John McCain Dead

nonfumi said:


Thats how any state operates;that isn't unique to socialism. There is always a ruling class and a class to be ruled. In capitalism the bourgeois rule and in socialism the proles .Either way one class will always go against the interest of the other.

You should also have a more nuanced view on the USSR if you are going to attack it instead of parroting what your social studies teacher said you should rather see the condition the USSR was in. The bourgoise and kulaks weren't "oppressed" out of pure malice. The process of collectivization was underway and due to it going against their own interest as land owners they rebelled by burning their farms and killing livestock.Threats of famine were large so the scarcity this produced was not only a rebellious impulse against the USSR but also an attempt to create profit. It is hard to sympathize with these people during that time.

I am not a tankie tho so I wont go to far to defend what I also see as a disaster but just know that socialism isn't just when the state does stuff. Also know that a state only becomes authoritarian as the USSR when it faces huge external threats such as invasion.

deg said:


todays capitalism is not racist and imperialist anymore though
try looking up neoliberalism that is the kind of capitalism that even a lot of liberal politicians want and do for decades now
this kind of capitalism wants globalization to happen in order for capitalists to create more profit by getting new customers from the likes of different cultural backgrounds/races/sexes/etc

but ye neoliberalism is still about maximizing capitalism as much as possible so its destructive to the environment and also its prone to economic/wealth inequality we are seeing today

-Placeholder- said:


Communism was oppressive under Lenin too, and he personally used lots of terror and violence in his revolution. Lenin created the gulags and started the dekulakisation campaign, Stalin only ramped up what Lenin had already started.

Socialism is totalitarian by nature. It is state control of the means of production, including the people who are those means. And people who object to having their property stolen, having no freedom, or having to live in poverty due to the problems of a centrally planned economy, are persecuted. It's not the fault of any one leader, it's a fundamental problems with the system itself. Impoverishment and oppression have happened every time socialism has been implemented.



When you liberate someone, you let them keep their country afterwards.

-Placeholder- said:


No, the kulaks and "bourgeoisie" didn't go against the interest of the proletariat. They were oppressed simply because they were wealthier and had more property due to their own hard work, and it's the Bolsheviks who launched a murderous campaign of genocide that was completely unjustified. The famine was completely their own fault and it was a result of their policies and collectivisation of farms. And need I mentioned Holdomor. Being a Communism apologist is quite poor taste. Socialism is when the state does stuff, because socialism is an institutional violation of property rights.

TsukuyomiREKT said:
Some pretty disgusting posts in here. Not that I'm surprised.

maluhia said:
You act like context doesn't matter. Nazi Germany or liberation via USSR. Truly a tough call.

Zelev said:


You're more offended about people being happy an oppressor is gone than the oppressor's actual crimes against humanity. You obviously have your priorities straight and know everything.

In what context was the ethnic cleansing

Russification

and fifty-year-long Soviet occupation of the Baltic States justified?

TsukuyomiREKT said:


People are happy someone died in a pretty horrible fashion just because they disagreed with his political viewpoints. What else should I call that exactly?

-Placeholder- said:


No, the kulaks and "bourgeoisie" didn't go against the interest of the proletariat. They were oppressed simply because they were wealthier and had more property due to their own hard work, and it's the Bolsheviks who launched a murderous campaign of genocide that was completely unjustified. The famine was completely their own fault and it was a result of their policies and collectivisation of farms. And need I mentioned Holdomor. Being a Communism apologist is quite poor taste. Socialism is when the state does stuff, because socialism is an institutional violation of property rights.

maluhia said:


Neoliberalism is cancer. Are you joking? Hillary Clinton and Obama are perfect examples.

maluhia said:

Life improved under the USSR.

-Placeholder- said:
Socialism is when the state does stuff, because socialism is an institutional violation of property rights.

Fijure said:


SOCIALISM IS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT DOES STUFF; THE MORE STUFF THE GOVERNMENT DOES; THE SOCIALISTER IT IS!!!!!

deg said:


i agree, i hate neoliberalism too just because of the economic/wealth inequality it brings and this current climate change

maluhia said:


Going back to your earlier point, capitalism still is inherently racist and imperialist. Mass incarceration disproportionately affected blacks and other minorities. This was literally only three presidencies ago, and his wife - whom called blacks "super predators" - ran for presidency only two years ago in 2016.

Or what about Black Lives Matter? That wasn't a spontaneous out-of-nowhere stunt. There is legit, systematic problems that have caused that spark.

If capitalism didn't thrive on racism/imperialism, then why is the USA exploiting the countries in the global south in its genocidal wars and beyond?

