To think being Far left wing (communist) and praising the ussr is as bad as being far right and supporting the Bnp

[Dadistired1]

This is a question I asked myself, I have a colleague who is very far left in her political views and has the USSR flag as her iphone and laptop screen saver.

Aibu to think that it is just as bad as having a confederate flag or nazi flag as a screensaver. Aibu to think its shocking no one at work has said anything.

Im left wing, but praising a regime that killed millions and oppressed many is way pass the line.

(ps this colleague is not from any former soviet country)

Yes she's not rushing to move to a communist country though is she? They never are.

We had a russian colleague and she told us about how history seems to have been revised several times as to whats taught in school.'

What is taught as 'history' in school is constantly being revised, everywhere, except perhaps in the US where drivel about Thanksgiving and the kindly natives, and 'Progress' (i.e. the wringing out of civil rights in the face of deadly opposition) has been presented as fact to impressionable minds for decades.

there are many of us around who suffered extensively at the hands of communism. Please don’t tell us, from your privileged Western position, that we don’t know what we went through.

Please don't assume that just because life was not lived under political dictators, all western positions were privileged.

Please do not try to tell people whose childhoods were spent in the brutal industrial schools of Ireland that their lives were in any way different from lives spent under conditions created by political dictatorships of the left. Vicious beatings, malnutrition, medical neglect, sadistic punishments, all were part of daily life for thousands in Ireland alone, for many decades.

That is without even mentioning the Magdalen Laundries, where many inmates were essentially condemned to enslavement for life, without any trial, without any right to appeal their sentencing, and not for any recognised crime.

It is also without mentioning the theft and exportation for profit of babies born to unwed mothers.

'Brutal abhorrent regime' is a good phrase to describe the conditions of life for many in the privileged west.

Pretty much all of the former Eastern bloc countries have experienced population decline, mainly due to outward migration and falling birth rates. So to be cynical, you could argue that the Soviets made such a mess of those countries under communism, that people couldn't wait to escape to the capitalist west once they had the chance.

I distinctly said Ireland had a 'far smaller population' than it did 150 years ago
That 150 year time span was important, since this has been a period of explosive global population growth.
The phrase 'far smaller' in the case of Ireland means a population that dropped from about 8 million to about 3 million but picked up again in recent decades to about half of its 1840 level.

If you wanted to be really cynical about emigration form the eastern bloc in the post Soviet period you could claim that the successor states were actually the ones that had made such a hash of things that people couldn't possibly live there. Certainly post independence Ireland was a horrible place to live for the poor, and people left in droves. The difference between post independence Ireland and certain other states seems to be the eventual acknowledgement that Ireland had created its own hell and stopped blaming the Brits for its own shortcomings.

The Soviets also destroyed much ethnic and non-Russian culture, and many of those non-ethnically Russian regimes are now depopulated, as their people tend to move to the cities.

Go and read a little of Irish and Scottish history, particularly as it relates to language, social structure and culture, before you start bleating about destruction of ethnicity and culture, and talking as if the USSR was the only entity in history that sought to impose an alien culture on subject states.

Hellocampers, I have the pleasure of living in the US and seeing at first hand how untramelled capitalism works, and life under an oligarchy that tries to present itself as a democracy, spending my taxes not on redistribution of wealth affordable universal healthcare and properly funded education for the underclass but on the 'defence' industry, on war and on interference in the affairs of sovereign states left, right and centre.

I gather that most of the posters singing the praises of western democracy are actually living coccooned in socialist western European states, or if not, then in states where socialism has greatly influenced social and economic policy and priorities when it comes to public spending, certainly not in states where socialists are rare as hen's teeth and socialism is considered as near as dammit to being grounds for burning people at the stake.

"Bleating" is such a loaded word- come on Math, that's beneath you. I'm on the Left and have supported revolutionary socialist campaigns in this country, but I can't read a post like IronCurtain's and not concede that she has a point.

Caramel -- Cecil Woodham Smith's account of the Famine is a good place to start.

