Thanks for watching, and please consider supporting the channel by buying merch: teespring.com/stores/the-cynical-historian Or by donating to my Patreon: www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian See following replies for corrections and additional info, but first, here are some related videos to check out: Cody's (AlternateHistoryHub) video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-o6T7tzrriUk.html 2:30 - Marxist historian EP Thompson: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Igb9f_cSRBk.html 5:10 - the Russian Intervention of 1918-20: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1mC1bmzbgxY.html 8:30 - Cody's (AlternateHistoryHub) video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-o6T7tzrriUk.html 15:15 - Death of Stalin: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KiOsPpvuYuk.html
*References* Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, _Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference_ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). amzn.to/33BTIMT Donald Davis and Eugene Trany, _The First Cold War: The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson in U.S.-Soviet Relations_ (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002). amzn.to/2OpXxwg Jochen Hellbeck, _Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich_ (New York: Public Affairs, 2015). amzn.to/2H7US9w David L Hoffmann, ed. _Stalinism: The Essential Reader_ (New York: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). amzn.to/2udigeo Terry Martin, _The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939_ (Ithaca, N.York: Cornell University Press, 2001). amzn.to/31xUBV8 Andrzej Paczkowski, “The Storm over the Black Book,” _The Wilson Quarterly_ 25, iss. 2 (2001): 28-34. A good database of primary sources and simplified histories: soviethistory.msu.edu Quick info: www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/your-guide-to-karl-marx-who-was-he-what-was-the-communist-manifesto-and-why-is-he-important/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_Soviet_Union
It's really, really lovely to watch a video like this where history is respected as something complicated, rather than the flurry of videos that take one side or the other in historical events in order to benefit modern political narratives.
@@kakyointhemilfhunter4273 It's been uncommon for much longer than that, probably since the first humans walked the earth. The human brain evolved to dislike nuance for survival purposes.
Everyone knows that McDonald's won the Cold War. They put a McDonald's in Red Square in 1989. The USSR collapses in 1991. Coincidence? I think not. Checkmate.
only thing is Reagan with his neo-libralism might made capitalism too extreme so could be in 50-60 years from now we would say "It was Reagan and Thatcher that saw the seeds that led to the communist revolution in the west, good riddance capitalism!"
The most common myth I run into (in the US) is even more basic: The Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar. I suspect most Americans have never even heard of Kerensky's provisional government. Even historically literate people need to be reminded on that point, in my experience.
That one I usually chuck up to people not knowing of provisional government due to how short lived it was and how little it achieved. I learned of it in highschool and I still forget it regularly
Yeah, the russian revolution and subsequent civil war was a lot more complicated. People are most likely mixing up the february and the october revolutions and completely forgetting about the russian civil war between the reds and the white.
@@uhohhotdog Perhaps one could blame the USSR for their problems because their form of government didn't prevent excesses by those at the pinnacle of power? I agree that the worse of humanity seem attracted to power, but some systems try to minimize their effectiveness. With more or less success, I admit.
Fun fact: Tankie is a mild pejorative handed out to Stalin apologists or authoritarian Communists in general, but the name comes from the Hungarian uprising of 1956. This is important because Stalin was dead at this point. Nikita Khrushchev rolled the tanks into Budapest.
Nitpick: the definition of private property is different under Marx than is used. Personal property is stuff like your house, car and if a crafts person, their tools. Private property is property where the labor of others is extracted, ie a factory. It’s a very different sense. Marx cared about the social relation of exploitation and its mechanics.
@Ornate Orator Center Left. I'm hardly "pro communism," or "rabidly anti capitalism" for that matter. Besides, that wasn't my only comment that I posted here, and it wasn't even my first one. My first one was mentioning how annoying this one Stalin apologist was. By the way, a video on myths and misconceptions about America in the 1950s could include both positive and negative things that people believe about the decade that are wrong, so it would hardly have to be a hyper nationalistic defense of America, or a condemnation of it. I just think that the fifties is an interesting decade, and outside of the wars that Americas has fought, its arguably one of the most popular subjects when disusing US history. It was an interesting time in the county's history.
@Ornate Orator "I bet I can guess your political ideology if that’s your comment to this video" I bet you are one of those people that loves to make unsubstantiated assumptions about others!
Are there any genuine myths about that time? Like, maybe a few specific cases about cia coups, but I don't think you could make a 10 point list about that time?
@@hanneswiggenhorn2023, Yes. There are a lot of myths about how good the average person had it back than, along with some myths that deny some of the bad things like how harmful Jim Crow was.
George H. W. Bush should get more credit for the end of Communism than Regan, he kept his mouth shut during the fall of Communism, rather than dancing on there graves. If he had done that there could have been a coup by the hardliners.
@@IgnoredAdviceProductions Actually no, the failure of Operation Typhoon (which was the best shot of any kind of Axis Eastern victory) happened well before US AID of any meaning arrived, & during the Stalingrad siege only about 10% of what the US-UK would contribute happened. However the war would have hit a stoppage point & just been a continuing cycle of trading area in the Pontic steppe, when historically some cities changed hands 4+ times prior to Kursk. Would the USSR have lost if the Western Allied powers were never in a position to mount a strong Continental invasion? its plausible, but Axis shortage of fuel makes that a miniscule prospect.
I used to have a coworker with nearly identical eyebrows. I joked that she was Brezhnev's lovechild. Then I realised that would be an awesome name for a rock band
Hey! Fellow historian from Greece here. It is really brave of you to make this video. Keep up the good work, academic history made public is really tough and it seems that today it's absolutely necessary.
It is worth pointing out that, while WW2 was absolutely, unquestionably won on the Eastern front first and foremost, the USSR still got a lot of help there. Not to say that they would’ve definitely failed without, but between so much fuel and bombs being consumed by the Battle of Britain (not to mention the codebreaking of the British Colossus), and the utterly incomprehensibly massive aid sent from the USA via Lend-Lease, Russia’s victory in the East was made considerably easier. It’s much easier, after all, to just make a metric fuckton of tanks if you’re not also having to make the metric fuckton of trucks, trains and other vehicles that a well-mobilized army needs to fight. And fielding that massive army is considerably easier when the USA is sending literally millions of tons of food over too. It really was a team effort, and just as the “USA saved the world!” narrative is tiring and inaccurate, so is the frequent counter-narrative of “the USSR could’ve easily won the whole thing by themselves!”
"People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own." -General Georgy Zhukov
Even though he was a mass murdering forkhead, I do think Stalin had the right of it as to how the Axis were defeated, "The British gave time, the Americans gave money, and we gave blood." Probably more than necessary because, as stated, Stalin was a massive tool, but it would have been ugly no matter who was in charge of the USSR at the time, because the Nazis went into the Soviet Union with a "Burn, Kill, Maim!" mentality.
