My War On Vodkastan

[Cheerful Charlie]

This is Texas. Here we drink rotgut whisky. It's an old Texas tradition.

 

[PyramidHead]

"The communists have been big on equality based on origins"? Stalin deported many minority populations in the USSR to Siberia. Ethnic cleansing based on paranoia that ruined lives and left many dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union

Many of those were Nazi sympathizers and literal terrorists who were plotting to overthrow the USSR from within. Others were Poles and Jews that were deported to get them away from persecution by the Nazis.

"A number of Caucasian and near-Caucasian people had shown themselves disloyal. The Chechens, Ingushes, the Balkarians, the people of Karachay, the Tatars of Crimea and the Kalmyks had indeed fought equally against the Nazis and the Soviet ‘imperialisms’. The Karachay people had openly welcomed the Germans under General Kleist and the prime mover in this astonishing act had been none other than the Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee of the Soviets of the Karachay Autonomous Province. The Crimean Tatars were still working together with the Germans exterminating all the Russians they could, especially the Party members. There was an anti-Soviet partisan war in progress."

Grigori Tokaev: Comrade X p.245

"Proportionately to their numbers, very many more people were deported from the Western Ukraine than from the Baltic states. Cities like Lvov were hotbeds of the most extreme Ukrainian nationalism, fascism, and anti-semitism; and the Western Ukraine was by far the most pro-Nazi part of the Soviet Union to have been occupied by the Germans. For at least two years after the war a savage guerrilla war was waged by Ukrainian nationals, with Nazi officers, against the Russians."

Alexander Werth: The Post-War Years

"Anti-historians often describe the enforced resettlements as acts of ‘genocide.’ But enforced resettlement of national groups can in no way be identified with intent to destroy them. Indeed, even such a hostile commentator as Robert Conquest is compelled to admit: “Nothing here matches the horror of the Nazi gas chambers. These nations were not physically annihilated.”"

The Enforced Resettlements Speech to the Stalin Society by Bill Bland, 1993.

In addition to which, it must be said, there is ample historical precedent for the same thing taking place in other nations at the time, such as the 6 million Japanese deported from America, and Koreans and Chinese from Japan. Deportation is part of the history of every major world power, especially in times of war.

In particular, the Crimean Tartars overwhelmingly sided with Nazi Germany in WWII, and committed countless acts of sabotage and destruction to Russian food supplies, bases, and shipping routes during the war. This is all well-documented and supported by respected German historians. You have to put these events into the context of World War II, which took multitudes more Soviet lives than the ~400,000 that occurred during the process of deporting the groups who contributed to that loss of life.

 

[barbos]

"The communists have been big on equality based on origins"? Stalin deported many minority populations in the USSR to Siberia.

As someone who was born in Siberia I don't know how to feel about it. And yes there are or rather were few german speaking villages near here, they are quite neat (as opposed to ordinary russian ones)

Ethnic cleansing based on paranoia that ruined lives and left many dead.

It was no different from deportation of japanese. Wait, no, it was very different because japnese had not shown any signs of disloyalty to the US whereas in case of chechens and crimean tartars there were quite a few "signs", very painful ones. Russian Germans were technically moved to save them from possible german-german coercion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union
....
Soviet archives documented 390,000^[4] deaths during kulak forced resettlement and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported to forced settlements during the 1940s;^[5] however Steven Rosefield and Norman Naimark put overall deaths closer to some 1 to 1.5 million perishing as a result of the deportations – of those deaths, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush were recognized as genocides by Ukraine-( plus 3 other countries) and the European Parliament respectively.
...

The horrors of Stalinism were many and involved millions. Ethnic cleansing and genocide.

You are really getting worked up about this Stalin poll. aren't you?
Pools are often misleading.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Over the years, I have seen a fair number of polls showing many Russians still have favorable view of Stalin, which I have always for disturbing and fascinating.

Of course here in the United States, we have quite a few people who have favorable views of the old Confederate South. and since we can't have a return to slavery, forming white ethnostates. Not to mention our Dominist Christian types who are perfectly comfortable with slavery as it is biblicaly acceptable. These types are typically Trump supporters no matter how mad and bad Trump gets.

The whole world is going crazy.

 

[PyramidHead]

Over the years, I have seen a fair number of polls showing many Russians still have favorable view of Stalin, which I have always for disturbing and fascinating.

Of course here in the United States, we have quite a few people who have favorable views of the old Confederate South. and since we can't have a return to slavery, forming white ethnostates. Not to mention our Dominist Christian types who are perfectly comfortable with slavery as it is biblicaly acceptable. These types are typically Trump supporters no matter how mad and bad Trump gets.

