Redpill me on the Soviet Union...

Redpill me on the Soviet Union. I have a basic high school tier understanding of history and I've read The Communist Manifesto. I'm leaning towards Socialism but I want to know what actually happened with the Soviet Union and whether it was actually the shit show people make it out to be.

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pastebin.com/Zwuejk4A
latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-black-russian-americans-20141119-story.html
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221064/Oppressive-grey-No-growing-communism-happiest-time-life.html
libcom.org/history/black-bolshevik-autobiography-afro-american-communist
link.springer.com/article/10.2307/3342145?no-access=true
articles.latimes.com/1986-06-07/local/me-10010_1_socialist-countries
cam.ac.uk/research/news/imf-loans-“strongly-linked”-to-tuberculosis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia
artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/captura-de-pantalla-de-2016-05-26-10-15-23.png
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf
homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/FarmtoFactory.pdf
artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/compar1.png?w=640
en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Union_(1977,_Unamended)
theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2016/jan/24/racial-harmony-in-a-marxist-utopia-how-the-soviet-union-capitalised-on-us-discrimination-in-pictures
revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PubEdUSSR.htm
revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/anglosov.htm
unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000013/001300eo.pdf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez
marxists.org/archive/newsholme/1933/red-medicine/index.htm
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482
gowans.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/we-lived-better-then/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif
wsws.org/en/articles/2003/07/unpo-j28.html
academia.edu/1072631/Review_Red_Plenty_by_Francis_Spufford
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC259165/
theglobeandmail.com/news/world/an-epidemic-of-street-kids-overwhelms-russian-cities/article4141933/
knoema.com/atlas/Russian-Federation/Nenets-Autonomous-District/topics/Demographics/Mortality/Infant-mortality-rate-deaths-before-age-1-per-1000-live-births
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Life_expectancy_and_infant_mortality
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy
i.stack.imgur.com/8Fj8E.png
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_1996
youtube.com/watch?v=933jsB5ChlA
youtube.com/watch?v=UpnAdVhfosY
youtube.com/watch?v=8uK5y8YjJTM
marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/lenin-socialism.htm
calvertjournal.com/features/show/9100/holidays-in-soviet-sanatoriums-ussr-tourism-photography
jakkkobinmag.com/2017/12/red-diaper-babies
jakkkobinmag.com/2016/08/soviet-architecture-bus-stops-design-history
spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html
youtu.be/9GOD5bhBaQE?t=13m8s
youtube.com/watch?v=EE-kCZnlGZU&t=50s
espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/gulag/
web.archive.org/web/20150215094534/http://www.russianspaceweb.com/buran.html
popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22515248/russia-super-rocket-energia/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Go to >>>/marx/ and ask Ismail for book suggestions

Ignore flag

pastebin.com/Zwuejk4A

The "no the Communist countries weren't living hell on earth you fucking idiot" starter pack.

latimes.com/world/la-fg-c1-black-russian-americans-20141119-story.html

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1221064/Oppressive-grey-No-growing-communism-happiest-time-life.html

libcom.org/history/black-bolshevik-autobiography-afro-american-communist

link.springer.com/article/10.2307/3342145?no-access=true

articles.latimes.com/1986-06-07/local/me-10010_1_socialist-countries

[…]


[…]

[…]

cam.ac.uk/research/news/imf-loans-“strongly-linked”-to-tuberculosis

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia


After the first few days of euphoria, the workers returned to work and found themselves without responsible management. This resulted in the creation of workers' committees in factories, workshops and warehouses, which tried to resume production with all the problems that a transformation of this kind entailed. Owing to inadequate training and the sabotage of some of the technicians who remained many others had fled with the owners the workers' committees and other bodies that were improvised had to rely on the guidance of the unions…. Lacking training in economic matters, the union leaders, with more good will than success, began to issue directives that spread confusion in the factory committees and enormous chaos in production. This was aggravated by the fact that each union… gave different and often contradictory instruction.[14]

If you didn't want to join the collective you were given some land but only as much as you could work yourself. You were not allowed to employ workers. Not only production was affected, distribution was on the basis of what people needed. In many areas money was abolished. People come to the collective store (often churches which had been turned into warehouses) and got what was available. If there were shortages rationing would be introduced to ensure that everyone got their fair share. But it was usually the case that increased production under the new system eliminated shortages.

