History Hit PANICS And Edits Out Horrible Take On USSR But I SAW IT!
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In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union emerged as a vast experiment in communist ideology. However, under Joseph Stalin's iron grip from the late 1920s until his death in 1953, this experiment transformed into one of history's most brutal dictatorships, marked by systematic repression, industrialization at a devastating human cost, and the creation of a pervasive cult of personality.
Stalin's ascent to power came through careful manipulation of party machinery and the systematic elimination of rivals. Following Lenin's death in 1924, he outmaneuvered Leon Trotsky and other potential successors through a combination of political cunning and brutality. What followed was the creation of a totalitarian state that would reshape every aspect of Soviet society through terror and coercion.
The collectivization of agriculture, implemented in the late 1920s, exemplified Stalin's ruthless approach to modernization. Millions of kulaks - wealthy peasants - were deported to Siberia or removed outright. Stalin weaponized hunger against the resistance to Soviet authority.
The Great Terror of the 1930s represented the apex of Stalinist repression. The infamous show trials of the Old Bolsheviks were merely the visible tip of an iceberg of persecution that reached into every corner of Soviet society. The NKVD, Stalin's secret police, arrested citizens on fabricated charges of being "enemies of the people." The gulag system expanded dramatically, becoming a vast archipelago of forced labor camps where millions perished from cold, starvation, and exhaustion.
Stalin's control extended beyond physical repression into the realm of thought and culture. He demanded that art, literature, and science conform to ideological requirements of the state. The doctrine of "socialist realism" stifled creative expression, while scientists and scholars who refused to align their work with Marxist-Leninist principles faced persecution. Even history itself was regularly rewritten, with photographs altered to remove purged officials who had fallen from favor.
The Second World War, while ultimately ending in Soviet victory, revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of Stalin's system. The rapid industrialization of the 1930s had created a military-industrial base that proved important in defeating Germany, but Stalin's purge of military leadership and initial strategic blunders contributed to devastating losses in the war's early stages. The victory, however, only reinforced Stalin's grip on power.
Stalin's paranoia intensified in his final years, leading to new waves of persecution. The "Doctors' Plot" of 1952-53 suggested the possibility of another great purge, which was only averted by Stalin's death in 1953. The scale of his tyranny became clearer during Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" in 1956, which detailed some of Stalin's crimes, though the full extent of his regime's brutality would not be known until the opening of Soviet archives decades later.
The legacy of Stalin's rule continues to cast a long shadow over the former Soviet states. His regime demonstrated how revolutionary ideals could be perverted into tools of oppression, and how modernization achieved through terror creates deep societal trauma. The estimated death toll of his regime - through executions, deportations, famines, and the gulag system - ranges in the millions making it one of history's deadliest dictatorships.
Perhaps most insidiously, Stalin's rule created a model of authoritarian control that combined traditional despotism with modern techniques of surveillance and ideological manipulation. His system showed how industrial modernization could be achieved without political liberalization, a lesson not lost on subsequent authoritarian regimes. The human cost of this achievement - in lives destroyed, families torn apart, and cultures suppressed - stands as a testament to the dangers of unchecked political power and the importance of defending democratic institutions and human rights.
#sovietunion #stalin #historyhit
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th-cam.com/video/7FkAwxqNyws/w-d-xo.html
No one with a knowledge of how slavery persisted into the 20th century in the United States (read the Emancipation of Robert Sadler) Churchill's terror famine in India or the FACT that Truman PROLONGED the war so that he could show off his atomic bombs by destroying two cities (one of the being the center of Christianity in Japan btw) could argue that the Soviet Union was uniquely evil even in comparison to the American and British Empires much less in comparison to the German empire which was the actual enemy of the Soviet Union during the darkest period in its history. If you think that, you are either ignorant or very good at compartmentalizing.
@metatronyt it's certainly funny how she skips totally to mention Holodomor under "how many people died under Stalin" question
Only with that, we are talking about several millions. History of everything did a video about that:
th-cam.com/video/rRpSJpHaIpY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=KykLDEHM_EQ0kO4h
Thankyou for always keeping it real metatron ur my fav historical youtuber
Are there ANY parts of human history you may not feel particularly knowledgable about? Would be fun to learn along with you for once ;D
Just a small advice: either bother yourself to learn the actual history of the country you're slandering or don't pretend to be the all-knowing truth teller. You get so offended by people slandering the western countries - but are not above doing it yourself. I, personally, don't care how you feel about the USSR, Russia, or whatever, but 99% of the western sources on the topic are propaganda lies, recycled for political purposes. Do your research - and do better.
Never even once did she mention how Gulags were a place to punish ideological dissidents and academics who wouldn't fall in line. Just "prisons" to "keep people away" and "punish them". After all, only "criminals" went there, right?
The entire video was hideously apologetic to one of the most cruel regimes in the last century.
If I, as a German, made a video like that for Nazi Germany, I'd have to worry about going to prison over it.
They also just sent random people there. They had quotas for how many people they sent to the gulags.
And imagine if you had a similar statue and flag on your desk in the foreground throughout the video.
She uses the word 'perished' instead of murdered. Totally bizarre, unless of course she's trying to subtly downplay the events.
She is what happens when communists take over "higher education".
"Yes, many jews perished in Adolf's wonderful summer camps, but it's a common misconception that everyone who was in those camps died. In fact, if you consider how many did not die, the camps weren't that bad, and in fact, produced a wealth of activity and unity to the Germanic peoples." - This crazy B
And the Western media use even more euphemistic language about the thousands of children lying dead in Gaza today... yaay, we are so much better' then the evil USSR!
I've noticed a lot of people on TH-cam saying "perished" or similar words/phrases instead of "died." Either it's a new trend, or because "dead" and "died" trigger TH-cam, like "suicide" and "Hitler" do.
A historian answering questions the way a historian answers questions, without assigning any morality. Just answering the fucking question, and you people lose it. You think history is a narrative. You don't understand the historical process
Editing the record for PR purposes? How wonderfully Soviet.
just think, these kind of apologists cheer massacres in the past. her pudgy face will be smiling if they happen again to you.
Editing out the pro-soviet propaganda doesn't sound very soviet
1984 is alive and well.
@@exantiuse497 Sure it is. It's not about the word "Soviet". The same people will happily claim that the prior results of their politics were actually consequences of entirelt different politics.
@@SydBat
1984 is alive and well - demonizing USSR
"How many people died under Stalin?" She danced around the question, and NEVER GAVE A NUMBER.
Of course, because there's no hard number, it's like asking me how many children and women the US has murdered in the dozens of wars it has caused and dozens of coups d'etat, I don't know but that doesn't mean I'm covering up those murders.
There is no number, the only answer - it's huge, no one knows the actual numbers till this day, archives are still closed and restricted.
There is no number, just a few different estimations. 3.000.000 up to 24.000.000 are the most common numbers, some say up to 60.000.000 but thats way over the top if you analyse the populations of the countries.
She said that there are no exact figures and a lot of debates.
@@imyarek She did not even give a broad estimate.
The red flag on her desk was a red flag.
Yeah, it disgusts me how that's okay but having a NS flag would outrage everybody and their dog, despite the USSR having been SO much worse, and having been our enemy for 40 years, not just 5. It shows you just how backwards things are.
Literally.
@@Rognvaldi Finally, someone used literally correctly.
The archer class is really made up of archers.
It's on-topic deco, dude.
I'm from a former soviet country. There are 2 kinds of people from the soviet times. Ones who had everything taken, and ones who had everything given. She gives the history of the 2nd group.
Well as far as people going to old USSR towns (here on TH-cam), most old people living there were given everything then because they all say it was better under USSR management.
@@beardedlonewolf7695 exactly 👌
A perfect way to put it... And as someone from a former soviet country as well, it genuinely keeps me up at night how easily it seems people from Western Europe and America conveniently only seem to see the history of that second group, and ignore all the horror stories of the first.
@@beardedlonewolf7695 maybe they should ask the millions of people who starved to death or died in the Gulags...
Oh, wait...
There are 2 kinds of people from the old South. Ones who had their slaves taken, and ones who were given their freedom. Guess what group you're a part of?
The party in both USSR and Warsaw Pact countries didn't 'offer' employment, employment was mandatory for everyone who wasn't attending school, retired, or officially declared physically or mentally unable to work.
The crime of not working was called 'parasitism' and the punishment was imprisonment coupled with heavy physical labour.
And a great channel about the USSR called the Ushanka Show mentions that you couldn't just change jobs either- that is you couldn't move up or to something particularly different either. You were basically stuck for life as whatever you started as.
@@mattl3729 Its not like you couldn't, but you had to be educated to get most jobs. And all education was free, read - government pays for it. And government is not going to pay for another one just because you don't feel like working on your current job. So once you got your education, you are stuck with jobs it allows.
@@mattl3729 its a lot of bs coming from ya. If you got the education OR experience you can change field. But a fucking peasant joe with no diploma would not be given the right to lead a police squad or enter teaching without some form of diploma or experience backing him. Simple factory jobs you could change if the factory head was fine with it along the current employer
Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Your time is a means of production. It follows that under Socialism the collective (state) owns your time (you).
I mean, that doesn't sound like a bad thing though? like isn't our proud American value that if you don't work you should die? isn't that what we preach and practice over here? in what world do you think the average person in the capitalist's world who isn't listed as attending school, retired, or officially declared physically or mentally unable to work is allowed to live? hell, we even demand disable people to "prove their worth" by shaming supposed "welfare queen". oh wait we do have those people those wealth rich pigs who leach off other like landlords or shareholders and big business owners
21:45 as woman who lived during USSR - I must remind you that there were no diapers for kids and no pads or tampons - or any other hygiene/comfort products like that. Even toilet paper was not a mass thing until late 70s and even then it was not everywhere but mainly in big cities, while everywhere it appeared only after mid 1980s - so near the death of USSR and when western products started slowly spilling into USSR.
Luckily I was born after this but my mother certainly remembers having to substitute toilet paper in communist Czechoslovakia with newspaper. Not very fun.
God bless you miss.
People here in America are losing their minds in favor of Communism. 3rd Wave Feminist claim Communism/Socialism can protect their bodies, they are severely Delusional.
People like can save America and this statement here is Dropping Reality on their Heads like Anvils.
God[YHWH] Bless you Miss, Where ever you Are.
if you lived in Siberia... or the Caucasus in the mountains, yes, but to this day is hard to find diapers in the woods wherever country you go
@wladdragwlya wrong, it was horrid for political opposition and Christians.
Churches and private property were seized and taken. A majority of Gulag slaves were priests and monks.
