Remember the old Soviet Union?

[SheilaT]

Remember how they arrested people for any reason, or no reason at all? Remember how they imprisoned and tortured citizens because, well just because?

You young ones, you who came to maturity after the fall of the Soviet Union, you probably don't recall how back then we roundly condemned those excesses. How we said, That could NEVER happen here.

I remember. I remember those condemnations. I remember how we said we were better than that.

We used to be right about those things.

Now, sadly, we are even worse than the old Soviet Union.

[olddots]

1. but atleast we have over 400 TV stations

[HardTimes99]

87. And I-shit! - nt

[The Straight Story]

2. I remember. I was playing chess with some Russians back in the day

At the YMCA and in tournaments. Damned good players btw.

We didn't often talk about the politics of the Soviet Union but it did come up here and there over games at the club.

They were afraid of their own government. Spied on by them. No justice. The few owned the most and many suffered. I was just a teen and didn't really get it all - I got the cold war, understood they were afraid, etc - and in my own way was proud of my country that they would come here of all places. I respected the players greatly, there was a whole soviet school of chess (which is one reason the 72 world championship was so big to the US).

It wasn't until I read up more over the years that it all sank in - and now I am seeing similar problems here. Massive defense spending, the few ruling the many, spying on our citizens and seeing them as the problem, secret police and detaining people without charges (gitmo ring a bell?).

Would that I knew more back then and could have spoken to them about it all instead of just listening for the most part. While many hated and feared the Russians I respected them and saw them as just like us. People just wanting a simple life with simple dreams. I feared their government but not the people and often wondered why it was we were enemies (which brings to song the old elton john song Nikita). I, and others, were sold on fear and so we kept spending more and more of our money on defense. Now it is terrorism that drives us with fear, spending, and letting our own government spy on us.

We were not so different then, and less so now....

[Art_from_Ark]

3. Do you remember those Radio Free Europe public service announcements?

I remember one in particular that showed a Hungarian disc jockey playing Western songs for the folks back in Hungary. The featured song was "On Broadway". Many years later, after I heard all the lyrics for the first time, I thought it was an odd choice, since they seem to paint a grim picture of life in the Big Apple:

"They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway
They say there's always magic in the air
But when you're walking down that street
And you ain't had enough to eat
The glitter rubs right off and you're nowhere"

[Kolesar]

29. "We were not so different then, and less so now..."

Russian citizens were not allowed to travel the country. Millions of WW2 POWs were sent to gulag work camps. Do you even know what the Lublianka was? Yes, I am sure you are going to rush over to google to figure out that one.

[The Straight Story]

33. You are discussing details

I am talking about the principles that are expounded upon from such details.

And if we don't put a stop to things now then how much worse will it get?

Are we more free now than in previous years? While some may be (minorities/etc) the overall populace is not (now we need passports to go to Canada, for one example). When I was a kid we didn't need to get a permit for a yard sale. We rode in the back of a station wagon (albeit not safely). The more laws we make (what is the irs code now, up to 15lbs worth of paper?) the more of us that there are breaking them. Justice is not applied equally. More and more our movements are tracked. Etc.

Sure, we don't have the work camps. But we do have the highest prison population in the world, and quite a few of them labor for 25 cents an hour making things that others profit from.

Trying seeing things not from flag colored glasses, pretend this is a whole different country and ask yourself if some of the things going on are right and if they are leading down a path to something worse.

[Kolesar]

35. flag colored glasses

I am the one who read everything Solzhenitsyn published in English and your aren't. I have a perspective that you "lack".

look up GPU and OGPU and Beria if you want to read some horrors. It's worse than needing a passport to go to Canada.

[The Straight Story]

39. Oh, I know it was worse than it is here NOW

But we are on the road to such things and those of us who see down the road are asking that we take a different one.

It didn't start out that way there. Time and again in history we see this. It often times goes slow and before you know it you are asking yourself how you got there.

And all along the way there are people saying 'well, we are not that bad right now'. 8 miles down the road it is 'could be worse, don't compare us to some other country, they were really bad'.

The mindset is there. Add more laws. Save us. Protect us from each other. Trust the government. Spy on us. Put more and more people in prison. Send some folks to gitmo with no charges. Rendition. Drone strikes that kill kids are justified.

Keep on trucking and someday people will be reading the books we write and saying 'hell, we ain't as bad as them'.

[geek tragedy]

75. So, when were the golden years of USA freedom?

The COINTELPRO/HUAC/CREEP era of 1945-1975?

[cali]

79. indeed.

[ReRe]

134. Yessirrrreeeee!

At least in those times we took to task the ills in our society. Whistles were blown and hearings were scheduled and heads rolled. That doesn't happen anymore. Shit has been hitting the fan and piling up since 1975 and here we are. So when do you think our golden years were? The last 35-40 years?

[geek tragedy]

136. The US is freer than at any time in its history.

That does not mean it is free enough, or that it will continue to improve. Indeed, we could backslide.

But, if one were forced to live in any period in US history, but not knowing one's gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or ethnicity, it would be difficult to argue that it would be better to live in a different era.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

161. You mean when the government was keeping dossiers on nuns who were for (gasp) peace?

[geek tragedy]

55. "we need passports to go to Canada" as opposed to being SHOT for trying to leave the USSR.

And, since when is needing a passport to enter a foreign country a huge emblem of totalitarianism?

[geek tragedy]

53. That was all true in the 1950's America, 1960's America, etc etc.

I guess if people think that the we were more free in the days of COINTELPRO, CREEP, and HUAC they have their right to be ignorant

[bluedigger]

4. I do remember.

[NBachers]

5. "Over there, they don't know the truth. The newspapers tell them what to think."

[JDPriestly]

6. Yes. That is why I am so appalled by the fact that the Obama administration is arresting

people for speaking the truth about corrupt, unconstitutional programs. When he was born, segregation was still legal.

Has he forgotten that just passing a bill does not make something constitutional?

[COLGATE4]

48. But passing a bill does make it law.

Until and unless it's challenged in court and found to be unconstitutional the law is presumed constitutional.

[JDPriestly]

131. True. But as I pointed out, people accepted segregation as the law for a long, long time

and before that, slavery. We have to work to change the law so that it complies with our Constitution.

[COLGATE4]

133. I agree. You can either work to change the law so that it

reads as you believe it should, or you can challenge it in court to see if a court finds it invalid as unconstitutional. But beyond those two instances the law as it stands is the law and should be obeyed unless and until it is legally changed.

[MirrorAshes]

7. We're worse? Really?

I appreciate your general point, but you lost me with that one.

[davidn3600]

10. Soviet Union under Stalin had an incarceration rate of about 800 per 100,000

America right now is at 743 per 100,000 and rising.

We're getting there...



[img][/img]

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

[ReRe]

15. Thank you...

...that RED really sticks out doesn't it? On top, buddies. Greatest country in the world, you bet. You could make a bunch of maps like that and color us red for things like healthcare, education, etc., on down the line. We're going backwards, not forwards.