In agricultural terms the revolution occurred at a good time. Harvests that were gathered in and being sold off to make big profits for a few landowners were instead distributed to those in need. Doctors, bakers, barbers, etc. were given what they needed in return for their services. Where money was not abolished a 'family wage' was introduced so that payment was on the basis of need and not the number of hours worked.

Production greatly increased. Technicians and agronomists helped the peasants to make better use of the land. Modern scientific methods were introduced and in some areas yields increased by as much as 50%. There was enough to feed the collectivists and the militias in their areas. Often there was enough for exchange with other collectives in the cities for machinery. In addition food was handed over to the supply committees who looked after distribution in the urban areas.[23]

The USSR:

had the 2nd fastest growing economy of the 20th century the USSR is 2nd after Japan Source: artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/captura-de-pantalla-de-2016-05-26-10-15-23.png

had zero unemployment have continuous economic growth for 70 straight years. see: Robert C. Allen's, From Farm To Factory Source: citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf (review of book here homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/FarmtoFactory.pdf ). The "continuous" part should make sense – the USSR was a planned, non-market economy, so market crashes á la capitalism were pretty much impossible.

had zero homelessness. Houses were often shared by two families throughout the 20s and 30s – so unlike capitalism, there were no empty houses, but the houses were very full. In the 40s there was the war, and in the 50s there were a number of orphans from the war. The mass housing projects began in the 60s, they were completed in the 70s, and by the 70s, there were homeless people, but they often had genuine issues with mental health.

end famine have higher calorie consumption than USA Source: artir.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/compar1.png?w=640

. You can read more about the post-1941 famine history in Nove's An Economic History of the USSR 1917-1991. There were food insecurity issues, especially when Khrushchev et al. majorly fucked up with trade and resource dependence on the west, but no famines after the collectivisation of agriculture in the early 1930s (except for in the Siege of Leningrad).

end sex inequality Source: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Union_(1977,_Unamended) Equal wages for men and women were mandated by law, but sex inequality, although not as pronounced as under capitalism, was perpetuated in social roles. Very important lesson to learn.

end racial inequality Source: theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2016/jan/24/racial-harmony-in-a-marxist-utopia-how-the-soviet-union-capitalised-on-us-discrimination-in-pictures

make all education free Source: revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/PubEdUSSR.htm revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/anglosov.htm unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0000/000013/001300eo.pdf

99% literacy Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likbez

have most doctors per capita in the world Source: marxists.org/archive/newsholme/1933/red-medicine/index.htm The Soviet Union had the highest physician-patient ratio in the world, my notes say 42 per 10,000 population, vs 24 in Denmark and Sweden, 19 in US. In this document: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0735675784900482 You can open it without paying with sci-hub.cc

eliminate poverty Source: gowans.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/we-lived-better-then/

double life expectancy Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union

After the October revolution, the life expectancy for all age groups went up. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. This improvement was seen in itself by some as immediate proof that the socialist system was superior to the capitalist system be 25 years away from reaching parity with Western world This is kind of a counterfactual – the transformation of the USSR to capitalism began a long time before 1991, so trying to figure out what Soviet growth would look like if it hadn't become capitalist requires that we root out the fundamental cause of the change to capitalism. And we can't even use US economic stats either – the mass-privatization of the Soviet economy and the sudden influx of cheap labour for Western capitalists obviously had an effect on the US economy. But then again, even a 1% difference will stack up over 25 years.

Now let's take a look at what happens after the USSR collapse:

GDP instantly halves Source: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Soviet_Union_GDP_per_capita.gif

42% decrease

40% of population drops into poverty Source: wsws.org/en/articles/2003/07/unpo-j28.html Article cites a 2003 UN report.