MaudeGonneMad:
'the surveillance structure of the Royal Irish Constabulary was impressive indeed - every meeting in every locality noted, membership figures, contents of speeches, movements of 'suspects', all gathered in in every district in Ireland and funnelled through to the British administration in Dublin Castle.'
Yes indeed, and there were lots of old scores settled when the War of Independence and Civil War occurred. The RIC paid for its role.

When the NI 'Troubles' started, a colleague remarked to my aunt, who lived and worked there at the time 'There'll be plenty of old scores settled now.' And there were.

Toadinthehole:
If we are to talk famines, I see your Irish Famine and raise you the Great Leap Forward.
Are we talking about scale here? Is it just scale that matters and not proportion of a population affected, or murderous motivation for ideological reasons (laissez faire economic dogma) on the part of those who saw in the population decimation of the famine an opportunity to move Ireland forward into a more modern economic model?

Is your response the reverse of 'A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic'?
i.e. 'A million deaths matter and one death is a statistic'?

I totally concur that Ireland he's lived under an oppressive regime, btw, I just think that your arguments stand on their own without you stooping to belittle other posters by your terminology.

*has lived, sorry.

IronCurtain needs to recognise that the Soviet Union fell apart twenty five years ago and that incessantly blaming those wicked Russian commies for all the problems experienced since then springs from a desire to blame that will not help move anyone forward.

There were plenty of committed Communists in Eastern Europe in the postwar period just as there were plenty of native supporters who willingly collaborated with the Nazis when they marched east and west, and there were Nazis in Britain too who would have been happy to fall into step had the Third Reich extended to Britain, and in Ireland too.

There is a difference between being fed up with your tiny flat and the lack of groceries in the shops and being a dedicated anti-Communist.

There is no destroyer of native, ethnic cultures in this modern era to match the force of western TV, the English language, and the relentless march of advertising. What was done under Communism and even by the English in Scotland and Ireland is chicken feed by comparison to the tidal wave of language and often alien, homogenised culture issuing forth 24/7 across the airwaves.

Fair point, BitofFun - I withdraw 'bleating'.

math I distinctly said Ireland had a 'far smaller population' than it did 150 years ago. That 150 year time span was important, since this has been a period of explosive global population growth.

And I clearly said that I was not referring to your self chosen 150 year time period.

And I am specifically referring to the period after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which so many people took advantage of to escape from the countries which formerly imposed a communist regime upon them.

Go and read a little of Irish and Scottish history, particularly as it relates to language, social structure and culture, before you start bleating about destruction of ethnicity and culture, and talking as if the USSR was the only entity in history that sought to impose an alien culture on subject states.

Bleating? Can you try and construct a proper recognised argument? At all?

Are you seriously suggesting that the Highland Clearances were equivalent to shipping people off to the gulags, affecting as they did one part of Scotland and the minority of the population? Or lets talk about Shetland and Orkney and the total oppression of their language by traditionally intolerant Scotland. Or lets talk now about the imposition of the Irish Gaelic language in Scotland for political gain. Theres an awful lot that the SNP have in common with communist regimes and its not based on their tax policies, its based on the desire to control and centralise, and to hell with decency and propriety.

This really is such a load of emotive, exaggerated nonsense. I worry for Scottish education if that pollicised, blinkered version of history is what you are taught.

I often think it will be quite predictable that Scotland will be the next "country" to see depopulation, due to the idiots that are currently in charge there.

even by the English in Scotland

The English in Scotland? You are talking about Scottish people's mothers and fathers for goodness sake. You would think you were talking about two distinct races, the inaccurate picture you try to portray.

There is no destroyer of native, ethnic cultures in this modern era to match the force of western TV, the English language, and the relentless march of advertising. What was done under Communism and even by the English in Scotland and Ireland is chicken feed by comparison to the tidal wave of language and often alien, homogenised culture issuing forth 24/7 across the airwaves.

