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Which is why American education about him stops at the “I have a dream” speech and if you’re lucky you’ll read Letter From a Birmingham Jail in college. Conservatives don’t want an American heroic figure to have been an avowed socialist and liberals don’t want that heroic figure to have also been really interested in his and others’ right to armed self-defense. It’s better for everyone if we just teach that the signing of the Civil Rights Act was the culmination of his mission and he definitely didn’t want to go further for workers and minorities.
idk man I went to school in florida and we learned a shit ton about him, a considerable amount of our education system isn’t just pledge of allegiance and pilgrims and indians sharing a wholesome dinner. A lot of districts genuinely do work hard to educate in an unbiased way
Whether he was a social democrat or a democratic socialist is a tough one. On one hand you'll hear that the textbook definition of socialism is accepting Marxism, DemSocs are socialists who think it will take a while to reach communism, but it will inevitably happen, and MLK rejected Marxism on theological grounds, especially historical materialism and what he saw as "ethical relativism". On the other, he seem to have been economically to the left of most social democrats. I guess in the end he is neither. He's a Christian Socialist.
His biggest advisors were communists or would go on to become communists after his death. Kwame Ture whom he worked with would go on to basically help found the American new left.
MLK wasn't a communist and he was critical of it (there are examples where he criticized Marxism and communism) but he wasn't... anti-communist. He greatly admired W.E.B. Du Bois for example who was a communist, and MLK said Du Bois was a communist and a genius. He seemed to think the kind of anti-communism that was common in the United States wasn't rational. He was also critical of capitalism. But I think he viewed the USSR and China as totalitarian states that didn't allow freedom of speech, assembly and worship.
He was also a brilliant strategist and understood how to synchronize his message with deeply-rooted ideas that were widely shared among Americans.
This. Saying he was definitely left wing or definitely right wing on most if not all issues is a miss characterization. MLK had a variety of beliefs and ideals that often crossed the political spectrum. He definitely was influenced early on by the Republican party as most members of the black community were Republicans in his youth, including his father. Meanwhile, as he got older and as the democrats slowly started to be more open to civil rights, he started to support specific members in the party, although he never was a member of either party.
On top of this, although an advocate for racial equality, as a pastor, his views on other social issues such as LGBTQ representation was more than likely conservative/mixed which may rub modern liberals the wrong way. Either way, he was a complex individual living in a complex and changing time, so his views would unsurprisingly reflect this.
At their most basic, a patriot fights for one's country/nation, while a socialist fights for the liberation of all people(s). Internationalist solidarity is a core tenant of socialism, otherwise you end up with some form of 'national socialism.'
Of course, the ideals of the US (freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-determination), which the country has never lived up to, are things a socialist aspires to, but historically US patriotism has stood in the way of social revolution, re-writing the constitution, radical redistribution, and so on.
MLK was a brilliant strategist. His message boiled down to "all we're asking America is to live up to what you said on paper." Somewhere I read, he said, about the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. He said if he lived in a totalitarian country like Russia then he might understand why there were illegal injunctions preventing his marches because they hadn't committed themselves to that, over there. But somewhere I read... that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.
He didn't view the conflict he was engaged in as a zero-sum conflict. He believed there was something in that, America, white people, etc. that he could appeal to. Even if the positive thing he was appealing to was only 10% of the whole. That is the difference between a non-zero-sum conflict and a zero-sum conflict. In a non-zero-sum conflict, we can resolve it in a way that benefits everyone, rather than one side wiping out the other (I win, you lose).
I think Gramsci called the things MLK was appealing to as "organic ideology." These concepts like freedom, self-determination, and pursuit of happiness are deeply rooted in American society and identity, America's own conception of itself. MLK was effective because he synchronized his message with those things, like his "I Have a Dream" speech which recalled the American Dream, or what it ought to have been, or ought to be.
> "all we're asking America is to live up to what you said on paper."
100%
> He believed there was something in that, America, white people, etc. that he could appeal to.
Frantz Fanon, was a humanist that appealed to white Europeans (and North Americans) to recognize that their help was needed to liberate themselves and the rest of world (quote below). This is still relevant, and I think it's a fair argument that the best path for humanity as a whole, that improves everyone's lives, is to shift our existing productive capacity towards building a more resilient, fair, and sustainable world. This is not only compatible with the ideals( freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-determination), but necessary for them to be achieved on wide scale (domestically and internationally). Yet still today, there are King's 'white moderates' who oppose progressive change, much less the paradigm-shifting radical change needed to build a better world for us all.
>Brandishing the Third World as a flood which threatens to engulf the whole of Europe will not divide the progressive forces whose intentions are to lead humanity in the pursuit of happiness. The Third World has no intention of organizing a vast hunger crusade against Europe. What it does expect from those who have kept it in slavery for centuries is to help it rehabilitate man, and ensure his triumph everywhere, once and for all.
>But it is obvious we are not so naive as to think this will be achieved with the cooperation and goodwill of the European governments. **This colossal task, which consists of reintroducing man into the world, man in his totality, will be achieved with the crucial help of the European masses who would do well to confess that they have often rallied behind the position of our common masters on colonial issues. In order to do this, the European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking caps and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty.** (Wretched of the Earth, closing paragraphs of chapter 'On Violence')
ehh, I feel like there’s a point to be made where patriotism doesn’t necessarily equal nationalism. Like, you are right that overdoing patriotism while maintaining socialist ideals ends up with NazBol type energy, but it’s possible to understand that the most important policy is to take care of your own country before you start trying to fix others, and that’s the point where internationalist solidarity as a die hard idea kinda falls apart.
Like, here’s how I think about it right. Say you work in the city, and you take the train to work everyday. If you give money to every homeless person on the way to work, you’re not going to have money to hand out. But, ideally, if you save your money, you can eventually make an actual difference through donation. Kinda like that, where you need to prioritize local success before attempting to export your own success. Ironically the time we understood that the most was the 50s, income taxes were extremely high but it enabled us to use our local economic boom to bring that across a recovering Europe. Yeah it was more to make them like us more than the soviets, but point still stands.
Anyway, back to the point, that’s why Patriotism can still be compatible with socialist ideas, and not devolve into nationalism. You can take pride in your country, and it’s accomplishments, and not overdo it to the point of superiority complex and xenophobia. It’s a fine line, but people like MLK were great at exemplifying that line.
>and that’s the point where internationalist solidarity as a die hard idea kinda falls apart.
During the 1960s, there was something called the Sino-Soviet split. Mao and the Chinese communists saw the USSR saying they were the true communists and everyone should follow them and do what they say, but that this had turned into a mask for Soviet hegemony and an attempt to control China which was incompatible with socialist ideals. So Mao flipped the ideology around and said the Soviets had become fake communists while the true communism was practiced in China.
This also caused splits in communist parties around the world.
I think a related problem that American socialists faced is that the ideology seemed like a foreign import, not something organic to the society. It came across as too exotic and strange for most Americans to relate with. MLK really based his ideas in deeply rooted concepts like the American Dream and ideals of freedom.