[Jenoch]

70. What percentage of the U.S. prison

population are political prisoners?

[Igel]

89. Depends who you talk to.

If you look at those arrested for political views per se, pretty much none.

If you look at those arrested for doing things as a result of their political views, other than things like speaking or publishing their views. possibly a few.

If you look at those arrested because they do something that somebody thinks should be allowed but that elected representatives and sometimes advocacy groups have pushed for, massive quantities of people.

[Jenoch]

100. "If you look at those arrested for political views per se, pretty much none."

That was pretty much my point. In the Soviet Union, your latter point is not relevant. There were no protests under Lenin, Stalin, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, or Chernenko.

[davidn3600]

142. But the US has it set up so that it doesnt take much to be convicted of a crime anymore

This lawyer here suggests that the average American commits three felonies a day because there are so many laws that are written so broadly.
http://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day

Our system also tends to target the poor and minorities. Look at the demographics of who makes up our prisoners. The system is also set up for people to be forced into plea deals. That's what was the issue with Aaron Swartz. The government was threatening him with 50 years in prison if he didn't cooperate with prosecutors. He ended up killing himself.

As far as political prisoners...we may not yet be as bad as the USSR as far as that is concerned. The Supreme Court has done a pretty good job over the centuries of safeguarding freedom of speech. Although Im seeing some troubling trends such as the current administration's intense hatred for whistle-blowers. There is also the crackdown against Occupy Wall Street. I do think our government creates lists. I think our government is monitoring things that we say and do. If you participate in protests or are politically active, the NSA and FBI very likely has a file on you even if you have done nothing wrong. That's not paranoia, this is based on the accounts of numerous NSA whistle-blowers....Russ Tice, William Binney, Thomas Drake, etc...

Look at the recent NYT article that talked about the guy that found out his mail is being monitored. Look at Obama's policy of wanting federal employees to spy on each other. Journalists have complained their computers have been hacked. We have become a surveillance state. And that's a dangerous precursor. All the government has to do now is destroy the first amendment and we will begin having political prisoners. And they can do that... freedom is an illusion. Look at the way the government has destroyed the 4th amendment. Our police are becoming militarized. People are going to prison for long sentences for petty crimes.

We are not there yet....but we are getting there. No question. Ask any former resident of the Soviet bloc and they will tell you our trajectory is incredibly troubling and dangerous.

[Jenoch]

143. I have family who lived through the

Soviet time and family who were killed by the Soviets. I think comparing the U.S. to the Soviet Union is disrespectful to the memory of their hardships caused by the Soviet leaders.

[treestar]

129. At least in the US it is actually pursuant to conviction of crime

under a set of rules of criminal procedure governed by the Constitution.

Stalin put people in prison for anything.

And what about executions? That would have to be counted in. Those who were killed for things that would not be crimes here, not capital crimes here, and account for people not in prison.

[ProfessorGAC]

137. Those Data From Stalinist Russia Come From Where?

I would suggest that one look at the "official" incarceration rates from the Stalin era USSR with a jaundiced eye.

And, after a purge, and thousands were killed, we obviously wouldn't count those as incarcerated.

Seems like an apples and oranges comparison.

[DevonRex]

139. Under Stalin 1.7 MILLION died in gulags. Another 799,455 were executed outright.

Another 390,000 died during forced kulak resettlement. This is just nwhats in official records.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Calculating_the_number_of_victims
"The official Soviet archival records do not contain comprehensive figures for some categories of victims, such as those of ethnic deportations or of German population transfers in the aftermath of World War II.[114] Eric D. Weitz wrote, "By 1948, according to Nicolas Werth, the mortality rate of the 600,000 people deported from the Caucasus between 1943 and 1944 had reached 25%."[115][116] Other notable exclusions from NKVD data on repression deaths include the Katyn massacre, other killings in the newly occupied areas, and the mass shootings of Red Army personnel (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941. The Soviets executed 158,000 soldiers for desertion during the war,[117] and the "blocking detachments" of the NKVD shot thousands more.[118] Also, the official statistics on Gulag mortality exclude deaths of prisoners taking place shortly after their release but which resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps.[119] Some historians also believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete.[120][121] In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Robert Gellately and Simon Sebag Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed.[39][122]
Historians working after the Soviet Union's dissolution have estimated victim totals ranging from approximately 4 million to nearly 10 million, not including those who died in famines.[123][124][125] Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million – a total of about 9 million victims of repression.[126]
Some have also included the deaths of 6 to 8 million people in the 1932–1933 famine among the victims of Stalin's repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks and others,[68][127][128][129][130] or simply an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization.[84][131][132]
Accordingly, if famine victims are included, a minimum of around 10 million deaths—6 million from famine and 4 million from other causes—are attributable to the regime,[133] with a number of recent historians suggesting a likely total of around 20 million, citing much higher victim totals from executions, gulags, deportations and other causes.[134][135][136][137][138][139][140] Adding 6–8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million.[141] In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Conquest states that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, the various terror campaigns launched by the Soviet government claimed no fewer than 15 million lives.[142] Others maintain that their earlier higher victim total estimates are correct.[143][144]"

[DeSwiss]

14. Damn right.

Look it up.

Tell me, how many military bases did the Soviets have around the world at their peak?

How many we got?

Why do we need almost 1000 military bases around the world it we're not worse?

Why do we have so many enemies?

Or do ''we'' really have enemies?

Or is it someone else they're aiming at and we're in the way?

Wake. Up.

[geek tragedy]

56. So, when is Obama going to send you to a Gulag and have your family shot

for speaking out against him?

Amazing that people can be so stupid to make these claims.

[MirrorAshes]

97. Seriously. n/t

[tridim]

102. This crap is becoming the norm on neoDU. It's horribly embarrassing. nt

[treestar]

8. Unrec

No we are in no way even close to that.

[great white snark]

19. I'll second that.

I guess the Nazi comparisons never stuck (not for lack of trying) and now we've moved on to USSR analogies.

IMHO two specious correlations.

Good morning treestar.

[treestar]

23. guess the "Stasi" did not work either

With the Fourth Amendment "gone" and "dead" and all that, maybe we'll soon be called Franco's Spain or Pinochet's Chile. Google can provide other examples.

Good morning to you, great white snark.

[Kolesar]

30. & this is Ms. Unhappy's climax of a decade of DUing.

"Time not well spent"

[JoePhilly]

47. YUP ... up next ... comparisons to Mao and China.

And with that, they'll complete the Tea Party Trifecta of insane comparisons.

[great white snark]

50. LOL

"Tea Party Trifecta of insane comparisons"

So, so true. You think someone is already working on a Photoshop of Eddie clutching a handful of secret documents while defiantly blocking the advance of a column of tanks?

[JoePhilly]

58. Perfect!!

In another DU thread, it was explained to me that the "signs" of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are both there for me to see, if I just "let the scales fall from my eyes."

That kind of delusional statement is exactly the kind of thing I've had Tea Party folks say in other forums.

