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Thread: Does Communism still have a role to play, or is it dead?

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    Завсегдатай mishau_'s Avatar
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    And Germany was a sponsor of the Russian Revolution and Lenin himself was apparentlly a German spy.
    English Edition

    В обычных странах церковь отделена от государства, а в России - от Бога.

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    Почтенный гражданин
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    That was because Germany wanted Russia's withdrawal from WW1 - which it did.
    Marx's communism has been born in Europe.
    But they were sane enough to not try to implement it in practice.
    At least not in a way Lenin, Stalin & Co. did.
    USA and USSR used to support different sides in many conflicts.
    USSR supported North Korea.
    USA supported South Korea.
    Which one you rather be living in?
    The same with East and West Germany - they had to build a wall and put armed guards on it to keep people from escaping to the West.
    if you include the Baltic states, then it's a different story, but they were technically part of the USSR.
    If someone stole your car - is it his now or still yours?
    yet in South Korea there are a number of US bases
    Of course there are - these nutjobs in the north must be kept in check.

    But still today, there are more American troops stationed in Western Europe, than the USSR ever had in Eastern Europe!
    Almost all Western Europe is also part of NATO - I don't see anything wrong that US troops are there - they are in the same military alliance after all...

    Warsaw Pact governments did a good job of oppressing their people themselves - large USSR military presence was not necessary.
    Ruthless, uncaring and incredibly unfair treatment of good people who had done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
    That's because in the USSR people and their lives had little to no value...
    State's needs were before people's needs - peope were just expendable crap - that was partially the reason why USSR WW2 casualties were so high.
    Most of the countries that you are referring to were always rather poor, invaded by first one power then another. Only a few of them ever had power or wealth that was their own.
    In most of Eastern Europe quality of life was higher than in the USSR - they did not bring "culture and enlightement" to countries they invaded.
    Plus I genuinely do think there were some good sides to the USSR.
    And then come bastards like me and Eric who destroy your overidealized view of the USSR.
    These "good sides" were the same things that any decent country is providing to their people right now - education, healthcare, infrastructure building, etc.
    Nothing really special.
    I'm doing really fine living in exUSSR country - we have not resorted to cannibalism or something like that after USSR dissolution - government is providing its services, schools are working, infrastructure is being built and maintained, etc...
    The bad sides of te USSR however outweight the good sides by orders of magnitude.
    Lack of basic human rights, oppression and persecutions by the state, etc...
    Серп и молот - смерть и голод!

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    Старший оракул CoffeeCup's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by nulle View Post
    I'm doing really fine living in exUSSR country - we have not resorted to cannibalism or something like that after USSR dissolution - ...
    Well, if you are really doing so fine why the only thing to discuss for you is how deep you are scared with "Putin's propaganda". Have you ever mentioned that there are some other things in the world outside like music, books, arts, sport?
    So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

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    Quote Originally Posted by nulle View Post
    T
    But they were sane enough to not try to implement it in practice.
    At least not in a way Lenin, Stalin & Co. did.
    They weren't in WWI by the time of occurrence of the communistic ideas in Europe
    Internal security fixed the problem, obviously

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    Завсегдатай Crocodile's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by nulle View Post
    At least not in a way Lenin, Stalin & Co. did.
    I think what Lenin and Stalin used to do is probably not the worst of all possible scenarios. We know there were lots of people who resisted the collectivization of the property and the communists had to prosecute those people. But, how many people would the communists have to prosecute if they would every try to enforce other things stated in the Communist Party Manifesto, for example "the community of wives?"

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    Завсегдатай BappaBa's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
    if they would every try to enforce other things stated in the Communist Party Manifesto, for example "the community of wives?"
    А если внимательно прочитать?
    Но вы, коммунисты, хотите ввести общность жен, - кричит нам хором вся буржуазия.
    Буржуа смотрит на свою жену как на простое орудие производства. Он слышит, что орудия производства предполагается предоставить в общее пользование, и, конечно, не может отрешиться от мысли, что и женщин постигнет та же участь. Он даже и не подозревает, что речь идет как раз об устранении такого положения женщины, когда она является простым орудием производства. Впрочем, нет ничего смешнее высокоморального ужаса наших буржуа по поводу мнимой официальной общности жен у коммунистов. Коммунистам нет надобности вводить общность жен, она существовала почти всегда. Наши буржуа, не довольствуясь тем, что в их распоряжении находятся жены и дочери их рабочих, не говоря уже об официальной проституции, видят особое наслаждение в том, чтобы соблазнять жен друг у друга.
    Буржуазный брак является в действительности общностью жен. Коммунистам можно было бы сделать упрек разве лишь в том, будто они хотят ввести вместо лицемерно-прикрытой общности жен официальную, открытую. Но ведь само собой разумеется, что с уничтожением нынешних производственных отношений исчезнет и вытекающая из них общность жен, т. е. официальная и неофициальная проституция.

