If you lived next to Russia (also lived under), you would know. Those aren’t wrong.
Azerbaijan is committing ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh. This would have never happened in the USSR
Yeah sure, these would have never happened in USSR:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_the_Soviet_Union
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Cossackization
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Meskhetian_Turks
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Also, it’s a conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Meskhetian_Turks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush
I can do the same and dump a list of massacres and population transfers before & after the fall of the USSR and it would be far greater than all these lists combined. If so called ‘Russification’ was the goal why would Lenin and Stalin create separate constituent states for the ethnicities of the USSR? I admit that resettlement is bad, but in resolving the contradictions of creating ethnic states in a former imperialist & colonialist empire they must take steps to avoid intra-ethnic conflict between the states (Which dates back centuries), which when they stopped doing in the mid to late 80s, led to all of the conflicts seen in the former USSR today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Cossackization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
“According to Nicolas Werth, one of the authors of The Black Book of Communism…” are you even trying at this point?
Holodomor was a famine, common in the area for hundreds of years before the USSR, it was also the last
“An estimated 800,000 to 1,200,000 people died during the purges of the 1930s” If such a large amount of people died, can you see it in population statistics?
Also, it’s a conflict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict
Take more than a surface look at this ‘conflict’
My point wasn’t dumping, I just wanted to show there are dedicated lists regarding USSR. Did those things happened? Yes. Did people suffer? Yes. Did millions die because of those policies? Yes. Nothing’s gonna change that. They solved their problems by doing that. That solution was the problem for others. However, victors shape the history.
Also conflict means it’s not one-sided.
By the way, I don’t know about “The Black Book of Communism”. What’s wrong with that?
There are dedicated lists for every country that has existed, but even for the deported peoples of the USSR, namely the Chechens the vast majority of those who lived & worked in both socialism and capitalism miss the USSR and its progress in free education, healthcare, peace, and development, which was afforded to everyone, absent after the restoration of capitalism. Purely anecdotal, but in my time in Azerbaijan in an ethnically Dagestani villiage, there was a portrait of Stalin in the lodge, despite the fact that their ethnicity was deported similar to the Chechens.
After the fall of Artsakh, Azeri forces have full control over the native Armenian population with no resistance, which is pretty 1 sided
Although viewed by many scholars and laymen alike as an authoritative account of the crimes of Communism, The Black Book of Communism has since its publication date been criticised by its readers and writers alike for its methodology. Namely, the book includes among its “one hundred million victims” Nazi collaborators in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (many of whom served in the Waffen-SS by the book’s own admission) as well as comparing the expected population growth before a famine to the actual population growth (in essence counting people who were never born). In addition, the editors also confused the per-thousand symbol (‰) with the percent sign when translating from French to English, multiply some death tolls by 10 times.
The book’s own authors criticize the historical accuracy of its conclusions:
Jean‐Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth reproach Stéphane Courtois considering ‘the criminal dimension as one of the proper ones of the communist system’s set’, he writes in his text. ‘This results in taking away the phenomenon’s historic character’, claims Jean‐Louis Margolin. ‘Even if the communist breeding ground can lead to mass crimes, the line between theory and practice is inevident, contrary to what Stéphane Courtois says.’ Disputing the ‘approximations’, ‘contradictions’, and ‘clumsinesses that make sense’, the two authors reproach Stéphane Courtois’s ‘obsession to reach one hundred million deaths’. — Le Monde
Margolin and Werth furthermore rebuked Courtois in an article published in Le Monde, stating that they disagreed with his vitriolic introduction and its political agenda. Margolin and Werth both disavowed the book, recognizing that Courtois was obsessed with reaching a body count of a hundred million and consequently leading to careless and biased ‘scholarship’. Courtois also composed the book’s introduction in secret, refusing to share it for his other contributors. They both rejected Courtois’s equivalence of German fascism with communism, with Werth telling Le Monde that ‘death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union.’
Of course there are, it’s just that’s much bigger in USSR’s account even if you drop the percentage by 10. The Chechens I met tell the otherwise, that they were oppressed and had to live their religion secretly (though I’m not opposed the parts like where they forbid circumcision on boys), overall USSR had no religion and wanted no religion and I suspect a lot of problems occurred because of it, either the existence or absence of it. They tried to change it at once with oppression and that’s an automatic backlash in human nature.
there was a portrait of Stalin in the lodge
That feels like Stockholm syndrome or laying low, I don’t know which is. Because I know muslims hate Stalin.
I guess there is no perfect world and nothing changed for thousands of years. No one wants to leave others to mind their own business.
It seems “The Black Book of Communism” is a bad book and I accept that it’s not fine to use it as a source. However even though that one is exaggerated, there are other sources too. By the way, I’m no expert on USSR or anything social sciences related, in fact I’m far from it. I just met a lot people who fled from USSR or who survived from persecution. None of the stories I heard even remotely praised USSR. But I don’t know the other side of the stories, and most likely I never will be able to. At least not in a way unbiased.
By the way, gonna little side-track here, what’s with the Ukrainians being Nazi I see around a lot, didn’t they crush under Germans too?
imperial russia and other related polities as they were before and as they are after are just matryoshkas (heh) of chauvinism. there were no saints before, there are no saints now. the soviet union, as bad as it was, was your best bet on actual civilization and the fact that every single crook that sat on the kremlin and on neighbouring countries talk against it shows well what they are.
Even if it’s biased you know what you’re talking about. They were victors and they created a civilization. However if they were the best bet, things must have been really bad there (now wondering a background to that, I don’t really know about “Rise of Moscow” parts of the history). The problem is and always was those administrative crooks.