@NaCl3 Something also important to consider is the food situation. One has to remember almost to the entirety of Ukraine was under German occupation for a decent amount of time during the german-soviet war. That being the breadbasket for the union would have assisted in beating the Soviets, if not American canned good deliveries. I've heard claims that American canned goods were served in the soviet union till the 70's because of how much aid the USA sent. So while I totally stand by the claim the soviet union could have kicked the Germans out of the soviet union, I'm not sure if they would be able to get to Berlin. Overall though I agree with the tremendous amount of blood the Russians sacrificed in the Second World War.
Well no Marx believed that there was to be a transitionary period between capitalism and stateless communism, Lenin acknowledges this in The State and Revoltion.
Can't wait to see the tankies and far-right make accusations of you being Fascist/Communist respectively. Actual nuance and context tends to piss off the extremists.
@@owenmitchell1469 A Libertarian who happens to make military history videos on specific battles/campaigns of WW2. Dude has a massive blindspot on the economic side of things. His videos provide a ton of context and so are very long. He really can't check his ideology at the door though and it shows when he stops focusing on the military battle.
RU-vid should bring back comment size limits just for TIK honestly, tell this man he's wrong and he'll give you a doctoral thesis on why he's right while still being wrong.
As another myth worth debunking: The Soviets single handheld defeated Nazi Germany. While the Soviets were utterly indispensable to the defeat of Nazi Germany, they were part of a broader effort with the western allies and European resistance movements. Stalin was literally calling for D-day and a second front from the start of 1943 until it happened in 1944. As you said, it was a united effort of various nations and peoples to defeat fascism, hints the name "Allies".
Soviets would have sucked nuts without Britain and America helping them. For example before British radios, Soviets had to use flag signals for their tanks. It's safe to say that Soviets couldn't have succeeded without west, while the same isn't true for west because they had A-bombs
@@PennyAfNorberg Eeeeh, the Nazis managed to push all the way to the capital and held basically continental Europe. Combine that with Stalin's extremely defensive style of foreign policy and I don't think that would have happened. Though if WWI taught us anything it's that wars can waffle dramatically so I'm leery about making any sort of definite statement.
@@vinylpowell7600 The Crusades have an overall death toll from 1m to 3m but they lasted from 1095 to 1291 so the comparison is kind of retarded since it's a 200 year period. The period of state murder discussed goes from 1917 to 1939.
Karl Marx was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Stalin was a contemporary of Walt Disney. That's usually how I explain the era difference we're talking about whenever people try to hold Marx responsible for the Soviet Union.
I mean, the phrase "communism has never been tried" is often used in lieu of "communism has never been achieved". Especially when the definition of most communists of communism is "a stateless, classless, money-less society". It is an oxymoron to call a state communist. More accurate, the Soviet world was "communist aligned". Their ideology was in favor of communism, and their political parties were named to announce their goals. In the same way that a republican party in a constitutional monarchy doesn't necessarily exist within a republic. The Soviet Union refereed to itself, and its fellow aligned nations as socialist. It's in the name, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. And the rhetoric often refereed to the state ideology as socialist. The references of the USSR and PRC being communist come from a particularly western perspective. One influenced by language barriers, propaganda of both sides muddying the water of socialist and communist definitions, and disagreements within the left questioning the legitimacy of variants of socialist and communist ideology.
@Albert Whisker A Soviet is a regional assembly. They grew out of the worker's councils of the Russian Revolution. They were at the time local government. As the Soviet Union changed, so did the role of these local assemblies. Generally a "Soviet Republic" means a constitutional state with a Russian style assembly.
@@bellorusso PragerU always talks about how much life got worse due to him, but barely mentioned his theories and frameworks of how capitalism exploits people. I don't agree with all that Marx said, but after I read a bit of him I understood why PragerU smack talked him that much. Because his theories do critiscise very similar systems and groups as the ones that keep PragerU PragerU alive.
@@frocco7125 its because PragurU is literally funded by the Koch brother lol. They dont care about nuance. Just about fooling their 15 year old viewers into unknowingly supporting corporate cronyism
@@frocco7125 Its also worth noting that people often forget the context of the time Marx lived. Marx lived in a society dominated by Monarchies and Imperialism. The reasons he called for Violent revolution is because he was living in a society dominated by autocrats whom couldn't be voted out of office, and the only two democracies of the time that existed (US and France), had to win their Democracy through violent Revolution.
Nothing against learning history 😅 I was just giving a compliment to The Cynical Historian, because I think it must be very hard to study history and not get incredibly frustrated because of the nature of history as a very complex subject. 😅
@@DrAnarchy69 What about when informal hierarchies appear? IMO just saying "let's get rid of hierarchies" ignores the stability that can come from them, and the problems of a disorganized mess of a system. I think distributing power as equally as possible is the only way forward, though. Being anti-hierarchy doesn't seem like a silver bullet to achieve that, not that you said it was. I like the model of co-ownership personally, like distributing stock and capital ownership. And then making sure decisions have the input of workers in a company, or citizens can be part of the budgeting process for example.
Socialist (though not leninist) here, while I do have some small disagreements with some points, overall, this is one of the most fair looks at Soviet history I've seen from a non-socialist/non-leftist channel, keep it up!
"Marx's ideas were more akin to anarchy." Mikhail Bakunin: Am I a joke to you? Edit: I just realized the guy I meant to talk about was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 🤦🏻♂️
Even the term "soviet" (Council) doesn't assume any state above village level and assumes that sharing resources would work globally with minimal oversight... History isn't kind to optimist ideas.
While it's true that the Normandy Invasion didn't suddenly turn the tide for Soviet Russia on the Eastern Front (Operation Barabarossa was an abject failure by that time), it did present the Third Reich with what Hitler most dreaded: A two front war waged on both fronts by competent foes. This kept Hitler from regrouping and making another run at the "lebensraum" that the Soviet Union had, and to which Hitler felt entitled. So, I wouldn't say the Normandy Invasion "saved" the Soviet Union, but it sure altered the equation firmly in the Allies favor... Good video; nicely done
True, but it turns out that 84% of the Wehrmacht had deployed to the Eastern Front, including the most seasoned soldiers. Ths is according to the National Review, vol CXIX
Also the USA supplied a lot of the tanks, trucks, ammunition, food, clothing, etc. that the soviets used to defeat the Germans. But you are correct in that the west likes to take more credit than they deserve for stopping Hitler. The Soviets fought twice as many Nazi divisions as the west did, so Normandy would have been a lot more hellish if not for the Russian front.