I went through a roll of toilet paper today blowing my nose with a cold. It would have been a nightmare.
The video has been hidden. It still turns up if you specifically search for it but now ALL the comments have been removed. Bad form, History Hit. Very bad form.
That's why I go to REAL History Channels; like @matatronyt
And now they removed it completely because I can’t even find it whenI specifically search xd
@@TheRealRealMClovinThere’s a link in the description. UPDATE : The link is no longer active, the video has been set to private.
@@GoBlueGirl78 aa ok not removed then but still not able to turn up if you specifically search it
I made 1 coms b4 this 1, if its missing you know y.
A friendly reminder that north korea also holds elections.
Anyways, have a nice day.
That’s crazy, Kimmy got 100% of the vote
@@marekgorka9816 man just has a really good gaming chair
@@def3ndr887that reminds me of the Armenian election where the news sites reported the dictator was elected again….. a few days before the election even started
"Elections".
Supreme Executive power derives from a mandate from the masses.
Congratulations Dear Leader upon winning 110% of the vote!!
I find it disturbing how many lecturers are hired propagandist and not unbiased academics.
Just imagine the Orwellian lectures explaining how 6M Palestinians woke up one day and realized they were unfortunate enough to have been born on land the British Monarchy was paid to give to someone else in the early 1900's and then sent ships full of people and guns to round up those 6M into leisure camps to sort of rest and recuperate for 70yrs while some magically disappear never to be seen or heard of again. The Severance procedure will be administered to both citizens and military who are on the front lines manning the 'Waste Management' infrastructure to keep the streets clean and the lights on while everyone has smiles for the cameras on every corner - all to keep the free flow of those dwindling 6M out of the headlines so the condos can be built atop the blood soaked fields and desecrated cemeteries.
No such thing as unbiased academic, I'd say in our day and age but it's been that way for a 100 years or more.
80 years of communism
Indeed. That's how past and current propaganda is spread. Unfortunately, history is usually not truth- from way back. It's what those who paid the writers wanted them to say, what forces control institutions, or just suppress dissent by sticking the word 'denier' or 'anti' on. I love the idea that truth has nothing to fear from scrutiny- and we should always be extremely suspicious of what we're not allowed to investigate, or discuss, or question; because if you can't question something, it means someone has something to hide.
@@keyser021Uh OK
As someone from a former Soviet country - this was disgusting. But I also want to answer your question about "who were they who liked the West?" It's ordinary people. 'Western' often was the synonim to 'of a very high quality', 'worth attention', 'worth buying' if we are talking about the goods. And also people went out of their way to get access to Western culture, especially music. But unfortunately she did not specify that and I suspect - it was on purpose
And also it was banned and you could get in trouble for praising it. I remember secretly recording music tapes and pirating them everywhere to people to listen.
Or that fashion on "boiled Jeans" to look cool like in Western movies.
Also, lets not forget that tampons/pads/diapers were not a thing in USSR even in 1990.
Yes because we were never shown the homeless - a uniquely western phenomenon at the time
@@ZS-rw4qq Sure. Cause homelessness was itself was a felony in the USSR. If you were homeless, you had two options: jail or a mental institution. And the latter was arguably worse. In addition to that, yes, freedom and opportunities also create the possibility of failure. Freedom always also creates more risks in life, cause you and only you are made responsible for yourself. Not a very steep price to pay if you ask me. There were especially many homeless in the 90s, cause to many the concept of competition and working for quality over quantity were alien after 70 years under a totalitarian rule where everything was decided for you.
@Admiral_Bongo hahahahhaha you missed the part where they built commie blocks to house everyone
@Admiral_Bongo You also missed how these people became homeless - through privatization of state owned companies
you know when there's a disclaimer at the beginning that the video is going to be good 😂
Sees Disclaimer pulls out chair and sits back for a good show.
I only wish there hadn't been one as now I REALLY can't go out and express my true feelings at those who deserve it LOL History Hit and this 'professor' deserve scorn.
No, he simply is lacking expertise in the area and doesn't have staff to cover it either, a situation we could discuss in depth.
Please note, that when she says the Crimean tatars "got displaced in 1944", this was by the soviets, not the Germans. In 1944 soviets recaptured Crimea, and immediately the tatars "got displaced".
She tried to link it with the jews getting wiped out by the Germans.
She really is sneaky.
same thing happened with chechens in 1944, lots of people murdered and deported
A lot of people got displaced after WWII. The Sudentan Germans got displaced too.
Surprised that did not happened to them during Russian Empire, after all their economy was basically build on raids and slave trade. Could not have happened to nicer people ...
@@stanleyrogouski There was a reason for that, the border of Germany moved.
In the Crimea, the soviets just decided to be evil to russify Crimea.
@@stanleyrogouski Displaced is far too mild a word. FAR too mild. It also wasn't the first time. There was a sizeable German population in western and southern Ukraine- people invited in by Catherine the Great- who were rounded up and moved to the far East when WWI started. Hundreds of thousands of people. A Ukrainian group did a fascinating and sad documentary about it a year or two ago. Stalin did the same at the start of WWII. And let's not forget all those who wanted to be free of the Soviet yoke and fought against them during WWII- and were turned over by the Allies to be deported or just murdered by Stalin. The USSR was the real evil of the 20th century by orders of magnitude- make no mistake. But that's impolitic to accept.
My great grandfather was sent to a gulag in Siberia from Hungary. He came back with many missing fingers and toes (frostbite) years later. He was lucky. Had to leave his daughter and wife alone, and they suffered. Once he came back, he turned to alcohol after the horrors he's seen, and they continued to suffer.
My great grand-uncle never returned to Austria. The USSR only released people through treaties who were not able to work.
I knew a Hungarian guy once who would always talk about the 'F&CKING Communtists' any time he had to mention them. I can only imagine how rotten it must have been to live under the USSR's boot.
@@Colki12 Yeah, the idea that 1.5 million people died in the Gulag is just ludicrous given how few Germans came back after the millions who surrendered at the end of the war in the east. Or maybe this 'professor' only meant Soviet citizens. Soviet citizens sent to Gulag between 1932 and 1934. She seems to like weird specifics.
My grandfather was also sent to Gulag. He survived too. When he arrived back to Hungary, my grandma took him in her arms to help him getting off the train. He weighed only 36 kg (79.3 pounds)...
@@mattl3729 Yeah we do. Unfortunately, today Hungary seems to wink a lot towards communism because people have let time cover up the wounds so much that they've forgot. Even my grandmother, who was the daughter in the story speaks about communism and socialism as "the good old times" and specifically blames Stalin & Lenin personally with the pain they've caused. It is the system and almost all people who led it.
The fact this woman is a lecturer at kings college is insane.
I like how some people forget about the minority cleansing in USSR
They just plain support it
ukraine did that too. just ask romanian, hungarian, etc minorities there. what is your point?
@@jesuschrist5294What about. What about. What about. What about
@@jesuschrist5294 Whatboutism goes crazy
The Holodomor tells you all you need to know.
As soon as she used the no true Scotsman fallacy on the soviet union a million alarms went off in my head.
This "Historian" has more red flags than the Kremlin in the 80s
Real historians dont participate in these videos sadly but are busy writing books and digging throuch archives
More red flags than a CCP parade.
It's funny. I can see the results of *attempting* large-scale communism. When people suggest we try communism I don't really care whether "real" communism was achieved in those cases; I care about what happened when people tried it.
its not true scotsman fallacy, if you dont follow the ideals of a certain ideology, then you arent following that ideology
@@boad8270 You might as well just say Communism is Utopia. Because you'll never be satisfied when the people who want it fail over and over again, meanwhile causing mass suffering.
31:30 Doesn't at all surprise me that she "forgot" to mention that the Baltic states being "a part" of the USSR is to this day viewed as little more than foreign occupation.
They were a part of the Russian Empire. So was a chunk of Poland and so was Finland. I tend to view the Soviets as thinking they are retaking rebellious territories. No doubt the locals thought very differently since nationalism had been brewing in minority populations since tsarist times. They wanted to defend their new countries and did so very well at the beginning.
@@danielallan8061What would the world say if Great Britain re-invaded Ireland because Ireland was formerly part of the United Kingdom?
There was _a lot_ that Metratron actually let slide without comment. The aforementioned fact that the Baltics were free for the entire period between the wars and therefore have always had a somewhat different view of their membership in the Union. (Likewise the end date of the USSR itself.)
More significantly: She reminds us that the Czar had a political prison system and presents the Gulags as a continuation of that culture. Not an unimportant thing to mention, but it should _never_ be mentioned without emphasizing that the scale and brutality of the two systems was utterly incomparable. History should better remember the (rare) leftists of impeccable belief and credentials who had the internal and external courage to say that the USSR was _worse_ than the Czar--at a time when the _New York Times_ for example was full of lies and apologies. Then her entire talk about "convincing" people to participate in the Soviet project. Then her mentioning all the component peoples of the USSR with just an emphasis on its wonderful diversity, without a word of the fates that many of them (mentioned and unmentioned) faced. (Although Metatron does mention Stalin's attitudes elsewhere.) Not crazy about the description of the German Soviet war or the "nylon curtain" or the housing or some other stuff where she's obviously trying to put some spin on it where Metatron has often elsewhere (including in this video) called out far more subtle spin games being played by historians with agendas.
@@danielallan8061 Estonia has been invaded and occupied by Danes, Germans, Swedish and Russians. Are you saying that all of them have claim to our home now because their pieces of shait ancestors forced their way in? Why bring it up as a response to "Baltics still see it as invasion/occupation," unless you're trying to be an apologist? Also parts of russia used to belong to Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, should they give those back as well. Why bring this garbage putinite argument of "historically we ruled there at some point" up, unless you're trying to make some kind of a garbage statemen?
@@danielallan8061 So India wasn't occupied by foreign invaders because India was part of the British Empire? Or could it be that the Russian Empire were also foreign occupiers of those places?
Your take is insanely bad, and you should feel bad for thinking that way.
At least now I know why Metatron was so viciously attacked, thou shall never touch their sacred cow.
*sees title*
*frantically grabs popcorn*
This comment made me laugh
Mmmmm popcorn
This isn’t the work of a historian, but rather an activist posing as one-quite Soviet, don’t you think? Her downplaying of the operation’s death toll by suggesting the numbers were "small" and claiming there’s "a lot of debate" is utterly disturbing. As a German, I find it appalling.
Consider the question, "Was the Soviet Union poor?" A glance at almost any data-whether income levels, infrastructure, or social systems-reveals the profound and lasting impact of the USSR on East Germany. Even today, the disparities are visible in modern statistics across the map.