I need to get me a secret decoder ring so I can see these scary signs.

[geek tragedy]

59. Pol Pot is the next logical step I think. nt

[JustAnotherGen]

156. If they go there

I will lose my ever loving mind.

[hobbit709]

24. Just keep telling yourself that.

[treestar]

123. What does that mean?

What's wrong with "telling myself" about reality rather than exaggerated doom and gloom?

[hobbit709]

124. "What does it all mean, Mr. Natural?"

[Scurrilous]

105. People around here have seriously lost their freakin' minds.

Read a history book!!1!

[oberliner]

166. Well said

Couldn't agree more.

[JustAnotherGen]

154. +1

[Starry Messenger]

9. America was never that great.

In the same era people criticize the USSR, the US was rife with Jim Crow and lynchings. The US was great if you were white and had a job. Sucked for everyone else.

[davidn3600]

12. Just like how conservatives claim the 1950s were the golden age

Yeah...as long as you were white, christian, straight, male, had a job, and wasn't a communist.

If you didnt fit that demographic...it sucked.

[Major Hogwash]

22. McCarthyism was rampant during the Red Scare and black listings of actors, comedians, and others.

I was reading the wiki entry for Professor Irwin Corey the other day and he thinks that the blacklisting follows him to this day.

Which is another reason why Nixon's people always called liberals and Democrats "pinkos", trying to smear them as "communist sympathizers".
During Nixon's first run for the Senate he distributed flyers about his opponent that year, and the flyers were pink, and that happened in sunny California.

Where Reagan and his red scare baiting tactics became so famous.

[treestar]

126. Was not institutional though, in that the Civil Rights Movement was able to take place

And things in those same decades were entirely worse for Russians white and otherwise.

[polichick]

159. And we weren't so wonderful to Native Americans...

Looks like the Great American Myth is finally being shattered - and that's probably a good thing.

Maybe if we're honest with ourselves, we'll have a better chance of living up to our Constitution, which actually is a pretty cool document.

[leveymg]

11. Americans were free to criticize the USSR, but those who criticized the USA, well they got their own

version of a police state, and it could be very, very nasty, indeed . . . let's not forget that this is not new.

[geek tragedy]

65. Yes, there is virtually no one who criticizes the US government in our society.

And, it's impossible to imagine online sites like DU being organized in the United States to engage in vitriolic criticism of the government, especially with the electronic surveillance state being so prevalent.

[leveymg]

71. There are 2 approaches to police states: Big Brother and Great Fear

We chose the former, the Soviets the latter. Ours is probably the more durable, as it allows mere dissent to be blown off harmlessly through public expression, while also giving the state a more ready opportunity to identify and neutralize those who might actually pose a threat to the status quo. Some undemocratic states combine the two, let me give you two examples: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/29/275653/--UPDATED-The-History-of-Political-Dirty-Tricks-Pt-2-How-to-Colonize-a-Larger-Country

Appointed police president of Berlin in late 1848, Hinckeldey was an innovator of many of the features of modern systematic political policing. Among the tactics that he introduced with his new police system in Berlin was the "Litfass columns". Named for Ernst Litfass, Frederick William's court printer, he had dozens of these large poles erected in strategic spots around Berlin. The public posting of political notices was then banned. By application to a state office for a waiver, however, the columns could be used to display messages. The police dutifully recorded the names of all who had applied. A. Richie, Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1998 at p.134.

LEGACY OF THE LITFASS COLUMNS: A similar ploy was later adopted by the People's Republic of China. In the mid-1980s, the Communist authorities at first appear to tolerate the operation of a so-called Democracy Wall, where "dissidents" in Beijing could post political writings, initially, without being arrested. Similar walls then sprung up under the noses of the authorities in other Chinese cities. For this apparent opening to democracy, the Deng regime much applauded, particularly by some in the Reagan-Bush Administration, eager to legitimize the regime and its growing commercial ties with U.S. corporations. Eventually, many of those who had availed themselves of the wall to post political messages were, of course, arrested in the roundup of hundreds of thousands of democracy supporters that followed the Tienamen Square massacre. The impression of anonymity and "freedom" conveyed by the Internet, of course, presents a similar opportunity for police to cast a wide net for identifying persons and organizations who may not hold favor for the regime in power, or may not in the future.

Both have risks and costs.

[geek tragedy]

72. If people aren't punished for their political beliefs or disabled from

organizing politically to change the government and replace those in power, it's not Big Brother.

[leveymg]

76. Even dissent can be an instrument of Big Brother. Goldstein was actually a double agent, and the

state ran the opposition, such as it was, as a means to identify and entrap those who might oppose it from within. 1984 was about the type of police state that uses the most extreme and obvious forms of both Big Brother and Great Fear.

It's become clear that Anglo-American society only tolerates dissent so far as it does not actually threaten the established order, and that even dissent is a useful tool of internal security. If it's watching you, it's Big Brother.

[geek tragedy]

78. So, is Skinner working for the government then?

Your conspiracy theory essentially requires a blind faith in the idea that no true opposition exists, that omnipotent, unseen sinister forces control all dialogue in this country.

Seems much simpler to observe that democracy is messy and often deeply flawed.

[leveymg]

95. We all are, quite willingly, because expression of difference is a shared psychological need

that western governments count on in order to contain, categorize and attempt to predict our political actions. Opinion groups in America are self-segregating and mutually self-cancelling, and except for those interests which wield effective, coordinated money influence in Washington, can safely be ignored by decision-makers while being closely monitored by internal security.

True opposition within an a real democracy requires that the majority have and actually use the power of the state over the state to make fundamental changes in the socio-economic order, and can change foreign policy by demonstrating opposition to wars. That is obviously not the case in America. Time and again, we see that efforts at fundamental reform are thwarted, despite overwhelming public mandate -- health policy, tax policy, Wall Street regulation -- and, as as the Iraq invasion showed, that by a combination of propaganda, deception, and isolation of dissent, military action can proceed, regardless, in the face of mass internal and global opposition.

That's not a conspiracy theory, it's manifestly the case. What we call democracy isn't.

[NuclearDem]

168. A lot of busted unions, detained peace activists, brutalized Occupiers, and jailed environmentalists

may disagree with you.

[geek tragedy]

169. What rights did unions have in the USSR? nt

[NuclearDem]

170. Wasn't defending the USSR. Nice deflection, though.

Also, nice that we're holding ourselves to USSR standards. I guess that mean abuses of the justice system and extraordinary suppression of dissent in this country are just dandy.

[cali]

80. Yes, that was rampant. Kent State was repeated on college campuses and towns

from coast to coast.

[leveymg]

111. Most people don't remember Jackson State that happened the same weekend.

Bet you never heard of the Orangeburg Massacre:

The Orangeburg massacre is the most common name given to an incident on February 8, 1968, in which nine South Carolina Highway Patrol officers in Orangeburg, South Carolina, fired into a crowd of protesters demonstrating against segregation at a bowling alley near the campus of South Carolina State College, a historically black college. Three men were killed and twenty-eight persons were injured; most victims were shot in the back.[1] One of the injured was a pregnant woman. She had a miscarriage a week later due to her beating by the police. It was the first unrest on a university campus resulting in deaths of protesters in the U.S.

