soviet people still loved him. That's how powerful propaganda is. It was only after Pravda began to expose the crimes of the dictator it once served that the people realized the truth.
Adolf Hitler killed nowhere near Josef Stalin, Pol Pot or even Mao Zedong. Kim Jong Un and his entire family can never politically commit the attrocities caused by Chairman Mao let alone Josef Stalin or Pol Pot because South Korea would invade with the USA and almost every other country except China and Russia and Iran who are the only countries who somewhat trade with North Korea...
God damn. This was only 90 years ago. Not even a century. My neighbour is 90 years old. It's insane to think I just had a casual chat this morning with someone who was alive while all this was going on somewhere else on the planet... Hell, it's insane to realize the horrors going on somewhere else RIGHT NOW while I'm just sitting here in my quiet rural apartment trying to assemble my stupid IKEA closet....
Being from Finland, hearing my great grandfathers stories from stalin's regime. Compared to Hitler. Stalin's always stood out to me being far worse. He didn't speak much on he situation. But when he did you would listen. God bless him. God bless all of us that didn't have to witness this first hand. Remember. It's not been 100 years since this has happened.
What about Finns murdering tens of thousands of Soviet POW during WWII. Did your grandfather tell you about that? Or about concentration camps for Soviet civilians of Slavic origin (the Soviet born Finns and Karelians were mostly spared of this fate). Your troops behaved better than Nazis during the war, but just a little better.
@@manichaean1888 Like I said. He didn't speak much about the war but I am well aware of what the Finns did too. Their are no winners in War. Just those who lose less.
@@jayh9635 I know that the Finns do not celebrate WWII (since nothing is there to celebrate). But somehow I always get impression that they do not feel gulty for all death and destruction they brought in the way as the Germans do. I have seen that film (Unknown Soldier, if I'm correct) which is the main Finnish war saga. There is regret in that story but no sense of guilt. It's like: "We fought bravely, but we lost in the end. The odds were against is. What a shame!".
@@manichaean1888 Feel guilty for what? Finland tried to avoid the war at all cost but USSR was determined to conquer the whole country as Finland was considered as a territory of the USSR in the Molotov-Rippentrop pact. USSR attacked Finland in 1939 in order to conquer it completely. Finland managed to survive the war as USSR was afraid that the UK and France would start supporting Finland and therefore agreed to sign a peace treaty. However, 13% of the land and 20% of agricultural land had to be ceded to the USSR. After the Winter War, it was clear that Stalin would not stop here but he would complete his plan to conquer the whole country. Finland had to seek aid for this and Germany was the only option. The alternative if you can call it like that would have been an almost total annihilation. Stalin once said that the population of Finland is smaller than Leningrad, its deportation to Siberia is only a logistical issue. Knowing what he did in Ukraine (Holodomor), Poland (Katyn) or in Baltics (annexation and replacing the local people with Russians) it is clear that he really could have executed his plans in Finland. So, large parts of the population would have been deported to Siberia, upper-class citizens would have been executed like in Katyn and the local population would have been replaced with Russians. Even today, Baltics have large Russian minorities, thanks to Stalin. Small countries do not fight for conquest but rather survival. When a country with a population of 170 million attacks a country with a population of 3,5 million, what kind of results do you expect? The fact that Finland managed to survive and to stay independent and to avoid total destruction when a country with 48 times bigger population attacks is quite an achievement. Is that something to be guilty about? So, Finland had basically two options: 1. Letting the USSR in voluntarily, leading to annexation and Stalin's atrocities. 2. Try to avoid the conflict as much as possible but fight if necessary because you don't want the aforementioned destiny. If you were governing Finland in 1939-1945, what would you have done differently? When it comes to prisoners of war, there were not systematic killings of POWs. Some guards treated POWs inhumanely but those actions are not denied but condemned. Such a poor and small economy could not sustain a large prisoner population and thus food and supplies were in short supply in the whole country. When a new area is captured it is customary that the local civil population is interned in times of war because it can contain partisans and spies. The Finnish forces trusted more the civil population with similar ethnicity and thus interning them would have been unnecessary.
And this kind of shit is still happening to this day in places like China and North Korea. China has prison camps all over where they put political prisoners and minorities, most notably uighur muslims. They force them to work for corporations under some other made up company, brainwash them to abandon their culture and pledge alligence to the state, execute them(which is legal in China) and harvest their organs. And in North Korea political prisoners sometimes along with their familimies are put into camps and things like execution by artilery cannons have happened.
A long way to go for sure. There are plenty of millennials who grew up never knowing what the Soviet Union was and have no understanding of its history or atrocities and are now once again promoting socialism. There’s plenty on Bernie bros who think “The Soviet Union wasn’t that bad” and that “it’s all western propaganda”. These people are dangerously blind to their own ignorance.
@@jokuvaan5175 China is not that bad, i mean, it IS bad, but is far better than NK or Sovier Russia, i say China is around the level of Nazi Germany of assholery
Stalin's predecessor, who simply followed the financial principles of Marx and Engels (including execution of all who know too much (read: are educated and can think for themselves) and dared to own private property or be religious), was just honoured with a monument in (olden days') West Germany. I guess nobody would dare put it in the old East Germany parts. His statue in Seattle is also still standing, the only monument that the fascists refuse to deface and/ or remove. Yes, I called BLM and AntiFa fascists. Because that is what they are. And they seem to refuse to learn from their failed CHAZ-experiment, that socialism looks good on paper and then fails in every way and execution. Won't it be a laugh (in the most horrible sense), if Russia needs to feed the USA in a few years' time, because the commie fascists finally got the White House?
I imagine that if I had been on that island, starving and freezing to death, I would have waded into the freezing river and allowed myself to die of hypothermia. It would have been a comparatively peaceful way to die rather than being eaten alive. If seen by a guard and shot, so much the better.
You are an idiot to think that you are any different than the others who went there you most certainly would do and think the same things everyone else did.
It's easier to say this from the comfort of your home with a full belly. I bet if you were in their shoes starving, you'd be one of the first to start killing for food.
Thank you so much for this research and brilliant video! This is kind of stories you never want to know much, because of the horror. I’ve made my own little research on the story of my husband’s grandfather. He was ethnic German, but lived in Ukraine. In 1938 he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in Uchtizmlag. This conversation camp was the last place for its prisoners because the conditions there and the labour they were meant to do. Of course, he dyed there in a couple of months. During the research I was too emotionally involved and understood that would never ever back to such a horrible subject. In the list of arrested people I’ve seen 9 years old kids. Two policemen who lead these cases were from russia, and after that they returned to their homeland getting all the awards and living peacefully to the very end of their miserable lives.
if youre interested, read at least part of the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, its a very hard book, but worth its place in the annals of history
I am from Moldavia and my family sometimes talks about how one of my great-grandad was whealthy during the URSS occupation of Moldavia. Whealthy at that time meant that he had a discreet amount of lands and cattles that provided enought food for his family to not fear starvation. This whealth was noticed by the URSS state and one day, out of the nowhere, a few officers arrived at my great-grandad's house and robbed him from all of his possesions except his house and dragged him away from his family on their truck. Nobody knows what they did to him but everyone thinks that he was shot by the officers shortly after leaving, on his way to a gulag. As horrible as this story is a I really hope that he really died like that instead of thinking that maybe he arrived into one of this horrific gulags to continue his misery.
This is very similar to what happened to my granddad during Khmer Rouge. Our family wasn’t exactly rich, but we have land and house. My granddad was a math teacher too. One day, they just came in, and took him away, took everything away. My mom was young back then. We don’t know what happened to him afterward. We assumed he was sent to gulag prison. I just hope he experienced a fast death, and not torture to death.
@@andromedamessier3176 im so sorry for what happened to your grandad, no one deserves that. In my opinion the Khymer Rouge were sadists, obsessed with control and the lowest of the low. The horrors they committed should never be forgotten and should never be allowed to happen again! God bless your grandad
I'm an Englishman of Russian descent, my great grandparents who were minor aristocrats fled Russia during the revolution whilst expecting my grandfather, who was born in Bulgaria but spent his formative years growing up in Serbia, they eventually all settled in southern England and helped massively in local construction, the church etc. They did well here but looking back on some of the horror strories like you and your family witnessed they were lucky to get out alive without suffering a similar fate. God bless you and your family, and god bless your grandad
Part of my family is Chechen, and we have similar horror stories. Stalin would send thugs to round us up, put us on freezing train, and use us for slave labor. We couldn’t speak our languages, and were often treated even worse than Russia prisoners. There are plenty of books about our plight back then. And they’re still doing it to this day.
My grandfather lost most of his family in the famine and the war. He was never the same again after the horrors that he survived in his own home country. It makes me almost physically ill hearing about the things in this video, but it's important that we don't forget. Thank you so so much for speaking about this, from a very grateful Ukrainian girl ❤️
Nowadays, history seems to be repeating itself. So videos like this are ever so important in reminding us the horrors that were - and can easily be again, judging by current political climate.
My family was all sent to Gulags as well during this time, except for the father of the Kulak family, who was shot on the spot. This was covered up until recently when we started digging. It's nice to hear that people still talk about these things, we can never forget these things so that we may be smarter in the future. I hope the current war in Ukraine ends soon, because more and more of my friends I grew up with keep vanishing on the way to the borders.
The fact that they were trying to make “self sustaining farms” IN SIBERIA, is something I just can’t get over because it’s so insane😳All that farmland in arctic climates😳
@@GWR4079 low key hilarious how you seeing a black person’s face makes you want to incite a “race war” and your brain is so rotted you think that’s a sensible reaction
I remember being in college and seeing students and professors waive the soviet hammer and sickle flag. I could never tell if these people were that evil or just dangerously ignorant of history.
They probably only read Marx’s book and immediately dismissed Stalin as “not a real Communist”. Shit like this is why I never blindly follow any sort of ideology whatsoever. Learn from history. That’s what we should all do.
The way Simon changes his demeanour as he gets to the condemnation of those responsible, adds much weight and gravity to the human suffering imposed. As always history potted into a nutshell, no waffle just a true story with the facts. Brilliantly done on a tragic subject.
That's why I don't believe in the "simulation" theory. We are a mixture of high intellect, self-awareness and pure primal animal. There isn't a worse combination of being. If it is a simulation, then we're definitely set on hard mode.
I read a book called Cannibalism and the story of Leningrad was in it. That is the first thing I thought when I watched this. Russian has such a dark history :(
Thank you for getting this information out into the world. These atrocities should never be forgotten, they should be in the forefront of people's minds. This is us, this what we're all capable of.
It’s why the 1st and 2nd amendment are important. Plenty of guns in Civilian hands until the nazis outlawed and confiscated them, same with the Soviets. Once Confiscation occurs, it’s all over. Ppl start dying shortly after..
It’s why they don’t want organized militias within communities or why the feds are getting more heavy handed and are chipping away at those amendments bit by bit. They know they can’t take them away outright cuz they’d get lynched. So they play the long game.
@@TheMoose126 It is true that people could have rebelled then if they got guns but today it is not possible to take on government with just guns it is pretty naive to think guns give you any chance against government armed by machines and corrupt people in charge of armies. Your gun would do nothing.
I'm from Canada and I find this video particularly interesting cause I met an old man who said he was from Siberia in jail , I found him to be pretty intriguing cause he ate everything that was given to him and was always studying when we got oranges or bananas he ate the peels that we would throw away, he told me about how they would hunt herds of caribou as they crossed the river so the corpses were easy to rope together and float on a skiff he said they would bring all the caribou to the cleaning hut where they skinned and harvested the meat and fur he said they had made the knives out of scavanged steel that was remnants of a trains engine block. He had a cellmate who only spoke Spanish and he himself ended up learning how to speak pretty mediocre Spanish in about three weeks.. I think he was locked up for quite a bit I was only there short term said it was for passport fraud, as I remember he was about 65 years old (in 2012) so he was probably second generation serbian exile, very resourceful guy
Anyone that managed to escape a communist regime always has something to incredibly interesting to say. For one reason, they were never allowed to say it before.
