[Transcript]
There's plenty you can criticise about the Soviet Union, but it's patently false to claim it was worse than the Tsarist era that preceeded it.
Personally, I don't like the tsarist era either for the Jewish pogroms and huge wealth inequality, but there were steps to industrialise and reform (albeit too little too late). However, to then claim the Soviet Union was an improvement when it arbitrarily imprisoned kulaks, and to a certain point just three people into prison and accused them of being kulaks, committed the mass genocide of Ukrainians in the Holodomor and overthrew a democratic government and replaced it with a one-party dictatorship that didn't even tolerate difference of opinion within itself just rubs off wrong on me. Thoughts?
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[Transcript]
I think the Russians were hungry under the Tsar, and very hungry under the Soviets.
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[Transcript]
It was worse than the tsars
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[Transcript for my favorite reply]
Did the Tsar have gulags?
Did the Tsar have a surveillance state?
Did the Tsar enforce a man-made famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people?
(Spotted here.)
The Tsar literally invented the fucking gulags, and after the Soviets reformed them they became the most progressive, least dangerous prisons in the world.
Ok that's bs, prison conditions in general and work camp conditions in particular were what you would expect in a backwards agrarian country desperately fighting off waves of external aggression while trying to industrialise - horrific.