The whole world is going crazy.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Over the years, I have seen a fair number of polls showing many Russians still have favorable view of Stalin, which I have always for disturbing and fascinating.

Of course here in the United States, we have quite a few people who have favorable views of the old Confederate South. and since we can't have a return to slavery, forming white ethnostates. Not to mention our Dominist Christian types who are perfectly comfortable with slavery as it is biblicaly acceptable.

You make a good point up to that point. There are people who hold all sorts of crazy beliefs, so saying people believe something (like slavery is good or stalin is good) does not make that belief good.

These types are typically Trump supporters no matter how mad and bad Trump gets.

At this point you got kind of carried away. At least you made PyramidHead cringe by comparing supporters of Stalin to people who support Trump for racist reasons. I think that comparison really rustled his jimmies.

 

[PyramidHead]

Ahhh my jimmies, they are certainly... rustled

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

All you have to do is look at the surveys and polls of who supports Trump and why. GOP voters still give Trump an 85% approval rating.
Evangelical Republicans have an even higher rate of supporting Trump. Despite all that Trump has done, and not done that needed doing. I was well away of these fact as I wrote about this. Only now have some evangelical white GOP voters are beginning to have second thoughts. 62% still plan to vote for Trump.

I have a doctor I go to, who recently took a trip to China. He reports that one thing that struck him was that in China, Mao Tse Tung is still very popular despite the deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward, the atrocities of the Communist regime under Mao and the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Statues and poster and other exhibits of Mao are quite common and hard to ignore.

In this crazed world, there seems to be nothing a murderous and incompetent dictator can do to earn universal disapproval. Even Hitler is still idolized by many idiots world wide. Including here in the US with Swastika flag waving right winged protesters for example.

 

[barbos]

All you have to do is look at the surveys and polls of who supports Trump and why. GOP voters still give Trump an 85% approval rating.
Evangelical Republicans have an even higher rate of supporting Trump. Despite all that Trump has done, and not done that needed doing. I was well away of these fact as I wrote about this. Only now have some evangelical white GOP voters are beginning to have second thoughts. 62% still plan to vote for Trump.

I have a doctor I go to, who recently took a trip to China. He reports that one thing that struck him was that in China, Mao Tse Tung is still very popular despite the deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward, the atrocities of the Communist regime under Mao and the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Statues and poster and other exhibits of Mao are quite common and hard to ignore.

In this crazed world, there seems to be nothing a murderous and incompetent dictator can do to earn universal disapproval. Even Hitler is still idolized by many idiots world wide. Including here in the US with Swastika flag waving right winged protesters for example.

Finally you realized that this Stalin pool data does not mean anything.

 

[PyramidHead]

All you have to do is look at the surveys and polls of who supports Trump and why. GOP voters still give Trump an 85% approval rating.
Evangelical Republicans have an even higher rate of supporting Trump. Despite all that Trump has done, and not done that needed doing. I was well away of these fact as I wrote about this. Only now have some evangelical white GOP voters are beginning to have second thoughts. 62% still plan to vote for Trump.

I have a doctor I go to, who recently took a trip to China. He reports that one thing that struck him was that in China, Mao Tse Tung is still very popular despite the deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward, the atrocities of the Communist regime under Mao and the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Statues and poster and other exhibits of Mao are quite common and hard to ignore.

In this crazed world, there seems to be nothing a murderous and incompetent dictator can do to earn universal disapproval. Even Hitler is still idolized by many idiots world wide. Including here in the US with Swastika flag waving right winged protesters for example.

Finally you realized that this Stalin pool data does not mean anything.

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

 

[Harry Bosch]

All you have to do is look at the surveys and polls of who supports Trump and why. GOP voters still give Trump an 85% approval rating.
Evangelical Republicans have an even higher rate of supporting Trump. Despite all that Trump has done, and not done that needed doing. I was well away of these fact as I wrote about this. Only now have some evangelical white GOP voters are beginning to have second thoughts. 62% still plan to vote for Trump.

I have a doctor I go to, who recently took a trip to China. He reports that one thing that struck him was that in China, Mao Tse Tung is still very popular despite the deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward, the atrocities of the Communist regime under Mao and the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Statues and poster and other exhibits of Mao are quite common and hard to ignore.

In this crazed world, there seems to be nothing a murderous and incompetent dictator can do to earn universal disapproval. Even Hitler is still idolized by many idiots world wide. Including here in the US with Swastika flag waving right winged protesters for example.

Finally you realized that this Stalin pool data does not mean anything.