@@Cd5ssmffan What's a lie? The old man story? Lol probably. Although those that are vocally suppressed due to government tend to overexert their newly acquired freedom of speech, along with it they tend to toss in a few pounds of bullshit too. Several pounds.
it is so terrifying what so many humans are capable of. Like how could the guards just have so little empathy that they enjoyed causing additional suffering
Well if you have empathy that means youre a good guy which means everyone is going to manipulate and use you. Have you ever heard of a line that goes the better you are towards someone the worse they are towards you?
Check out Jordan Peterson’s lecture about “the gulag archipelago” it’s the book that crumbled and revealed the reality behind the Soviet Union essentially. It is extremely wicked and disgusting what happened during that era. The book was written and published between the years of 1950s - 1960s. It was written by a Russian dissident who preached against the Soviet Union, who himself was a prisoner in the gulags for over a decade. It is probably the greatest book of the 20th century.
@@freckleheckler6311 It's even better to read the book itself.' The Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzenitzhyn. You can even listen to the audiobook on TH-cam for free.
I'm glad there are channels like this, in school they teach us so much about "Nazis bad" but nothing about USSR and all the equaly disgusting things they did
@@MEME-fd1nf Are you serious? I mean I'm honestly not surprised, because the public education system in the US is getting worse every year. But when I was in high school (that would have been in the late 90's), we studied the Soviet Union and Stalin almost as extensively as Germany and World War II
M E M E They don’t know who Stalin is because kids don’t pay attention in school anymore then blame it on the education system(I’m not defending our education system btw lol). All of my History teachers who taught in areas of WWII all told the class that Stalin was worse than Hitler he killed more, tortured more but Stalin was an “ally” at the time so we turned a blind eye to his crimes. I even took a whole Genocide class in HS that taught about the Armenian Genocide, Manchuria Genocide, Holocaust, Russian Gulags, Pol-Pot and his regime in Cambodia, the Rwandan Genocide so on.
I live in Bulgaria and in my town there’s a monument of “the soviet liberators who died for our liberation from the fascists”. The only soviet soldiers to die in Bulgaria during WW2 were 80 men from the soviet occupation forces who learned that a shipment of alcohol was comming to a train station and decided to rob it. They killed the guard who tried to stop them and went on with their plan. The alcohol in the train however was Methanol and they all poisoned themselves and died. Nowadays there are dozens of monuments portraying them as heroes who selflessly died for my country.
@@haroldfiedler6549 Bulgaria was a German ally on paper but they did not aid Germany in the war afaik. All they did was hold Greece I believe. They didn't even know what the Germans were doing and when they learned, they joined the Allies. How about you read a book lmao
Harold Fiedler I am not a history buff but given I was born there I’d say I know a thing or two and from memory what I remember is that Bulgaria was part of the axis only due to its leader thinking that it was a safe bet and that the nazis would win, so he could get some personal gains out of this deal. Also the nazis offered many things they weren’t really planning on fulfilling like better roads and such. Most of the population was against that decision and were deeply clearly aligned with Russia, which then lead to an opposition forming, where Bulgarian Guerrilla armies would ambush nazis and try their best to push them out of the country. The police would catch and torture school students as much of that military opposition was made up of young people who had next to no army experience. Also I’m pretty sure Bulgaria joins the Allies about halfway through the war, though I’m not sure if it was officially or not. I may have missed a couple of things in my explanation so apologies.
This is one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard. I'm grateful that the account has survived and that you covered it, even though I think I'll have new nightmares.
If done respectfully, this would make an excellent historical horror film. You wouldn't really have to embellished anything because the true horrors speak for themselves.
All horror creatures and fictitious monsters are human inventions, because there is nothing darker than the dreams of the human mind, and nothing worse than having the power to make those dreams come to life.
Read The Gulag Archipelago, (the abridged version.) Nazinsky might have been extreme for the amount of cannibalism that occurred, but the inhumane conditions were not uncommon for the Gulag camps. The book, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Gulag survivor, contains too much information to go into here, but his work attests to the fact that the whole Gulag apparatus was a horrific nightmare of unbelievable proportions, outstripping the Nazis in the sheer volume of innocent lives utterly destroyed.
It's true, and the reason Solzhenitsyn isn't taught in schools is because he lays out exactly who it was that started the Soviet Union, and those people are still largely in charge of world events in the West today.
But this story had nothing to do with current geopolitics. School teaches you about the stuff you need to know to understand the current situation and how your country made it to where it is
That's why I can't stand people tearing down civil war statues!! It's not that America is proud of the civil war, but if we forget it we are doomed to repeat it or something similar!
Some people actively want to repeat history because they think it will benefit them. And to tie this into Bradley's comment. Those are the same people tearing down monuments.
Crazy to think that for every 1 man that is willing to investigate this without his superiors' permission and who gets fired and blacklisted from his life; how many were there that "saw" nothing or wrote nothing down.
@@cjshandwritinganalytics6050 note that was 1 man whose investigation survived in archives. It's probably safe to assume a bunch of similar reports were simply discarded. And a bunch of people just disappeared without telling their story
Ukraine quite clearly hasn’t forgotten about how badly the Kremlin has treated it (along with most of its citizenry at one point or another from Russian Empire to USSR, Stalinist and thereafter, to Putin’s modernist mixture of those two prior powers)… As somebody else said in the comments this is still more or less modern history, and to think this and/or some degree of form of this can’t happen is a dangerous mistake.
Dream on. Why do people need a brinksmanship of films to enlighten them? The facts are all out there. They actually did make a film about this crap. It was titled Doctor Zhivago.
There have been several good movies about Stalin's evil acts. See Bitter Harvest and Mr. Jones, for example. Chernobyl and Citizen X, too, although they are more of an indictment of the Soviet society in general.
I love the fact that this channel has dedicated itself to true reporting. I honor you for exercising modesty, humility and human compassion in your videos. Thank you
@@rikiwakwak I think people need to realize that two things can be bad at the same time and that one thing being worse doesn't mean that the other thing is good.
My Great-Great Grandfather escaped and returned to Germany from one of those camps in Siberia after WWI. He was missing for almost 2 years, and appears to have walked back for a large portion of it. That is all we know, as he never spoke when he got home, and died within days.
@mike adan Depends on the class. If you ask me it should be discussed super openly, and should be taught, just as with the horrors of the Nazis or the horrors of Cambodia's takeover by Pol Pot. The tragedy is, an idea that *can* have merit - Socialism - was twisted into Communism and horrible misuse by people who wanted power. That's true even of Capitalism, of any form of government really. And the problem is that the way communism (not the philosophy it's based on) is built in such a way as to inevitably give an upper group more power and the people less power. That unfortunately makes it extremely easy for a despot to use a communist government to gain power. At the same time, socialist ideas like universal healthcare and higher taxes on the wealthy do make sense, social security and medicaid/medicare are also socialist in concept. The problem isn't the ideals, the problem is how people MISUSE the ideals. Same thing with capitalism, the problem is how people MISUSE capitalism to starve out smaller businesses and get richer at everyone else's expense, not with the idea of capitalism and competition. tl;dr - despots find a way, no matter the philosophy, no matter the system.
@@ThePhantomSafetyPin now that you have santitized socialism of all evil...explain how it would work anywhere in the world? The only places that socialism works is in heaven where it's not needed and Hell where it's practiced daily.
@fleshnbone187 I hear this b.s. a lot, but the truth is Scandinavia have small population and super high taxes. The government have bought into many large companies(lite touch nationalism). Simply this pie in the sky thinking works in a country with the population of NYC, but it will not scale up...look at China..
Hell is suppose eternal torment that resets over and over. What if you lived on this island and then died and it kept resetting over and over for all of eternity?
I’m an American uni graduate (who also studied abroad in the UK) and I saw other students in both areas who were radical fans of Stalin and the USSR. They thought it was a total success and any sort of sad/horrific story was just “Western propaganda.” “They had brilliant industrial practices! Everyone was treated equally! Need not, want not!” How is your ignorance of one of the most violent regimes in the world any different from any other fanatic?
When it comes to the USSR and Nazi Germany the only hard thing to discern is which one was worse. Probably the USSR, but it feels like a disrespect to the victims of either to even categorize them.
Yeah it's not that difficult to find massive wrongdoings, should you go east or west from Europe. The secrets just surface and travel differently in and between east and west. Perhaps in west it's more sneaky while in the east it's just better kept secret. Or you don't have to travel either way from Europe and you will find them just alike. What's the real shocking thing is that it seems to tag along with humans rather than areas. We're always blind to something, be it in ourselves or our beliefs.
@@1Barrett50 You can make this partisan comment on a site about the worst of Stalin’s gulags where cannibalism was committed. This is why the Republican Party is in hopeless decline.
@@lukecage3485 I never named you an idiot, and you already said, that I'm an idiot twice. And yeah, sorry for not knowing a language that's not native to me, that kinda makes me an idiot, don't it? And yeah, about Stalin, he has a georgian last name and never was proven to have jewish roots.
@@ButterDog42069 False, you said "take off your conspiracy hat". Who the F wears "conspiracy hats"?? It's not my native language either but that didn't stop me from researching it. He was a Jew and its even in his REAL name. Stalin he took because it means "steel".
The most bloodcurdling thing I read, in a comic book, was one of the Alien series stories where an alien had put someone into their bio-netting resin where they wait for facehuggers to shoot out and impregnate them, well one of the characters found a girl from their party and was going to free her, but she said “it’s no use... the creature [the alien] has eaten too much of me... lost too much blood...” and I can’t help but wonder if this absolutely wretched snippet was inspired in any capacity by the part where they tied that poor girl up and began to slaughter her alive only to be found later still alive but knowing she was doomed nonetheless... God forgive us...
Congrats on being the 512th person to type this. Rest assured your name will be added to the plaque of Commentors who let Us all know they love whiffing their own farts!
They do. You take the right classes in college and you will learn this stuff. Do you expect them to teach this stuff in elementary school? Along with mathematics and spelling?
People tend to think that the worst things in history happened centuries ago but the cruelty of the 20th century is unmatched in history. If medieval or ancient people would watch the scenes of this gulag they would be terrified for sure.
Idk, there's been many empires throughout history who were laughably barbaric and evil, as well as many other rulers. Caligula and the Neo-Assyrian empire are two prominent examples.
You think people were better in times before international media and ethical scrutiny? That’s a hilariously bad take. We’re just more efficient and industrial at doing the kind of killing that has always happened.
@nohabloemojislosiento4930 I didn't say that people before were better. I made 2 claims in my comment and you responded to neither of them. 1. The cruelty of the 20th century is unmatched. 2. The level of savagery that was committed there is a rare occurrence in history and would terrify most people no matter the society or historic time.
I dunno man, even just the religious wars of early modern western europe between Catholic and Protestant townspeople were barbaric. Catholics burned Protestants alive, Protestants pressed Catholics to death with rocks and boards, both disembodied and used horses to tear 4 limbs off at once, nevermind just regular massacre by the blade. And these were literal neighbors, same ethnicity and town, who ALL believed in salvation via Jesus Christ, but just thought the other guys were praying it wrong.
Good video. Thank you for this story. I'm Lithuanian, my grandmother was deported to Siberia at around 7 years of age. She did comeback and lived a long life, but this IS, like you said, a monument the humanity should Not forget. Don't be monsters to each other, being human is montrous enough.
