Enough about the bad, what was GOOD abot the Soviet Union?

[Taverner]

Healhcare for all. Worker vacations. No one starves (unless under Stalin.)

[slackmaster]

1. They made a great enemy

[Taverner]

8. Aye. Boogeyman Supreme.

[mick063]

2. There was nothing good.

A brutal, totalitarion, repressive regime.

[Taverner]

7. BS. I've spoken to many who, despite being Anti-Communist, admitted the system treated them well

And this is after the Berlin Wall fell...

[sharp_stick]

26. As long as you could join the party

and you did what you were told you were able to get bread. I suppose for some that's considered being treated well. For pretty much everyone else though the entire system treated them like shit under a shoe.

As for the Berlin wall, perhaps the Stasi were treated pretty well, not many others though.

[Zalatix]

114. Did you ask anyone from the Gulags?

Oh wait, they died, they can't provide an opposing opinion.

[dionysus]

178. i know. this thread is cracking me up...

[Fool Count]

28. Is that what they told you in school?

[Shankapotomus]

3. One thing that doesn't make sense

is if communism is so ineffective as the Right says, why was the Soviet Union a super power and rival to the U.S. at all?

[bhikkhu]

35. It was efficient at exploiting natural resources

...and the region it occupied was rich in natural resources.

The idea that success or failure depends on ideology is a tired old myth; as long as there are resources and cheap energy, any hare-brained dumbass idea of how to run things is likely to result in growth. The trick is when you no longer have enough to fuel growth - do you level off, or do you nosedive? That's when ideology or how your values line up with reality becomes important.

[LooseWilly]

123. "do you level off, or do you nosedive?"... You mean like in 2008 here in the US?

The US nosedived... and then levelled off at the dropped level.

Sounds like your judgement is equally applicable to the US... which is also a region rich in natural resources.

[dionysus]

176. if you're honestly comparing that to the way the USSR fell, well... can't help ya...

[malaise]

4. True but even better than that was

the balance of power on the planet.

[Taverner]

9. +100

[PavePusher]

159. Somehow I don't think that made having such a brutal, oppresive system valid. YMMV. n/t

[malaise]

161. Brutal and oppressive compared to what?

They never had a prison population the size of the US or China and they didn't invent new laws to lock up people addicted to illegal drugs...just to lock up one section of their male population.

[PavePusher]

163. The Soviets never had laws against drugs?

As far as their jail population... Are you counting the Gulag? The work camps? How about the folks who were merely summarily executed?

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

[dionysus]

177. might want to crack a history book and look up gulags....

[dimbear]

5. It was only good in comparison to the previous regime. A theocratic dictatorship,

run by a weak willed moron.

Bad combination.

Ended upside down in a well.

[FarLeftFist]

6. The women and the vodka imo. Not much else

[Snake Alchemist]

12. Beat me to it. nt

Last edited Sun Mar 4, 2012, 08:57 PM - Edit history (1)

[Art_from_Ark]

167. Those Ukraine girls really knocked me out

They left the West behind
And Moscow girls made me sing and shout
That Georgia was always on my my my my my mind

[onehandle]

10. Other worldly graphic design and style.

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/22/soviet_cookbook_imprint/singleton

[Taverner]

16. I highly rec this coffee table book

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=CCCP+book&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US fficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=13083394014582547531&sa=X&ei=qQJUT9WtF8vRiALO7JG5AQ&ved=0CCQQ8wIwAA

[obxhead]

23. A smiley broke your link

I think...

It's not working and I see an odd smiley in the middle of it.

[Taverner]

83. Here ya go!

http://www.amazon.com/Frederic-Chaubin-Communist-Constructions-Photographed/dp/3836525194

[eShirl]

11. much of their sports medicine/ sports science (not sure of the term) was ahead of its time

[napoleon_in_rags]

13. Uh, taking out Hitler?

And you got to admit, a rational secular enemy is a lot safer than an irrational one.

[Taverner]

14. YES! There is that!!!

[BOHICA12]

44. Not very economical on the Infantry or the Civilians

Used mass to their advantage. Left a lot of dead Soviets, Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Urkanians, etc. But they got the job done.

[bigmonkey]

101. You're right, they did ruin Hitler.

A great service to humanity, and at great cost to the Soviets. Stalin may have toasted "To American production, without which the war would have been lost", but the Soviets wore out the German machine before the U.S. battered it to death.

[napoleon_in_rags]

141. I wonder about alternative histories...

For instance, if the US took a stance more neutral... or more importantly, more hateful of Jews: Would this letter have been written?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-ein39/
Or more specifically, would the "relativity jew" (as the Nazis derisively called Einstein) decided to go the Soviet union instead and write the letter to Stalin? If so, would Stalin have been able to keep the war effort going long enough for his own "Manhattan project", and what would have been the effect on the world when Stalin emerged victorious as the world's only nuclear power? My bet is he wouldn't have gone the gentle US way, setting up the UN to create world peace. And I'd probably be watching my language, as well as calling you "comrade" in this very post.

[ronnie624]

115. 1200 miles of fire and flying steel.

Horrific beyond imagining.

The U.S. military at that time would have been smashed under the German onslaught. Thank heavens for big oceans.

Soldier of Destruction by Henry Signor is an excellent read.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

15. A quote that made the rounds

not sure if it's actual or allegorical: 'We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us'

[Frances]

17. What was good about Hitler's Germany?

The evil was so great that it seems wrong to think about anything that might have been good.

[Taverner]

62. Nazi Germany =/= Soviet Union

[Zalatix]

104. Nazi Germany < Soviet Union

When you compare the number of people killed, the level of repression and the devastation of the environment, that is.

[baldguy]

109. Tell that to the Native Americans & the slaves.

And how many once-thriving lakes & rivers in the US are now devoid of fish? The Great Lakes fishing fleets are long gone, never to return. I also remember when the pollution in the Cuyahoga River catching fire was nearly an annual event.

The USSR was never as evil, and America was never as great as the dreamy-eyed American propaganda painted them.

[Zalatix]

112. Umm, the USSR was every bit as evil as we said. Ask the Soviet Jews sometime.

And while the US has horrible environmental issues and was even worse to the Native Americans, that does not invalidate the fact that the USSR was worse than Nazi Germany.

