Matvei Bronstein: Theorical physicist. Pioneer of quantum gravity. Arrested, accused of fictional “terroristic” activity and shot in 1938
Lev Shubnikov: Experimental physicist. Accused on false charges. Executed
Adrian Piotrovsky: Russian dramaturge. Accused on false charges of treason. Executed.
Nikolai Bukharin: Leader of the Communist revolution. Member of the Politburo. Falsely accused of treason. Executed.
General Alexander Egorov: Marshal of the Soviet Union. Commander of the Red Army Southern Front. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Arrested, accused on false charges, executed.
General Mikhail Tukhachevsky Supreme Marshal of the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the Red Napoleon. Arrested, accused on fake charges. Executed.
Grigory Zinoviev: Chairman of the Communist International Movement. Member of the Soviet Politburo. Accused of treason and executed.
Even the secret police themselves were not safe:
Genrikh Yagoda : Right-hand of Joseph Stalin. Head of the NKD Secret Police. He spied on everyone in Russia and jailed thousands of innocents. Yagoda was arrested and executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genrikh_Yagoda
Nikolai Yezhov : Appointed head of the NKD Secret Police after the death of Yagoda. Arrested on fake charges, executed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov
Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 600 000 people were killed and over one million people were deported to Gulags in Siberia.
I am more annoyed by people complaining about tankies that actual tankies at this point.
Bots spreading double genocide theory? Are we in a 2008 economic crisis again?
Meanwhile, the average victim of communism (considering soviets inflicted 7/10 nazi casualties):

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115
Of course a SJW poster would post propaganda on YSK.
How tf was he inspired by Trotsky? He fucking had the guy killed!
If hitler were a lemmy thread he’d be this one
And Russia would join in an alliance with him
New canon: neocons astroturfing YSK
How tf is writing articles about historical facts astroturfing??? I live in post-soviet eastern european country and we have a saying “If a theory doesn’t match the facts, so much the worse for the facts.” precisely for people like you
I am a real human and I am trustworthy
The purge of the red army was noticed by the German high command which factored into launching Operation Barbarossa. The red army was a shambles as most of the officers had been murdered or imprisoned. Units struggled to respond without them.
He even imprisoned his airplane designers until it was pointed out that if he wanted a modern air force he couldn’t kill the airplane designers.
The guilty were innocent so being innocent was a crime.
I could just see Stalin chastising his generals and security state in meetings: “It’s not ‘The Great Calming’ now is it!?” “Get out there and spread more terror!” "NO! Not just ADEQUATE terror… GREAT TERROR!
To place Russian communism and Nazi-fascism on the same moral plane, in that both would be totalitarian, is superficial at best, fascism at worst.
Whoever insists on this equation may well consider himself a democrat, in truth and in the bottom of his heart he is in fact already a fascist, and certainly only in a hypocritical and insincere way will he fight fascism, while reserving all his hatred for communism.
- Thomas Mann
Quote is from this book https://www.iskrabooks.org/books/p/losurdo-stalin-history-and-critique
There’s no argument in this citation. Just a dumb, unfounded opinion
providing an essential academic counter-narrative to the rampant demonization of one of fascism’s most ardent enemies.
That seems awfully generous for a man that signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and only became an ardent enemy of the Nazi’s after they backstabbed him. I don’t have the time to energy to dive deeper before saying this sounds like one hell of an apologist for one of history’s most evil authoritarians and I have no desire to engage with it further. This man did not care for his comrades and anyone that equates him with any form of socialism is just poisoning socialism in the general public.
What is the reasoning behind that conclusion? I can see how comparing the two simply because they’re totalitarian would be superficial (there are many structural differences between both). And to me, what the Nazis did, the rhetoric they used and their rise to power has always felt much more ominous and foreboding than even Stalin’s.