Well done Yagoda, you created the first and most animalistic battle royal in existence, but i just wonder one thing. He said the survivors got pulled out of the island afterwards, so.. pretty much the ones who murdered, tortured and ate human flesh and skinned them alive got to live, and eventually started families and as of today, they are someone's grandparents.. That's haunting for me
well, as this incident happened nearly 90 years ago I assume that all of them are dead by now. We also should never forget, that thousands and thousands of Nazi war criminals never had to face justice and of course many of them lived happily ever after for decades after the war. The same is true for many high ranking members of the Nazi justice system, the police, the military, teachers and many more that were able to continue working for the new government after the end of WWII. Probably worst of all is the fact that many doctors who were involved in the holocaust and the mass euthanasia of children and disabled people never were punished, or if the were, served only a few years and worked as doctors again. I know a case of a doctor who killed and tortured children during the 40s but was a highly respected doctor and a well-renowned medical expert working for the legal system until the late 1990s - despite the fact that his crimes were well known.
@@michaelkores6860 just remember that ALL of the major evil regimes were left wing. Hitler, stalin, Lenin, mao, FDR. The list goes on. Mussolini may be classified as right leaning, only his implementation was pure authoritarian left.
@@sbevexlr848 when have u actually heard anyone say that unironically. Even in youtube I haven't seen that to a considerable extent, they label it as "western propaganda" not "capitalist pig", and I doubt any communist would even step foot to this videos comment section.
The fact that many young people now act like the fall of the Soviet Union was a sad thing, and the way Communism is depicted as cool and innocent, is absolutely sickening when viewed in the light of the truth.
I know a lot of ardent communists, they hate the soviet union for what it did and the mark it's left on the world. They claim it wasn't real communism (which to be fair it wasn't) and that a decentralized form of communism could work, as in so decentralized that 1 person could at most tell 10 people what to do.
@@terrorcookie3889 You raise a good point. True communism is actually a beautiful dream. And that's not say it's unattainable. As you point out, centralization was a major problem with the Soviet Union. However, reducing centralization could lead to two other issues. The need for organization is one. Someone would have to plan and oversee work and resources. And without power to enforce that organization, chaos would result. Secondly, some people are hard-working, but there are lazy individuals who would try to cheat the system. I think humanity as a species has much to learn for true communism to work.
as another commenter wrote about russia "and then it got worse". what we have now, while not as poverty stricken and brutal, is pretty damn bad. and putin is not going away any time soon. the oligarchs have won. remember, orwells hero wrote a book called "the theory and practice of oligarchal collectivism", and it was, although fictional, basically right.
@@isabellalofton263 Yes exactly that is why I personally am not a communist, it doesn't truly take into consideration human nature. We are both greedy and generous at the same time. Pure capitalism doesn't work as it leads to corruption, pure communism doesn't work as it also leads to corruption. We need something in the middle, a socialist and capitalist fusion with strong institutions to squash out corruption and unethical acts in my opinion
As horrific as it is to hear about this, it's still so important because most people in the western world are totally ignorant to the horrors of the Soviet union
@@daazor This is sadly a thing that has happened both to Russia and to China in the sense that the USSR and China were and are defined by their most heinous leaders rather than note there are nuances to both countries and systems that happened almost as soon as Stalin and Mao stopped breathing. Putin and XI might respect their predecessors, but they are not Mao or Stalin. (Which is not to say they aren't terrible on their own, because they are).
Even worse when western people talk about communism as this "beautiful idea badly executed". It sucks on paper, it sucks on reality, humans are prone to do the worst atrocities when given power.
This video and others about Soviet crimes are quite relevant in the light of the current Russo-Ukrainian war. Putin's actions have been described akin to Stalin's and he seems to want to re-enact the 'glory days' of the Soviet Union. As an Estonian, I've heard numerous stories about Soviet crimes against the Baltic people, and the current war has caused trans-generational suffering in everyone currently alive. Thank you for this horrible yet important video. These stories need to be told so they can't be erased from history. Russia must answer for its crimes against humanity.
Yeah, like a true horror movie. Like in the movie "the mist" when people started going nuts after being stuck just 1 day, or "The cube". Turns out humans are that scary after all
It didn't surprise me that much. One thing Soviets were great at were such large projects that ended in catastrophe leaving a lot of dead people. What surprised me was how fast it went overboard. The result of so many bad factors: - extremely harsh environment - no food, equipment and infrastructure - no oversight or organisation - soviet guards - prisoners were mostly people from town without necessary survival skills - most prisoners were non-criminals, but there were true criminals which was an advantage
@Richard W. Any belief system that sacrifices humanity and people for her end goals is evil and can lead to horrible acts, some are just more self-righteous than others. Capitalism without government oversight and control turns into another hunger games, which is what the right-wing of the Libertarians would want.
I just wanted to say thank you for bringing this history to us. i can only imagine how rough it can be to do research on topics like this that are so horrible, tragic and deplorable. Thank you for doing research on things you do even if it is stomach turning. Ive enjoyed your work for a long time i hope to see many more videos and wish you the best of health.
Have you ever heard of these antique buildings that contain vast amounts of paper bound objects? They contain words that are typed on pages from people from the past. I would bet you can find one in your area. If you enter ask for the History Section. Your mind will be blown
Same could be said about the germans who fought after the fall of Berlin better to die for a dying cause then surrender to either Americans and dehydrate/starve with no medical treatment in Eisenhower death camps or shot in a ditch and used as anti nazi propaganda/gulaged
When I did my final essay in my History class at school; I chose this island as I had relatives sent there who never made it back. Thank you Simon and everyone else who have helped make this video. More people need too hear what humanity is capable of.
Busham Nah all good man. Comedy is a good way to talk about tragedy since it helps bring light to it. And let’s be honest here, it’s kinda the best time and place to say it 🤣🤣
I just discovered these podcasts -I didn’t know they were on TH-cam as well. They are absolutely amazing thank you so much. So much information - in such a short period of time! they’re perfect Thanks
FollowTheSpirit Forget horror movies. Learn about history. It’s terrifying. I recommend the TH-cam Series “The Great War”, “WW2, “Time Ghost”, and “Between 2 Wars”. Learn what they edited out of history class because they neared teen would start wetting their beds at night again. Welcome to real life buddy. Watch a learn. Get your head out of the sand. Humans are the most dangerous animal out there.
the only thing remotely useful he did was His lack of value towards humans won the Eastern front since the USSR's Only advantage against nazi Germany was Army size and also the winter. Even Lenin didn't want him in power
Things like this make me look at my own hands and just think "How are things like this done to other people? " I look around my house and realize, I'm DAMN lucky..
And it can happen again. It can happen in any country. All you have to do is take away food. And people, regular human beings, will begin to commit atrocities in order to survive. Hunger and desperation. It brings the devil out of people. so we must always make sure that no one goes hungry and we must always make sure that people don't feel desperate, that they have hope and that they have a chance. And that's why you try to take care of the disenfranchise. That's why you don't ignore those who are marginalized in society. Those are the people who are desperate and hungry and they will do anything to survive and the only reason that they feel like that is because we allow them to feel like that. A lot of times it is up to us to do better than the government.
@@MrSpartanspud there's a reason that the theme of "lives are not disposable tools" is so common to this very day in the art, literature and even video games produced in the former soviet union (especially the Ukraine, Poland and other former soviet client states). That is what communism does, it reduces man to a part in the machine that is the state command economy. Just as a machinist doesn't really worry too much about what happens to stripped out old bolts they throw in a scrap bin, communist regimes care little for people they deem "unproductive"-- and their idea of production means "can you make guns and tanks, or the material to make guns and tanks" giving little thought to higher human aspirations like art, science for the sake of human advancement (as opposed to making better tanks) or other things that cannot be used to project the power of the state.
@@MrSpartanspud You should read The Gulag Archipelago. There is a clear decline in human rights from when the Tsar was overthrown, to the collapse of the Soviet government. It's important to see the gradual decline, because once you do, you realize America is quickly headed down a similar course.
I knew Joe Stalin had many souls that were recklessly murdered, killed, tortured due to his paranoia and despotic sadistic hold on to power... millions upon millions of people.. but.. this story really raises the evils of Stalinist Russia and the old Soviet era "great purges" to entirely new level of DEPRAVITY. That this sad sad story was successfully repressed and covered up until the fall of the USSR in 1994 is profound. Wow ! Thank you for doing this segment. Never forget !
Concider for a moment how many equally terrible events like this have happened in the Soviet Union or in other communist countries, but have never been revealed.
Far left communists have been infiltrating western democracies for a long time. Look at many of the democrats in America, or the greens here in Australia, they have no gulags only because they lack power, not for the lack of trying.
@@TwoPlusTwoEqualsFive32 Oh I see your an idiot. There are no communists in the democratic party, the most far left are democratic socialists which are completely different, chalk and cheese. It's like saying fiscal conservatives are fascists (which unfortunately some people do) but that's just as idiotic. Communism is is a very very specific thing, and it sucks Stalinism was even more specific, (as was said in the video some officials fought hard to make sure nothing like this happened again) Stalin was a monster nobody idolises him least of all democratic socialists.
The only thing taught in schools (in the US) is to ask permission to use the bathroom. I actually had to break myself of this once I entered the workforce. I mainly work on my own now and STILL feel the need to inform people of where I'm going.
Worst thing i was taught about the ussr in school was the famine in Ukraine they caused and that collectivization farms and the gulags were awful but most of it focused on the nazis. The ussr was one the winning side of ww2 after all and we all know who writes the story.. The cold war is probably why we hear the negatives at all
@@forreal245 I teach all of the horror stories I can prove through books and there many parents trying to get fired! Fortunately the new administration in my country is try to show real history to our kids.
Creepypastas are fictional short stories in the style of fan fiction. Yet when it comes to the USSR, the craziest fan fiction seems to be not too far removed from much of reality.
That story was ruined for me before I even read it, because I already knew fatal insomnia existed. It doesn't make you crazy, but it does kill you after enough time.
@@Nova_Needle oh but it does make you somehow crazy, it affects the brain so of course it has some symptoms like hallucinations, panic attacks, delirium/paranoia, until reaches dementia and eventually death.
@@lospolloshermandez4299 Its based on the very real torture methods used during interrogations by the soviet police. As dictated in The Gulag Archipelago, the guards would force prisoners to stay awake for 5 days at a time in order to make them confess to their "crimes". They did other much worse shit aswell.
"Why didn't they just escape?"
I mean sure, you can escape a Siberian prison, but then you're still in Siberia... and good luck with that.
That's what's really horrible. The best case scenario is that you escape to a siberian farm and work there the rest of your life.
That reads like a Jordan Peterson quote.
Exactly. That's one reason why these camps were always in the middle of nowhere.
Keep making Left Turns and you will wind up at Cannibal Island.
I know, they would probably die from the heat its so hot in Russia all the time. It's like a tropical rain forest.
After studying Russian history, one quote stuck with me; "In Russia, even the rocks are guilty." That land has been home to unparalleled suffering and cruelty on a scale that defies comprehension.
Study American or Chinese history....It is not just Russia....it is mankind.
Freddy's cousin
@@perrygriffin2371 probably he votes for Russian Asset D.T. and he reads Turner' Diaries ;)
made you look True.
@Heyward Shepherd there is dripping water out of your ears...you might want to fill it up before the gold fish dies.
There’s an old Russian joke that goes something like this. “Why is Hitler only up to his neck in blood? Because he’s standing on Stalins shoulders.”
I feel bad for laughing at the joke.
Now that’s funny
@MrEnglewood78 I can't believe some of you compare Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to USA and other European Democracies. Really? Are you people that Dense?
@@impossibru3588 look at the ice camps ?
@@kkssd92 look at Abu Ghraib prison and tell me it's not really bad ?
