You missed the part in between where they made a deal with the nazis
I didn’t miss that part because there was no “deal with Nazis”. Nothing as bad as the Munich Agreement signed the previous year by England, France and Germany among others, allowing Hitler to occupy the Sudetenland, a land with more than 3mn people in Czechoslovakia (to whom the Soviet Union offered assistance but Romania and Poland denied pass to Soviet troops, possibly influenced by the fact that Poland also did a grab of land of Czechoslovakia). The USSR spent the entire 30s trying to push for a military alliance with England, France and Poland to stop Nazism, but they all refused because a good liberal would rather have Nazis first exterminate communists. Stalin went as far as offering to station 1 million troops, together with aviation and artillery, in France, in case Stalin invaded, to which England and France refused. Feel free to study the so-called “collective security policy” pushed by the USSR in Europe against Nazism.
The Soviet Union had been in a civil war until 1921 (right after a devastating WW1/, and before that it was a preindustrial nation. It had a whopping 19 years to rebuild the country from scratch and to industrialise, compared to the 100+ years of German industrialization. They desperately needed every single year of industrialization they could get in order to gain some advantage against the industrially superior Nazis, as evidenced by the 25+ million casualties the USSR suffered against the Nazis despite material help from the US. Making an agreement to postpone the war after every country in Europe refuses to enter a military alliance against Nazis just because you’re a communist country, is just the logical action to defend your citizens.
Please stop pushing revisionist nazi propaganda. Without the USSR, the slavic population of Europe, including Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian, as well as many other ethnic groups, would have been genocided in vastly superior numbers than they were.
but Romania and Poland denied pass to Soviet troops
I thought Romania did?
“Rumania had agreed to permit Russian troops to pass through her territory to the assistance of Czechoslovakia as soon as the League of Nations had pronounced Czechoslovakia to be a victim of aggression” - Munich, Prologue to Tragedy by John W. Wheeler-Bennet, p. 100
So you are straight up denying the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
To be clear I don’t fault them for signing a NAP, I fault them for invading a bunch of eastern European countries with whom they had no quarrel because they wanted to do imperialism.
But I guess the fact that you dodged the question and immediately started spewing whataboutism proves that you’re not really interested in a discussion.
There a whole article about Russian disinformation on this topic here. They certainly did have a pact with the Nazis. Your argument is basically “it didn’t happen, but if it did then it the West forced us into it” which is a 100% classic disinformation line. It’s like when Putin says there is no war with Ukraine, but if there is it’s because the West forced us to do it.
An organization that bombastically calls itself ‘EUvsDisinfo’, splatters a diplomatic photograph with fake blood, and preemptively dismisses counterevidence as ‘pro‐Kremlin disinformation’ does not sound like something that has an interest in exploring this matter in good faith, but I can play along (for now). Simply put, your source leaves too much counterevidence unaddressed. This, for example:
The discussion in London took place on 24 April. Halifax also backed unilateral declarations. ‘A tri-partite pact on the lines proposed, would make war inevitable. On the other hand, he thought that it was only fair to assume that if we rejected Russia’s proposals, Russia would sulk.’ And then Halifax made this comment, almost as an afterthought: ‘There was… always the bare possibility that a refusal of Russia’s offer might even throw her into Germany’s arms.’⁸⁰ Was anyone listening? If you asked the British and French everyman’s opinion, war was already inevitable.
[…]
The failures of the previous five years to obtain agreements on collective security led Molotov to want to pin the French and British to the wall to make sure they would not leave the Soviet Union in the lurch against the Wehrmacht. This was not Soviet paranoia, it was Soviet experience. Would not any prudent diplomat in the same position, after years of being spurned, mistrust interlocutors like Chamberlain and Bonnet? Maiskii’s reports appear to have encouraged the Soviet government to invest in continued negotiations. The obduracy in Moscow derived from doubts about British and French intentions which Maiskii and Surits could not overcome, and that for good reason.
I know that I did not address everything in your link, but frankly I really doubt that you have the time, patience, or interest in reading a thoroughly sourced and exhaustive commentary on it. For simplicity’s sake I chose to focus on the denial that the liberal capitalists wanted a reinvasion of Soviet Eurasia.
We are the East Stratcom Task Force, a team of experts with a background mainly in communications, journalism, social sciences and Russian studies.
We are part of the EU’s diplomatic service which is led by the EU’s High Representative
“Your comment is state propaganda! Here’s some state propaganda from my side to discredit it!!” Oh I wonder, why would a European state agency directed by Josep Borrell (Social Democrat party of Spain, the PSOE), well-known NATO removed (he was in the government when the Spanish government pushed the referendum to join NATO after 4 years of pro-NATO propaganda), want to create anti-communist and Russophobic propaganda?
If you read my comment, I’m not denying the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, I’m framing it in context. All that the article you sent says, is “Russian nationalists sometimes also put context to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, so everyone who puts context to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is reproducing what Russian nationalists say!!”
