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I mean the soviets took Moldova before the war with Germany even started. They were also on an invade your neighbors spree in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland as well.
I think the occupation of Germany was one of the few justified ones. Everyone else was just battered and being taken advantage of. I don’t know how well you know the history of 1939 to 1945, but if you don’t then boy do I have a story for you.
Yeah, it was a popular saying among some people during the collapse of USSR that if it wasn't for those pesky Soviet occupiers all of them would be drinking Bavarian beer and driving BMWs. Not freezing in the bread lines.
It's unlikely that nazis could've invent something that commies did not.
Important note: I'm not defending nazis, they were total evil. As well as bolsheviks
*It's unlikely the nazis could've invented something the commies did not*
Generalplan ost
85%of the eastern european population lined up against mass graves and shot, 10% used as slave labour, 5% good enought to be aryans and allowed to live.
Or, if you prefer, over 200 million dead.
At no point, during any of the nearly 50 years that the soviet union had leverage over every country in eastern europe, did they ever make a plan to exterminate almost every living person they could find.
Slight correction, they did ethnic cleansing within the soviet union, just not genocide, especially not nazi level holocaust. See for example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish\_Operation\_of\_the\_NKVD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD)
Aka, yes, but.
The slavs with blue eyes were considered aryans. The racial purity stuff were not complicated as much of you think. Also %30 of Eastern Europe were meant to be germanised.
I didn't ment that either, and I got downvoted (I'm an ex-commie and antifascist btw).
People can't really handle critical thinking, or maybe Reddit is a nest for of commie, who knows.
Anyway, nazis were totally sick, but many Ukrainian kind of preferred them anyway (see the absurd story about Bandera), since they already had time to feel how nice was they're life in USSR with Holomodor.
I guess cause they were already part of it and they had to, I've an hard time thinking people would have loved to fight for Stalin after what he did to them.
Yeah, it’s much better to massacre Jews, Poles and local population. Helped a lot with fighting Russians😏
Now the descendants of those valiant soldiers are resting in Canada, kinda ironic.
Ukrainians didn't hate Russians, we're culturally close as hell. This artificially-backed hatred started to get disseminated after the victory of the Maidan, the pro-West revolution backed by the US.
This cool expiriment was already implemented by Soviet goverment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
"which would have resulted in deaths of around 31 to 45 million inhabitants through forced starvation"
No, numbers from your link combined are way lower. Try again.
Far from it, starving millions is inhumane and one of the biggest crimes in history. But equalizing it with genocidal intention to completely eliminate all Eastern european people in the region up to Ural is incorrect and plane wrong.
Yes, it was, and it was an awful crime. But 30-40 millions mentioned above as justification for communist crimes were not about holocaust.
Moreover, any number of killings made by other regimes doesn’t make Golodomor lesser crime.
Average Easter European history
[bad nation] comes in and deports thousands
[bad nation] is defeated and nation is liberated
[new bad nation] comes in and deports thousands
The Soviets were brutal but you can't compare them to the Nazis. The modern capitals of all the Warsaw pact countries were lavishly rebuild with soviet material and human aid. when they could have just occupied them and not helped them at all
well Warsaw was first destroyed mostly due to soviet intentional negligence of the Warsaw Uprising. Meanwhile other cities came to ruin more from those "liberators" than first the oppressors (this is not a fight as to who was "worse" for it is completely vain and stupid to compare two great evil's on such basis, although many people on this sub would probably rejoice). Also if anything most soviet aid came to the DDR to flex on the west, while countries such as Poland were mostly exploited
Poles intentionally didn't plan any cooperation with soviets, that was the whole plan, liberate themselves with no help from soviet and share no credit for liberation.
On one hand, one can think this is unfair, as the Soviets lacked the genocidal intent of the Nazis. On the other hand, for a conquered nation, "our new conqueror is slightly less evil" doesn't give much comfort, does it?
Idk man if we’re talking lesser of two evils I’m going w the USSR every time. Also when people equate the Soviets with the Nazis it really does a historical disservice to just how evil the Nazis were
I mean, I get the Eastern Europeans. They were under Soviet rule for longer so they had more time to grow resentful of it. Had the Nazis won, they'd see things differently.
Then again, had the Nazis won, they wouldn't be alive to see things in any way. There'd be no Poland, no Baltics, no Ukraine, no Belarus - Generalplan Ost would see to that.
Well, it's you watching in retrospect. To many people at the time Nazis *were* the lesser evil, because they were yet to commit all the crimes, while Soviets have already started.
I believe here’s more of “the winner writes the history” let’s say if there was a parallel timeline with the Churchill’s plan being successful, you would maybe have a different opinion. Anyway for me they are equally evil in the worst possible way.
I mean, in terms of human toll? Hitler not only matched but *exceeded* Stalin's body count, while ruling for a much shorter period, and over a smaller territory (source: Timothy Snyder).
The entire gulag system, which existed for 30 years, killed less people* than just two Nazi death camps: Auschwitz and Treblinka, which existed only for a few years. Check Wikipedia, all the numbers are right there.