Hitler = 12 million murdered. (High end estimates)
Stalin = 20 million murdered. (LOW end estimate)

[baldguy]

117. The USSR was around much longer than Nazi Germany, too.

For 120 yrs it was deliberate US govt policy to kill Indians, or to drive them off their land, so they'd starve. As a result dozens of cultures were wiped out entirely. How many were killed? 100 million? 200 million? We will never know. But if the USSR was worse than Nazi Germany just by sheer numbers, then measuring by your own standards the USA is the worst of them all.

You may not like or condone what was done, but you - as an American- have benefited from those evil actions just like everyone else.

It's the same with the people of the Soviet Union.

What you fail to acknowledge is that there will be wars & economic hardship in nearly every century, in nearly every country. Every nation has to deal with the horrors in it's past. The difference is that while Nazi Germany was the responsibility of one man, and virtually died with him, the USSR and the USA are the result of several generations all working toward a common goal.

[Zalatix]

118. Let me repeat. Saying that the USA was worst of all does NOT invalidate the fact that

the USSR was worse than Nazi Germany.

Do you get it yet?

[LooseWilly]

133. You <3 Hitler for killing Soviets? Am I getting it?

If the Soviets are worse than the Nazis, by your judgement, then the Nazis would be doing a "good" thing by killing them... logically. Therefore, I presume you are extolling the virtues of Hitler for killing Soviets... right?

And, to follow logically... the fact that the US allied with the "evil" Soviets to fight and "kill" poor, virtuous Hitler... the only one willing to "stand up to" the "bad bad bad" Soviets... that would make the Americans, also, worse than Hitler.

Am I starting to get it? We're all, every DUer, worse than Hitler?

[napoleon_in_rags]

142. Its amazing... This person wishes Hitler took Stalingrad and won the eastern front.

I never thought I would see somebody cheerleading Hitler on DU.

[LooseWilly]

146. The best part is that, since defending Stalin is bannable, cheerleading Hitler can't be challenged!

Yaay Hitler!

Stalin is bad, m'kay...

[napoleon_in_rags]

150. Absolutely disgusting. I want there to be no illusions about where my sentiments lie:

One one hand, I am presented with the ideals of Karl Marx, telling me that each person has something to contribute and draw from the whole, without regards to their disability or mastery of anything.

On the other hand, I am presented with the idea that there are a "superior" people, who should seek to eradicate all other people from existence, to make way for a world populated with this new superior race. I am told that intellectual inferiors should be eradicated, and as an example of this inferiority, I am given what the Nazis called "the relativity Jew"; Einstein - who alerted FDR to the possibilities of the atom Bomb, while being targeted for eradication by the Ann Coulter elite of Nazi Germany as being "intellectually inferior", and therefor deserving of eugenic eradication to purify Germany of "inferior minds".

Given this, I am not ashamed ONE BIT of the stance I have taken my whole life, of standing with the elderly, the weak, the mentally and physically disabled, believing they have something to teach us, and we should be humble rather than condemning anybody. I am not ashamed of my stance that what some consider to be inferior may in fact be superior, and so I am in fact not ashamed to call myself what Einstein called himself: A Socialist.

[white_wolf]

119. The U.S. likely killed more Native Americans than either of those regimes killed Jews.

So, by your logic, the U.S. is worse.

[Zalatix]

121. Now you are changing the subject. The subject was the USSR vs Nazi Germany.

Stop running away from the subject at hand. This was not about the US vs USSR vs Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union massacred more of its people than Nazi Germany did theirs.

Why are you dragging the US into this? This discussion was not about that. Are you doing this in order to try and take attention off the USSR, which is getting undue praise in this thread?

All I gotta say to you is bring it. I will force this discussion BACK onto how bad the USSR is. Trust me, I have more stamina than you. And if you push me... more facts, too.

[white_wolf]

124. I was actually agreeing with the above poster who pointed out the U.S. issue.

It is rather hypocritical of you call the USSR horrible, which it was, without calling the U.S. horrible, which it is. You can't oppose one on moral grounds without opposing the other on moral grounds.

[Zalatix]

126. I already condemned the US in my response to him. Next?

"And while the US has horrible environmental issues and was even worse to the Native Americans"... what do you think that means?

[LooseWilly]

148. The subject was NOT the USSR vs Nazi Germany... that's just what you seem to want the subject to be

The subject of the OP is "Enough about the bad, what was GOOD about the Soviet Union?"

You're the one who seems to have a Nazi Fixation. A fixation which, oddly, precludes including comparisons to the US.... and which also seems to have no interest in providing links to support the "numbers" of those killed by one regime vs. another.

You also show a surprising lack of interest in commenting on the global-polite cal context in which the (manufactured) numbers that you are spamming were "generated". Nazi Germany was not faced with the prospect of / fact of boycotts/blockades of every possibly useful supply ... the USSR was faced with not only these prospects, but also foreign troops intervening in their territory and supporting guerilla insurrectionists.

Nazi Germany also didn't have nearly the same population of greater Russia.

(10 million of 66 million is considerably more than 12 million of 170 million. Germany in 1933 had 66.0 millions. The USSR had 170 million.) "The new Soviet Census (1939) showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match exactly the numbers stated by Stalin in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937))

The notion that a lesser "concentration" of murders... in the face of an unequal percentage of those affected as well as kack of certifiaility of said recored murder

[Zalatix]

154. What an idiotic argument, going on about PERCENTAGES.

Yours is an incredibly weak attempt to lessen the crimes of the USSR against its own citizens. And the number of murders in the USSR was closer to a MINIMUM of 25 million. Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev "A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia" documents this. Hardly manufactured, dude.

As for the OP, there was nothing GOOD about the USSR - except maybe that they didnt't kill more people.

[LooseWilly]

182. If percentages aren't relevant... then please communicate that fact to all of corporate America...

... because percentage increases in sales and so on are the lifeblood of corporate number crunchers.

I am willing to concede that PERCENTAGES are idiotic if you are willing to concede that the entire US economy is idiotic, however.

Whaddaya say? Are we agreed?

Care to provide a link to this Alexander What's-his-face that you're going to use as a source? I'll consider reading something you've linked to... but if I have to do the research to support your argument, then your argument is FAIL.