@@noahedelson3618. Your figures are not quite on it. 80% of Germany's military casualties were suffered fighting the Soviets. By late 44. 33% approx of Germany's Divisions were fighting the Western Allies. (104 Divisions) While 198 German Divisions were fighting the Soviets. After the failure of the Ardennes offensive. More German Divisions went east.
@@WJV9. Lend Lease was critical in that it meant that Soviet production could focus on weapons production as much raw materials and other essential goods were being sent to the Soviets including food, fuel and even socks and boots. The British also sent plenty of essential goods. US supplied many logistical items. tens of thousands of Studebaker trucks. Rolling Stock, railway rails, locomotives as well as lumber for telegraph poles. This helped greatly in the huge Soviet offensives of 44-45 but it was ultimately the sacrifice and sweat of the Soviet peoples that won through in the end.
@Kayoshie Flametail I am not sure if there was ever an era that was truly all around "good", just as I do not believe that about the United States. I do, however, believe that there were certain things that the USSR did that were worthy of praise, namely the immense reduction of poverty and improvement of living conditions over the course of its existence, improved women's rights over the west, free housing, free education, a guaranteed job, quality public transport, support for anti-colonialism (even if merely ostensible), many new scientific and technological advancements like the cell-phone, etc. My general opinion on the USSR is that it was a flawed experiment that did some things poorly but other things well. However, the fact that it was able to achieve such a level of development despite instant and fierce opposition from the west, as well as the enormous toll of WWII, is nothing short of remarkable.
Wow. I expected some bashing to anyone who claims to be communist in the comment section. When I saw all the civil responses and even curious questions my humanity restored just a little bit. Even if I disagree with some economical themes associated with communism, .... It makes me think that ultimately it is an effort to make people to be more close together and to be more at peace (just one of many, I don't imply it is the only one please don't censor me current government lol). Humanity should work together to accomplish peace and prosperity and not just kill each other because of labels (just labels, choose any color any text font whatever, it is not like peoples have not committed atrocities without any justification).
They stand on the side of profit, as does any company that big. The only agenda you can pursue if you want to be a billionaire is ruthless profiteering and market dominance.
I don’t get why nuance regarding the USSR is so hard. Like in America, most of us acknowledge the good ideas and successes that came out of American society without denying all the atrocities committed in America’s past and present. Many social democrats admire much of what FDR did, but they don’t pretend things like Japanese Internment, Redlining or the Dresden bombings are justified/didn’t happen.
"without denying all the atrocities commited by America's past and present" - I (not an American) got the impression that people who praise America, usually, exactly don't do that, sadly
@Lynnix Varjo People who praise America definitely don’t have that nuance. A lot of America’s past and current atrocities are filtered out, so many Americans are unaware of a lot of it. Younger Americans are generally more aware of it, although even among young people, the full extent of what America does is often not completely grasped. So it’s not denialism or justification as much as it is just complete ignorance.
Our problem is we tend to see history as a binary, either "good stuff" or "bad stuff" committed by "heros" or "villains". Until we take off that filter we'll never be able to truly objectively look at what happened.
@Randall Briggs The USSR was responsible for significant economic, technological, medical, political, scientific and cultural progress both within the USSR and also in other parts of the world. I can’t possibly go through all of them, but a few examples that come to mind are the massive expansions to women’s rights (especially compared to the West), ending homelessness, massive expansions to worker’s rights and huge increases in educational attainment. The USSR was a noble attempt at achieving economic democracy and while it fell short in a lot of ways, soviet democracy on the local level offered more opportunities for democratic participation than what is seen almost anywhere else in the modern world.
@Randall Briggs Also Hitler was going to invade either way. Stalin was just ensuring they had a buffer zone since Britain and France had already refused to form a pact with the Soviet Union in opposition to Germany.
Yuri Andropov targeted corruption that had flourished under Leonid Brezhnev, implemented economic and social reforms, and elevated Mikhail Gorbachev within the ranks of government knowing Gorbachev wanted reform. To say he was "essentially the same" as Brezhnev is misleading and not covering his time in power is a real missed opportunity.
Honestly, I don't think this guy is as good as he and his subscribers think he is. Your point on Andropov is an excellent one. Some others are the massive amount of aid that the US supplied to the Soviets. Millions of tons of grain and crude oil, refined petroleum products, gunpowder, millions of pairs of boots, anti-tank weapons, medicine, and hundreds of thousands of jeeps and heavy trucks. These allowed the Soviets to free up millions of men for the war effort and allowed them to reduce famine and allowed them to focus on weapon production. I mean, anyone who has read about World War Two in any detail knows that the Eastern Front was far more bloody than the Western Front.
@@libertatemadvocatus1797 The way I see it, if it weren't for the western allies the Soviet Union would have had a far higher casualty rate. Looking at post-ww2 Europe, the Russians kept Europe from speaking German and the United States kept Europe from speaking Russian
Come to think of it, I have heard it pronounced that way. Hilariously enough, the translater for one of the clips I used during that sequence used my pronunciation, so it's obviously a common mistake
@@jindrichdolejs623 It's a common feature of slavic speakers (and Germans like me, too) speaking English - in our accents, those sounds are different because we devoice the end of syllables. That's probably not the reason for this misunderstanding, but it made me think of it :)
Another Myth: "In the USSR, everything was free." Actually, they did not have a Welfare state as understood in the Capitalist West. If you were Unemployed and you weren't a Pensioneer or Disabled, you were left to die starving. All the "free stuff" were actually in payment of your Labor. The higher your Job Post, the more perks you got. What they did have was a Job Guarantee for all who seek to have one.
I mean yeah, if you're able and are looking for work, you get provided, and vice versa, that why i hate it when american said communist are lazy and get thing for free And also, soviet actually have programs to help the disable tho
I think the “no one achieved communism” thing is just weird semantics. I think what modern leftist refer to “communism” is just the new term for what Marx called “high phase communism” as opposed to low phase which modern leftist now call socialist. Idk the description of the difference between the two has changed through history for some reason and it’s confusing. Good vid overall though
The main problem leftists have is people pointing to the ussr or china and saying "THIS IS communism, this is what communists want" when those were communist states (countries under the communist party). In the video when he says something along the lines of leftists saying it isn't Communism because it didn't work is mostly correct, because the guidelines for it are the stateless classless society based on blah blah blah, but that isn't to say that it hasn't actually been tried. Just being tried really, really slowly, sometimes to the point of regression
@@smallman9787 are you sure, those aren't Faschists who stuck to their talking points, performing lips service but little else? I much rather own cute, culty communes that falter without the leaders or recruiting younger.