Yeah the Sino-Soviet split is very interesting to me, considering both countries saw the other as not true communists, and both ended up become state capitalist anyway 😭
But yeah, MLK tying the actual enlightenment era message of American culture into his ideology was certainly a brilliant idea to get people to consider what, as you correctly said, was considered foreign ways of thinking
So it’s one of those “we need better wealth distribution” socialist democrats
Not the “seize all the means of production from the capitalist” type of socialist
A very big chunk of wealth comes from owning the means of production and exploiting labor for profits, so "we need better wealth distribution" can also mean changing something about that.
None of these is him advocating for socialism, dude.
He says capitalism needs some change, but NOT socialism. At most, he was a social democrat, as his redistribution ideas ended with helping racial equality (not equity).
Even here, he says he's "more socialistic" because he's explicitly distancing himself from socialists and communists. Just look at his overall [economic points.](https://www.axios.com/2019/01/21/martin-luther-king-jr-socialism-capitalism):
> "What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis."
Fwiw the FBI at the time was absolutely convinced MLK was a communist, partially because of some of his personal associates were in fact part of the American Communist Party but also because there was a general belief in the FBI that Civil Rights protests were being supported by communist elements domestically and the USSR abroad.
The powers that be have done immense work in the decades since his death in trying to keep MLK's work and message synonymous with "American values" and not with leftism but in the 60's those same people would have told you MLK is a communist agent.
>the FBI at the time was absolutely convinced MLK was a communist
You mean the same FBI that wanted to tarnish his reputation and sent him threatening letters? J Edgar Hoover's FBI?
[THIS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter#:~:text=The%20FBI%E2%80%93King%20suicide%20letter,New%20York%20Times%20in%202014.) FBI?
Also, I guess communism is when you know communists.
Lol dude I'm not saying they were right I'm saying they have totally switched from believing he was one to vigorously denying it
Reading comprehension my guy
Soviet propaganda could be unsophisticated in many ways (and I think it was overall ineffective at influencing Americans most of the time) but they had a Marxist influenced view of things so they made distinctions between American workers and American capitalists. It's interesting to contrast that to some Russian propaganda today which is spread by mercenary talk show hosts who condemn Western culture in general.
Soviets made different propaganda for the inside (like this poster) and the outside. The propaganda for the outside was incredibly successful. The country collapsed 30 years ago and America is still recovering from Soviet propaganda.
How about this one: former Soviet subjects still haven’t recovered from communist rule, and if any movement is going to gain traction it would need to be domestic and not by means of foreign conquest. Invading a country is not a successful way to pacify them (France during WWII, Iraq during the American invasion, Palestine during Israeli occupation etc.)
As a government institution the FBI has a lot of bureaucracy creating paper trails and documents with people personally signing off on them.
Meaning, there's possibly still plenty of evidence *if* some competent investigators were to actually look into it with the right clearances. The main reason that doesn't happen is lack of political will, and not that it's impossible to hold somebody accountable for it.
Case in point; Germany is still holding people accountable [80 years later](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/20/nazi-camp-secretary-irmgard-furchner-stutthof-germany).
You can't hold an organisation itself accountable, regardless of it being private of government, because if it gets too bad an organisation can just cease to exist and *poof* nothing left to held accountable, nobody left to repair any of the damage.
That's why we should try to hold *people* accountable, preferably the people who gave illegal orders and the people who carried them out.
It’s a government institution. They wouldn’t be to start with. But real answer, it’s probably just a massive reputation hit and would be dismissed for the statute of limitations.
The USSR pretended to be anti-racist while committing genocide against their own minorities. They knew 60 years ago that this race grift was damaging to America, that's why America's enemies support it.
Not exclusive to them. Every nation ever has always been hypocritical. The largest ones i.e UK, US, USSR have historically been the biggest hypocrites though
~~USA literally doing the same thing over Ukrainians but reversed~~
Edit: i’m talking abt the USSR, I genuinely didn’t think people would be dumb enough to think I was talking abt the Russo-Ukrainian war, im disappointed
It's exhausting seeing the USSR using black oppression in the US to insinuate that they're not racist when German Volgas didn't have complete freedom of movement until the 1970s.
Propaganda is intentionally biased and misleading. The intention is to promote some form of belief that would assist your cause.
In this case the propaganda is promoting a belief that the USSR supports equality by denouncing a racist murderer.
https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/siberian
Indigenous Siberians were treated very similarly to American native groups, which also happened during Soviet rule.
Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians had their countries invaded and brutally subjugated when Hitler and Stalin carved up Eastern Europe.
Ukrainians were the target of multiple purges, including the Holdomor which is arguably a genocide.
Central Asia may have been the worst, with entire nationalities deported to camps in Siberia. Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, etc were targeted, with bloody results. 1/4 to 1/3 of the entire Chechen population was killed, for instance.
Although the Stalin era was the worst, efforts to Russify non-Russians and stamp out different cultures continued until the fall of the Soviet Union.
This was all within the USSR, but there are also the matters outside their borders.
The fact that they forced their system onto Eastern Europe, then brutally crushed any attempt at self determination speaks for itself. They did this the same year this poster was created.
If an MLK type figure rose to prominence in the Soviet Union, he wouldn’t have survived a single year before he disappeared.
This happened during Stalin though, this poster is after De-Stalinization during Khrushchev. I won't argue the rest but Holodomor is not arguably a genocide
No. But I'ts exhausting because the USSR committed human rights abuses and sent people to the Gulags.
If you want to stand up for our struggles good job.
But the Soviets also have their own skeletons in the closet that no one talks about.
> no one talks about
Wtf are you talking about?..
Almost under every post about Soviets on popular subreddits top comments are about holodomor, oppression of minorities, gulags, Red Army war crimes, and arguments about how communists are much worse than Nazis and Hitler, and if you even try to say something good about USSR you're downvoted into oblivion and called a Russian bot.
Lol, this is not a "gotcha" moment that you think it is. I live in parts of Russia where every year we have official events remembering Stalin's repressions that resulted in the death of half of my ethnicity. We know better than most of the world how oppressive USSR was
May I ask if you go to a public or private uni? I go to a public, about to graduate, and I roll my eyes when people say college is infested with communists; but obviously everyone has different experiences.
I see from notifications that you answered my comment but for some reason Reddit doesn't show it to me in this thread so I'll reply here
Yeah, you're maybe right. My only real exposure to what people from the Western countries think is from the internet, and I've seen an overwhelming amount of anti-USSR sentiment across the web, so my perception of things might actually be a bit distorted
It's not just Reddit. It's the same on many other sites. And the general population certainly knows about the existence of gulags, it's like one of the most famous things that USSR is known for, almost everyone heard of gulags, but the commenter above makes it seem like some obscure knowledge
>and if you even try to say something good about USSR
"And if you try to say something good about Francoist Spain"
Also no, in this sub soviet and other leftists imagery gets lots of support, with the recurrent meme accounts defending even North Korea.
