Who was worse?

[Vivolkha]

Where did you get that nonsense from?

FOX news?

And this is where the far left is as bad as the far right: history disproves their narratives, so they call it lies and "fake news." It's a pity people can't accept that their heroes were shitty human beings who committed atrocities.

The first source I posted was literally about history falsification by authoritarian regimes. Enough said.

[East Ustya]

Where did you get that nonsense from?

FOX news?

Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62.
ISBN 0-8027-7768-6

Great, some "expert"

[Page]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

[East Ustya]

And this is where the far left is as bad as the far right: history disproves their narratives, so they call it lies and "fake news." It's a pity people can't accept that their heroes were shitty human beings who committed atrocities.

The first source I posted was literally about history falsification by authoritarian regimes. Enough said.

Becuase YOU say so right?....

I never should have replied here....

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

Yes.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

The first source I posted was literally about history falsification by authoritarian regimes. Enough said.

Becuase YOU say so right?....

I never should have replied here....

I like how you pretend to be infallible.

[Cekoviu]

It is not productive to try to rank genocides, nor is there a clear answer. We all know that they were all completely horrific and should never happen again, and I think that's all we really can say.

[East Ustya]

Becuase YOU say so right?....

I never should have replied here....

I like how you pretend to be infallible.

Did I ever say that?

Perhaps you should not ASUME things.

[LiberNovusAmericae]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

Yes, gulags, ethnic cleansing, and purges were not needed to win WWII. Are you going tankie now?

[Chan Island]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

Possibly, though they'd have to rely on lendlease more. It's tricky, because a big part of the damage Stalin did was in rapidly industrialising the Soviet union.

[Ayissor]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

Certainly, I would say Trotsky would have absolutely shattered the Germans potentially being the first to invade, how the west responds is a different question though.

[Page]

The first source I posted was literally about history falsification by authoritarian regimes. Enough said.

Becuase YOU say so right?....

I never should have replied here....

Advice from one radical leftist to another: Don't defend Mao too much, because he is responsible for many atrocities and there is evidence beyond dispute on that. Some of the deaths in China were beyond his control, but Mao cannot be made into a hero.

Refute the capitalist portrayal of 20th century socialism as pure evil that is completely devoid of historical context, but accept that Mao and Stalin can never be rehabilitated.

[Lancaster of Wessex]

Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62.
ISBN 0-8027-7768-6

Great, some "expert"

And do you have any scholarly books published under your name to disprove what the vast majority of historians agree with? i.e. that Mao's regime committed countless atrocities costing millions of lives? Have you submitted any papers to historical journals for peer review? Or is it just, "I love Mao and you're all just spreading lies that I can't accept because of my aforementioned fondness for said tyrant."

[Teachian]

This is basically asking “which turd would you most hate to eat?”

There’s a fair point that some of these people are remembered for the deaths they caused more than others, but I’d be happy remembering them all as poop rather than figuring out which is “better”

[East Ustya]

Becuase YOU say so right?....

I never should have replied here....

Advice from one radical leftist to another: Don't defend Mao too much, because he is responsible for many atrocities and there is evidence beyond dispute on that. Some of the deaths in China were beyond his control, but Mao cannot be made into a hero.

Refute the capitalist portrayal of 20th century socialism as pure evil that is completely devoid of historical context, but accept that Mao and Stalin can never be rehabilitated.

I never said he was a hero, I just refuse to believe the capitalist propaganda that depicts him as a demonic monster.

Point is, none of those far right-wingers care about the victims, they just want to push their agenda.

And when I bring this up they always just say: "No you are doing it to push YOUR agenda"

That is all.

[Page]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

Possibly, though they'd have to rely on lendlease more. It's tricky, because a big part of the damage Stalin did was in rapidly industrialising the Soviet union.

But without that rapid industrialization, Nazi Germany would have taken Moscow, Stalingrad, and probably have pushed the Soviets into Siberia. Soviet victory was the result of brutal attrition. More tanks, more planes. One of the most crucial factors in World War 2 was that Germany started running out of steel and oil while the Soviets had new vehicles coming out every day.

[Arandias]

In all Honesty I'd say Hitler was worse. Now I know that's the cliche answer but I would argue that while Stalin and Mao killed more people they were in power for far longer than Hitler but more importantly their atrocities were confined to their respective domains while Hitler spread his atrocities across Europe and was actively trying to conquer Europe while Stalin and Mao were comparatively isolationist (The whole "Socialism in One Country" schtick)

[The Empire of Pretantia]

I like how you pretend to be infallible.

Did I ever say that?

Perhaps you should not ASUME things.

A tree doesn't need to say it's made of wood.

[Adad Civilization]

Stalin and Mao didn't kill out of ethnic and racial hatred. So, if Hitler had won, a hell of a lot more would have died. Stalin and Mao killed out of a mixture of incompetence and power-hunger, so I would say hitler was worse than the two of them.

Between Stalin and Mao, I would say Mao as they were both pretty much the same. The only exception being Mao killed a hellova lot more.