I’m glad you mention how important it is to remember these awful events in history. Too often I hear people complain how these events put a damper on their life and want to forget it. It’s important to remember even if is hard to hear about.
😅
Agreed 100%
The fact that Stalinists aren't treated like Nazis in modern society disgusts me
The main reason is because the Nazis went out in a blaze of glory while the Soviet Union simply fizzled out, so the same people who were in power in the Soviet Union in the 50s were the same guys had the same mindset as those in 80s and 90s
I mean there aren't many Stalinists in the modern historical spotlight, and unfortunately they never got the public defeat that Nazis got, so they've kind of just faded into obscurity on the world stage. Which is very unfortunate, because Putin has been able to turn Russia into a criminal oligarchy which in many ways pays homage to the old Stalinist state. It's sad that after living through the evil of Lenin and Stalin, some Russians lived to see another dictator take over.
@@justinusberger3933 In reality when you want to exterminate people you are the bad guy, true legit story! Only in the wet dream of a Nazi seems good.
@0_0 Jist 4 Jest At least you know the truth, guide us 0_0, show us the path. You have to spread the word, your mission is sacred.
@@hochiminh5851 if that didn't happen I wonder what India population would be at now hmmm
My grandmother was taken to Siberia. She was the youngest of 3 children, maybe 6 or so. She was also the only one who came back alive, her teenage sisters and parents all starved to death.
They were taken to Siberia in trains used to transport cattle and dropped off at some ramshackle, abandoned village with a few dilapidated houses that had holes on their roofs etc. A small village was located not very far away, but the people there were so brainwashed by the government to believe that these poor souls were their enemies, criminals etc that they didn't help them.
My grandmother told me stories of how people would pick undigested grains out of excrement to make food out of them, later on digging up the dead from their shallow graves when things got really tough.
Women and children (they were separated from men) went into the freezing taiga to cut down trees all day (they still had to work for the government), many died on their way back because they were so weak and exhausted they couldn't walk, freezing to death where they lay.
My grandmother survived, because her mother told her to go to the village and beg for food and one Russian lady had it in her heart to feed her every now and then, that's how she survived.
Unsurprisingly, she has mental health issues. Sometimes she gets confused and thinks that it's still soviet times or that me and my siblings were alive back then. She developed a cold personality, preferring solitude and the company of books rather than people, which made it hard for my father (her son) growing up and in turn for us on some level as he had anger issues and such. She's 82 now and still cries to this day when she remembers the things she witnessed. She said that she will forever remember the Russian woman that saved her but is heartbroken because she doesn't even know her name and never got to thank her.
Ačiū, kad pasidalinai šia istorija.
Thank you so much for sharing your grandmother's story with us. I'm truly sorry that Stalin's evil caused so much pain for your family.
Maybe she will meet her in Heaven… this is an important story to hear; thank you for sharing this.
I was always weirded out by the way Russians have cold and stiff personalities in general, and I always it’s probably living in harsh environments makes you like that over generations and it becomes a society trait after a while. But this is probably another reason, the horror and pain russians saw is definitely above anything humans can withstand without changing so much.
Most interesting comment I've read in a long time
all of russian history can be summed up with.....”and then things got worse”.
John Wayne - youre right, i was exaggerating a bit, its much better now. when uncle joe kicked it things got markedly better, but good lord they hit some horrific lows.
hahaha
Same with China... except until recently of course but they had a bad run.
@@johnwayne8494 Much better now. You should travel or at least read a little.
mike oneil Not after the Romanovs got in, although after they were put out...
"A very human kind of inhumanity"
Such a fantastic line.
These prisoners helped cause a terrible famine.
And these are just the stories they bothered to record
@C D Don't turn it into something to support your ideals. This isn't about communism or capitalism, it's about what happens when psychopaths are given control.
You're kidding, right? This is exactly what communism is. It's death.
@@CptCool-xt8ht Communist is truly rubbish. Even in Vietnam, after the Vietnam war we tried to exercise Communist ways and it was shit. We can only going so far for a decade, we had enough, for a nation after wars this was too much. Notebooks for food proportion was crazy, economies were shit, only few people works, we even disdain the idea of make thinkers, engineers, workers do farm works, which is stupid, we know that and we stopped it
@@richardsmith9615 yea but it just so happens that everytime communism is implemented a psycopath takes control of the state. Communism is psycopathic in nature because it came from the mind of that true sociopath Karl Marx. Listen to Tomas Sowell's: Marx the Man and tell me he didn't display clear signs of psycopathy. Everything that is grown from the seeds of that evil ideology will bear the same fruit.
@@richardsmith9615 can you provide an example of when communism ever actually worked?
I worked with a woman who’s mom had grown up in Stalin’s Russia. She was smuggled across the frontier into Norway in a suitcase when she was 15; she weighed 60 ish pounds. She was my age, and looked 20 years older. Men in uniforms sent her into frightened hiding under her desk. And she hated Stalin with a barely sane rage I have never seen in my life. She was terrified that “they” would come get her, even after the Berlin Wall fell, even after Yelsin took over. She would tell anyone to fear the day our country followed a man rather than our principles. She had food hidden everywhere in her house, even cans of soup under the sink in the bathroom. She knew what it was like to be hungry, and she never forgot. She finally died of a heart condition associated with being starved as a child. RIP, Lana...
God rest her soul 💞
Damn
It's starting to look like your friends mom was right. It's starting to look like the United States is heading that way. My heart cries for all people who had to suffer through that Hell. Greedy people are a threat to our way of life.
Rest in peace, Lana.
My devout Roman Catholic family (mom's side) came from Eastern Europe. The name "Joseph" is never to be used or even married. It's practically genetic hatred by my generation, because we grew up hearing the stories... What happened if you were in Stalin's reach, in or out of Russia.
The kind of story you don't want to hear, but at the same time needs to be told. Thank you for that.
Well said.
so story
It deserves to be told, miss.
We owe it to the victims to be educated about what happened to them and why.
@@FGS-yk3vc very story such why
Madeleine Brouwer Simon and team at their absolute best.
It took me 2 tries to get through ‘Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin’ by Timothy Snyder. It was so dark and so depressing that I was having nightmares. A couple years later I picked it up again and got through it. The sheer number of deaths and suffering of people in the Bloodlands is truly horrifying.
I know this is unrelated other than for it being a book it took multiple times for me to read and having nightmares about it, but it was a book called '3096 days' about a girl who was snatched off the footpath and kept by her abductor for years.
Bought it years ago, and haven't the stomach to finish reading it.
Good writing on a horrible time..
The fact that we know about this because of one man makes me wonder what sort of terrible, gruesome things we DON'T know about.
Some Man it wasn’t one man. It was an ideology that killed over 100 million in the 1900’s. Pol Pot, Mao, Guevara, Lenin, Stalin, etc. See the common thread yet?
Communists are the worst humans in our recorded history.
@@surfinalien What are you talking about? Did you watch the whole video? I'm saying the only reason we know about this particular incident is because one man tried to make it public.
J Dineen Stalin murdered at least 30 million people’s and Mao 40-60 million. Strangely, Hitler is known by everyone as the worst mass murderer in history although he was a mere amateur by comparison with his modest 6 million murdered.
@@gulftoad the U.S. government committed mass genocide against the Natives of the continent. They also enslaved and thrived off an economy built off of slavery. Capitalism continues to kill and American imperialism has continued to kill over the past half century. Read more than a high school history text book please.
"Joseph Stalin's worst gulag." Just the worst one we know about.
Ikr how many more still kept hidden we might never know
Yes, there were MANY.
fitting pfp "worst one so *far*"
I don’t think it can get much worse
@@Gerolinger it can....
My grandmother was 5 or 6 when Stalin died. She remembers the day distinctly because there was a woman outside wailing and screaming while tearing at here hair, when she asked her parents why the woman was crying, they told her it was because Stalin died.
Even with the horrible oppression he was guilty of, the Soviet people still loved him. That's how powerful propaganda is.
It was only after Pravda began to expose the crimes of the dictator it once served that the people realized the truth.
Or the innate insanity of a whole people. There are always exceptions, but Russians? Hard nope.
And sadly his crimes are still being covered up by the Putin regime today.
Humans always ready to worship false idols
They didn't want to know. Not truth seekers.
The worst part of this whole story is not that it happened, but that it isn't common knowledge nor taught in school.
even worse people think Stalin wasn't that bad
Preach
People seemed to be glorifying communism, even I thought it was good until I found out the whole story
@@abriishpotato4729 Russia helping to defeat Nazi Germany probably plays a part
Carlo Vos yeah that and lack of education i guess
that just leads to misunderstanding
Stalin makes Hitler look like an amateur. Imagine what stories will come out when North Koeran dictatorship ends.
Or masskiller MAO Zedong of China ..
Josip Gelo, that is a sobering thought indeed.
Stories have already come out. Pretty much the same thing
Adolf Hitler killed nowhere near Josef Stalin, Pol Pot or even Mao Zedong. Kim Jong Un and his entire family can never politically commit the attrocities caused by Chairman Mao let alone Josef Stalin or Pol Pot because South Korea would invade with the USA and almost every other country except China and Russia and Iran who are the only countries who somewhat trade with North Korea...
Or Pol Pot
With a name like "Stalin’s Cannibal Island" it was impossible not to click.
oh i know
Fap*
Harry Shill Starve*
Warning: Not click bait. Brace yourself.
@@garrettallen7427 lets go bowling cousin !
God damn. This was only 90 years ago. Not even a century. My neighbour is 90 years old. It's insane to think I just had a casual chat this morning with someone who was alive while all this was going on somewhere else on the planet... Hell, it's insane to realize the horrors going on somewhere else RIGHT NOW while I'm just sitting here in my quiet rural apartment trying to assemble my stupid IKEA closet....
World awareness is not really a strength in the US
This is modern history. Don't kid yourself to think this can't happen again.
North Korea.
@@katiearcher4475 China...
Internal passport and vaccination card are both ways to control the population.
They're trying their best here in the states
*Papua New Guinea has entered the chat*
"Cannibal Island is just one example in a grim decade of Soviet terror."
Dear god
*decades
Dear god watched with a big box of heavenly pop corn with his feets propped up on thee lucky ones forever.
what they must have planned for us in 2021 ?
Dear Satan
There's more.
Being from Finland, hearing my great grandfathers stories from stalin's regime. Compared to Hitler. Stalin's always stood out to me being far worse. He didn't speak much on he situation. But when he did you would listen. God bless him. God bless all of us that didn't have to witness this first hand. Remember. It's not been 100 years since this has happened.
Stalin is one of greatest pos this Earth has ever known, and yet, we probably only know a small percentage of the horrors that he committed.
What about Finns murdering tens of thousands of Soviet POW during WWII. Did your grandfather tell you about that? Or about concentration camps for Soviet civilians of Slavic origin (the Soviet born Finns and Karelians were mostly spared of this fate). Your troops behaved better than Nazis during the war, but just a little better.
@@manichaean1888 Like I said. He didn't speak much about the war but I am well aware of what the Finns did too. Their are no winners in War. Just those who lose less.
@@jayh9635 I know that the Finns do not celebrate WWII (since nothing is there to celebrate). But somehow I always get impression that they do not feel gulty for all death and destruction they brought in the way as the Germans do.
I have seen that film (Unknown Soldier, if I'm correct) which is the main Finnish war saga. There is regret in that story but no sense of guilt. It's like: "We fought bravely, but we lost in the end. The odds were against is. What a shame!".