And I disagree with your assessment that "except maybe that they didnt't{sic} kill more people" is the only good thing about the Soviet Union... in fact I wish they had killed more Nazis, but they were working with limited resources as a result of having been embargoed by the entire world for a couple of decades... so they couldn't kill all the Nazis that the US would later see fit to inculcate into their political & scientific operations. Good for Nixon and Truman and their ilk, bad for the people of the world who would be victimized by increasing US imperialism.

(No point in doing the work to determine percentages of world population oppressed by US imperialist policy in comparison with Soviet "imperialist" policy... I use the same word for the sake of pretending that there is some degree of equivalence... vs. Nazi imperialist policy. You don't believe in percentages, because they don't support your argument... and accuracy of relativities is not so important to you, if the unwillingness to acknowledge the usefulness of percentages is any indicator, as the rhetorical usefulness of your own bombast, anyway.)

[Zalatix]

184. Wait, now you're comparing economics to mass slaughter?

Now we're venturing off into talking about Corporate America? Really? I've heard of changing the subject but... damn.

[dmallind]

66. Technological and scientific advancement?

[Tom Ripley]

18. They forced America's hand at civil rights reforms and support for the arts and sciences

[cynatnite]

19. Oh, I've got a long list of goodies...

One political party
The KGB which was under the control of the communist party
The suppression of political dissent
No separation of powers
Government control of the media.
If you wanted higher education, you had to prove your party loyalty.
Religious institutions were monitored by the government.

Of course, free healthcare is always good, but I am curious as to the quality of care. I've read reports that varied about the quality of care.

[white_wolf]

20. You want some indirect benefits of the USSR?

How about the modern welfare state and Social-Democracies? Do people think those massive reforms were granted out of the goodness of the capitalists's non-existent hearts? No,they were granted out of fear. The USSR showed that a (very flawed) alternative to private capitalism could exist and that scared the capitalists here and in Europe into giving major reforms. Reforms that they are now trying to give back. Oh,and if it wasn't for the USSR WWII could have gone very differently.

As to the point about famines, you can't blame that on Soviet policy simply because Russia has problems with famines under the Tsars.

[izquierdista]

21. Everyone had a place to live

You should remember that as the Germans retreated in WWII, they destroyed everything. Can you imagine if everyone east of the Mississippi river had to live in a tent, bombed out building, or a cave? That's pretty much what the housing situation in the Soviet Union was in 1945. But the Communist government built apartment block after apartment block as quick as they could to get the common people walls to keep out the cold wind, a roof to keep off the snow, all with electricity and running water. They also had communal heating systems, where profit on the individual user didn't have to be measured.

There was no homeless problem. If someone looked to be homeless, they were picked up by the militsia (police) and taken to a social worker who would assign them to a housing unit. Homelessness didn't reappear until after the fall of Communism, and people could swindle others out of the housing unit they were living in.

If you've ever lived in the former Soviet Union, what strikes you is that housing is frozen in about 1960 levels. Except for the economic winners in the new capitalist economy, most people live where their family lived in 1960. Same plumbing, same leaky windows, same electric wiring, everything aging and maintenance falling a little further behind. Except for the front door. Most people have upgraded to the Fort Knox3.0 design.

I am of the impression that if the Soviets had kept improving housing year after year, increasing living area per person, adding amenities as happened in the West, they might still be in business today.

[Cirque du So-What]

22. All the things you laud about the Soviet Union

are common to the western European nations that instituted socialist programs - all without the repression and militarism that characterized the Soviet Union. Praising the Soviet Union for its social programs isn't all that much different from overlooking all the evils of fascism by praising Mussolini for making the trains run on time.

[etherealtruth]

25. You stated that very well

Your thoughts were rambling around in my head ... I couldn't express nearly as clearly or as concisely as you did.

[white_wolf]

30. Those reforms probably wouldn't have been implemented without the USSR.

They were a response to the USSR, to stem the rising fear of Revolution. Without the USSR those various welfare state measures are being rolled back. Reforms never last under capitalism.

[joshcryer]

51. I highly doubt that. The USSR delayed the implementation of those reforms...

...by being itself a totalitarian state and politicians using that as a tool to resist reforms. Had the USSR gone the way of the democratic workers councils then the whole world would be socialist if not down right communist by now. The USSR fucked us as a species by completely doing socialism the wrong way, crony, power structure, authoritarians.

[Zalatix]

125. The entire NEW LEFT in America and Britain was formed in opposition to the USSR.

Tom Hayden, one of the New Left's founders, is one of them, and he is still alive. You can ask him.

[white_wolf]

129. So,what is your point?

That has 0 to do with what I said. The facts remain that the USSR provided an alternative to private capitalism and this coupled with the revolutionary sentiment of many workers gave rise to the modern welfare state. I know leftists are opposed to the USSR, I'm one of them. It was a failure, but the fact remains it provide some indirect benefits to western workers.

[Zalatix]

155. You said

"Those reforms probably wouldn't have been implemented without the USSR."

Factually wrong. The New Left had a lot to do with reforms made in Europe, plus the non-USSR Communists who came before them. The Bolshevik Revolution did not inspire nearly as much as you think.

[Taverner]

158. Very good point

And there is absolutely nothing to counter disaster capitalism at this point...

[dionysus]

173. .

[white_wolf]

174. Oh, please do you really think the capitalists granted those reforms out of kindness?

If so you are very naive.

[dionysus]

180. i'll tell you one thing; cardboard cutout comrades crack me up.

[white_wolf]

181. Apologists for capitalism crack me up.

Maybe you'll eventually learn that the people on top are not your friends or allies.

[dionysus]

185. how bout this; i'll take a nice socialist country like sweden, and you have have your failed death

trap known as the USSR... deal, comrade?

[joshcryer]

50. Note: in the beginning the Soviet Union was to be implemented democratically.

But western-style democracy was being touted by the powers that be in the Union as an Emmanuel Goldstein. So they killed anyone who wanted democracy. This is not an exaggeration. Wholesale slaughter if you wanted democracy.

[Octafish]

71. The Mensheviks

Democratic Socialists.

[joshcryer]

78. Yep, Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and anarchists.

Funny how democracy (and leftism) tends to produced factionalization.

The party split, the fascist Bolsheviks united, and the rest of the parties and groups just factionalized to a point where they had little power. Once the Bolsheviks disbanded the assembly and installed dictatorship, it was all over buy the crying.