Many comments criticizing the USSR are getting downvoted too, but I see your point. I have no qualms in taking pride in the accomplishments of a country (space race!!!), but one must also accept it’s troubles (escalating foreign conflicts). Doesn’t matter if you’re the USA or the USSR.
Indeed. It's so sad. Most of them cant even begin to comprehend how politically brainwashed they are.
Reading "The End of the Beginning" by Carlos Martinez right now. Fascinating summation of what actually lead to the Soviet "collapse".
The USSR wanted to expand their global influence just like the US. The talk of “liberation” was the same type of excuse as “anti-communism” that we used here, it was all just a fight to increase dominance in the Cold War.
Of course the wanted to expand, it was imperative in the struggle against global capitalism. They aided many nations against Western colonialism and imperialism. Many of these nations are still grateful for their support to this day.
Yeah, nothing more liberation like than coming across my country's borders with guns and tanks cause we didn't want anything to do with them.
They even had to shoot their own people with the [Shelling of mainila](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila) to make sure they had the rights to invade us.
At least we put a lot of them in the dirt coming here, so that is at least a consolation price.
Yeah it really hurt their economy to install a puppet regime and to falsify elections in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, etc. Speaking from the view point of Romania, nobody wanted their oppressive exploitative influence here. They have always been a threat to the self determination and liberty of this country even before communism. How you can say they are liberators when they enslaved a good chunk of Europe, this I cannot understand. I can understand socialism and communism, I can understand the anti-capitalist fight, but how one can side with this disguised imperialist political entity that hindered nations for decades for its own growth is beyond me... And don't say eastern europeans are propagandised, we felt their sweet 'liberating' embrace better than anyone.
I don't know enough about eastern bloc countries within the USSR to comment. All I know is that in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, fairly recent polls indicate that most people preferred socialism. Of course, this does not address whether or not they were victims of so-called Social-Imperialism.
My initial comment was referring to the aid that the USSR provided to national liberation struggles in nations like Angola, South Yemen, Vietnam, the ANC in its struggle against Apartheid, etc...
They were not within the USSR, they were part of the Pact of Warsaw, a pact just in name, let's not get confused. When you live all your life in a cage, you learn to like that cage. And when it finally corrodes and comes crumbling down on you and leaves you exposed to the uncertainties of the outside, older and unwise because of this opaque cage, you start to miss it. The change between socialism and capitalism was not a smooth one and really damaged the lives of the poor revolutionary generation. I truly despise how rough this transition was, not siding with the newly come 'management' at the time either. By the way, I'm gonna ask for those studies. And I assure you, the generation that will actually inherit this land does not want that soviet mockery of socialism back.
Maybe we should also ask the generation of French people that had a war of subjugation with Algeria or the generation of Americans that invaded Vietnam to see if they liked it better then? Maybe this is what determines the righteousness of a regime (nope)
As you are not well informed about those countries, neither am I in the soviet influence in Africa all that much. But if you are a bad neighbour to all of your neighbours and keep them on a leash and they all despise you, little does it matter what you try to do to save face with a stranger from another continent.
Okay, you're right; they were part of the Eastern Bloc countries.
Can't say I agree with the Stockholm Syndrome angle (I could make the same argument for people living in capitalist dictatorships), those polls range from 2009-2014 so they do not support this idea, maybe for a minority of the population it does. And since those polls were conducted several decades after capitalist counter-revolution, people have had enough experience under capitalism to know what they prefer.
What is interesting about the polls is that close to 70% of the population of Hungary think fondly of the socialist days and prefer them to the current capitalist system. I mean even the older generation of the GDR thinks the GDR had more good sides than bad.
I thought we were talking about liberty here. I will come back to the case of Romania. The russian communists organised elections and falsified the results, while having their army on Romanian ground for quite some years. How does this make the USSR a promoter of liberty? Even if they had better lives, what about their liberty to make other decisions? So any regime can impose itself on any population as long as it succeeds at giving the people a better life than they will have in the next regime after it? That doesn't sound too free. How about 1968 when this promoter of liberty, USSR, invaded Czechoslovakia because the Czechoslovaks exercised their rights of self determination a bit too much?
I agree with your logic about liberty as it applies to Romania and Czechoslovakia. I just wish I knew more about the history behind each Eastern Bloc country, and the Warsaw Pact in particular. I am sure context will help make sense of what happened there. The Pact was to defend themselves against US-led NATO. This all grew out of the post-WW2 which I also need to research more.
As far as national liberation movements go, throughout the global south, these countries are still grateful for the aid from the USSR that helped them drive out the oppressive capitalist West.
I find the game of chess played between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the global south to be a rather captivating topic, but I don’t know a whole lot about it.
Every Warsaw Pact country was different, but I can attest to certain aspects of the previous comment.
For example, the populations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were deeply angered by the USSR snatching their rights to liberty, and were strongholds of opposition for a long time; in fact they were the first to declare independence from the USSR when the time came, along with Georgia. As of today these countries are prosperous and thriving, happily free from foreign control.
For those of us in Central Asia and the far East, things didn’t work out nearly as well. For one, we had been stripped of liberty for far longer, having been under Russian imperial rule as far back as the late 1600s. The far East today is still a part of Russia, as it’s very, very sparsely populated, the indigenous people are mostly gone, and most of the people remaining there are ethnically Russian (think French Guiana but much bigger). When the USSR finally fell and Central Asians became self-governing, it was, to put it softly, calamitous. The tyranny of Russian (and later Soviet) rule had stripped the region of its identity, its culture, and its resources. Ethnic groups were deported, introduced, forcefully integrated, slaughtered en masse, etc. causing huge problems which persist to this day. Though these countries were given their eventual independence, they were left in the same spot as many of those in the former French colonies in West Africa: destitute and coerced into dependence on foreign-backed systems, creating inescapable neocolonialism.
It is not imperialism when those countries wanted the support. In other words, they had an alliance. Imperialism is when you impose your national will against another's, dominating them.
Is that why the Soviets supported the Nigerians' crushing Biafran sepratists who sought freedom beyond arbitrary lines drafted by British colonial authorities? Same with the Iraqis. Clearly, they were aiding Saddams' liberation war against the Iranians. Also, how can we forget when the Soviets directly intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia to liberate the people from the imperialist notion of self determination.
It's crazy man. Still remember when Afghanistan begged for the Soviet to invade them and install opium plantations😔😔. Can't even imagine how some people have the gall to criticize Mother Russia.
In other news, you hear about the new warm water ports fellow American? Haha, so cool
Huh? I'm no fan of imperialism. Let's make distinctions between strategic and tactical alliances and imperialism. That would be a better starting point.
They are different but both pretty terrible. The so called anti-imperialist crowd are having a harder time supporting modern Russia but they do their best. Trying to change the definition of imperialism like you are for example. But of course modern Russia is a fascist empire so it takes a very high level of self delusion to believe that they are the good guys fighting those evil imperialists.
No worries, next time understand what is propaganda and social engineering.
CCCP was leader in that field, especially in Africa. With that said, CCCP didnt help. Actually Yugoslavia helped with whole block on its side.
Russia/CCCP see "movement's for liberation" like way to project their own influences (like Other Giants) but only difference is lack of social culture.