The event pre-dated the 1970 Kent State shootings and Jackson State killings, in which the National Guard at Kent State, and police and state highway patrol at Jackson State killed student protesters demonstrating against the United States invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

There were many, many serious injuries to demonstrators during Vietnam War protests, but never an incident where anyone ever shot back.

[telclaven]

81. Where's the photos of the 101st Airborne?

Desegregating schools and removing governors from doorways? Oh, right, those don't meet the criteria.

Shit, this is why I have a hard time taking folks seriously on the interwebs.

[leveymg]

112. One doesn't forgive the other or disprove the point.

[Igel]

90. I got so see some of the last of those lines.

Didn't stand in any.

Went into the store after the line dissipated. It was a food store. The only thing left was some rather unpleasant looking lard. (Unpleasant for lard, that is; lard always looks unpleasant, IMO.)

The last hundred people or so didn't get anything--they rejected the lard. Those that got things didn't get what they wanted, necessarily. They got what they could use.

And that was largely the standing joke. An elderly widow sees a line and queues up. She asks around, "What's the line for?" When she gets to the front the only thing she can buy are the men's shoes that are far too large for her feet. She buys as many as she's allowed, hoping that she can trade them for something that a neighbor bought with no need or use for.

Read Shalamov. Don't bother with that piker writer of GULag resort colonies, Solzhenitsyn. Kolyma or bust!

[JustAnotherGen]

160. I will

Thank you for the tip. Varlam Shalamov - correct? Your info and first hand experience on the opposite side of the cold war is fascinating. Thank you.

[pinboy3niner]

16. The Soviets had a tradition of 'samokritica'--self-criticism

I remember when they resurrected it to allow people to criticize mid-level managers and to call out corruption--as long as they didn't question top party officials.

[cantbeserious]

17. Thank You For Sharing - Yes We Have Become Our Worst Fears

eom

[Warren DeMontague]

18. Remember how they dragged sick grannies off to prison for smoking a plant? Remember when they

threw a Paraplegic in a prison cell for managing his own pain?


Oh, wait, that's here.

[Kolesar]

27. nobody is going to send you to die digging a canal in the Arctic, Maximo...eom

[Kolesar]

36. " all those evils committed by Communist governments -- are happening here now."

and "I didn't say ALL of it was happening here, did I? "
Uh, dude, it looks like you did say so.

[Kolesar]

38. Sheila the O/P really blew this one...eom

[geek tragedy]

66. No, the appeal to glandular anti-government and anti-American hatred

was spot on.

[Cleita]

21. Yes, I remember. It's one of the reason I have been so appalled with the actions our

government has taken in regard to human rights or refusing to recognize them in the last fifteen years. Also, the Soviet Union spied on its citizens. Sure their methods were low tech, but they did it by getting neighbors to report their neighbors to the authorities, co-workers to do the same and even children to tell on their parents if they complained or engaged in what they deemed covert activities about the Soviet government.

[MattSh]

25. I've been living 8 years now in the former USSR...

And my wife was born and raised there.

Funny, she's never met any of those people... nor have I. Maybe they all moved to the USA or Israel? But having met a number of those who did move to the USA, many claimed for religious reasons, but more often then not the reason seemed to be economic. But hey, if it helps to propel the propaganda.

So I'm wondering... did all of this really happen, or was this propaganda spread by the US media? US media started propagandizing long before 9/11, for those who might not have been paying attention.

And yes, it's quite easy to find people who long for the good old USSR days.

And before some people start to scream "Stalin", Stalin died 60 years ago. If they're less than 60 years, old, they don't have any recollection of that.

[geek tragedy]

67. I bet she never met anyone who experienced the Holocaust either.

Spare us your "Communist dictatorship was not oppressive" bullshit.

[Igel]

92. I've met holocaust deniers.

I've also met a professor who remembers her parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings. They died during WWII. She managed to get smuggled out with relatives of a friend.

Her husband bore the tattoo. He, too, was the last of his family.

I've also met those persecuted by the USSR government. And those who remember Soviet tanks in the main market in Brno, Czech Republic.

[MattSh]

107. Project much?

[geek tragedy]

109. You're denying that the USSR was a totalitarian regime that had zero tolerance for dissent. nt

[Igel]

91. Only those born before 1970 would remember much of these people.

That means they'd be 43 and would have been 15 under Gorbachev. The best they'd remember were people coming back from prison.

Unless they were intelligentsia, that's unlikely. Moreover, most of those who returned had either official sentences or just put it behind them. It's like the Czech Republic: They had an oppressive state but oddly after it was over nobody was guilty. The records were sealed and nobody fessed up. Even those who had been persecuted found it unpleasant to talk about, so they didn't. (Rather like my father and serving in the Navy during WWII. It was only the year before his suicide that he allowed any mention of it in the house. My brother still won't say more about Vietnam than he was at Da Nang, liked Bangkok, and worked on planes.)

You'd really have to be in your 60s to have seen the end of anything that's really oppression.

Yet still in 1989 my Russian teacher cried when he saw suicide stats for the USSR. The official line was that there were none. Then he cried when he saw a plane crash. The official line was that there were none. He was Jewish--not practicing. But he was told he could never teach English because he was unreliable. He could only teach Russian, and that in elementary school. Then he complained and he was fired. Then he was found guilty of "parasitism"--that's what you got instead of unemployment in the worker's paradise. Finally, because he was Jewish, he was allowed to immigrate. He was told this one day, and allowed his suitcase, which was promptly searched for any precious metals, valuable jewelry, or cash. He got on the plane with his passport trashed and no citizenship. He wasn't allowed to return.

This was in the '70s. He complained that he was only allowed to teach elementary school Russian because he was Jewish and discriminated against.

[Hekate]

162. I'll bet they called your teacher a rootless cosmopolite, to boot.

He's lucky he got out alive.

[Kolesar]

26. I read the Gulag Archipelago and you didn't ... eom

[SheilaT]

120. Actually, I have read all three volumes

of The Gulag Archipelago. In hardback, when they came out. Really a slog, but I often told people that the third volume was the reward you got for making it through the first two.

[bemildred]

28. You become what you hate.

It's not quite Newton's Law of Gravity, but it is a law.

[geek tragedy]

64. Except the USSR died 25 years ago.

I guess people hate Islamic radicals as the next big bogeyman, but not sure how that squares with increasing GLBT rights.

[pnwmom]

31. No, we are not worse than the old Soviet Union, or even the new Russia. n/t

[FSogol]

34. Unrec. Pointless exaggeration.

Where would America's Siberia be?

[Kolesar]

40. The visiting Republicans would say DU, DailyKos, New York, and Chicago ... eom

[GliderGuider]

41. Where would America's Siberia be?

Inside a vast and privatized prison system, for starters...