If capitalism wasn't racist, then why does the fossil fuel industry exploit communities of color by devastating their neighborhoods and then get stupid tax breaks to boot?

If capitalism wasn't racist or imperialist, then why does Puerto Rico still not have electricity one year later after the hurricane?

Anyway, you get the point.

deg said:


capitalism is about the economy more, the systematic racism you are saying has got to do with plain racism or even xenophobia

you got to admit the reason for globalization today is free trade and that includes immigration of workers and that is thanks to the capitalisms goal of maximizing profits

Very unbiased source you got there. And quality of life certainly improved for the 2,5% of Estonias population that was sent to Siberia by Stalin.

Think about this - Estonia and Finland were about equally developed and very similar countries prior to WWII. Look at where they were in 1990 or now for that matter.

deg said:


capitalism is about the economy more, the systematic racism you are saying has got to do with plain racism or even xenophobia

you got to admit the reason for globalization today is free trade and that includes immigration of workers and that is thanks to the capitalisms goal of maximizing profits

-Placeholder- said:


That's right, the state can't do anything without violating property rights. Therefore the bigger the state, the more socialist the country.

"Ethnic" cleansing as in Nazis, kulaks, and bootlickers?

In the summer of 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as a result of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. In the aftermath of World War II, Estonia lost approximately 17.5% of its population.

Pursuant to the instructions issued in 1941, the following people in the territories to be annexed into the Soviet Union and their family members were to be subjected to repression: all the members of the former governments, higher state officials and judges, higher military personnel, former politicians, members of voluntary state defence organisations, members of student organisations, persons having actively participated in anti-Soviet armed combat, Russian émigrés, security police officers and police officers, representatives of foreign companies and in general all people having contacts abroad, entrepreneurs and bankers, clergymen and members of the Red Cross.

Soviet Mass Deportations from Latvia

Historical Background

A declared neutral country during the early phases of World War II, Latvia fell prey to the realpolitik of both Nazi Germany and Communist Soviet Union, who concluded a Non-Aggression Treaty on 23 August 1939, known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The Pact allowed Germany to invade Poland on 1 September 1939. Among its secret provisions was the establishment of a Soviet Sphere of Influence in Eastern Europe, which included Latvia and allowed the Soviet Union under various pretexts to invade Latvia on 17 June 1940 and annex the country on 5 August 1940. The illegal takeover was never recognized de jure by major Western powers. Immediately after establishing its rule through its collaborators and proxies, the Soviets began deporting the elites to the Soviet Union, culminating in the mass deportation on 14 June 1941 of more than 15,000 people. After the Nazi German occupation from 1941 to 1944/45, the USSR reoccupied Latvia and applied harsh measures to punish the people for alleged collaboration with the enemy and resisting Soviet occupation. A second mass deportation on 25 March 1949 effectively ended armed resistance against the occupation regime.

Deportations as a Crime against Humanity

Because of the deportations deprived people of their civil and human rights and were carried out in an inhumane manner, the deportations are to be classified as crimes against humanity. The Communist regime in the Soviet Union engaged in mass relocations to enforce its political, social and nationalities policies and to persecute and silence its critics and opponents. Stalin perfected the policies of Lenin and established a vast system of hard labour prison camps known as the GULAG. Stalin's regime was also marked by mass deportations and forced resettlement of entire peoples and social groups to Siberia and other areas of the vast country. At the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s, the regime rid the country of well-to-do farmers (kulaks) who had survived the regime-induced famine in Belarus and Ukraine and did not wish to collectivise. In the "Great Purge" of the 1930s, former Bolshevik cadres who had served Lenin were deported or murdered as "traitors." Ethnic groups who were suspected of being disloyal, including Latvians, were also deported—of the 126,000 Latvians in the USSR, 75,000 were arrested, and 20,000 were shot. After World War II, Stalin ordered the deportation of many people who had lived in German-occupied regions because he suspected them of having collaborated with the enemy. The deportees were deprived of their civil and human rights and oftentimes life because of the harsh and inhuman conditions in prison camps and exile.

Two mass deportations were carried out in Latvia: during the first Soviet occupation in 1941, and in 1949, during the second occupation. It must be noted, however, that the deportation to GULAG prison camps and forced settlement areas took place at other times as well. Many Latvians were sent to the so-called "filtration" and POW camps" after World II, imprisoned or re-deported after they had been allowed to return to Latvia. The total number of inhabitants of Latvia subjected to deportation exceeds that of the two official mass deportations.