I'm guessing she ended up in England when her family, as part of the Party, had to flee when the USSR fell. Just my assertion by how much she defends it.
After 40 years you cannot really use communism as excuse for bad economy and corrupt government.
@@paulie9483 Fleeing to England and now doing her best to turn it a communist Hellscape.
'You know, the gulags were not that bad, kind of like a holiday camp but you are offered the chance to work!'
- Prof. Anastasia Pologia
@@paulie9483She doesn't speak like someone from England, nor in Received Pronunciation. I'd wager she arrived here later in her life, after childhood.
Oh she's just doing the "Tell me you're a GRU Asset without telling me you're a GRU asset" meme!
Modern Russian authorities are anti-sovietic. So, she is certainly not a GRU asset 😂
22:15 - everything she says from this point on is completely insane - she is 100% a soviet apologist. We're getting into 'My grandmother told me Cleopatra was black' territory. And this person is a PROFESSOR?
Yep this is the point where she wasn't even trying to hide it anymore. Only a full blown propagandist would actually make these claims.
This tells you all you need to know about current academia, doesn't it?
Obviously you don't know how history works. If a historian on World War is asked the question: "Were the Nazis White Supremacists?" And the historian answers "Yes, the Nazis believed that Whites were superior to Jews, Blacks, Roma, Slavs and other ethnicities and races," it seems Metatron and his comments section are going to go "OMG, this professor is insane and a Nazi!"
One does not have to believe in an ideology to tell you that it is what THEY believed. It is absolutely true that that is what THEY believed, and it can be cited chapter and verse, which is what actual historians do as opposed to TH-cam streams who likely have never actually picked up a history book.
@@AdanALW Right, because that statue of Lenin and the commie flag was definitely planted there by AI, and not a deliberate choice of this woman.
And planty of us, here in this comment section had the misfortune to live through this sick system (me included) or live in the aftermath, so we know she is lying and putting a typical commie propaganda.
No books needed and we are tired of idiots saying socialism is not so bad, and trying to excuse all the lies.
@@AdanALW But the Nazis weren't even "White" supremacist in the way we use "White supremacism" today.
Slavs, Jews and even Roma are classified as "White" according to American views on race. They deplored them too, while propping up the Japanese as "Eastern Aryans", the Finns and Hungarians as "Uralic Aryans" despite having varying views on Hungarians. Hell, they even acknowledged Iranians as "Proto-Aryans" and held them in high regard despite modern views on race classifying them as "Brown". If they were unequivocally "White supremacists", they would hold the view that all Whites are superior to everyone else, which they did not - they were a lot more particular than your generic White supremacist.
Your example is wrong since it doesn't even represent reality. Second: that's not what the issue was with the video. She outright equivocated the Stalinist regime with all Western nations, despite the UK and France pulling strings and waging wars to free slaves in Africa - a very noble pursuit - while Russia was too busy butchering the Circassians at the time. Morality is a fickle thing, sure, but's it's very clear that the western part of the world was nowhere near as monstrous as the USSR.
As a Pole, I facepalmed quite a lot watching her.
Talk to your granpa then watch again
@ZS-rw4qq when you stop wearing diapers we can talk kiddo.
As a Hungarian, I also facepalmed a lot.
@@d.cs.j.2513 I mean Hungary was allied of Germans whos plan was to wipe out the Slavs, including your bro Poles. So...
If you wonder why Americans don't understand Communism, not having lived through it is a factor, but the real delusional stuff comes from propagandists embedded in our schools and universities. McCarthy and Stripling were absolutely right, and they didn't go far enough.
@30:12 : "it took many years to convince locals to be part of this new state" -- That's, like, the weirdest description of the Holodomor that I've ever heard.
Holodomor never existed, It was something invented by the nazis to stir the nationalist sentiment under soviet lands...Sorry not nazis...Heros of the nation of Ukraine.
she isn't describing the Holodomor
You mean "description of the non-existent myth"?
I dont think she is describing Hladomor with this one. She describes how soviets attacked and subjugated weaker countries around them. It takes a while until you murder enough people to make others obey.
Watch "Europa the last battle" 12h documentary. It explains everything and more. Cheers.
Whoopsie! They’ve been saying the quiet part out loud a lot lately.
And what's that?
"Lately." There have been people defending the USSR since pretty much the inception of that country, nothing new there
❓The video no longer can be seen it seems. Did they delete or make it private?
One more Soviet joke:
two prisoners talking in a labor camp. "How long is your sentence? "
"Two years." "What did you do?"
"I didn´t do nothing..." "Don´t lie! ´Nothing´ gets you only one year!"
I love this joke the most:
"- What is capitalism?
- It is when one person exploits another!
- And what is communism?
- It is when other way around!"
Actually the shortest sentence were 3 and 5 years. That's when you were lucky. Most ranged from 10 to 25...
Also keep in mind sentences could be extended while you were prisoners. And once "freed" you'd actually be forced to live in desertic areas with the choice of either letting everyone exploit you for peanuts or starve to death. For years.
How reminding of current sentences in the UK for Facebook posts.
“One can argue that they offered employment to every Soviet citizen…” I mean sure, one could argue that, but it’d be a really ignorant argument. Especially considering the famous Soviet phrase, “the administration pretends to pay us, so we pretend to work.”
Am I really “employed” if I’m not being compensated for my work?
So you’re saying that the Soviets invented the concept of “paying you with exposure”? The problem is that the exposure was to harsh conditions, famine, starvation, & the punishing, unforgiving climate.
They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work
More than that, the employment in the USSR was mandatory, and to be long-time unemployed was a criminal offence.
As it should be in any labor camp.
Well, can't say about SSSR, but the way it worked here during communism was similar in some ways. During the heyday it was easy to get a job and very hard to get fired so most places were overstaffed and people were hardly dying of overwork. The pay wasn't much but there were all kinds of side benefits provided by the state that you could get, so you could make a decent living in the end. An example of the benefits was free housing distributed by wait list or raffle, most larger companies owning a seaside resort so the employees and their families could go there on vacation for free, zero interest loans for a house or car, free education and so on. Crime was also at an all time low because there weren't enough enemies of the state to go around, so you had to have the police catch real criminals so they don't go fat and lazy, even though donuts weren't really a thing.
But yeah, the big issue was obvious, advancing at work was hard and the pay was similar for everyone so there was just no incentive to put in real effort, the whole thing was pretty much riding on foreign loans and those who had true enthusiasm for the ideology. As both of those driving forces started going dry (also helped by usual post-war baby boom), the cracks in the system started showing, accelerating the slowly brewing internal instability which ended the whole experiment.
As a bonus story, I worked in one of the few remaining state-owned company some 15 years ago and you'd be surprised at how preserved the mentality was, there were people putting in the work and the rest was just coasting along. It was normal to catch a snooze at work, hit the bottle, or go elsewhere to run errands (by company car no less), get to your workplace an hour late or vanish an hour or two before the end. If you ask me how is it working at all, I can only say it's a lot harder for essential services to go under than for everything else.
This is not a "real" phrase. It was originated in the West and was spread through english and geraman languages where it does sound good. Translating it into russian makes it super awkward and the first russian mansions of this phrase date to early 1990s.
The issue of pay was never present in the USSR, unlike the capitalistic countries. The issue was in availability of goods and services, not the amount of money.
The famines stopped after the 1940s. After that, the issues of mandatory employment and lack of consumer goods remained, but the lower class worker *was* materially better of then in the West, at certain periods. Of course, that alone does not make the USSR good or excuse their other crimes, it should only make the Western countries question how they treat people below the middle class.
"The goal of socialism is communism." -Lenin
All the policies done by the Soviet Union were by design whether progressive apologists would admit it or not.
Tankies often hate religion, but critique the religion of Marx? Not allowed.
@@Sheddred_for_Yeshua Seriously, criticize the state just a bit and they lose their minds more than any religious zealot I've ever met.
@@Sheddred_for_YeshuaBy that classification you can call anything a religion.
@TheLogg Tankies tend to be militant atheists who aggressively hate religion. Marx simply created an opiate for edge lords.
@@TheLogg_"Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. . ."_
Gramsci
Not everything is religion, but socialism surely is
She's one of those "it wasn't real communism." People
Fact check: False. They're not actually people.
Exactly
The funny thing is, one could well be one of those people, yet still not deny the historical crimes of specific communist regimes.
It's never "real Communism" because Socialism always fails to transition into Communism.
It's a fundamentally broken ideology that needs to be abandoned.
hate communism like the next person but this statement isn't 100% untrue. Most if not all communism countries didn't even follow their own ideologies and the bad things were mostly because of bad leadership and horrible oppression.
Alexander Solženitsyn said number of killed in gulags upwards to 40 million .
And was a hilarious liar
The USSR did, as a matter of fact, go out of their way to offer employment to everyone. From around 1961 to 1991 being unemployed for a prolonged period was considered "social parasitism" could land you in Gulag or jail (having a private enterprise and living off the profits it generated was also considered social parasitism and bore the same consequences). That was one of the reasons Soviet economy was so inefficient. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people were doing jobs or labor that wasn't necessary or even completely redundant and they all got their wages.
But the wages most of them got were small, so yeah, they were poor.
My great grandma, at that point a retired kolkhoz worker, had an old age pension of ~6 rubles in late 70s and early 80s. This was enough to buy food for 3-5 days worth of food if you bought the cheapest stuff.
Edit: "the lack of issues amongst etno-national groups" got a good chuckle out of me. That's just utter garbage.
Yeah, the ethno-national issues were the exact thing, in the form of "national movement" started in Baltic states and spread around USSR that was essential in bringing the Behemoth down. It was wild of her to claim that.
You'd be (unpleasantly) surprised by how unknown till now the ethnic tensions (and repression, displacement and cleansing) in the USSR were among people who weren't history experts, even if they were contemporary to the USSR's existence and end. Of course, in my country, we have the only Stalinist Communist Party in the world except N. Korea, and they have a certain.....hold on academia and intellectual culture both, to put mildly. But I've noticed it in other Western countries as well.
The joke was under communism the state pretends to pay you while you pretend to work.
""the lack of issues amongst etno-national groups" If I remember my history right, Stalin in the 20's and 30's exterminated some minorities to the point of killing over 90% of the members because he figured they were issues. I guess arguably a "Lack of issues" could be a euphemism for genocide in her defense!
Standard genocide apologist masquerading as an academic. The only moment she expressed any sort of sadness was when explaining when the USSR ended. Wild lol.
Probably because brainwashing probably started when she was a student at her university.