But I can’t put it into words and I see no real reason why Stalin’s crimes and death camps would in any way be less evil than the Nazis’. To me it feels like Nazis went beyond just political power straight into core beliefs and ideology, whereas Stalin’s crimes were just your typical tyrant authoritarian maneuvering, but I don’t know if that really makes an ethical difference.
Here is a larger context of the quote, run it through some translator if you don’t know german
Mit anderen Worten: diese Jugend anerkennt mit Herz und Sinn das Gebot, die Freiheit durch soziale Verantwortlichkeit zu bedingen, die Demokratievom Nationalen zu emanzipieren und sie weltweit, universell zu machen, den Frieden auf eine kollektivistische Freiheit zu gründen, deren Ausdruck und Garant der den Nationalregierungen übergeordnete Weltstaat wäre. Die Vorbedingung dafür, jeder weiß es, ist die Verständigung unserer westlichen Welt mit Rußland, die Begegnung des bürgerlich-demokratischen und des sozialistischen Prinzips in der Anerkennung gemeinsamer menschheitlicher Ziele.
Ist eine solche Verständigung und Begegnung möglich? Die »Realisten« verneinen die Frage. Ihre Antwort ist Krieg. Ich zweifle, ob sie wissen, was sie sagen, ob sie, ganz wörtlich gesprochen, bei Verstande sind, indem sie so antworten. Ihr Sinn ist dick umnebelt vom Interesse, dem erbitterten und zu allem fähigen Interesse an der integralen und zugeständnislosen Erhaltung der »Freiheit«, die sie meinen, der kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsform in ihrer veraltetsten, unangepaßtesten Gestalt. Diese Verstocktheit impliziert den Unglauben an die Entwicklungsfähigkeit anderer Mächte und Systeme, zum Beispiel an diejenige der russischen Revolution, deren radikaler und tyrannischer Kollektivismus der humanen Überlieferung des Westens ein für allemal als der Erz- und Todfeind gegenüberstehen, und deren totalitärer Zwang sich von dem faschistisch-nationalsozialistischen in nichts unterscheiden soll. Wenn kein Unterschied besteht zwischen dem Totalitätscharakter des russischen Sozialismus und des Faschismus, — woher dann, so kann man fragen, die einhellige Entschiedenheit, mit welcher überall die kapitalistische Welt dem faschistischen Schrecken vor dem kommunistischen den Vorzug gibt, ihr offenkundiger Entschluß, lieber den einen anzunehmen als den anderen? - Die russische Revolution ist, wie einst die große Französische, ein historischer Prozeß, der sich in Phasen abspielt, von denen die letzte kaum schon gekommen ist. Es ist so unvernünftig, eine dieser Phasen unter Hohngeschrei mit der anderen erschlagen zu wollen, wie es unvernünftig ist, zu glauben, der Stalinismus bilde die unveränderliche Endform des revolutionären Prozesses. Den russischen Kommunismus mit dem Nazi-Faschismus auf die gleiche moralische Stufe zu stellen, weil beide totalitär seien, ist besten Falles Oberflächlichkeit, im schlimmeren Falle ist es - Faschismus. Wer auf dieser Gleichstellung beharrt, mag sich als Demokrat vorkommen, -in Wahrheit und im Herzensgrund ist er damit bereits Faschist und wird mit Sicherheit den Faschismus nur unaufrichtig und zum Schein, mit vollem Haß aber allein den Kommunismus bekämpfen.
