Asalam alaikum comrades! I'm a historian on Russian history but mostly focus on the first 30-40 years and the cultural and ethnographic makeup of what the USSR was. I'm all about humanization and covering the positive aspects of Soviet & Russian history as that's what's missing in the English language, the lesser known, misunderstood and misrepresented.
*I also love Vexillology and political geography 🚩🗺️
There's a good amount were I live in the southern U.S.. In the town I'm in, there's petty marxist vs anarchist bs, but I've been able to find a group that has spent a year trying to organize both. While we are set on our views, we've been able to grow a strong comraderie for each other.
Well, everything is simple: they try to bias even more, but the way dialectical materialism works is the right opposite- the more you repeat the same mantra, the less likely is for you to convince people in pink unicorns walking around.
Finally, someone applying professional approaches to explain the subject. Centuries of propaganda damaged millions of people and couple of generations at least. Amazingly practically no one dare to ask the right questions about what was the actual cause of the famine, and why western countries actually broke the trading contract between SU and the West and put an ultimatum that they won’t accept payments in gold but only in pure grain no matter what. This matter forced SU to force the additional extraction of grain from the peasants, which led in several( not all the regions) in deficit of food and famine. This was a sudden strike of western bourgeoisie intended to start rebellions and destabilise the situation. Next year it was managed because the SU arranged the trade with different other countries and freed itself from the obligations. Easy to blame the consequences and forget the causes.
Almost every Marxist channel talks about the serious issues like how to build the movement, theory deep-dives and practical issues. Not every communist channel needs to talk about those issues.
I'm so sorry for the hate you face. It's clear you have good heart and is working hard to share revolutionary knowledge to help people think critically and have a better understanding of Socialism/Communism. But there are immature individuals who want to spread hate, blindly criticize and hurt to feel superior. I love despite that you continue to create good content and inspire us!
So from the perspective of Industrial Safety, loose uncontrolled hair really is a hazard. These days we talk more about loose clothing that might draw a limb into a machine, rather than just rip out a clump of hair, but it's still a concern. As it turns out, pre-industrial women (and men) often covered their hair simply to keep it clean. The simplest way to do this is with a bit of cloth, like a head scarf or a bandana. From a strictly utilitarian point of view, I don't understand why anyone who does any kind of work whatsoever, wears their hair longer than shoulder length. Even in terms of straight up sex, long hair gets in the way, and I don't mean body hair. Same goes for long finger nails. Your Muslim hang-ups naturally mean less than nothing to me. Meaning continue doing whatever you want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But if your customs or religious taboos get in the way of safety, you either leave them off my site or you're not permitted in production areas. In terms of women entering the workforce "temporarily", for whatever reasons, that sounds idiotic. Something like 50% of any general population at any given time is likely to be women. Women have the same number of arms and legs, and brain cells, as men. We're functionally interchangeable for any type of useful work, and excluding 50% of your potential workers and potential genius level contributors is epically, painfully, stupid. It's funny we don't make the same mistake with working animals; female dogs and horses are as good as males for any given task; we don't make a distinction in that regard. True to form, Soviet leadership wanted healthy citizen, both male and female. Though to be fair, the primary purpose of males was to serve as soldiers, and the primary role of females was to produce healthy offspring. Nevertheless, Soviet Women still wanted to appeal to men, and men in their turn wanted to appeal to women. Biology always wins out over ideology. However, the body image of the ideal man and woman were closer to those of proportionate, healthy, individuals. The Soviet Union also mounted a long-term campaign to free women from domestic servitude, in order to get them into the workforce and directly contributing to the economy. To be fair, the Soviet official efforts at gender equality, and the actual results, are not in line with each other. While women volunteers fought WWII in every branch of service available to men, often in combat roles and even more often with unusual motivation and valor. Those that remained in military roles after the war, found their careers suddenly stagnating; their former respect spent, and the expectation that women should return to homemaking and unquestioning subservience to male veterans. Those that returned to civilian roles, likewise found their options limited, and subservience to male veterans not only expected but ham-fistedly enforced. Pro-Tip, through the magic of video editing, you can cut out the bit where your hair is momentarily uncovered, and only actually wear one headscarf at a time. Also, 99% of us don't care about seeing your hair, have no notions of impropriety or lewdness at the sight of a woman's uncovered hair, or would even notice anything was at all out of the ordinary. And theoretically, there's an anti-religious tone to classical Marxism and even more so to Marxist-Leninism, if you're so inclined as to relax your obedience to various Muslim rules. Just a thought. Women's liberation, and all that... The woman in the poster at the end, is indeed wearing more or less a shawl. Russians would call it a head-scarf simply because we don't really have another term. But this one is more for warmth than to protect the hair from dirt, or keep it out of the way of work. It may or may not have been worn over a second scarf of a lighter fabric. The caption at the bottom says (roughly) "You returned life to us", meaning the returning soldier who is supposed to have returned life to normal through victory. Actually, life didn't really return to any semblance of normal until probably the late 70's or 80's; the very ratio of females to males remained nearly 2:1 until the early 90's, and the cult of WWII and the veterans that served remains to this day (not to downplay their sacrifice, but there aren't many left alive, and they were still just normal, flawed, men. Which only underlines their sacrifice in a way, but they weren't unerring gods). Truth, as a general rule, resists simplicity. Or "The devil is in the details". Or perhaps my favorite : "Monday begins on Saturday"...