This is the stuff of madness. I can only assume that you have actually lost the plot. Maybe you think issuing diktats as to the Truth According to the State, so that poor productivity, death and persecution can be hidden via having one State-controlled newspaper and news channel, and an internet blackout is preferable. Actually, I think you do.

Well, good luck with all that then. Just don't expect too many people to want to live alongside you in your strict little controlled State.

I actually find the minimisation of people killed by the State under Communism really, really offensive, and I'd like to apologise to anyone who suffered, or whose relatives or people they know suffered under it, for the stream of ignorance I quoted above.

math There is a difference between being fed up with your tiny flat and the lack of groceries in the shops and being a dedicated anti-Communist.

And you are so ignorant in your knowledge of the ethnic minorities in Russia, it is unbelievable. What the Communists did was collectivise and encourage formally nomadic populations in certain regions to move to cities. Where they had no choice to stay in one room apartments sharing bathrooms with other families. I suppose someone like you would say that was an improvement to a nomadic lifestyle, when in reality the nomadic tribes of the Steppes and Tundra were highly successfully in living in their environment and in fact in trading from it. Collectivisation destroyed all those mercantile networks and those lifestyles, never mind actual ethnicities for good.

Try and educate yourself - I feel really embarrassed for Scottish education, if that is where you are from as you seem to claim to be, to produce such ignorance.

Math, ideologically I disagree with you on many counts. However this is not a political or ideological debate.This thread was triggered by the use of very loaded symbolism representative of a brutal regime that destroyed millions of lives.

I respect the great influence left wing ideologists had in Europe and completely agree with your point that socialist democracies especially in Northern Europe are good places to live in. I refuse to cancel out that good influence by associating it in any way with what happened in post-war Eastern Europe because really, there are no grounds for comparison.

I am not educated enough about Ireland but just because because cruelty took place in one part of the world does not mean I need to look at my own history with different eyes. It was still wrong. I would not dream of telling Irish people that they need to look at history differently and that is why I ask people like you to respect that brandishing the Soviet flag is painful for those who had to suffer at the hands of that regime.

I am not sure what the point you are trying to make is when you say: There is a difference between being fed up with your tiny flat and the lack of groceries in the shops and being a dedicated anti-Communist. I tried to give people on this thread an understanding of the lack of any basic individual freedom that went on in those countries. Eastern Europe wasn't a great utopia only tarred by the inappropriate size of the fucking flats so please don't dismiss it like this. It is offensive to do so and I would never dare to do the same in return about a country like Ireland for example.

And yes, Communism fell 25 years ago and I can tell you despite my country's current problems it is still a million times better than what it was back then. I would choose it, or the UK, or the US any day over Russia, Korea or China because my individual freedom is much more important to me. I believe most people, including yourself, would do the same.

I have told you why I chose that particular time period. It has seen a global population explosion. If you want to dodge the implications of my choice of time period by pretending it is irrelevant that Ireland's population fell dramatically while the populations of other states rose dramatically, you are of course welcome.

Ask yourself why anyone would leave a country that was no longer Communist and no longer undemocratic. Surely for staunch anti communists, a country finally free but also 'home' would be the ideal place in which to live? If people left it was because the successor regimes presided over chaos both civil and economic, and because they weren't willing to wait it out and contribute to the establishment of democracy.

Please do yourself the favour of reading about Scottish history before you start minimising the destruction of Scottish language and culture. In particular please refer to the Highland Clearances and ask yourself whether you like Toadinthehole are blinded by scale and share an unfortunate tendency to discount starvation and being forced off ancestral lands unless it
(a) happened in the Soviet Union
and
(b) involved millions of people.

Theres an awful lot that the SNP have in common with communist regimes and its not based on their tax policies, its based on the desire to control and centralise, and to hell with decency and propriety.
LOL.
And the opposition to Scottish independence has nothing whatsoever to do with the desire to control and centralise, only with another centre and somebody else doing the controlling. I gather you are not a fan of the SNP? My prediction wrt Scotland is a net gain of population, since university education there is free.