Die Unterschiede im Verhältnis des russischen Sozialismus und des Faschismus zur Humanität, zur Idee des Menschen und seiner Zukunft sind unermeßlich. Der unteilbare Friede; konstruktive Arbeit und gerechter Lohn; ein allgemeiner Genuß der Güter dieser Erde; mehr Glück, weniger vermeidbares und nur vom Menschen verschuldetes Leid hienieden; die geistige Hebung des Volkes durch Erziehung, durch Wissen, durch Bildung - das alles sind Ziele, die denjenigen faschistischer Misanthropie, faschistischen Nihilismus, faschistischer Erniedrigungslust und Verdummungspädagogik diametral entgegengesetzt sind. Der Kommunismus, wie die russische Revolution ihn unter besonderen menschlichen Gegebenheiten zu verwirklichen sucht, ist, trotz aller blutigen Zeichen, die daran irre machen könnten, im Kern — und sehr im Gegensatz zum Faschismus — eine humanitäre und eine demokratische Bewegung. Tyrannei? Er ist es. Aber eine Tyrannei, die das Analphabetentum ausmerzt, kann, ob sie es weiß oder nicht, im Herzen nicht gewillt sein, Tyrannei zu bleiben. Vor einigen sechzig Jahren verspottete Nietzsche, ein sehr großer, nur allzu vieldeutiger Denker, die Volksbildung, indem er ausrief: »Will man Sklaven, so ist man ein Narr, wenn man sich Herren erzieht!« Der russische Sozialismus will offenbar keine Sklaven, denn er erzieht sich denkende Menschen. Damit ist er, beinahe unweigerlich, auf dem Wege zur Freiheit.
from “Thomas Mann Essays - Band 2 Politik” published by Hermann Kurzke pg 310-312
Yeah, I think that managed to put my feeling into more concise words. Russian socialism cost many many lives, but at its core the principles it was trying to champion seem correct: it proposes fairness and dignity through the active improvement of people’s education and lives. Whereas fascist movements (Hitler, Mussolini, Trump) are actively destructive. They thrive off of people’s hatred and fear of “the other”.
I guess my main question would be… If the Soviet Union was truly raising thinking, critical workers that would one day not become slaves, then how is it possible that immediately after its collapse, Russia became almost immediately a fascist state that indeed allowed only slaves and never masters to exist beyond its oligarchy?
Something seems amiss in the proposition there. It seems to me like fascism is almost an unavoidable illness that comes to all societies sooner or later, and the only thing we can do is find ways to weaken it before it leads to catastrophic results.
MAGA will be a good example of how fascism comes to its end within societies that cannot be militarily opposed.
I guess my main question would be… If the Soviet Union was truly raising thinking, critical workers that would one day not become slaves, then how is it possible that immediately after its collapse, Russia became almost immediately a fascist state that indeed allowed only slaves and never masters to exist beyond its oligarchy?
The soviet union was an absolute academic powerhouse, for instance they won every space-race except the first walk on the moon. Women were particularly empowered this video essay is really really good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnTlejH-WzQ
The collapse of the USSR was a betrayal from the top orchestrated with western companies that gutted the former socialist republics. Women with PhD’s were suddenly not being hired anymore and many were forced into sex work in order to survive. They even held a referendum in the months prior to legitimize the dissolution but the vast majority of the population voted in favor of keeping communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum .
So if OP did not include the last line, they would not necessarily be a fascist, but because of the last line they are definitely a fascist.
And the worst part: all these powerful people did nothing about it, because of fear of each-other. One old fucker could do all of this, without being good at combat, or particulary strong.
And now for those who haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it for a while, go and watch The Death Of Stalin. Brilliant relatively truthful satire of the events preceding and after the event.
Jason Isaacs is fantastic in it.
aside from compressed timeline - it actually does a good job representing the major players and their core traits and interactions. Lots of straightforward historical dramas about that period took a lot more artistic license in that regard. Like there’s an old movie called The Inner Circle which is basically about Stalin’s movie club - and it paints the same people in borderline caricature simplistic tones despite the movie technically being a serious drama.
If I remember it correctly, it was quite funny
It’s funny, because we weren’t there.
that doesnt seem random, intellectuals and people that are likely to oppose will get killed first.
The purge started at the top and worked its way down. Senior party members were the first ones executed.
Once it got down to the lower levels of the civil service, the cheka would just round up anyone in the streets to meet the quota.
Makes you wonder whether this Stalin guy was actually on board with communism (which should be democratic to the extreme), or just used it as a excuse…