[Zalatix]

113. Bingo!!!

[geek tragedy]

24. Greater equality of the sexes.

No sexual exploitation of women for commerce, as opposed to the industrial scale degradation going on there now.

[Nye Bevan]

41. YES. Half the Politburo were women, if I remember correctly (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

153. Seriously?

http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/USSR.htm

Hardly any until the Gorbachev age. Compare with the UK page:

http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/United_Kingdom.htm

But it's hard to know what is sarcasm, sometimes.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. Well, I know people who came from there and people who studied there as grad students

There were some very bad things, as others have pointed out. According to those who were in a position to know (emigres), the medical system was free but uneven. You got much better care if you were a high-level Communist Party member or celebrity than if you were an ordinary person or even a rank-and-file Communist Party member.

However:

Everyone had a job.
Everyone had a place to live.
The educational system was really good in math and science and not too shabby in literature, and an effort was made to equalize opportunities across the country. Students who were notably talented in certain subjects (math, science, music, languages) went to specialized schools at no extra charge.
While the arts were censored, they were well supported, and every city of any size had a ballet company, a symphony orchestra, and a live theater company.
The system required conservative societies under their control (the Islamic peoples in Central Asia) to give equal rights to women.

According to what I've heard, the average person had ways of coping with the system. They knew exactly what was forbidden and what was OK and how to get around the restrictions and shortages. For example, many people received part of their pay in whatever product their workplace was involved in and used these things for barter.

The transition in the early 1990s was nothing short of brutal. A country where no one had run a profit-making business for 70 years was told that they had to become capitalists overnight. The only people who had the faintest clue about how to make a profit were the criminals, and the Russian Mafia has flourished since then. Some of the Party officials who had enough money to buy factories just fired all the workers and sold the machinery for scrap or ran their new businesses so badly that they failed. Mass unemployment resulted--and there were no unemployment benefits. At one point, it was reported that people were selling their furniture to survive.

The coping skills that ordinary people had developed over 70 years were suddenly useless.

One of my American friends has acted as a consultant to medical personnel who treat AIDS patients (oh yes, the poverty led to an explosion of drug trafficking and prostitution, which combined to give the former Soviet Union a horrible rate of AIDS infection), and according to her, one of the major problems since the changeover is that medical supplies are now harder to come by. The medical facilities used to get an allotment of supplies that was sometimes inadequate but arrived like clockwork. Now the poorer facilities are chronically short of supplies and are often shortchanged if a wealthier facility decides to pay a higher price.

She also said that the heavily touristed areas of cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg have been spruced up and look great, but if you go a few blocks away, you can end up in some pretty scary-looking slums. And the provincial towns that she has visited? Really run down.

The social safety net is practically non-existent. The only people who can get unemployment benefits are women with children. My friend reported that of the nurses and women doctors she worked with, only a few were married, but they all had a child. One child, presumably as "unemployment insurance."

So the fall of Communism was not an unmixed blessing.

In my opinion, China went about it better--although, of course, it's still repressive and has a lot of problems. They first allowed the farmers to divide up the old communes and own the land outright. This motivated the farmers to work hard for their own prosperity.

Then they allowed small sole proprietorships. This was actually a practical rather than an ideological move. After Deng Xiaoping came to power, he issued an amnesty for all the people who had been exiled to the boonies during the Cultural Revolution, but he knew that there weren't enough jobs for all of them. He figured that allowing people to open businesses would take care of at least some of the returnees. Many Chinese, especially in the southern and coastal areas, have relatives overseas, and the relatives were allowed to help finance these operations.

In other words, China did it gradually and in small steps, and by all accounts, they've adjusted better, although the gap between rich and poor is unbelievably large.

[Starry Messenger]

29. In addition to other positives mentioned upthread...

they pissed the hell out of that old ghoul Ronald Reagan. Other things: space program that caused Western countries to rush to catch up. The ending of capitalism in their country for over 70 years. The inspiration for several social programs that Western countries now take for granted. And let us repeat, the defeat of the Nazis at unimaginable national cost to life and country.

I recommend Michael Parenti's Blackshirts & Reds for a good readable overview of the former USSR.

[boppers]

31. Jobs for all who were willing to become slaves to the system.

Kind of like capitalism, really.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

32. If not for the Soviet Union, we many never have experienced Eduard Khil !!!

[IDemo]

79. and Yakov Smirnoff

In United States, television watches you...

[JI7]

33. motivated America to do a lot of good things , helped defeat NAzi Germany

[Fool Count]

34. The best thing about Soviet Union was a complete absence of profit motive

poisoning relationships between people there. Love, marriage, friendship, neighborly and workplace
relationships, arts, cinema and even sports were entirely unadulterated by mercantilism which spoils
everything in a capitalist country. Just as a model demonstration that a complex advanced society
can exist without the profit motive and the "free market" USSR's experience will be invaluable for
future generations of humans, who will be looking for alternatives when capitalism will finally run
its course and destroy everything there is to ruin on this planet.

[bhikkhu]

37. It would have been more valuable had it not failed so spectacularly

...and left a ruined environment, a ruined economy, and a shattered society as its primary legacies.

[JSnuffy]

42. But besides that... kudos...

Sheesh...

[Fool Count]

45. That "ruined environments, ruined economy and shattered society" will look

like a veritable paradise well worth revisiting to most people after capitalism is done with them.
That is a certainty, you can take it to the bank.

[TBF]

89. Agree with that completely. nt

[bhikkhu]

98. True, they did collapse while there were still resources left to burn through

...and it is possible that we may burn through everything before collapsing.

[Nye Bevan]

43. The Soviet Union was certainly an invaluable showcase for a system without any profit motive (nt)

[joshcryer]

54. Are you kidding me?

Sure, at a cultural level that may be true, but at the political level that was as far from the truth as can be imagined. We know this when the country was sold off piecemeal by powerful party members and the Russian mafia took even stronger hold than it had before. Cronyism ran deep in the USSR, and we see that in almost all the cases where the bloc states got their independence that they fared better than Russia itself.

[Fool Count]

103. I am not kidding you, I lived there. And I don't see how anything you say here about cronyism

invalidates the point I made.

[joshcryer]

106. What point was I trying to invalidate? You were just suggesting one side of the coin.

You completely left out the other side of the coin, for reasons which evade me.

