JuryNullification [he/him]

  • 4 Posts
  • 20 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: May 23rd, 2021

help-circle


  • Please engage with contemporary, mainstream historians who have studied the now open Soviet archives. I recommend R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933. You can just read the introduction (all but the first edition) where they discuss and go into detail on Holodomor as genocide. It’s in English and pretty accessible to lay people. The rest of the book will likely be of no interest to you, as it’s part of a series of very dry academic publications by the authors that goes into the minutiae of Soviet agriculture. If that interests you, go for it.

    This book is in libgen.


  • JuryNullification [he/him]@hexbear.netto> Greentext@lemmy.mlAnon is tired
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.

    Damn, really feels like we’ve been seized by the throat





  • parenti-hands

    During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

    If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.

    party-parenti