• @Binkie55
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    10 months ago

    Social Democrats betraying the German Communists in 1918. The whole world would likely be Socialist by now if this never happened.

  • @doriangray11
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    2410 months ago

    Maybe the Sino-Soviet split. It seems like it was destined to happen after Stalin died because of how shitty Khrushchev was, but still, that was an extremely harmful event for the future of humanity. Hopefully we can recover from that mistake.

    • Makan ☭ CPUSA
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      1610 months ago

      There were bad things done by the Chinese side as well; it couldn’t all be chalked up to “Khruschev bad.”

      • @doriangray11
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        1710 months ago

        It’s true. I’m just saying, I think it might have not happened if Stalin never died.

      • @cayde6ml
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        1610 months ago

        China did some really stupid shit, and obviously this is a very complex issue. But I still lay most of the fault on Khruschev and his ilk.

      • ButtigiegMineralMap
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        510 months ago

        Like what? I only learned about the cringe that Khrushchev did, what did China do

        • SovereignState
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          1310 months ago

          Khruschev was quite funnily not a rightist but an ultraleftist when it came to many policy decisions. This meant that although he was responsible in no small part for the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, he was always pretty good on international questions and oversaw a period of time wherein the Soviet Union was assisting other nations in their national liberation struggles.

          China, on the other hand, had a hard right-ward shift with the beginning of their approach to peaceful coexistence in 1972. Nixon’s visit was a pivotal moment wherein one can see China’s foreign policy flipping from support for the international communist movement to actively aiding and abetting the imperial project so as to keep the U.S. and NATO off of their ass. It worked, of course, however it is difficult not to look back in hindsight regarding China’s congratulations to Pinochet or their support for Marcos against the communist rebellion, or even worse their misadventures in Afrika, and not think of them as absolutely fucking things up in their own way.

          It was less “peaceful coexistence” and more “anything to spite the revisionist USSR”, including selling arms to fascists and compradors in Afrika and Asia while the USSR was busy arming communists and trying to spread world revolution that way.

          I support China’s current approach to peace of course, now that there exists no alternative, and maybe history will exonerate the Chinese state of crimes committed during that period… but from what I am aware of, they were most certainly crimes - crimes against the global communist movement, even.

          • ButtigiegMineralMap
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            1010 months ago

            Interesting, I never knew about their message to Pinochet or their semi-reactionary takes

          • Camarada ForteMA
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            510 months ago

            Do you have any specific works in mind which details the things you mentioned, comrade? Specifically Khrushchev’s policies and China’s policies

            • SovereignState
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              10 months ago

              Wrt Khruschev, there was an inkling of my understanding of him as a historical figure obviously to be found in Grover Furr’s Khruschev Lied, something I would recommend all persons interested in the truth behind Stalin’s legacy to read.

              My understanding of him as more of an ultraleftist figure comes mostly from Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny, a great attempt to dispassionately deconstruct the collapse of the Soviet Union from a communist perspective as well as an attempt to guide the movement away from similar errors in the future. They do a great job illustrating Khruschev’s strangely ultra behavior like attempting to dissolve party “bureaucracy” nationwide and disseminate power more locally (at the great expense of central government).

              On Mao: I recommend the notably critical piece Mao’s China and After by Maurice Meisner for a well-rounded history of Mao’s China from before the revolution to after “capitalist restoration”. It has its issues - Meisner’s critique of “Stalinism” reeks of academic Trotskyism to me, for instance, but it was still beyond illuminating imo.

              When it comes to analyses of specific misadventures most of my understanding stems from a Monthly Review article here and other such periodical sources. Whenever I’m off work I’d be more than happy to track a few of them down!

              • Camarada ForteMA
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                410 months ago

                Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union

                I only read half of it, and it’s an outstanding work. Really monumental in their scope and I believe they reached the goal of their book.

