That’s so vile. Even if you’re a megabrain and all politicians and propagandists are the same to you, civilians crying in horror as their cities are bombed are not the same thing at all.

I followed the link and read that they call liberation of Estonia from the Nazi occupation a “Soviet re-occupation” in Wikipedia. This is a disgrace.

I didn’t mean to suggest Baltic states are one people! And of course I’m aware of class and social differences. I lived through much of shock therapy suffering you mention, I wish we could talk in person, I have lots of thoughts I’m not sure how to put into writing…

I think culturally, from Catholicism and Lutheranism to Latin script to just architecture surrounding them in their cities, people in Baltic states feel European in the way Ukrainians, Moldovans, and Georgians simply can’t.

I remember a lot of late-Soviet Russians coopting reactionary language - when state informed them of the crimes South African whites commited on the black population, Russians would say “aren’t we whites too?” which was of course in part a joke, but there was an underlying sense of entitlement to be the oppressor, to be the slave master. I bet you’d find less of that in the Eastern republics where people still remembered living under Russian Empire yoke and had less reason to self-identify as prospective oppressors. When in the referendum Russians voted lowest of all the republics in support of preserving the USSR (except Baltic republics), I think this is a large part of the reason why (also worth mentioning Eastern republics voted by far the highest to preserve it). It’s the feeling of belonging to a powerful, respected, “cultured” nation that deserves more than the plebs around them. I think Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Balts had even stronger claim to proper “Whiteness”. Ukrainians on the other hand needed much more mental gymnastics to devise a theory where Russians were “Mongolised” since medieval times and Ukrainians were the only “pure” Slavs which also somehow made them essentially Nordics… They managed of course, but it was laborious.

Again I wish we could talk in person cause I can see I’m fumbling.

UK was just as implicated as the US:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/17/revealed-how-uk-spies-incited-mass-of-indonesias-communists

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/17/slaughter-in-indonesia-britains-secret-propaganda-war

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/23/uks-propaganda-leaflets-inspired-1960s-massacre-of-indonesian-communists

I think even without false flag operations it would be difficult to keep Baltics within the USSR for long, from what I know they were the only ones where significant part of the population hated USSR and never accepted it.

Having grown up in the Soviet Ukraine and having visited Soviet Latvia a couple times (mom’s best friend lived there), lots of people in the Baltics really didn’t want to be in the USSR and considered themselves occupied by Russia, unlike people in Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia, etc.

In Baltics it was common that people on the street would refuse to speak Russian even if you only asked how to get to the train station (despite learning Russian in schools), something that only started happening in Ukraine or Georgia after decades of Western propaganda (and still it’s pretty much only people who grew up on Western propaganda who behave like that, people who grew up in the USSR still mostly consider all Soviets brotherly nations).

I shouldn’t have said anything, I know nothing about internet personalities

Sounds like the new Vaush

I’ve been watching belly of the beast for quite a while now, no idea who the interviewer is but he’s suddenly all over lemmygrad lol

The reason is the same as always, extraction of natural resources and cheap labour from Russia.

Europe will never side with Russia in this conflict, but should the US attack China, Europe might side with China in hopes of regaining independence from the US.

[…] when Hitler Germany declared war on the Soviet Union, the Anglo-French-American bloc, far from joining with Hitler Germany, was compelled to enter into a coalition with the U.S.S.R. against Hitler Germany.

It is said that the contradictions between capitalism and socialism are stronger than the contradictions among the capitalist countries. Theoretically, of course, that is true. It is not only true now, today; it was true before the Second World War. And it was more or less realized by the leaders of the capitalist countries. Yet the Second World War began not as a war with the U.S.S.R., but as a war between capitalist countries. Why? Firstly, because war with the U.S.S.R., as a socialist land, is more dangerous to capitalism than war between capitalist countries; for whereas war between capitalist countries puts in question only the supremacy of certain capitalist countries over others, war with the U.S.S.R. must certainly put in question the existence of capitalism itself. Secondly, because the capitalists, although they clamour, for “propaganda” purposes, about the aggressiveness of the Soviet Union, do not themselves believe that it is aggressive, because they are aware of the Soviet Union’s peaceful policy and know that it will not itself attack capitalist countries.

[…] Consequently, the struggle of the capitalist countries for markets and their desire to crush their competitors proved in practice to be stronger than the contradictions between the capitalist camp and the socialist camp.

Joseph Stalin, Economic Problems of the USSR, Chapter 6 Inevitability of Wars Between Capitalist Countries

His supporters are still handing out flyers claiming he was framed by the state for being a Marxist, I got one at the last national demo for Palestine in London.

Life in the USSR was so hard people born there in 1968 are 77 now /s

I’m just answering a poster saying anarchism is a lot like democratic centralism. Some parts are similar (delegation and recall), others are not at all (vanguard party, dotp)

I am an ML.

I never said I’m an anarchist I’m just explaining what anarchism is and it’s not what a lot of people here think it is.

how do you expect to protect your revolution with no vanguard or DoTP?

This is literally what I wrote in my first comment:

My disagreement with anarchism is different: I think only a state with a strong coercive apparatus can survive sustained imperial pressure and capitalist encirclement.

Definitely!

Early Soviets maybe, before war communism, for like less than a year… There was a reason anarchists tried to assassinate Lenin as a counterrevolutionary.

The “delegation and recall” part of it? Totally! The “vanguard party” and “DotP” parts? Not so much.

You can call a federation of communes a “state” if you want. Anarchists are not against this kind of “state”. As long as power flows bottom-up by delegation and recall.

I’m not an anarchist, but a lot of people here are misrepresenting anarchism. Anarchists don’t reject coordination or planning, only hierarchical state control. Large infrastructure would be built by federated councils, unions, and communes, with common plans and technical bodies coordinated by accountable, recallable delegates. Central coordination without a state hierarchy is entirely possible.

My disagreement with anarchism is different: I think only a state with a strong coercive apparatus can survive sustained imperial pressure and capitalist encirclement.