How do communists want to enforce their ideology?

Dr Fallout said:
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You're really optimistic aren't you? Also the civil war began because the Republic was weak and the Duma corrupt, and don't get me started on the White Guard.
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Obviously it would have required an alternate history here with different reforms and such. But if you would have given it some time, if people got more freedom, ellections and an actuall republic? Who knows? Does it sound to optimistic? I guess. I just think that the Communist System we have seen since the 1920s in Russia, was a very inhuman system that has done a lot of damage to Russia. If they had a more democratic system, even with the issues of zarist Russia, they might have recovered much sooner and would have a much better economy today.
I know I tend to bitch a lot about the US and Europe. But I think the political systems we have, are one the reasons why both the US and Europe are technological power houses today. Many of our problems come from the fact that we are loosing democratic principles because of lobbying, to the banks and large companies. But that is a different story and I digress. If you just look at the recent past alone, there is a lot of research and education going on that is simply not happening anywhere else on that level. How many LHCs does Russia or China have? How much basic research do they do? How many universities do they have? And how much research was going on there in the last 70 years? I am sure they can and will pick up. But they still have to deal with a hell lot of issues because of how much their Communist leaders fucked up in the past, like Mao or Stalin.
 
Illuminati Confirmed! said:
The idea of a capitalist Russian empire efficiently colonizing the untamed wilderness of Siberia gives me a freedom boner.
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Seems to be a part of Putin's revisioned master plan:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world...lusioned-British-citizens-free-land-in-Russia
LAND in Russia’s eastern wilderness is being offered to disillusioned British people for free - as long as they can survive the frigid cold and barren Siberian landscape for five years.
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:revolution:
 
Land in Siberia? You might as well try your chances on Mars. Maybe it would be even better ... the Siberian mosquitoes alone are a good reason to try Mars, and you don't have to deal with Putin.
 
There is nothing worse in the wilderness than mosquitoes (a couple even got me today while i made a quick detour to piss in the bushes), and the ones in Siberia will kick your ass. I'd rather live around bears, wolves and tigers than around mosquitoes.
 
The tropics get a lot of credit when it comes to bugs, but yeah, here in frigid Norway we got the ordinary mosquitos - then we got the tiny "knott" (gnat in English I think) that swarm you the way even mosquitos can't, and one time when visiting the mountain, I looked down at my leg, and saw a big, black - rather elongated creature lift off and leave a hole with a single stream of blood running into my shoe. I went right into panic-spasm-hysteria, I've yet to identify that fucking thing. Probably an alien :I
 
Maybe something similar to this:
WdJYeu.jpg

The so called horse fly. Fuckers can get even trough your shirt ...
 
Crni Vuk said:
Maybe something similar to this:
WdJYeu.jpg

The so called horse fly. Fuckers can get even trough your shirt ...
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Quite possibly. I assume that their regular victims are reindeer and musk oxes. Compared to those, I'm a soft little dessert pudding :(
 
When I visited northern Norway around Alta, there were no mosquitos. It was around midsummer time with the snow melting from the tops of mountains and coming down in little brooks was wonderful and the sun was shining, beautiful weather. My theory was that since all the water was either moving or sea water (salty) there was no place for the mosquitos to breed in. Plus the slight wind kept them at bay.

In the Finnish northern Lapland we drove through there were PLENTY of the little vampires. And yea that could be horse fly that bit you Zegh, although for it to break skin and cause bleeding it has to be a pretty brutal individual.

Edit. About Siberia, somehow the Siberian winter scares me a lot more then their mozzies. Recently read this piece about ice road truckers there.

http://www.theguardian.com/artandde...11/on-thin-ice-a-siberian-highway-photo-essay
 
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Communism as a theory was created when capitalism was making kids in Europe work 14 hours shifts in a factory. In Russia the Czars were living in oppulence while the population was starving in an country based on agricultural economy, comunism was a tool to get rid of the Czars and industrialize the nation. Do the Czars still rule in Russia? Is Russia an industrialized nation? There, communist ideals did their job and they did it right, doesn't mean we all have to live in a communist utopia. Do kids in Europe still work 14 hours shitfs in crowded factories? No, they get an education and are so pampered that they even feel self entitled all the time. So I guess fighting for social rigths and socialist ideals is not a complete waste of time. The fact the Soviet Union fell, China is more capitalist than the US and we are not all living in a communist utopia does not mean socialist ideals are useless, and much less that they failed. The Soviet Union is not around anymore and we are not living in a capitalist utopia either, and it seems capitalism was much better when the Soviet Union still existed, since all I see now is recession and crisis in a world level scale.
 
