Yeah. It’s a lot to go through and a lot more than I was expecting. I’m open to being wrong here, most of the people I’ve met don’t seem to indicate anything similar to the above, but that could still be broadly anecdotal. Certainly a lot to think about and read up on here, and I’m not anti communist at all, but I think that WWII alone is enough for me to be anti-Stalin and make me less likely to believe that his people were treated well. I could be wrong there too.
I’ll point out though that I’m not making an argument. It’s literally impossible to “undermine” someone’s experience unless they’re lying about it. And I’m more likely to believe someone about their experience over the numbers which describe what their experience should have been. I still see some humility in that, but I would understand if not everyone does
What experiences are you actually talking about? Because I will gladly take an hour out of my day just to fish for a few first-hand examples of people who lived in the USSR talking about how much better life was before its dissolution.
There’s a popular youtube channel called Bald and Bankrupt, and the guy who does it generally sucks, but almost universally whenever he talks to someone who actually lived in the USSR, they talk about how much better it was before its dissolution. There’s also statues and portraits of Stalin all over the dang place.
For the sake of covering “both sides”, I did find another clip while skimming of a woman talking about how her family was sent to Siberia by Stalin (as soon as she said this, I knew her family was probably very wealthy, which she confirmed immediately, lol). Her family wasn’t sent to a gulag, but rather to another village. Eventually they were allowed to return. If you’d like to know more about what the kulaks did to deserve being sent to another village, and you’re not aware already… well, that’s a whole other can of worms that frankly I don’t feel like getting into right now. But basically, by withholding the harvest of crops en masse from the people who needed them for the sake of their own profit, the kulaks - who were dissatisfied with communist redistribution of wealth (kulak means a person who is wealthy enough to own land and hire labor) - caused the deaths of many, many citizens of the USSR.
There are more examples of older folks speaking positively about the USSR, but that’s all I feel like combing through right now.
Anyway, I wanna go play video games now. I hope some of this was of actual interest to you, and helps you feel a little more open-minded. I appreciate you actually making the effort to confront your viewpoint, not many people make that step.
Yeah. It’s a lot to go through and a lot more than I was expecting. I’m open to being wrong here, most of the people I’ve met don’t seem to indicate anything similar to the above, but that could still be broadly anecdotal. Certainly a lot to think about and read up on here, and I’m not anti communist at all, but I think that WWII alone is enough for me to be anti-Stalin and make me less likely to believe that his people were treated well. I could be wrong there too.
I’ll point out though that I’m not making an argument. It’s literally impossible to “undermine” someone’s experience unless they’re lying about it. And I’m more likely to believe someone about their experience over the numbers which describe what their experience should have been. I still see some humility in that, but I would understand if not everyone does
What experiences are you actually talking about? Because I will gladly take an hour out of my day just to fish for a few first-hand examples of people who lived in the USSR talking about how much better life was before its dissolution.
There’s a popular youtube channel called Bald and Bankrupt, and the guy who does it generally sucks, but almost universally whenever he talks to someone who actually lived in the USSR, they talk about how much better it was before its dissolution. There’s also statues and portraits of Stalin all over the dang place.
“Many old people like me lived better in the USSR” …later on in the video… “In the USSR it was better … [now] the poor people have to pay for their apartments, they don’t have enough for medicine, don’t have enough for housing fees”
Here is a woman who describes her time in the USSR as “living wonderfully” before restructuring.
Here is a woman who talks about how her community was cooperative right up until the USSR’s collapse. Later in the video another woman talks about being forced from her home overnight while the USSR was being picked apart in 1992.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, everything in Russia became dirty”
For the sake of covering “both sides”, I did find another clip while skimming of a woman talking about how her family was sent to Siberia by Stalin (as soon as she said this, I knew her family was probably very wealthy, which she confirmed immediately, lol). Her family wasn’t sent to a gulag, but rather to another village. Eventually they were allowed to return. If you’d like to know more about what the kulaks did to deserve being sent to another village, and you’re not aware already… well, that’s a whole other can of worms that frankly I don’t feel like getting into right now. But basically, by withholding the harvest of crops en masse from the people who needed them for the sake of their own profit, the kulaks - who were dissatisfied with communist redistribution of wealth (kulak means a person who is wealthy enough to own land and hire labor) - caused the deaths of many, many citizens of the USSR.
There are more examples of older folks speaking positively about the USSR, but that’s all I feel like combing through right now.
Anyway, I wanna go play video games now. I hope some of this was of actual interest to you, and helps you feel a little more open-minded. I appreciate you actually making the effort to confront your viewpoint, not many people make that step.