"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether it be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users, as it handwaves their extremism.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post, rather than engaging in arguments that lack mutual agreement.
Brigading/Trolling — If you're here because this community was linked in another thread, please refrain from maliciously voting, commenting, or manipulating the post in any way. This includes alt accounts. All votes are public, and if you are found to be brigading, you will be banned. Good-faith and honest communication is an exception.
Tankies can explain their views, but may be criticised or challenged for them. Any minor infraction of the rules may result in a warning and possibly a temporary ban.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically last only 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction doubles the duration. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
None of what is said here is untrue.
It just leaves out the dictatorship, the gulags, the holodomor, the torture, personality cult, the propaganda, the wars of aggression, political oppression at home and abroad etc etc.
Numerous points here are untrue. The USSR's economic growth was anything but consistent or steady, the educational and healthcare standards for the masses were subpar and the elite afforded special treatment precisely because of that reason, full employment was a myth, homelessness was a major issue, infrastructure in the SovUnion was mega-fucked, and city planning was disastrous because of the weight of the ideology and bureaucracy demanding results without being able to deliver resources.
It did not result in dramatic democratization of society, life expectancy doubled across the world average (hardly suggesting the Soviet Union's system as the cause) in the 20th century, and the standards for who was counted as literate were reduced in the Stalinist 30s to improve the numbers.
Well, it was better than the tsarist russia. Only because even Bolsheviks would have to try really hard to make it worse (and in some aspects they managed to)
You're right, the democratization point is utter bullshit, my bad, missed that one.
As for the other points, as I alluded to, there are caveats for many of them. On the other hand, the soviet union modernized a country that was partly a feudalist state into a superpower. While the ideology and methods are unsympathetic, many of its results were beneficial, for example health care, which though imperfect, was universal and free, unlike the US for example. Education was also free and of high quality overall, marred of course with indoctrination and ideological blinders, but still good.
Saying the USSR was all good or all bad is a naive and unnuanced analysis of 80 years of history. Compare it to tsarist Russia incredible leaps were made. Compare it to USA they outperformed them on some metrics, and underperformed on others.
I agree that the USSR was neither all good or all bad, my point was simply that many of the points raised in the screenshot are outright false, not just omissions.
I would also like to note that the semi-feudal state of the Russian Empire was itself already a major power.
Its not untrue but every point comes with a set of asterisks.
Like free housing, sure. But not as soon as you need it. You'll spend your best years in communal property living with a lot of random people in shitty conditions. And as you get your house in your late thirties, you chose nothing. Don't want it cause there are some serious reasons? Well screw you then. And it's not that you can just save and take a mortgage anyway.
Lies of omission are the worst kind of lies. There's a reason they're the favorite of every flavor of authoritarian. So much so the Soviets elevated it to an art.
You can tell they've never been to any post Soviet country. Or, likely, anywhere outside of their mom's basement.
So why isn't it still around today? And if it was so amazing, why go to such great lengths at preventing people from leaving?
I find this type of thinking to be some kind of twisted optimism - to see only good things and ignore the bad ones. Especially, since mostly good things were purely for russians and mostly bad things were for nations and regions, that they have used and abused(like Ukraine). From this point of view, surely USSR was the best time for russians since they have so much other people, territories and resources to exploit(in reality only rich and powerful have done this leaving only a smaller part for their slaves, while brainwashing them into believing the otherwise).