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Gonzalez said:
There, communist ideals did their job and they did it right
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Surely all the people which ended up in the cellars of the Tscheka and later the gulags agree with you. Oh. Wait. They can't. Because they are all fucking dead. Killed by the communist regime. And let us not even mention the people that died in the revolution and the aftermath.

Look, I am all for those ideals of socialism. But as I repeated countless times ... only a cynical who never had to really feel some boot in his neck or the terror of a political prison, could say something like "Communism did it right" or that it helped Russia.
Most of us, at least in Europe, have it good these days, really really good. Even the Russians and most of the east Europeans today. I am not saying all people do great, there is still a lot of poverity and definetly a lot of room to improve. But compared to Stalinism? WW2, WW1 and all the stuff that happend inbetween? The Cold war and the danger of nuclear annihilation? I would say Europe and humanity has progressed a fucking lot! Communism is only aweseome on paper. And that's where it belongs. It should never be a system, only something to consider and learn from. It's stuff for political debates, universities and discussions. But it never ever did anything right for any state on this earth. Just like dictatorships.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Surely all the people which ended up in the cellars of the Tscheka and later the gulags agree with you. Oh. Wait. They can't. Because they are all fucking dead. Killed by the communist regime.
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No, they were killed by Stalin, not communism, and you keep making the same mistake of confusing Stalin with communism through all your argument. Take Russia when the communist took over and then when the communists left and compare the two. One is a worthless rural contry, compared to the industrialized west, with all traces of the once empire left being a tyranical monarchy, and the other one was one of the world's main superpowers, that is until the USSR came into crisis and had to disappear. Like it or not Russia's situation improved under communism, it saved them from Hittler and 85% of their forces that the western allies didn't had to deal with, I doubt they would had been able to do that without industry. And don't even get me started on the threat of nuclear war, like the west didn't build up their arsenals and had several times more nuclear warheads than the Soviets ever did, get the capistlist indoctrination ot ouf your mind for a bit, the Cold War was not the unilateral responsibility of the USSR, so I don't see how you could put all the blame of that on them. You think they didn't feel trheathened by the NATO buildup? Wasn't NATO created before the Wasaw Pact? Wasn't the west making deals with Germany before the war even ended behind their allies backs?

And yes in the days of the revolution ruthless action was taken, just like ruthless action was taken aginst the revolutionists, and I suppose the monarchy didn't killed or incarcerated the opposition or even shot unarmed protesters in the streets. But you cannot seriously think Lenin and Stalin violently forced communism down 111 million Russians throaths. The government got corrupted after it was in power, but the ideals of the revolution were not without merit.

I'm not going to deffend every single thing the USSR did, but the USSR was not comunism, and much less socialism, those concepts go beyond those who apply or follow them. You have to stop thinking in absolutes.

Thats why I would probably like to live under capitalism but with the USSR still present, or at least some form of alternative to the western powers, if anything it keeps the vicious part of capitalism in check.

I'm not a marxist leninist, I'm more like in the middle between left and right ideologically, I guess thats why I can look at both sides and see the merits and mistakes of both.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
only a cynical who never had to really feel some boot in his neck or the terror of a political prison, could say something like "Communism did it right" or that it helped Russia.
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This reminds me: I could use the same argument against capitalism.

Remember Operation Condor? That took place in my country. Talk about the terror of being kidnapped on the middle of the nigth and then tortured for days before being thrown alive out of an airplane and into the ocen, all CIA sanctioned, and all thougth in the School of the Americas for US puppet dictators.

Yup, I guess we'll have to ferget everything positive free market has ever done because of that. Free market is evil, all those people died because of capitalism, not because the US behaved like assholes.

