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[Comrade P.]

I'm not sure there's any justification for the 'acceptable sacrifice' of people

300 Spartans?

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Sacrificing yourself isn't the same as state sponsored genocide, sorry revisionists

[Comrade P.]

state sponsored genocide

I'm tired of being at least relatively polite. Go fuck yourself, Mictlantecuhtli. Every argument against your point of view you are given you reduce to "you Russians perform genocide". WE ARE NOT DOING THAT. Tired of repeating.

[GlyphGryph]

I'm not sure there's any justification for the 'acceptable sacrifice' of people

300 Spartans?

I'm pretty sure he was speaking in the definition used earlier, the one we were debating when it was said that the West understands sacrifice, but seems to disagree on what that entails.

In Western terms we would say: They made a necessary sacrifice to insure Greek liberty. They are heroes! (Or something, I mean it was mostly Athenian's who made the sacrifice not Spartans but whatever)
But in terms of the Russian definition brought up earlier, where it a "sacrifice" is made of unwilling third parties, we would ask: Who did the Spartan's sacrifice? And/or who made an acceptable sacrifice of the Spartan's?

This appears to be where the definition of an "acceptable sacrifice" comes from. The West sees sacrifices as acceptable and even heroic when they are made willingly, it sees the murder of third parties to achieve its goal as, at best, a necessary evil.

I guess it depends on whether you are using the Western definition of the "heroic sacrifice" a la the Spartans and firefighters and stuff, or the pro-Russian-proposed-definition which seems to be "it's worth killing this dude to get what we want" a la the human sacrifice of the Aztecs.

The US wouldn't really consider the people we shoot to be "sacrifices" even if we are shooting them to achieve what would be a worthwhile goal (like stopping an armed robber or something).

state sponsored genocide

I'm tired of being at least relatively polite. Go fuck yourself, Mictlantecuhtli. Every argument against your point of view you are given you reduce to "you Russians perform genocide". WE ARE NOT DOING THAT. Tired of repeating.

Admittedly, you weren't really helped by a Pro-Soviet dude coming into the thread and saying he was totally happy about any possible genocides and was not going to feel bad about them in the slightest since they were a good thing. This was quite specifically the issue that raised the whole "sacrifice" thing, since it was said those victims were "sacrificed" for the good of Russia by that poster. You can disagree with that and still be Pro-Current-day-Russia, and I hope you do, but keep that context in mind here.

[XXSockXX]

I'd like to adress a minor mistake, GG: Until now, he has only shown an imperialist mindset, not a fascist one - imperialism being a kind of foreign and fascism one of domestic politics. These two often go hand in hand, I admit, but right now 'fascist' is not the right word.

He said he's perfectly cool with all of the internal stuff the Soviets did as well (no problems at all with any of their "brutal and terrible past", after all), since it made them a powerful nation. I might be ignorant here, though - exactly what points would he need to adopt that he hasn't, so far, in order to be considered fascist?

Calling Soviet reign a fascism is incorrect, mind you. Totalitarian? Yes. Fascist? No.
What do you understand under fascism, btw? Or do you use it merely as insult, uncomprehending its meaning?


What evil stuff did Soviet do? Let's see:
-2,9 mln imprisoned in gulag (a prison, where you forced to work). But it is a large country, and, in comparison, USA currently holds now 2,1 mln prisoners and they are also obligatory to work (although, they are payed a cent per hour). Apparently, this is how the civilized world works.
-600 thousand executed (not millions, as considered by some). In harsh conditions of rebuilding after both WW1, civil war and foreign intervention, I think it is understandable and reasonable enough. Even if there were mistakes in judge verdicts, most of people executed or imprisoned were not innocent saints.
-moving some ethnicities from one place to another? Considering the situation - the war with the Germany (whose war goal was extermination of Russian population) - it would have been completely unreasonable to leave large amounts of other smaller ethnicities on soon-to-be-occupied territories, who did not show much loyalty to you and are likely to betray you.
-and so on, and so forth. All perfectly explained by completely rational motivation.

You're right, Soviet-style communism is not fascism, totalitarianism is the better word.

Guardian G.I. is right too, this line of thinking is very alien to me and most people here. You do realize that by that logic, Germany's attempt to colonize Eastern Europe in WW2 while moving or killing the population was completely rational as well? Germany was defeated in WW1 because the homefront collapsed due to food shortages, thus it was necessary to take land in the East, so that could never happen again. Is that a fair judgement in your opinion?

Generally I find the differences in mentality here very interesting, I don't know how representative they are, but it is these differences that have prevented a better relationship between Russia and the West after the Cold War ended. (Which by the way, I also wouldn't regard as a defeat of the USSR, rather as the collapse of a system that no longer worked.)

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Admittedly, you weren't really helped by a Pro-Soviet dude coming into the thread and saying he was totally happy about any possible genocides and was not going to feel bad about them in the slightest since they were a good thing. This was quite specifically the issue that raised the whole "sacrifice" thing, since it was said those victims were "sacrificed" for the good of Russia by that poster. You can disagree with that and still be Pro-Current-day-Russia, and I hope you do, but keep that context in mind here.