@@JackClockerinos I saw a mix of debunking both right and left myths. He gave a decent defense of Marx himself, tried to show that Stalin was the very worst of the Soviet GenSecs rather than the norm (but correctly emphasized the norm was bad and went all the way back to Lenin,) gave credit where credit is due with the Soviets being responsible for whooping Hitler's butt, and also pointing out if the US did imperialisms (and we did) then the Soviets did imperialisms too (and they did.) And rightly pointed out the Cultural Marxism thing is nonsense. Any reactionaries about to say: "But the Frankfurt School was real" So was the Illuminati, they still aren't controlling the world. They're a defunct inconsequential Bavarian freethought group that would have been forgotten if not for the same scarmongering over democracy back in the late 18th/early 19th centuries that reactionaries do today over socialism. And the Frankfurt School are a bunch of sociology dorks that tried to make Marxist ideas more popular to the general 'Murican public without having a revolution and failed miserably.
What I feel a lot of people miss is that the disaster in Russia, Stalinism, was a consequence of the failure of the international revolutionary wave in Europe, most importantly in Germany. Lenin was under no delusions about Russia alone not being able to go from a feudal backwater into anything resembling socialism, and knew he needed the support of the international communist movement. Because, if they tried to build "socialism in one country" they'd be alone in this quest and would be starved for resources. In order to survive, they'd need to conduct trade with capitalist powers, make compromises with them, which means participation on the global market and the accumulation of capital, and oh, look where we are now.
it was not without trying, tho. Trotskii (the non-Latin Romanisation of that name) was eager to foment revolution. If it would not spark on its own, he was more than happy to carry it forward at the point of Krasnii Armiya (Red Army) bayonets. Interestingly enough, there were Communist mini-revolutions throughout central and eastern Europe shortly after the Great War - Munich; Bavaria as a whole; the Soviet Republic of Hungary under Bela Kun... It was only after the Poles were finally able to no-sell the Red Army at Warsaw and see them off that Staling figured it would be better to strengthen his forces at home before sending them out again - thus "Socialism in one State/Country" (This was sourced from "The Age of Social Catastrophe" by Robert Gellately) Lenin's New Economic Policy was actually viewed as a treason against Marxist ideology, but he knew it had to be done in order to balance the Union's books and get some hard currency in the treasury. Once it accomplished those modest goals, it went out with the bath water and the Terror could begin in earnest
This is also following the revolution and fighting the (foreign-backed) White Army in the Russian civil war, which probably played a part in a lot of later decisions.
@@shannonstrobel6727 "Trotskii was more than happy to carry it forward at the point of Red Army bayonets" That's completely wrong though. What Trotsky actually said about the prospect of 'spreading revolution' by the soviet military was that it would be totally opposed to his position and that of the Bolsheviks. Quoting Trotsky himself in the Dewey commission: "A revolution by the Red Army would be the worst adventurism. To try to impose revolution on other people by the Red Army would be adventurism."
@@shannonstrobel6727 Non-latin romanisation is an oxymoron, given that romanisation explicitly is the conversion from a non-latin to a latin alphabet. More than that, the final letter in Trotsky's cyrilic spelling more closely resembles a "y" or "j", not an "i"
While that is true, I think we all should agree that Lenin is to blame for selling the global revolution scenario as "historically inevitable" when in fact it was a HUGE gamble with a very low chance of success.
I got ads too. It's both heartening (to know that they're not attempting to silence you down at the moment) and annoying (because, well, they are ads right in the middle of the flippin' video!) at the same time.
@@stanleyrogouski Whether it would have been better or not for the Soviets to collapse is a different point than the one discussed in the video and by the original poster. It was the question of whether the Soviet actions in the Cold War could be called imperialism. Hopefully we agree on that. I'd also like to imagine there was a way for Hungary and Poland to avoid far right regimes without Soviet tanks in their countries. And at any rate, suggesting there wasn't is basically paternalism, the forefather of imperialism.
My great-grandfather was a member of the CPSU from 1948 until 1992, and he said that Communism had never been fully implemented. In the Soviet Union, Communism was the idealized version spoken of by Marx, Engels, and to a lesser extent, Lenin. However, even being a member of the party was something he resented. He knew that the collapse of the Soviet Union was inevitable after Stalin's death. He was forced to stay after Malenkov was removed from power in 1954, but he left the party only a week after Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist.
As for the "the US saved the USSR in WWII" thing, while our fighting didn't seem to save them, they still relied heavily on US aid, whether it be weapons, resources, trucks, etc.
Both Stalin and Georgy Zhukov said that they would have lost the war if it weren't for US materiel aid. To what extent that's accurate is debatable, but if the head of state and most decorated soviet general of the war each said that on multuple occasions, then there must be something to it.
There have been efforts to overstate both sides of this issue. There are people, Tankies as Cypher calls them, who have tried to claim that Soviets would have carried through to ultimate victory without a single piece of US equipment if they had had to. They're every bit as wrong as the people claiming that the US beat the NAZIs militarily practically single handedly. I'm generally skeptical of "both sides-ism", but this is a case where it's actually accurate.
@@jesseberg3271 I agree however you can kinda make the claim that the us beat the Japanese navy single handily However I completely disagree we had a lot of help from our allies navies as well and on the ground the Australians and New Zealand and the Indians were immensely helpful in the ground war
Find that hard to believe, tho I want to give credit where credit is due. If the soviets we're willing to lose 27M fighting the Reich alone, to our 400K overall, sounds to me like they were doing just fine on their own. I don't want to over credit or under credit anyone, but I don't think the ussr needed anyone's help in WW2. That doesn't mean our people didn't make crucial wins and didn't show great bravery both in the Pacific and Europe.
Marx hoped for a proletariat revolution in advanced nations such as Germany, England, or America; countries with developed economies and a fairly well-educated population and trained work force. He did not view the Russian Empire of his time suitable for such a revolution as it represented the opposite of what he thought necessary for successful communism.
The Berlin wall came down in 1989, two years after Ronald Reagan said ''Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!'' However, neither Reagan nor Gorbachev tore down that wall. That was East Germans, and some could even say Helmut Kohl did this when he promised that ''Deutschland wird wieder vereinigt.'' But it is true that Reagan did not bring down the Berlin Wall. But I give him and Gorbachev all the credit for ending the Cold War.
@Reno Figaro True, but even though Reagan did encourage the Soviet Union to end hostilities, he should not be credited with ending the Cold War. If it wasn't for Gorbachev, the Cold War might never have ended. And we are still fighting a Cold War, this time against Putin.