The deportations deprived Latvia of its national elites and people with the closest bonds to the land. They created shortages in the labour force, which were made up by immigrants from non-Latvian areas of the Soviet Union. Thus the deportations also fulfilled the function of colonising and russifying the country. Though not outright genocide, the deportations created conditions that set Latvia and its people on a course of losing its cultural heritage and eventually its national identity as well.

Mass Deportation 14 June 1941

Instructions on how to carry out mass deportations were prepared in the autumn of 1939 for the newly-annexed regions of western Ukraine by the head of the Ukrainian SSR NKVD (later known as KGB), General Ivan Serov. They were approved in Moscow and later used in the Baltic States as well. As the USSR Commissar for State Security, Serov signed the orders on 21 January 1941.

In the night between 13 and 14 June, about 15,500 Latvian residents—among them 2400 children younger than ten—were arrested without a court order to be deported to distant regions in the Soviet Union. Targeted were mainly families who had members in leading positions in state and local governments, economy and culture.

People to be deported were awakened in the night and given less than one hour to prepare for the journey. They were allowed to take with them only what they could carry, and everything left behind was confiscated by the state. The unfortunate were herded into already prepared cattle or freight railroad cars, in which they spent weeks and months. Many died on the way, especially infants, the sick, and the elderly. Men, totalling some 8250, were separated from their families, arrested, and sent to GULAG hard labour camps. Women and children were taken to so-called "administrative settlements" as family members of "enemies of the people"

No word of these events was mentioned in Latvia's Soviet-censored newspapers. Loved ones had no way of knowing what had become of those deported. None of the institutions, including the militia, provided information or help. Scattered along the railroad tracks were farewell notes written by the deported to their families—few of them ever reached their intended recipients.

Conditions in the hard labour camps were inhumane. The inmates lost their identities, and were terrorised by the guards and criminal prisoners. Food rations were meagre, and did not replace the calories expended through work. People grew weak, and were crippled by diarrhoea, scurvy, and other illnesses. Winters were marked by unbearable cold, and many did not survive the first one. Only a small part of those deported in 1941 later returned to Latvia. The families in forced settlement had to fend for themselves in harsh conditions; the death rate among the very young and the elderly was likewise high.

The Mass Deportation of 25 March 1949

This deportation of more than 42,000 people was carried out to end the resistance to collectivisation of the farms and at the same time to get rid of the supporters of national partisans. This deportation was mainly directed against the farming population and entire families were sent to forced settlement areas for life. After Stalin's death, many were eventually allowed to return, but they could not resume their previous lives and were treated as unreliables.

The "legal" basis of the deportation was contained in the top secret decision by the Council of Ministers of the USSR of 29 January 1949 and the instruction, issued by the Ministry of State Security in February, "Concerning the Procedure for Deporting Several Categories of Inhabitants from the Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR and Estonian SSR." On 17 March 1949, Vilis Lācis as the Chairman signed the decision of the Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR. The military forces of the State Security and Interior ministries received the top-secret order No. 0068 to carry out deportations in the Baltic states under the code name "Priboi" ("coastal surf").

The deportation began in the night of 24 March. At night, people were arrested at home, during the day at their places of employment. Schoolchildren were sometimes taken to the trains directly from school.

Between 25 March and 28 March 42,133 people, or more than 2% of the pre-war population of Latvia, were deported from Latvia to places of "special settlement" (mainly in the districts of Krasnoyarsk, Amur, Irkustsk, Omsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk). Among these were more than 10,990 children and youths under 16. Women and children under 16 constituted 73% of the deportees. Altogether 30,620 families and 94,799 people were deported from the three Baltic States.

1941, June 13-14: (Baltic countries) In the aftermath of the Baltic States’ conquest, about 39,395 persons – Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians but also Poles, Finns, and Germans – were deported to the Soviet Far East. Ivan Serov coordinated the operation under the command of Lavrenti Beria.

1948: Confronted with the large insurrection that followed the Baltic States’ annexation, the Soviet central apparatus decided to deport new groups of Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians: about 48,000 persons were sent to Siberia.

1949, March: The previous measures did not stop the revolts in the Baltic States. In response, Stalin ordered the deportation of an additional 30,000 families, that is to say a total of about 95,000 persons, to discourage insurgents and bring all the opponents to heel. All deportees became special settlers and lived under the NKVD’s harsh rule.

Для многих из нас слово Холокост неразрывно связано с трагедией европейского еврейства и цыган. Но, оказывается, не только они вправе считать себя пострадавшими от бесчеловечной расовой политики нацистов. И коммунистов, увы, тоже.

ВРАГИ ГИТЛЕРА, ЖЕРТВЫ СТАЛИНА

Члены христианской церкви Свидетели Иеговы сами определили себя как враги фюрера.

