What is your opinion of the Soviet Union?

[Joe McCarthy]

http://www.whyguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/soviet-union1.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6SchU8D-e1s/SFocUe8cnlI/AAAAAAAAB8U/pBi8pubg7hI/s400/SnakesonaSovietUnion0.jpg

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[Joe McCarthy]

Here is what the black American actor-singer, and Communist, Paul Robeson, thought of the Soviet Union, from an interview in 1935:

http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv4n2/ussrpr.htm


The reception was long and brilliant and lasted until about 2 a.m. But somehow in the course of it, Robeson found time to answer a few questions from the Daily Worker correspondent.

I began with the obvious: "Have you noticed a race question in the Soviet Union?"

An undercurrent of laughter rumbled under Robeson's big mellow voice as he answered: "Only that it seems to work to my advantage!"



And then he explained. He has been studying the Soviet Union for two years, studying the Russian language also for that length of time, has been a regular reader of the Pravda and Isvestia for months, and knows something about the solution of the race question here. He knows that the Soviet theory is that all races are equal-really equal, socially equal, too, as well as economically and politically. He expressed delight but no surprise when I informed him of the election to the Moscow Soviet of the American Negro, Robinson, working in the First State Ball Bearing Plant here.



"I was not prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow," said Robeson. "I was aware that there was no starvation here, but I was not prepared for the bounding life; the feeling of safety and abundance and freedom that I find here, wherever I turn. I was not prepared for the endless friendliness, which surrounded me from the moment I crossed the border. I had a technically irregular passport, but all this was brushed aside by the eager helpfulness of the border authorities. And this joy and happiness and friendliness, this utter absence of any embarrassment over a 'race question' is all the more keenly felt by me because of the day I spent in Berlin on the way here, and that was a day of horror-in an atmosphere of hatred, fear and suspicion."


More from Robeson; this time from 'To You Beloved Comrade' - an ode to Stalin upon his death.

http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc9804/robeson.htm

Extract:


I was later to travel - to see with my own eyes what could happen to so-called backward peoples. In the West (in England, in Belgium, France, Portugal, Holland) - the Africans, the Indians (East and West), many of the Asian peoples were considered so backward that centuries, perhaps, would have to pass before these so-called "colonials" could become a part of modern society.

But in the Soviet Union, Yakuts, Nenetses, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks - had respect and were helped to advance with unbelievable rapidity in this socialist land. No empty promises, such as colored folk continuously hear in the United States, but deeds. For example, the transforming of the desert in Uzbekistan into blooming acres of cotton. And an old friend of mine, Mr. Golden, trained under Carver at Tuskegee, played a prominent role in cotton production. In 1949, I saw his daughter, now grown and in the university - a proud Soviet citizen.


Today in Korea - in Southeast Asia - in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East - in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage - what sacrifice - what determination never to rest until victory!

And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an "American Century" blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by - that we now live in a people's century - that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics.They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life.

[Grumpy Cat]

Meh.

Collapsed 20 years ago.

[Joe McCarthy]

Meh.

Collapsed 20 years ago.

You seem to be implying that the Soviet era has no bearing on the current order or that it had no lasting effects.

[Oreka Bailoak]

The Soviet Union is the perfect example of exactly what you don't want a country to become economically because of massive famines like Holodomor where the government took food away from unfavored peoples which resulted in the deaths of millions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Not to mention the massive corruption of government like creating gulags to imprison innocent people or executing unfavored people into the thousands.

The whole Government was absolute terror. I don't understand how anybody can be apathetic. I'd be interested to know the opinions of North Korea from this board which shouldn't be any different than our views of the Soviet Union. Both were/are so similar.

[The Ripper]

You seem to be implying that the Soviet era has no bearing on the current order or that it had no lasting effects.

They did defeat the Germans for you.

[Joe McCarthy]

They did defeat the Germans for you.

Both Stalin and Zhukov admitted that without Lend-Lease they would have lost.

