this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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If you talk to certain people in my country, they'll tell that neoliberalism has been a success because it lifted their standard of living. It doesn't make what they say generally true.
Lucky for you, your loved ones survived the shock therapy implemented from the 90s onwards. Then do a survey of the people who didn't survive. Or who had to leave. Or who were trafficked. Or who were bombed by NATO. Or whose shipyards and factories were asset stripped. Then speak to the people who lived under the Tsar or the Nazis or whoever else preceded the Soviets. Then find some people in Ukraine and Russia, who were comrades until the 90s, and ask them what it's been like in the slow, violent aftermath of letting the capitalists back in.
Except if that followed logically, then who was it who took the post-Soviet states into capitalism? Not to mention that the fact that they survived leaves open the possibility that if they were 'capitalists' through that time, that 'capitalists' might not have probably died in Siberia.
Look, I'm not saying the USSR was perfect. I'm not saying I have a perfect understanding of the USSR. I'm saying you need to understand that whether it's explicit or subconscious, you are doing a class analysis by virtue of living in a class society. Most of your information is shaped by the ruling class, which controls the production and distribution of knowledge. It's the same for the people you're going to talk to. You can't escape it. The ruling ideas of the epoch are the ideas of the ruling class. Individual anecdotes based on an insignificant sample size of respondents doesn't change anything.
Well clearly also lucky for me to not have my ancestors be deported to Siberia. Soviet union did not come without costs either. Radical change will always have negative aspects. Ushering in socialism could arguably be considered just as violent as letting capitalism back in.
So we can say the USSR failed to create socialism? Because after half a century of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" the bourgeoisie still existed in those countries as none of them stayed socialist after the collapse.
The people I talked to, their ruling class for the majority of their life was the "proletariat" class. Their point of view of the world didn't magically change after the union collapsed and capitalism was introduced. If they can't be trusted to give accurate insight into how the world was back then then who can you trust?
Or your ancestors were just among the vast majority of people—who were not deported to Siberia. Perhaps they were even supportive enough of the Soviet project that they were happy to live in it without rebelling so much that they would be punished.
Yes. This is not controversial. The question is, why? (The answer is because capitalists will never willingly let socialists take power and will do everything possible to stop socialists from succeeding.)
Considering the USSR doesn't exist and the world is not socialist, I don't think it's controversial to say the USSR failed to create socialism. They succeeded in implementing a socialist experiment and brought underdeveloped and war torn parts of Europe to a position there they could compete on an equal footing with the most advanced capitalist countries.
They also helped bring about an end to colonialism and we're so successful the advanced capitalist states had to implement a welfare state to prevent revolutions in the imperial core.
They can be trusted to give an account based on a memory of things that happened over 30 years ago, based on their own experience, their class position during and after the USSR, all influenced by folk knowledge and propaganda by Soviets and capitalists. Their view is valid data. But it is not universal data. There is no such thing.
There are few sources that I would 'trust' on their face. Oral history, ethnography, and auto-ethnography have their uses, but they have limitations. Such accounts must be understood in their political economic context.
Alright, what would be thing that would change your mind? I'm just going to focus it down to Estonia so it there would be less vagueness over the baltics (because they are still 3 different countries with different historical backgrounds). What would it take for you to believe that Estonia did not want to be in the union and couldn't willingly leave the union?
So really, what is the missing part of proof that would change your mind? Why do you believe the opposite in the first place?
Rigorous, Marxist research. Please do not take this as a request for you to show me anti-communist literature.
It depends what you mean by 'the opposite'. I think you have misunderstood what I'm saying. I'm not claiming that everybody liked the USSR. So 'the opposite' is not me accepting that some people disliked the USSR. I already know they didn't and I'm not denying it. I'm saying their view must be put into context, treated to analysis, and understood as a class-based perspective.
I know that many people did not like the USSR. I know that the proportion of people who did not like the USSR was different in different SSRs. I know that many people suffered in the USSR, some for good reasons and some who didn't deserve it. I know that the USSR made mistakes and that different SSRs made different mistakes. I know that the sum of errors made by the USSR led to it's dissolution.
More stories that people didn't like the USSR is not a new argument, it's more evidence for an existing, common argument, which I have heard many times and dismissed. You're making it sound like you think I've never read that anti-Soviet narrative. But every single part of my education was anti-communist.
I started with the anti-communist history, documentaries, survey data, movies, novels, etc, and I found it all lacking in basic requirements of logic and rigour. The anti-communist narrative does not hold up to any of the standards applied to any other idea or subject. This fact should raise alarm bells for anyone who claims to think critically.
More stories about people surviving and living normal lives in the USSR, even if they disliked the USSR, suggests the opposite of what you think it does. It suggests that not all dissidents were sent to Siberia it treated badly. More stories about this or that SSR that wanted to leave but 'couldn't', suggests the exact opposite of what you claim. If it's proof of anything, given that we know that the USSR ended and that e.g. the Baltics are no longer in the USSR, it proves that SSRs could leave.
