What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Valmy]

The 1980s Soviet Union wasn't North Korea.

The Afghans might disagree with that assertion.

Well yeah. They pissed the Soviet government off.

[viper37]

The 1980s Soviet Union wasn't North Korea.

The Afghans might disagree with that assertion.

Well yeah. They pissed the Soviet government off.

Like the Ukrainians pissed the Russian government off?

[Josquius]

The goulag was active still in the 80s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Stus

Pizza Hut Gorbachev sent tanks to Vilnius and Tbilisi, killing civilians.

The USSR was always shit.

Shit corms in degrees.
Nazi level, in terms of horrors and scale, death camps these were not.

[crazy canuck]

The goulag was active still in the 80s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Stus

Pizza Hut Gorbachev sent tanks to Vilnius and Tbilisi, killing civilians.

The USSR was always shit.

Shit corms in degrees.
Nazi level, in terms of horrors and scale, death camps these were not.

The person mentioned in the wiki link died in a Soviet labour camp.

[HVC]

The goulag was active still in the 80s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Stus

Pizza Hut Gorbachev sent tanks to Vilnius and Tbilisi, killing civilians.

The USSR was always shit.

Shit corms in degrees.
Nazi level, in terms of horrors and scale, death camps these were not.

The person mentioned in the wiki link died in a Soviet labour camp.

But a left labour camp, so obviously better.

[Josquius]

The goulag was active still in the 80s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasyl_Stus

Pizza Hut Gorbachev sent tanks to Vilnius and Tbilisi, killing civilians.

The USSR was always shit.

Shit corms in degrees.
Nazi level, in terms of horrors and scale, death camps these were not.

The person mentioned in the wiki link died in a Soviet labour camp.

Vasyl Stus died after he declared hunger strike on September 4, 1985, in a Soviet forced labor camp for political prisoners Perm-36 near the village of Kuchino, Perm Oblast, Russian SFSR, where he had been transferred in November 1980. Danylo Shumuk reported that the commandant, Major Zhuravkov, committed suicide after the death of Stus.[8] In the Kuchino camp, out of 56 inmates kept there between 1980 and 1987, eight died, including four members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

Hardly Auschwitz.

[garbon]

I don't get your argument, Jos. I guess Stasi East Germany wasn't bad as the Nazis but it would still be a god awful.

[jimmy olsen]

March 4th trial for Jan 6th in DC. Could be convicted by April and sentenced in time for the GOP convention.

[crazy canuck]

Jos, why are you taking a position that trivializes death?

[grumbler]

Jos, why are you taking a position that trivializes death?

I don't agree with Josq on many things, but I think that his correct observation that the later USSR was not the horror show that was the Stalin years is hardly trivializing death.  Brutal, yes, but not nearly as brutal as before.

[viper37]

It's hard to top the Nazis.  It's even hard to beat Stalin.  Doesn't mean the USSR wasn't a shit place to live in, or a mild leftist regime that generally left you in peace.

[Josquius]

Some of the replies showing my point here really.
Its fascinating that this OMG evil communists cold war propagandised image of the Soviet Union as the worst thing ever persists and that any suggestion that though it was obviously not good it wasn't as bad as many think, is horrific and trivialising the worst things imaginable.

It's hard to top the Nazis.  It's even hard to beat Stalin.  Doesn't mean the USSR wasn't a shit place to live in, or a mild leftist regime that generally left you in peace.

Shit- obviously. But nobody thinks otherwise.
Mild leftist regime- no.
Generally left you in peace- it did. It depends on the specific era being talked about, crackdowns and 'free' periods ebbed and flowed, but stay clear of a few well known lines and generally as authoritarian dictatorships go people did have a fair bit of freedom to live their lives.

[Sheilbh]

I don't agree with Josq on many things, but I think that his correct observation that the later USSR was not the horror show that was the Stalin years is hardly trivializing death.  Brutal, yes, but not nearly as brutal as before.

Yeah it's true. It's also normally the way alt history approaches the Nazis - that they basically end up as racist Brezhnevs. And I think that is possibly a difference with the Nazis (even from other fascists) is that I'm not sure that was ever possible. I don't think their state or ideology could have settled into that.

But I would slightly push back on the idea that the later USSR was not as bad as the propaganda. It was not Leninist or Stalinist Russia, but I think if anything there's maybe too soft a view of the USSR Khrushchev to Gorby - which perhaps reflects Western policy and attitude. That was the era when there were peaks and troughs but relationships normalised a bit with the USSR. My understanding is that Brezhnev era is now viewed with a bit of nostalgia by Russians and I think it's the era we look to in Ostalgie or common representations of communism. I think to some extent that possibly goes too far the other way in overstating the normality, the banality, the day-to-day existence of queues and not enough that it was still underpinned by a regime of terror - albeit a more bureacratic and restrained terror than under Stalin.

[crazy canuck]

Jos, why are you taking a position that trivializes death?

I don't agree with Josq on many things, but I think that his correct observation that the later USSR was not the horror show that was the Stalin years is hardly trivializing death.  Brutal, yes, but not nearly as brutal as before.

If one is only concerned about death and death camps if they reach the level of Stalin or the Nazis, then yes, indeed, you are in fact trivializing death.

What is the point of making the argument that well It wasn't as bad as Auschwitz.

[Tamas]

Without reading through the last two pages: as late as well into the 80s the communist regimes were ruining lives and being totalitarian. Maybe not shoot you in the head for saying a stupid joke kind of way but rather the losing your job and being banned from earning a proper living  and may be rotting in jail for saying a stupid joke kind of way.

Heck Hungarian opposition demonstrators (reading pamphlets next to statues on public holidays) were beaten by police a year or so before the system collapsed. And Hungary was considered the most lenient of the Warsaw Pact regimes.

And let's not even mention Romania.

I am glad it didn't seem that nad looking in from the outside, but it was still bloody damn horrible.