States tend to have governments. Governments tend to need to exert a degree of control and centralisation often goes along with that. Otherwise you end up with a spectacle like Yeltsin's Russia.

What the Communists did was collectivise and encourage formally nomadic populations in certain regions to move to cities. Where they had no choice to stay in one room apartments sharing bathrooms with other families.
At least they had bathrooms. The poor of Dublin had a commode in the yard and a pump, both outside. Women had to carry water upstairs every day to the squalid rooms their families lived in. The poor in Ireland were similar to the Soviet proletariat of course in that they had no choice about the conditions in which they lived their lives.

You should read about what collectivisation entailed in the Soviet Union. It was not a matter of forcing or encouraging ethnic minorities into cities.

Maybe you think issuing diktats as to the Truth According to the State, so that poor productivity, death and persecution can be hidden via having one State-controlled newspaper and news channel, and an internet blackout is preferable. Actually, I think you do.
I live in the country that spawned Joseph McCarthy (maybe read up on McCarthyism?), where Fox News rules the airwaves. Assuming you live in Britain and assuming you have some critical faculties, ask yourself what life would be like in a place where there was no state controlled and reasonably independent news source accountable to the public and instead all news was controlled by private corporations. Again, assuming you live in Britain, you are living a life that is very much insulated from the worst excesses of the capitalist system. If you even moved to Ireland you might see things in a different light.

Just don't expect too many people to want to live alongside you in your strict little controlled State.
Unfortunately, both for America and for the rest of the world, 318.9 million other people live alongside me in a state where there is no access to unbiased news.

"There is a difference between being fed up with your tiny flat and the lack of groceries in the shops and being a dedicated anti-Communist."
I tried to give people on this thread an understanding of the lack of any basic individual freedom that went on in those countries. Eastern Europe wasn't a great utopia only tarred by the inappropriate size of the fucking flats so please don't dismiss it like this.

I made my comment in response to the idea put forth here that most people in eastern Europe were longing for the day when Communism would end and in the context of descriptions of life that involved size of flats, lack of groceries, etc. i.e. the confusion of political and material disgruntlement.

I have made previous comments about lack of choice and poor living conditions in the west to highlight that the poor and the powerless get the short end of the stick no mater where they live.

Something that seems not to have penetrated the minds of many here is the fact that freedom is a meaningless concept unless you are in a privileged position in your society relative to the toiling masses or those who want to toil but do not have a job, and it doesn't matter if that society is in the west or the east.

Yours is the voice of privilege -- since it is the voice of one who can afford to put 'freedom' ahead of material issues, I think it can be fairly assumed that material matters are not a worry.

If you are poor, no amount of theoretical freedom will benefit you. Try telling the poor of the Dublin flats that yes they were living in hopeless poverty with no chance of ever doing better, but whoopee -- their post boxes were finally painted green instead of red, so they should cheer up.

The kind of extreme poverty that you are talking about is still not an excuse to set up an abusive government that will take away all of your rights. Not least because in eastern Europe said government was too busy making sure wealth was accumulated in the hands of the political elite to care much about the masses wellbeing.

I am willing to bet math that compared to most in the world both of us are privileged and you'll never hear me deny this. In my case, this is a direct consequence of my country's abusive government having been overturned 25 years ago. And at the momebt the vast majority of the world's privileged live in western democracies, not under totalitarianism.

Ultimately, I think we can agree to have a different view on how the world needs to change in order to have better, more inclusive societies. Don't get me wrong, I see the need for change as much as you do. But I don't think you fundamentally disagree with me when I say that totalitarianism is not the way forward. Communism as it happened was an abusive and reckless regime and humanity can do a lot better than to uphold it as anything aspirational.

The life expectancy has went down dramatically since communism collapsed.
The collapse of communism has produced clear winners and losers.

I'm sorry colley but that is not true. Life expectancy in the CEE countries increased rapidly in the 90s and the Baltic states started improving a few years later.

Russia and Ukraine have indeed experienced a decline during post-Soviet decades and we can argue how much of that is linked to the fact that they were still under an absolutist regime for most of that period.