[LooseWilly]

145. Cronyism (and nepotism) run deep in every country around the world, including the US.

If that's the whole of our argument about the "evils" of the USSR... then maybe Halliburton execs should be prosecuted as war criminals for having crony ties to the GWB white house which led to billions in contracts... and charter school admins should be indicted for their "crony" ties to Arne Duncan... and Egypt should be invaded and "liberated" because the government there consists of "cronies" of the generals who decided to back the protestors against Mubarak.

Hells, maybe your local DMV clerks should all be arrested on charges of "cronyism", as half of them probably got the job by knowing someone else in the office.

Are you next going to assert that the DMV is Stalinist?...

The piecemeal sale of the Russian economy to mafiosi was an illegal act which was simply unenforceable because it was being acted out by the enforcers of the law - the Gorbachev government which had decided to dismantle the communist state as it had existed for 70+ years. The argument that the mechanisms by which the government was dismantled should somehow be reflective of the flaws of the government... rather than representative of the corrupt leanings of those who were dismantling the government and economy in the first fucking place... is a reflection of the urge to spin in order to push an ideological agenda (in your case a neo-anarchist, libertarian agenda)... into the brains of anyone as a knee-jerk conclusion regarding the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.

The fact that there was cronyism displayed in the dismantling of the Soviet Union could be evidence of cronyism as a inherent & characteristic problem in their system... but the cronyism could just as easily be evidence of a new, and imported Western/Capitalist, problem which had come to "infect" the Communist system of the USSR.... You have yet to provide any evidence that there is anything but a coincidental co-incidence of these two phenomena.

While we all wait for you to publish some peer reviewed papers on the subject... I will continue to judge that it was just a matter of some corrupt assholes who decided to pull a sell-out to the West in so dramatically prompt a manner as to completely catch the non-surrenderers of the party completely by surprise.

What Gorbachev did would've been like Reagan deciding to convert to Islam and start regularly attending the teachings of Khomeini.

Sure, Iranian fundamentalists would've greeted Bizarro-Reagan as a hero (like Americans currently regard de-facto-Bizarro-Gorbachev as a hero)... but what Gorbachev did... like what Bizarro-Reagan didn't do... was essentially commit an act of treason against his own people (as expressed by a government which they had fought to put into place).

Coups happen.

Spinning them as "Democratic" is often bullshit intended to sell newspapers".

[joshcryer]

149. Cronyism is more apparent in these so called "socialist" systems, and easier to hide.

You have Libya where the Gaddafi's and his tribe had all the luxuries in the world (whose son owned a million dollar mansion in London), you have Cuba with its party owned villas, you have North Korea where the party officials and high end leaders have all the luxuries that they want. The Soviet Leaders were no different, living in extravagance as the peasants starved. This does not require "peer review publishing" on my behalf, as it has already been established in numerous books on the matter.

When you have an authoritarian system you can show that the overt extravagance by party officials for what it is. We live in a plutocracy, ourselves, of course, and are not fundamentally different from those systems.

Blaming the "Emmanuel Goldstein" of the "west" is just part for the course. A small country like Cuba could've easily, trivially, become self-sufficient. It didn't happen because like all authoritarian systems, it relies on hierarchies and power structures which ultimately does not allow as such (if a country is self-sufficient then the peoples are self-sufficient and don't rely on the party or power structures to provide them anything).

Perestroika was the greatest thing to happen to the Soviet Union. The USSR dictatorship was utterly shocked when the people voted against them when they actually had a choice with which whom to vote for. The people that they chose were chosen for them in the past, the ballot wasn't "I want to elect this person" the ballot was "yes or no to elect this person we have chosen for you." The "elected officials" were chosen beforehand, with no actual democratic self-determination on behalf of the population as a whole, it was highly centralized, and crony to the core.

[LooseWilly]

183. No, it wasn't. Everything you have said is false. Assertions without substantiation are easy.

If what you say "has already been established in numerous books on the matter", then it shouldn't be hard to provide links that will at least establish a context for what you are asserting.

For all I know you are paraphrasing books written by Kissinger and other Heritage Foundation authors.

Until I get some context, I'll assume you're just pulling convenient statements out of your ass. And, if you think that I'm going to do the research to try to find sources that support your arguments... well, I can do that... but I guarantee that all the sources for your arguments so found will indeed be from the Heritage Foundation, and dismissable a priori as a result of their source.

(And, just for your information... the phrase isn't "part for the course", it's "par for the course"... it's a golf allusion that I would've thought you'd've picked up in all those Kissinger books that you're alluding to in your otherwise unfounded assertions.)

I am curious though about your idea of "self-sufficient"... you say "A small country like Cuba could've easily, trivially, become self-sufficient." ... but, what do you mean by "self-sufficient"? Can they grow their own food? Yes (they largely do). Can they build their own homes? Yes (Again, they do.) Can they train their own doctors to treat the populace? Yes (They actually export MDs around Latin America... it's what they trade to Venezuela for oil.) Can they produce their own radioactive isotopes for use in several cancer treatments? Not so much.

That's the crux of the "self-sufficient" argument. Same applies to Iran, Venezuela, and a number of other countries that face US & Western Capitalist embargoes... that's what killed sizeable portions of the Iraqis that Saddam is blamed for the deaths of... lack of medical supplies because of an embargo. In fact, that may be the cause of a number of the deaths that the Heritage Foundation attributes to Stalin as well. Death by embargo, which can then be blamed on the embargoed leadership, rather than taken on as a responsibility of the embargoing powers.

As for perestroika.. it was spectacular— if you really wanted a hooker.

From Vixen to Victim:
The Sensationalization and Normalization of Prostitution in Post-Soviet Russia
By: Katherine P. Avgerinos
Since the height of its popularity in the mid-1990s, the Moscow nightclub “Golodnaya Utka,” or “The Hungry Duck,” has been dubbed “Moscow’s first rape camp.”[1] The club exploded on the Moscow night scene a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. The interactive strip shows and other debaucheries attracted many young Muscovites, eager to experience the sexual liberalization that Russian society had undergone. The club also became a frequent spot for prostitutes, whose presence was becoming increasingly common in Moscow. The club’s reputation became so scandalous that the state Duma attempted to shut it down for corrupting youth. However, the sexualization of Russian culture had already come too far in early post-Soviet Moscow, and the club was never closed. Today, the Hungry Duck continues to be a major establishment for entertainment in Moscow, catering to the needs of both Russian and foreign patrons, with services provided by teams of official strippers and unofficial prostitutes.