You describe living in the eastern bloc under comunism to be something close to living hell. During the 70's it was probably better to be a dissenter in East Germany than a regular citizen in Argentina. In East Germany at most you could expect imprisonment and interrogation torture would consist on sleep deprivation, here wetter you actually did something or not you would get hours long sessions of getting electrical shocks to your genitals for weeks before being killed after they were done with you.
 
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Uh ... we are pretty much on the same page with capitalism, I don't think any one here hailed it as the best system on this planet or something. But the point is, that nothing we say about capitalism makes an argument for communism. See the issue is that people have a very romanticised about communism. I understand that people tend to think like that, eveything was better in the past. And who can blame some of them, when you look at how things have been in Russia trough the 90s and most of the Warsaw Pakt states. However, that doesn't mean what people think about communism would be really true. That we should forget about the many really big problems that came with it and that many of the economic issues those states complain about today, had their roots in communism after all.
I will say this again, I am NOT a friend of the NATO. I am NOT saying that our way of life (Germany) is some kind of standard for the world. For fucks sake, if tomorrow everyone would have the same econimic status with 10 Iphones, 3 cars and 5 flat-screen TVs per person, we could all turn it on for 5 min. and say kiss-and-good-bye to our planet. But if people feel that Communism was such a great system then I wonder why it ever colapsed in the first place.

Gonzalez said:
No, they were killed by Stalin, not communism, and you keep making the same mistake of confusing Stalin with communism through all your argument.
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Yes, I am aware about that. But then don't call everything simply capitalism either. I say communism for the same reason you say capitalism. Beacuse I don't want to write an essay about the nuances in the Soviet/Warsaw Pakt politics, of which most people probably won't even care about. We say capitalism and communism, because that way people know what we are talking about. It is a simplification. But not necessarily a totally wrong one. Also, those people that ended up in Tschecka prisons where not killed by Lenin and his goons? Revisionism much? Look, I said this countless times, I am not against social rights, free education, health care and all that stuff. But there can be no doubt, that communism, at least the forms we've seen under Lenin and Stalin and their goons, has been a system build on terror and crime. It is a common myth to believe that gulags would have been only a Stalinist invention. While the system was the most ugly under Stalin, it was Lenin and the Bolshevik judicial system that made those possible, and they existed as early like 1918. So, yes, Stalin was the worst of them all, no doubts about that. But we can not act like, oh Stalin did it all, that bad mofo! This is the kind of revisionism that became so common under Chrustschow. Njet Njet! Sovietunion not bad! Stalin bad! But we good now! Sorry for all the millions of dead people though. We truly sorry. We make Stalin criminal now, that should be enough.
We can not simply ignore cause and effect. Stalin just like many others, have been people of their time, shaped by the revolution and Bolshevik ideals.

Like it or not Russia's situation improved under communism, it saved them from Hittler and 85% of their forces that the western allies didn't had to deal with, I doubt they would had been able to do that without industry.
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WW2 was a joint effort. While the Soviets had to suffer a lot and occupied most of the German ground forces, they might have even lost the war without the US and more important the British aid. Particularly the equipment the Brits send to the Soviets between 1941 and 43 was crucial for their survival! Lend&Lease saved their buts. Even Stalin, admited that much to his closest subordinates, when he expressed the doubt that they would have made it without the economical support of the allies.
And Russia improving? I beg to differ. Yes, the living standard improved after they removed the Tzarist system. But is this really the effort of the communists? Or simply the fact that WW1 ended for Russia at this point, that people could get back to their homes, and their farms, that industrialisation already started to pick up before WW1 stared in Russia. This revolution we saw, didn't happend over night, it was a growing conflict between the newly formed working class, farmers still living as peasants and the Tzarist Regime. Russia was already in progress. Infact, in certain areas the Soviets never managed to really improve Russia. And this improvement by communism, was NOT(!) evenly distributed all over the Sovetunion. Famines and economical crises have been still the norm, and the forced collectivisation by the state created its own problems as well. You can not simply ignore economics and try to overcome every obstacle trough sher manpower alone.
I believe, if Russia would have followed something that was closer to Sweden or even Britain, they would have seen a hell of a lot more improvements after 1918/19.