[The Ripper]

Both Stalin and Zhukov admitted that without Lend-Lease they would have lost.

Somebody still had to do the fighting, remember. Those jeeps and cans of beans weren't killing nazis by themselves.

[Joe McCarthy]

The whole Government was absolute terror. I don't understand how anybody can be apathetic. I'd be interested to know the opinions of North Korea from this board which shouldn't be any different than our views of the Soviet Union. Both were/are so similar.

It's fairly easy to understand the apathy when one understands that the European far right (and American to some extent) shares much of the ideological fixations of the Soviet era left - anti-Americanism, and anti-capitalism. In some cases the USSR, or at least East Germany, will be remembered fondly, primarily because they weren't the United States.

[Joe McCarthy]

Somebody still had to do the fighting, remember. Those jeeps and cans of beans weren't killing nazis by themselves.

That much is true, and the Soviet people fought bravely, even if they were really mauled visciously.

[Joe McCarthy]

We see here that the early USSR did much to inaugurate sexual license, preceding the 60's (and partially Frankfurt School, specifically Herbert Marcuse, driven) counter-culture by decades.

http://www.mailstar.net/sex-soviet.html


{p. 34} The makers of Soviet Russia were in a somewhat different situation. Like the early Christians, many of the old Bolsheviks were hostile or indifferent to marriage, though of course for opposite reasons. They often believed in free love, which was regarded as a 'Gift of the Revolution'. Many nineteenth-century socialists had subscribed to the view that sex was or ought to be as simple and trivial a satisfaction of physical needs as drinking a glass of water. As for the family, at one time or another, Trotsky, Alexandra Kollontai, Lunacharski and Krylenko all subscribed to the view that it would wither away in due course. The radical view was summarised by A. Slepkov, an influential Leningrad party member:

{quote} Bourgeois ideologists think that the family is an eternal, not a transitory organization, that sexual relations are at the basis of the family, that these sexual relations will exist as long as the two sexes, and since man and woman will both live under socialism just as under capitalism, that therefore the existence of the family is inevitable. That is completely incorrect. Sexual relations, of course, have existed, exist, and will exist. However, this is in no way connected with the indispensability of the existence of the family. The best historians of culture definitely have established that in primitive times the family did not exist . . . Similar to the way in which, together with the disappearance of classes, together with the annihilation of class contradictions, the state will disappear, similarly to that, together with the strengthening of the socialist economy, together with the growth of socialist relationships, together with the overcoming of earlier pre-socialist forms, the family will

{p. 35} also die out. The family is already setting out on the road to a merging with Socialist Society, to a dissolution into it. An openly negative attitude toward the family under present conditions does not have sufficient grounding, because pre-socialist relationships still exist, the state is still weak, the new social forms (public dining rooms, state rearing of children, and so forth) are as yet little developed, and until then the family cannot be abolished completely. However, the coordination of this family with the general organization of Soviet life is the task of every communist, of every Komsomolite [member of Communist Youth League]. One must not shut oneself off in the family, but rather, grow out of the family shell into the new Socialist Society. The contemporary Soviet family is the springboard from which we must leap into the future. Always seeking to carry the entire family over into the public organizations, always a more decisive overcoming of the elements of bourgeois family living - that is the difficult, but important task which stands before us. {endquote; Quoted, H. Kent Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia, Cambridge, Mass., 1968, pp. 44-5}

Lunacharski, the Commissar of Education, wrote as late as the early 1930s:

{quote} Our problem now is to do away with the household and to free women from the care of children. It would be idiotic to separate children from their parents by force. But when, in our communal houses, we have well-organized quarters for children, connected by a heated gallery with the adults' quarters, to suit the requirements of the climate, there is no doubt the parents will, of their own free will, send their children to these quarters, where they will be supervised by trained pedagogical and medical personnel. There is no doubt that the terms 'my parents,' 'our children,' will gradually fall out of usage, being replaced by such conceptions as 'old people,' 'children,' and 'infants.' {endquote; Ibid., pp. 47-8}

