I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.
And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.
This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.
IPN love doing failed exhumations, like the one when they dug up polish PM (London govt) and general Sikorski, who died in plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943. I don’t know what they expected to find, a bullet with Stalin autograph in his head? All they found is that he died because his plane crashed. USSR didn’t even had any motive of killing him, it happened after he and his government started cooperation with USSR, his death hindered that since the rest of his govt were filled with indolent anticommunist. Funnily enough the only ones who did had motive to off him were his govt pals and Brits, and Brits still don’t want to reveal their archive about the case.
Poles are obsessed with Russia, every Pole that has ever died must have been the victim of a secret Russian plot
Funniest excercise ever is observing polish TV mentioning Russian Empire. On one hand it’s Russian, and the tsars really opressed Poles quite hard, but on the other hand they were deposed by the ultimate commie evil! So the one tsar which do get lauded is the worst one of them all, Bloody Nicky, and the social structure and 'reforms" of late empire gets romanticized as hell.