The religious repressions in the 20s and 30s were crazy. A lot of buildings were destroyed and many religious figures executed or sent to the working camps. It affected a lot of communities. Just wanted to point that out.
4:24 It kind of slapped me across the face (in a good way) how rare it is to see social/political youtubers actually encourage us to contribute content to the conversation this directly. Like abstractly we support new creators, but the competitive brainwashing that sees other creators as competition can run pretty deep.
I can neither associate with conceiving communism as an identity marker / lifestyle choice nor the elitist behaviour of Lenin / Trotsky /whatever exegetes. What drew me to socialist / communist ideas were problems in society and politics I couldn't make sense of prior to my first encounter with Marx, the Frankfurt School, ect. The idea of having to represent or perform "a perfect communist" seems just so utterly weird to me. It is not by a fetishization of a peasant past that we achieve a utopian future from where we are now.
To be a real, functioning communism one must have proper childhood "experience" - to learn what it should be, watch TIK's video 'A concerning pattern in ALL Socialist childhoods'
Grey is a popular color for early self-reliant clothes. why dye it when most people's pants are torn or non-existent make it make it durable and bring color tomorrow
Grey cloths threw industry is like black and white TV, if no one has TV you gonna start black and white because it's simpler to manufacture and costs less reasources and machinery so you can get product to the people sooner with a limited tech level than if you mass produced color tvs from the start when your production capacity isn't there
I love love your style. It is so beautiful. When I watch old movies, I see the wonderful tailoring and beautiful quality woolens and silks from the 1940's and 1950's and want so much to recreate them and I am not thinking of the political values at all. I'm more honoring history and evolution of thought over time.
Great analysis, really appreciate the nuance and connections to today! (Loved the search through the chest and poster tubes, and that mao poster is phenomenal) Of course, the largest paper tiger still today is the face of US imperialism but now with the spearhead of global zionism. We saw zionism fall in "25 minutes" (jon elmer) and see the US aircraft carriers being repelled in the Red Sea for the first time since WWII. They've been losing wars left and right since WWII getting chunks taken out of their facade, and yet still stand... but barely. We must claw the insides of the beast. Mao said as well that the Korean people were the first people in the world to pierce the idea of US invincibility. Thanks Iz!
Empowerment and setting the focus on the face (the soul) of ones person, instead of their figure and curves. The us seems to cut them down to "women" instead of presenting them as people like you and me.
As the gap between when I became a communist and the present moment widens, I have become more appreciative of all of my comrades. Knowing that the burden of being class conscious does not have to be carried alone and that only together can we accomplish our goals.
I never heared this story and I lived near Mecca for +10 years! British, French and American intellegence officers were practically controlling the region in this time (read about John Philby, mindblowing stories!). Their no. 1 priority was for the local leaders in the Arabian peninsula to have zero contact with non-western powers, now from this story I can say not even hear from regular people like the Hajjs during pilgrimage! So much for democracy.
i’m new to all of this, so some of your points fly over my head a little bit - but this video is really well made and engaging. even as someone who doesn’t understand a lot of what you’re saying, it gives me motivation to learn ! also your style is so awesome :OOO
Thank you! A very good and necessary comment on the movement. This is an issue that bothers me greatly - the lack of socialist unity. Having been involved in several different "groupings" I am in awe of the amount of work and energy spent on bashing other leftists. This led me down another road: a purely scientific one. And I was delighted to find that communism can be found as an answer this way too. And it unifies all socialist variants. I have hope!
is that like, someone who does something to hurt you then tries to censor you and punish you for how you react? actually nvm that's a narcissist. gee, come to think of it, that's how U.S. capitalism operates.
Hello, I'm from Argentina Oh, I love your channel!! In my country it is very difficult to get things from the Soviet era, because at the time the Russians emigrated to my country the communist ideology was prohibited, for this reason the few items that there are are very expensive, 500 dollars for a flag, I ended up making myself one of his own and baking the hammer and sickle in gold