The article vaguely points to a few dubious claims* of “USSR sending Jews to Germany” (USSR being the most progressive country against antisemitism back in its time, eliminating former pogroms in the former Russian Empire, and with overrepresentation of Jewish people in government and science, and even going as far as creating a Jewish Autonomous Oblast for Jewish people who might have felt like moving to a region with higher Jewish representation). It also makes a few claims of “tech transfer” between Nazi Germany and the USSR (ignoring why the USSR would want technology to defend itself from Germany and ignoring that the US had plenty of factories in Nazi Germany for example). And it completely ignores the existence of the Collective Security attempted for the 10 prior years by the USSR.
You’re just choosing to ignore everything I said in my comment because “Russian nationalists sometimes try to put context to Molotov-Ribbentrop”. I’m literally a communist, I’m the first and foremost hater of fascist Putin. The fact that Russian nationalists stoke the USSR occasionally for nationalist purposes (while removing any socialist ideology from their claims to keep it nice and capitalist), doesn’t mean they can’t sometimes make a better historical claim to some events by pure chance.
*Edit: the “USSR SENT JEWS TO NAZI GERMANY” claim apparently refers to a “few hundred” people, including Jews, that requested asylum in the USSR from Nazi Germany and were denied asylum and returned to Nazi Germany. I don’t think EU countries, who are now rejecting Russian refugees (let alone from northern Africa or middle east) by the thousands, have the high moral ground to complain about this
Something tells me that if I invited anticommunists to check out a source with the self‐heroizing title of ‘RFvsMisinfo’, featuring a blood‐splattered photograph from the Munich conference and various sentences presupposing that any counterevidence is ‘Western propaganda’, they would feel more than a wee discouraged, too… just saying.
Sloppy propaganda aside, it is genuinely interesting to compare and contrast the Fascists’ dealings with other dictatorships of the bourgeoisie to their dealings with the people’s republics. It isn’t useful just for dunking on anticommies. For example:
Admittedly, I feel like a sicko for saying that these subjects ‘interest’ me… but hey, somebody has to get their hands dirty when studying these tragedies. It’s only fitting that the one doing the job most often would also be the one who can tolerate it the best.
Yeah, kinda insane how mask-off the “euvsdisinfo” thing is. At least they did the thing better with the Adrian Zenz and Uyghurs, using established media as a smokescreen to hide the fact that it was all Radio Free Asia. But I guess the US propaganda apparatus is bound to be more refined.
Thank you for the links to your other posts, interesting stuff. I don’t think you’re a sicko. To me, it’s important to analyse the actual history of the systems we defend (and the ones we want to emancipate from) in order to better understand what we’re fighting for, what we’re fighting against, and how to avoid certain mistakes in the future. It’s great that we have people like you in the movement.
Have you compiled all of this information (meaning these short-format, well-sourced posts) somewhere easy to access?
Yes, but I stopped updating the megathread because of the character limit. Seriously, I added so much content to the thread that our software couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been thinking about using Github as an alternative, though I am inexperienced with that platform and I am unsure if others would want me to continue my compilation there.
I didn’t miss that part because there was no “deal with Nazis”. Nothing as bad as the Munich Agreement signed the previous year by England, France and Germany among others, allowing Hitler to occupy the Sudetenland, a land with more than 3mn people in Czechoslovakia (to whom the Soviet Union offered assistance but Romania and Poland denied pass to Soviet troops, possibly influenced by the fact that Poland also did a grab of land of Czechoslovakia). The USSR spent the entire 30s trying to push for a military alliance with England, France and Poland to stop Nazism, but they all refused because a good liberal would rather have Nazis first exterminate communists. Stalin went as far as offering to station 1 million troops, together with aviation and artillery, in France, in case Stalin invaded, to which England and France refused. Feel free to study the so-called “collective security policy” pushed by the USSR in Europe against Nazism.
The Soviet Union had been in a civil war until 1921 (right after a devastating WW1/, and before that it was a preindustrial nation. It had a whopping 19 years to rebuild the country from scratch and to industrialise, compared to the 100+ years of German industrialization. They desperately needed every single year of industrialization they could get in order to gain some advantage against the industrially superior Nazis, as evidenced by the 25+ million casualties the USSR suffered against the Nazis despite material help from the US. Making an agreement to postpone the war after every country in Europe refuses to enter a military alliance against Nazis just because you’re a communist country, is just the logical action to defend your citizens.
Please stop pushing revisionist nazi propaganda. Without the USSR, the slavic population of Europe, including Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian, as well as many other ethnic groups, would have been genocided in vastly superior numbers than they were.
I thought Romania did?
“Rumania had agreed to permit Russian troops to pass through her territory to the assistance of Czechoslovakia as soon as the League of Nations had pronounced Czechoslovakia to be a victim of aggression” - Munich, Prologue to Tragedy by John W. Wheeler-Bennet, p. 100
So you are straight up denying the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?
To be clear I don’t fault them for signing a NAP, I fault them for invading a bunch of eastern European countries with whom they had no quarrel because they wanted to do imperialism.