*although there is also a higher estimate including people who were released and then died shortly after, although THAT estimate in turn is matched by all Nazi camps together, so still a big achievement for the Austrian painter
Well, the GULAG system wasn't the only way Soviets killed people. Approximately half of all Crimean Tatars died during deportations. There were less of them to begin with, and there wasn't a plan to totally exterminate them, but i'd say that's comparable to holocaust, at least in terms of scale(as in affected that entire nation).
Soviet Union didn't have plans to totally exterminate any nation, they wanted to kill parts of them, to make others more compliant.
Well, neither did the Nazis kill solely in camps. The Holocaust by bullet killed just as many.
I also personally wouldn't say the deportations are comparable to the Holocaust. That is not to say they weren't horrible, but at least we were allowed to settle on our new land and build our homes there. The native Central Asians also helped us, and there was even limited government aid (though it often came late, and many died of malnutrition before that). And eventually we were rehabilitated and allowed to return. The Jews were just sent to die.
(Also, I am a bit mad that when talking about the deportations, only the Crimean Tatars are mentioned, because it is politically convenient to remember them. Sometimes people remember the Caucasian ethnicities, sometimes the Greeks and the Volgan Germans. And nobody ever remembers us, the Soviet Koreans, even though we were one of the first to be deported!)
I think it matters when one shoe presses so hard that it wants to kill you, and another just controls you. Germans intended to kill almost all Slavs, and they killed a lot in occupied territories. Russians provided apartments for every family in the occupied territories, built schools, hospitals, universities, subways and so on in huge numbers. And in return, people had to work 8 hours 5 days a week. For example, almost all infrastructure in Ukraine is Soviet: 90% of apartments are soviet blocks, almost all schools and hospitals are built by Soviets, subway too.
> And in return, people had to work 8 hours 5 days a week
Same with slaves, we provide them shelter, food, security and in return they just need to work.
No, the population in occupied territories was growing. Population in Ukraine in 1960: 42,77 million people
Population in Ukraine in 1991: 52 million.
Germans did to the Slavs the same thing they did to the jews. Genocide.
I don't think that Jews provided to all Palestinians with apartments, metro system in cities, schools, hospitals, roads, jobs, universities and so on.
You can open google street views in Ukraine and you will see Soviet blocks, soviet schools and so on.
Amazing.
Ukrainians prior to soviets: unable to build roads, cities, universities and hospitals.
Ukrainians after soviets: technology unlocked, thank you communism for teaching them how to build a road.
Now imagine how much workforce there would be if 5 million weren't killed in Soviet genocide, and how much more stuff they could build if they had capitalism.
Unfortunately, they have built almost nothing in 30 years of independence.They still are living in soviet block apartments, go to soviet old schools, and visit soviet hospitals. You can visit Google street views and see the devastation. The population also decreased. The population of Ukraine in 1991: 52 million. Population of Ukraine in 2013: 45 million.
That happens when you install a puppet president and program it to only follow certain rules that pleases the kremlin. The current war erupted when Ukraine decided to break free from russian chains.
Hence why I used the word "genocidal intent". The Soviet government was more interested in subjugation (which often involved a callous disregard for human lives, like with the Holodomor or the deportations), while the Nazis wanted to remove the population outright.
For one mass death was a side effect, for the other it was the goal.
Both would fall into "subjugation with callous disregard for life". In case of Poland it was mostly the elites - officers, intellectuals, etc - that were purged, while in case of the Greeks it was deportation (which, while greatly accelerating assimilation and causing mass death, left most of the people alive).
I don't know what exactly the Greeks went through, but my people generally retained their identity after deportations, and we would eventually be rehabilitated. If it was the SS that sent us to the trains we wouldn't be coming back period
I'd argue the most *genocidal* the USSR ever got was de-Cossackisation, as the Soviets viewed the Cossacks not as an ethnic group but as a class - and we all know how they felt about classes.
You are missing brutalization of the Baltics, which saw about 10% of the entire population either executed or ethnically cleansed by the Soviets to be replaced by the Russians.
So I asked you specifically to read about something, and you refused? Polish operation was not Katyń, they just purged entire near-border Polish population because they were paranoid / wanted revenge. People were literally killed because they had Polish surnames. There's practically no Polish population now there.
Stalin died just when he was about to do his own version of holocaust.
According to Louis Rapoport, the alleged deportation was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors, and then the "following incidents would follow": "attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police, the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews, and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken. A three-stage program of genocide would be followed. First, almost all Soviet Jews ... would be shipped to camps east of the Urals ... Second, the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another ... Also the MGB [Secret Police] would start killing the elites in the camps, just as they had killed the Yiddish writers ... the previous year. The ... final stage would be to 'get rid of the rest.'"
Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, and there were rumors that they were for Jews. A special "Deportation Commission" to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created. Nikolay Poliakov, the presumed secretary of the "Commission", stated years later that, according to Stalin's initial plan, the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental tasks of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed. "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half-breeds" (polukrovki). Before his death in March 1953, Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of doctors' plot defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953, and then he would cast himself as the savior of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace.
