They’ll literally talk about feeding millions of people alligators or put on theatrically staged shows of tying people up to chairs with bags on their heads and executing them via gunshot to the back of the head among other monstrous acts but will cry crocodile tears enough to flood the Great Plains with an ocean and accuse you of being a monster in human skin if you don’t want basic human rights for everyone.

It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.

Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible

Quote by stalin-pipe

A maximum sentence in the worst Soviet prison in the Stalin era is a kindness to these people.

  • ButtBidet [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    32·
    10 hours ago

    No see, people deserve to be treated much worse than even normally maltreated prisoners in the US because… possibly maybe having a visa violation.

    • Keld [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      27·
      7 hours ago

      We can obviously agree that prisons in the soviet union were bad during certain periods of Soviet history. It rose out of the tsarist system and became formalised during one of the most brutal civil wars in history, and its most famous and most explored period was during the most brutal invasion and land war the world has ever seen. But I venture to say that there is a pretty significant difference between electing not to feed the nazis first during a famine, and doing ethnic cleansing tourism.

    • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      54·
      9 hours ago

      Solzhenitsyn, one of the most influential figures in the western perception of the gulag system, had his cancer treated there and it saved his life. His book is mostly rumors and folktales written as though they were things he had witnessed, which is why editions in some languages call it what he did, a “literary experiment,” and his wife further clarified in an interview for NYT decades later that these were folklore. Solzhenitsyn was also an antisemitic freak who somewhat bought into the “Judeo-Bolshevism” thing and was arrested for writing a letter about how the USSR needed to be overthrown while he was an officer in the Red Army on the Eastern Front, favoring an Eastern Orthodox theocratic monarchy.

      Robert Conquest, probably the other most influential figure in this perception, claimed more people died in the gulag system than had ever even been entered into it (as we discovered when we gained access to the Soviet archives). This joins the list with other discredited theses from him, such as his thoroughly-debunked idea that the USSR’s Great Famine of '32-'33 was a deliberate “terror famine” and a Holocaust-like event. He also preceded his work as a “historian” by working for 8 years in post-war British intelligence as specifically an anti-Soviet propagandist.

      Just some fun facts.

          • pillowtags@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            18·
            9 hours ago

            I seriously doubt that someone who’s immediate response was to attack and dismiss my post, calling me a “shitlib”, which I’m sure means something to you, is interested in a “nuanced” discussion of any kind.

            And if your so called primary source is an American journalist who was allowed to visit some prisons, then I would ask you if you really believe they would allow her to tour the majority of facilities?

            I am suspect of propaganda in all its forms. And I’m in no way defending the fascist shithole that the US has become. I am simply pointing out that the US being shit is not a defense of Siberian labor camps, as your post implies.

            • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              4·
              2 hours ago

              I am suspect of propaganda in all its forms

              damn it’s so lucky for you that western media is objective and doesn’t have any sort of agenda so you can accept it uncritically

            • Alaskaball [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
              34·
              8 hours ago

              I seriously doubt that someone who’s immediate response was to attack and dismiss my post… is interested in a “nuanced” discussion of any kind.

              projection

              And if your so called primary source is an American journalist who was allowed to visit some prisons, then I would ask you if you really believe they would allow her to tour the majority of facilities?

              Yes because the rest of her, and Callcott’s books both discuss their first-hand investigation of Soviet prisons across the union.

              I am suspect of propaganda in all its forms. And I’m in no way defending the fascist shithole that the US has become. I am simply pointing out that the US being shit is not a defense of Siberian labor camps, as your post implies.

              We live in a country that constantly spins outright lies about so-called enemies to justify the crimes against humanity it commits against everyone within and without its boarders.

              I am not implying that I am defending the Soviet penal system. I am speaking the truth.

              Alright you pass since you put in the effort

            • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              37·
              9 hours ago

              I am suspect of propaganda in all its forms

              But not suspect of all the western propaganda about Soviet gulags, apparently.

            • Super_Lumalo [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              32·
              9 hours ago

              I seriously doubt that someone who’s immediate response was to attack and dismiss my post, calling me a “shitlib”, which I’m sure means something to you, is interested in a “nuanced” discussion of any kind.

              Gives a non nuanced, downright moronic, oneliner and then is surprised by the response they get… Many such cases!

              I would ask you if you really believe they would allow her to tour the majority of facilities?

              It’s over folks. Pack up, she wasn’t given access to the hiper-gulag hidden in Tselinoyarsk and all the real victims were given wedgies and shoved into lockers so she couldn’t interview them…

              I am suspect of propaganda in all its forms.

              doubt

            • Skye [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              30·
              8 hours ago

              Actually educating yourself about the things you seemingly strongly believe in is a good thing to do, even if you don’t think someone on hexbear.net is going to be cordial to you (and it’s not exactly like you started out the conversation in a way that screams “good faith argument”).

              More importantly, if you just assume everything that contradicts what you already believe in is propaganda and not worth looking at you’re really just making sure you’ll never escape any propaganda or incorrect assumption you’ve fallen for in the past.

            • Le_Wokisme [they/them, undecided]@hexbear.netEnglish
              30·
              9 hours ago

              who would the soviets be putting in prison?

              do you think the united states propaganda machine that is responsible for your background vibes based opinion of the gulag system is more or less reliable than literally any other source?