Начиная с 1929 года журнал Общества Сторожевой Башни "Золотой век" (сейчас он известен как "Пробудитесь!") предупреждал об опасности нацизма: "Как можно молчать об ужасах в Германии, где за один раз арестовали 40 000 невинных людей; где в одной тюрьме за ночь казнили семьдесят из них., где уничтожаются все дома, учреждения и больницы для престарелых, бедных и немощных, и все детские приюты?" К 1933 году в стране насчитывалось 25 тысяч последователей. Историк Брайан Данн указывает три причины, почему тогдашний режим обрушился на них: международность, противостояние расизму и нейтралитет по отношению к государству.

Убеждения, основанные на Библии, не позволяли им вскидывать руку в обязательном гитлеровском приветствии, поддерживать НСДАП и брать в руки оружие. И поэтому их обвинили в. связях с евреями и коммунистами, проведении подрывной политической деятельности.

19 февраля 1951 года министр государственной безопасности СССР Абакумов направил Сталину сов. секретную записку "О необходимости выселения из западных областей Украины и Белоруссии, Молдавской, Латвийской, Литовской и Эстонской ССР участников антисоветской секты иеговистов и членов их семей". В ней говорится, что только за 1947-1950 гг. было арестовано 1048 человек главарей и активистов, изъято 5 подпольных типографий и свыше 35 тысяч экземпляров листовок, брошюр и книг. Всего выселению подлежали восемь с половиной тысяч человек (более 3 тысяч семей).

For many of us the word Holocaust is inextricably linked with the tragedy of European Jewry and Gypsies. But, it turns out, not only they have the right to consider themselves to have suffered from the inhuman race policy of the Nazis. And the Communists, alas, too.

THE ENEMIES OF HITLER, THE VICTIMS OF STALIN

Members of the Christian Church Jehovah's Witnesses themselves identified themselves as enemies of the Fuhrer.

Since 1929, the magazine of the Watchtower Society "The Golden Age" (now known as Awake!) Warned of the danger of Nazism: "How can you keep silent about the horrors in Germany, where 40,000 innocent people were arrested at once, where in one prison During the night, seventy of them were executed, where all the houses, institutions and hospitals for the elderly, the poor and the infirm, and all the children's shelters are destroyed? " By 1933 there were 25,000 followers in the country. Historian Bryan Dunn points out three reasons why the regime of that time attacked them: internationalism, opposition to racism and neutrality towards the state.

Beliefs based on the Bible did not allow them to throw up their hand in the obligatory Hitler's greeting, support the Nazi Party and take up arms. And so they were accused of. ties with Jews and Communists, conducting subversive political activities.

February 19, 1951 Minister of State Security of the USSR Abakumov sent Stalin Sov. secret note "On the need to evict members of the anti-Soviet sect of Jehovah's Witnesses and members of their families from the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, the Moldavian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian SSR." It says that only in 1947-1950. 1048 people of leaders and activists were arrested, 5 underground printing houses and over 35,000 copies of leaflets, brochures and books were confiscated. Eight and a half thousand people (more than 3 thousand families) were subject to eviction.

The Soviet Union meets the three requirements of a naval power according to Mahan: a strong fleet, a strategically adequate geographical position, and a maritime way of thinking. This is especially true in the Baltic, where the Warsaw Pact maintains a naval force five times that of the NATO nations, and controls, either directly or through its allies, over 60 percent of the coastline. For the mainte- nance and supply of the Soviet navy, the Baltic is of great importance. By far the largest naval repair facilities for the Russian fleets are in Baltic ports, notably Leningrad. The Baltic Sea drives a wedge deep into the industrial heart of the Soviet Union. The Soviet naval bases in the Black Sea and Pacific are of secondary importance for these purposes. The Northern fleet facing the Artic, remains the most substantial, as well as the least vulnerable geographically.

Nikolay Mezhevich, a St. Petersburg professor who heads the Russian Association of Baltic Research, says that “for Russia the [three Baltic] countries should not exist” and that there are no prospects for an improvement in relations because the Baltic regimes can function only as anti-Russian actors.

In an interview with Rubaltic’s Aleksandr Nosovich following a conference at the Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad on relations between Russia and Poland, Mezhevich says that relations with Warsaw while bad now can improve but those with the Baltic countries never can.

Russians and Poles, he continues, have “a common mentality: they are similar people with a common understanding of life. “But ‘with Lithuania, normalization is impossible,'” in any case, Mezhevich says, he does not expect to live to see it. That is because Vilnius like Riga and Tallinn can only exist by blaming Russia for all of their own shortcomings.