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    Завсегдатай Crocodile's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BappaBa View Post
    А если внимательно прочитать?
    Excellent! Finally someone had actually opened what the communists' plan is. So, I agree, let's read that passage carefully. What do we see?

    1. A prediction: "Но ведь само собой разумеется, что с уничтожением нынешних производственных отношений исчезнет и вытекающая из них общность жен". So, by the 30s the "present system of production" had been totally destroyed. Had the "community of wives" became "open" by itself? No. Thanks to Stalin the family was preserved and even declared important.

    2. An explicit plan: "они хотят ввести вместо лицемерно-прикрытой общности жен официальную"

    So, if the communists want the community of wives become official and it does not [SURPRISE!!] happens on its own, how the community of wives would become official?

    Answer: by force, like everything else the communists had done.

    Do you remember that the very first communist government included a very interesting member Alexandra Kolollontai who had openly promoted 'free relationship' and the community of wives. She was very popular [because she gave a brilliant example of how that should be done] but that didn't go anywhere en mass. Lenin didn't push it and Stalin fought it. By the 80s a person could be expelled from the party for the regular adultery.

    So far so good for the 'brilliant theory' by Marx.

  8. #8
    Hanna
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    Nulle, what you are outlining is the official post 1992 version of events that most people choose to believe in. I am not denying any of this, but I am saying that there is more to the story and this is not the full truth either. There are lots of people here that don't have the same gloomy view of thing, but a more nuanced one.
    A lot of people had more security in their lives, and dignity.

    I know there were shortages of some pretty important products that people needed, like shampoo, deodorant etc. (it was noticeable with some people...)
    In my childhood I used to wait for the bus at the same metro/bus stop where people got off to catch the Leningrad and Gdansk ferries. Occasionally groups of travellers would pass by to catch a bus to the ferries. I remember how the travellers were carrying massive bags of rather unexpected stuff - basic things that must have been hard to get hold of in the USSR or Poland. Things which we took for granted.

    I agree that motivating people is one of the biggest problems with socialism.
    If you literally can't sack people, and if they are stuck in a boring job, then they will not make the effort.
    In socialism there is a lot of talk about how all jobs are worth the same. But in reality some jobs are less interesting and still not valued in the same way.
    When these people fail to do their jobs properly it affects all of society.
    I think this is one of the biggest problems with any kind of socialism, or Communism.

    And it's not hard to motivate someone who has an interesting job that he enjoys. And as far as I understand the USSR too offered motivation to such people.

    The reason why I am taking the position I am, is because I don't like black - white painting history in retrospect. I am not saying I know the answers or that I would have had a plan that would have worked better.
    Just want to introduce a bit of a perspective to peoples views!
    EDIT>

    Plus, I am interested in Political Science and as far as that goes, the experiences of the ex USSR people are extremely interesting. You've seen more in 25 years than many other Europeans have seen in many generations. I think it's wrong to generalise and brush over the experiences of people etc.

    Some USSR people spent their lives trying to "build communism" etc with a lot of dedication. I think their efforts merit at least some kind of recognition. They DID achieve things of value even though the long term goal of Communism was not achieved.

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    In most of Eastern Europe quality of life was higher than in the USSR - they did not bring "culture and enlightement" to countries they invaded.
    It happened because the Soviet Union provided such a life to them.

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    Завсегдатай Crocodile's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
    [...]the USA has already invaded or fought wars in the below locations between WW2 and now.
    Exactly! That's the whole point. The USA has become a superpower as a result of the WWII, mainly because it suffered the least - the entire infrastructure was intact and all the isolationists in the US were silenced by the Perl Harbor attack. (Can anybody else see a parallel with 9/11? Anyways, it's a different story...)

    So, when you start counting your countries, you should start counting from the point the political power has declared an expansion/intervention foreign policy. Not from the end of the WWII. Also, it was already noted here that the US and the USSR were both engaged in the similar military conflicts and covert operations de-facto fighting each other. All those Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
    Roadmap: Iran, Syria, North Korea...
    The roadmap for the USSR had officially been the entire world.