But I guess the fact that you dodged the question and immediately started spewing whataboutism proves that you’re not really interested in a discussion.
No, I’m denying your framing of it
Edit: you’ve added two paragraphs to your comment, I’ll answer to that tomorrow
There a whole article about Russian disinformation on this topic here. They certainly did have a pact with the Nazis. Your argument is basically “it didn’t happen, but if it did then it the West forced us into it” which is a 100% classic disinformation line. It’s like when Putin says there is no war with Ukraine, but if there is it’s because the West forced us to do it.
An organization that bombastically calls itself ‘EUvsDisinfo’, splatters a diplomatic photograph with fake blood, and preemptively dismisses counterevidence as ‘pro‐Kremlin disinformation’ does not sound like something that has an interest in exploring this matter in good faith, but I can play along (for now). Simply put, your source leaves too much counterevidence unaddressed. This, for example:
(Source and more here.)
I know that I did not address everything in your link, but frankly I really doubt that you have the time, patience, or interest in reading a thoroughly sourced and exhaustive commentary on it. For simplicity’s sake I chose to focus on the denial that the liberal capitalists wanted a reinvasion of Soviet Eurasia.
Source: euvsdisinfo
“Your comment is state propaganda! Here’s some state propaganda from my side to discredit it!!” Oh I wonder, why would a European state agency directed by Josep Borrell (Social Democrat party of Spain, the PSOE), well-known NATO removed (he was in the government when the Spanish government pushed the referendum to join NATO after 4 years of pro-NATO propaganda), want to create anti-communist and Russophobic propaganda?
If you read my comment, I’m not denying the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, I’m framing it in context. All that the article you sent says, is “Russian nationalists sometimes also put context to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, so everyone who puts context to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is reproducing what Russian nationalists say!!”
The article vaguely points to a few dubious claims* of “USSR sending Jews to Germany” (USSR being the most progressive country against antisemitism back in its time, eliminating former pogroms in the former Russian Empire, and with overrepresentation of Jewish people in government and science, and even going as far as creating a Jewish Autonomous Oblast for Jewish people who might have felt like moving to a region with higher Jewish representation). It also makes a few claims of “tech transfer” between Nazi Germany and the USSR (ignoring why the USSR would want technology to defend itself from Germany and ignoring that the US had plenty of factories in Nazi Germany for example). And it completely ignores the existence of the Collective Security attempted for the 10 prior years by the USSR.
You’re just choosing to ignore everything I said in my comment because “Russian nationalists sometimes try to put context to Molotov-Ribbentrop”. I’m literally a communist, I’m the first and foremost hater of fascist Putin. The fact that Russian nationalists stoke the USSR occasionally for nationalist purposes (while removing any socialist ideology from their claims to keep it nice and capitalist), doesn’t mean they can’t sometimes make a better historical claim to some events by pure chance.
*Edit: the “USSR SENT JEWS TO NAZI GERMANY” claim apparently refers to a “few hundred” people, including Jews, that requested asylum in the USSR from Nazi Germany and were denied asylum and returned to Nazi Germany. I don’t think EU countries, who are now rejecting Russian refugees (let alone from northern Africa or middle east) by the thousands, have the high moral ground to complain about this
Something tells me that if I invited anticommunists to check out a source with the self‐heroizing title of ‘RFvsMisinfo’, featuring a blood‐splattered photograph from the Munich conference and various sentences presupposing that any counterevidence is ‘Western propaganda’, they would feel more than a wee discouraged, too… just saying.
Sloppy propaganda aside, it is genuinely interesting to compare and contrast the Fascists’ dealings with other dictatorships of the bourgeoisie to their dealings with the people’s republics. It isn’t useful just for dunking on anticommies. For example:
And since somebody mentioned deportations of Jews:
Admittedly, I feel like a sicko for saying that these subjects ‘interest’ me… but hey, somebody has to get their hands dirty when studying these tragedies. It’s only fitting that the one doing the job most often would also be the one who can tolerate it the best.
Yeah, kinda insane how mask-off the “euvsdisinfo” thing is. At least they did the thing better with the Adrian Zenz and Uyghurs, using established media as a smokescreen to hide the fact that it was all Radio Free Asia. But I guess the US propaganda apparatus is bound to be more refined.
Thank you for the links to your other posts, interesting stuff. I don’t think you’re a sicko. To me, it’s important to analyse the actual history of the systems we defend (and the ones we want to emancipate from) in order to better understand what we’re fighting for, what we’re fighting against, and how to avoid certain mistakes in the future. It’s great that we have people like you in the movement.
Have you compiled all of this information (meaning these short-format, well-sourced posts) somewhere easy to access?
Yes, but I stopped updating the megathread because of the character limit. Seriously, I added so much content to the thread that our software couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been thinking about using Github as an alternative, though I am inexperienced with that platform and I am unsure if others would want me to continue my compilation there.
I mean, that’s fucking amazing. Seriously, thank you.
Since it’s mostly just text (and links, which are also kinda text), maybe it would just be easier to have a pastebin or something?