@Reno Figaro The thawing did begin with the conversations Kennedy and Khrushchev had, but it didn't end the Cold War. Khrushchev was too much of a hardliner when compared to later Soviet Leaders. Sure, he was not as bad as Stalin or Malenkov, but it was Khrushchev's relationship with JFK that led to his downfall in 1964. Brezhnev was far more open to change, even if he was a bigot. Andropov and Chernenko would never have listened to Reagan, but Gorbachev was willing to tear down the wall between Communism and Capitalism. Reagan may not be responsible for bringing down the Berlin Wall, but it was thanks to him and to Gorbachev that the Cold War ended.
But they didn't end the cold war did they! The USA wanted to break up and impoverish Russia and when that failed the thaw - never a full melt - resumed in earnest. The period 1989-1991 was just a lull in the USA's desire to dominate the world. The same with China from 1982-2001. And now the USA wants to talky on both China and Russia, just like it did in the first cold war. Will they succeed a second time? Only time will tell.
Apparently,it was torn down due to an accident.Someone gave the wrong date,so when thousands of people lined up at the wall,the officers decided "We could either tell them the truth & have them wait 24 hours,OR we could take a few hammers right now & break the wall."...
On point 10 about Reagan, from what I've heard, the Soviets were obsessed with matching the US militarily to maintain M.A.D. but Reagan's massive ramp up of military spending meant the Soviets effectively grinded their economies down trying to keep up which slowly lead to the Soviet Union disbanding from the pressure.
That is, indeed, a major contributor. It had generally gone the opposite direction in the '70s with the US military stagnating and the Soviet military expanding and updating at a greater pace. Reagan stoked the arms race so much it panicked the Soviet leadership and their military spending became so high it became even more crippling. With the already faulty top-down planned economy of the USSR, it was the last straw.
The Soviet Economy was already stagnating and becoming enormously dysfunctional by the time Reagan became President. The reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Economy is far more nuanced than high military spending
Is this something that people repeated so much it became truth because almost everybody says it or is there some real evidence that supports this? As far as i know the Soviets were heavy on military spending throughout whole cold war so if they went even more crazy with it, it should be very easy to verify yet i never saw any signs that this is the case.
@@robertkalinic335 I don't know about the Soviets going "even more crazy with it", but I do know the world was nearly destroyed during the Able Archer 83 incident, much of it a result from the total alarm in the Soviet Union over Reagan's "Star Wars" plan. The ramp up in US military spending caused the Soviets to effective give up resulting in the INF Treaty. The point was that the Soviets were obsessed with keeping up with the US military, which meant a disproportionate amount of funding went into military spending instead of the economy resulting in a economy that would steadily shrink. Reagan's massive ramp up is supposedly the death blow where the Soviets officially couldn't keep up and their economies ground down.
I've seen estimates of Soviet military spending, in the 1980s, of between 12 and 30 percent of GNP. Of course, it's a lot of estimation as the USSR leadership was never forthcoming about such details of the state. Their absolutely massive military of the time was rather obvious, however. It made the US military look quite small in comparison. Yet the USSR didn't quite have the economic power of the US to back up such a huge arsenal. The estimates do have a solid basis.
Game idea: every time he says 'Bretsneff' instead of Brezhnev, take a shot of Stolichnaya in the name of the glorious motherland. For the 'Ahhhhndropov' and 'Neechie' bonus rounds, take three shots for each.
The only possibly justifiable argument for the US 'saving' the Soviet Union in WW2 would be based on the industrial materials sent their in the first two years following Barbarosa. This consisted of things like railroad cars, trucks and fuel that acted to jump-start the ability of the USSR to extract it's own resources and make it's own weapons on a mass scale. While that scaling up would still have occurred without the aid the delay might have been fatal if it had allowed the Nazis to take the Caucuses and it's oil.
A really good video and meticulously even-handed. I have spent countless hours debating these points with a lot of folks, both my fellow leftists and with those to my right. I feel like I lose brain cells whenever i hear either a leftist say "communism has never been tried" because even if we go by the Marxist definition, they still tried, they just didn't accomplish it. Rosa Luxemburg was literally criticizing Lenin's purges in 1918 in her pamphlet on the Russian Revolution, which led to her famous quote "Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently". The idea Stalin has been "besmirched" is the one I've probably spent the most time having to argue about because even if Stalin's atrocities were exaggerated by anti-communists, you can't exaggerate something if it didn't happen. As you said, the most reliable estimates we have right now say 6.5 million deaths. While it's not as high as the older estimates of 20 million deaths, that's still a huge number of deaths Stalin was responsible for. Ive probably spent just as much time on the imperialism issue as I have on Stalin. I mean come on! Soviet imperialism literally split the global communist movement not once, but twice! First with Mao, and then with the western communists after the Prague Spring leading to the development of Eurocommunism! I mean Czechoslovakia was trying to chart a new course for socialism for their own country and this was seen as a threat not to socialism, but to Soviet Hegemony! The Soviets were literally prepared to go to war with Yugoslavia to bring it back into the Soviet sphere of influence in the 1950s!
Oh, you lost American kids... You'd have to learn history first but you can't because you have stand up comedians, not historians there in the US. "Rosa Luxemburg was literally criticizing Lenin's purges in 1918 in her pamphlet on the Russian Revolution..." And how it ended up on Rosa? Do you know when the so called Red terror started? Was it maybe after the White terror and the attempted assassination of Lenin? "the most reliable estimates we have right now say 6.5 million deaths" Reliable? On what bases? On the Holodomor myth? Why the biggest US ally, Britain is not recognizing that myth? Why Kazakhstan that very probably suffered more from that famine is not recognizing that myth?
I still believe Tito had Stalin whacked. "Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle... if you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow and I won't have to send another."
@@simplicius11 1) I have a degree in history and cypher is getting his PhD 2) Please read Rosa’s writings. Also I’m not sure how that has any relevance to her murder given she didn’t have state power, while Lenin did 3) Accoridng to the Soviet archives 4) Britain recognizes the Holomodor happened, it just doesn’t call it a genocide, because that classification is disputed.
@@SunflowerSocialist te autopsy said it was a stroke. Though the timing of the message was so close, also I reàd somewhere that Stalin was about to send another Assassin before his stroke. It was funny to think about
For number 6, I want to stress that I do not believe that one side alone could have won ww2, east or west. It was the combination of both sides' indomitable will that eventually broke Germany, and being stretched INCREDIBLY thin didnt hurt, either.
The Soviets had the rare metal known as Stalinium forged from Stalin's sweat, vodka, and Lenin's toenails, which made every bullet and missile bounce off. The Germans have been reported to lose so hard that they started praying to a god named "Gaijin" to nerf the metal.