What genocide are you referring to
I mean at least she talks about it. It is worse to keep quite about such things, for example we got genocide of Poles in Western Ukraine, starvation of Indians and Germans by the Brits, British concentration camps in South Africa, Austrian concentration camps for Ukrainians. . How about Kongo? yeah...
@ajaysidhu471 Ukrainians, Polish, Jews, "academics", priests, "capitalists", mentally handicapped were all ethnically eradicated from regions. Many other populations were forcefully moved westward after ww2. Also, the sexual exploitation of the female population in occupied nations.
@@ajaysidhu471 they could be referring to any of them. Russia's history of genocide, displacement, repression, etc. is pretty well documented for every group that isn't considered slavic. If you want a specific group to look into the Buryat are one such group.
In capitalism, we debate about whether to build a wall to keep people out. In communism, the party has to build a wall to keep people in.
Not true, Ukraine is as capitalist and democratic as they come, and men are not allowed to leave the country.
They called the Berlin wall the "anti-facist rampart".
It seems to have been a huge success. Not a single facist ever even TRIED to get past it. 😅
Actually they'll tell you that the wall is for your own good to keep the bad people out.
It was quite a sensationalist symbol, but reality was more complex than that. There was actually quite a lot of people who migrated from other countries TO the Soviet Union and other Warsaw pact nations, like, precisely, East Germany. But, I know how it is. Many people think the World is just U.S.A., Germany, France and UK.
“We” debate that wall because of the number of refugees fleeing their country capitalists exploited and stripped of all its resources after toppling their democratically elected leaders.
That "propfessor" used some dodgy and manipulative terms.
She's in denial.
Stalin: "To make an omelet you need to break some eggs".
Orson Welles: "So where is the omelet?"
The communists: "The west stole it from us!"
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The quote is actually from a pro Stalin journalist who wrote for the New York Times
Actually not far from the truth.
The USA love to blame the USSR for their failures that the USA worked so hard to make happen.
🤣🤣🤣
- So, Stalin brought Soviet Russia from dust-poor, back water country to the second powerhouse. The first country that ever sent humans into space.
- Is that not an omelet?
I remember this TH-camr named the fat electrician had a perfect comeback to the people who say “ that wasn’t true communism” Communism is like a recipe for a cake and each time they use that recipe the cake gets ruined.
Except for the fact it also produced the fastest growing and most productive economies in human history. That gets conveniently ignored.
@@-Zevin- There's an actual easy answer for that, all of that "growth" is just becaus ethe money and property they "expropiate" from people, once they run out of that the economy thanks like crazy,
@@-Zevin- It killed millions. That also gets conveniently ignored.
@@LilStankiboi So has capitalism literally hundreds of millions, also conveniently ignored. See how this works?
@@LilStankiboi So has capitalism. Ironic.
Being Polish, it's absolutely shocking and disgraceful how she interpret history. And her having a soviet flag along of little statue of Lenin on her desk is disgusting!!! These are not fun gadgets.
Oh the poor polish fascists. Oh boohoo.
As east german, i agreee
Womp womp
@@MfSDDThe GDR was better than the fascist hellhole of today, don't be crybaby
As an American, I really do wish that the Hammer and Sickle was considered as taboo as the swastika.
"Katorga system" - but word "Katorga" itself literally means "tortorous unpaid/slave work done for a good of a State by prisoners", so such casual tone speaking about it is wild. And "Katorga work" meant "a really hard work as a punishment"
Because most countries had it at the time. Actually most countries still have forced labour it's just that it's not that hard as mining and not in such band conditions. Some of the GULAG prisoners were even paid.
"Not quite slavery, it was a kind of employment that in Russian we call 'slàveriy'"
And they closed the comment section all together.
I can't even find the video 😂
Video is delisted, but the direct link is in the description
Very Soviet.
@@memewizard8372 Video is private now 😂
@@T2266 yeah they are a dumb history channel that makes small videos like that. They want the money flow so seeing all you absolute ahistorical monkeys losing your shit because she didn't call the ussr evil just made them avoid drama
What she is doing is the definition of gaslighting.
I guess so, her religion is Communism, so she whitewashes everything about the USSR.
No she isn't metatron and you all are just extremely ignorant about the USSR and eat up Eastern Euro revanchist mythmaking designed to forge a nationalist identity post-USSR which was done on the back of the double genocide myth and whitewashing Nationalist actions during the 1930s-40s (hence why Eastern Europe today loves it's Nazi collaborators and SS volunteers like the Forest brothers and OUN) and largely debunked cold war history with metatron literally spouting nonsense from The Black Book of Communism.
The opening of the Soviet archives and modern Soviet historiography is largely in line with what she is saying. Also Western biases are playing here where Westerners completely ignore what the west was doing at the same time to colonial subjects in the global south.
Gulags are actually a great example, statistically, they were nothing like what they are presented in the West, they were not death camps, most people in them were criminals, their population was high but mostly for short periods, lower imprisonment than the US today and they frankly look like summer camps compared to the actual colonial borderline death camps run by the West, in particular France had some real nasty ones the last that was shut in the 1970s. But do you hear about Western colonial labour camps? Nope.
If Soviet Eastern Europe was "colonization" then surely they were far more humane than Western colonization right? Doesn't that prove her point, that the USSR was not more evil than other countries at the time? Did Britain or France go around Africa giving people free modern apartments, univerties, hospitals and healthcare? Parks, theme park rides in parks, local cinemas, cultural palaces? Doesn't look like it.
People should read (or listen to the audiobook on TH-cam) Stalin: critique of a black legend, it shows that even Stalin wasn't actually out of the norm when it came to atrocities of major powers at the time. When it comes to the USSR, people, including metatron have complete brainrot.
*I don't think these people even believe in it themselves* I think it's actually often the case, that they are very unwell, disturbed and depressed people, and rather than harming themselves like a lot of people sadly do when they are in this situation, they try to harm other people by promoting these ideologies.
Have you seen "The protocols of the learned elders of zion"? Pre-soviet russian text/document?
That's a hallmark of leftists. Always gaslight people and pretend their crap ideology is better and less destructive than it obviously is. Usually while denouncing any opposing ideologies as worse than they actually are.
in the 80s there was a comedian who defected from the USSR. He used to joke that the USSR gave you just enough bread to make the sandwiches you ate while standing in line to get more bread. This lady is clearly a propagandist for centralized government.
Yakov Smirnoff? He's still touring and occasionally performing in Branson Missouri.
try being on a slave trade vessel bound for the US and then enslaved on a plantation.... before you try to pretend some countries are worse than others... i'm not saying i know who was the worst, but i'm not going to snow flake implode just because someone said 'no more evil than other countries'.
I liked the joke that under communism the state pretends to pay you while you pretend to work
The USA gave me no bread when I was hungry
@@GG-vm1rn the USA gave you access to the means to earn your bread.
No food shortages in Soviet Union? What about great famine of 1930-1933? Famine in Ukraine, "Holodomor" in 1932-1933? This lady is insane.
It feels completely bizarre to be a millennial and be old enough to remember when posting positive propaganda about the ussr would be unheard of.
«...a very vibrant Crimean Tatar population, that also _get displaced_ ".
Nice euphemism to say deported.
she kinda made it sound like it was the germans who did it as well, not the soviets, really pushing soviet propaganda
@GiovanniPerini Italy was in Hitler coalition and had really fascists in power. Also, Italy committed genocide in Ethiopia. Compared to your country, USSR is an angel.
Crimean tatars were deported because Soviets were afraid Turkey would enter WWII and Crimean Tatars and other Muslim populations will be helping Turks. uS did the same and put Japanese and Germans in camps during WWII.
@@malikamasimova7631 why are you trying to justify a bad thing(deporting an ethnic group) by comparing it to another bad thing(imprisoning ethnic groups)?
@@malikamasimova7631Temporarily Imprisoning a population (which no one is defending here) is very different from sending an entire native population into exile, in which a large number of them perished, and then having their land colonized. They are not even comparable.
My Ukrainian grandfather gave me a copy of the Gulag Archipelago when I was in my early teens. Almost forty years later and I still have little tolerance for pro-communist nonsense.
Yeah, and Archipelago Gulag is not a documentary proof, it’s a work of semi fiction: read stories, extrapolations and exaggerations and not based on factual information.
The gulag Archipelago is a fiction and no documents proof
@ sure comrade, of course a book based on actual historic events written during a time that simply whispering ant-Soviet sentiments would send you to the gulags doesn’t have any documented proof. Let’s just forget that hundreds of thousands of people have just disappeared mysteriously during that time and if they returned , they were shadows of themselves including members of my family. I guess they got the directions wrong for Ibiza and accidentally ended up in Siberia.
I don't like USSR, but that book is a work of fiction.
@ but it is the basis of all the proof that most people online use without knowing that it is a work of fiction
Hi Metatron. I was born in Russia, and my mom grew up in USSR, she is by no means a fan of the regime So I asked her if the USSR a communist state. Her answer was surprisingly similar to the professor here - even as they were taught in school, the USSR is not communist yet. That is what they are driving towards. but as for now, they have not achieved communism yet. I told her that it's semantics, as the party and the ideology were. She said that very well may be the case, but if you caught a person on the street and asked him if the country is communist, he would tell you no, we are not there yet. Would also tell you to f*** off.
Then I asked her if it was democratic and she scoffed. I was actually born during an election, and it was a very hard delivery, she was hospitalized for 2 weeks. guys in suits came into the room, told doctors to wait outside and gave her the blank to vote, made sure she voted "correctly", then told the doctor he may come back in. So there were elections, but they were not democratic. duh.
So, she's a tankie academic, basically. Big miss for History Hit.
They miss a lot lately.
I don't trust them anymore.
She's not a tankie. She is literally Russian
My eloquent comments disappear, so I will be short. The USSR was a scion of the Faustian spirit of Europe. Weep for the statues of Titus, of General Lee and of Lenin. Both 1789, 1945 and 1991 were a disaster for the European civilisation.
- Adûnâi
@@lenseclipse That's like saying every German will defend Nazism or every Japanese will be proud of the Imperial Administration.
"Was the USSR communist?"
Well, the only political party allowed was the"Communist Party", sooo...
somewhere in the distance: "noooo, not real communism... lets try again"
They called them socialist. Communism was the Aim. Chrustov thought 1985 it could be reached.😅
She is absolutely right and Metatron is not - USSR was a constant strive for communism, and not a communist country.
And yes, I was actually born there, unlike all of you.
@@DubaiShortsChannel Well we are not in real Capitalism yet so you cant judge it.