                Thanks for the Meisner recommendation, I’ll definitely check it out if I find it on Library Genesis or a random pdf around

  • ☭CommieWolf☆
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    2110 months ago

    The Indian and Native people of America should never have trusted a single thing the European settlers ever said.

    • @201dberg
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      10 months ago

      I think that even had they killed the first settlers, Europeans were always going to come in and conquer the Americas. The natives just did not have the right kind of civilization to fight nations that were so experienced with colonization. It might not have gone as smoothly for the colonizers. Might have drastically changed how the continent was divided up. Maybe even would have caused, what is now the US, to be more like divided colonies for different nations. Maybe, MAYBE this would have prevented as many natives being killed, but there really no way I see the natives of the time preventing the eventual colonization of Central and North America.

      • @Arachno_Stalinist
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        1710 months ago

        The Philippines also did something similar when the Spanish started colonizing. While we did manage to drive the Spanish away in the Battle of Mactan (leading to the death of Ferdinand Magellan), they would later return and the Philippines got colonized anyways.

      • ☭CommieWolf☆
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        610 months ago

        This narrative that the natives people were somehow “Civilizationally” inferior is false. They were near on par in almost all aspects, and were very much capable of holding their own. One of the big factors that allowed the Europeans to get such a strong foothold was co-operation with natives and Indians in the lands they occupied, and turning tribes and groups against each other and hiring mercenaries from among the natives to fight for them. Had there been some form of unified front, there would almost certainly have been a chance for them to resist the colonizers.

        • @201dberg
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          910 months ago

          I never said they had an “inferior civilization.” I said they did not have the right kind of civilization, to fight off the colonizing forced that would repeatedly come for the Americas, even had they had killed the first group.

          Their conditions simply didn’t require them to form a civilization like that. They didn’t need to make fortified bases and castles, invent firearms, develop large scale unified armies with tactics designed to fight other large scale armies. Sure, they had battle experience. They went to war and such but they had never had to deal with something like these European colonizers before that would have required them to unify against a threat like that.

          Them having said large scale unified front would require pretty drastic changes to the society that would go back much farther in time. Had your original comment been “The native Americans forming a cohesive, unified civilization capable of keeping the Europeans out of the Americas.” Then I would have to agree. Had that happened, even with the technical superiority of the EUs it would have drastically changed how North America would develop. The US as we know it probably wouldn’t ever come to exist.

          There is however, a significant difference between that and simply saying " the Natives should never had trusted the Europeans," which is what my first response was to.

          • QueerCommie
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            910 months ago

            To add to this, the colonizers had diseases on their side.

          • ☭CommieWolf☆
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            410 months ago

            Before you revised your first comment it came across like you were implying some sort of civilizational backwardness, maybe that wasn’t the intention but it was what you wrote. I think you should look into the nature of the conquest of Latin America, the romanticized idea of a small, technologically superior European force defeating large unorganized and less “advanced” indigenous peoples is nearly a complete fabrication. It was achieved through divide and conquer, and in large part by hiring natives to fight each other. Even in north America this was done, with certain peoples siding with the colonizer to evict their fellow Indians. The conquest of the Americas could not have been possible without the co-operation from the local leadership. In nearly every single large scale battle between natives and Europeans, the Europeans had significant Indian forces siding with them. The short sightedness of those who sided with the colonizers at the time is what I was referring to in my original comment.

    • Muad'DibberA
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      910 months ago

      These 2, plus sino-soviet split (all mentioned below), would also be my biggest three.

  • @Shaggy0291
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    1810 months ago

    There are several moments in both the failed 1919 German revolution and the Polish-Soviet war that have echoed very greatly. A communist takeover of Germany would have drastically changed the European balance of power in favour of communism, probably paving the way towards a WW2 conflict with Britain, America and France on one side and Germany and Russia on the other. It isn’t hard to imagine a reality where continental Europe winds up sovietised in its entirety.

  • Commissar of Antifa
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    1710 months ago

    Zhukov helping Khrushchev coup Malenkov, Molotov, and Kaganovich.