@@manichaean1888 Feel guilty for what? Finland tried to avoid the war at all cost but USSR was determined to conquer the whole country as Finland was considered as a territory of the USSR in the Molotov-Rippentrop pact. USSR attacked Finland in 1939 in order to conquer it completely. Finland managed to survive the war as USSR was afraid that the UK and France would start supporting Finland and therefore agreed to sign a peace treaty. However, 13% of the land and 20% of agricultural land had to be ceded to the USSR. After the Winter War, it was clear that Stalin would not stop here but he would complete his plan to conquer the whole country. Finland had to seek aid for this and Germany was the only option. The alternative if you can call it like that would have been an almost total annihilation.
Stalin once said that the population of Finland is smaller than Leningrad, its deportation to Siberia is only a logistical issue. Knowing what he did in Ukraine (Holodomor), Poland (Katyn) or in Baltics (annexation and replacing the local people with Russians) it is clear that he really could have executed his plans in Finland. So, large parts of the population would have been deported to Siberia, upper-class citizens would have been executed like in Katyn and the local population would have been replaced with Russians. Even today, Baltics have large Russian minorities, thanks to Stalin.
Small countries do not fight for conquest but rather survival. When a country with a population of 170 million attacks a country with a population of 3,5 million, what kind of results do you expect? The fact that Finland managed to survive and to stay independent and to avoid total destruction when a country with 48 times bigger population attacks is quite an achievement. Is that something to be guilty about?
So, Finland had basically two options:
1. Letting the USSR in voluntarily, leading to annexation and Stalin's atrocities.
2. Try to avoid the conflict as much as possible but fight if necessary because you don't want the aforementioned destiny.
If you were governing Finland in 1939-1945, what would you have done differently?
When it comes to prisoners of war, there were not systematic killings of POWs. Some guards treated POWs inhumanely but those actions are not denied but condemned. Such a poor and small economy could not sustain a large prisoner population and thus food and supplies were in short supply in the whole country. When a new area is captured it is customary that the local civil population is interned in times of war because it can contain partisans and spies. The Finnish forces trusted more the civil population with similar ethnicity and thus interning them would have been unnecessary.
If a place can legit become haunted, I'd imagine a scenario like this would cause it
We're not even a hundred years removed from this unimaginable barbarism. We've got a long way to go still.
And this kind of shit is still happening to this day in places like China and North Korea. China has prison camps all over where they put political prisoners and minorities, most notably uighur muslims. They force them to work for corporations under some other made up company, brainwash them to abandon their culture and pledge alligence to the state, execute them(which is legal in China) and harvest their organs. And in North Korea political prisoners sometimes along with their familimies are put into camps and things like execution by artilery cannons have happened.
A long way to go for sure. There are plenty of millennials who grew up never knowing what the Soviet Union was and have no understanding of its history or atrocities and are now once again promoting socialism.
There’s plenty on Bernie bros who think “The Soviet Union wasn’t that bad” and that “it’s all western propaganda”. These people are dangerously blind to their own ignorance.
@@jokuvaan5175 China is not that bad, i mean, it IS bad, but is far better than NK or Sovier Russia, i say China is around the level of Nazi Germany of assholery
We'd act the same if this happened today.
Stalin's predecessor, who simply followed the financial principles of Marx and Engels (including execution of all who know too much (read: are educated and can think for themselves) and dared to own private property or be religious), was just honoured with a monument in (olden days') West Germany. I guess nobody would dare put it in the old East Germany parts. His statue in Seattle is also still standing, the only monument that the fascists refuse to deface and/ or remove. Yes, I called BLM and AntiFa fascists. Because that is what they are.
And they seem to refuse to learn from their failed CHAZ-experiment, that socialism looks good on paper and then fails in every way and execution.
Won't it be a laugh (in the most horrible sense), if Russia needs to feed the USA in a few years' time, because the commie fascists finally got the White House?
Just in case anyone tells you Stalin's gulags "weren't that bad" or were "just reeducation camps".
or "Detention Centers"
1000 Bernie Bros already downvoted the video.
But but but they had congeal visits
Or had a living wage
vunderground1 ....Corbyn is a moron
I imagine that if I had been on that island, starving and freezing to death, I would have waded into the freezing river and allowed myself to die of hypothermia. It would have been a comparatively peaceful way to die rather than being eaten alive. If seen by a guard and shot, so much the better.
I'm with you on this one. Hypothermia/bullets much better than being cut apart and cooked
yes the first thing that i thought was the same
There's a nice defeatist attitude. I sentence you to scrub the Georgia Guidstones with a worn-out toothbrush.
You are an idiot to think that you are any different than the others who went there you most certainly would do and think the same things everyone else did.
It's easier to say this from the comfort of your home with a full belly. I bet if you were in their shoes starving, you'd be one of the first to start killing for food.
Thank you so much for this research and brilliant video! This is kind of stories you never want to know much, because of the horror. I’ve made my own little research on the story of my husband’s grandfather. He was ethnic German, but lived in Ukraine. In 1938 he was arrested and sentenced to ten years in Uchtizmlag. This conversation camp was the last place for its prisoners because the conditions there and the labour they were meant to do. Of course, he dyed there in a couple of months. During the research I was too emotionally involved and understood that would never ever back to such a horrible subject. In the list of arrested people I’ve seen 9 years old kids. Two policemen who lead these cases were from russia, and after that they returned to their homeland getting all the awards and living peacefully to the very end of their miserable lives.
I wonder how many stories like this will remain untold because no one survived to tell them....
@C D And to the German civilians living in Eastern-Prussia... It should be classified as a genocide.
Google « art of the gulag » or something to that effect.
The jews have lots of stories like these
Google for Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge. :-))
if youre interested, read at least part of the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, its a very hard book, but worth its place in the annals of history
I am from Moldavia and my family sometimes talks about how one of my great-grandad was whealthy during the URSS occupation of Moldavia. Whealthy at that time meant that he had a discreet amount of lands and cattles that provided enought food for his family to not fear starvation. This whealth was noticed by the URSS state and one day, out of the nowhere, a few officers arrived at my great-grandad's house and robbed him from all of his possesions except his house and dragged him away from his family on their truck. Nobody knows what they did to him but everyone thinks that he was shot by the officers shortly after leaving, on his way to a gulag. As horrible as this story is a I really hope that he really died like that instead of thinking that maybe he arrived into one of this horrific gulags to continue his misery.
And had who defend that moviment politicol ideologicol ?
This is very similar to what happened to my granddad during Khmer Rouge. Our family wasn’t exactly rich, but we have land and house. My granddad was a math teacher too. One day, they just came in, and took him away, took everything away. My mom was young back then. We don’t know what happened to him afterward. We assumed he was sent to gulag prison. I just hope he experienced a fast death, and not torture to death.
@@andromedamessier3176 im so sorry for what happened to your grandad, no one deserves that. In my opinion the Khymer Rouge were sadists, obsessed with control and the lowest of the low. The horrors they committed should never be forgotten and should never be allowed to happen again! God bless your grandad
I'm an Englishman of Russian descent, my great grandparents who were minor aristocrats fled Russia during the revolution whilst expecting my grandfather, who was born in Bulgaria but spent his formative years growing up in Serbia, they eventually all settled in southern England and helped massively in local construction, the church etc. They did well here but looking back on some of the horror strories like you and your family witnessed they were lucky to get out alive without suffering a similar fate. God bless you and your family, and god bless your grandad
Part of my family is Chechen, and we have similar horror stories. Stalin would send thugs to round us up, put us on freezing train, and use us for slave labor. We couldn’t speak our languages, and were often treated even worse than Russia prisoners. There are plenty of books about our plight back then. And they’re still doing it to this day.
My grandfather lost most of his family in the famine and the war. He was never the same again after the horrors that he survived in his own home country. It makes me almost physically ill hearing about the things in this video, but it's important that we don't forget. Thank you so so much for speaking about this, from a very grateful Ukrainian girl ❤️
Nowadays, history seems to be repeating itself. So videos like this are ever so important in reminding us the horrors that were - and can easily be again, judging by current political climate.
My family was all sent to Gulags as well during this time, except for the father of the Kulak family, who was shot on the spot. This was covered up until recently when we started digging. It's nice to hear that people still talk about these things, we can never forget these things so that we may be smarter in the future. I hope the current war in Ukraine ends soon, because more and more of my friends I grew up with keep vanishing on the way to the borders.
I see quite a few comments have disappeared off this thread.
So much censorship.
It looks like those dirty communists are watching everyone.
Kseniya Marina yea ok
@Maria Kelly Thank you! ❤️ I'd like to think he's resting peacefully now
The fact that they were trying to make “self sustaining farms” IN SIBERIA, is something I just can’t get over because it’s so insane😳All that farmland in arctic climates😳
Crazy to think stuff like this was happening less than 100 years ago 😳
You wait until the next war, there's much worse coming, you'll be in it
There will be another war or power grab. Peace never lasts more than 100 years
@@GWR4079 race war before or after power grab??
@@JohnDoe-sx2zk they have been trying for a race war for a while now look at the state of the media
@@GWR4079 low key hilarious how you seeing a black person’s face makes you want to incite a “race war” and your brain is so rotted you think that’s a sensible reaction
I shake my head when people say we are are living in the 'worst of times.' Things can get so much worse. And given human history, they probably will.
The worst is yet to come! Look how fast and crazy this whole world is going! People are absolutely out of there minds !!!!
Religious people always say that. They can't help it.
@@faithersland8234 Turn off your internet and stop watching the news and you'll think the world is great.
@@faithersland8234 lol ok
@@Xxmeca421xX and it's proved the world (overall) is in a much better place
I remember being in college and seeing students and professors waive the soviet hammer and sickle flag. I could never tell if these people were that evil or just dangerously ignorant of history.
Useful idiots as uncle stalin would call them the same people hed probably happily throw on cannibal island without a second thought
It's the latter.
They probably only read Marx’s book and immediately dismissed Stalin as “not a real Communist”. Shit like this is why I never blindly follow any sort of ideology whatsoever. Learn from history. That’s what we should all do.
Angry Robot those who dont learn history are doomed to repeat it
I’d go with dangerously ignorant.
Isn’t Stalin awesome guys? Can’t believe there are freaks that praise that villain
The way Simon changes his demeanour as he gets to the condemnation of those responsible, adds much weight and gravity to the human suffering imposed.
As always history potted into a nutshell, no waffle just a true story with the facts.
Brilliantly done on a tragic subject.
simon is probably the world's best professional narrator
@@skyfever111 Thank you. You guys are very kind :)
I agree, and I am also impressed; Simon has class.
I think this is the first time I've seen Simon this angry. I'm subscribed to all of his channels and watch daily, so that's telling.
@Aggressive Tubesock Who's Gregory Furr?
One of the most disturbing sentences I've ever heard: Luckily the suffering had become so bad, that not even the soviets could ignore it. 😳
After that he said it was all one month after the first barge landed
@@toring61_52 Nikeo shut up.
@@toring61_52 it was created by China no western/capitalist country would shut down there own economies otherwise
@@jamestaylor841 Yeah keep telling yourself that. it's incredible to really see how closed off people are and live and believe in the matrix of lies.
Gordon Ramsey should do one of his new shows there to point out the folly of Leftism.
My great-grandmother was in Leningrad during the siege(1941-1944) and she told similar stories, how women were attacked on a streets by cannibals.
Sounds like a zombie movie turned real.
That's why I don't believe in the "simulation" theory. We are a mixture of high intellect, self-awareness and pure primal animal. There isn't a worse combination of being. If it is a simulation, then we're definitely set on hard mode.
I read a book called Cannibalism and the story of Leningrad was in it. That is the first thing I thought when I watched this. Russian has such a dark history :(
@Father Ted good name, my Irish friends showed me the show.
Oh yeah I heard that the police had to make a anti-cannibalism force and people were chopping off their body parts just to eat,Truly Horrifying
Thank you for getting this information out into the world. These atrocities should never be forgotten, they should be in the forefront of people's minds. This is us, this what we're all capable of.
