Minor correction on the CPUSA, it started as a genuine communist party with ties to the CPSU, but was systematically infiltrated and destroyed internally until it became a shell of what it once was. The ACP is different, it espouses “MAGA communism,” whereas CPUSA is just toothless and ineffective.
Yes, I can say with a straight face that genocidal Zionist settler-colonialism is entirely different from soviet literacy programs, because the goal of Zionism is the eradication of Palestinians and the goal of the soviet literacy programs is the ability to read and communicate.
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
To the contrary of your claims, Ukrainian identity was propped up and defended by the communists, along with other ethnicities. The USSR did not run based on resource extraction or cultural erasure, but by promoting both national liberation and proletarian internationalism. Same with the PRC, minority languages and ethnicities are protected, given special protections such as exemptions from the One Child Policy and affirmative action style policies, and have greater proportional representation than Han Chinese in the NPC.
You’re seriously wrong about your claims, to the point of trivializing actual genocide and cultural erasure, including that done by the genocidal US Empire and the Zionist entity.
Kibbutz in Israel are elements of settler-colonialism. Cooperatives are not communist either, but communalist. Communism is a system of collectivized production and distribution, and cannot work in small scales as what we know as communism. The idea that administration and management is incompatible with local inputs is a sheer mockery of socialist economics and is straight from Ludwig Von Mises, quack economist disproven by steady and stable economic growth in socialist countries.
Secondly, the USSR was not “Russified.” It was a federation of multi-national ethnicities, which were protected by the soviets. Tsarist Russification was stopped by the soviets. Advocating for a common writing system and language was done alongside vast literacy programs and protecting ethnicities and languages. National liberation was taken incredibly seriously by the soviets.
You’re also hinting that you think the genocide of Palestine is overblown and that Israel has a right to exist, which is full-blown Zionism.
As I explained in this comment, there’s practically no actual evidence supporting the claim that Stalin impregnated a 14 year old. Said claims come from Montefiore, who is in Epstein’s black book:
Yep, just that you have to give them somewhere to go. Planting seeds isn’t enough, water and adequate sunlight need to be available and the soil has to be fertile.
Yep, but you have to take it further too, connect the dots. Just showing the first dot won’t help when systemic change is the correct path, and that requires an all-encompassing view.
Are you a genuine Gorby fan?
It isn’t a problem with the admin alone, but the system itself. Imperialism is what runs the US Empire, be it dem or rep admin.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism in the USSR. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries.
As for Beria, the context was in Khrushchev’s “secret speech” and denunciations of Stalin and the Stalin administration. Much of this has been confirmed false, see Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo.
Regarding the allegations around Stalin, I’ll direct you to my response to their comment. Essentially, these claims about Stalin’s supposed pedophilia come from the very same Montefiore. Secondly, Stalin did not have anti-semitic policies (anti-semitism was punishable by death in the USSR). I don’t know why five year plans are a bad thing to you, having goals for a state to focus on is common practice in socialist countries, China is beginning their 15th Five Year Plan.
As for the famine in the 1930s, Stalin wasn’t punished because he did not intend to do so, and the soviets did what they could to prevent and alleviate it once it had started. The idea of an intentional famine is simply fringe among contemporary historians, same with claims of white genocide in South Africa. For example, serious bourgeois academic sources tend to say it was a failure of planning, rather than genocide. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
[data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the ‘revolution from above,’ rather than of a ‘successful’ nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.
Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Comrade Kosior!
You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation invillages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?
Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.
Sincerely, J. Stalin
Muggeridge and Jones reported on the famine. Völkischer Beobachter reported on it as intentional, and then spread the story around further.
Returning to your claims:
The communist parties that completely control a country are like any other one party state, be they Bathists, Communists, Fascists, or other they support policies that get fear and loyalty towards their great leader.
Communists are entirely different from fascists, because they establish socialist democracy and pro-social policies, while fascists do not.
The soviet union wasn’t run by a dictator. To the contrary, the USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The soviet union did not “bleed dry” their member-states, or anyone else. As a socialist economy, it did not need to run on the same mechanisms of capital expansion the west does. Instead, all socialist countries saw dramatic growth over time, and rising key life metrics.
It should be noted that the claims of Stalin impregnating Pereprygina at 14 come from Simon Sebag Montefiore, who himself is not a historian, was not given access to the soviet archives (which is the starting point for modern soviet historiography), and who himself is in Epstein’s black book.
It does seem plausible that Stalin may have fathered a child in Siberia with Lidia Pereprygina while in exile based on modern evidence, but no such evidence presently exists backing up when this may have happened. The fact that primary sources are practically nonexistent and that the only one pushing this narrative of Stalin being a pedophile wrap back around to Montefiore’s claims (themselves based largely on hearsay for the more absurd claims), points to it likely being propaganda and Red Scare fearmongering.
Can’t forget that!
Be sure to follow Politzer’s work with On Contradiction, as Politzer makes some errors regarding dialectics, contradiction, and the negation of the negation.
Materialism does not posit that ideas do not have any influence, but that ideas come from material conditions, they aren’t formed independently of the person’s lived experience but are shaped by it. Conversation and exchange of ideas still exists and still shapes how people think, but these ideas did not come from nothing.
The world shapes us, we shape the world, the new world then reshapes us and we then reshape the world in endless spirals. It’s a cycle, but one where a return to the origin point is at a higher level, like a car tire completing one revolution and advancing one tire length.
As for the vanguard, the vanguard is a subsection of the proletariat, not its own class. As such, the vanguard has class interests aligned with the rest of the proletariat, that being the collectivization of all production and distribution so as to end the proletariat as a class in general.
MLs tend to critically support the Russian Federation not because it’s a former socialist state, but because of the progressive role Russia plays in undermining the western empire. Russia has been an ally to Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, and is in general interested in a world where the US Empire isn’t constantly boxxing it in and sanctioning it. This anti-imperialism isn’t necessarily because Russians are more morally pure or anything, but out of definite relations to imperialism.
Beria was executed once he was found guilty. Even his position couldn’t save him. Meanwhile, in the west, wealthy capitalists go with slaps on the wrist for making a pedophile island. That’s not even getting into the fact that Montefiore, an anti-communist propagandist that is in the Epstein files and hasn’t had access to the soviet archives is the one major source of Beria’s crimes, either way he was found guilty and executed once that was done.
I believe it! But having a unique name for each can be nice given how small the fediverse is, I imagine.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation. They are doing a good job, but party building takes time and effort.
This kinda goes both ways though, I hadn’t heard of the WFP before, and they don’t seem to be particularly effective, like a mini-DSA.