    Look, I'm not trying to say the US does not have an expansionist foreign policy, it obviously does. But, please, stop idealizing the USSR saying the US is worse than the USSR in the foreign policy or something like that. Any superpower is tempted to grow until the internal tensions are too high, and then the superpower crashes into the smaller pieces. I don't think the US is an exception to that rule.

    I appreciate your concern about the abundancy of the US military bases around the world, but you should also realize it's not that easy to withdraw. During the Cold War era, Western Europe was crying to save it from the USSR, hence the NATO, the bases, and the financial dependency of the entire world on the US to mutually maintain the whole thing. (And those bases are not 100% US bases, since the soldiers from the other NATO countries serve there as well. And all NATO countries still contribute money to maintain those bases and it's expensive to them.)

    So, now your $1,000,000 question is: if there's no USSR why do we need NATO? And my reply to that would be: because, nothing had fundamentally changed! The major idea of many NATO bases was to have the short-range nuclear weapon so close to the enemy that the enemy would have no chance to launch an attack. (If you have a lot of targets, it lowers the chances of the successful attack.) In the WWIII one side should aim to survive the nuclear winter, otherwise there's no point to start. And as our dear guy Yeltzin had once said: "Clinton for a minute, for a second had forgotten what is Russia, which possess the full arsenal of the nuclear weapon." (Some people still believe he was a democrat and his reforms were democratic and based on that belief they blame the havoc of the 90s on the democrats, but that's another story...)

    Can you see my point? It have already been 20 years since the collapse of the USSR, but the global nuclear threat had not gone anywhere. So, if you put yourself in the shoes of a typical NATO high-level strategic planner, what should you do?

    1. Continue to have the military bases as widespread in the world as possible, and
    2. Prevent the other countries from joining the nuclear club.

    Does that tempt the involved parties from the personal exploitation of the system? Of course it does! I don't even think there could be a disagreement on that.

    But, what better options do we have right now? The WikiLeaks with all its bravery and heroism cannot stop the nuclar war, won't you agree?

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    Завсегдатай it-ogo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
    So, if you put yourself in the shoes of a typical NATO high-level strategic planner, what should you do?

    1. Continue to have the military bases as widespread in the world as possible, and
    2. Prevent the other countries from joining the nuclear club.
    Nukes are very expensive and dangerous for the owner. The main reason to join the nuclear club is to protect oneself from the intrusion of a superpower. So the aggressive politics of USA (and NATO) is the main reason of the nukes' spread over the world nowadays. BTW you can surely remove North Korea from the "roadmap", cause it is already in club. Actually, USA provides help to North Korea each year. So, either a typical NATO high-level strategic planner have a problem with strategic planning or he takes NATO aggressiveness as something uncontrolled and tries only to reduce the consequences (mainly unsuccessfully).

    No?
    "Россия для русских" - это неправильно. Остальные-то чем лучше?

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    Quote Originally Posted by it-ogo View Post
    Nukes are very expensive and dangerous for the owner. The main reason to join the nuclear club is to protect oneself from the intrusion of a superpower. So the aggressive politics of USA (and NATO) is the main reason of the nukes' spread over the world nowadays. BTW you can surely remove North Korea from the "roadmap", cause it is already in club. Actually, USA provides help to North Korea each year. So, either a typical NATO high-level strategic planner have a problem with strategic planning or he takes NATO aggressiveness as something uncontrolled and tries only to reduce the consequences (mainly unsuccessfully).

    No?
    More than 60 years have passed since the first and last actual use of nuclear weapons. The U.S. used it against their enemy at a war time, and everyone learned their lesson then. Now, these days any use of these weapons is totally unacceptable. Every sane government understands that. No U.S. war operation against dictators anywhere involved nuclear weapons. Now you say one has to have nuclear weapons to "protect themselves". Well, I think those who seriously consider resorting to this kind of weapon, no matter what the reason is, are insane and very dangerous folks, and it's only for that alone they deserve being taken down.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
    Well, I think those who seriously consider resorting to this kind of weapon, no matter what the reason is, are insane and very dangerous folks, and it's only for that alone they deserve being taken down.
    So either governments of nuclear countries are all insane (including US) or you wrong. I think the second

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    Завсегдатай it-ogo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
    Well, I think those who seriously consider resorting to this kind of weapon, no matter what the reason is, are insane and very dangerous folks, and it's only for that alone they deserve being taken down.
    From WWII nuclear weapon is used in diplomacy rather than in war. And it is perfectly effective.

    I don't judge who deserves what and seriously consider what. I said that after fall of USSR foreign policy of USA is the main reason of spreading nukes. Am I wrong?
    "Россия для русских" - это неправильно. Остальные-то чем лучше?