7.7 million excess deaths in the first year Source: academia.edu/1072631/Review_Red_Plenty_by_Francis_Spufford Really difficult to find this exact figure, original link I had was dead. Also: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC259165/

one in ten children now live on the streets Source: theglobeandmail.com/news/world/an-epidemic-of-street-kids-overwhelms-russian-cities/article4141933/

infant mortality increase Source: knoema.com/atlas/Russian-Federation/Nenets-Autonomous-District/topics/Demographics/Mortality/Infant-mortality-rate-deaths-before-age-1-per-1000-live-births Was 29.3 in 2003 which is around (current) Syria and Micronesia, 7.9 in 2013. Given the trend downwards, it was likely to have been much higher in the 90s. There's a weird amount of variation between years – I have no clue why. Infant mortality in USSR was 1.92, literally the lowest in the world. What the actual fuck. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Life_expectancy_and_infant_mortality

life expectancy decreases by 10 years Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy
Approximately true for men, women were less affected apparently. i.stack.imgur.com/8Fj8E.png 1996 election rigged Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_presidential_election,_1996


Soviet Women Remember Socialism
youtube.com/watch?v=933jsB5ChlA

Bulgaria 1965
youtube.com/watch?v=UpnAdVhfosY

Moscow 1965
youtube.com/watch?v=8uK5y8YjJTM

Here comrade. A handy little guide.
marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/lenin-socialism.htm

In the same boat, and I have a question if anyone can answer it. I'd appreciate it.

I watched a documentary on Soviet Russia and communism came up. In the documentary they were talking about Russia's planned economy. They went into to explain how much the USSR struggled building this economy and how they were so desperate as to copy American Sears catalogs to get an idea on pricing of commodities.

Something about that seems off. The obvious intimation is that the USSR was fumbling around and how socialism can't work; Praise capitalism and such.

What is this all about?

It's a common talking point in anti-communist circles, but it's more of a myth. Never actually seen evidence of it, I mean, why the fuck would they do that? They had an entire ministry for prices and why the heck would you copy prices from a completely different economy with a completely different economic system, income, purchasing power and production output? Maybe there was an incident where they checked the catalog in 1990 or something, during Perestroika.

One of the biggest redpills you need to take is that comparing quality of life in the USSR with west germany, the USA, france etc. is completely retarded for a million reasons. Compare it with countries like Italy or Spain and you will see it was pretty good. While Italy and Spain are never praised as super prosperous or heaven on earth you will never see people point out every flaw a million times and make up another million. You won't get strange looks if you tell people you'd like to visit Rome someday. "Didn't you know 100 million people starved in Italy?"

Finnish bolshevik made this video I really enjoy watching:

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god i wanna fuck dark wojak yui

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Despite some of the obvious problems with Jacobin, they've had some good pieces about very interesting topics regarding how ambitious and inventive the Soviet Union was. I mean the Soviet was literally a league 3 team that clawed their way through constant war and sabotage by massive capitalist empires and they made to the fucking final and barely lost. They were the underdogs x100, and even while they were fighting on every conceivable economic, political, military, and cultural front, they still managed to have things like science fiction, architecture, education flourish.
some links that kinda talk about these things:
calvertjournal.com/features/show/9100/holidays-in-soviet-sanatoriums-ussr-tourism-photography
jakkkobinmag.com/2017/12/red-diaper-babies
jakkkobinmag.com/2016/08/soviet-architecture-bus-stops-design-history

they also won the space race

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Soviet sci-fi is extremely underrated. There was a ton of interesting stuff published aside from the Strugatskys, including a whole subgenre of revolutionary sci-fi from the 20s-30s

reading roadside picnic right now
fucking loving it
do you have other titles to suggest?

Of Strugatskys specifically?

Monday Begins On Saturday (Soviet Harry Potter but better, about a programmer in a magic research institute)

Hard to be a God (Researchers from future end up on a medieval, feudal planet with a directive not to mess with history)

Those Burdened By Evil (Multi-POV biblical fantasy)

Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism
spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html

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...

hmmm

I invite you to look up the Holodomor, the Gulags, and Genrikh Yagoda.

The USSR and China were proof that Marx's accelerationist praxis is correct. They pushed the development of productive forces faster and more comprehensively than the market alone would have. Without socialism, Russia and China today would be as poorly-developed as India, and we'd all be that much further away from communism.