Words from a man who lived thru 1927 to 2008 in Poland "I wish the facists would have won since at least they treated us as humans"
@@DubaiShortsChannel And I bet you were one of the people who benefitted from the state of affairs there. You, probably were NOT in the gulags...
Wanna hear a joke?
The Soviet Union
"The Soviet Union? It's just a myth! Can you imagine a bunch of soviets, trying to form a union?" Unknown Imperial City Guard, Cyrodil, 3rd era.
Dark humor is like food in the Soviet Union.
Not everybody is going to get it.
The F in communism is for Food.
NOICE
@@immikeurnotand even if they do, it might not agree with them 😂
Countries that have had the opportunity to sample both Soviets and Nazis Occupation, say that the Soviets are worse.
That may be true. But even I, as a German, will have to admit that the occupation of those countries was, thankfully, cut rather short in comparison to the one by the Soviets. I don't know how a decades long Nazi occupation would have looked, but it might not have been better by much, if at all.
No way was it worse
It took decades, to save enough money to buy a terrible car, years to get approval to purchase that terrible car, and another ten to fifteen years, before your car could be built, because their manufacturing was horrendous. Yes, they were poor.
Money was not that big of a problem, but the fact there was nothing to buy. You waited for the approval to buy a car and for it to be built even when you had the money.
Even grocery stores had empty shelves. I remember from the childhood that we needed coupons for foodstuff (so people wouldn’t buy more than allowed) and my mother swapped out vodka and cigarette coupons for sugar coupons so we could make more jam for the winter.
Then all you got was a Lada.
Then it fell apart
OK - this is a bit overblown. I was born in a communist state (not USSR). You can say cars where expensive for the average person but saving to get a car was far from decades. Financing the purchase was not an issue as there where also loans. The approval for my father took less than 6 month (even thou he has criminal record) and he was placed on a list to wait, I don't know how long he had to wait originally but soon after he got married and I was born so the waiting time was reduced to 18 months. He actually sold his placement to another person as he decided to buy a second had car instead of a new one. About how poor people where - this is quite subjective. As non party members and with some political criminals in my family we had 3 houses and an apartment + 2 cars. And my family was not especially wealthy or part of the ruling class. Engineers, accountants and teachers. When 1989 came, I had a bank account with the equivalent of about 8k USD ( I was 7 at that time), this was a fund created by my parents where they added some money each month so when I turn 18 i can have a good start in life. This was not the only family saving account. Too bad that due to inflation all the accounts turned to dust just for a few years after the democracy came.
Source: my dade booty while i was taking a shower with him.
My great-grandfather died in Gulag after USSR occupation of Lithuania, he was an officer, his wife died from hunger to feed her 2 children, 1 boy and daughter they had to survive in the harshest Siberian climate, but in the end they returned to their homeland.
In Siberia?
That's horrible. At least they were able to leave and go back to their homeland eventually. But unfortunately there are probably millions of other families with similar stories, who I guess this lady just seems to ignore, or try to excuse as if they didn't happen
@@lucassmith1886There are not probably millions of other families with similar stories that you seem to ignore or try to excuse as if they didn't happen. History of black American families who lost an ancestor to slavery. History of families in the US colonies who lost an ancestor to colonial rule. History of families in colonial plantations who lost an ancestor due to the harsh living and working conditions. History of families who lost an ancestor in industrial capitalist Europe that granted no rights to workers. History of families who lost an ancestor during one of the many capitalist wars.
@@Maximilien1794 Who was talking about any of these? Whataboutism isn't an argument. Plus it's accepted that all you said happened, even if records don't survive, by sheer historical context. So you have no argument to dispute the numbers of lost victims to the gulags either. There are multiple survivor testimonies and they deserve the same respect as the other historical victims.
Plus why stop there? Black Americans, industrial workers....we know. Give some recognition to other unknown ones too. Millions of Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks the Turks genocided. Millions of Chinese who starved to death and we're murdered during the Great Leap Forward. Thousands of homosexuals in concentration camps. Millions under Ottoman occupation. Millions during both the Transatlantic and the Transaharan slave trade. Millions histories lost due to the Barbary slave traders. Millions under the Khmer Rouge. Who knows how many Oceania n Aborigines. And of course, many millions of Jews.
@@Maximilien1794this isn’t about that shut up with this whataboutism nonsense tankie
20:57
Boris Yeltsin, a prominent person in the communist party, soon to be Russia's first president, made a unplanned visit to a random supermarket in Texas in 1989. He was shocked to see such a insane amount of options for products available at the fingertips of everyone in the US. He even said no one in Moscow had such a variety of groceries to chose from. He was so shocked, he accused the Americans of faking all of this for propaganda. By the end the Soviet delegation came back with full shopping carts of food.
This was the in 1980s, a time concidered relatively decent in the USSR, you can imagine how awful it was in the worst of times.
To be fair, late 80s were a relatively bad times for the SU. Not 40s and early 50s by any stretch of the imagination, but SU peaked somewhere in the mid 70s, when the oil prices were high. It was eventually all downhill from there
@@grimwaltzmanrelatively bad can describe pretty much 40% of the USSRs existence, another 40% can be "awful" and another 20% is decent/good
In 1989, the Soviet economy was already in freefall.
Its "good times" ended in 1984-1985, after the oil prices had collapsed.
there is famous story have one of communist party members did faint after seeing have much u could buy in western store xD
So what? We still don't have the same stuff in European super markets than in the US. For example don't have the insane variety of sugary cereals with marshmallows and all kinds of shit. America on the other hand still doesn't have public healthcare that pretty much every other country has, including USSR and Cuba.
Gulags: “served as a system of punishment or prisons, if you will.” 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️ They were cruel and inhuman prisons for many, many innocent free thinkers, period point blank!
Yeah-yeah, innocent free thinkers like Ivan the Jewslayer
Academics in general have worrying tendencies towards downplaying the crimes of communist regimes. I remember reading one professor who downplayed the crimes of Stalin by referring to them as "executions" as opposed to murders for the case of Nazi Germany, because Stalin believed he was eliminating threats to his regime whereas Hitler killed people just for who they were. He conveniently seemed to forget that *every* government that commits mass murder believes it is doing so "for the good of the realm" and Stalin also killed millions "just for who they were" including members of numerous ethnic groups he persecuted, kulaks, and civil servants whose political views differed slightly from his.
@zwan6740 Siri what is Columbia University
They've also tried to say how great gulags were.
If that was his justification, then it was bullshit, but using "executions" alone isn't downplaying per se. We are still using "political prisoners", for example, not "political kidnapping victims". It's meant to convey the idea that someone was killed specifically for punishment, it says nothing about it being justified. I have heard cartel killings described as "executions", for example.
@@longiusaescius2537 What?
Academics have worrying tendencies to downplay the crimes of the British and American empires - far bloodier regimes than Soviet Union ever was.
This was painful to listen to. She did everything she could to make USSR sound like one of the good guys. Apologetic, indeed.
Imagine how painful it has been for me for the past decades to see the USA do it.
Yore fucking dogshit at history if you go by concepts like "good" and "bad" guys bro...
Well that would depend on what side you fall on, I could argue the “ good guys “ aren’t in the west either .
No, the good guys are the guys who had segregation intill 1950s and who invaded and committed genocide in Vietnam. These are the good guys. The good guys are Europeans, who built concentration camps for Jews, and who had human zoos up until 50s, the human zoos where good Europeans put black people in Africa.
Dont forget, Britain and the USA such as France fully supported the Sowjets.
She definitely has a future in politics with her ability to dodge questions, downplay events, use logical fallacies, and to twist and manipulate the truth until it's unrecognizable.
How did she do that? Offer concrete examples of her "twisting the truth until its unrecognizable". You will find none. You are lying. You maybe dont even know it, because you are so used to the propagandist version of describing the USSR (and now Russia), that to hear objective descriptions without the added "commentary" (of the terrible unspeakable evilness) makes it sound "twisted" to you. Most people cant listen to objective descriptions of the USA for the same reason, just opposite - they feel like objective descriptions are unfair and they smear the USA, if they dont contain the "amazing beautiful democratic beacon of freedom and liberty" shtick.
I'm at work while listening to this, so I don't have time to comment extensively on everything.
Overall: she is most definitely putting the best possible spin on everything she says, and including things that will make a modern (or to put it bluntly: younger) person think better of the USSR.
I would go so far as to call it disgusting.
One thing I do want to comment on in a bit more detail: access to western media (after WW2).
There is a VAST difference between having access to media, and being allowed access to media.
She did mention that people had to listen in secret, but she skipped over it very quickly.
There are records of people getting arrested and imprisoned for listening to or owning western media.
_There is a VAST difference between having access to media, and being allowed access to media._
That's true. She also admits that this wasn't easy for the poorer part of the population, which makes her statement here questionable.
44:29 based on the stories my grandparents told, this is also a heavy understatement. Yes, you could listen to Free Europe when it wasn’t completely jammed, but if they caught you or someone reported you, then you could spend the next few years in the caring hands of the state. So if you were brave enough, you listened on minimum volume, with your ear on the speaker. There is a very good reason why Warsaw Pact radio receivers in the 50s/60s didn’t have a headphone connector.
I like radio free nonsense or radio free Nazi these days
Fun fact about the gulags. It wasn't even just people who were a threat. If they needed laborers for a project, say the nickel mine in Norolisk, they would just set an arrest quota to get the workers they needed. Engineers, geologists, and miners would just get arrested for "treason" and sentenced to work for 15+ years. This ended in the late 30s, but it's important to know it wasn't just political disidents either.
Can you just hear how moronic you sound?
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
Thomas Sowell
It’s a chance to test out the verbal virtuosity Sowell attributed to those intellectuals.
I think he gives too much credit to some people
Id argue some services should be, such as police, fire and defence. I am also worried about the loss of jobs to automation, the amount of people that will be replaced in transport and logistics alone in the near future is worrying
@@nickbilske8140 I disagree, we've seen firsthand how state control of utilities & institutions has been a complete disaster.
Socialism was such a bad system that the living standards, life-expectancy, and every other measure of human flourishing dropped like a rock when the Soviet Union abandoned it and switched to capitalism. 🙄
Socialism is such a bad system that a country 30 times the size of Cuba is afraid to compete with it on the free market, hence the need for a blockade which not only prohibits Americans from doing business with Cuba but threatens to seize the assets of any other country that does as well. 🙄
If capitalism were a good system, it could compete on the free market without the need for blockades and coups to keep it in power. If on the other hand, it is a tool used by a ruling class more corrupt than has been seen since the days of two cities in Bible which can survive only by force and intimidation, it makes perfect sense that it relies on coups, rigged elections, programs like Operation Gladio in Italy and outright blockades.