[Page]

Here's an interesting question to contemplate: If a good person of strong ethics and conscience were in charge of the USSR during WW2, would the Soviets still have won?

Yes, gulags, ethnic cleansing, and purges were not needed to win WWII. Are you going tankie now?

No, I firmly reject authoritarianism in all its forms and I condemn all the atrocities of Stalinist Russia.

What I was going for was more so to question whether it's even possible to retain human decency under such conditions as the Soviets faced during the nazi invasion, and perhaps also that Stalin might have acted as he did because of the incredibly dire conditions.

[East Ustya]

Did I ever say that?

Perhaps you should not ASUME things.

A tree doesn't need to say it's made of wood.

And one liners prove nothing.

[Herearewe]

Using high school tropes and made up kill statistics. Great. It's not as if Hitler's reich did not start the second world war, causing the deaths of 27 million Soviet citizens, 6 million Jews, under a Million British citizens, Millions of French citizens interned in work camps, 20% of Poland's population dead, Yugoslavs murdered en masse, 500,000 Americans, the list goes on and on. The numbers for Stalin are completely made up and don't match the demographic realities of the soviet union - you've clearly just read "The black book of Communism" or some similar propagandist fare. While the agrarian failures and purges did number in the few million, the Soviet authorities did not commit acts of genocide, defined as the determined extermination of an ethnic group, until reprisals against Chechens and Crimean Tatars after the war, who mind you, had served en masse under the nazi regime in their own SS Legions. Your "killcount" for Stalin most likely assumes that Soviet soldiers who died saving this world from fascism were the fault of the Stalinist regime somehow. Such an argument is disgusting and vomit-inducing - the fascist tide was prevented most by the valiant defense of Soviet citizens, and without their sacrifice, you would be living under Nazism right now. The same goes for the brave American, British, Chinese, Yugoslav, French, Polish, and Chinese troops who fought Nazism in the east and West. And you would label their deaths as the fault of the countries they died for? Absolutely disgusting...

You draw a false comparison between the acts of a genocidal maniac who had the aim of ethnic cleansing and the acts of failed states who conducted POLITICAL, rather than ETHNIC repression. Murdering landlords is very different from murdering ethnic groups. Worst of all is when you say "Stalin's and Mao's worst crimes were against the people of their own countries".

Hitler murdered millions of his own citizens, 9 million Germans drawn into a war of genocide (all of whom, I'm afraid, were complicit in said genocide, but they are blood on his hands nonetheless), millions of Germans against his regime who perished in concentration camps, from Catholic Priests to Trade Unionists to Communists and Homosexuals, Millions of Jews who were GERMAN citizens.

Typical Wehrabooism.

[Ayissor]

Yes, gulags, ethnic cleansing, and purges were not needed to win WWII. Are you going tankie now?

No, I firmly reject authoritarianism in all its forms and I condemn all the atrocities of Stalinist Russia.

What I was going for was more so to question whether it's even possible to retain human decency under such conditions as the Soviets faced during the nazi invasion, and perhaps also that Stalin might have acted as he did because of the incredibly dire conditions.

That depends.
Many would still die as Russia (Or, well, the former Empire to be more accurate) was in DIRE need of industrialization, but the amount of deaths could have been prevented so they are a result of catastrophes and tragedies, not incompetence.

[Novus America]

And this is where the far left is as bad as the far right: history disproves their narratives, so they call it lies and "fake news." It's a pity people can't accept that their heroes were shitty human beings who committed atrocities.

That is more of an American thing really, a nation that believes ALL its actions are inherently justified, not matter how terrible they are.

YES Mao made mistakes, but he did not torture and murder millions of people.

“The movement paralyzed China politically and damaged its economy and society, and killed an estimated 500,000 to 2,000,000 people.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

“Not all deaths during the Great Leap were from starvation. Frank Dikötter estimates that at least 2.5 million people were beaten or tortured to death and one million to three million committed suicide.[101][56] He provides some illustrative examples. In Xinyang, where over a million died in 1960, 6–7% (around 67,000) of these were beaten to death by the militias. In Daoxian county, 10% of those who died had been "buried alive, clubbed to death or otherwise killed by party members and their militia." In Shimen county, around 13,500 died in 1960, of these 12% were "beaten or driven to their deaths."[102] In accounts documented by Yang Jisheng,[35][53] people were beaten or killed for rebelling against the government, reporting the real harvest numbers, for sounding alarm, for refusing to hand over what little food they had left, for trying to flee the famine area, for begging food or as little as stealing scraps or angering officials.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

Also deaths caused by a complete disregard for human life are still murder.

[Novus America]

Yes, gulags, ethnic cleansing, and purges were not needed to win WWII. Are you going tankie now?

No, I firmly reject authoritarianism in all its forms and I condemn all the atrocities of Stalinist Russia.

What I was going for was more so to question whether it's even possible to retain human decency under such conditions as the Soviets faced during the nazi invasion, and perhaps also that Stalin might have acted as he did because of the incredibly dire conditions.

Stalin killed millions before and after the war though.