Trotsky was a communist revolutionary and intellectual. He once wrote "In politics, obtaining power and maintaining power justifies anything" in his book "Leur morale et la nôtre"*

In this book, Trotsky justifies the use of lies, infiltration of other political parties, smearing, even hostage taking. He says absolute ruthlesness is necessary to overthrow a hostile system and wield power. He concludes "We are acting for the greater good. We can't be restrained by normal morality".

Joseph Stalin took Trotsky's advice literally. So he murdered Trotsky because he saw him as rival. Stalin also started killing people because he believed they could be sympathetic to capitalism or opponents to his power.

Even the secret police themselves were not safe

Everybody was absolutely terrified during this period. At least 500 000 people were murdered. Over 1 million people were deported to Gulags, secret prisons in Siberia, where they worked 12 hours a day.

Joseph Stalin decided to crush Ukraine for resisting communism and supporting independance. In 1933, he seized all Ukraine's food production [with his giant spoon] including all the bread, the wheat, the cows, the chicken. In the next months, over 5 million Ukrainians were starved to death. The situation was so bad that thousands of people turned to cannibalism. When the Nazis invaded Ukraine, some Ukrainians thought they were saviors

Hitler was a monster, but we really don't talk enough about how bad Stalin was.

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[–] edie@lemmy.encryptionin.space 26 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (2 children)

because it was literally just what their equivalent of the federal prison system was called for a period.

It seems to me to slightly different than that

if you would consult the chart from chapter 10:

The etymology of GULAG is: "the acronym of Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj, “Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps”)" emphasis mine, as it corresponds directly to the above, specifically the camps under the O.G.P.U. These are where those with harsher sentences were sent, as seen in the chart (3-10 years)

Though, this nuance (as the libs love to say) is probably not to be found in the average person, so every kind of prison just gets called "gulag."

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[–] sangeteria@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

How do you do that collapsible formatting?

[–] edie@lemmy.encryptionin.space 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

In the web ui clicking on the ! in a diamond ◇ will paste in the code, otherwise it's like this:

titletext

Also, (again in the web ui) you can click the paper 📄 (next to the upvote button on a comment) to see the markdown of a comment or post

I don't know how these things work in apps. Presumably the spoiler markdown will work, but if the buttons exist or where I don't know.

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[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 13 points 20 hours ago

Thank you for the correction