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

Sorry, but this doesn't excuse their practice of murdering innocents and eliminating all personal rights.

 

[PyramidHead]

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

Sorry, but this doesn't excuse their practice of murdering innocents and eliminating all personal rights.

Neither leader did that, so please stay on topic

 

[barbos]

All you have to do is look at the surveys and polls of who supports Trump and why. GOP voters still give Trump an 85% approval rating.
Evangelical Republicans have an even higher rate of supporting Trump. Despite all that Trump has done, and not done that needed doing. I was well away of these fact as I wrote about this. Only now have some evangelical white GOP voters are beginning to have second thoughts. 62% still plan to vote for Trump.

I have a doctor I go to, who recently took a trip to China. He reports that one thing that struck him was that in China, Mao Tse Tung is still very popular despite the deaths caused by the Great Leap Forward, the atrocities of the Communist regime under Mao and the disastrous Cultural Revolution. Statues and poster and other exhibits of Mao are quite common and hard to ignore.

In this crazed world, there seems to be nothing a murderous and incompetent dictator can do to earn universal disapproval. Even Hitler is still idolized by many idiots world wide. Including here in the US with Swastika flag waving right winged protesters for example.

Finally you realized that this Stalin pool data does not mean anything.

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

I don't argue with that. It's just that 99% of the population which was polled are hardly experts on relevant history. You air some propagamentary on the 1st channel and you are gonna have a spike in Stalin approval. You don't even have to air anything, just have few high profile corruption incidents and Stalin ratings go up.

 

[RVonse]

But in Trump's case, you didn't have official government policies with his signature that were consistent with him being the least racist person you've ever met. His policies were all the opposite of what he said about himself.

The last two info/educational threads I started got next to no replies, but I'll consider it. I got some good discussion going in the DPRK thread, but nobody really changed their minds about it. Thank you for at least being open to the possibility of learning something, though.

That's all you can do PyramidHead. And for what its worth, I totally agree with your position here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

Mao was far more the cause of China's problems than the solution. China only started functioning reasonably well when they went back to capitalism.

 

[PyramidHead]

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

Mao was far more the cause of China's problems than the solution. China only started functioning reasonably well when they went back to capitalism.

China is socialist with Chinese characteristics, which is a recognition that different circumstances on the road to communism call for different systems and strategies. Mao was necessary to bring China into the modern world from the role of enslaved peasants to a self-determining nation of disciplined and dedicated workers. Now Xi is carrying out the next phase of their development. They are on a timetable that extends decades, maybe a century, into the future. Socialism takes a while to build and depends on the material conditions of where it's being built.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except you're both wrong and it does, as does the reverence for Mao in China. Both leaders guided their respective countries through periods of external and internal threats and brought them into the modern era, and both were subjected to imperialist propaganda campaigns to discredit their achievements and paint them as cruel despots.

Mao was far more the cause of China's problems than the solution. China only started functioning reasonably well when they went back to capitalism.

China is socialist with Chinese characteristics, which is a recognition that different circumstances on the road to communism call for different systems and strategies. Mao was necessary to bring China into the modern world from the role of enslaved peasants to a self-determining nation of disciplined and dedicated workers. Now Xi is carrying out the next phase of their development. They are on a timetable that extends decades, maybe a century, into the future. Socialism takes a while to build and depends on the material conditions of where it's being built.

China was communist for a while, a total disaster that killed tens of millions of people. It's only when they went capitalist that they started towards the modern world. It's not a matter of socialism taking a while to build, they aren't even trying. Rather, they are trying to dismantle the remains of the old communist system. (It lives on somewhat in the state owned enterprises.)

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated disaster that killed millions, not due to peculiarities of Communism itself, but because of massive ignorance and incompetence of Mao. When his fellow communists tried to ease him out of power to end the madness, he unleashed the Cultural revolution to hold on to power. Again, not a peculiar feature of socialism or communism, but abuse of his popularity among young fools who had grown up never knowing anything that we might consider a normal, competent state of any sort. Abuse of a personality cult to retain power in China. Millions died before that was put down.

Capitalism entered China when the Red Army took to starting various businesses because there was otherwise no money to support the Red Army which was effectively on their own. Which became the model for the present modern day Chinese style of a Communist - Capitalist hybrid system. Doctrinaire marxist Communism had died the death of utter failure back in the 60's and early 70's.

 

[PyramidHead]

China is socialist with Chinese characteristics, which is a recognition that different circumstances on the road to communism call for different systems and strategies. Mao was necessary to bring China into the modern world from the role of enslaved peasants to a self-determining nation of disciplined and dedicated workers. Now Xi is carrying out the next phase of their development. They are on a timetable that extends decades, maybe a century, into the future. Socialism takes a while to build and depends on the material conditions of where it's being built.