>>>Zig Forums

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yeah?

...

Are there good documentaries about the USSR?

thanks
got any other soviet sci-fi you like beyond them?

the most important things to know.

1) holodomor was a fiction created by Ukrainian nationalist retards to blame Russians.

2) the enemy's of the people were sent to have fun and the zoo

3)Genrikh Yagoda was just a horny jew who liked porn,plastic dildo and piss off his friends and NKVD.

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Funny how most of it mentions strong economic developments, prosperity and recovery from brutal war. Western descriptions of Soviet economy and life was actually more positive and honest during the cold war than after, when blatant lies can go unchallenged.

Not OP, but have similar interests. However I’m more interested in the evolving politics of the Soviet Union’s leadership post-Lenin as opposed to everyday life.

Are you an American? Because then "I have basic HS understanding" means you have no understanding.

…do they have a list of the 'regular fa'?
Pre-fa? Near-fa?
Iran so fa away
To clarify for those who haven’t read the article. This list the police are calling Antifa, is a list of regular citizens who signed a petition against trump. The list was started by internet trolls. Paranoid neo nazis fell for it and then apparently the police fell for it after that. At which point the police started circulating the list as credible.
The actual document originated on Zig Forums, was popularized by Neo-Nazi websites like Stormfront, and contains the names of thousands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens who signed an online petition against President Trump, according to the lawsuit.
This totally reminds me of when those homeland security documents came out which showed that top level investigators believed Antifa Supersoldiers were going to start a civil war. What did we find out was their “credible” source? An internet rant by alex jones.
This is another stunning example of how some law enforcement officers are letting their own paranoid brain slugs influence their political beliefs which is steering them into nonsense investigations. It’s the red scare all over again.
When investigators believe anyone who signs an online petition against trump is a possible lead to investigate, those investigators have gone off the sanity rails and need to be stripped of any authority over everyday citizens.

My grandparents lived in the Eastern Bloc. I know these things from them and my mother:

I don't remember everything they've told me, but the quality of life was definitely much better.

What

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Can anyone debunk the common assertion that the Eastern Bloc was disastrous for the environment?

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Although nuclear waste was sometimes handled poorly (up til the mid 70s) the garbage disposal was fucking top class.
No plastic was used in almost any products. glass bottles weren't thrown out but brought back to the store and exchanged for 10 kopeks a bottle. These bottles were sent to the factories, washed and re-used. broken glass was melted down. scrap metal like cans were also melted down, and gathered in special machines from the garbage disposals.
Books and scrap paper was gathered on special days were Makulatura was gathered and sent to be recycled for new paper.
Subotniks would have nearly the entire city out cleaning the streets, by gathering litter, fixing broken public spaces (benches and bird-houses) and the planting of trees. Indeed Stalin personally had entire forests planted after WW-2 to replace the trees cut down in the 30s and 40s for the industrialization and war-effort. Many of these 60+ year old trees have recently been cut down again and sold for timber by Russian oligarchs. The open spaces used as toxic garbage dumps.

There's the basic run-down.

youtu.be/9GOD5bhBaQE?t=13m8s

Huh, when I occasionally listened to stories about Yugoslavia from my parents perspective.
They told me that during summertime, a lot of young adults volunteered to work in Federate Republics that had a sea (Basically just Croatia that is) and those were great places to meet other people your age while also leaving your village/town for a few weeks.

I typed de*eneracy and for some reason it corrected to fun. There was a lot of fun activities, my grandfather and mother traveled all over Eastern Europe. I have a ton of pictures at home of these times.

BASED CCCP

Tell this fucking bitch…

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Ah right, it's a word filter put in since a lot of Zig Forumsyps kept going around crying de*eneracy

..meaning that before the 70s there was (almost) zero homelessness? What about this don't you understand?

youtube.com/watch?v=EE-kCZnlGZU&t=50s
Cockshott explains the economic reasons why the USSR collapsed.

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Get new pics.

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please tell me that's real

harold is an old hungarian so he might have been to Moscow

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Based as fuck

nice

lmao

it was the only real attempt at leading a worldwide proletarian revolution, but it's dead so it's useless to discuss anymore. Socialism is dead

oh ok

eat a bag of cocksshott

...