It’s why the 1st and 2nd amendment are important. Plenty of guns in Civilian hands until the nazis outlawed and confiscated them, same with the Soviets. Once Confiscation occurs, it’s all over. Ppl start dying shortly after..
It’s why they don’t want organized militias within communities or why the feds are getting more heavy handed and are chipping away at those amendments bit by bit. They know they can’t take them away outright cuz they’d get lynched. So they play the long game.
@@TheMoose126 It is true that people could have rebelled then if they got guns but today it is not possible to take on government with just guns it is pretty naive to think guns give you any chance against government armed by machines and corrupt people in charge of armies. Your gun would do nothing.
@@TheMoose126 many may find this comment cringe but its true
That was by far the most dark story I've heard from this channel.
Paul Castro this might be the darkest story I’ve heard period...
Paul Castro And yet by far the best and perhaps most necessary. It should be said Simon has amazing range.
@KoivuTheHab thank you for your service.
idoj654123 I love how the best defense for Trump is that atleast he isn’t a mass murderer. Just accept he’s an inept dumbass and call it a day.
Darkest*
I'm from Canada and I find this video particularly interesting cause I met an old man who said he was from Siberia in jail , I found him to be pretty intriguing cause he ate everything that was given to him and was always studying when we got oranges or bananas he ate the peels that we would throw away, he told me about how they would hunt herds of caribou as they crossed the river so the corpses were easy to rope together and float on a skiff he said they would bring all the caribou to the cleaning hut where they skinned and harvested the meat and fur he said they had made the knives out of scavanged steel that was remnants of a trains engine block. He had a cellmate who only spoke Spanish and he himself ended up learning how to speak pretty mediocre Spanish in about three weeks.. I think he was locked up for quite a bit I was only there short term said it was for passport fraud, as I remember he was about 65 years old (in 2012) so he was probably second generation serbian exile, very resourceful guy
This is actually an amazing comment. Thank you for sharing
never happened
Anyone that managed to escape a communist regime always has something to incredibly interesting to say. For one reason, they were never allowed to say it before.
@@siggyretburns7523 its a lie
@@Cd5ssmffan
What's a lie?
The old man story? Lol probably. Although those that are vocally suppressed due to government tend to overexert their newly acquired freedom of speech, along with it they tend to toss in a few pounds of bullshit too. Several pounds.
it is so terrifying what so many humans are capable of. Like how could the guards just have so little empathy that they enjoyed causing additional suffering
95%of the Russian population have no moral compass whatsoever.
Well if you have empathy that means youre a good guy which means everyone is going to manipulate and use you. Have you ever heard of a line that goes the better you are towards someone the worse they are towards you?
Imagine how many similar cases like this in rural Soviet Union happened that we don't know about.
Check out Jordan Peterson’s lecture about “the gulag archipelago” it’s the book that crumbled and revealed the reality behind the Soviet Union essentially. It is extremely wicked and disgusting what happened during that era. The book was written and published between the years of 1950s - 1960s. It was written by a Russian dissident who preached against the Soviet Union, who himself was a prisoner in the gulags for over a decade. It is probably the greatest book of the 20th century.
@@freckleheckler6311 It's even better to read the book itself.' The Gulag Archipelago' by Alexander Solzenitzhyn. You can even listen to the audiobook on TH-cam for free.
@C De and accumulate wealth for themselves
@@rexterrocks This book is fairytale, didn't happen ))
whatever fantasies you have to tell yourself to stoke up those anti-slavic tensions.
I'm glad there are channels like this, in school they teach us so much about "Nazis bad" but nothing about USSR and all the equaly disgusting things they did
Really? You dont remember mccarthyism? The cold war? I'm pretty sure everyone in the states knows Stalin was terrible
Some Dude They don’t teach that. More then half my class didn’t know who Stalin was.
@@MEME-fd1nf Are you serious? I mean I'm honestly not surprised, because the public education system in the US is getting worse every year. But when I was in high school (that would have been in the late 90's), we studied the Soviet Union and Stalin almost as extensively as Germany and World War II
@@ninja_tony bcs yall hate the soviets in europe nobody talks about that and in school all we learn is ww2 Nationalsozialismus
M E M E They don’t know who Stalin is because kids don’t pay attention in school anymore then blame it on the education system(I’m not defending our education system btw lol). All of my History teachers who taught in areas of WWII all told the class that Stalin was worse than Hitler he killed more, tortured more but Stalin was an “ally” at the time so we turned a blind eye to his crimes. I even took a whole Genocide class in HS that taught about the Armenian Genocide, Manchuria Genocide, Holocaust, Russian Gulags, Pol-Pot and his regime in Cambodia, the Rwandan Genocide so on.
I live in Bulgaria and in my town there’s a monument of “the soviet liberators who died for our liberation from the fascists”. The only soviet soldiers to die in Bulgaria during WW2 were 80 men from the soviet occupation forces who learned that a shipment of alcohol was comming to a train station and decided to rob it. They killed the guard who tried to stop them and went on with their plan. The alcohol in the train however was Methanol and they all poisoned themselves and died. Nowadays there are dozens of monuments portraying them as heroes who selflessly died for my country.
What the Nazis did in Bulgaria was nothing compared to what the Soviets did.
@@thatguy22441 Bulgaria was a German ally from early in the war. You might want to read a history book before making a fool out of yourself.
Now that's what I call poetic justice. Or Karma.
@@haroldfiedler6549 Bulgaria was a German ally on paper but they did not aid Germany in the war afaik. All they did was hold Greece I believe. They didn't even know what the Germans were doing and when they learned, they joined the Allies. How about you read a book lmao
Harold Fiedler I am not a history buff but given I was born there I’d say I know a thing or two and from memory what I remember is that Bulgaria was part of the axis only due to its leader thinking that it was a safe bet and that the nazis would win, so he could get some personal gains out of this deal. Also the nazis offered many things they weren’t really planning on fulfilling like better roads and such. Most of the population was against that decision and were deeply clearly aligned with Russia, which then lead to an opposition forming, where Bulgarian Guerrilla armies would ambush nazis and try their best to push them out of the country. The police would catch and torture school students as much of that military opposition was made up of young people who had next to no army experience. Also I’m pretty sure Bulgaria joins the Allies about halfway through the war, though I’m not sure if it was officially or not. I may have missed a couple of things in my explanation so apologies.
This is one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard. I'm grateful that the account has survived and that you covered it, even though I think I'll have new nightmares.
If done respectfully, this would make an excellent historical horror film. You wouldn't really have to embellished anything because the true horrors speak for themselves.
All horror creatures and fictitious monsters are human inventions, because there is nothing darker than the dreams of the human mind, and nothing worse than having the power to make those dreams come to life.
Oh please don’t give him another channel idea 😂
Some humans are the true demon
No need to go to hell to look for one.
I would watch it. Then probably have to pour myself a STIFF drink to sleep that night for the first time in a LONG time!
Getting a kfc ad in the middle of this video has been the most surreal and uncomfortable thing ever
Same
OOOF, I can only imagine
Four months later, still getting KFC ads during this video!
Finger licken good 😈
I got a vegetarian meat add. Literally made me shiver
Read The Gulag Archipelago, (the abridged version.) Nazinsky might have been extreme for the amount of cannibalism that occurred, but the inhumane conditions were not uncommon for the Gulag camps. The book, written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Gulag survivor, contains too much information to go into here, but his work attests to the fact that the whole Gulag apparatus was a horrific nightmare of unbelievable proportions, outstripping the Nazis in the sheer volume of innocent lives utterly destroyed.
It's true, and the reason Solzhenitsyn isn't taught in schools is because he lays out exactly who it was that started the Soviet Union, and those people are still largely in charge of world events in the West today.
AH, YES! I remember when that book came out. It's a hefty read that I never did. Maybe I should! 11523
Stalin was a monster and it make me sick that Vladimir Putin is trying to rehabilitate his image.
Thank you Internet for teaching me more than my school ever did about history
If they taught history in schools then the masses would know the obvious truth that the human race is completely enslaved
Amen to that
But this story had nothing to do with current geopolitics. School teaches you about the stuff you need to know to understand the current situation and how your country made it to where it is
Same lol
Very true
If we forget history, we are doomed to repeat it.
That's why I can't stand people tearing down civil war statues!! It's not that America is proud of the civil war, but if we forget it we are doomed to repeat it or something similar!
Some people actively want to repeat history because they think it will benefit them. And to tie this into Bradley's comment. Those are the same people tearing down monuments.
@@bradleysmith9431 nobody is going to forget that the civil war happened because a 200 year old rusty statue of a racist slave owner was torn down 🙄
Woah... did you come up with that?
@Gary Anthony McLoughlin lmao nobody is banning books
And these are just the horror stories the Soviets bothered to write down.
There is more to the soviet union than stalin
Crazy to think that for every 1 man that is willing to investigate this without his superiors' permission and who gets fired and blacklisted from his life; how many were there that "saw" nothing or wrote nothing down.
@@cjshandwritinganalytics6050 note that was 1 man whose investigation survived in archives. It's probably safe to assume a bunch of similar reports were simply discarded. And a bunch of people just disappeared without telling their story
Most of NKVD archives are classified. They document much more coz they where proud of there actions.
@Kira same with every country
Ukraine quite clearly hasn’t forgotten about how badly the Kremlin has treated it (along with most of its citizenry at one point or another from Russian Empire to USSR, Stalinist and thereafter, to Putin’s modernist mixture of those two prior powers)…
As somebody else said in the comments this is still more or less modern history, and to think this and/or some degree of form of this can’t happen is a dangerous mistake.
Stalin - "Hey comrades, I have a really bad idea!"
Genrikh Yagoda - "Hey, I know how to make that bad idea even shittier!".
gotta love Lewis Black,lol
Lewis Black fans on here, I see. ;)
Yea that’s a Lewis black comedy line. And I’m fairly certain u already knew that. So here’s the next part.... it’s called plagiarism
*[Marxism intensifies]*
I came for the jokes, and you didn't disappoint
Hey Hollywood how bout instead of another holocaust movie or ww2 movie with the same rehashed plot why not make this a 3 hour movie R rated of course.
Because they need to keep brainwashing and convincing people. Same reason why it's taught to children in Western public school every single year.
Dream on. Why do people need a brinksmanship of films to enlighten them? The facts are all out there. They actually did make a film about this crap. It was titled Doctor Zhivago.
because noone has the balls to air out Russian laundry, same reason we dont get anything about China...
There have been several good movies about Stalin's evil acts. See Bitter Harvest and Mr. Jones, for example. Chernobyl and Citizen X, too, although they are more of an indictment of the Soviet society in general.
Because it shows the commie policy at its best...
"You're like Hitler but even Hitler cared about Germany or something." -Morty from Rick and Morty
Damn :)
@@FriendLover-O ok mister I've got nothing better to do than make snide comments to strangers on TH-cam
Hitler cared about Germany so much he refused to surrender then called the entire German population failures.
@@edmiesterful can you show me where he wrote that.
@@FriendLover-O dunno, looks liike you are the triggered one
I love the fact that this channel has dedicated itself to true reporting. I honor you for exercising modesty, humility and human compassion in your videos. Thank you
Far more light should be shed on the crimes of the Soviet Union.
Read "Stalin ".
Cant do that. It would take some pressure off of Germany, and there is way too much money, and agenda involved to ever let that happen.
@@rikiwakwak I think people need to realize that two things can be bad at the same time and that one thing being worse doesn't mean that the other thing is good.
I agree with you.