This, according to Lunacharski, was to be an essential part of the transition to the new society - 'that broad public society which will replace the small philistine nook, that little philistine apartment, that domestic hearth, yes, that stagnant family unit which separates itself off from society.' {ibid., p. 68} A genuine Communist would avoid such a permanent pairing marriage and would seek to satisfy his needs by ' ... a freedom of the mutual relations of the husbands, the wives, fathers,

{p. 36} children, so that you can't tell who is related to whom and how closely. That is social construction.' {ibid.} ...




Soviet medical and legal experts were very proud of the progressive nature of their legislation. At the Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform, held in Copenhagen in 1928, Soviet legislation was cited to repre-

{p. 71} sentatives of other countries as an example of progressivism. In 1930, medical expert Mark Sereisky wrote in The Great Soviet Encyclopedia: "Soviet legislation does not recognize so-called crimes against morality our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest."

[Loddfafner]

I clicked "very favorable" because I am a sucker for nostalgia and it is easy to be favorable of conditions that are far away and somewhat long ago. I feel the same nostalgia as for 1930s Germany, the Hapsburg Empire, and Napoleon III. Its only practical consequence is in my emphases in stamp collecting and in the photos I am likely to take in my travels. I love old Lenin images just as I like SS pins.

[Joe McCarthy]

An observation - I find that those who have a 'neutral' view toward the USSR have a higher opinion of Gorbachev than Reagan, and if they're old enough, thought Ronnie was a threat to world peace.

[Motörhead Remember Me]

You seem to be implying that the Soviet era has no bearing on the current order or that it had no lasting effects.

It certainly does. The criminals who ran the country have only transformed from being megalomaniac and corrupt Soviets into being megalomaniac and corrupt Russians (and Belorussians).

[Motörhead Remember Me]

An observation - I find that those who have a 'neutral' view toward the USSR have a higher opinion of Gorbachev than Reagan, and if they're old enough, thought Ronnie was a threat to world peace.

I have a negative view of the Sovietunion but Gorby was an exception. He was the only Soviet/Russian leader with any credibility. Reagan on the other hand ... Well, he pumped money and weapons into some of the worst criminalstates of the era; Irak, Nicaragua, Chile, Saudi Arabia e.t.c.

[Joe McCarthy]

Erm, does anyone seriously believe Reagan's efforts to fight Communism in backing Pinochet, the Contras, and backing Saddam over a bigger asshole, the Ayatollah, all while trying to bring down the USSR was morally inferior to Gorbachev trying to save Communism, sending tanks against Lithuanians, backing Sandinistas, and waging genocide in Afghanistan?

[Peerkons]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CoN-0dL6_hY/SQ9aIt4XckI/AAAAAAAAKQo/NsrHrSqXgJ0/s400/commie2.jpg

[The Lawspeaker]

Erm, does anyone seriously believe Reagan's efforts to fight Communism in backing Pinochet, the Contras, and backing Saddam over a bigger asshole, the Ayatollah, all while trying to bring down the USSR was morally inferior to Gorbachev trying to save Communism, sending tanks against Lithuanians, backing Sandinistas, and waging genocide in Afghanistan?
What exactly is the difference ? I actually think that Reagan is the biggest arsehole of the two and let me explain that one:

Gorbi send Russian tanks to the Baltic (foreigners)- while Reagan turned countrymen against each other and effed up their already effed up societies for a long time. Traumatising entire peoples for the sake of some "containment". Gorbi at least (usually) kept his promises.. Reagan violated the Constitution on several occasions (Iran-Contra anyone?), was up to his neck in the drug trade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US), sold his country out to big business and increased the size of the government (had he not promised that he would deal with the size of the government and diminish it ?) and with his reckless, idiotic behaviour as put his allies at a severe risk (MGM-31 Pershing's in Germany and cruise missiles in the Netherlands).