It also looks to this Canuck like you have a state security/surveillance apparatus that would be the envy of most authoritarian governments throughout history.

There's no question that American methods (and the techniques used to hide them from public view) have become more sophisticated, but that doesn't really make them any less odious.

[Igel]

94. Yes and no.

The infrastructure for electronic communication is there.

Not sure about phone calls and mail. There's not the manpower for that and voice recognition isn't able to process that many calls. Then again the USSR just had a lot of tape recorders (and before that, paid listeners).

But the USSR's security apparatus wasn't that kind of surveillance. And the round up of domestic enemies and their persecution preceded the surveillance system. It was the *reason* for the system to be built. It wasn't focused on outsiders; it was focused on enemies of the state, political enemies. Black Marias were common when phones were still fairly rare.

And the entire "listening to phone calls" or "reading the mail" wasn't the worst of it. That was minor. You had to know who to eavesdrop on first. For that they managed to have a large number of people who, out of fear, loyalty, pay, or gain informed on others. Then there wasn't anything like a reasonable trial. You'd be arrested, held, sentenced, and transported--and only then would your wife be told you'd been arrested. Eventually a letter would come. Perhaps.

If you were unlucky you'd go to a GULag. Most people survived there. The economy depended on it. Of course, the GULags weren't necessarily camps with barbed wire. Often they were administrative centers and the "prisoners" were distributed in surrounding areas but had to stay there and be monitored. They couldn't leave--if they left the local police wherever they went would find them. You needed to register with the police when you moved, and if you didn't have a residence permit you couldn't stay more than a certain length of time. This was still true in the '80s. It was hard to get a permit to move to a highly desirable place. But if you were politically marked the process still had to be vetted by a political authority.

In some cases relatives only found out what happened to their kin after the KGB archives were opened. And before Putin closed them because they were giving the country a bad rep.

Had Snowden lived in the USSR, he wouldn't have gotten away. He would have been monitored and picked up before he managed to do much harm. If he managed to get away from home, he wouldn't have been able to get out of the country without a visa and plane ticket. And if he did, he would have had no money--and if he accepted money from people abroad, that would be a crime in itself. Odds are he wouldn't have lived long enough to do much without the help of another government.

Hyperbole is only just so useful. Then it becomes self-parody.

[MineralMan]

42. Russia is not a friend to civil rights.

They have officially suppressed all sorts of groups on racial, religious, ethnic and other grounds. Most recently, they have threatened to arrest people who show affection as same-sex couples. This is just the latest of that nation's repressive characteristics. It is not a safe place for anyone who is different in some way.

Blind praise for that society is misplaced. Badly misplaced.

[GliderGuider]

45. Where is the "blind praise" in the OP?

I don't see any.

[geek tragedy]

57. You're right, it's delusional hate of the United States and its government.

It's the same crap barfed up by McVeigh et al.

It's amazing that people publicly call out the US government and its electronic surveillance state as being worse than Stalinist USSR, but have no fear of being imprisoned as a result.

[MineralMan]

113. But we're "worse than the old Soviet Union?"

Really?

It is not so. Truly.

[GliderGuider]

119. Whatever your opinion on that,

your use of the phrase "blind praise" is just as inflammatory as the OP's language, and factually incorrect. Sorry.

Having visited Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1968 under the Brezhnev regime, my impression is that the USA is far less brutal, and much more sophisticated in its surveillance and control techniques. However, the mechanisms are all in place, and if the mask of false legality and secrecy were ever to be ripped away (or to slip?) the appearance of an overtly totalitarian regime would take but a heartbeat. As a Canadian progressive, I don't doubt for a moment that there are many at the levers of power down there who would relish the idea. How high up do those people go? We have no way of knowing, so we suspect the worst.

Americans are just people like any others, but I think "America" has become a subtly, deeply and disturbingly barbaric nation.

[MineralMan]

121. I see. Thanks.

[DCBob]

43. "we are even worse than the old Soviet Union" Huh??

I dont think your memory serves you well.

[GliderGuider]

44. Neil Young got it right:

"We got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand..."

Keep on Rockin' in the "Free" World, baby!

[JoePhilly]

46. But I thought we were Nazi Germany?

[geek tragedy]

54. The mouth-foamers are running out of hyperbole. nt

[JoePhilly]

61. They have gone so far around the bend ...

they have actually circled all the way around and crashed head-long into the exact same claims the Tea Baggers make.

[geek tragedy]

63. The paranoids have always had a lot more in common than they realized.

Of course, they say that Obama is Stalin and that the USA is more oppressive than Stalinist Russia is, but don't you dare question their patriotism or accuse them of hating Obama or suggest that they're a crazy-ass Paulbot.

[Javaman]

49. Gulag Archipelago.

article 58.

[Fearless]

51. How about this...

http://www.travelandescape.ca/2013/07/russia-says-it-will-arrest-openly-gay-tourists/


Apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

[geek tragedy]

52. So now Obama is Stalin, and America is now Amerika.. DU has become the Tea Party

No intelligent or sane person believes that people in the USA are subject to more state-sponsored oppression of civil liberties than were people in the USSR.

The good old fashioned America-hating left has joined forces with the Paulbots here.

[kelliekat44]

60. Is the implication here that the US has NO REASON arrest or even question Snowden? nt

[geek tragedy]

62. The implication is that the Tea party is right about Obama. When we warned people

that this place had been taken over by crazy-ass Paulbots and Alex Jones fans, we were not joking.

Look at all of the people recommending this, complaining about how people get put in jail for criticizing the government, that the electronic surveillance state is all-encompassing, yet blasting away criticism of the government free from worry of imprisonment.

[Octafish]

68. Andrei Amalrik wrote 'Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984?'

Read it in junior high and it gave me hope that communist tyranny would end.

Perhaps, one day, capitalist tyranny also will end.



"I must emphasize that my essay is based not on scholarly research but only on observation. From an academic point of view, it may appear to be only empty chatter. But for Western students of the Soviet Union, at any rate, this discussion should have the same interest that a fish would have for an ichthyologist if it suddenly began to talk."

SOURCE: http://all-history.org/474.html

[Igel]

98. Yes. I rather liked that book.

It was probably the first entire book I ever read in Russian. Thin little tome.

He was off by a few years. Ridiculed horribly by Sovietologists. Then again in 1991 or 1992 I was at a AAASS meeting in which the panel discussion was essentially, "How did we screw up so badly?" in predicting that the USSR was stable and would be around for many decades to come.

The old men said they hadn't. Or they cited their work saying that there was uncertainty. Or that they hedged their bets. Often they cited stuff from the last minute or a hedge in the second to last paragraph of a 300-page book or the footnote of a masterful article demonstrating that the USSR was solid as a rock.

One young guy who got his PhD young, had a job, and wasn't going into academia just railed against them--both for screwing up so massively and being unable to admit it. It was amusing to watch him laugh when they made some far-fetched ass-covering claim.