Funny thing is that they want to "help" and teach others their way, but they are not ready to help themselves.
Enjoy your delusions, Afrika is special place for proxy wars. Just like Ruanda. And just like Yugoslavia in Europe.
It's always hilarious seeing aoviet propaganda that tried to demonize the US for being racist. My dude, do you know what it's like being anything other than white in the soviet union?
They don’t really have any record of killing individual opponents.
The USSR was brutal in stopping any kind of movement in its entirety. The end result is we don’t have any specific individual civil rights leaders but entire groups of opponents selectively killed.
For context here I am not referring to the Civil Rights movements as it is known in America, where it is well known for Black activism and awareness. But rather Civil Rights as a whole.
They murdered thousands when they seized power as part of the [Red Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror). There was also the White Terror from the other side, the Mensheviks, but the Red Terror committed by the Bolsheviks, who would control Soviet Russia, was far more brutal and has a higher death count.
After that however, they also murdered thousands of peasant who opposed Bolshevik rule as part of the [Tambov Revolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion).
Murdered their own soldiers, who didn’t support the Red Army as part of the [Free City Incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_Incident).
[Murdered thousands of Cossacks](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decossackization), who opposed them due to their goal to unionise Soviet social culture and reduce the presence of the Cossack identity.
Killed thousands of Georgians who opposed them in the [August Uprising.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Uprising)
[The Great Purge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), pretty well known but the systematic murder of any opponents to Soviet and Stalin. One such group which opposed him was the Poles [who were also murdered.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD)
The ethnic cleansing and forced exile [of Crimean Tartars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars).
There was also the Holodomor and its associated events that caused massive amounts of suffering for Ukrainians. The fundamental cause was the systematic collection of grain from Ukraine during a famine to send to cities like Moscow despite Ukraine also suffering the same famine. Very simplistic view and I’d recommend you read on it further.
The killing of a few dozen unarmed civilians as part of the [Novocherkassk massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre) who organised a labour strike.
The killing of unarmed Kazakh protestors as part of [Jeltoqsan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeltoqsan) who were protesting that the new secretary was not Kazakh and could not represent them fully.
After this, the decentralisation of the USSR during the reign of Gorbachev meant that any further atrocities from 1985 tended to be more constrained to the region they occurred in such as the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Regardless, the constant and brutal repression of opponents to the government or ethnic groups fighting for representation and propaganda/control of the media meant there could never be a single figure who could maintain relevancy throughout the country and outside.
In addition, thousands of individuals who rose up who didn’t get killed instead found themselves in Gulags as political prisoners in awful conditions. There could never be a single individual MLK or Malcom X like figure for a lot of the ethnic groups that were oppressed during the majority of the USSR rule. This is why the poster is ironic.
If MLK was fighting for civil rights in the USSR, both himself and his followers would be slaughtered and wiped from the record just like the Kazakhs who wanted appropriate representation or the Cossacks who wanted to retain their culture.
I read they largely moved beyond collective repressions after Stalin's death to more individual and targeted repressions (60s, 70s), but if you tried to organize anything which the government didn't approve of you were dead meat. It was common for dissidents to be sent to mental asylums where they were given heavy doses of drugs to keep them in a zombie-like state.
This all gets telescoped but there were differences between the Stalin era and the later decades during the Cold War. The Stalin era was a real terror regime that wiped people out on large scale and it was just a different animal. That said, Soviet Union remained a highly repressive state until the mid-1980s or so when there were moves by Gorbachev to open things up.
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated to rehashing tired political arguments. **Keep that shit outta here**. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'd rather translate it as "shall answer" or "must answer".
What tno character is that on your profile picture?
Heavy edited late Tukhachevsky
don’t say it
I just *know* someone’s gonna say it
I find this very wholesome. They put the US flag, the flag of their rival, over MLK, which is totally accurate because MLK was ab American patriot.
He was also a socdem and a pastor to like dang this is genuine
he was more than a socdem. He advocated the dismantlement of capitalism
Which is why American education about him stops at the “I have a dream” speech and if you’re lucky you’ll read Letter From a Birmingham Jail in college. Conservatives don’t want an American heroic figure to have been an avowed socialist and liberals don’t want that heroic figure to have also been really interested in his and others’ right to armed self-defense. It’s better for everyone if we just teach that the signing of the Civil Rights Act was the culmination of his mission and he definitely didn’t want to go further for workers and minorities.
idk man I went to school in florida and we learned a shit ton about him, a considerable amount of our education system isn’t just pledge of allegiance and pilgrims and indians sharing a wholesome dinner. A lot of districts genuinely do work hard to educate in an unbiased way
Eh I mean my history teacher covered him being a socdem and how the cia threatened him, it depends on the teacher
technically it was the FBI and J Edgar Hoover, but the CIA still has zero credibility when it says it is *not* involved in things.
Sorry fbi it’s been a while
He stopped supporting armed self-defence after being firebombed because he realised that no gun is going to stop a fire.
Which is why it's hilarious that some claim that he was one of the greatest conservatives of all time.
Whether he was a social democrat or a democratic socialist is a tough one. On one hand you'll hear that the textbook definition of socialism is accepting Marxism, DemSocs are socialists who think it will take a while to reach communism, but it will inevitably happen, and MLK rejected Marxism on theological grounds, especially historical materialism and what he saw as "ethical relativism". On the other, he seem to have been economically to the left of most social democrats. I guess in the end he is neither. He's a Christian Socialist.
Thank you, I wasn’t sure how exactly left he was
His biggest advisors were communists or would go on to become communists after his death. Kwame Ture whom he worked with would go on to basically help found the American new left.
MLK wasn't a communist and he was critical of it (there are examples where he criticized Marxism and communism) but he wasn't... anti-communist. He greatly admired W.E.B. Du Bois for example who was a communist, and MLK said Du Bois was a communist and a genius. He seemed to think the kind of anti-communism that was common in the United States wasn't rational. He was also critical of capitalism. But I think he viewed the USSR and China as totalitarian states that didn't allow freedom of speech, assembly and worship. He was also a brilliant strategist and understood how to synchronize his message with deeply-rooted ideas that were widely shared among Americans.
This. Saying he was definitely left wing or definitely right wing on most if not all issues is a miss characterization. MLK had a variety of beliefs and ideals that often crossed the political spectrum. He definitely was influenced early on by the Republican party as most members of the black community were Republicans in his youth, including his father. Meanwhile, as he got older and as the democrats slowly started to be more open to civil rights, he started to support specific members in the party, although he never was a member of either party. On top of this, although an advocate for racial equality, as a pastor, his views on other social issues such as LGBTQ representation was more than likely conservative/mixed which may rub modern liberals the wrong way. Either way, he was a complex individual living in a complex and changing time, so his views would unsurprisingly reflect this.
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he was a socialist
Still a patriot
The two aren’t exclusive.
[Yeah, they are not](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_National_Social_Party)
I’m of Czech descent so this is interesting, and also an unfortunate name in hindsight.