The Soviet space program is viewed with rose-tinted glasses by modern leftists. It achieved great things on a shoestring but it was forced by political interference to pursue short-term goals and particularly 'firsts' at the expense of NASA. The first woman in space had no relevant expertise, the first spacewalk was done using a hastily designed inflatable airlock which nearly killed the cosmonaut (all modern spacewalks use the method first used by NASA). The Soviets were on the verge of a circumlunar mission in 1968, but it was abandoned just because NASA did it first. The picture in needs to be seen with this in mind - doing things first is not the basis for a successful space program.

The Soviet's patronage of their space program continued long after the supposed end of the space race. They designed a better space shuttle and they saw Mir as their crown jewel. There is a documentary about Mir before and after the break up of the Soviet Union where before hand it well taken care of the people on board are full of scientific enthusiasm, whereas after the fall you can see it being whored out to corporations and the wealthy all while it grows more and more neglected. Also America cut corners all the time on their space program and they racked up a death toll of 17 people.

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There's a reason people focus on that early period. Both sides became far less ambitious from the early 70s onwards. What really are space stations achieving?

The space shuttle was a flawed concept, I don't think it's just a case of the Americans fucking up the execution. Soyuz has always been cheaper and safer. And you can't say Buran was better when it was never put to the test.

14 of those were on space shuttles. In the space race proper the death toll is 5 Soviet, 3 American. Also the Soviets were far more guilty of cutting corners; for example cramming several people into a spacecraft basically designed for one (Voskhod). Whereas after the Apollo 1 disaster the Americans delayed the next manned launch for a year and a half while they made sure they'd got things right.

Ultimate USSR redpill: The GULAGs were pleasant
espressostalinist.com/the-real-stalin-series/gulag/

web.archive.org/web/20150215094534/http://www.russianspaceweb.com/buran.html

Not enough to draw anything from. The US equivalent had 5 test flights and 135 missions, with the first disaster being on the 25th mission.

unironically was not even close to achieving socialism

natsocs are objectivly the best posters thou

Is it true that the Baltic nations were worse off back then? Can you explain why they wanted to dissolve from the union and why the Baltic Way happened if life was so much better for them in the USSR?

This, the blackpill is that humanity died with the soviet union. Now everyone's living in capitalist limbo, all tacitly eager for death.

pretty sure that Estonia had some of the best living standards in the Soviet Union

It is.

40% vehicle failure rate versus 0% vehicle failure rate.
The Energia-Buran project was built upon well established systems of launch the soviet's had used before while the American shuttle was already seen by engineers as problematic because of its lack of ejection seats, and the fact that it used unthrottleable solid rocket boosters. Energia was also going to be resuable in a similiar way to SpaceX's boosters were and the Russian space agency is looking into restarting the Energia project as a way to carry heavier loads into space.
popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a22515248/russia-super-rocket-energia/

fuck boons

It essentially was the International's holding action to accommodate German, French and English revolutions, these didn't happen as the Soviets and all Marxists expected, or simply failed, yet the Soviets survived and outlived them, exterminating counter-revolutionaries, centrist democrats and everyone in between in the process of Revolution, therefore making it impossible to reestablish bourgeois political bodies. Later on, the new pseudo-Soviet dictatorial government was formed around the Party that realized a need to somehow normalize and control their new society - contrived, odd methods and justifications were being invented constantly, which all were a total fabrication in the end. A 'mutant' self-denying class system developed. The rest is history that you all know.

What is this based on? I googled '40% vehicle failure rate' and from what I see that just refers to the fact that 2/5 shuttles were lost, which is not fair considering they were used an average of 27 times each. True failure rate would be 2/135, i.e. 1.5%. And again, Buran was only used once, without crew, for 2 orbits. That isn't enough to say how well it would have done in its role, and it makes '0% failure rate' meaningless. And as it was abandoned because, like the US shuttle, it was probably going to be more expensive than just using Soyuz, it probably wasn't going to have that much of an impact. Although of course Russia in the early 90s was much more eager to abandon projects than the USSR would have been.

They're always 'looking into' things.