[Octafish]

117. MI-Complex needed USSR to justify its budget.

Rheinhard Gehlen, Igor Orlov, and the other NAZI spies brought over to fight the commies after WW2 were more than willing to say what the CIA brass wanted to hear them say in the run-up to Cold War, the Team-B concept.

Trillions of dollars later, after the collapse of the USSR and its sapped economy, where Amalrik was shown to be correct, the wizards came up with their War on Terror. Ingenious, really, for making sure those profits keep on coming.

Back to WTSUSU1984?: It was a thin tome. IMO, it will stand as a giant archive of insight, integrity and bravery in memory of its author, one man who stood up to a superpower.

PS: Does "AAASS" stand for American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies? If so, there's nothing like an international conference where scholars from around the world can ogle each other in person to create lasting impressions. Thanks to your description, Igel, I feel like I was there watching the young PhD give them the what's for.

[leftstreet]

174. Communi$t, Terrori$t, the Briti$h Are Coming!

Same shit, different decades

[Autumn]

69. Well we don't have to stand in line to buy bread or TP.

Yet. But damned if the media reporting isn't almost the same as they had. Recommended

[great white snark]

73. Nonsense but DU does have an "America sucks" clique that will eat it up.

Your target audience are the folks who cry "exceptionalism" whenever someone conveys pride or appreciation for America.

[snooper2]

74. Is this your honest opinion

or are you just bored and wanted a bunch of replies LOL

[cali]

77. Remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn?

I so dislike vague nonsense. I'm hardly a booster for this admin or a rah rah U.S.A person, but comparisons only work when you put some actual thought and work into them.

n February 1945, while serving in East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn was arrested for writing derogatory comments in private letters to a friend, Nikolai Vitkevich,[10] about the conduct of the war by Joseph Stalin, whom he called "Khozyain" ("the boss&quot , and "Balabos", (Yiddish rendering of Hebrew baal ha-bayiθ for "master of the house&quot .[11] He was accused of anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58 paragraph 10 of the Soviet criminal code, and of "founding a hostile organization" under paragraph 11.[12] Solzhenitsyn was taken to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was interrogated. On 7 July 1945, he was sentenced in his absence by Special Council of the NKVD to an eight-year term in a labor camp. This was the normal sentence for most crimes under Article 58 at the time.[13]

The first part of Solzhenitsyn's sentence was served in several different work camps; the "middle phase," as he later referred to it, was spent in a sharashka (i.e., a special scientific research facility run by Ministry of State Security), where he met Lev Kopelev, upon whom he based the character of Lev Rubin in his book The First Circle, published in a self-censored or "distorted" version in the West in 1968 (an English translation of the full version was eventually published by Harper Perennial in October 2009).[14] In 1950, he was sent to a "Special Camp" for political prisoners. During his imprisonment at the camp in the town of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan, he worked as a miner, bricklayer, and foundry foreman. His experiences at Ekibastuz formed the basis for the book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. One of his fellow political prisoners, Ion Moraru, remembers that Solzhenitsyn spent some of his time at Ekibastuz writing.[15] While there he had a tumor removed, although his cancer was not diagnosed at the time.

In March 1953 after the expiry of Solzhenitsyn's sentence, he was sent to internal exile for life at Kok-Terek in the northeastern region of Kazakhstan, very close to the current border with Russia, as was common for political prisoners. His undiagnosed cancer spread until, by the end of the year, he was close to death.

<snip>

n August 1971 the KGB allegedly made an attempt to assassinate Solzhenitsyn using an unknown biological agent (most likely ricin) with an experimental gel-based delivery method. The attempt left him seriously ill but ultimately was not successful.[31][32]

<snip>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#Imprisonment

And yes, the incarceration of Barrett Brown is a foreboding of possible things to come. Our mass surveillance is another indication of where we're headed, but your comparison is vapid.

[Igel]

99. And yet Solzhenitsyn said that he had it easy.

When talking about Shalamov.

Check out the "Kolyma Tales." The publication of this work was evidence that Gorbachev was really tackling repression of dissident speech. Scholars went through word by word to make sure it wasn't bowdlerized when it was printed.

Kolyma was an old tsarist penal colony. Lenin closed it to much acclaim.

Lenin re-opened it to silence.

Stalin caused it to flourish. It had a death rate like no other. Many would have preferred execution to Kolyma. You die either way, but in one case it's after a lot of pain, suffering, and humiliation.

Estimates of those killed there are high. They were controversial, until somebody checked Lloyd's of London records. The only way there was by ship. Stalin ensured the ships with Lloyd's. Valuable cargo, those slaves ... er, inmates. (This was when the American Communist Party still supported Stalin.)

Do not read the Kolyma Tales before bedtime. And keep a bottle of something strongly alcoholic around.

[Skinner]

82. Rofl. "Worse than the old Soviet Union."

The 30 people who recommended this thread should be embarrassed. What a breathtaking display of ignorance.

[Octafish]

83. Nothing ignorant at all. Some people recognize where the nation is heading.

If it's wrong to warn when there's still time, then we have a problem that has nothing to do with perspective.

[Skinner]

84. The OP is using the present tense.

"Now, sadly, we are even worse than the old Soviet Union."

It's laughable.

[Kolesar]

86. I took an undergrad course in Solzhenitsyn

The malaise on this thread betrays an astonishing level of ignorance. Of course, the saddies here are not embarrassed to wade in that pool. There will be another thread for them to booger up before the hour is up.

[Number23]

150. Absolutely. And it's 39 recs now.

The rec list is a veritable Who's Who of Wacked Out Woo.

[JoePhilly]

96. Thanks for posting. I was sure you'd been sent to Siberia.

Or maybe the US equivalent ... Wasilla.

Wait, wait, wait ... maybe the government got to you too.

Or maybe they just replaced you with a Skinner clone.

Ugh.

[RZM]

106. +1 thanks Skinner

But unfortunately it's not all ignorance. Some know the comparison is bogus but support it anyway to make a point.

[canoeist52]

110. No shame here. Some posters rec. for the conversational content.

It isn't necessary to agree with a post to recommend the thread's dialog. There is always much to learn.

[DevonRex]

118. "Russia: Worst Human Rights Climate In Post-Soviet Era" (HRW)

&quot Moscow) – The Russian government has unleashed a crackdown on civil society in the year since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency that is unprecedented in the country’s post-Soviet history.

The 78-page report, “Laws of Attrition: Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency,”describes some of the changes since Putin returned to the presidency in May 2012. The authorities have introduced a series of restrictive laws, begun a nationwide campaign of invasive inspections of nongovernmental organizations, harassed, intimidated, and in a number of cases imprisonedpolitical activists, and sought to cast government critics as clandestine enemies. The report analyzes the new laws, including the so-called “foreign agents” law, the treason law, and the assembly law, and documents how they have been used.

“The new laws and government harassment are pushing civil society activists to the margins of the law,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government crackdown is hurting Russian society and harming Russia’s international standing.”