Asked by Nosovich what the “optimal” Russian policy toward the Baltic countries should be, the St. Petersburg professor is blunt: “There are no such countries. For Russia, there are no such countries. Legally, they exist, but we do not maintain any economic or political contacts with them.” The Baltics are thus “a dead zone, a Chernobyl.”

He nonetheless opposes breaking diplomatic relations with them. “Why given them that happiness?” Mezhevich asks rhetorically. “They are always dreaming about this. But the presence of diplomatic ties does not mean that me should develop any contacts with them because in these countries already nothing will change.”

Regardless of who wins elections in any of them, “the political regimes [of the three] are set in stone once and for all and will not change. Any Baltic politician who falls into the System will instantly be ‘worked over’” until he fits in with that reality. This is clear in Lithuania and Estonia, “and in Latvia it will be the same.”

Russia was the official language, but people still used their own languages. The USSR was very diverse. Even Russia alone is ethnically diverse.

"In 1918, it was decreed that all nationalities in the Soviet Union had the right to education in their own language."

Conflict Summary:

Estonia, which had endured foreign occupation for centuries, joined its fellow Baltic Republics of Latvia and Lithuania in a nonviolent movement that enabled them to become independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Estonians began taking advantage of their unique and rich cultural tradition, particularly in choral music, to encourage a national reawakening. Estonians gathered in the thousands and eventually hundreds of thousands to celebrate their heritage in song, in what became known as “The Singing Revolution.” Raising the banned Estonian flag while gathering en masse and singing banned patriotic songs, the movement eventually gained support of the republic’s ruling Communist Party in defying Moscow, faced down Soviet tanks, and successfully declared Estonian independence.

Although discrimination on the basis of language was illegal under the Soviet Constitution, the de facto status of these languages differed.

Although the USSR did not have de jure an official language over most of its history, until 1990,[1] and Russian was merely defined as the language of interethnic communication (Russian: язык межнационального общения), it assumed de facto the role of official language.[2] For its role and influence in the USSR, see Russification.

Progress in the spread of Russian language as a second language and the gradual displacement of other languages was monitored in Soviet censuses. The Soviet censuses of 1926, 1937, 1939, and 1959, had included questions on "native language" (родной язык) as well as "nationality." The 1970, 1979, and 1989 censuses added to these questions one on "other language of the peoples of the USSR" that an individual could "use fluently" (свободно владеть). It is speculated that the explicit goal of the new question on "second language" was to monitor the spread of Russian as the language of internationality communication.[37]

Each of the official homelands within the Soviet Union was regarded as the only homeland of the titular nationality and its language, while the Russian language was regarded as the language for interethnic communication for the whole Soviet Union. Therefore, for most of the Soviet era, especially after the korenizatsiya (indigenization) policy ended in the 1930s, schools in which non-Russian Soviet languages would be taught were not generally available outside the respective ethnically based administrative units of these ethnicities. Some exceptions appeared to involve cases of historic rivalries or patterns of assimilation between neighboring non-Russian groups, such as between Tatars and Bashkirs in Russia or among major Central Asian nationalities. For example, even in the 1970s schooling was offered in at least seven languages in Uzbekistan: Russian, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Karakalpak.

While formally all languages were equal, in almost all Soviet republics the Russian/local bilingualism was "asymmetric": the titular nation learned Russian, whereas immigrant Russians generally did not learn the local language.

In addition, many non-Russians who lived outside their respective administrative units tended to become Russified linguistically; that is, they not only learned Russian as a second language but they also adopted it as their home language or mother tongue – although some still retained their sense of ethnic identity or origins even after shifting their native language to Russian. This includes both the traditional communities (e.g., Lithuanians in the northwestern Belarus (see Eastern Vilnius region) or the Kaliningrad Oblast (see Lithuania Minor)) and the communities that appeared during Soviet times such as Ukrainian or Belarusian workers in Kazakhstan or Latvia, whose children attended primarily the Russian-language schools and thus the further generations are primarily speaking Russian as their native language; for example, 57% of Estonia's Ukrainians, 70% of Estonia's Belarusians and 37% of Estonia's Latvians claimed Russian as the native language in the last Soviet census of 1989. Russian language as well replaced Yiddish and other languages as the main language of many Jewish communities inside the Soviet Union.