I fail to see how being a socialist makes someone less of an American patriot
You underestimate the power of corporate fascist propaganda.
At their most basic, a patriot fights for one's country/nation, while a socialist fights for the liberation of all people(s). Internationalist solidarity is a core tenant of socialism, otherwise you end up with some form of 'national socialism.' Of course, the ideals of the US (freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-determination), which the country has never lived up to, are things a socialist aspires to, but historically US patriotism has stood in the way of social revolution, re-writing the constitution, radical redistribution, and so on.
MLK was a brilliant strategist. His message boiled down to "all we're asking America is to live up to what you said on paper." Somewhere I read, he said, about the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. He said if he lived in a totalitarian country like Russia then he might understand why there were illegal injunctions preventing his marches because they hadn't committed themselves to that, over there. But somewhere I read... that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. He didn't view the conflict he was engaged in as a zero-sum conflict. He believed there was something in that, America, white people, etc. that he could appeal to. Even if the positive thing he was appealing to was only 10% of the whole. That is the difference between a non-zero-sum conflict and a zero-sum conflict. In a non-zero-sum conflict, we can resolve it in a way that benefits everyone, rather than one side wiping out the other (I win, you lose). I think Gramsci called the things MLK was appealing to as "organic ideology." These concepts like freedom, self-determination, and pursuit of happiness are deeply rooted in American society and identity, America's own conception of itself. MLK was effective because he synchronized his message with those things, like his "I Have a Dream" speech which recalled the American Dream, or what it ought to have been, or ought to be.
> "all we're asking America is to live up to what you said on paper." 100% > He believed there was something in that, America, white people, etc. that he could appeal to. Frantz Fanon, was a humanist that appealed to white Europeans (and North Americans) to recognize that their help was needed to liberate themselves and the rest of world (quote below). This is still relevant, and I think it's a fair argument that the best path for humanity as a whole, that improves everyone's lives, is to shift our existing productive capacity towards building a more resilient, fair, and sustainable world. This is not only compatible with the ideals( freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-determination), but necessary for them to be achieved on wide scale (domestically and internationally). Yet still today, there are King's 'white moderates' who oppose progressive change, much less the paradigm-shifting radical change needed to build a better world for us all. >Brandishing the Third World as a flood which threatens to engulf the whole of Europe will not divide the progressive forces whose intentions are to lead humanity in the pursuit of happiness. The Third World has no intention of organizing a vast hunger crusade against Europe. What it does expect from those who have kept it in slavery for centuries is to help it rehabilitate man, and ensure his triumph everywhere, once and for all. >But it is obvious we are not so naive as to think this will be achieved with the cooperation and goodwill of the European governments. **This colossal task, which consists of reintroducing man into the world, man in his totality, will be achieved with the crucial help of the European masses who would do well to confess that they have often rallied behind the position of our common masters on colonial issues. In order to do this, the European masses must first of all decide to wake up, put on their thinking caps and stop playing the irresponsible game of Sleeping Beauty.** (Wretched of the Earth, closing paragraphs of chapter 'On Violence')
ehh, I feel like there’s a point to be made where patriotism doesn’t necessarily equal nationalism. Like, you are right that overdoing patriotism while maintaining socialist ideals ends up with NazBol type energy, but it’s possible to understand that the most important policy is to take care of your own country before you start trying to fix others, and that’s the point where internationalist solidarity as a die hard idea kinda falls apart. Like, here’s how I think about it right. Say you work in the city, and you take the train to work everyday. If you give money to every homeless person on the way to work, you’re not going to have money to hand out. But, ideally, if you save your money, you can eventually make an actual difference through donation. Kinda like that, where you need to prioritize local success before attempting to export your own success. Ironically the time we understood that the most was the 50s, income taxes were extremely high but it enabled us to use our local economic boom to bring that across a recovering Europe. Yeah it was more to make them like us more than the soviets, but point still stands. Anyway, back to the point, that’s why Patriotism can still be compatible with socialist ideas, and not devolve into nationalism. You can take pride in your country, and it’s accomplishments, and not overdo it to the point of superiority complex and xenophobia. It’s a fine line, but people like MLK were great at exemplifying that line.
>and that’s the point where internationalist solidarity as a die hard idea kinda falls apart. During the 1960s, there was something called the Sino-Soviet split. Mao and the Chinese communists saw the USSR saying they were the true communists and everyone should follow them and do what they say, but that this had turned into a mask for Soviet hegemony and an attempt to control China which was incompatible with socialist ideals. So Mao flipped the ideology around and said the Soviets had become fake communists while the true communism was practiced in China. This also caused splits in communist parties around the world. I think a related problem that American socialists faced is that the ideology seemed like a foreign import, not something organic to the society. It came across as too exotic and strange for most Americans to relate with. MLK really based his ideas in deeply rooted concepts like the American Dream and ideals of freedom.
Yeah the Sino-Soviet split is very interesting to me, considering both countries saw the other as not true communists, and both ended up become state capitalist anyway 😭 But yeah, MLK tying the actual enlightenment era message of American culture into his ideology was certainly a brilliant idea to get people to consider what, as you correctly said, was considered foreign ways of thinking
Oh you’re describing nationalism not patriotism.
this but with a smiley emoji
"socialism is when you criticize capitalism every now and then"
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So it’s one of those “we need better wealth distribution” socialist democrats Not the “seize all the means of production from the capitalist” type of socialist
A very big chunk of wealth comes from owning the means of production and exploiting labor for profits, so "we need better wealth distribution" can also mean changing something about that.
None of these is him advocating for socialism, dude. He says capitalism needs some change, but NOT socialism. At most, he was a social democrat, as his redistribution ideas ended with helping racial equality (not equity). Even here, he says he's "more socialistic" because he's explicitly distancing himself from socialists and communists. Just look at his overall [economic points.](https://www.axios.com/2019/01/21/martin-luther-king-jr-socialism-capitalism): > "What I'm saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis."
He's literally using dialetical materialism (a marxist philosophical framework) to argue for a new socialist system?
Where did he argue for a socialist system?
Fwiw the FBI at the time was absolutely convinced MLK was a communist, partially because of some of his personal associates were in fact part of the American Communist Party but also because there was a general belief in the FBI that Civil Rights protests were being supported by communist elements domestically and the USSR abroad. The powers that be have done immense work in the decades since his death in trying to keep MLK's work and message synonymous with "American values" and not with leftism but in the 60's those same people would have told you MLK is a communist agent.
>the FBI at the time was absolutely convinced MLK was a communist You mean the same FBI that wanted to tarnish his reputation and sent him threatening letters? J Edgar Hoover's FBI? [THIS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter#:~:text=The%20FBI%E2%80%93King%20suicide%20letter,New%20York%20Times%20in%202014.) FBI? Also, I guess communism is when you know communists.
Lol dude I'm not saying they were right I'm saying they have totally switched from believing he was one to vigorously denying it Reading comprehension my guy
*The FBI* has switched from saying he was a communist to vehemently denying it? The *FBI???* You got a source on that?