Many of the new laws and the treatment of civil society violate Russia’s international human rights commitments, Human Rights Watch said."
SNIP

Just in case someone challenged your comment I thought maybe they'd take HRW's word for it.

[Cali_Democrat]

125. +1

[Recursion]

85. What's sad is that you probably think that's accurate

Sigh

[Kolesar]

88. O/P isn't participating on her thread any more.

She is off on another message board where she is also an expert on "Benghazi".

Lather, rinse, repeat

[SheilaT]

122. I simply don't spend as much time here

as some posters do.

And I don't believe I've ever posted anything at all about Benghazi. And this is the only message board I participate in.

Thank you for your concern.

[geek tragedy]

127. Aren't you worried about being arrested by the Obamastapo for criticizing

the US government?

Because you sure as shit would be if you lived in the old USSR.

[Adsos Letter]

178. I just noticed the date on the OP

July 2013?

[Sheepshank]

93. and that is exactly why Snowden chose to go to China, Russia and now maybe Venezuela

because his desire for the sanctity human rights will be assuaged there....right?

[RZM]

101. 682,000 people shot from 1937-38

Not counting the millions more who were arrested, thrown in the camps, and/or later died from the conditions there.

A lot of people commenting on this thread wouldn't have made it, had they lived there back then.

That includes many who agree with the OP's assessment.

[Jenoch]

103. I think comparing the Soviet Union

to the U.S. in this manner is disrespectful to the great suffering of the people who were crushed under the Soviets.

[markiv]

104. to become like Russia, we would have to lower our incarceration rate

higher percentage of people in prison here, than there

[geek tragedy]

108. Well, plus the millions who were deliberately starved to death due to Stalin's ag policy. nt

[Catherina]

115. Over 80,000 in solitary confinement right now.

Cops who think it's ok to stick a broom up someone's rectum or beat you and kill you. We have a big problem that so many people don't see because they're fortunate enough to live in more privileged bubbles and it's not their reality, but it's still there.

[DevonRex]

140. She said the Soviet Union. Stalin alone murdered MILLIONS in gulags.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Calculating_the_number_of_victims

Calculating the number of victims

Before the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, researchers who attempted to count the number of people killed under Stalin's regime produced estimates ranging from 3 to 60 million.[111] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, containing official records of 799,455 executions 1921-53,[112] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement – with a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[113]


Photo from 1943 exhumation of mass grave of Polish officers killed by NKVD in Katyń Forest in 1940.
The official Soviet archival records do not contain comprehensive figures for some categories of victims, such as those of ethnic deportations or of German population transfers in the aftermath of World War II.[114] Eric D. Weitz wrote, "By 1948, according to Nicolas Werth, the mortality rate of the 600,000 people deported from the Caucasus between 1943 and 1944 had reached 25%."[115][116] Other notable exclusions from NKVD data on repression deaths include the Katyn massacre, other killings in the newly occupied areas, and the mass shootings of Red Army personnel (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941. The Soviets executed 158,000 soldiers for desertion during the war,[117] and the "blocking detachments" of the NKVD shot thousands more.[118] Also, the official statistics on Gulag mortality exclude deaths of prisoners taking place shortly after their release but which resulted from the harsh treatment in the camps.[119] Some historians also believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete.[120][121] In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Robert Gellately and Simon Sebag Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed.[39][122]
Historians working after the Soviet Union's dissolution have estimated victim totals ranging from approximately 4 million to nearly 10 million, not including those who died in famines.[123][124][125] Russian writer Vadim Erlikman, for example, makes the following estimates: executions, 1.5 million; gulags, 5 million; deportations, 1.7 million out of 7.5 million deported; and POWs and German civilians, 1 million – a total of about 9 million victims of repression.[126]
Some have also included the deaths of 6 to 8 million people in the 1932–1933 famine among the victims of Stalin's repression. This categorization is controversial however, as historians differ as to whether the famine was a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks and others,[68][127][128][129][130] or simply an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization.[84][131][132]
Accordingly, if famine victims are included, a minimum of around 10 million deaths—6 million from famine and 4 million from other causes—are attributable to the regime,[133] with a number of recent historians suggesting a likely total of around 20 million, citing much higher victim totals from executions, gulags, deportations and other causes.[134][135][136][137][138][139][140] Adding 6–8 million famine victims to Erlikman's estimates above, for example, would yield a total of between 15 and 17 million victims. Researcher Robert Conquest, meanwhile, has revised his original estimate of up to 30 million victims down to 20 million.[141] In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Conquest states that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, the various terror campaigns launched by the Soviet government claimed no fewer than 15 million lives.[142] Others maintain that their earlier higher victim total estimates are correct.[143][144]

[Catherina]

114. Sureveillance wise, we sure are. Starving people? We sure are.

Your point bears finessing but when you look at how many millions we've killed in our wars, how many millions are starving for Monsanto's profit, how water rights are being swooped up by corporations for profit, how people are being thrown out of their homes for profit, how people are persecuted for revealing war crimes and illegal crimes against our constitution, then you have a point, no matter how uncomfortable people find the reflection.

[DevonRex]

116. OMG this is fucking ridiculous.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/24/russia-worst-human-rights-climate-post-soviet-era

"Russia: Worst Human Rights Climate in Post-Soviet Era
Unprecedented Crackdown on Civil Society

Moscow) – The Russian government has unleashed a crackdown on civil society in the year since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency that is unprecedented in the country’s post-Soviet history.

The 78-page report, “Laws of Attrition: Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency,”describes some of the changes since Putin returned to the presidency in May 2012. The authorities have introduced a series of restrictive laws, begun a nationwide campaign of invasive inspections of nongovernmental organizations, harassed, intimidated, and in a number of cases imprisonedpolitical activists, and sought to cast government critics as clandestine enemies. The report analyzes the new laws, including the so-called “foreign agents” law, the treason law, and the assembly law, and documents how they have been used.

“The new laws and government harassment are pushing civil society activists to the margins of the law,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government crackdown is hurting Russian society and harming Russia’s international standing.”

Many of the new laws and the treatment of civil society violate Russia’s international human rights commitments, Human Rights Watch said."

Here's the link to the full report.

http://www.hrw.org/node/115059

" Laws of Attrition
Crackdown on Russia’s Civil Society after Putin’s Return to the Presidency

APRIL 24, 2013
This 78-page report describes some of the changes since Putin returned to the presidency in May 2012. The authorities have introduced a series of restrictive laws, begun a nationwide campaign of invasive inspections of nongovernmental organizations, harassed, intimidated, and in a number of cases imprisoned political activists, and sought to cast government critics as clandestine enemies. The report analyzes the new laws, including the so-called “foreign agents” law, the treason law, and the assembly law, and documents how they have been used."