Another consequence of the mixing of nationalities and the spread of bilingualism and linguistic Russification was the growth of ethnic intermarriage and a process of ethnic Russification—coming to call oneself Russian by nationality or ethnicity, not just speaking Russian as a second language or using it as a primary language. In the last decades of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russification (or ethnic assimilation) was moving very rapidly for a few nationalities such as the Karelians and Mordvinians.[38] However, whether children born in mixed families where one of the parents was Russian were likely to be raised as Russians depended on the context. For example, the majority of children in families where one parent was Russian and the other Ukrainian living in North Kazakhstan chose Russian as their nationality on their internal passport at age 16. However, children of mixed Russian and Estonian parents living in Tallinn (the capital city of Estonia), or mixed Russian and Latvian parents living in Riga (the capital of Latvia), or mixed Russian and Lithuanian parents living in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania) most often chose as their own nationality that of the titular nationality of their republic – not Russian.[39]

More generally, patterns of linguistic and ethnic assimilation (Russification) were complex and cannot be accounted for by any single factor such as educational policy. Also relevant were the traditional cultures and religions of the groups, their residence in urban or rural areas, their contact with and exposure to Russian language and to ethnic Russians, and other factors.[40]

Life improved under the USSR.

Compared with other countries, the purchasing power of the Estonian people was about average among more developed countries. The US had four times more purchasing power than Estonia; Canada and Australia more than three times; and Sweden, Denmark, the UK and the Netherlands two to two-and-a-half times; Estonia ranked close to Italy. In terms of workers’ average annual income, Estonians were well ahead of Poland, Russia and south-eastern Europe.

Those employed by large industries were doing rather well. In 1939, an average male worker earned 95 kroons per month, while the average woman earned 60 kroons per month. Remuneration was lower than average in the so-called women’s industries – textiles and foodstuffs.

These hourly rates are very small and tell us little. For comparison, the prices of some foodstuffs in 1940 were: butter 1.85–2.2 kroons/kg, milk 11–20 cents/l, pork 0.95–1.05 kroons/kg, cod fillet 0.5 kroons/kg.

Living conditions changed considerably compared with the tsarist era (when Estonia was under the Russian Empire – editor). Food prices dropped by some 20%; a similar decrease could also be seen in the prices of mail and transport services. Heating and lighting became about 30% cheaper. By contrast, housing and clothing became more expensive, and the price of entertainment more than doubled. Despite the severe economic crisis in the early 1930s, people were about 20% wealthier in general in 1938 than during the best times in the pre-war period.

Estonia remained poorer than most Western European countries, but the difference in production levels and living standards was not striking. In the early 1930s, per capita national income in Estonia was approximately 60% of that in Sweden (Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia 2002: 19).3 The difference was even less obvious in comparison to Finland, Estonia’s northern neighbour. Household income and living standards in Estonia were only slightly lower than those in Finland, or possibly at the same level (Hagfors & Kuus 1993).

From the Soviet occupation in 1944 to the death of Stalin in 1953 Eastern Europe was a Stalin’s playfield with human rights practically non-existent. The Lithuanian nation was not expelled in its entirety, unlike Chechens or Crimean Tatars for example, but as many as half a million Lithuanians were, many dying or losing health in the cold GULAGs of Siberia, others died in prisons. Additionally, many of Lithuania’s Poles (200 000) were expelled to Poland by Stalin (in trains marked with slogans “We are returning home” despite the fact that the Polish-speaking minority existed in Lithuania for centuries). Lithuanians of Klaipėda region were expelled to Germany together with the Germans of Lithuania (170 000 people). At the same time, Lithuanian cities like Vilnius and Klaipėda were heavily settled by ethnic Russians with Lithuania’s Russian population share increasing more than threefold in a decade (from 2,5% to 8,5%). All these persecutions triggered the longest major guerilla war in modern Europe. This Lithuanian armed resistance was crushed by large Soviet forces by mid-1950s with some 30 000 partisans killed. Under Stalin, Lithuania lost 32% of its pre-WW2 population.

Furthermore, most of Lithuania Minor was annexed to Russia as Kaliningrad Oblast. After a brutal genocide (300 000 locals murdered, among them 130 000 Lithuanians) the region's population was replaced by Soviet settlers and new Russian placenames were coined for its towns and features. This effectively ended the history of Lithuania Minor.

Nikita Khrushchev’s destalinization (1953-1964) changed some policies (those people exiled to Siberia who were not yet dead gained limited freedom and the settling of Lithuania by ethnic Russians slowed down) but most things left unchanged. The agriculture remained collectivized and its outputs greatly diminished (especially when taking into regard the improved technologies), the property remained nationalized, the ownership of Lithuanian symbols and any criticism of communism or the Soviet occupation were still punished by long terms of imprisonment (in jails or insane asylums) and the Lithuanians living in other parts of Soviet Union as well as those living in the multi-ethnic Vilnius region were Russified.

