Things can do good and still be bad. America helped fight the Nazis (and also paved the way at certain points in a few things you list including free education for children) and they’re still bad. Thing can be better than other systems and still be bad. Capitalism was better than feudalism. I still don’t want it. Also its laughable to say it fought hardest against imperialism. I dare you to tell that to many of the countries it used to control, both directly and indirectly, through military power. I dare you to tell that to a Ukrainian friend. Russia/USSR was/is still an imperial power that’s caused a lot of harm.
Also, even doing all that, it was still authoritarian state own capitalism at best in the end. That’s what you’re defending as the bastion of lefty success?
Enjoy your bad logic and your boot. We don’t see eye to eye.
Also its laughable to say it fought hardest against imperialism
It’s laughable if you haven’t read a book in your life about actual Soviet policy, economic relations, and the meaning of the word “imperialism”.
I dare you to tell that to a Ukrainian friend
Your friend has the luxury of considering themselves Ukrainian thanks to the fucking Soviet Union. Ukraine had up until the formation of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics in 1917 been a people without representation split between Poland and the Russian Empire. The first Bolshevik constitution gave all the nations and peoples of the Russian Empire full and unilateral right to secession and independence. Poland became independent this way and immediately invaded the newly established Ukrainian People’s Republic (first time in history that Ukraine had a representation and an administration of itself, courtesy of the Bolsheviks). Lenin himself fought other socialists like Rosa Luxembourg in order to enable an independent Ukraine, as opposed to the homogenous “socialist national identity” that they proposed, this is a historical fact.
The Bolsheviks, during the Russian civil war, fought Poland and gave back Ukraine’s territories to its people, and Ukraine was established as an independent republic within the USSR. In the following decades, and for the first time in its history, the citizens of Ukraine would gain access to education and the possibility of choosing an education in Ukrainian language, a majority of the published literature and newspapers were published in Ukrainian, and just 40-odd years after Ukraine’s first ever autoctonous administration and representation, a Ukrainian would become the president of the Soviet Union.
I dare you to tell that to many of the countries it used to control, both directly and indirectly
The fact that over the past 30 years, a russophobic and anticommunist nationalist sentiment has been fostered in Ukraine, as has been in most of Eastern Europe since the advent of capitalism as a political tool against Russia, doesn’t invalidate any of that, and the fact that Ukrainians generally feel that way doesn’t automatically make it right, in the same sense that American exceptionalism is a general sentiment in the US and it’s wrong. As an example, most Polish people view the crisis of the 80s (which gave rise to Solidarity) as a consequence of Soviet meddling in their economy. The reality of the consensus of serious economists who study this issue is that Poland went, against the advice of the Soviet Union (proving again that its “iron grip” in the eastern block wasn’t such), went into debt with western banks and financial institutions and paid the consequences.
Russia/USSR was/is
The fact that you even compare the two shows how little idea you have of what you’re talking about. Modern capitalist Russia is a liberal democracy on a downwards spiral towards fascism, the Soviet Union was a worker’s state and didn’t exert imperialism. The trade terms of the USSR were generally beneficial to the countries that traded with it (see Cuba’s crisis in the 90s after trade with the USSR stopped), USSR was a net exporter of raw materials and fossil fuels which it did at international prices even within the COMECON. If you have studied unequal exchange, this means that the Soviet Union was subsidising other states because of the imbalance in international prices of raw materials vs manufactured, high added-value goods. The USSR assisted immensely in anti-imperialist struggle: wars of Korea and Vietnam, Chinese revolution, Cuban revolution…
What you’re doing here is proving that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and you consider yourself a leftist but you’ve done no study of the material history of socialism and you parrot the talking points of the US State Department.
Things can do good and still be bad. America helped fight the Nazis (and also paved the way at certain points in a few things you list including free education for children) and they’re still bad. Thing can be better than other systems and still be bad. Capitalism was better than feudalism. I still don’t want it. Also its laughable to say it fought hardest against imperialism. I dare you to tell that to many of the countries it used to control, both directly and indirectly, through military power. I dare you to tell that to a Ukrainian friend. Russia/USSR was/is still an imperial power that’s caused a lot of harm.
Also, even doing all that, it was still authoritarian state own capitalism at best in the end. That’s what you’re defending as the bastion of lefty success?
Enjoy your bad logic and your boot. We don’t see eye to eye.
It’s laughable if you haven’t read a book in your life about actual Soviet policy, economic relations, and the meaning of the word “imperialism”.
Your friend has the luxury of considering themselves Ukrainian thanks to the fucking Soviet Union. Ukraine had up until the formation of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics in 1917 been a people without representation split between Poland and the Russian Empire. The first Bolshevik constitution gave all the nations and peoples of the Russian Empire full and unilateral right to secession and independence. Poland became independent this way and immediately invaded the newly established Ukrainian People’s Republic (first time in history that Ukraine had a representation and an administration of itself, courtesy of the Bolsheviks). Lenin himself fought other socialists like Rosa Luxembourg in order to enable an independent Ukraine, as opposed to the homogenous “socialist national identity” that they proposed, this is a historical fact.
The Bolsheviks, during the Russian civil war, fought Poland and gave back Ukraine’s territories to its people, and Ukraine was established as an independent republic within the USSR. In the following decades, and for the first time in its history, the citizens of Ukraine would gain access to education and the possibility of choosing an education in Ukrainian language, a majority of the published literature and newspapers were published in Ukrainian, and just 40-odd years after Ukraine’s first ever autoctonous administration and representation, a Ukrainian would become the president of the Soviet Union.
The fact that over the past 30 years, a russophobic and anticommunist nationalist sentiment has been fostered in Ukraine, as has been in most of Eastern Europe since the advent of capitalism as a political tool against Russia, doesn’t invalidate any of that, and the fact that Ukrainians generally feel that way doesn’t automatically make it right, in the same sense that American exceptionalism is a general sentiment in the US and it’s wrong. As an example, most Polish people view the crisis of the 80s (which gave rise to Solidarity) as a consequence of Soviet meddling in their economy. The reality of the consensus of serious economists who study this issue is that Poland went, against the advice of the Soviet Union (proving again that its “iron grip” in the eastern block wasn’t such), went into debt with western banks and financial institutions and paid the consequences.
The fact that you even compare the two shows how little idea you have of what you’re talking about. Modern capitalist Russia is a liberal democracy on a downwards spiral towards fascism, the Soviet Union was a worker’s state and didn’t exert imperialism. The trade terms of the USSR were generally beneficial to the countries that traded with it (see Cuba’s crisis in the 90s after trade with the USSR stopped), USSR was a net exporter of raw materials and fossil fuels which it did at international prices even within the COMECON. If you have studied unequal exchange, this means that the Soviet Union was subsidising other states because of the imbalance in international prices of raw materials vs manufactured, high added-value goods. The USSR assisted immensely in anti-imperialist struggle: wars of Korea and Vietnam, Chinese revolution, Cuban revolution…
What you’re doing here is proving that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and you consider yourself a leftist but you’ve done no study of the material history of socialism and you parrot the talking points of the US State Department.