I disagree Soviet industry was supprior to German industry and the Soviets had vast swaths of man power not to mention the Germans lacked oil, were invading an extremely resilient army, and was dealing with poor supply in poor temperatures, the only real disadvantage the Soviets had was tech, and lacking some more special natural resources, Germany had no real chance at defeating the Soviets the only reason they did so well in the first place was because Stalin was caught off guard. The allies certainly hastened the end of world war 2, but they did not win it, the Soviets did.
@@sparrow6604 alright, we shall address these in the order you placed them. Firstly, I dont know where you heard soviet industry was superior to german industry, but it is simply not true. The soviets, or russians at the time, did not start truly industrializing until the 1900s, whereas germany had been near fully industrialized by its unification in 1871, the only holdouts being cities where the guilds held power, preventing industialization in those areas entirely. The germans did lack oil, but they absolutely knew this, making strides in coal liquefaction technology, and making a trade agreement giving them near exclusive rights to the Baku oil fields, a stipulation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Also, most soviet industry cut so many corners, that vehicles would simply break down on the way to the front. The soviets, I'll grant you, were extremely resilient, but they were mostly untrained conscripts, and russia has had a crippling alcohol addiction since the 1500s, an addiction stalin only fueled to keep the masses complacent. Soviet tech was surprisingly up to date for the time, as they heavily cooperated with research with the allies and even the germans before the war. They were only truly behind in air technology, a disadvantage that would shaft them and lose them more than they should have. I will grant you, supply was poor in the east, but that is because the best equipment was saved for the western front. Hitler knew the allies would attempt an invasion, so he kept the atlantikwall needlessly stacked. I say that the soviets could not have won alone, not because I dont like the soviets, but because I genuinely believe it. To say the soviets could have won alone is to downplay the stunning effectiveness of allied bombing raids on both morale and industry, and SEVERELY undersells the genuinely fierce and violent resistance that French, Dutch, Polish, and Yugoslav armies took part in. Not to mention in heavily masks the utter incompetence of Stalin's USSR.
@@texo456 in difference in industrialization was overtook by Stalin’s industrialization programs as deadly as they were they were effective by 1943 the Soviets were out producing the Germans in 3-1 and were out producing aircraft by over 10000, granted your right in saying Soviet equipment was inferior but it also didn’t matter even before the war Soviet industry was superior so allied bombing didn’t have that much of an effect, also morale bombing did not do much to stop the Germans from fighting, like what do soldiers say on the eastern front care if a city hundreds of miles away was bombed . Also supply in the east was bad because of how much land they had to supply, also what equipment was being saved for the west? France fell in 1940, and didn’t land again properly until 1944, (unless maybe Italy was eating up equipment? Also what does equipment have to do with supply? Did better tanks magically mean better supply? Or am I misunderstanding what your saying? As for oil that’s fair the Germans had made a lot of progress in synthetics. The partisans also did alot of stuff but it wasent like they won the war, heavy industry won the war and the Soviets simply had more.
One thing regarding Lenin: His idea of Vanguard Party did not come because they thought they were the most advanced theorist, but because of two things: 1st - The lack of practical theory regarding the way to get to power 2nd - The absolute lack of industrialisation of the Russian Empire Not unlike Blanquism or even some Jacobinist ideas during the French Revolution, the idea was that a temporary authoritarian phase was necessary to ready the social and political conditions for actual socialist and then later communist political organisation. It's also quite unfair to put all the problem on the pure theoretical dimension when it comes to what happened with the October Revolution when the thing that was probably the most impactful on future policies was the civil war, not unlike the French Revolution. The plan was to create a vanguard party made and led by workers, democratically organized, that would conduct industrialisation, what they called "socialist primitive accumulation of capital", basically doing the same step of industrialisation the capitalist world did but in an organized, planned and faster fashion. Increasing agricultural productivity, then investing these gains in productivity in industrialisation to develop an actual working class that would directly be organized around socialism and so could directly transition to communism. But, of course, civil war, political repression, old tsarist administration, a lot of factors come into play when we consider what happened.
Wasnt there the whole split between the anarchists and marxists where the anarchists ended up telling Marx "if you create this authoritarian state to manage things after the revolution then it will just hold onto power and never go away", or something like that?
@@Loregamorl Yes, and they were right. Leninism and the idea of a vanguard party is nothing more than a front for the establishment of a permanent autocracy.
@@DonHaka Don’t make me laugh. In every M-L state its been a bunch of elitist oligarchs that have been in power, just like any other fascist state. And yes, one person has often controlled these states; see prominent Nazi sympathizer Stalin for more details.
@@Loregamorl Sort of, It was the Hague congress in 1872 Though it should be mentioned that they were anarchists so any government was defined as authoritarian automatically and Marx was advocating a democracy not a totalitarian dictatorship.
I like how this video isn't just "WELL ACKTUALLYY" retorts to standard statements, and isn't just anti-Soviet but gives a fair shake when it comes to WW2 and some anti-Soviet misconceptions too . That's some good evaluation.
My cat prescribed to the communist ideology. She started dressing like Lenin and raised the hammer and sickle in our living room. She learned and only spoke Russian. I drew the line when she set up a Gulag in our spare bedroom and forced me to work in it. I took down her "iron curtain" she set up dividing our living room and sent her packing. She took her manifesto but returned three days later with the stars and stripes flag in her paw and vowed to stop her forced ideology and I took her back in. We've gotten along just fine since.
If you ask me, Lenin and the Soviet Union betrayed their ideals when they violently put down the Krondstadt sailors. The men of the Baltic Fleet had been some of the most devoted Bolsheviks and served the party since the February Revolution, and Lenin stabbed them in the back when they became unsatisfied with how Lenin was handling the revolution.
Regarding the "US saved USSR" I feel now there is this "the allies didn't do anything till the end the Soviets did the real work" idea now that is also untrue and equally if not more prominent than the other, I even used to belive it.
@@noahedelson3618 Killing Guys more guys ≠ Did more work. Who flattened the rhur industries? Who kept german and Italian forces occupied in Africa, or guarding Greece and Italy,? Who cut German trade off from the outside world? Who broke the enigma code again and again? Who knocked out Germany's chief ally in Europe? Or how about I go ahead and quote Kruschev and Stalin about the American lendlease system. "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me." Source: www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balance-in-soviet-fight-against-nazi-germany/30599486.html
@@CynicalHistorian Ian Kershaw, writes in his Hitler bio it was his choice to divert troops from attacking Moscow and Leningrad "Operation Typhoon" To attack Stalingrad instead, Which destabilised and broke the momentum of the German assault and led to stagnation and eventual retreat.