But you cannot seriously think Lenin and Stalin violently forced communism down 111 million Russians throaths
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Uh, yes, that is exactly what they did though. Dude, seriously, most of the Russian population have been iliterate and working in agriculture. Do you really believe that most of them have been familiar with the theories of marx and the socialist ideals? For most of them the Tzar and his goons, have been simply replaced by a different ruler.
That's why I said, Russias history is a very sad and one of many missed oportunities.


Hell, there have been Soviet War Veterans who said this, when Hitler attacked, they had the choice between two dictatorships. They simply chose the one that spoke their language. Most people of the Sovietunion havn't been closer to the Marxist/Soviet ideals than the Germans to Nationalsocialism.

Infact, I would even argue that WW2 and the attack by the Germans was the best thing that ever happend to Stalin - not to his people though, as it not only got rid of a lot of his opposition but it also united all of the Soviet states to a clear goal, even the orthodox church was on their side during the war. With the defeat of Germany the Sovietunion was politicaly at it's peak and it made it possible for them to conquer a lot of teritory in eastern europe.
 
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Well one of the reasons Soviet communism/socialism collapsed was due to the Cold War it had to wage against the First World countries. This put a pretty huge drain on their economy. This on top of WW 2 in which they, as Gonz stated, bore the brunt of the Nazi warmachine's assault. The Soviet Union was started partly because WW 1 was a drain on them and made them sceptical of the West.

Not sure if it's possible to have 'humane' leadership in Russia or do they prefer a dictator-style leader (a Czar, a Stalin, a Putin, etc.) to rule over them.

Interestingly, countries like my country Finland and also former Yugoslavia and Argentina were all part of the so called Third World, non-aligned countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World
 
Putin isn't a democrat, but he is not even in the same ballpark like most of the Soviet leaders. Russia was probably never as liberal like it is today and people never had as much prosperity like today. Which doesn't mean that it would be a dream state of course. Just historically speaking. Russia has still a long way to go, before it gets to become a real democracy.
And I think it would have been possible to have at least a more humane leadership after 1918 in Russia. Other states had those as well. And some of it was already starting to form in 1919 before the Bolsheviks assumed power. The issue is that a lot of Soviet history is burried under revisionism. Something that Russian historians just now start to slowly change. Just as how in Germany everything that happend between 1933-45 was labeled as EVIL NAZIS! the Soviets gloriefied everything that happend after 1918. But the Bolshevik take over was not this glorious fight, and they did never had the full support by the population or even the workers. It was a Coup d'état.
 
Just the other day I watched the second part in a three-part documentary series about Stalin. It repeated the, presumably true thing, that Lenin warned the others about Stalin and tried to keep him from assuming power. Lenin already knew that Stalin was too ruthless. So we never really got to see Leninism. Not saying Lenin wasn't ruthless in his own way as well.
 
@Crni Vuk You keep select reading what I said and tree won't let you see the forest. Communism and socialism were created in a place and time and effectively changed our society for good, you don't need to live in true communism to see how it benefited us. If it wasn't for the idea of communism and a more equitative world we wouldn't have a lot of social benefits we have today. The capitalist west had to concede lot of things we today give for granted, like paid vacations, the right to strike, retirement, and the list goes on, precisely because the idea of communism and socialism existed and workers started to demand rigths they didn't have and today you and I enjoy thanks to their sacrifice, and partly also because the west had to compete with the USSR who was promising a worker's paradise. Even today's Germany is doing so well because one half of it was compeeting with the other to see which half was doing better, the western powers poured in a lot of resources to rebuild Germany, and the USSR did something simmilar in the East half, making it the model communist nation.

I don't believe true communism is achievable, but I believe a lot of it's ideals contributed to better the west even, and now the USSR is gone capitalism and neo-liberalism is showing it's ugly side once more, and lot of the worker's conquests start to slowly being lost, one needs only to look at countires like Spain or Greece, recession makes labour cheap, and workers work more for less and can hardly make ends meet.
 
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