But as said, there has to be some big political and economic changes in order the let such things happen
Far more light should be shed on the campaign organizers on Bernie Sanders payroll that say "gulags weren't that bad"
My Great-Great Grandfather escaped and returned to Germany from one of those camps in Siberia after WWI. He was missing for almost 2 years, and appears to have walked back for a large portion of it. That is all we know, as he never spoke when he got home, and died within days.
I'm glad he trekked home and rested there and not died in one of those hell holes,you have my condolences.
This was the same for my grandfather, but WWII. In the gulag for over 7 years.
I’m glad he at least got to make it back home, couldn’t imagine what he survived during the journey back
@@LeisureLizard 7 years omg. It's amazing what humans can survive.
Stalin is one of greatest pos this Earth has ever known, and yet, we probably only know a small percentage of the horrors that he committed.
Not human. Demonic
@mike adan Depends on the class. If you ask me it should be discussed super openly, and should be taught, just as with the horrors of the Nazis or the horrors of Cambodia's takeover by Pol Pot. The tragedy is, an idea that *can* have merit - Socialism - was twisted into Communism and horrible misuse by people who wanted power. That's true even of Capitalism, of any form of government really. And the problem is that the way communism (not the philosophy it's based on) is built in such a way as to inevitably give an upper group more power and the people less power. That unfortunately makes it extremely easy for a despot to use a communist government to gain power. At the same time, socialist ideas like universal healthcare and higher taxes on the wealthy do make sense, social security and medicaid/medicare are also socialist in concept. The problem isn't the ideals, the problem is how people MISUSE the ideals. Same thing with capitalism, the problem is how people MISUSE capitalism to starve out smaller businesses and get richer at everyone else's expense, not with the idea of capitalism and competition.
tl;dr - despots find a way, no matter the philosophy, no matter the system.
@@ThePhantomSafetyPin which is why we’re stuck with a broken and monitored version of capitalism.
@@ThePhantomSafetyPin now that you have santitized socialism of all evil...explain how it would work anywhere in the world?
The only places that socialism works is in heaven where it's not needed and Hell where it's practiced daily.
@fleshnbone187 I hear this b.s. a lot, but the truth is Scandinavia have small population and super high taxes. The government have bought into many large companies(lite touch nationalism). Simply this pie in the sky thinking works in a country with the population of NYC, but it will not scale up...look at China..
Thank you for shedding light on how monstrous the real world can be.
"Doc, is this Hell?"
"No. Although, I can't imagine Hell being much worse."
Hell is suppose eternal torment that resets over and over. What if you lived on this island and then died and it kept resetting over and over for all of eternity?
@@jeremywynohradnyk4993 Well... That would definitely be worse. Can't argue that...
@@jeremywynohradnyk4993 Eternity itself is terrifying enough.
I’m an American uni graduate (who also studied abroad in the UK) and I saw other students in both areas who were radical fans of Stalin and the USSR. They thought it was a total success and any sort of sad/horrific story was just “Western propaganda.”
“They had brilliant industrial practices! Everyone was treated equally! Need not, want not!” How is your ignorance of one of the most violent regimes in the world any different from any other fanatic?
When it comes to the USSR and Nazi Germany the only hard thing to discern is which one was worse. Probably the USSR, but it feels like a disrespect to the victims of either to even categorize them.
I would bet that every one of them in the U.S. votes democrat.
Yeah it's not that difficult to find massive wrongdoings, should you go east or west from Europe. The secrets just surface and travel differently in and between east and west. Perhaps in west it's more sneaky while in the east it's just better kept secret. Or you don't have to travel either way from Europe and you will find them just alike. What's the real shocking thing is that it seems to tag along with humans rather than areas. We're always blind to something, be it in ourselves or our beliefs.
@@1Barrett50
You can make this partisan comment on a site about the worst of Stalin’s gulags where cannibalism was committed. This is why the Republican Party is in hopeless decline.
@@carlabroderick5508 Keep believing the propaganda, that's how people like Stalin get into power.
There's a reason why Lenin warned the party about Stalin before he died.
@@lukecage3485 Stalin was a georgian, dude, not a jew, take off your conspiracy hat
@@ButterDog42069 ?? Ever heard of ancestry, genius? No, YOU take off your gullible dolt hat. As if conspiracies don't exist. Idiot.
@@lukecage3485 I never named you an idiot, and you already said, that I'm an idiot twice. And yeah, sorry for not knowing a language that's not native to me, that kinda makes me an idiot, don't it? And yeah, about Stalin, he has a georgian last name and never was proven to have jewish roots.
@@ButterDog42069 False, you said "take off your conspiracy hat". Who the F wears "conspiracy hats"??
It's not my native language either but that didn't stop me from researching it. He was a Jew and its even in his REAL name. Stalin he took because it means "steel".
@@lukecage3485 bruv, how can you state, that he was a Jew, if his actual last name is Dzhugashvily
The most bloodcurdling thing I read, in a comic book, was one of the Alien series stories where an alien had put someone into their bio-netting resin where they wait for facehuggers to shoot out and impregnate them, well one of the characters found a girl from their party and was going to free her, but she said “it’s no use... the creature [the alien] has eaten too much of me... lost too much blood...” and I can’t help but wonder if this absolutely wretched snippet was inspired in any capacity by the part where they tied that poor girl up and began to slaughter her alive only to be found later still alive but knowing she was doomed nonetheless... God forgive us...
This really makes you reflect on how good we have it. Thank you for presenting this story.
Congrats on being the 512th person to type this. Rest assured your name will be added to the plaque of Commentors who let Us all know they love whiffing their own farts!
You should always be aware how fast it could all be taken away.
@@salvagemonster3612 you need to go outside more
Unless your a Muslim Urgar in Xinjiang china
@@salvagemonster3612😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
They don't teach this in school...
They do. You take the right classes in college and you will learn this stuff. Do you expect them to teach this stuff in elementary school? Along with mathematics and spelling?
Schools today are all for promoting socialism. So they would not teach this because it shows a dark side to countries that have accepted socialism
Because they run the schools buddy. Don't want to make their ideology look bad.
I have head that Gulag Archipelago is required high school reading today in Russia.
@@BernardS4 Read Dr. Zhivago
People tend to think that the worst things in history happened centuries ago but the cruelty of the 20th century is unmatched in history. If medieval or ancient people would watch the scenes of this gulag they would be terrified for sure.
Idk, there's been many empires throughout history who were laughably barbaric and evil, as well as many other rulers. Caligula and the Neo-Assyrian empire are two prominent examples.
You think people were better in times before international media and ethical scrutiny? That’s a hilariously bad take. We’re just more efficient and industrial at doing the kind of killing that has always happened.
@nohabloemojislosiento4930 I didn't say that people before were better. I made 2 claims in my comment and you responded to neither of them.
1. The cruelty of the 20th century is unmatched.
2. The level of savagery that was committed there is a rare occurrence in history and would terrify most people no matter the society or historic time.
I dunno man, even just the religious wars of early modern western europe between Catholic and Protestant townspeople were barbaric. Catholics burned Protestants alive, Protestants pressed Catholics to death with rocks and boards, both disembodied and used horses to tear 4 limbs off at once, nevermind just regular massacre by the blade. And these were literal neighbors, same ethnicity and town, who ALL believed in salvation via Jesus Christ, but just thought the other guys were praying it wrong.
@@RockSolitude its actually more likely that Caligula was an ordinary emperor, but his political enemies spread rumors about him being mad postmortem.
27 settlers died of exposure before arriving to the island. They were known as the ‘lucky ones’. And also made good appetizers.
Good video. Thank you for this story. I'm Lithuanian, my grandmother was deported to Siberia at around 7 years of age. She did comeback and lived a long life, but this IS, like you said, a monument the humanity should Not forget.
Don't be monsters to each other, being human is montrous enough.
simply being a human, is literally just being a animal but with sentient level far higher
Well done Yagoda, you created the first and most animalistic battle royal in existence, but i just wonder one thing.
He said the survivors got pulled out of the island afterwards, so.. pretty much the ones who murdered, tortured and ate human flesh and skinned them alive got to live, and eventually started families and as of today, they are someone's grandparents..
That's haunting for me
well, as this incident happened nearly 90 years ago I assume that all of them are dead by now. We also should never forget, that thousands and thousands of Nazi war criminals never had to face justice and of course many of them lived happily ever after for decades after the war. The same is true for many high ranking members of the Nazi justice system, the police, the military, teachers and many more that were able to continue working for the new government after the end of WWII. Probably worst of all is the fact that many doctors who were involved in the holocaust and the mass euthanasia of children and disabled people never were punished, or if the were, served only a few years and worked as doctors again. I know a case of a doctor who killed and tortured children during the 40s but was a highly respected doctor and a well-renowned medical expert working for the legal system until the late 1990s - despite the fact that his crimes were well known.
@@michaelkores6860 just remember that ALL of the major evil regimes were left wing. Hitler, stalin, Lenin, mao, FDR. The list goes on. Mussolini may be classified as right leaning, only his implementation was pure authoritarian left.
@@TheDoomslayersDaddy that’s true except for Pinochet
@@sirlost94 agreed , I just neglected to mention him as he lacks a bit of prominence the other characters I mentioned have among most people
@@TheDoomslayersDaddy reminds me of the polish soldier who, about how it feels taking a life, said “I wouldn’t know, I’ve only ever killed communists”
Stalin is a Georgian
He didn’t like Georgia
He ruled Russia
He didn’t like Russians
Me: What
he was paranoid
He was a communist. They hate everyone.
@@MrPornstache wait till the Commies call you a "Capitalist Pig" or saying this is "Capitalist propoganda" lol
@@sbevexlr848 when have u actually heard anyone say that unironically. Even in youtube I haven't seen that to a considerable extent, they label it as "western propaganda" not "capitalist pig", and I doubt any communist would even step foot to this videos comment section.
@@ushikiii lol true but I have seen a bunch of them being serious about these words lmao
Best arguement for 2A I've seen all week.
The fact that many young people now act like the fall of the Soviet Union was a sad thing, and the way Communism is depicted as cool and innocent, is absolutely sickening when viewed in the light of the truth.
Yes, many youth think the Soviet Union was a workers paradise.
I know a lot of ardent communists, they hate the soviet union for what it did and the mark it's left on the world. They claim it wasn't real communism (which to be fair it wasn't) and that a decentralized form of communism could work, as in so decentralized that 1 person could at most tell 10 people what to do.
@@terrorcookie3889 You raise a good point. True communism is actually a beautiful dream. And that's not say it's unattainable. As you point out, centralization was a major problem with the Soviet Union. However, reducing centralization could lead to two other issues. The need for organization is one. Someone would have to plan and oversee work and resources. And without power to enforce that organization, chaos would result. Secondly, some people are hard-working, but there are lazy individuals who would try to cheat the system. I think humanity as a species has much to learn for true communism to work.
as another commenter wrote about russia "and then it got worse". what we have now, while not as poverty stricken and brutal, is pretty damn bad. and putin is not going away any time soon. the oligarchs have won. remember, orwells hero wrote a book called "the theory and practice of oligarchal collectivism", and it was, although fictional, basically right.
@@isabellalofton263 Yes exactly that is why I personally am not a communist, it doesn't truly take into consideration human nature. We are both greedy and generous at the same time. Pure capitalism doesn't work as it leads to corruption, pure communism doesn't work as it also leads to corruption. We need something in the middle, a socialist and capitalist fusion with strong institutions to squash out corruption and unethical acts in my opinion
As horrific as it is to hear about this, it's still so important because most people in the western world are totally ignorant to the horrors of the Soviet union
You really need to separate Stalinist times from whole Soviet history. It was the darkest time.
the worst is that some even look up to that
To the horrors of socialism. Please let us not forget that Soviets were ushering in communism utopia and millions of lives lost be damned
@@daazor This is sadly a thing that has happened both to Russia and to China in the sense that the USSR and China were and are defined by their most heinous leaders rather than note there are nuances to both countries and systems that happened almost as soon as Stalin and Mao stopped breathing. Putin and XI might respect their predecessors, but they are not Mao or Stalin. (Which is not to say they aren't terrible on their own, because they are).