The big gamble paid off (but it could have gone bust big time and we would have all gone "boom").. but we are still paying for it today (societally speaking). And from a "democratically elected leader" one should expect some more morality - especially from a so-called Christian (as he bought the support of the "Christian" Right).

[Talvi]

I have a USSR birth certificate. And its weird.

I voted very unfavorable. Because they sucked. They have done much more damage than good.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2174/3541374757_6a6f9662a0_z.jpg?zz=1

I dont think anyone who is favorable towards the USSR can be a "real" Estonian.

[Peerkons]

I think the poster says it all.
Latvija - Life. Bolshevism - Death.
My grandgrandfather was deported to Siberia because he was officer in Latvian Navy and brother of my father died in soviet army. I would have uncle now.
http://data.lnb.lv/digitala_biblioteka/Plakati_Latvija/saize1/nba04_2375.jpg

[Motörhead Remember Me]

Erm, does anyone seriously believe Reagan's efforts to fight Communism in backing Pinochet, the Contras, and backing Saddam over a bigger asshole, the Ayatollah, all while trying to bring down the USSR was morally inferior to Gorbachev trying to save Communism, sending tanks against Lithuanians, backing Sandinistas, and waging genocide in Afghanistan?

The world is not black and white. There are also different shades of grey. The Nicaraguan government and Pinochet were dictators who committed grave crimes against their own people, stole money from their people e.t.c. The forces opposing them may have been communists but more likely socialists, who wanted more democracy and freedom for their people. You can't argue that life have turned worse in Nicaragua and Chile after the dictators?
Remember that Reagans government armed the same forces fighting Yankee boys in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Besides, it was Gorbie who demolished Soviet communism and withdrew the Red army from Afghanistan... Get the facts straight.

[Svanhild]

They did defeat the Germans for you.
And that's a good achievement?

[The Lawspeaker]

And that's a good achievement?
Only if you hate Hitler. I am personally not a big fan of him either.. but what we got afterwards was more insidious and far more deadly in the end.

[Kanasyuvigi]

Talking about Reagan...
Do you really think that an actor really ruled the USA?
Being the US president was just his greatest role.

[The Lawspeaker]

Talking about Reagan...
Do you really think that an actor really ruled the USA?
Being the US president was just his greatest role.
It usually are indeed the shady groups behind the president that have more power then the actual president. But then again.. Reagan wasn't a very clean person himself either.

[Joe McCarthy]

Get the facts straight. I'd suggest you follow your own advice. Nicaragua was run by communists, not opposed by them, and Gorby tried to save the USSR only to see his reformist measures spin out of control and help destroy it. He also continued the war in Afghanistan for years before pulling out... As for Pinochet, he did much to lay the groundwork for Chile's present success. Those who see him as worse than Bolsheviks tend to be Western liberals of the caviar variety.

[The Lawspeaker]

I'd suggest you follow your own advice. Nicaragua was run by communists, not opposed by them, and Gorby tried to save the USSR only to see his reformist measures spin out of control and help destroy it. He also continued the war in Afghanistan for years before pulling out... As for Pinochet, he did much to lay the groundwork for Chile's present success. Those who see him as worse than Bolsheviks tend to be Western liberals of the caviar variety.
Bullshit. It wasn't. Some were Marxists but it was a rather large group of people that had trouble with American meddling in internal affairs. But of course supporting the Contra's is alright as they were "freedom fighters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras#Human_rights_controversies)"... right, Joe ?

And Pinochet was a man that killed 3200 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_under_Pinochet#Human_rights_violations) (and probably a lot more) of his own people, tortured around 30.000 and "success (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_under_Pinochet#Social_consequences)" ? Only a certain group in Chile has profited (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3688/is_199607/ai_n8754144/) from the Chicago boys and poverty today is considerably higher then it was before 1973 as the wealth was more equally spread and it wrecked Chilean democracy (and it still has left a bitter legacy of division). Chile before the 1970s was one of the few very stable democracies in Latin America and was actually nicknamed "the Norway of South America". And right now the amount of people under the poverty line is 18.2 percent (http://www.indexmundi.com/chile/population_below_poverty_line.html) (in 2005).