I don't think he cares about that, the discussion on the pro-soviet side consists entirely of falsehoods of misrepresentation anyways

Just more: "you're a westerner and soviet russia didn't do things that bad" victim complex puffing up like usual

[RedKing]

state sponsored genocide

I'm tired of being at least relatively polite. Go fuck yourself, Mictlantecuhtli. Every argument against your point of view you are given you reduce to "you Russians perform genocide". WE ARE NOT DOING THAT. Tired of repeating.

Would you prefer past tense then?

Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Poles, Koreans, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Kalmyks, Chechens....it's quite an impressive list.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Would you prefer past tense then?

Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Poles, Koreans, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Kalmyks, Chechens....it's quite an impressive list.

In the mind of imperialist modern soviets.. Those are acceptable sacrifices.

[Guardian G.I.]

Since this thread went up in flames because of my previous post, I want to say that by "sacrifices" I originally meant people sacrificing themselves for the Soviet Union (e.g. soldiers during WW2). While some may say that it is also necessary in some cases, killing political dissidents isn't a sacrifice (although if Stalinist Aztecs had existed, they would have regarded that as a genuine contribution to the country).

[Comrade P.]

Nevermind the demand that was here, in this post. Understood somehow by myself.

[Frumple]

@ GI: I... don't think it's actually on fire yet, s'just Mict actively trying to set it alight. And CP helping a little, I'unno.

[da_nang]

Out of curiosity, what would the Russians classify the Great Purge as?

[Guardian G.I.]

Out of curiosity, what would the Russians classify the Great Purge as?

It depends on who you ask about it.

[BlindKitty]

Since this thread went up in flames because of my previous post, I want to say that by "sacrifices" I originally meant people sacrificing themselves for the Soviet Union (e.g. soldiers during WW2). While some may say that it is also necessary in some cases, killing political dissidents isn't a sacrifice (although if Stalinist Aztecs had existed, they would have regarded that as a genuine contribution to the country).

You mean those soldiers who were forced to attack fortified positions with rifles only because all the best equipment was used by NKVD to stop them from retreating?

[GlyphGryph]

Our "brutal and terrible past" has brought us might and prosperity. It definitely is "not-so-bad' in my book, for it is due to it we are where we are and who we are - even after USSR collapse we are still a considerable force to be reckoned with, not some third world country.

And what did we achieve under Soviet regime? Nuclear power, space program, heavy industrialization. Even if you say there were crimes committed, it was damn worth it. No regrets, no remorse.
[...]
Our actions seem righteous enough to me.

Keep in mind that this was the particular sequence of words that seems to have set most people off as far as declaring a certain sort of Russian viewpoint unacceptable, and that the response to that was then responded to in turn by this post:

-2,9 mln imprisoned in gulag (a prison, where you forced to work). But it is a large country, and, in comparison, USA currently holds now 2,1 mln prisoners and they are also obligatory to work (although, they are payed a cent per hour). Apparently, this is how the civilized world works.
-600 thousand executed (not millions, as considered by some). In harsh conditions of rebuilding after both WW1, civil war and foreign intervention, I think it is understandable and reasonable enough. Even if there were mistakes in judge verdicts, most of people executed or imprisoned were not innocent saints.
-moving some ethnicities from one place to another? Considering the situation - the war with the Germany (whose war goal was extermination of Russian population) - it would have been completely unreasonable to leave large amounts of other smaller ethnicities on soon-to-be-occupied territories, who did not show much loyalty to you and are likely to betray you.
-and so on, and so forth. All perfectly explained by completely rational motivation.

And Guardian G.I. then defended that post by arguing that the Westerner's just can't understand how that stuff was good because they don't understand the need for necessary sacrifices.

Beznogim, I understand your point of view, but I think that your attempts to explain the necessity of Soviet policies are fruitless. As your signature says, НЕ ПЫТАЙТЕСБ ЧТОТ0 NЗМЕНИТЬ. The majority of people here come from countries where the concept of "necessary sacrifice" is regarded as ultimate evil. Individualist societies cannot accept loss of human life no matter how necessary it might be for the country. Stalin's policies will always be regarded as absolute evil from Western point of view, even though from Stalin's viewpoint, his actions were necessary to ensure survival of the Soviet Union. It's not just a conflict of political ideologies, the moralities of Western and Russian societies contradict each other here.

At no point was the conversation about "voluntary sacrifice" on the part of Russian's, it was specifically a discussion about the concept of "necessary sacrifice" applying to those who were thrown in the gulag, those who were executed, and those who were relocated against their will.

Of course, Guardian G.I is now arguing

Since this thread went up in flames because of my previous post, I want to say that by "sacrifices" I originally meant people sacrificing themselves for the Soviet Union (e.g. soldiers during WW2). While some may say that it is also necessary in some cases, killing political dissidents isn't a sacrifice (although if Stalinist Aztecs had existed, they would have regarded that as a genuine contribution to the country).

And I'm... not entirely sure how to understand that, since there didn't seem to be any mention of soldiers or anything at all in the circumstances leading up to the post.

But I think that about sums up the position that Mict is specifically arguing against here.