I hold that the USSR was still a success because it's achievements are uncountable. Soviets turned the most backwards country in Europe into the world's second most powerful superpower in one generation, all without colonialism. Then they liberated the rest of Europe and Asia (supporting China, DPRK, Laos, and Vietnam) from brutal Nazis, fascists, and colonialists. Then they helped liberate much of Africa and parts of Latin America from the same brutal, murderous, terror regimes of western imperialists. There is nothing you could ever say to me that will make me think these were bad things. And I have only scratched the surface of foreign policy.
Nevermind near universal suffrage, education, housing, healthcare, employment, etc, at home. All at a time when the 'advanced civilisations' were raping and looting the world to strengthen the west, while their domestic populations didn't have anything close to universal education, housing, employment, healthcare, suffrage, etc. And did everything that people criticise the USSR for but on a much greater and more violent scale.
So the question is not what would change my mind, because I already have a nuanced and balanced view. The question is what would change your mind?
What would make you realise that implying that a Union of hundreds of million people, that defeated the Nazis, supported anti-colonial movements, and spanning 70 years, didn't do a single thing right? Because to me, insisting that 6 people and a survey taken at one particular time in one particular place as representative of the facts and experience of all those millions, across a wide geography and several decades is… it's not rigorous or logical, I'll say that much.
So that's a roundabout way of saying "no, nothing will change my mind". Good to know and this will be the last time I will respond to you, so I will point out the stupidity of some of your statements.
Here you're twisting what I said to say nothing. The opposite of "Estonia did not want to be in the union and couldn't willing leave it" is that "Estonia wanted to be in the union and could willing leave it". You're just going off on a tangent to not address the point.
Some people can also live a normal life under imperialistic sphere of the US, even if they dislike US. Does that mean it suggests the opposite of your understanding of the US, and by extension capitalism? That capitalism isn't bad?
I know, some were shot on sight, others we're sent to jail to rot. The ones who lived had to keep their nose down to survive.
So you believe the SSRs could leave the union because the union stopped existing? By the time those countries could actually vote themselves out of the union the collapse was already inevitable. You acknowledge there was dissent and desire to leave and that's where my question was, why couldn't they leave before. But you're not interested in answering that because that doesn't suit the idyllic vision you have of the soviet union.
Guess Nazi Germany was also a success in your book. They turned a crumbling nation into something that was an existential threat even to the USSR, all in one generation, no colonialism and only at fraction of the size of the union.
With the significant help of the good old capitalist America. USSR probably wouldn't have survived the Nazi invasion if not for lend-lease program from America. In Khrushchev memoirs he mentions that Stalin himself said that USSR wouldn't have won without the help from America. The USSR didn't do this liberation on their own and they couldn't have done it without America.
I never said they were bad things. But Mr "nuanced and balanced view" here should be able to see how not everything the union did was good just as everything the US does is bad, as I just pointed out US is the reason the USSR didn't lose to Nazi Germany. As is stands their actions in other parts of the world don't invalidate how they oppressed the Baltic states.
Whataboutism.
Twisting my words again. Never did I say they didn't do a single thing right. I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy of saying the other SSRs were free and democratic, they weren't.
But it's not like you're going to change you mind anyway so feel free to live in your contradictions that you're going to ignore so you could believe the lies you want to believe.
No, it's a direct way of saying that you won't change my mind. I didn't wake up a Marxist one day after hitting my head or eating something spicy.
I don't recall saying that 'Estonia' wanted to be in or out the Union. From the beginning, I've been saying that some people wanted in and some people wanted out. And I've been saying that their position is determined by their class position.
There's no going off on a tangent. Putting things into their political economic context is a basic element of Marxist analysis.
You have severely misunderstood my argument. There's too much to unpack here for me to untangle.
Are you for real? Is this really how you understand Nazi Germany? After what you said above, I'm not so sure that you are a Nazi sympathiser. Now I think you just don't know what you're talking about. Then again, Nazi sympathisers do like their horseshoe theories to whitewash and minimise the horrors of capitalism.
I didn't say that you said these were bad things. I don't recall you saying anything about these things at all and I can't be bothered to scroll back up. I mentioned these things because you asked what would change my mind. And I'm telling you that with these positives on the record, nobody will ever convince me that the USSR was not a net benefit to humanity.
Please re-read what I said.
This is entirely beside the point. It's you who keeps insisting on the issue. Did you forget that this all started with someone asking why communists are positive about the USSR?
If you ask someone a question about why they think X, you can't cry 'whataboutism' when they list the reasons for thinking X.
I know you didn't say this explicitly. But you did imply it. You came running in to a discussion about why people are positive about the USSR to say that we're all wrong because we haven't considered your tiny bit of evidence that some people didn't like the Union (which we have seen and considered before, albeit in a different format). Your framing implies that our reasons are insignificant in the face of six people and a survey that disagrees.
Further, you can't cry 'twisting my words' in the same breath as claiming that I said 'the other SSRs were free and democratic' when I didn't say it. It comes off as a bit… disingenuous.
Well, I did tell you not to come back at me with anti-communism because you won't change my mind. I'm not trying to hide that. The real mystery is what made you think you could come into an explicitly communist space and turn people into liberals with an anecdote.
No wonder anyone can't get through to you when you're going out of your way to not even address the point but address something that was never even said.
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