First, for the sake of argument, let’s assume every word in that excerpt is uninpeachable historical fact. Taking it as fact, it is no worse than what the U.S. has done at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, that blacksite the Chicago PD used to disappear and torture people, etc., to say nothing of the horrors of the many dictatorships the U.S. installed and propped up throughout the Cold War. If you see this conduct as some moral event horizon you should want to burn the U.S. to the ground. This is not whataboutism, this is asking if you really give a shit about this stuff, or if it only offends your sensibilities when the Bad Countries do it.
Dispensing with the assumption that the except is proven fact, let’s examine the reliability of the sources (I’ll spoiler this section to not clog up the thread, but suffice to say it doesn’t look great):
spoiler
Lidia Golovkova: A search for “Lidia Golovkova historian cv” doesn’t turn up anything. Nor does the alternate spelling “Lydia.” Searching her on Google Scholar returns no articles she authored. She appears to be a real person – looks like she attended a conference organized by “The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia” in 2002 – but I’ve found nothing that would speak directly to her credibility as a historian, or lack thereof. She appears to be cited fairly regularly (sometimes in academia, more often in articles like the one you quote from), but it also looks like she’s cited in the same breath as noted hack Robert Conquest (example). Generously, she might be associated with positions only a minority of historians hold. Less generously, it looks like she’s doing motivated reasoning and pop history, like Conquest.
Sukhanovskaya Prison: Special Facility 110: Found a few mentions of this book, but no English translations. Two mentions in particular (here and here) both cite Russian-language editions. It’s odd how many of the same English excerpts can be found with a “cursory” search, despite the book at minimum not being widely available in English. Looks more like quote mining/citation hunting than all of these authors actually assessing what they’re referencing. It would be difficult for English speakers to evaluate, for instance, whether this work is consistent with information from USSR archives that were released after the country fell (a major turning point in Sovietology which separated serious historians from propagandists; see Conquest).
No, not particularly. But the reason for opposing it is much broader than torture. My assertion that Soviet police tortured people is only to show that Soviet cops were not particularly better than American cops, which is where this whole argument started, if you look up the comment chain.
So you were just doing reddit contrarianism, got it.
If you want to actually assess Soviet vs. American policing the way to do it isn’t to find a (poorly sourced) example of Soviet police misconduct, because you can find endless examples of the same from American police. Instead, you’d have to look at how the police typically act(ed) in each country. You might start by looking for something to show Soviet police were armed with more military equipment than American police, for example, but you’d be looking for a while.
There are countless examples of U.S. police misconduct that was ordered by superiors, and plenty more that was done with their full knowledge and tacit approval.
Where to begin?
First, for the sake of argument, let’s assume every word in that excerpt is uninpeachable historical fact. Taking it as fact, it is no worse than what the U.S. has done at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, that blacksite the Chicago PD used to disappear and torture people, etc., to say nothing of the horrors of the many dictatorships the U.S. installed and propped up throughout the Cold War. If you see this conduct as some moral event horizon you should want to burn the U.S. to the ground. This is not whataboutism, this is asking if you really give a shit about this stuff, or if it only offends your sensibilities when the Bad Countries do it.
Dispensing with the assumption that the except is proven fact, let’s examine the reliability of the sources (I’ll spoiler this section to not clog up the thread, but suffice to say it doesn’t look great):
spoiler
I love that when I assert that Soviet police tortured people your response is to accuse me of wanting to burn the USSR to the ground for it, lmao.
…so you’re saying you supported the USSR?
No, not particularly. But the reason for opposing it is much broader than torture. My assertion that Soviet police tortured people is only to show that Soviet cops were not particularly better than American cops, which is where this whole argument started, if you look up the comment chain.
So you were just doing reddit contrarianism, got it.
If you want to actually assess Soviet vs. American policing the way to do it isn’t to find a (poorly sourced) example of Soviet police misconduct, because you can find endless examples of the same from American police. Instead, you’d have to look at how the police typically act(ed) in each country. You might start by looking for something to show Soviet police were armed with more military equipment than American police, for example, but you’d be looking for a while.
“Misconduct is when police carry out the orders they’re given”
lmao, never change, tankie.
There are countless examples of U.S. police misconduct that was ordered by superiors, and plenty more that was done with their full knowledge and tacit approval.
Take your shit back to reddit