I was talking about Russia and Ukraine. I watched a documentary about this. In some age groups, life expectancy had plummeted. They talked for example to some older people whose living standards had fallen dramatically and were struggling to survive.

math I have told you why I chose that particular time period. It has seen a global population explosion. If you want to dodge the implications of my choice of time period by pretending it is irrelevant that Ireland's population fell dramatically while the populations of other states rose dramatically, you are of course welcome.

You don't get to choose the terms of reference for this discussion. Ones which you do not stick to yourself when you choose to labour the Highland Clearances ending in the 19th Century. (while blithely ignoring Scots of the same period engaging in and making vast sums of money out of slave ownership in colonies overseas). You also ignore within your attempt at a self-imposed time period the millions who had little choice but to emigrate from the Scandinavian countries due to grinding poverty (in fact you also ignore the typical socialist ruination of ethnic populations of Sami and their lifestyle in those countries this century, but I suspect for someone whose intellectual response to reasoned argument is to complain of bleating, that is beyond you).

Right now we have scenes of Germans welcoming refugees from a totally different culture on our screens, yet you embarrass your country by making self-pitying remarks about events in its history which happened hundreds of years ago and their next door neighbours, who don't even live in a different country! Its pathetic. Do you think there is actually any country out there whose people didn't suffer some awful periods in their history? Maybe you think the Irish, or the Scots, are in some way more important, or more favoured than any other people, and their suffering means more. ie an outside toilet is somehow worse than a grandfather shipped off to the gulags for daring to write the truth. In The Netherlands in the same period, the rural population tended to be so poor that they would make soil soup, in the hope of some fibre being included, and many people had no choice but to emigrate. But if you moaned repeatedly about those periods now, people would simply think you were a whinging obsessive.

I also kind of love the way you think no Russians under communism had outside toilets, only the Irish had those.

My prediction wrt Scotland is a net gain of population, since university education there is free.

Well, certainly Scotland will have to offer something free to encourage people to move there if its going to lose much of its own population to the much freer and richer state to its south. Whether they will stay seems a tad optimistic, but I suppose it depends on how bad it is where they are coming from. But Scotland has had free education for over a hundred years, and free university education for a lengthy period prior to the SNP's policies, in a way that those countries from which it will have to bribe emigrants did not. I certainly wouldn't want to live there with the political instability, whereas I would happily live in England. And to be honest, the thought of listening to more than one whinging person like you fixated on one period on history and never able to get over it but using it as a political tool for ever more would be akin to sticking needles under my fingernails. I should imagine many other people would feel the same way.

As for the rest, I'm afraid it does have quite a lot of rambling, emotional dogma, and its not really worth sifting through. You have already lost much of your audience by being rude to other posters, myself included. "bleating" - again, why didn't your extensive free education properly equip you for rational discussion?

Assuming you live in Britain and assuming you have some critical faculties, ask yourself what life would be like in a place where there was no state controlled and reasonably independent news source accountable to the public and instead all news was controlled by private corporations. Again, assuming you live in Britain, you are living a life that is very much insulated from the worst excesses of the capitalist system. If you even moved to Ireland you might see things in a different light.

Oh I see! You live in America. I think the people of Ireland might be a bit annoyed about the way you are portraying their country.

Apologies for my lack of "critical faculties" (seriously, how many idiotic dumb insults will I have to endure on this thread)? but as you are evidently unable to work out, I am not "from Britain". I actually come from a country that was invaded in the second world war and in which many people lost their lives and were shipped to concentration camps, but I don't see the people here referring to it in a type of distasteful competitive blame-game.

The point is, you can think what you like; you are entitled to your own opinions and allowed to express them, and other people are allowed to disagree with them, in this country. It needs to be cherished.

2 x whinging vs 1 x bleating= Total loss of high ground.

Why can't we be civil? It would make the conversation far more interesting and productive. Imagine you're guests on ^In Our Time* if it helps.