... http://www.sras.org/normalization_of_prostitution_in_post-soviet_russia

Even I'm not enough of a degenerate to call the "freedom" of post-Soviet Russia the "greatest thing"... but maybe if you're an anarchist and Somalia is your end goal... this is a good first step?

[alcibiades_mystery]

36. Soviets invented (modern) cinema...often forgotten in the Hollywood myth

Soviet five year plans transitioned a feudal economy into an industrial capitalist economy in about 30 years. Under the "natural course" of development, it took most of Western Europe at least 80 years to do the same, if not 300. Of course, this was very artificial, and as stained in blood as the emergence of capitalism itself. The massacres were, indeed, doubled to produce the same effect in a shorter period of time, but the transition from feudalism to capitalism was about as bloody as it was anywhere.

Stalin looks like a brutal tyrant because he condensed the outright murder and depravity that was the emergence of industrial production everywhere. What Stalin did was really no different than what capitalism did everywhere it emerged - Stalin's terror was just more visible.

[Nye Bevan]

38. Ivan Drago from "Rocky 4".

"If he dies, he dies."

"I will break you".

Classic stuff.

[Nye Bevan]

39. No annoying political commercials on TV.

No wasting time figuring out who to vote for in elections.

No political yard signs cluttering the neighborhood.

No wasting money on expensive vacations abroad.

A true paradise.

[BOHICA12]

40. Defeating the Third Reich ....

... by wasting millions of lives - but en mass they paved the way to victory.

The rape of Berlin - not so much!

[white_wolf]

46. Also,there are several polls that show that the Russian people think they were better off under the-

Soviets. Private capitalism has created massive unemployment, poverty, homelessness in Russia. Not to mention alcoholism has skyrocketed. How about this, look at Cuba and compare it to its private capitalist neighbors, it's a lot better off. Given the choices I'd choose Cuba over Haiti any day. For anyone wondering how I keep adding "private" to capitalism, it is because I don't think the Soviets ever achieved socialism. They were stuck in a State Capitalism.

[Taverner]

82. +100

[obliviously]

47. Are you going to do

What were the good things about the Holocaust next?

[white_wolf]

49. Bullshit comparison and you know it.

[obliviously]

53. 61,911,000 Victims

killed by the soviet union 1917-1987 now that is cause for a celebration is it, sounds like a holocaust to me!

[white_wolf]

55. The Holocaust was deliberate murder.

A lot of the deaths cited for the USSR are inflated by adding numbers caused by famine or WWII. For the record I don't support the USSR under any of its various leaders, but there is so much misinformation about it.

[Taverner]

59. Jesus FUCK - what kind of retort is that???

Hyperbole Bomb....

[obliviously]

65. Read the links

or have someone read them to you.

[white_wolf]

61. Bullshit! I clearly said I don't support the USSR.

I merely pointed out that there is a lot of misinformation and outright lies when it comes to the death toll. Maybe if you had cited your sources instead of just throwing numbers around I would have believed you.

[boppers]

67. Who is that guy in your avatar?

Just curious.

[white_wolf]

70. Karl Marx...

If you are trying to imply the USSR was at Marx had in mind you are mistaken. The Paris Commune was his concept of what a socialist state would be like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Commune#Social_measures

[boppers]

85. Marx was a philosopher, not a politician.

Much to his benefit, and detriment. It is why his ideas were doomed to fail. Brilliant, but doomed, because he did not understand politics is always run by baser humans than himself and his ideals.

[Taverner]

72. Marx =/= USSR

Marxist Leninism, MAYBE

But not Marx himself

[white_wolf]

81. Oh it was Marxist-Lennist for sure.

Stalin coined that term, but its highly debatable just how much Lenin would have approved of the system that bore his name.

[RZM]

96. I don't know about that

Lenin laid the foundations for what came after. He presided over the implementation of a one-party authoritarian state with a police apparatus empowered to use terror against the population. Stalin built from this foundation.

Also, Lenin never intended the peasant seizure of the land in 1917-18 to be a permanent situation. He envisioned state control of the land eventually, but in his lifetime the state's power did not extend enough into the countryside to do this. Even in his lifetime the Leninist state conducted a war of sorts against the peasants, notably the requisitioning of grain, which caused much starvation in the early 1920s. The utter chaos and discontent this caused was part of the reason for NEP, which was essentially capitalism by another name. There were major peasant revolts in the early days and they were suppressed ruthlessly, including with the use of poison gas.

Would he have been quite as bad as Stalin? Maybe not, but the precedents had all been set in his lifetime. Lenin bears a lot of responsibility for what came after.

[obliviously]

60. Seven million died in the 'forgotten' holocaust

http://www.ukemonde.com/genocide/margolisholocaust.html

You won't read this, you run from truth.

[joshcryer]

64. Erm, the Red Terror was certainly deliberate as were many mass atrocities in the Soviet Union.

If you have a problem with Rummel, this guy has all of the figures: http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Stalin

He makes no statement about which figures are correct.

[white_wolf]

68. Stalin's regime was monstrous. There is no denying that.

I don't support the USSR, hell I don't even support Trotsky anymore. The Vanguard is too isolated from the people and is too risky, but there is still a lot of misinformation about the USSR.

[joshcryer]

76. The poster made a shitty quip but Stalin did mass murder people, it's unquestionable.

More so than the holocaust? Probably.

If you read the link I provided the conclusion is:

TOTAL: 87M deaths by Communism.
RESIDUE: 116M deaths by non-Communism.

So communism hasn't killed as many people as non-communism, if that makes you "feel" any better.

(But if you want to really compare systems, it's certainly responsible for more democide than capitalism.)

[white_wolf]

80. I said Stalin's reign was monstrous.

The USSR was on the right track in the very early years and then I'm not sure what happened it just went the wrong way. Perhaps it was the fact that it didn't spread outside Russia for many years or the perhaps its a problem within the nature of the Vanguard Party itself.

[Zalatix]

156. "A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia" puts it at a minimum of 25 million massacred.

Oh but that's not a holocaust because....... why?