Soviet Lithuania was isolated from the non-Soviet world with travel restrictions both for foreigners to enter anywhere except for several designated tourist places, and for the locals to travel abroad. Religion and the religious were persecuted and many Roman Catholic churches, as well as all the monasteries, were closed down with the number of open Catholic churches in Vilnius becoming the same as that of Russian Orthodox churches despite there being ten Catholics for every single Orthodox.

The Soviet economy was plagued by the popular belief that “Everything belongs to everybody, and therefore everything belongs to nobody” and stumbled well behind the Western European one. People were widely stealing from their workplaces and this was regarded as a normal practice by the society, therefore condoned by the peers and even many CEOs. Few people (if any) were rich in terms of money but the community was far from egalitarian because it was who you knew that mattered the most: the people who had important friends also had access to many things that were inaccessible to most others, e.g. better cars, larger apartments, modern TV sets or warm-climate fruits (these things were inaccessible to many partly because they used to be taken by those who had important “relationships”).

Still, however, the Lithuanian economy remained one of the most robust ones inside the Soviet Union – in Central Asia, Siberia or the Caucasus the situation was even worse. The economic hardships, as well as the inability to maintain a large army and secret service network (that was necessary to subdue any resistance in the Soviet Union and elsewhere in the Eastern Europe), led to Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of Perestroika and Glastnost (1985), or the move towards capitalism and democracy.

In Lithuania, this led to the establishment of Sąjūdis (The Movement) led by musician Vytautas Landsbergis. It took an increasingly pro-independence stance and its protests were attended by hundreds of thousands. The pro-independence underground always existed in Lithuania in the form of Lithuanian Freedom League or the Roman Catholic secret newspaper describing the brutality of the Soviet regime. But only by the year 1988, the majority of Lithuanians dared to tell their thoughts publically.

deg said:


capitalism is about the economy more, the systematic racism you are saying has got to do with plain racism or even xenophobia

you got to admit the reason for globalization today is free trade and that includes immigration of workers and that is thanks to the capitalisms goal of maximizing profits

hotsushikun said:
@Comic_Sans So many long posts, hahaha!

Comic_Sans said:
I have family friends who come from the Baltic region (Lithuania and Estonia). I am not going to sit here and watch while an American self-proclaimed communist tries to justify the Soviet Union's oppression of their peoples

hotsushikun said:
Yeah, i see that you really love the political though, more than anyone else.

maluhia said:


That is grossly dishonest. Capitalism is defined as an "economic and political system." The military-industrial complex exploits nations of color and is a direct result of capitalism.

The reason for globalization is because of colonialism, lol. Globalization is a form of colonialism that prevents the development of third world countries.

nonfumi said:
@deg
You are right that capitalism isn't the same capitalism we had years ago. Living conditions are generally better and reform has lead capitalism to being more humane. However the contradictions inherited into capitalism will never go away.We also must remember that capitalism in the third world isn't as humane as it is in the first world due to imperialism and so on.
I also do think we are not really ready for communism and that we have not reached the productive potential to develop communism. However I do not think that socialism needs a fully automated economy to be established.I do think we have reached the productive potential to let socialism develop so it may develop into communism.

Fijure said:
@maluhia

Read @comic_sans' post. Believing all murdered Estonians were kulaks is beyond delusional and retarded. The majority were freedom fighters fighting for their national independence from the Soviets, people of all classes, and, ironically, a sizable minority were Russians who had fled the Union after the revolution. Anyway, reply to comic about this, she replied much more thoroughly than I could ever be bothered to.

@-Placeholder-

That's stupid, even the most bona fide socialist countries like North Korea and Cuba have property rights. Does that mean they are not real socialism according to you. Honestly I don't even wanna defend socialism your definition is just stupid.

@comic_sans

Wasn't aware you were enthusiastic about the Baltic states as well, nice to see someone speaking their case here. They are always the best reminder about the reality of Russia.

Comic_Sans said:
I have family friends who come from the Baltic region (Lithuania and Estonia). I am not going to sit here and watch while a self-proclaimed American communist who probably hasn't interacted with anybody from a former Eastern Bloc country (even less set foot in one) in her whole life tries to justify the Soviet Union's imperialist annexation of their nations

contrarychild said:
"Let's make ce look even more despicable by arguing politics on a thread about someone's death xdxdxd"

nonfumi said:

Lol you're just sperging out cold war propaganda.
First the kulaks and bourgeois did not earn all they had with hard work. The kulaks earned much of their wealth by exploiting the peasants and the bourgeois can not be bourgeois without exploiting the proles. You saying this just shows you have no idea what you are talking about. If you really think the bourgeois and proletariat have the same interest in the long run you are delusional.

