I have a friend who is by all accounts very socialist but was absolutely horrified when I claimed that the USSR was not “bad” and that many of the deaths it is blamed for have a much more complicated reason. They also called me a tankie, much to my despair as it really displayed to me how many brainworms they have. They also were fairly close to calling me a genocide denier 💀
This person is a freshman in college and I’d like to try and help them unlearn these ideas. They are queer and Canadian,and they also thought Vaush was great if that’s helpful at all. Does anyone have any accessible resources to help them unlearn what they’ve been taught about the USSR?
Are they the sort that might be swayed by, say, the fact that even anti-communist historian Robert Conquest revised his opinion on the "Holodomor" after the release of the Soviet Archives and since then no longer believes it was a deliberate attack on Ukraine?
EDIT:
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
https://spme.org/spme-research/analysis/clemens-heni-the-prague-declaration-antisemitism-with-a-democratic-face/7822/
https://www.villagevoice.com/2020/11/21/in-search-of-a-soviet-holocaust/