China was communist for a while, a total disaster that killed tens of millions of people. It's only when they went capitalist that they started towards the modern world. It's not a matter of socialism taking a while to build, they aren't even trying. Rather, they are trying to dismantle the remains of the old communist system. (It lives on somewhat in the state owned enterprises.)

Reassessing the Great Leap Forward

In 1950, when the Communist Party took the helm after the liberation of China from its many slavers, average life span was 35 years; 20% of population was addicted to opium; and literacy rates was something like 14%.
In 1976, at the end of Maoist era, merely 26 years later, average life span had doubled to 70; the opium problem was eradicated; and literacy levels had gone up to around 80%.

This was a man, a revolutionary, a socialist, who worked day and night, and dedicated his life to the freedom and health of his country from dynastic corruption, genocidal colonial rule, brutal capitalist oppression, and the resultant social diseases. What possible motive did Mao Ze Dong have for “killing 80 million of his own people”?

The article goes on to note the various other factors that contributed far more heavily to the (exaggerated) death tolls during this period of China's history, and puts those numbers (even the exaggerated ones) into context by comparing them to those brought about by Western powers. The conclusion:

At this time the citizens of China was hard and embattled, who had just finished fighting a series of long lasting wars. There were grenade launchers and machine guns in every village. But during or after the famine not a single revolt against the Communist Party occurred. Why?

Because the people understood very clearly that the bulk of blame for the suffering that they experienced could not be placed on the Communist Party. And because there was immediate government response in the form of massive nation wide relief programs and rescue missions.

And some years later, Mao was already bed-ridden and very ill, when revolutionary passion had tipped overboard into zealotry and witch hunts during the Cultural Revolution, largely engineered by the infamous Gang of Four. While the ordeal likely did have some positive effects on society in the long run, in eliminating residual decadent, bourgeois, classist, sexist, etc., mentality, most of the Chinese population is more critical than approving of that episode, as is the CCP. But that is maybe subject for another time.

However, today, it is crucial to understand that none of the recent epic and amazing strides of modern China would be possible without the liberation won and foundations built by the communist party under the leadership of Mao Ze dong.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Reassessing the Great Leap Forward

In 1950, when the Communist Party took the helm after the liberation of China from its many slavers, average life span was 35 years; 20% of population was addicted to opium; and literacy rates was something like 14%.
In 1976, at the end of Maoist era, merely 26 years later, average life span had doubled to 70; the opium problem was eradicated; and literacy levels had gone up to around 80%.

Why should we even believe the lifespan data?

The opium problem would have self-solved--stop importing it, that's enough time for most of the addicts to either die or get off it.

You're neglecting the fact that something like 10% of the population died of starvation during that time.

I do agree they did a good job with literacy, although it's not as good as they claim--I've watched my wife struggle to communicate with those from rural areas many times. The state has been mandating the teaching of Mandarin for 70 years now, there should be no more language barrier than between different parts of the US.

This was a man, a revolutionary, a socialist, who worked day and night, and dedicated his life to the freedom and health of his country from dynastic corruption, genocidal colonial rule, brutal capitalist oppression, and the resultant social diseases. What possible motive did Mao Ze Dong have for “killing 80 million of his own people”?

He didn't intend to. It's that he tried to impose communism and communism couldn't produce enough to feed the people. Note that even those who didn't die had their growth stunted--I can see over the heads of basically everyone that was born during the communist era. I can't see over the heads of those born in the capitalist era. That's nutrition, not genetics.

The article goes on to note the various other factors that contributed far more heavily to the (exaggerated) death tolls during this period of China's history, and puts those numbers (even the exaggerated ones) into context by comparing them to those brought about by Western powers. The conclusion:

At this time the citizens of China was hard and embattled, who had just finished fighting a series of long lasting wars. There were grenade launchers and machine guns in every village. But during or after the famine not a single revolt against the Communist Party occurred. Why?

Because the people understood very clearly that the bulk of blame for the suffering that they experienced could not be placed on the Communist Party. And because there was immediate government response in the form of massive nation wide relief programs and rescue missions.

This is laughable. If there was a revolt we wouldn't have heard about it. And why do you think they still had those weapons? The Red Guards took whatever they wanted to, even when it was meaningless. (The house my wife grew up in had steps in front because that's how it was designed. The other houses didn't, so the red guards removed the steps. Never mind that this meant that this left a "step" of more than 2 feet to get into the building, lowering the floor wasn't possible. That's the callous evil you're defending.)