And the economic crisis in the 1970s was global btw. "Free market" America suffered horribly too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_(1964%E2%80%931980)#. 22Stagflation.22) but the reason for the coup d'etat was the fact that Alliende wanted to nationalise some American-held companies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_nationalization_of_copper).

Just get your facts straight.

[Crossbow]

"For my part, the time I spent in Russia was one of continually increasing nightmare. I have said in print what, on reflection, appeared to me to be the truth, but I have not expressed the sense of utter horror which overwhelmed me while I was there. Cruelty, poverty, suspicion, persecution formed the very air we breathed. Our conversations were continually spied upon. In the middle of the night one would hear shots, and know that idealists were being killed in prison. There was a hypocritical pretence of equality, and everybody was called "tovarisch", but it was amazing how differently this word could be pronounced, according as the person adressed was Lenin or a lazy servant..."


Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, chapter 9, Russia.

[safinator]

Very unfavorable

[Swan]

The USSR has been a great country - the first socialist democracy in the world. The country has served as an example of what the working masses guided by scientific socialism and led by a militant vanguard party can accomplish i.e. major advances in all areas of socioeconomic and cultural life. The obsolete and parasitical capitalist system and vestiges of feudalism were liquidated and replaced by a system that attends to the people's needs and run by the working people themselves. The people enjoyed quality employment in the country's thriving and world-class industries and the most advanced labor legislation anywhere in the world, with meaningful input at the workplace. There were benefits like lengthy holidays that were often spent at the Black Sea coast or the Caucasian mountains in the winter. The people did not have crippling mortgages, rents, food costs, etc found in capitalism, as all of these combined took up no more than 5 percent of a family's budget. There was no such thing as a student debt or exorbitant costs for medical services.

There was a rich and vibrant life in the village, as the collective farms eliminated the poverty and absence of rights characteristic of the Russian peasantry before the Revolution and currently in the so-called "Russian Federation".

The great Red Army was established that successfully crushed the enemies of the people rather than being unleashed on the people as has been the case with the kings and current regime in Moscow. This was a truly popular army that educated men in the spirit of socialism and patriotism.

The cultural policies largely succeeded in containing the spread of bourgeois decadent customs and ideas such as homosexuality, pornography, etc. Art, music, etc were all guided principles of democratism, humanism, and civic-mindedness, unlike the filth found in capitalism such as jazz music, gangster movies, and pulp magazines. The Komosmol provided opportunities for productive, structured lives for young people unlike the rampant hooliganism, gangs, drug traffickers found in capitalism. Vast sports programs were developed that produced the best athletes in the world and provided the population as a whole the opportunity for access to amateur competitions and events like the Spartakiad.

Predictably, the dismantling of the Soviet system (there was no 'collapse') by forces of counter-revolution with support from imperialists abroad has had catastrophic consequences for Russia in every possible way. Everything from the country's military to its agriculture are in shambles.

[CommonSense]

A complete abomination and the prime example of how communist ideas can be twisted for a totalitarian cause. Millions of people herded into kolhozes, left to fend for themselves and the little they got was taken away from them - it's no surprise so many of them died of starvation. In the cities people would slave all day for a shit wage and anything they could afford with it required hours of waiting in queue. Until Hruschov's mass building project, there were multiple families living in a single apartment. And let's not forget how entire ethnicities were deported and displaced across the vastness of the countries. Millions of 'kulaks', 'saboteurs', 'spies' either executed after staged trials or deported to Siberia to labor in freezing weather and pitiful living conditions. Even after Stalin there were no civil liberties, poverty, corruption and alcoholism abound as the country slowly drifted towards disintegration.