[Fool Count]

105. 61.911,000? Really? You don't say. Why not 61,911,457?

The whole population of Russia was under 150 million when communists came to power. It was nearly 300 million
in 1992 when capitalist restoration started in earnest. Since then Capitalist "liberals" killed more Russians in reduced
lifespan and birth rates than Nazi Germans did in WWII. They did it as surely as by putting a gun to their victims'
heads and pulling a trigger. And those murderers have the balls to call Stalin a villain?

[joshcryer]

107. It was 160 million before the October Revolution, 8 years later? 130 million.

After the capitalist reforms there was a decline in life expectancy, child mortality, and fertility rates, but they have all been on the rise since then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia

You can expect such things to happen after a state falls, particularly if the state is being gutted from within.

Capitalism kills far more through market dynamics than any other system.

Authoritarian fascist has undoubtedly, however, been the largest driver of democide the planet has ever seen.

[Starry Messenger]

122. Thank you. nt.

[baldguy]

111. I'm sure you have similar criticisms of the genocide of Native Americans

implemented as US govt policy in the 1700s and 1800s.

Right?

[joshcryer]

48. They put a robot on the moon. Other than that, the political system was murderous.

And it deserved all the criticism that was leveled at it.

[Fool Count]

127. No it wasn't. And no, it didn't. The very statement that

"it deserved all the criticism that was leveled at it" is an entirely meaningless one.
Are you even familiar with all the criticisms that were leveled at it? Is it not at all
possible that among them there might have been a criticism which it didn't deserve?
Can you be sure that its opponents had such total integrity that they only limited themselves
to "well-deserved" criticisms and never resorted to baseless propaganda? Of course, you
can't. Not having lived there, you can't even judge which particular criticisms were "deserved"
and which were not, since your only source of information are the same "critics". The aplomb
with which you make such senseless pronouncements is very amusing if not unusual for the
anti-Soviet propaganda victims.

[joshcryer]

131. I have not encountered any undeserved criticism of the USSR.

[Fool Count]

132. Like you have not encountered a war you didn't like?

Kinda tells more about yourself than about USSR. Did you not hear the stories that Soviet soldiers
put booby-trapped toys around Afghan countryside to kill and maim Afghani children? Do you think
it was a "deserved criticism of the USSR"? Or do you actually believe those stories? Just one little
example.

[joshcryer]

134. Oh, so you don't think Russia's imperialist forays into Afghanistan deserved criticism?

[obliviously]

52. Enlighten yourself

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE4.HTM

[Enrique]

56. they produced awesome chess players

[JHB]

58. They scared rich people elsewhere into playing nice for a while

[Taverner]

75. +100

[Nye Bevan]

88. The rich people were the senior members of the Communist Party.

They didn't have to wait on long lines like everyone else.

[JHB]

147. I think you missed the key word "elsewhere". n/t

[TBF]

91. Agree. nt

[dmallind]

62. They had some truly great musicians

Like the more well-known camps for kids with athletic promise, they also had the same for musical performers.

Richter, Ashkenazy, Rostropovich, and so on. Forced cramming? Possibly. but the results were stupendous.

[boppers]

69. Oooh, they had great mustaches and beards, too!

The USSR knew how to rock themselves some serious facial hair!

[Taverner]

73. ...um...

[boppers]

86. Hey, when I saw "musicians" I read it as "mustaches".

After realizing I had read it wrong, I realized it was true, anyways.

[dmallind]

160. I'm unsure a rigid central authority is needed or even beneficial for beard growth, but if you like.

[Canuckistanian]

74. Vodka technology advanced by DECADES

[boppers]

87. In only 70 years, no less! eom

[Octafish]

77. Yuri Gagarin

Alexei Leonov...Laika...Sputnik...Venera...

[Shankapotomus]

84. This thread made me think about

who is freer: We here at DU who can discuss such questions without an automatic reflexive thought denying revulsion or the conservatives minds over at FR that would scream blasphemy and then shut down in blind obedience at the mere hint of such speculation?

[TBF]

93. Dunno - there's quite a lot of red-baiting in this thread.

It's just more subtle.

[Starry Messenger]

94. There are several things I'd like to post countering comments in the thread.

However, people have been banned for similar views to mine. I never know where the line is here, so I am forced to watch in silence. Self-censorship.

[joshcryer]

108. My views are left of yours and I have been posting them repeatedly throughout this thread.

I don't see what is banworthy here, to be honest.

[Fool Count]

130. How brave of you, saying that USSR was a totalitarian dictatorship oppressing its people.

It is so out of mainstream US government line that I don't know how are you not in jail still. LOL.

[joshcryer]

135. Nope, some on the left avoid touching on the issue of totalitarian Russia.

The US government would rather people not know that the Soviets initially were going to democratically implement socialism.

The IWW tried to do that here in the United States but it was crushed.

By some saviors like FDR who restricted the labor movement.

And therefore that is why I am left of many who post here.

[Shankapotomus]

151. Really?

I can't imagine why they would ban you if you're expressing yourself civilly and not condoning violence, misogyny, discrimination or racism.

[TBF]

186. Read the TOS very closely

re hard core communism. There's definitely a line there.

[Snake Alchemist]

90. would make a GREAT movie. "The Softer Side of Stalin" nt

[unkachuck]

92. "...\.what was GOOD about the Soviet Union?"

....they were a global counter-weight to the unbridled forces of greed and capitalism....the Soviet Union challenged and checked capitalism where ever they found it around the world providing the world with an alternative ideology and system....

....the 1% controlled, greed-based, unchecked, unregulated, undemocratic, corrupt crony-capitalist world of today would have been impossible if the Soviet Union was still around....

....that is what was most 'GOOD' about the Soviet Union....

[napoleon_in_rags]

143. +1 When The Soviets fell, "Greed is Good" became the mantra.

To the most grotesque extends imaginable, to the extent this country is actually destroying itself worshiping greedy cocksuckers. I'm not claiming the Soviet system was some holy ideal, but the competition sure did provide an incentive for capitalists to keep their noses clean and to work hard to claim the moral high ground in the ideological fight. Ironically, a core principle of capitalism - that competition brings out the best in people - may prove to be the downfall of a capitalist system that has become hopelessly corrupt with no valid alternatives.

[cthulu2016]

95. re: "no one starves"

Are we comparing the USSR to Somalia or to a first world nation?

