one example of this is the study book for my current course. we were given this assignment from the book. i've translated it, of course
"take a stance on the following statement: stalin's USSR was a totalitarian state." here are the example answers given by the book:
"stances in favor of the statement:
- the country had a single-party system and a communist party dictatorship
- Stalin had consolidated power by the end of the 1920s
- Stalin's cult of personality
- the great purge of the 1930s: stalin's political enemies were liquidated or taken to prison camps
- independent peasants, a.k.a. kulaks, were forcibly migrated
- sources of information were controlled and art was subjugated to emphasize the power of the country's ideology"
next up is the best part and the reason I'm making this post. some more of the book's example answers:
"stances against the statement:
- can anything even be said against the statement?
- the communists thought the country's workers had the power, but that was just propaganda talk."
i love how even when they attempt to criticize red scare rhetoric, they just give up before they even try.
- the country had two bourgeois parties and being a communist was outlawed or heavily suppressed
- the bourgeois had consolidated power before the country was even formed, and the polity consisted of landowning men
- the cult of the "free" market
- the first and second Red Scares, the Lavender Scare, McCarthyism
- Japanese internment, COINTELPRO, the war on drugs specifically to politically target blacks and hippies
- sources of information were controlled and art was subjugated to emphasize the power of the country’s ideology
stances against the statement:
-
can anything even be said against the statement?
-
the capitalists thought the country’s shareholders had the power, but that was just propaganda talk."
-
i'm assuming you mean the finnish civil war. the education on that was relatively good. lots of emphasis on the atrocities committed against the reds, such as the mass executions and concentration camps. the book still refused to show much sympathy for the reds' cause. it still took a centrist position on if the war was a class war or not, for example, along with some 'both sides' stuff. but it helps that my teacher is some sort of leftist, considering how much he talks about class differences, income inequality and how much capitalism directly causes climate change.
Yeah, been wondering about the education about it. There has been some taking to task of Mannerheim in recent years, wondered if anything has changed from what I've heard from back in the 90's where it was pretty pro-white.
in the book, the winter war is basically handled by this false neutrality, talking objectively about how important it is to finnish identity and how it's a source of pride etc. but never even attempting to push back against it. on the other hand, the continuation war is condemned because finland openly collaborated with the nazis and gave up thousands POWs to nazi germany. it's like the winter war is this sacred thing here that you're never allowed to criticize in any way.
They arent wrong the ussr ended up having a totalitarian government controlled by a league of stalins puppets and it all started under lenin. Do you think that stalin had any right to purge anyone or that the party had any say in how the resources were distributed? doesnt sound very democratic to me
Were not comparing the ussr to the us were looking at what the ussr was founded and what it became
Fuck off how are you any different than fucing liberals? Just because you used the state power to boost support for your party and yourself doesnt mean you have any right to act with impunity isnt socialism supposed to be about democracy and not centered around small cabals?
small cabals
Lmao. Just wait til you hear your namesake was also a Marxist-Leninist. There are multiple great write-ups, videos, and podcasts that critically examine Stalin's legacy. It is perfectly fine to dislike the direction the party and state went, but it should be done precisely and not with rhetoric entirely indistinguishable from red scare bullshit.
He's a complicated figure on his own without the myth-making by the West and the later Soviets themselves.
Ussr was doomed from the start or how do you think it fell? was it just (((western imperialism))) or greedy revisionists? clearly if the ruling partys version of socialism was the right way they wouldnt have lost the people but that didnt happen. It was from the START an authoritarian state trying to implement their agenda over millions of poeple and for a huge amount of land it was never democratic nor did the poepoel have a ny meaningful say in in it
