militarily, morally, and ideologically.
the ussr was literally the only force capable of combating capitalism.
Was she the greatest force of good in the world?
Aiden Green
Robert Jenkins
For the most part, yes. Good intentions, lackluster execution.
Carson Parker
Feels like shit, I want her back so badly.
Tyler Cook
The USSR were the ones that defeated the go-to villain tropes for the past 80 years
The USSR defeated the evil fucking Nazis
Largest land invasion in history
Some of the greatest heroes this world has ever known, fuck the fat slobs in Burgerland
Ayden White
Me too, user, me too… 😞
Noah James
It was a corrupted mess, hahaha!
Aw, the USSR… It could’ve been better than it was. They needed better consumer tech, more regularized production processes… and… I don’t even know. One of the problems is they developed this simultaneously cynical and gullible population. The state controlled information so well, who could ever pierce a lie? So they were cynical. And yet the state controlled information so well, wasn’t everything mostly true? It had to be good enough to work with! And so they were gullible. Nothing was completely true, but everything was mostly true, and then liberalization scrambled people’s brains. None of this was how the other societies of the world thought about information. The poor Soviet people weren’t ready.
And Yeltsin, ach. That bastard Yeltsin, haha. He was so good at navigating the corrupted mess, but he should’ve stayed mayor of Moscow.
Chase Davis
Jose Davis
I'd say so. Despite it's problems, especially towards the end, it was still a force of good in the world. There is a quote by Hafez al-Assad I believe, where he basically says with the absence of the USSR the world was stripped of a real alternative to the U.S.
Just the Soviets existing during the Cold War was enough to give many countries a form of a safety net, and now that it's gone there is no longer this big opposing power to the U.S. and the capitalist world, just small remnants that are increasingly being undermined. You either yield to the interests of the capitalists, or perish. I doubt the increasingly tough war on Cuba and the DPRK, along with the active attempts to coup Venezuela would be happening if the USSR was still here to support them. No doubt a lot of the economic problems and sanctions wouldn't be an issue either with continued Soviet aid.
There are many things to criticise the USSR for, but it's position as a counterbalance to the West is undeniable, along with it's influence in spreading and supporting revolution all across the world. They proved that socialism can be put into practice, and for decades served as an inspiration to communists. Without them, the capitalists don't need to worry about the consequences of their actions and have virtually free reign over the world. No more do they need to try and appease us like they did post-WWII to discourage us seeking an alternative. Of course, China is still there, but it's nowhere near the same thing.
In a way, the world died when the Soviet Union died.
Aiden Gray
what is this song called
Evan Young
en.wikipedia.org
BROS I STILL LOVER HER
Kayden Turner
Come on comrade, we cant lose hope yet, even if it's in fighting to the death we can still spit in porky's face
Charles Foster
Remember that the USSR didnt even exist before 1917
Ayden Flores
Руся - Русалонька
based
Jack Martin
Yes. Liberated Europe from Nazism. Liberated Manchuria from Fascism .Supported anti colonial revoliutionaries in Algeria,Angola,Bangladesh,Cuba,China.India,Indonesia and many more. Protected Cuba,Egypt and India from invasions. etc
Camden Jenkins
Press F to pay respects famrades.
Caleb Roberts
Henry James
It didn't exist until 1922
Caleb Anderson
is this copypasta?
Mason Anderson
It being the first scientific country to ever exist properly was a good thing and genuinely put it way ahead of its time, no matter what.
Isaiah Gonzalez
I think I know what you mean, but still.
Henry Taylor
Wrong, USSR was social imperialist after Khrushchev took over until it fell. After the Gang of Four trials the world proletariat had no leadership, no advocates for them in any significant positions of power
Luis Adams
Wrong, USSR was social imperialist after Khrushchev took over until it fell. After the Gang of Four trials the world proletariat had no leadership, no advocates for them in any significant positions of power
Mason Flores
The greatest force for good is the international working class. The USSR ended up degenerating and suppressing its own workers and being taken over by bureucrats who, in opposition to the socialized forms of property won by the workers, ended up liquidating state property and violently re-establishing capitalist relations.
The USSR should not be idealized but analyzed from a scientific basis. The reason it failed was due to the bureaucracy which controlled the state suppressing its own working class and suppressing revolutionary movements throughout the world under the banner of social democracy and alliances with the capitalists.
The USSR is dead but the Russian Revolution continues to live on and as the crisis of capitalism intensifies the embers of the great revolution will burst forth into a fire that engulfs the whole world, and under a conscious Marxist leadership of the Fourth International represented by the WSWS, socialism will win.
Nicholas Collins
I 35% agree with this post but you need the gulag.