Love your channel, content, your objectivity particularly, and your passion for such!
How disgusting is it they feel comfortable putting the flag of mass genocide in the video
Long live to the workers movement! And communism!
The Hammer & Sickle flag is as bad, if not worse than the Swastika flag of 30s-40s Germany.
@frankmueller2781 worse
That would be american flag, litteral nazi state with succesfull lebenstraum project
I only saw the Soviet flag, not the USA flag.
22:47
Im from Kazakhstan, a post-Soviet country, mostly the small amount of people that feel nostalgic about the USSR only feel that way because of the 90s. The 90s were a time of chaos, insane levels of crime, poverty, absolutele government corruption, stagnent wages and wage cuts, inflation, widening of the inequality, de-industrialisation and shock capitalism. Because of the absolute shock experienced and associated with the 90s, people tend to think that the 70s and 80s were much better then they actually were.
However, it's a unpopular opinion outside Russia, because pretty much no one is nostalgic for the time of living under the boot of Moscow
Yeah.. the 90s collapse which was CAUSED by the Soviet system. That also gets conveniently wiped from their memories. Not surprising since those who support such things rarely think in the wider terms of Cause & Effect.
What choice did Kazakhs have in 1920s? To live like Uyghurs in China? Or to live like Uzbeks and Tajiks in Afghanistan? There was USSR and Kazakhs got their country, just freaking be happy. If Kazakhstan would be occupied like Uyghurs by China would have NIL and sit in concentration camps.
Boot of Moscow when you have your own country now is better than boot of China. Uyghurs live under China and there are 8 million of them and they do not have their country.
@@malikamasimova7631 Қоя салшы Малика, ватноголовая дура
@@malikamasimova7631I don't think you are entitled to say to a Kazakh how they should feel about their own history. If you have historical arguments about what would have happened and how the way things went might have been a better choice than alternatives, then you should present them soberly and argue. Not that it's always necessary to pull out the "what if" because China is its own separate can of worms and the two communist regimes of the region collaborated, came to agreements and in general decided the course of events together, so you can't examine the issue of central Asia without taking into consideration both, and you didn't account for that.
PS If you wonder why Kazakhstan is so big on denuclearization, it's because the USSR turned it into a huge texting ground for their nuclear initiatives and polluted the shit out of it.
Real historians dont participate in these videos sadly but are busy writing books and digging throuch archives
No,there was food rationing even in 80ties as example sugar had been rationed.And in general, there was a shortage of many goods, it was even problematic to get a toilet paper.
Apprently Russia didn't have its first TP factory UNTIL the 80s. A Ukrainian guy who grew up in the 70s and 80s, but emigrated the the US in the 90s, tells great stories about the USSR on his channel 'Ushanka Show' and mentioned this lovely gem I think. It's fascinating.
that same thing happens in Venezuela and Cuba now. Probably in north korea too
Only sugar and butter in my city, although they could buy more on the black market with no problem. Then 1991 came, and that felt hard, and then 1992 with wars, real poverty, bread and water diet...
A friend and his wife came to America in the 80s. He was able to leave because his father in law had a lot of influence in the government. He was a butcher.
In capitalist countries there is also rationing. It's called high prices.
The Tankies will not be happy with this video
I've already found a few comments accusing him of being a facist 🤣
Tankies often hate religion while creating religion out of communism. They don't seem bright people.
@@monsoon2134. Facist being anyone who has a different opinion
Good.
Tankies aren't bright people.
KGB still operates in russia, but it got renamed to FSB.
CIA still operates in US, it did not even change it name
@@bronicage5666 and...?
@@bronicage5666comparing the CIA and the KGB is dumb
@@achmahnsch Yeah, CIA is worse.
@ spoken like a true moron.
Please, the amount of murder the KGB was committing on their own population makes everything the CIA did look like a school project. Before speaking absolute garbage you should do some research. Because I can’t think of a n American version of the gulags and when the CIA was mass deporting political enemies of the state
My mother is Polish, there was not unemployment in the communist era, it was mandatory to work, if u were at home not working, police was coming to ur house to take u to work, because yes, there were job vacancies, other thing is that u didnt like the job, whether u wanted it or not, u had to work, was considered lazy by society not to and illegal by law, and u were payed depending on how much u worked and people with university studies were not earning more thsn thise in the mines
Food was rationated, but there was a black market, people had farms, gardens and ways to get what they needed. U had more money if u worked more, but u couldn’t be too rich if u werent from the partie, but people had more and less needs back then, is now when us not possible to get to the end of the month
She is not completely wrong, perhaps u dont know well the culture
And yes, there was a fascination with the US and hate towards Germany that still persists today in the new generations, they will never agree with no German, less in the European Union, they dont want to feel controlled by them, about Polish, they dont like Ukrainians, Russians nor Belarusians, they dont like to be mixed with them, Poland was always divided by those countries, but yes, they think US is awesome and thought it back then, even though US is nothing special, but was and is idealised
The amount of spin she's using could generate her own gravitational field.
Agree with the sentiment but...I don't think spinning generates gravitational fields.
@@eewweeppkk One way to generate artificial gravity is the idea of a space station that rotates at a set speed, depending upon the level of gravity desired. SO actually, spinning CAN be used to create artificial gravity. Keyword being artificial. :)
Truer words have never been spoken.
@@darthdonkulous1810 I know that getting this deep into it is autistic as heck but that doesn't actually produce gravity or a gravitational field, it just makes the station seem like it has gravity by applying a centrifugal force to the stuff in it.
@@eewweeppkk Absolutely correct!
Still... I called it artificial for a reason lol
She keeps saying they all had jobs, but what were the jobs paying? You can have a job and still be poor.
Workers and tradies made good money and had good benefits. Like my dad was an engineer and his salary was 125 rubles, a worker would make 500 rubies.
Yes like in USA and many other countrys
Ask a commie a question, get a commie answer 🤷♀️
A historian with an agenda is indeed not an historian that’s an activist. A historian will stay true to the facts even when they don’t like the truth themselves
Went to look at the comments myself and sure enough, the video is deleted. Never existed, never happened, cant prove it. How very fitting.
It is there for me. Use the link in the description of this video. The comments are now turned off.
I don't understand people like you. People are allowed to retract things when they realize they made a mistake. Especially for a channel that is interested in academic integrity.
@@Mrtheunnameable Hiding a mistake is fine. But not taking accountability for it is a bit weird.
My 2 cents from what I know from talking from my family and friends that lived under soviet regime:
- Yes, you could vote in "democratic" elections, but only red party. There was no other.
- Everything belonged to the state and everybody had to work. If you did not work, you went to jail.
- Access to food was there but supply was minimum. You had to queue in line to get it. Orange and other tropical food choices were considered as something higher standard. Not everybody could get it and certainly not every time. There was one type of shop in which you paid with something like points. There you could get everything "exotic", like different pair of jeans or a different jacket. As you could get only one type in normal shop.
- you, or better your kids, could get higher education only if you worked for the people that represented state as they would only get that education so they can work as an some agent for state. Not everybody could get education they wanted
- (my opinion this) non-materialistic people were happier as life was simple for them. You go to school, you support the red, you get a job and a living accommodations for that (true story - my grandfather got new 4 bedroom flat for free because he signed work contract and he could keep it), you work, create family and then you die. Materialistic people had to hide things they own that was considered luxurious (summer houses, two cars,..etc), as everybody had to be equal with what they could own.
- no, people did not have access to the western media. There was maybe few hour programme one time per week where they played music from west but other than that it wasnt available.
- you couldnt practice any religion. Kids in school learn to march and salute the flag among, join the pioneer groups.
- military service was mandatory for a year. Then you could stay or just go and get other work.
Hope this helps :)
nothing you said is wrong
You are spot on on each and every point.
Thats how life was under communist rule and this wasnt just in USSR but in every communist country.
In romania until 1989 (which is my home country) youd be given monthly rations of oil, sugar, salt, meat based on how many people were in your family. And the amount was NOT generous.
You'd have to stay in line for hours upon hours upon hours if you wanted to grab something of quality with lines extending for hundreds of meters.
In regards to acess to western media, not only did people not have access to it but being caught owning such media or goods could land you directly in prison.
In every communist country was ilegal to own foreign currency ESPECIALLY dollars and being caught in possession of dollars could land you in prison under the accusation of treason.
Goods like coca cola or other popular western things were subjects of contraband.
Change "materialistic" to "subjugated" and you might have a point.
My family also lived under communist regime. You mentioned that oranges were present only sometimes , in Poland there were only available on Christmas. Now i live in Liverpool, the UK. you know that in 1970s oranges in the UK were also considered high end. And did you know that you could only get oranges in 1960s, 1970s only Christmas time... So i guess capitalism didn't work either..
Also, you could only go to university if you joined the party. Essentially intellectuals were forced into the party system, meaning only the stupid would be discontent and resisting.
@@noman-s6l talk about strawman....
How about having to stay in line for hours for basic necesities like bread, or milk, or anything for that matter and on an every day basis to. In romania is true people had enough money to save a large part of their earnings every month during communism, so you could argue we were richer but what is the point of having money when theres nothing to spend it on, when you cant even buy food with it.
Just because oranges were in a smiliar situation due to supply doesnt mean capitalism failed the same way communism did my guy.
You are an absolute liar if you try to defend communism and u definitely did not experience its horrors
Is she a historian or Stalin's lawyer? Unbelievable.
nice to know the lecturers teaching a subject like the USSR are teaching in a fair and unbiased way here in the UK, It would be a shame if pupils in later life got into power and we ended up with the beginings of a communist state
The Estonians living under soviet rule had access to Finnish radio and TV programs, because a more than powerful enough transmission tower was intentionally built in Finland, so that it could transmit across the Gulf of Finland.
I wonder if that was a good thing- because it meant they had a better idea than most how terribly they had things.
There was also something called "Radio free Europe" that could be accessed in some soviet bloc countries (Poland for example).
@@oskarskalski2982 Something to add, that i have a feeling that RFE did not reach entirety of soviet union is existence of samizdat's.
@@mattl3729 I've seen testimonies saying it gave hope. How not all world is a miserable landfill like soviet union, and the communist propaganda about the west was just lies.
And the way Estonians today are rejecting communism and russia, is a strong indication they prefer the western way.
Crying out loud Estonia was the best developed and most prosperous region of the whole Soviet Union!
Next time the Russians to just let the Nazi lovers crawl all the way to Germany if that’s how they feel. In grades, get rescued from extermination, get their entire country, built up from nothing and even get the best living standard in the whole country and yet they still complain.
