I hear, even from some leftists, that the USSR in the 1930s was “Gray bleak totalitarian hell”. But why? What was actually wrong with the USSR in the 1930s?
Nonense. The 1930s were the period of the most intense industrialization and collectivization struggles in the USSR, it was the period during which the most progress and development of any country in perhaps all of human history was made. It was an incredible achievement, a feat of labor heroism that displayed the organizational prowess of the Soviets, they built countless factories, homes, hospitals, schools, expanded the electric grid, road and rail network, etc.
Of course it was also associated with a lot of hardship, you don’t make such rapid, accelerated progress without some sacrifices and some mistakes along the way, especially while you are under the most crushing sanctions in the world at the time and seeing the west gear up for another war against you forcing you to devote much of your civil resources to building up a military that can go toe to toe with the highly industrialized European superpower of Germany.
At the same time there were also intense political struggles going on, there were factions like the Trotskyists who were constantly scheming to undermine the Soviet government and take over, there were reactionaries waiting for their chance to strike, there were dishonest opportunists who advanced through the ranks of the party by illicit means and for personal gain, leading to false accusations and innocent people being harmed.
There was just a lot happening, both good and bad, but there was also a lot of unity, optimism and hope for the future as the people were seeing this enormous, rapid progress being made and their lives getting exponentially better.
It was very far from being a “gray bleak totalitarian hell”. If any period in the USSR was gray and bleak it would have to be the late 70s, early 80s when the leadership had become ossified and the party stangant and no longer as dynamic as it used to be, and it became clear that the leadership had essentially lost faith in the socialist ideal and was running on bureaucratic momentum. It’s what led to the disastrous rise of the traitor Gorbachev.
And even still, at its worst the Soviet Union (apart from the war years '41-'45) was still better than the post-Soviet republics were in the 90s (maybe the exception of the Baltics which got pumped full of Euro-American subsidies to turn them into anti-Russian military outposts). Even when there was stagnation there was still constant if slow growth and improvement in living standards, and everyone had a secure education, housing, healthcare, job, etc.
You should read about life under the Czar. Life is hell but it is better to struggle under your own destiny than struggle as a slave. You’re talking about the great depression era. Life wasn’t too great anywhere. Russia was in the middle of a counter revolution while rebuilding itself from the decimation of the first world war and preparing for the tremendous losses of the first.
Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat. We mean to be dictatorial over the bourgeoisie. They should feel oppressed. It’s their oppression you’re sympathizing with. The working people were already condemned to suffer the greatest forms of oppression for a thousand years without a word of sympathy. It is only when they liberate themselves that you open your mouth and complain about dictatorship.
Grey and bleak. There are films of the people from the era telling you just how grey and bleak they saw the world. Listen to them over your cartoons. They were building a new world order and they knew it. That doesn’t mean there is no hardship. It means you endure hardship because that it was the time calls for and it is your world you are struggling to build, your future not the Czar’s. With or without the revolution life would have been hard as it was for all of the world in the 1930’s. It was hard in Europe and America where if you were a communist you would be purged and arrested, but again that totalitarian hellscape doesn’t count.
The only world you are presented with is the world of the upper class. The millions of poor who die from their poverty, violence and disenheritence of capitalism, are invisible. You don’t see the slaves, you see the planters. When the slaves revolt and upend their masters it looks like an awful thing from the perspective of the planters. You never saw the slaves. You never saw the thousand years of terror. You only saw the terror that ended the prosperity and peaceful lives of the planters.
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