The turning point was when Germany invaded the USSR (I know that there are scenarios where the Soviets may have collapsed, but the German's lack of oil pretty much doomed them from the start).
I am a retired historian/teacher and just came across this video and want to comment on #6. First, thank you for mentioning Kursk, which one could argue was just as much a turning point as Stalingrad. But the USSR would have had a much more difficult time if it were not for American industry in key areas. One thing that is often mentioned is the sheer number of trucks used for transportation sent to the USSR. Research shows that over 390,000 vehicles were shipped (not all made it). Stalin himself said that without those trucks, it would have been a long walk to Berlin. The Soviets were notoriously incompetent in some areas of manufacturing. 50% of copper wire produced failed quality control; hence, the U.S. supplied almost all of the wire used by the USSR for ground communication equipment once in the war. Another area was suppling aviation fuel. The Soviets simply could not refine such fuel in quantity. The U.S. was suppling 90% of aviation fuel used by the Soviets by 1943.
Oh my! Historical professionalism? Taking responsibility for your comment section? Going against über funded propagandists? Am I in heaven? I would also like to add a point to the 2nd myth. Saying communism has never been tried is false because it erasures the achievements of anarchists and other socialists who were not leninists (who are just edgy social-democrats, but this last one is just my opinion)
*Blinks in Social Democrat* You’ve actually got a really good point there. We (SocDem’s & DemSoc’s) end up bickering hard in private, but since 1979 we’ve been basically the same team fighting against Neoliberalism, with a lot of combined ideological drift over time as the worst idea since Nationalism has lingered these last 40 years.
Leninists are edgy social democrats? I think you're misguided there, there are merits to Lenin's theory as he applies a method to Marxist theory. There are flaws in the Leninist method as have been outlined by other Marxists such as Luxemburg, but to describe Leninists as edgy social democrats is really failing to appreciate the ideological contributions he made to theory
@@SirPercival13 Not Leninists. He very specifically said the non-leninists. He's talking about the group of socialists that includes George Orwell and elements of the British Labor Party. Democratic Socialists, and such.
It's also intellectually dishonest to to assume when people criticize the effects of Marxism, that they are 1. Attributing the crime of manslaughter to Karl Marx directly (seriously, bro?) 2. To assume that his school of thought has no lasting impact on history. Like you said, it's called "Marxism-Leninism". Lenin, Mao etc did not create socialism/communism whatever completely by themselves, they had very distinct school of thought they derived their worldview from, separating it from other philosophies and schools of thought.
To whom is this even a response to? To the creator of this video? When did he say that Marxism has no lasting impact? Also, do you realize that Leninism, Marxist-Leninism, and Trotskyism are all different ideologies? Marxist-Leninism is usually just a synonym for Stalinism. The way you refer to Marxist-Leninism almost seems to indicate that you don't realize this. About your first point I absolutely agree, Cypher did a really bad job of tackling that point. But I think he is absolutely right in asserting that Marxism and Marx's work cannot be blamed for the atrocities of the socialist regimes of the 20th century. People who claim so most likely don't know much about Marx, the history of socialism and probably cannot even give a definition of Marxism.
The problem is that claiming that Marx gives rise to Marxism-Leninism is a fallacious argument, called the genetic fallacy. Cypher is correct in his analogy to Nietzsche.
I think it's important to think about the different communist ideologies, before saying it was tried. The communism tankies advocate for was tried many times. The communism anarchocommunists fight for, wasn't tried so far.
@Red Baron Well yeah, it was tried, but it didn't fail cuz it wasnt a good system, it failed cuz for example the fascists in spain invaded the communes and killed them all. Anarchocommunism ''failed'' cuz outside powers forced themselves onto them
I would also add the myth that somehow Russia was this paradise of Jeffersonian Democracy under the Czars until the evil Commies came and ruined it all. The Soviet Union can be seen a modern update of Czarist Russia with the state owning everything, strong man rule enforced by a secrete police.
I don't know if I'd call the Soviet Union a modern update of the Czars, but yeah I do see a lot of reactionaries try and paint a rosey picture of the same regime responsible for Bloody Sunday and Protocols of the Elders of Zion (or, arguably worse, even the Ancien Regime in France) and it's hella creepy.
That myth isn’t based on nothing though, by the time the revolution happened the Czar had already abdicated, and the country was under a provisional government, which is sort of where it all comes from.
The irony is that revolution was supposed to destroy the terror of the Tzarist regime. But the Soviet police, deportation of people and gulags made the previous regime pale in comparison.
@@str.77 You know the Romanovs committed far more evil than just " single massacre and a forgery" which were bad enough in themselves. I will brook no garbage from reactionaries like this. Do not use the Soviets crimes to justify the Romanovs.
The US did not save the USSR. Chiang Kai Shek did, a fact now acknowledged by the PRC. How did he save the USSR? Because without his determination to defeat the Japanese, China would have collapsed before Barbarossa even began. With China out of the war Japan would have been in a position to fulfill her obligations under the Tripartite Pact and strike the Soviet Union in the East. The Soviets would have lost a two front war in the summer of 1941. Japan also played an indirect role. The Army wanted to go North in 1941 but instead the US embargo forced the decision to go South. This was communicated to Stalin by Richard Sorge in the fall of 1941. Stalin was able to move troops from the far east to Moscow front in late 1941 for the counterattack that threw the Germans back from the gates of Moscow. WWII was a global war in which events in one theater had tremendous influence in other theaters.
@@stanleyrogouski Well that was a "whataboutism" if I ever heard one. Two of those three states didn't even exist when Goldman was alive. And she was plenty critical about the one she lived in and was deported from.
Great video:) But what you said at 15:09 seems to me to need attention. Not all Gulags were abolished right after Stalin's death; just the majority of them - the Gulag of Perm-36 remained open and functional until 1987. Krushchev's destalinization didn't happen over night, instead 'taking three steps forward and two steps back'. By the time he was ousted, Gulags had yet to be wiped off the face of the Earth. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
Whether you are right or not depends on how you use the term "Gulag". If you are referring to the "Chief Administration of Camps", that was dissolved in 1960, during destalinization. If you are referring to the camps themselves (and considering the context, and how the English-speaking world in general uses the term "Gulag", you certainly are), then yes, you are correct: there were still gulags _(plural)_ operating into the late-1980s. For more information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
Alright, as a communist, speaking for my cadre of like 4 people, we gotta own up to 2. It's technically true that we haven't seen the end goal of communism, but by any common definition, it's an unhelpful argument.