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    Quote Originally Posted by it-ogo View Post
    Actually, USA provides help to North Korea each year.
    Would you care to provide any sort of evidence?

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    Завсегдатай it-ogo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
    Would you care to provide any sort of evidence?
    Google helps.

    USA helps NK regime to keep stability from 1995. Actually, last about 2 years USA help reduced but it is mainly because China strongly increased help.
    "Россия для русских" - это неправильно. Остальные-то чем лучше?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
    Would you care to provide any sort of evidence?
    I guess you have been banned in google
    US supplied food as an aid to NK up to 2009 then NK rejected - http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...rth-korea-can/
    Now they talking about resuming food aid - U.S., North Korea weigh resumption of food aid - Checkpoint Washington - The Washington Post

  18. #18
    Завсегдатай Crocodile's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by it-ogo View Post
    Nukes are very expensive and dangerous for the owner. The main reason to join the nuclear club is to protect oneself from the intrusion of a superpower. So the aggressive politics of USA (and NATO) is the main reason of the nukes' spread over the world nowadays. BTW you can surely remove North Korea from the "roadmap", cause it is already in club. Actually, USA provides help to North Korea each year. So, either a typical NATO high-level strategic planner have a problem with strategic planning or he takes NATO aggressiveness as something uncontrolled and tries only to reduce the consequences (mainly unsuccessfully).

    No?
    Nice.

    "The main reason to join the nuclear club is to protect oneself from the intrusion of a superpower."

    Not really. Say, Iran produced 20 nuclear warheads. How could Iran protect itself from the intrusion of Russia or the US? The superpower is not only the possession of the nuclear warheads, but more importantly the ability to destroy the enemy's warheads. If Russia ever wants to invade Iran, the first thing it should plan is to destroy Iran's nuclear silos and destroy the runways that would prevent the nuclear-carrying aircraft from being launched. That should be done just hours BEFORE the first main blow to the enemy's bases. That is a task for the special forces in coordination with the other army units. That's why the USSR needed so many of the special forces. So, when Iran produces 2,000 warheads with a variety of ways to deliver them, the adequate amount of special forces and all the necessary support infrastructure, the intelligence services to figure out what's going on, and many more things, ONLY THEN Iran could say: "Phew, a superpower will not attack me anymore. I'm safe now. But, hey I'm a superpower now myself. Cool!"

    In reality, what a country like Iran might do with 5 nuclear warheads of the low quality? With a sane government, to threaten the countries nearby, e.g. Israel, adding more political power. With an insane government, it might be Allah Akbar. In either case Israel would want to strike first because it probably would not want to be held hostage to the power games of the others and that would be a legitimate cause for the war in that case. Meaning, if Iran is 'allowed' to produce a warhead, even one, that would almost inevitably cause the war in the region with millions of civil casualties. The situation in the North Korea, in my opinion, is different by that the South Korea is much more chicken than Israel and they want the NATO doing all the work for them. And NATO isn't really afraid of the NK's nuclear weapons (see above why), so they just hold it on the back burner since they can't afford one more war, both politically and financially. (As a side note, isn't it interesting that since the 1991 the NATO engaged in the wars it doesn't need at all, but now due to that the reputation of NATO is completely ruined internationally? Anyways, that's a totally different topic...)

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    Завсегдатай it-ogo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
    ...The superpower is not only the possession of the nuclear warheads, but more importantly the ability to destroy the enemy's warheads...
    Hey, Crock, Dr. Strangelove's scenarios are obsolete a bit, didn't you notice? It is not about MAD doctrine.

    The superpower is a country with a technology of safe aggression. It has a well-trained advanced army and to keep it in a good shape and check new features, makes "training on cats" from time to time. Superpower makes "small victorious war" and its propaganda justify it. To avoid it, potential victim should have one bad nuke without any means of delivery. The very presence of it turns nice technological "small victorious war" into an adventure with unpredictable outcome and occasionally (in case of nuclear explosion) very bad publicity. It is not COMPLETELY safe any more. Superpower will not risk to get into such a dirty bloody story even if the risk is very small.
    "Россия для русских" - это неправильно. Остальные-то чем лучше?

  20. #20
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    Yes, nulle, if you live so well and the USSR was so bad, why do so many people regret its failure?
    After the fall of the Soviet Union the level of life fell dramatically in its parts. There was hunger in Tadjikistan, there was no fuel in Armenia and so on. And I don't speak about wars.

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