  • @CannotSleep420
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    1710 months ago

    Whoever that legged fish was that first stepped onto land fucked up big time.

  • ButtigiegMineralMap
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    10 months ago

    maybe the creation of the film “Mean Creek” starring Josh Peck /s Fr tho my answer is Humans discovering nuclear weapons. Ik ik, it’s good for preventing escalation but I genuinely think nuclear weapons will be humanity’s downfall. Fact check me if I’m wrong but I heard that 3 or more nuclear ICBMs hitting Earth at the same time could literally pull us off balance and we could all freeze or burn to death in seconds. NO battle is worth that. The class struggle dies the second that we all do. Global capitalist interests and all the natural resources and markets and money on our planet, the things that we have fought over and died for and propagandized and coerced and did so many horrid things for as humans, it will all have been for nothing. Obviously de-nuclearization is not overnight, but people need to keep in mind that too many escalations or mistakes could lead to the end of everything we know. Vasili Arkhipov is one of the greatest people to ever exist. There was a false alarm on Soviet scanners of missiles coming their way in the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Officer Arkhipov denied the request to fire missiles back. Arkhipov likely saved a large portion of Earth’s population that day, possibly all of Earth’s inhabitants.

      • @ImOnADiet
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        710 months ago

        I have no clue on the accuracy but i took this to mean 3 nukes striking the earth at the exact same moment? It doesnt seem possible to me but im not informed at all

        • Muad'DibberA
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          810 months ago

          I’ve also heard that a nuke exploding in the upper atmosphere could end all life. Every nuke test so far has been underwater, underground, at low altitudes, etc.

  • @yearningforfreedom
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    1010 months ago

    Columbus not being sent to a dungeon for thinking the world was shaped like a pear

    • @redtea
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      710 months ago

      He was closer than the flat earthers. A bit more dangerous, though.

  • @Magos_Galactose
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    1010 months ago

    Not sure how to put it in technically accurate term, but it’s regarding Soviet’s lack of standardization of computer, which directly lead to numerous technological setback in the 70s, and likely one of the key obstacle in preventing the Soviet Union from automating their economy.

    Totally not inspired by one of the video I recently watched.

  • @201dberg
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    810 months ago

    So I am not good with names but I think the point that would have made the biggest ripple is, there was a person that was close with Stalin, whom was basically being groomed to take over after Stalin died. He got assassinated which opened the doors to Khrushchev coming in and kicking off the slow but eventual end to the USSR.

    At least this is what my memory recalls. I just don’t know the specific details.

    Had someone taken over that respected and followed Stalin and his plans for the USSR I think it would have reinforced those ideals within the party and prevented the collapse in the long run Perhaps even have prevented the sino-Soviet split. It would have prevented wars within the middle east. Cuba would be in better shape. Workers all over the world would have better conditions because Capitalism wouldn’t have been able to let its guard down. US imperialism would be drastically less impactful to the world, etc etc. Hell the US might not even have an empire. The EU would probably be more left than it is in response to being so close to such a massive collection of communism. China would probably be even farther along on their road to communism. It might even have an empowering effect on India’s communist parties and thus India may have had a revolution.

    The fall of the USSR was the greatest tragedy to ever befall mankind. I believe it was the death of this one man, who’s name I can’t remember, that could be the pivotal point in causing it.

    • @PolandIsAStateOfMind
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      10 months ago

      there was a person that was close with Stalin, whom was basically being groomed to take over after Stalin died

      Kirov? And of fucking course burgie historians blame Stalin for that.

      If we are at this topic i would get back to Yakov Sverdlov who was clearly being prepared to help and eventually take over for Lenin (especially when Lenin was shot by F. Kaplan) alas he died from the spanish flu in 1919.

      I would called neither of those “mistake” though, first was hostile act and second random accident. In that venue, mistake was Stalin trusting Malenkov instead of Molotov.