Now lets say the famine was all because of collectivization does that justify the kulaks hoarding grain?Are they innocent just because they were standing up to the bully USSR?

Concerning the Holdomor did it really happen? I say yeah kinda but not in the shortsighted way you say it did. Did a famine happen? No shit.Was it deliberate?That is still being debated by historians.So unless you are going to search ever inch of the soviet archive to find me proof that the famine was intentional you should stop saying the Holdomor was a genocide.Say it was due to bad policy because at least you'll be somewhat honest.

"Socialism is when the state does stuff, because socialism is an institutional violation of property rights."
Wow I guess every country with a state must be socialist.

maluhia said:


You act like context doesn't matter. Nazi Germany or liberation via USSR. Truly a tough call.

maluhia said:


Going back to your earlier point, capitalism still is inherently racist and imperialist. Mass incarceration disproportionately affected blacks and other minorities via the War on Drugs that spans decades. This was literally only three presidencies ago, and his wife - who called blacks "super predators" - ran for presidency only two years ago in 2016.

Or what about Black Lives Matter? That wasn't a spontaneous out-of-nowhere stunt. There is legit, systematic problems that have caused that spark.

If capitalism didn't thrive on racism/imperialism, then why is the USA exploiting the countries in the global south in its genocidal wars and beyond?

If capitalism wasn't racist, then why does the fossil fuel industry exploit communities of color by devastating their neighborhoods and then get stupid tax breaks to boot?

If capitalism wasn't racist or imperialist, then why does Puerto Rico still not have electricity one year later after the hurricane?

Anyway, you get the point.

Fijure said:
RIP to McCain, but apart from that I'm happy this thread has finally provided something CE has lacked for a long time, a bona fide communist who unironically defends the USSR. We've been missing that in addition to all the right wing whackjobs.



Very unbiased source you got there. And quality of life certainly improved for the 2,5% of Estonias population that was sent to Siberia by Stalin.

Think about this - Estonia and Finland were about equally developed and very similar countries prior to WWII. Look at where they were in 1990 or now for that matter.



SOCIALISM IS WHEN THE GOVERNMENT DOES STUFF; THE MORE STUFF THE GOVERNMENT DOES; THE SOCIALISTER IT IS!!!!!

nonfumi said:
@deg
Why so?I could understand saying that for communism because that relies on an abundance of resources but not socialism.I say as long as a country is industrialized and is able to defend itself that socialism is possible more or less depending on the material conditions.

I see somebody wants another round of the Venezuela debacle

Only nazis, kulaks and "bootlickers" were deported, you say?

http://estonianworld.com/life/estonia-remembers-the-soviet-deportations/

Fucking members of student organizations and people having contacts abroad, what a bunch of literal nazis!

I bet all of those Latvian children were literal mini Hitlers for having the misfortune (or fortune, depending on how you define it) to be born in the types of families that Stalin didn't like!

People who are revolting because they don't like being annexed by a bigger country and want to remain independent = nazis

Jehovah's witnesses, another bunch of literal NAZIS (who loved Hitler so much that they were against him)

The Baltic region is also a strategically important region. But I'm sure that the Soviet Union only annexed the Baltic States during fifty years out of pure kindness... NOTHING else! (Which is why they are so ashamed of their loss that they'd rather pretend the Baltic States don't exist and enjoy slandering them so much https://upnorth.eu/russia-estonia-latvia-lithuania-not-exist-says-russian-expert-baltic-region/

Is that your argument? "Russia is diverse, so that means Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians had no right to complain when they were ethnically cleansed and russified, sorry, culturally enriched and forced to become part of a nation they did not want to be part of"?

You don't even know what the Singing Revolution is, do you? Luckily for you, I've got a "Singing Revolution for noobs" article for you right here https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/estonias-singing-revolution-1986-1991/

You should probably build a time machine and go back in time to tell those pesky protestors that the USSR didn't do nuffin, they were just trying to culturally enrich them.

And where, exactly, does the article make mention of the Baltic countries specifically or prove that the quality of life in the Baltic States wouldn't have improved and/or that they would have been far worse off had it not been for the "liberating" claws of the Soviet Union? Especially considering that Estonia was already relatively well off before the war http://estonianworld.com/business/a-hundred-years-of-the-estonian-economy/

Fijure said:


@comic_sans

Wasn't aware you were enthusiastic about the Baltic states as well, nice to see someone speaking their case here. They are always the best reminder about the reality of Russia.

nonfumi said:

This isn't a funeral xddddd