She is completely clueless. I grew up in an ex comunist country, and people were not happy, the heating in houses was inexistent, on the country side, people actually put the farm animals in the house, in order to generate heat.
I spoke with Russian people, and it was the same.
She is not clueless. She intentionally misinforms people for her ideology. She is a piece of shit.
That is actually medieval. Wild
Wow anecdotal evidence, very scientific.
@@-Zevin- ok leftist
Gotta love how non-specific these anecdotes are. Well here is something specific for you. Crime skyrocketed and life expectancy plummeted after the Soviet Union was dismembered by self-dealing kleptocrats like Yeltsin.
That's a historical fact which you don't need to trust me to look up.
I wonder if this professor of 'modern history' would ever talk about the Holodomor. You know, where the Soviets starved millions?
She glossed over it at about 42 mins 'was the USSR hungry' Kind of touches on it and that the state was at fault, but fails to mention the millions purposely starved.
@@paulie9483about 12% of Ukrainian ssr, about 30% of Kazakh ssr and nearly 5% of russian ssr in majority Ukrainian/cossak regions
The Soviets didn't starve millions. You should read actual historians.
@@paulie9483 You're a lier and should be ashamed of spreading such lies.
They should because it's not the only area of famine that year Volga region and Kazakhstan too but it's never talked about it would go against the propaganda 😮
There only two thing aboust USSR on internet that is real 1st - all of the sides pulling facts to prove their point of believes, neglecting the other and actively labeling them to negative connotation labels. 2nd - the younger the commenteer, the more he and his family sufferd in USSR.
history hit decided to close the comments instead of dealing with the problem :>
I think the "was USSR evil?" question is too blunt and emotionally charged, especially considering how differently the country operated throughout its existence.
Lenin's USSR - overly ambitious and zealous, noble intentions heavily outweighed by a sloppy, bloody, truly ruinous execution. The worst parts in the long run were the borders cutting the empire into loosely ethnic-based pieces that never existed on a map before, while at the same time executing a brief, yet tragically successful attempt at homogenising and "modernising" culture by banning languages other than Russian, outlawing religion, and shunning the Russian folk culture to the point where it was up to historians and old grannies from remote villages to pick up the pieces later. Many of them never to be recovered. While Lenin's politics were less damaging to the country economically and demographically, the cultural damage he inflicted is mourned by many to this day.
Stalin's USSR - the closest the country came to objective evil. GULag operating on an unprecedented scale, mass deportations, the country became a brutal machine of progress. An unprecedented leap in industrial capabilities and education levels, at the cost of making all of Lenin-era problems worse and killing drastically more people through negligent, top-down control, and paranoid witch hunting. It is, however, important to separate the horrors of the war from the rest of Stalin's rule, he's hardly responsible for Nazis deliberately starving tens of millions of civilians on occupied lands or deliberately executing most of their PoWs.
Khruschev/Brezhnev USSR, Cold War period - this is where the large scale atrocities against the Soviet people subside, and it becomes just a power struggle of two morally bankrupt empires. Not much to say here, only that whatever the USSR did in this period, the US did too. I think this period can only be classified as evil if you're trying to get a reaction from people, because objectively, compared to other big powers of the past and its contemporary peer, it really wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
Gorbachev/Yeltsyn USSR, Perestroika period - this is the point where the Cold War military overspending caught up to them, and the country decided to give in and liberalise. Most will agree that while this was not the most economically prosperous part of Soviet history (that would be the mid-late 60s), it was the freest. Hell, it was more free than modern Russia. People were hopeful for a better future, which would've come if they didn't more or less repeat Lenin's mistake with a careless, rushed, badly executed system overhaul of the 90s. In this period, there really isn't an argument to call it evil, unless you're an active supporter of totalitarian regimes.
This was a lot of text that likely nobody will read, but maybe someone will care to hear my stance on the matter. A country can't really be "evil", however the first 30 years of the USSR were cruel, inhumane and an atrocity to take lessons from for the rest of history
Edit: Communism and socialism are NOT interchangeable. The Soviet ruling party was communist, but the actual country and its system were not. What they had was either socialism, or state capitalism (if you view socialism only as its idealistic version with no central power). Communism involves complete abolition of currency and commerce. This has actually been attempted, there was a very brief period before the USSR was fully estabilished, when Lenin tried to abolish money entirely. This was a total disaster, and he went back on it rather quickly, but this means true communism HAS, in fact, been tried.
If anyone has any questions, i'd be happy to answer them based on the first hand accounts of my parents and grandparents
Thank you for this, this is also my view on the subject. Coudnt have put It better.
Please stop lying . USSR was always evil. Only thing difference between Stalin and Khrushchev/Brezhnev/Gorbachev periods is scale of atrocities . In Khrushchev/Brezhnev/Gorbachev people was still send to gulag or arrested and immediately executed , even without any ''trial'' .
I agree, there is always some nuance there and you don't have to be USSR apologist to see those nuances. US has done some horrible shit especially in 1950's and 60's with all those coups in Latin and Arab countries. That does not put this on equal terms with what USSR did. Was it evil? Like you've said there were different periods with different levels of oppression. Even inside USSR after Stalin's death they recognised how Stalin was evil ("On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences"). In Poland to this day there is great resentment that US sold us out to the USSR's sphere of influence (at least Churchill wanted the square deal from Poland with the Operation Unthinkable although it was doomed from the start) and those 44 years under communism show clearly that it was a totalitarian regime, maybe not totally evil but with the evil outcome. Yes, there were some positive things, we had periods of good economy (based on money borrowed from western countries that we couldn't pay which came back to bite us in the 80's), heavy industry was blooming but overall we were so glad that it was over.
Khrushchev/Brezhnev had very terrible things happening. Read about punitive psychiatry
Well put together. Thoughtful.
*Instructions unclear. Accidentally committed genocide*
You mean when English moved to the US, accidentally committed genocide of natives in Americas?
These people keep using the same recipe for decades and the cake is always awfull. I wonder why they dont change it?
@@malikamasimova7631 To be fair, most of the american indigenous people that died in the colonisation era, did so because of the sucesive waves of deseases we brought with us, and against wich they had no defenses........And this was almost absolutely unintentional (although very convinient for the colonists).
Indeed, most of them ( up to 90%, depending of who you ask) kicked the bucket, before they had even the CHANCHE of seeing a white man showing up in the horizon, lusting for women, land, and whatever valuable thing or resources they may have.....
Would they have k*lled all this people the "traditional" way, if the deseases hadn`t done the job previously? Hell yeah! But fact is, they didn`t need to. They just had to deal with the survivors of a post-apocaliptic scenario that had not yet recovered from what they probably thought was the end of the world.........
A woman stands in line for hours, when she gets to the head of the line, she asks the clerk, "do you have any bread"? The clerk answers "No, lady, this is the store with no meat, the store with no bread is across the street"......Welcome to the USSR.
9:38 people were communists but the state never reached communizm, simple analogy- 4 of your buddies tried to build a cabin in the woods but drop the projekt after 20% completion, were they cabin builders? -yes. Was cabin build? No.
Being Russian myself it's a bit weird hearing such critical take about labor and why we wouldn't look up to America in that regard. Labor ethics, organization, industry and novel management ideas - that was the most admirable trait of americans you find in almost all soviet literature touching on the topic of american life (fiction, non-fiction, or science). We were going through our industrialization with massive American expert help and inspiration in the beginning, as well as having background in our persistent historical problem of insufficient labor force throughout our modern history (hence the need for such breakneck industrialization, at almost whatever the cost).
Also, talking about gulag and whatnot. You could be sent away there by locals' vote, (or into exile previously, as in Imperial Russia), if you weren't productive and contributing to your local community - not talking about dissidents, or trouble makers. A sanction we had, for people who refused to work. That's why they were labor camps and not prisons, that's why we were all about "rehabilitating through labor". All because we always needed everyone working and then some: extra hands, extra machines, extra hours, etc. Even now, we're one of, if not outright _the most_ overworked country in Europe (and that's just counting official employment figures, which understate the whole issue), usually trading places with Poland and Greece every once in a while. You could always get a job and education for that job here, that was never the problem - problem was and is the constant shortage of labor and machinery. You'd be much underpaid, as per our usual management incompetence, but you wouldn't ever have to search long, unless the only kind of job you ever expect to do is intellectual and you're a dissident.
That's just such a silly point about their video to be so stuck on.
You make a valid point about American economic help. Henry Ford made the largest vehicle plant. Armand Hammer helped also. The 15 million in Stalin's gulags, however, were not just common criminals, dissidents, and unreleased war prisoners. A major purpose of the gulags was slave labor..
@@lonniekwartler8396 If labour was the major purpose of the gulags, then they'd have made at least some attempt to keep them alive.
So, in essence, Russia has always sucked, pre- and post-soviet era
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755Not necessarily. The gulag was intended to get a specific amount of work out of each prisoner - the expected average about 2-5 years. They didn't care to keep people alive, only to squeeze out maximum amount of effort from them. In Anne Applebaum's anthology "Gulag Voices", with real testimonies from survivors, L. Razgov (a former member of the inner circle of Cheka, whose whole family was gradually shipped off and killed when Yezhov fell if I remember correctly) recalls that when the need for production of timber reached critical levels during WWII, the then camp's commander ordered the prisoners working in timber to be fed double or even more the amount of food.....which he took by reducing even more the infirm and sicks' rations to the point of starving them to death. Simply put, the cost of keeping someone alive was way bigger than just replacing the prisoner. After all, the Soviet union treated it's citizens as expendable and relied on sheer numbers to overcome adversity, notably during WWII that was articulated by Stalin himself, basically saying "we got more".
@@viktoriyaserebryakov2755 those were by no means death camps as they are often portrayed now, for a certain purpose of never again having problems with workers uniting around the idea about the world without "successful entrepreneurs" sucking their blood.
Here is a story of a son telling his father was frostbitten and denied help, th-cam.com/video/rqSjtVOfjR4/w-d-xo.html but then in the father's book about his life in Siberia he says he was treated in a hospital and left it only in April, when the winter came to its end. That's not how a death camp would operate, also telling much about the snowball of horror stories about the system growing bigger and bigger, as if the real tragedy that did happen would not be enough.
In early February 1954, the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs compiled an information note addressed to the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev, on the number of those convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period from 1921 to 1953. This strictly secret document for official use stated that according to the data available to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, from 1921 to 1953, 3 million 777 thousand 380 people were convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes by the Collegium of the OGPU, the Special Conference of the NKVD, the USSR MGB and the Military Collegium, as well as by courts, military tribunals and troikas. Among them, 642 thousand 980 persons were sentenced to capital punishment. 2 million 369 thousand 220 persons were sentenced to detention in camps and prisons for the term up to 25 years and below. 765 thousand 180 people were sentenced to exile and expulsion.