The problem is also tankies who themselves arent really even lefitists. They'll champion china and north korea for instance simply because they "call" themselves communists and they stand up to the west but thats literally just that. One is an absolute monarchy that doesnt care about the needs of workers while the other is a capitalist dictatorship with zero regulations on government sponsored big business
There are so many different leftist ideologies and takes on what communism is that any "achkually, gobunism was tried, you leftists are just deranged" is like going to every single different christian church with their own take on christianity and saying "you are all the same, and your ideology is this definition i will make that only some of you have in common or slightly agree with"
@not Shane kid you've never seen 2 leftists debate each other and it shows. also, marx has his own definition, and the dictionary he used isnt really a good mirror of it
I remember a joke from something like 7th grade. How often are Soviet citizens allowed to travel abroad? Every 12 years. Hungary in '56, Czechoslovakia in '68 and Poland in '80. So yes. The USSR was imperialistic.
@@stanleyrogouski If there wasn't a planetary quarantine right now that I personally don't want to violate, I could literally hop on a plane and fly to either if I wanted to, without needing to join any organization. Govn't can't do much more than say 'plz don't' and get out the way.
on myth #1: the definition of communism in that dictionary is simplistic, I think you will agree, and yes by that definition of communism, the USSR did "try" to implement a form of it in the early years, under (a telling word) Lenin-Trotsky-Kalinin and others, (Stalin wasn't in the picture until later). However, the pressures of, internal civil war and sabotage, and foreign intervention, plus just basic lack of material goods, and industry, anywhere but in the bigger cities of Moscow and Petrograd, meant it wasn't possible, and was soon displaced by state capitalism, a very different animal. This is also to a much greater degree what exists in the PRC to this day. (this also is highly simplistic... so go off and do your own research)
Kid Mohair this is something that I always have to point out to tankies and Soviet sympathisers whom try to deny the unions failures or justify atrocities. Marx recognised that you can’t just go from feudalism you communism by force, capitalism is a necessary stepping stone. It’s a fundamental part of historical materialism which Lenin claimed to be a scientific fact that guided his decisions. They were set up to failure and tyranny inevitably ensued.
6:40 The constituent assembly was a redundant body, sort of just a vestigial organ left over from the dual power (provisional government of the state Duma and the Petrograd soviet) government formed after the February revolution. Really from the October revolution onwards the Soviet was in control. It consisted of other parties besides the bolsheviks too, that being the Left SRs, the Mezhrainosty, and some elements of the mensheviks. Of course, the left SRs would end up being opposed to the policies of the bolsheviks, but that stems from the bolsheviks signing brest-litovsk, not from the constituent assembly being dissolved.
You just think this because you've been brainwashed by post-modernist- cultural- neo- marxist- Bolshevik- Leninist- atheist- genderless-snowflake teachers genetically engineered by the left to infiltrate society and destroy capitalism which I support even though I'm in negative income because I have to use credit cards for food and am barely covering the interest on loans on my transport and house to cover conservative government's tax-cuts for the obscenely wealthy and the bank!!!!!!!111111 I'm disliking this video and am off to talk to Russian bots on twitter where the real news is!!!111
No spreading hate in the comments? Well, I happen to think eggplant is vile and should be eradicated from the face of the earth, and you can't stop me saying that you fascist pinko commie postmodernist expressionist neo-dadaist! :-P
@@CynicalHistorian Xi Thought: Here, have some honey. It's local. Chinese Citizens and The World: The bees! Not the bees! They're in my eyes! Aaagggghhhh!
Hey, I'm a leftist and I just wanted to thank you for having such nuanced takes about the USSR. When I hear rightists get all riled up about the Soviets I often get defensive even though I don't even particularly like the USSR cause they all just do these dumb PragerU-tier shit arguments. So thank you for being fair and just presenting good and honest history.
I am a communists and I probably have a view of the USSR and Stalin that is different from yours (I don't think that it was a paradise and I know that the USSR government committed some bad crimes). Your video is interesting in many aspects, but I think that you committed some misinterpretations (as for example attributing to Stalin, that according to your interpretation was a sort of totalitarian dictator, all the crimes committed under his government). I don't have the time to argue against some of your arguments, but I wanted to argue why for me the USSR wasn't imperialist during large part of his history. It of course had a sciovinistic approach toward its allies in the eastern bloc, imposing his supremacy even with force (the USSR policies were not so some aspects very different from the policies that the US adopted toward the western block countries. These policies were not exactly imperialistic in fact the satelite states of both the blocks had, despite their dependency, a relative large possibility of autonomy if they didn't change their political system too radically). But the USSR, as the global communist movement, helped a lot the struggle of third world countries for indipendece, as recognised by Eric Hosbaw that wasn't a pro-soviet historian. For example the USSR supported India without imposing its economic system in the country (India has always been state capitalist), or the USSR baked the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa when it was too small to hope achieving anything concrete. The Third Wolrd countries even looked at the Soviet Union as a model for achieving an economic development and as a commercial partner that represented an alternative to the western ex colonial powers (for example, Patrik Lumumba built relation with the Soviet Union while the western powers hostile to him were planning his overthrown). The USSR of course had its economic interests abroad, but never acted like the US or the other western powers. As acknowledged in the "Secret history of the KGB" (a strongly anticommunist book), the KGB offices abroad had a counter espionage function and they did not have to interfere in the political spectrum of the various countries. And also, no one has the responsibility for bolshevism, because bolshevism wasn't some sort of criminal ideology comparable with nazism. I can also (and maybe with far more reasons), say that who has the responsibility for capitalism or for the birth of any capitalist states that commited some crimes (practically every capitalist state), is an evil and terrible person, but I doubt that these approach will result in something positive. And bolshevism cannot be considered as a sort of betrayal of marxism. The bolsheviks were real Marxist and they belived and wanted to build a real socialist state. The errors and horrors that they committed are part of the Marxist tradition and I, as a Marxist, have the duty to understand why did bad things happened and what is the best way to avoid them, not to treat them as a thing that is totally separated from a pure socialist idealistic model (as the slave trade is part of the capitalist one). Sorry for the long comment, but I feel I have to write it. Good afternoon!
The USSR instead acted like an imperialist country during the war against Afganistan. Here the red army committed horrible crimes and that event must be remembered as a very bad thing.
You also listed a source that praised the Black Book of Communism that contains, as his author recognises, a lot of historical errors with figures, a book that is highly polemical and is designed to shut up any discourse about communism. It used some absurd tools as counting all the people died for famine as victims of Communism, without watching at the intention of the 'perpetrators' or at the concrete situation! (for example it counts all the people that died for famine during the Great Forward as Mao's death tool when they recognise that he (Mao) didn't want to kill the majority of these people (in reality anyone of them). And these are only some of its flaws! (one of the major flaws is to watch the communist experience under the category of totalitarianism).