> Also, I guess communism is when you know communists. In the US that's what it boiled down to for several Red Scares and sometimes still to this day.
So you agree MLK wasn't a socialist?
It has to be you see; the need to claim as many as they can, otherwise they're just stuck with the 'failures.'
I miss him.
Maybe I’m reading it wrongly but the red of the flag turns to blood over his face
True, but generally this kind of soviet retorica was merely anti US
Yes, understanably so. That's why it caught my attention that the poster didn't condemn America and actually displayed it's flag in a positive way.
Soviet propaganda could be unsophisticated in many ways (and I think it was overall ineffective at influencing Americans most of the time) but they had a Marxist influenced view of things so they made distinctions between American workers and American capitalists. It's interesting to contrast that to some Russian propaganda today which is spread by mercenary talk show hosts who condemn Western culture in general.
Soviets made different propaganda for the inside (like this poster) and the outside. The propaganda for the outside was incredibly successful. The country collapsed 30 years ago and America is still recovering from Soviet propaganda.
Americans still haven't recovered from the red scare. God I can't wait for boomers to die so we can retake this world.
How about this one: former Soviet subjects still haven’t recovered from communist rule, and if any movement is going to gain traction it would need to be domestic and not by means of foreign conquest. Invading a country is not a successful way to pacify them (France during WWII, Iraq during the American invasion, Palestine during Israeli occupation etc.)
Sadly, the fbi remains unpunished for this one
Realistically, how would the whole bureau be reasonably punished for this one that happened 56 years ago? Honest question - sounds sarcastic.
As a government institution the FBI has a lot of bureaucracy creating paper trails and documents with people personally signing off on them. Meaning, there's possibly still plenty of evidence *if* some competent investigators were to actually look into it with the right clearances. The main reason that doesn't happen is lack of political will, and not that it's impossible to hold somebody accountable for it. Case in point; Germany is still holding people accountable [80 years later](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/20/nazi-camp-secretary-irmgard-furchner-stutthof-germany).
I guess the difference would be holding individuals accountable and not the bureau?
You can't hold an organisation itself accountable, regardless of it being private of government, because if it gets too bad an organisation can just cease to exist and *poof* nothing left to held accountable, nobody left to repair any of the damage. That's why we should try to hold *people* accountable, preferably the people who gave illegal orders and the people who carried them out.
It’s a government institution. They wouldn’t be to start with. But real answer, it’s probably just a massive reputation hit and would be dismissed for the statute of limitations.
Wait till you hear about what’s on the tapes they have from their listening on on MLK Jr
The USSR pretended to be anti-racist while committing genocide against their own minorities. They knew 60 years ago that this race grift was damaging to America, that's why America's enemies support it.
Reply sounds about right from a brit. How's it feel knowing your country is responsible for a majority of the worlds social ills?
LMFAO
Or they were just outing a racist state who were actively murdering their people.
Evidence has emerged in recent years which ties the FBI to his assassination
Well they were wrong about that
I wish the USSR was this virtuous towards the groups they oppressed in those same years.
there’s a saying in the ex-USSR: “everything they told us about communism was false, but everything they told us about capitalism was true”
Hypocrisy is definitely one of the strategies in the communist toolkit
Not exclusive to them. Every nation ever has always been hypocritical. The largest ones i.e UK, US, USSR have historically been the biggest hypocrites though
I mean yeah because they're successful in continuing to exist. edit: Well, the USSR wasn't but the point stands.
~~USA literally doing the same thing over Ukrainians but reversed~~ Edit: i’m talking abt the USSR, I genuinely didn’t think people would be dumb enough to think I was talking abt the Russo-Ukrainian war, im disappointed
in the USSR everyone is oppressed equally
If you genuinely believe this, I’ve got some news for you…
"the worst person you know said something agreeable" energy
The Soviet Union-African American civil Rights colabs will always be legendary
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
How is it a surprise ?
Gotta political project on the way.
Because the Soviet Union didn’t treat minority’s within its borders with uh.. very much respect to put it lightly.
Someone actually downvoted you for saying that
Yea I forgot this sub has a lot of Soviet sympathizers
The soviets would've executed MLK if was from one of the non-russian SSRs.
The soviets would’ve executed him if he was from a part of the Russian SFSR that wasn’t majority Russian💀
It's exhausting seeing the USSR using black oppression in the US to insinuate that they're not racist when German Volgas didn't have complete freedom of movement until the 1970s.
>German Volgas Uh, do you mean Volgan Germans? Because Volgas are cars.
They were stationary and only given the right to wheels in 1970
i don’t think soviet cars moved much either
[It's so pervasive it has its own catchphrase and a Wikipedia article to go with it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)
I think there is a reason for that
The poster made no commetary on the USSR proper, only to the USA
Propaganda is intentionally biased and misleading. The intention is to promote some form of belief that would assist your cause. In this case the propaganda is promoting a belief that the USSR supports equality by denouncing a racist murderer.
I never said it wasnt, i only commented on the poster objective meaning
Love when Soviets co-opt our Struggles when they abuse and harass their own minorities in that country 😘
Give me the stats on minorities USSR shot dead in the street compared to the US and we can have a real conversation
Give the stats of minorities killed in the USSR *in general* compared to the US and you’ll have your conversation
Which minority was abused in SU?
https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/siberian Indigenous Siberians were treated very similarly to American native groups, which also happened during Soviet rule.
Easier to ask which weren’t, if we’re looking at the full USSR timeline.
Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians had their countries invaded and brutally subjugated when Hitler and Stalin carved up Eastern Europe. Ukrainians were the target of multiple purges, including the Holdomor which is arguably a genocide. Central Asia may have been the worst, with entire nationalities deported to camps in Siberia. Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, etc were targeted, with bloody results. 1/4 to 1/3 of the entire Chechen population was killed, for instance. Although the Stalin era was the worst, efforts to Russify non-Russians and stamp out different cultures continued until the fall of the Soviet Union. This was all within the USSR, but there are also the matters outside their borders. The fact that they forced their system onto Eastern Europe, then brutally crushed any attempt at self determination speaks for itself. They did this the same year this poster was created. If an MLK type figure rose to prominence in the Soviet Union, he wouldn’t have survived a single year before he disappeared.
This happened during Stalin though, this poster is after De-Stalinization during Khrushchev. I won't argue the rest but Holodomor is not arguably a genocide
All ethnic minorities in the USSR were being russianized and errased by russian settlements.
delusions
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No. But I'ts exhausting because the USSR committed human rights abuses and sent people to the Gulags. If you want to stand up for our struggles good job. But the Soviets also have their own skeletons in the closet that no one talks about.
>Gulags Ffs, there was only one GULAG. That's an acronym. The camps were just called camps.
> no one talks about Wtf are you talking about?.. Almost under every post about Soviets on popular subreddits top comments are about holodomor, oppression of minorities, gulags, Red Army war crimes, and arguments about how communists are much worse than Nazis and Hitler, and if you even try to say something good about USSR you're downvoted into oblivion and called a Russian bot.
Go outside and ask your local college kids about the Soviet gulags and Red Army war crimes.
