- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
A Palestinian man was found dead in a park in the Belgian city of Antwerp with his hands and feet tied, leaving the cause of his death a mystery amid authorities’ suggestion that it may have been a suicide.
“Suicide.”
With time, they would’ve killed it, with deportations, settlements, language policy, etc. Poles are more numerous than e.g. Lithuanians but Russia has wanted to Russify the whole area for centuries now. And the Soviets were nothing but the continuation of the genocidal, colonial, Russian empire with a different coat of paint.
They probably would’ve treated Poland like Ukraine and worse right from the start if the Nazis hadn’t tried a very similar thing directly beforehand: Poland had a very active and well-organised resistance, had the Soviets started out with their usual genocidal programme the Polish resistance would’ve fought right back. So they bid their time, first carefully cultivating an image as liberators.
The Soviets had 50 years, and didn’t manage it. The Nazis had five years and managed a fifth of the fucking population.
Pretty sure the Nazis put a higher priority on genocide than the Soviets did. Guess what? That makes them worse. And looking at those numbers, considerably worse.
They did treat Poland like Ukraine.
The Polish Home Army was a nonentity by the end of the war due to the Sovs stabbing them in the back, and the Cursed Soldiers of the next decade achieved little. It wasn’t that the Polish people just suddenly ‘forgot’ about what the Soviets had done to them - it was that the Nazis were unamfuckingbiguously worse.
Did you blank out on the Holodomor or are you denying it?
We’re talking about Soviets vs. Nazis here, not “Who did worse, specifically, in Poland”.
Neither. The looting of Poland by the Soviets post-WW2, the export of foodstuffs under famine conditions, and the repression of Polish political organs is well-recorded. The death toll just wasn’t as high.
Famine in Poland? You’re referring to the Warsaw Ghetto famine (that was the Nazis) or the shortages in the early 1980s? The GDR sent a lot of stuff over back then.
…frankly speaking looking through lists famines in Poland are historically about as astonishingly rare as plague outbreaks.
My point still stands, though: The Soviets were absolutely willing to do worse, it just wasn’t opportune at the moment. And this isn’t about “What either side did in Poland, specifically”, but whether there’s a point at which evil is so bad that it’s pointless to make distinctions. And the Soviets crossed that line.
You can also find people the Nazis treated way better than Poles, Slavic people: The Sorbs (mostly innocently). Or Croats (because Ustaše). That doesn’t suddenly make the Nazis less evil.
No, I’m referring to the postwar situation of the 1940s in which thousands of Poles were deliberately starved to death by Soviet authorities.
Yes, that’s kind of the point. The Soviets were opportunistic genocidaires. The Nazis sabotaged their own war effort to engage in more genocide. One. Is. Worse.
So the 1946/47 Winter? Germany also hungered back then, it was an extreme cold and draught double-whammy, but by the life of me I can’t find anything about Poland, and that’s with searching for sources in Polish.
Yes: Being opportunistic is more effective in the long run. Cold-bloodedness doesn’t tend to make things better, on the contrary, as it necessitates habit it’s harder to overcome.
…and just for the record: If you’d been arguing that the Soviets were worse I’d have challenged you by arguing that the Nazis were worse. That’s my very point. They’re both worse.
That’s not how comparatives work. Two things can’t both be ‘worse’ if they’re the only things being discussed.
My very point is that comparisons become impossible at some point. You might be able to say “The Nazis are worse here” or “The Soviets are worse here” but once you try to go “They’re better” you look around and see that nope, that’s just coincidence, nope, that’s still fucking unconscionable, nope, there’s no tiny sliver of goodness behind that that would make “better” a word anyone with an ounce of ethics would use without their stomach churning.
Thus, neither are better than the other, and both are worse. Because the shit they did is so far off the scale that comparisons break down. It’s like comparing infinities.