[BeyondGeography]

128. Didn't I see you marching the other day?

[Progressive dog]

130. Down memory lane where a one party

dictatorship that killed millions of it's own people is compared to the present US government.
From wikipedia

After Stalin's death, the suppression of dissent was dramatically reduced and took new forms. The internal critics of the system were convicted for anti-Soviet agitation, Anti-Soviet slander, or as "social parasites". Others were labeled as mentally ill, having sluggishly progressing schizophrenia and incarcerated in "psikhushkas", i.e. mental hospitals used by the Soviet authorities as prisons.[18] A number of notable dissidents, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Andrei Sakharov, were sent to internal or external exile.

Now, sadly, we are even worse than the old Soviet Union.

No, we're not--not even close.

[1-Old-Man]

135. I saw Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (his motorcade) once.

I couldn't tell you what year it was, maybe the late 50's or early 60's. He was visiting the US and his motorcade passed by us while we (a friend and I) were walking out near the Bethesda Naval Hospital. I didn't know who it was until seeing the news that evening. Back then they used to have news that told you the facts about the day's events, not like today when they tell you what they think about the day's events.

[NCTraveler]

138. The Tea Party, Ron Paul, and all of his supporters fully agree with you. nt.

[Hekate]

141. When is the US going to sequester an area the size of the Ukraine and take away all the food?

When is the US going to sequester an area the size of the Ukraine and take away all the food?
Collectivization especially targeted Ukraine, "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union," which clung stubbornly to its own national identity and preference for village-level communal landholdings. In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian famine has only recently been recognized as one of the most destructive genocides of the twentieth century. http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

Where is our Gulag Archipelago of forced labor camps designed to work millions of inmates to death?
In the worst camps, such as those of the Kolyma gold-mining region in the Arctic, the survival rate was just 2 or 3 percent..... Alexander Solzhenitsyn calls the prison colonies in the Solovetsky Islands "the Arctic Auschwitz," and cites the edict of their commander, Naftaly Frenkel, which "became the supreme law of the Archipelago: 'We have to squeeze everything out of a prisoner in the first three months -- after that we don't need him anymore.'" (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 49.) http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

Where are our denunciations, including by children of their parents?

I could go on and on, but I am so angry I am shaking.

American Amnesia strikes again.

Hekate

[Kolesar]

148. My relatives were starved to death and SheilaT makes light of it...eom

[dipsydoodle]

149. Exactly what do think the US did when it sequestered all of the land occupied

by the native population ?

[Dash87]

167. That was 150 or something years ago.

How is that relevant to current times? That's like saying present day Germany is as bad as the old Soviet Union because they did the Holocaust. It's even less relevant to the present US.

[Apophis]

144. Soviet Russia, where road forks you?

[Life Long Dem]

145. Duck and cover

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover

[SheilaT]

146. I really do want to thank everyone for the discussion

my OP generated. Lots of you disagreed with me, but almost no one simply called me an idiot or ignoramus, but instead offered good reasons for your disagreement.

And those who agree, generally said why.

It strikes me that this thread is in a rather odd way, an example of the best of DU. Good discussion. Largely civil, even when disagreeing.

Thank you all again.

[Posteritatis]

147. Anyone who says the US is worse than the Soviet Union was doesn't remember it. (nt)

[kestrel91316]

151. Excellent. Except for the last sentence, which is utter BS. Ask Solzhenitzen.

[arely staircase]

152. You know nothing about us or the Soviet Union

clearly.

[Cha]

164. But, she'll get a lot .. "right on!"

[JustAnotherGen]

153. I don't know

I was taught (father was a Green Beret) that our country does things that they only want us to believe other countries do. Born in 1973. Remember the wall coming down. The country I was born in (West Germany) doesn't even exist anymore.

Anyways - I was raised jaded, and he reinforced that in 2004. Lots of long conversations on the patio that summer.

I truly believe everything in the OP has gone on at least since the formation of the FBI - then AMPED up and taken over by the OSS. Operation Paperclip wasn't just child's play. That was some serious shit. And then think about the Brain Washing (monarch is just a pretty name for it) they put the special forces through in the 1960's and the Black Ops that came out of that.

We've been bad asses for a lot longer that the creation of the unPatriot Act. All that did was wrap it up in a pretty yellow ribbon with support the troops on it.

And we were always going shot for shot against the Soviet Union. We were not innocent.


So let's not pretend this something new. We've always been a cesspool of nasty.

[zappaman]

155. !!!

[JustAnotherGen]

157. I love that pic!

[Cha]

165. Yeah, there's some of our guys in charge

of the "gulags" now. Bless their hearts.. fighting the stupid from all sides of the spectrum.

[sigmasix]

158. revising history for snowden

We're going to see a lot of this sort of revisionist history defense of Russia since Snowden has taken up residence there and declared Russia a human rights defender.

Just remember; Snowden=hero to ODS folks, and no amount of truth will change that.

[Cha]

163. Your burning stupid hyperbole weakens any point you're

attempting to make, Sheila.

[zappaman]

171. "burning stupid hyperbole"

perfect!

[Major Hogwash]

172. Hahahaha!!!!!!!!!

Burning down the house!!!



When I was a little kid in elementary school, we had to do "duck and cover" drills twice a year when I was in the 1st grade to the 3rd grade.

What we need now is more cowbell!!!

[Cha]

173. thanks zappa.. I thought

maybe it was the OP defending her burning stupid hyperbole.

[Cleita]

177. My cousin was in the Air Force stationed in England in 1959. He ran across a travel

magazine printed in Russia about Russia. It was very glossy and Potemkinist in style, sort of a Russian Conde Nast. He started mailing it to me because he found it interesting at a time when any information about nations behind the Iron Curtain was propaganda. Turned out that was not a smart thing to do at the height of the Cold War. We also learned that the CIA reads your mail. I was investigated for subversive activities. My cousin lost his security clearance, was reduced in rank and sent to some awful base in Texas to finish out his tour.That's when we lost our innocence about America. Now with the revelations of Edward Snowden and wiki leaks, they aren't even pretending to violating our Fourth Amendment rights.

Welcome to DU btw.

[SheilaT]

179. You seriously know nothing at all about

the imprisonment and torture of Soviet citizens? Try reading An American in the Gulag. Came out around the same time as Solzhenitsyn's books.

His were not pure fiction.

It goes far beyond "They couldn't criticize their leaders".

I am not defending what this country has done, but for you to hold up the old Soviet Union as a wonder of virtue, freedom, and consumer goods, shows you don't know very much.

[Cleita]

176. I also remember how we were brainwashed into believing that communism was

evil because the Soviet Union and China were evil communist states. Much was made of the virtues of capitalism against communism. Yet, capitalism and communism or its cousin socialism are actually economic systems that can operate under different kinds of government. Now as to government, we claim to prefer democracy, and when you have a blend of capitalism and socialism, even communism under a democracy you get a satisfactory result as evidenced by many of the Scandinavian nations.

We have turned from a democratic republic by making capitalism a system of government instead of making it operate under a system of democracy. It's the opposite and just as bad as the Soviet Union making communism the system of government rather than under a government that eventually turned it into a totalitarian empire.