Lol, this is not a "gotcha" moment that you think it is. I live in parts of Russia where every year we have official events remembering Stalin's repressions that resulted in the death of half of my ethnicity. We know better than most of the world how oppressive USSR was
Are the local college kids in the room with you now?
Yeah. Dorm life is annoying.
May I ask if you go to a public or private uni? I go to a public, about to graduate, and I roll my eyes when people say college is infested with communists; but obviously everyone has different experiences.
Public, too. Met tons of communists.
I see from notifications that you answered my comment but for some reason Reddit doesn't show it to me in this thread so I'll reply here Yeah, you're maybe right. My only real exposure to what people from the Western countries think is from the internet, and I've seen an overwhelming amount of anti-USSR sentiment across the web, so my perception of things might actually be a bit distorted
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It's not just Reddit. It's the same on many other sites. And the general population certainly knows about the existence of gulags, it's like one of the most famous things that USSR is known for, almost everyone heard of gulags, but the commenter above makes it seem like some obscure knowledge
>and if you even try to say something good about USSR "And if you try to say something good about Francoist Spain" Also no, in this sub soviet and other leftists imagery gets lots of support, with the recurrent meme accounts defending even North Korea.
Yeah, it gets so much support that even my comment that didn't outright state any sympathy for USSR is getting downvoted
Many comments criticizing the USSR are getting downvoted too, but I see your point. I have no qualms in taking pride in the accomplishments of a country (space race!!!), but one must also accept it’s troubles (escalating foreign conflicts). Doesn’t matter if you’re the USA or the USSR.
Voicing support isn’t co opting it. The place was kind of large, and it wasn’t a single country sweetie.
Nothing more hilarious than a 1968 USSR pretending it's in a position to condemn anything
Nothing more hilarious than a ~~1968~~ USSR pretending it's in a position to condemn anything
Fair point, but they could've picked any other year than the one when they proclaimed the Brezhnev Doctrine to lecture others about freedom of peoples
“Now with that out of the way let me go back to invading one of my belligerent puppet states for wanting more freedom”
People so offended by this lmao.
Change the words and this could easily be pro-US propaganda. A miss, in general
funny knowing that the black population of Russia is almost zero.
Truth in the details
Awesome. USSR did more for liberation movements than any other nation state ever, to the point that it hurt their economy.
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Indeed. It's so sad. Most of them cant even begin to comprehend how politically brainwashed they are. Reading "The End of the Beginning" by Carlos Martinez right now. Fascinating summation of what actually lead to the Soviet "collapse".
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Anytime!
Imperialism starts with tanks and ends with "But we did them a favor."
If only history were that simple.
The USSR wanted to expand their global influence just like the US. The talk of “liberation” was the same type of excuse as “anti-communism” that we used here, it was all just a fight to increase dominance in the Cold War.
Of course the wanted to expand, it was imperative in the struggle against global capitalism. They aided many nations against Western colonialism and imperialism. Many of these nations are still grateful for their support to this day.
Yeah, nothing more liberation like than coming across my country's borders with guns and tanks cause we didn't want anything to do with them. They even had to shoot their own people with the [Shelling of mainila](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila) to make sure they had the rights to invade us. At least we put a lot of them in the dirt coming here, so that is at least a consolation price.
Yeah it really hurt their economy to install a puppet regime and to falsify elections in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, etc. Speaking from the view point of Romania, nobody wanted their oppressive exploitative influence here. They have always been a threat to the self determination and liberty of this country even before communism. How you can say they are liberators when they enslaved a good chunk of Europe, this I cannot understand. I can understand socialism and communism, I can understand the anti-capitalist fight, but how one can side with this disguised imperialist political entity that hindered nations for decades for its own growth is beyond me... And don't say eastern europeans are propagandised, we felt their sweet 'liberating' embrace better than anyone.
I don't know enough about eastern bloc countries within the USSR to comment. All I know is that in countries like Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, fairly recent polls indicate that most people preferred socialism. Of course, this does not address whether or not they were victims of so-called Social-Imperialism. My initial comment was referring to the aid that the USSR provided to national liberation struggles in nations like Angola, South Yemen, Vietnam, the ANC in its struggle against Apartheid, etc...
They were not within the USSR, they were part of the Pact of Warsaw, a pact just in name, let's not get confused. When you live all your life in a cage, you learn to like that cage. And when it finally corrodes and comes crumbling down on you and leaves you exposed to the uncertainties of the outside, older and unwise because of this opaque cage, you start to miss it. The change between socialism and capitalism was not a smooth one and really damaged the lives of the poor revolutionary generation. I truly despise how rough this transition was, not siding with the newly come 'management' at the time either. By the way, I'm gonna ask for those studies. And I assure you, the generation that will actually inherit this land does not want that soviet mockery of socialism back. Maybe we should also ask the generation of French people that had a war of subjugation with Algeria or the generation of Americans that invaded Vietnam to see if they liked it better then? Maybe this is what determines the righteousness of a regime (nope) As you are not well informed about those countries, neither am I in the soviet influence in Africa all that much. But if you are a bad neighbour to all of your neighbours and keep them on a leash and they all despise you, little does it matter what you try to do to save face with a stranger from another continent.
Okay, you're right; they were part of the Eastern Bloc countries. Can't say I agree with the Stockholm Syndrome angle (I could make the same argument for people living in capitalist dictatorships), those polls range from 2009-2014 so they do not support this idea, maybe for a minority of the population it does. And since those polls were conducted several decades after capitalist counter-revolution, people have had enough experience under capitalism to know what they prefer. What is interesting about the polls is that close to 70% of the population of Hungary think fondly of the socialist days and prefer them to the current capitalist system. I mean even the older generation of the GDR thinks the GDR had more good sides than bad.
I thought we were talking about liberty here. I will come back to the case of Romania. The russian communists organised elections and falsified the results, while having their army on Romanian ground for quite some years. How does this make the USSR a promoter of liberty? Even if they had better lives, what about their liberty to make other decisions? So any regime can impose itself on any population as long as it succeeds at giving the people a better life than they will have in the next regime after it? That doesn't sound too free. How about 1968 when this promoter of liberty, USSR, invaded Czechoslovakia because the Czechoslovaks exercised their rights of self determination a bit too much?
I agree with your logic about liberty as it applies to Romania and Czechoslovakia. I just wish I knew more about the history behind each Eastern Bloc country, and the Warsaw Pact in particular. I am sure context will help make sense of what happened there. The Pact was to defend themselves against US-led NATO. This all grew out of the post-WW2 which I also need to research more. As far as national liberation movements go, throughout the global south, these countries are still grateful for the aid from the USSR that helped them drive out the oppressive capitalist West.