Even worse when western people talk about communism as this "beautiful idea badly executed". It sucks on paper, it sucks on reality, humans are prone to do the worst atrocities when given power.
They should have thrown Stalin onto that island, and told the cannibals "He's all yours."
Beria would have loved that!
A move like that would take guts, something most people don't seem to have.
*sees cannibal island* Me: i never knew the forest was in real life XD
When I read your comment, I heard Tony Starks/Iron Mans voice when I read "He's all yours"
Atli Ársælsson what do you mean who?
This video and others about Soviet crimes are quite relevant in the light of the current Russo-Ukrainian war. Putin's actions have been described akin to Stalin's and he seems to want to re-enact the 'glory days' of the Soviet Union. As an Estonian, I've heard numerous stories about Soviet crimes against the Baltic people, and the current war has caused trans-generational suffering in everyone currently alive. Thank you for this horrible yet important video. These stories need to be told so they can't be erased from history. Russia must answer for its crimes against humanity.
The speed at which this all unfolded is terrifying.
4,500 people dead on 1 tiny island in a month.
The cruelty is shocking.
Yeah, like a true horror movie. Like in the movie "the mist" when people started going nuts after being stuck just 1 day, or "The cube".
Turns out humans are that scary after all
The only thing communism is effective with is murder on an industrial scale. Those who follow this ideology should be hanged in the main square
AND the fact they found evidence of cannibalism ONE WEEK after the prisoners were out there.
Sounds like Slab City without opioids.
It didn't surprise me that much. One thing Soviets were great at were such large projects that ended in catastrophe leaving a lot of dead people.
What surprised me was how fast it went overboard. The result of so many bad factors:
- extremely harsh environment
- no food, equipment and infrastructure
- no oversight or organisation
- soviet guards
- prisoners were mostly people from town without necessary survival skills
- most prisoners were non-criminals, but there were true criminals which was an advantage
Stalin: "Into the goulash with him!"
Someone: "You mean gulag"
Stalin: "This guy too!"
Hahah underrated comment.
@@nicholasfeiock7873 I am glad i could put some light in your life with dark humor :)
If I lacked a spine I would Carlos Mencia this meme worthy comment. 😂
This is funny jfjdd
*Guards put them in the stew*
Stalin: "what are you doing?!?"
Guards: what you said, great leader
Hearing stories like this makes you realize life isn't so bad
For the time being. But all these dumb fvck haters who aren't capable of realising how good they've got it are unwittingly bringing this shit back.
No shit. You're right.
@Richard W. Any belief system that sacrifices humanity and people for her end goals is evil and can lead to horrible acts, some are just more self-righteous than others. Capitalism without government oversight and control turns into another hunger games, which is what the right-wing of the Libertarians would want.
Life is good. You destroyed the environment for your grandchildren.... Life is good
Try reading the "kolyma tales" or "graphite" by varlam shalamov (I'm sure I misspelled that), you'll never feel bad about a shitty day at work again.
I just wanted to say thank you for bringing this history to us. i can only imagine how rough it can be to do research on topics like this that are so horrible, tragic and deplorable. Thank you for doing research on things you do even if it is stomach turning. Ive enjoyed your work for a long time i hope to see many more videos and wish you the best of health.
Have you ever heard of these antique buildings that contain vast amounts of paper bound objects? They contain words that are typed on pages from people from the past. I would bet you can find one in your area. If you enter ask for the History Section. Your mind will be blown
@@salvagemonster3612 and if you ask for the “condescending douche” section you’ll find a framed portrait with your face on it 😄
Love your channel bro, really brings out the history nerd in me
I love the really off the beaten track videos this channel produces.
Thomas Zielke right. Not just the new fad
When those who died on the way there are the lucky ones, you know that this is far worse than you could image.
Same could be said about the germans who fought after the fall of Berlin better to die for a dying cause then surrender to either Americans and dehydrate/starve with no medical treatment in Eisenhower death camps or shot in a ditch and used as anti nazi propaganda/gulaged
When I did my final essay in my History class at school; I chose this island as I had relatives sent there who never made it back.
Thank you Simon and everyone else who have helped make this video. More people need too hear what humanity is capable of.
KoivuTheHab
Ahahaha
Well everyone knows lean meat is good for ya 🤣
Busham
Nah all good man. Comedy is a good way to talk about tragedy since it helps bring light to it.
And let’s be honest here, it’s kinda the best time and place to say it 🤣🤣
Busham
Yeah, but instead of feeding trolls better to laugh at epic banter instead aye!
@KoivuTheHab Do you want a piece of me?
What astounds me is the fact people who sit there and call nazis evil actively push for a society that allows these atrocities.
I just discovered these podcasts -I didn’t know they were on TH-cam as well.
They are absolutely amazing thank you so much. So much information - in such a short period of time! they’re perfect
Thanks
"Her calves had been cut o-"
NO, NO, THANK YOU SIR. Good evening to you. Ok I'm gone.
FollowTheSpirit
Forget horror movies. Learn about history. It’s terrifying.
I recommend the TH-cam Series “The Great War”, “WW2, “Time Ghost”, and “Between 2 Wars”.
Learn what they edited out of history class because they neared teen would start wetting their beds at night again.
Welcome to real life buddy. Watch a learn. Get your head out of the sand.
Humans are the most dangerous animal out there.
Honestly I wish I had done that. Very informative video, but now I really wish that I could still drink.
equarg facts, well put.
Im not a shocked easly person but this whole video filled me with dread, holy shit
@@equarg most dangerous, no, most evil, by a large margin
And people still think Stalin wasn't that bad of a guy
Just remember, there’s still people that think Marxism could work.
Only if everyone was perfect.
the only thing remotely useful he did was His lack of value towards humans won the Eastern front since the USSR's Only advantage against nazi Germany was Army size and also the winter. Even Lenin didn't want him in power
Lots of people think that communism isn't that bad too lol.
Bruh who? You guys keep saying this and ive NEVER heard anyone pro stalin
@@GazingTrandoshan look up the video "was stalin really that bad"
Things like this make me look at my own hands and just think "How are things like this done to other people? "
I look around my house and realize, I'm DAMN lucky..
I feel you. I have a 1 br studio in the basement and drive a car with almost 200k miles on it but I am truly grateful for what little I do have.
Amen brother, Amen.
And it can happen again. It can happen in any country. All you have to do is take away food. And people, regular human beings, will begin to commit atrocities in order to survive. Hunger and desperation. It brings the devil out of people. so we must always make sure that no one goes hungry and we must always make sure that people don't feel desperate, that they have hope and that they have a chance. And that's why you try to take care of the disenfranchise. That's why you don't ignore those who are marginalized in society. Those are the people who are desperate and hungry and they will do anything to survive and the only reason that they feel like that is because we allow them to feel like that. A lot of times it is up to us to do better than the government.
If you ignore history, you are doomed to repeat it
Guards lost there humanity. The "prisoner's" just followed suit.
It sounds like they never had it to begin with.
@@MrSpartanspud there's a reason that the theme of "lives are not disposable tools" is so common to this very day in the art, literature and even video games produced in the former soviet union (especially the Ukraine, Poland and other former soviet client states). That is what communism does, it reduces man to a part in the machine that is the state command economy. Just as a machinist doesn't really worry too much about what happens to stripped out old bolts they throw in a scrap bin, communist regimes care little for people they deem "unproductive"-- and their idea of production means "can you make guns and tanks, or the material to make guns and tanks" giving little thought to higher human aspirations like art, science for the sake of human advancement (as opposed to making better tanks) or other things that cannot be used to project the power of the state.
@@MrSpartanspud You should read The Gulag Archipelago. There is a clear decline in human rights from when the Tsar was overthrown, to the collapse of the Soviet government. It's important to see the gradual decline, because once you do, you realize America is quickly headed down a similar course.
All I can remember is the Stanford prison experiment ending with it's logical and horrific conclusion.
I knew Joe Stalin had many souls that were recklessly murdered, killed, tortured due to his paranoia and despotic sadistic hold on to power... millions upon millions of people.. but.. this story really raises the evils of Stalinist Russia and the old Soviet era "great purges" to entirely new level of DEPRAVITY. That this sad sad story was successfully repressed and covered up until the fall of the USSR in 1994 is profound. Wow !
Thank you for doing this segment. Never forget !
John Kelsey that’s cool and all, but the Soviets dissolved in 1991...
Concider for a moment how many equally terrible events like this have happened in the Soviet Union or in other communist countries, but have never been revealed.
Whenever I hear about a " passionate communist " that was murdered by his own leaders, I get all warm and fuzzy inside.
Everytime a teenager praises Stalin, show them this
Who praises Stalin?
@@theantilifeequation8150 edgy teenagers
They're rewriting history books in Russia atm
Far left communists have been infiltrating western democracies for a long time. Look at many of the democrats in America, or the greens here in Australia, they have no gulags only because they lack power, not for the lack of trying.
@@TwoPlusTwoEqualsFive32
Oh I see your an idiot. There are no communists in the democratic party, the most far left are democratic socialists which are completely different, chalk and cheese. It's like saying fiscal conservatives are fascists (which unfortunately some people do) but that's just as idiotic. Communism is is a very very specific thing, and it sucks Stalinism was even more specific, (as was said in the video some officials fought hard to make sure nothing like this happened again) Stalin was a monster nobody idolises him least of all democratic socialists.
This is honestly one of the most horrifying things I've ever watched.
Pardon my French, but I’m just going to come out and say it....that Stalin fella was a real JERK
Good euphémism talking about a Monster
You can't say that! 75 years ago you would've been shot for saying that! If you lived in the USSR of course lol
I have a feeling these guys ^ didn't get the reference
Whoa whoa whoa man take it easy on the language
A real , dare I say . Goofball .
Thank you Geographics for uploading.
Very important time in history almost kept hidden.🖤
This needs to be taught in high school history if it isn't.
Nothing is taught in high school except computers & socialism.
Nothing about the horrors committed by the USSR was taught in my high school.
The only thing taught in schools (in the US) is to ask permission to use the bathroom. I actually had to break myself of this once I entered the workforce. I mainly work on my own now and STILL feel the need to inform people of where I'm going.
Worst thing i was taught about the ussr in school was the famine in Ukraine they caused and that collectivization farms and the gulags were awful but most of it focused on the nazis. The ussr was one the winning side of ww2 after all and we all know who writes the story.. The cold war is probably why we hear the negatives at all
@@forreal245 I teach all of the horror stories I can prove through books and there many parents trying to get fired! Fortunately the new administration in my country is try to show real history to our kids.
TFW when "The Russian Sleep Experiment" Creepypasta sounds like a kids good night story.
Wasn't it staged? or maybe it was based on a true story
Creepypastas are fictional short stories in the style of fan fiction. Yet when it comes to the USSR, the craziest fan fiction seems to be not too far removed from much of reality.
That story was ruined for me before I even read it, because I already knew fatal insomnia existed. It doesn't make you crazy, but it does kill you after enough time.
@@Nova_Needle oh but it does make you somehow crazy, it affects the brain so of course it has some symptoms like hallucinations, panic attacks, delirium/paranoia, until reaches dementia and eventually death.
@@lospolloshermandez4299 Its based on the very real torture methods used during interrogations by the soviet police. As dictated in The Gulag Archipelago, the guards would force prisoners to stay awake for 5 days at a time in order to make them confess to their "crimes". They did other much worse shit aswell.