In the same note it was especially noted that 442 thousand 531 people were convicted by the Special Conference under the NKVD from November 1934 to September 1953 on the basis of the Decree of the CEC and SNK of the USSR of 5 November 1934. Among them, 10 thousand 101 persons were sentenced to capital punishment, 360 thousand 921 persons were sentenced to imprisonment, 67 thousand 539 persons were sentenced to exile and expulsion within the country, 3 thousand 970 persons were sentenced to other punishments, including expulsion abroad and forced treatment in psychiatric hospitals. Thus, there is no question of millions and tens of millions of repressed, let alone shot.
Even earlier, at the beginning of January 1954, the then Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR Kruglov sent to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Malenkov and the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Khrushchev a secret letter No. 26/k, which contained a certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, where the exact number of convicted persons for counter-revolutionary and other particularly dangerous state crimes was named. According to this certificate, in the period from 1 January 1921 to 1 July 1953 the number of convicted persons was 4 million 60 thousand 306. This figure was made up of the same 3 million 777 thousand 380 persons convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes mentioned above and 282 thousand 926 persons convicted of other particularly grave state crimes, including those under Article 59 of the Criminal Code (particularly dangerous banditry) and Article 193 of the Criminal Code (military espionage).
It must be said that until the late 1980s this information was a strict state secret. And for the first time the true statistics of those convicted and shot for counter-revolutionary activities was officially published only in September 1989. The full text of E.Yu. Spitsina in the audio file.
Ok, not 10s of millions, but definitely a little over 4 million variously punished for not being what the leaders of the country wanted them to be ... And kept secret for several decades. It's nice to have the numbers of convicted, I guess.
Even more cringe is trying to say that soviets were like nazis. Western propaganda right here. Try asking people who were freed by soviets from Nazis (some of them still alive today).
Yeah the thing is that not that much people could be freed form the soviets because they won the war and occupied all the countries that theh were suppouse to have a referendum of self determination. Im sure a lot of people would be pleased to not end on a gulag waiting for stalin to die to get out of it.
As a person from ex-Soviet republic, I have personally heard many thinks about USSR from my relatives and many others who lived under the Soviet regime. Its always mixt bag. The positives I hear is that it was easy to find work, housing, higher education was cheap and accessible, and medical care was good and money wasn’t the problem. Same was true under other dictatorships. Biggest issue was lack of consumer goods, state censorship and limited access of movement. Note that this all refers to time from 1970s till collapse.
Most deaths under USSR were because of direct actions of soviet party. If I’m not mistaken than most people died in peace time in USSR not the WW2. Mainly from famines and purges.
The funniest part about communism is that the biggest threat to communism are other communists.
I agree with most of what you said, except:
1) Medical care was free, but not that great.
2) I wouldn't say the same is true under other dictatorships. Capitalist third world dictatorships don't do almost anything to improve the life of their average citizen. A capitalist democracy is better than a communist dictatorship, but a communist dictatorship is often better than a capitalist dictatorship.
@@user-df4kf6fg7h Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi offered free education and healthcare. So there are similarities.
@@NebulaNXN There are similiarities because they both adopted some form of socialist ideology with a sprinkle of Arab nationalism. Hussein was from Baath party that had socialism in it's name although since 1980's he was distancing himself from socialist ideology.
Regarding housing, a joke told by Russians in the time of Khruschev, has two friends running into each other. They catch up. One says he is writing a book. It is about a couple who fall in love, get married, and get an apartment in Moscow. The other replies, it is fiction. That referred to the housing shortage. Numerous divorced couples lived in the same apartment due to that shortage. The point of jokes is what they show about the lives of the people telling and getting them.
@@lonniekwartler8396 "apartment in Moscow" - that explains it. People wanted to live in the big city, not wherever the state would give them an apartment.
Regarding having access to high education, no there were strict rules who will have access to these equal rights! If your parents were not best behaving communists, or even if you are from "bourgeois" family, you can be restricted to only unpopular specialities, or even to be forbidden to apply in university. At the other hand, at least in my country, if your parents were "active fighters against fascism" you could enter in the university without exam. Even if you are illiterate.
So called "equality"...
I think it depends on the country and the period. In Poland in 60's and 70's yes, children of party's bozo's had it easier but it wasn't as restricted and I think that it is one positive thing we inherited from those dark times - free higher education. I went to technical university to get MoS and didn't pay single zloty for my education (I mean as a fee, of course there were other costs) but thanks to this it was easier for my mother as a single parent to put me through the university.
Yep. My mother retell me what she overheard one teacher say when entering the college:
- She is a very clever girl. Her grades and test results are the best what we got. But I cannot let her pass the entry exam because she is a Jew. If I do, I am not sure what will happen to me tomorrow.
It was in the 70s.
@@oskarskalski2982 here is something that an old man from Poland told me "I still wish that the facists would have won they at least treated us a humans"
But in America in 50s you dont have acces to real education based on ethnicity, common you are every time comparing CCCP in 40s with US in 80s...
@@viktorgabriel2554 You know, my grandfather always told me that during the war Germans treated local popukation better than Red Army soldier that "liberated" those areas. However they didn't treat Polish people as humans, Nazi germans treated all Slavic people as sub-humans so I wouldn't go that far with being apologist for Germans.
October suprise! Metatron always brings receipts.
About WW2:
- The 1941/42 winter was the coldest winter in Europe of the 20th century. The lowest temperature measured outside Moscow was -53C (-63F) measuredon January 26. Such temperatures are very different from what Germany had been facing in Poland. The only place they might face similar temperatures would be in Norway but the battle for Norway was over before the 1940/41 winter.
- The resilience of the population (including but not limited to ethnic Russians) probably DID play a part. This was boosted significnatly by the genocidal behavior of the Germans during the early phases of the invasion, though.
- The contribution of the USSR women WAS very significant. To some extent on the front, but much more by their contribution in the Siberian factories. While most German women were housewives for most of the war (some even had maids), the USSR women were manning the factories (just like the American and British women). This is part of the reason why the Soviet industrial output was so large compared to Germany's for most of the war.
- In addition to not fully switching to a wartime economy until 1944 AND fighting a 2-front, German industry faced stortages of many important materials. Not only oil, but also materials like rubber, manganese, chromium, aluminium and copper. While even without such shortages, Germany would have been doomed by 1942 anyway (the combined strength of the Soviets, US and UK forces was too great), a scenario where they were NOT at war in the West and where they were free to import such materials would have allowed them to maintain a technological superiority over the Soviets (in metallurgy, for instance, and also engines that required high quality alloys).
In sum, I think Germany MAY have had a very tiny shot at delivering a knockout blow against the Soviets if they could start it when planned (instead of losing a month taking Greece) AND if the 41/42 winter had been milder than usual.
But they would have had a MUCH greater chance had Lord Halifax managed to force a peace treaty with Germany in 1940, something he surely would have if Churchill hadn't been there to stop him.
12:14 Translation = If we change the definition of democracy, then we can jam the definition of democracy in to fit the Soviet Union." Beautiful.
quite literally, 1984
Well these people pretend to act for the people, so the majority. So yes, in their mindset, they are democratic. Because they think they are doing the right thing that everyone will praise them for once it succeeds. But it does not even get close to that point.
Under this lady's logic I'm 13" because I can start measuring from wherever I want.
It is fascinating, how they claim USSR was not communist,
but at the same time they are willing to defend USSR as a communist nation.
It show, they where dishonest in the first claim.
where does she "defend USSR as a communist nation"? explaining marxist theory doesn't mean you agree with it, either. the USSR was state socialist, but it was not communism. communism, for marx, is a classless, stateless, moneyless society. for marx, socialism will eventually cause communism once socialism has conquered the planet because the state will eventually become obsolete and cease to exist as society will be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law
@@kasin3504 When she make excuses, for why USSR failed, and claim it was sabotaged.
And USSR was communism.
You just do not like when reality of what you think is a good idea,
turns out to be really bad.
Marx never claimed communism is when the you got a state less society, that was Lenin.
It was USSR that told you that, and that they would become like that in the future.
So, the group you claim was not real communists, where the people who told you that definition.
So, quite wasting time, defending a ideology that can not work, because it is not based on the real world, and will always turn into a tyranny.
@@haraldbredsdorff2699 "When she make excuses, for why USSR failed, and claim it was sabotaged." - which part of the sabotage of the USSR outlined in what she said do you believe is false? tell me specifically what you object to and lets talk that out instead of being so broad
"Marx never claimed communism is when the you got a state less society, that was Lenin." - this is false, here's a quote from the communist manifesto by marx and engels:
"When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another... if, by means of a revolution, [the proletariat] makes itself the ruling class.. [then it has] swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class"
marx says that political power exists to oppress classes, and that if proletarians make themselves the ruling class and abolish classes, then it naturally follows that there will be no political power because there is no other class to oppress. the word "political" means: that which relates to the government. what does a government rule over? a state.
if you're not convinced there's more by engels, this is from his book anti-dühring:
"The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away."
another quote from the engels' work origins of the family, private property, and the state:
"The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong-into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe."
"So, the group you claim was not real communists, where the people who told you that definition." - i never said the bolsheviks were not real communists, they WERE real communists, but the USSR was not a communist state, it was a socialist one.
@@haraldbredsdorff2699 It was not communism at any given point, thats a fact. Stalin himself denied communism and created a kind of dictatorship, today its even called Stalinism. After Stalin the SU became a communist country but even that is not realy true, because it is and were an oligarchy. Words have meanings and right now you are the one trying to lie and argue with false claims.
The only "country" that somehow was close to communism were the Inka but even them had a strict hierarchy in their society. The SU was never even close to cummunism.
@@ruas4721 Do you know the source of "Ussr is not communist, it is socialist and will become communist utopia, in the future"?
It was Stalin, after he was confronted with he had not yet given Ussr the utopia they where promised.
Meaning, all the way up to that point, they all believed they had communism, and it did not work. All of the western communists supported Stalin, because they thought it was communism.
Because they followed Marx plan.
Now, we can say, "it was not communism, because everything was not communal owned".
But that claim would mean Karl Marx was not a communist, because he supported state ownership in his communist manifesto, not communal ownership.
The idea, that communism would have no hierarchy, comes from the anarchists, not the Marxists.
The professor wasn't bad. The sad thing was the editorializing made by the Channel.