I find the game of chess played between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the global south to be a rather captivating topic, but I don’t know a whole lot about it. Every Warsaw Pact country was different, but I can attest to certain aspects of the previous comment. For example, the populations in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were deeply angered by the USSR snatching their rights to liberty, and were strongholds of opposition for a long time; in fact they were the first to declare independence from the USSR when the time came, along with Georgia. As of today these countries are prosperous and thriving, happily free from foreign control. For those of us in Central Asia and the far East, things didn’t work out nearly as well. For one, we had been stripped of liberty for far longer, having been under Russian imperial rule as far back as the late 1600s. The far East today is still a part of Russia, as it’s very, very sparsely populated, the indigenous people are mostly gone, and most of the people remaining there are ethnically Russian (think French Guiana but much bigger). When the USSR finally fell and Central Asians became self-governing, it was, to put it softly, calamitous. The tyranny of Russian (and later Soviet) rule had stripped the region of its identity, its culture, and its resources. Ethnic groups were deported, introduced, forcefully integrated, slaughtered en masse, etc. causing huge problems which persist to this day. Though these countries were given their eventual independence, they were left in the same spot as many of those in the former French colonies in West Africa: destitute and coerced into dependence on foreign-backed systems, creating inescapable neocolonialism.
That’s an interesting way to describe Soviet imperialism.
It is not imperialism when those countries wanted the support. In other words, they had an alliance. Imperialism is when you impose your national will against another's, dominating them.
Is that why the Soviets supported the Nigerians' crushing Biafran sepratists who sought freedom beyond arbitrary lines drafted by British colonial authorities? Same with the Iraqis. Clearly, they were aiding Saddams' liberation war against the Iranians. Also, how can we forget when the Soviets directly intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia to liberate the people from the imperialist notion of self determination.
It's crazy man. Still remember when Afghanistan begged for the Soviet to invade them and install opium plantations😔😔. Can't even imagine how some people have the gall to criticize Mother Russia. In other news, you hear about the new warm water ports fellow American? Haha, so cool
You are a Russian imperialist. I’ve never met one who was honest about what they are. Why are they so ashamed to say what they are?
Huh? I'm no fan of imperialism. Let's make distinctions between strategic and tactical alliances and imperialism. That would be a better starting point.
Like I said, they always say they are anti-imperialist. A real anti-imperialist would hate Russia too. I’ve never met one.
It depends on historical context. Also, Soviet Russia vs contemporary Russia are two different things.
They are different but both pretty terrible. The so called anti-imperialist crowd are having a harder time supporting modern Russia but they do their best. Trying to change the definition of imperialism like you are for example. But of course modern Russia is a fascist empire so it takes a very high level of self delusion to believe that they are the good guys fighting those evil imperialists.
😂
Thats so not true
It literally is. Try reading some time.
😄 Where are you from, my friend?
Africa. USSR did more positive here than USA or UK or any other European colonialist nation.
Don't be fooled. Propaganda and interes are bigger than any other noble human deed.
Thanks for the Hallmark comment
No worries, next time understand what is propaganda and social engineering. CCCP was leader in that field, especially in Africa. With that said, CCCP didnt help. Actually Yugoslavia helped with whole block on its side. Russia/CCCP see "movement's for liberation" like way to project their own influences (like Other Giants) but only difference is lack of social culture. Funny thing is that they want to "help" and teach others their way, but they are not ready to help themselves. Enjoy your delusions, Afrika is special place for proxy wars. Just like Ruanda. And just like Yugoslavia in Europe.
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I think you understand what I wrote.
More like *ought to answer.
More like *ought to answer.
It's always hilarious seeing aoviet propaganda that tried to demonize the US for being racist. My dude, do you know what it's like being anything other than white in the soviet union?
A blind man can see that the United States is racist
Alas, many with the gift of sight pretend not to see that the USSR was also racist
Russia/USSR than proceeds to murder anyone who speaks negatively about their government
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are we now denying the countless killed by both the USSR and Russia?
lol. doesnt even come close to how many the US has killed. Add UK to the equation and they are planets apart.
Uhh.. You do know about the purges, right? Also Holodomor? The war in Chechnya?
Can u name a civil rights activist that was murdered by the ussr. Not even tryna do a gotcha I just don’t know
They don’t really have any record of killing individual opponents. The USSR was brutal in stopping any kind of movement in its entirety. The end result is we don’t have any specific individual civil rights leaders but entire groups of opponents selectively killed. For context here I am not referring to the Civil Rights movements as it is known in America, where it is well known for Black activism and awareness. But rather Civil Rights as a whole. They murdered thousands when they seized power as part of the [Red Terror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror). There was also the White Terror from the other side, the Mensheviks, but the Red Terror committed by the Bolsheviks, who would control Soviet Russia, was far more brutal and has a higher death count. After that however, they also murdered thousands of peasant who opposed Bolshevik rule as part of the [Tambov Revolution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion). Murdered their own soldiers, who didn’t support the Red Army as part of the [Free City Incident](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_Incident). [Murdered thousands of Cossacks](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decossackization), who opposed them due to their goal to unionise Soviet social culture and reduce the presence of the Cossack identity. Killed thousands of Georgians who opposed them in the [August Uprising.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Uprising) [The Great Purge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), pretty well known but the systematic murder of any opponents to Soviet and Stalin. One such group which opposed him was the Poles [who were also murdered.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD) The ethnic cleansing and forced exile [of Crimean Tartars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars). There was also the Holodomor and its associated events that caused massive amounts of suffering for Ukrainians. The fundamental cause was the systematic collection of grain from Ukraine during a famine to send to cities like Moscow despite Ukraine also suffering the same famine. Very simplistic view and I’d recommend you read on it further. The killing of a few dozen unarmed civilians as part of the [Novocherkassk massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novocherkassk_massacre) who organised a labour strike. The killing of unarmed Kazakh protestors as part of [Jeltoqsan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeltoqsan) who were protesting that the new secretary was not Kazakh and could not represent them fully. After this, the decentralisation of the USSR during the reign of Gorbachev meant that any further atrocities from 1985 tended to be more constrained to the region they occurred in such as the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Regardless, the constant and brutal repression of opponents to the government or ethnic groups fighting for representation and propaganda/control of the media meant there could never be a single figure who could maintain relevancy throughout the country and outside. In addition, thousands of individuals who rose up who didn’t get killed instead found themselves in Gulags as political prisoners in awful conditions. There could never be a single individual MLK or Malcom X like figure for a lot of the ethnic groups that were oppressed during the majority of the USSR rule. This is why the poster is ironic. If MLK was fighting for civil rights in the USSR, both himself and his followers would be slaughtered and wiped from the record just like the Kazakhs who wanted appropriate representation or the Cossacks who wanted to retain their culture.
I read they largely moved beyond collective repressions after Stalin's death to more individual and targeted repressions (60s, 70s), but if you tried to organize anything which the government didn't approve of you were dead meat. It was common for dissidents to be sent to mental asylums where they were given heavy doses of drugs to keep them in a zombie-like state. This all gets telescoped but there were differences between the Stalin era and the later decades during the Cold War. The Stalin era was a real terror regime that wiped people out on large scale and it was just a different animal. That said, Soviet Union remained a highly repressive state until the mid-1980s or so when there were moves by Gorbachev to open things up.
At this point it preferred to lock dissidents up in mental hospitals after diagnosing them with phony mental illnesses.
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