Robert Sullivan
Oliver Jackson
Those first two sentences are correct, the rest is petit bourgeois dogshit
Cameron Johnson
The rise of the bureaucracy itself was due to the failure of the international Marxist leadership and the literal physical annilhation of the Russian proletariat. Over the course of the civil war, half of the Bolshevik party died, over half of workers died, and the heavily industrialized areas lost as many as 2/3 of workers. With the decline of genuine Marxists and the working class, the institution of the NEP resusitated forces like the capitalists, rich layers of the peasantry, and middle class elements which eventually manifested itself in the support of the theories of Stalin and Bukahrin of "Socialism in one country", the idea that Bolsheviks should not count on international revolution and instead operate on a nationalist basis. Through this, the Comintern, once the main organ of the Bolsheviks were reduced to simply the foreign policy apparatus of the nationalist Soviet state.
As Rosa Luxemburg herself said:
Everything that happens in Russia is comprehensible and represents an inevitable chain of causes and effects, the starting point and end term of which are: the failure of the German proletariat and the occupation of Russia by German imperialism. It would be demanding something superhuman from Lenin and his comrades if we should expect of them that under such circumstances they should conjure forth the finest democracy, the most exemplary dictatorship of the proletariat and a flourishing socialist economy. By their determined revolutionary stand, their exemplary strength in action, and their unbreakable loyalty to interNational Soycialism, they have contributed whatever could possibly be contributed under such devilishly hard conditions. The danger begins only when they make a virtue of necessity and want to freeze into a complete theoretical system all the tactics forced upon them by these fatal circumstances, and want to recommend them to the international proletariat as a model of socialist tactics. When they get in there own light in this way, and hide their genuine, unquestionable historical service under the bushel of false steps forced on them by necessity, they render a poor service to interNational Soycialism for the sake of which they have fought and suffered; for they want to place in its storehouse as new discoveries all the distortions prescribed in Russia by necessity and compulsion – in the last analysis only by-products of the bankruptcy of interNational Soycialism in the present world war.
Let the German Government Socialists cry that the rule of the Bolsheviks in Russia is a distorted expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. If it was or is such, that is only because it is a product of the behavior of the German proletariat, in itself a distorted expression of the socialist class struggle. All of us are subject to the laws of history, and it is only internationally that the socialist order of society can be realized. The Bolsheviks have shown that they are capable of everything that a genuine revolutionary party can contribute within the limits of historical possibilities. They are not supposed to perform miracles. For a model and faultless proletarian revolution in an isolated land, exhausted by world war, strangled by imperialism, betrayed by the international proletariat, would be a miracle.
What is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the kernel from the accidental excrescencies in the politics of the Bolsheviks. In the present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that secondary question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”
This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labor in the entire world. In Russia, the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to “Bolshevism.”
marxists.org
Anthony Perry
Based Bonbibro. See you at /bbg/
Asher Long
never even knew her, being born after her far too soon demise.
Ryan Kelly
The USSR was a failure. If it wasn’t it would still be around today. It’s time to learn what it did right, and what it did wrong and use this knowledge to ensure socialist projects in the future don’t collapse. Repeating what has failed is not good praxis.
Wyatt Barnes
this
Hudson Hernandez
The cockshott thread is awaiting gentlemen.
William Parker
undialectical and objectively wrong. get your head out of your own ass and read something that isn't a MTW blogpost. i recommend "Is The Red Flag Flying?" by Al Szymanski. here's a quote for you:
Jackson Murphy
bullshit. the bureaucracy did not "suppress" the working class, nor did they suppress revolutionary movements. once again, this is objectively wrong and makes no fucking sense considering the USSR actively supported revolutions in the third world, as well as giving aid to existing socialist states and parties all across the globe. not once did they ever promote "social democracy" and i fucking encourage you to show me one example of this. not even Gorbachev promoted social democracy until well after the USSR had fallen. as for "alliances with capitalists" this makes no sense because not only was the capitalist world undermining and subverting the USSR from its conception, they were vehemently anti-communist and anti-Soviet. if you are referring to diplomacy and trade deals, those existed once again as far back as 1917 when Lenin and Stalin encouraged healthy competition and friendly relations between the socialist and capitalist camps, and had asked for American workers and engineers to help build infrastructure and train the Soviet workforce in the 20s and 30s. not once did they ever have an "alliance" with the capitalists, and the closest they got was during WWII after they had been encouraging Hitler to push east and practically waited to the very last moment to support the USSR and open up a second front. most of the lend-lease didn't even arrive until after 1942.
you have to be either completely delusional or a liar to peddle such a falsified narrative, because beyond what I've already stated, why was there even a fucking cold war if the Soviets were supposedly "social democrats" who allied with the capitalists and suppressed revolution? how do you explain supporting Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan? or what of the fact that the mode of production was still socialist even during the 80s, or that the CPSU never denounced socialism until Gorbachev declared it "Stalinism"? your blatant twisting of history cannot be rectified with some baseless "social imperialism" narrative, nor your disregard for proper Marxist analysis.
while this trot may have conflicting ideas as to what the USSR did wrong and right, his approach is generally 10x better than the dogmatism peddled by some of the people on the left. the USSR wasn't perfect, and as such we need to recognise its flaws as to not repeat it in the future, while still understanding the nature of said flaws and why it failed.
Dominic Campbell
Trotsky was a genius