A person was much liklier to starve in the USSR than in, say, the USA. In the Stalin era a person was liklier to starve in the USSR than pretty much anywhere else. In the post-Stalin era starvation as a specific cause of death was rare both places but malnutrition was far more common in the USSR.

The people were, for the most part, poor and miserable. The working middle class faced many everyday privations that we find only among the very poorest few here.

If I wanted to compare the lot of people at the bottom I'd be more comfortable talking about Cuba than the USSR. The USSR was a very bad place full of very unhappy people. Nothing to emulate.

The question of whether some people were better off then than they are today is another matter. Some probably were. If someone wanted to argue that living in a post-apocalyptic sort of decaying gangster state is worse than the USSR there may be an argument to be made. I wouldn't suggest either system.

[provis99]

97. significant increase in literacy in 11 years.

from 56% literacy in 1926, to 75% in 1937.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union

they also completely avoided the Great Depression.

[RZM]

144. And do you know what was going on there during the time of the Great Depression?

I'll take the depression over the Holodomor any day. And you would too.

[provis99]

169. non-sequitur.

[Taverner]

170. Nope. America would never do something like that to our own people....

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

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

[RZM]

171. Your examples took place many generations before the terror famine

Besides, if you want to talk ethnic deportations, you've got the Soviet deportations during the 30s (Greeks, Koreans, etc.) and enormous operations during WWII (Germans, Kalmyks, Caucasus Muslims) totaling in the millions.

That's one of the origins of the conflict in Chechnya. Stalin saw fit to deport the entire Chechen people in 1944.

[Taverner]

172. Stalin was a few generations ago too...

[RZM]

175. But not nearly as many as the trail of tears or slavery

Slavery existed on a large scale in the USSR until the 1950s. The ethnic deportations remained in force for decades. Chechens didn't come back until the 1950s (against the state's will). Germans weren't fully amnestied until the 1970s. Crimean Tatars are still waiting to come home.

[RZM]

99. There was a lot of social mobility in the early years, notably during the Five Year Plans

Living standards went down because consumer goods were not emphasized (consumer goods were a serious problem area all the way until the collapse). But a lot of people improved their stations during this period. This was perhaps the main reason why Khrushchev remained 100 percent committed to the system his entire life. He received engineering training and was able to eventually enter politics and lead the country. Somebody of his background and means would never have been able to do that before.

By the way, when you look deeper at health care in the Soviet Union, you see a lot of serious flaws. Yes there were a lot of doctors, but quite a few were poorly trained. And facilities were abominable as well. I forget the exact stats, but as late as the 1970s-80s, close to half of Soviet doctors had never examined an x-ray. I believe roughly 1/4 of Soviet hospitals did not have running water.

This is a good book that examines postwar life in the USSR. It contains a lot of interesting statistics, including those on the health care system.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Empires-History-Soviet-1945-1991/dp/0192803190/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330919913&sr=8-1

[Tabasco_Dave]

100. The olympics didn't suck

and the steroid women where good for a laugh.

[gulliver]

102. It's just a distraction from the stupidity of Republicanism

...and the people who work to spread it. I mean why even bother posting threads that take our eye off the ball? The Soviets were 99.995% shitheads politically as everyone knows. But some of them did pet puppies and play with their children.

The Soviet Union is a dead threat to this country. It paid the price for its ideologically stupidity and corruption. On the other hand, Republicanism, as currently practiced by the Republican Tea Party and other leading morons, is a present day threat to the country. And it has yet to answer for horrendous damage its asinine policies created in the Bush years. The Republican party needs to go to the corner and put on its dunce cap.

I'm sure you understand and agree, Taverner. Threads like this OP are idle and amusing, but they just distract from the hard work of getting Republican incompetents and crazies as far away from the complicated machinery of the country as possible.

[akbacchus_BC]

110. I will answer that! The US had to silence the Soviet Union because it did not want any competition !

If anybody in America that felt silencing the Soviet Union was a good thing, then I disagree.

Discussion is always open!

[backscatter712]

116. The USSR wasn't as different from the US as we think.

They just used different ideology to slap down the politically inconvenient.

Sometimes, say during the Stalin era, they were completely totalitarian.

During the Khruschev era, they were less totalitarian, and a lot of people lived decently well.

But the USSR, like the US, was an imperial system based on the exploitation of human beings. They had their client states, as did we. They propped up pet dictators, as did we. They brought cops and prisons and dirty tricks upon dissidents, as did we.

But they did have a bitchin' space program!

[Comrade Grumpy]

120. Soviet technology built the world's largest transistor.

[Kablooie]

128. But everyone had to join the union.

[JNathanK]

137. If they were more democratic, in the real sense of the term, it could have worked better.

They should have focused less on military expansion and more on developing consumer goods. If they could build state of the art nuclear submarines, I don't see why they couldn't have built a decent car. Its the biggest land mass in the world too. I don't understand why people had to live in such cramped apartments.

[Kwarg]

138. Nearly universal higher education

[alp227]

140. Fodder for Republican scare tactics against ANYTHING approaching the idea of common resources.

[steve2470]

152. More of a solidarity feeling with others

I read this somewhere. I don't know how true it is.

[aikoaiko]

157. I think they had a low crime rate.

I can't produce anything to back that up.

[Swede]

162. They had a cool national anthem.

I used to enjoy it before the hockey games when the CCCP hit the ice.

[Blue_Tires]

164. Their national team was kinda-sorta good at hockey, too...

[RZM]

166. The Russian Federation still has the same anthem, but with different lyrics

It is kind of a nice melody.

[cherokeeprogressive]

165. Their 1972 Olympic Basketball team.

It only took them three cheats to beat the US Team.

[Gruntled Old Man]

168. Uh.....

not much.

[dionysus]

179. in soviet russia, the thread locks you....

[KamaAina]

187. They pulled Russia out of feudalism

that's right, feudalism. Serfs and everything. Russia was so far behind the times -- literally -- it was still on the Julian calendar!

[Leopolds Ghost]

188. I wish I could find the appropriate scene from Dr.Zhivago, but this'll have to do

Remember Kronstadt! Down with the Bolsheviks!

"I am the only free pony on this thread!" -- An Old Trot



Authoritarian state socialism is the cancer that killed the left