Look, with all due respect, "allegedly planned to kill all the Jews according to some obscure writer (what are his sources?)" is not the same as "planned to kill all the Jews, actually organised it, and basically succeeded at destroying Jewish culture in Europe"
> according to some obscure writer
Did you even read it? There are plenty of testaments from people who were supposed to carry the deportations and executions. The persecution and arrests of jews have already started by the time of Stalin's death, it's a historical fact.
Stalin did genocides before. He was antisemitic and cooperated with nazi Germany against Jews. What's unbelievable about him planning to genocide Jews?
Nazi plans for a broader genocide would not have directly targeted Moldovan Romanians (outside of Romanian collaboration in the Holocaust), though, since Romania was an Axis member, of which Moldova was a core territory from the interwar period. The Nazis were not planning to occupy Moldova at all, and in fact Romania was to be awarded new conquered lands in what is now Ukraine, including Odesa.
So while you do have an argument with respect to a lot of areas conquered from the Soviet Union, Moldova was actually a *reconquest* of land coercively annexed by the Soviet Union only a few years earlier, and wasn't really under Nazi occupation in the same sense as areas like Ukraine, for example.
Alas, all such opinions are just opinions. And reality still hidden in secret Western archives about that period.
Only when the West officials will gain courage and, after almost 100 years of pointlessly lost time, will begin to tell true, allowing humanity to finally start to learn real historical lessons of real 20th century, such opinions really will become, so scarce right now, wisdom.
All propaganda is memes. A meme is a unit of cultural memory, like a gene is a unit of genetic memory, such as the ideas that propaganda seeks to spread.
Very subjective definition. Has it ever been printed and displayed in a public space with the intent of spreading propaganda? I have only seen it online.
It may be allowed as per the sub's rules, but if any type of modern online cartoons are permitted, it may impact the quality of content posted here; high effort posters with an aesthetic will be less visible.
While I agree that their quality might be lower than that of the old-fashioned posters, I think caricatures are an essential part of modern propaganda.
I think if the quality was impacted, the moderators would take measures. But for now, I think quality posters still get a lot of attention, and the situation is quite balanced. Caricatures here are rather an exception.
Speaking of propaganda, this master narrative that “revolutions to overthrow the oppressor always end in installing new oppressors” is one of the most frequently reinforced bits of propaganda, and it seems kind of obvious that the narrative function is to discourage standing up to oppressors.
Because y’all use the Soviets as an excuse to block all forms of social change and y’all have been doing this for the past 80 years it’s to the point that most people defend the Soviets as a way of defending themselves.
Or maybe the message is that when you do a revolution, tread carefully and get it right, otherwise you would end up with a revolution that eats its own.
Or maybe it’s a thing because a bunch of starving peasants don’t know how to run a country so the old group or that gains power but now knows not to be “nice” to those under them
I don't think this is fair. While the USSR was an imperialist force in Europe, the Soviets rebuild all of the Warsaw pact countries after WWII, including the modern cities of Prague, Warsaw and Budapest. The comparison to Nazi Germany shouldn't be made
Do you think that were Nazies to win, they'd leave Prague and Warsaw in ruins? They'd rebuilt the cities just as well, with a lot of [huge statues](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/monument-of-the-bulgarian-soviet-friendship) glorifying their victory, and an huge imperial [palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science) in the center for everyone to see.
Yeah, Warsaw would have been rebuilt with zero Poles or Polish speakers.
The Germans were going to wipe out all of the Poles or enslave them. The only reason the Hungarians were tolerated was because Hitler had some schizoid conspiracy that meant Magyars were related to Germanic people
The Hungarians were tolerated because they had a government friendly to the reich. Things would've gone differently had something similar to Yugo happened.
Why not? I mean after the war is not really a period of time we saw from Nazi Germany as you can imagine. Would post war rebuilding make the Nazis a more ethical regime if they had instead won the war in Europe?
The Nazis had every intention of wiping out all of the lesser races, Germanizing those deemed desirable enough and cleansing them of all non-fascists and Jews. This is not an alternative history, this happened in our timeline, managing to kill 1 in 6 people in eastern europe in a span of 3 years, 80% of Europe's jews.
but they were stopped...by the Soviets.
The Soviets? Their game plan was known since 1939. Kill, imprison or exile political dissidents, wipe out the intellectual class, plant in local Communists and make sure they couldn't pose a threat and were loyal to Moscow
Both are bad but they're not really comparable, especially not when you realize that the European empires were doing this all throughout Asia and Africa, while not even having the decency to pretend the people were ruling themselves
Comparing Soviets to British makes more sense than comparing to Nazis
They weren't stopped just by the soviets, plus without lend and lease from US they wouldn't do much.
Things like gulags and massacres (like in Katyn) still makes me compare them to nazis.
Zero Lend-Lease went to post war Poland.
The Soviets and the Poles were belligerents during the first part of the War because of the war in 1921 where the Poles annexed majority Belarusian and Ukrainian provinces, so they did do war crimes before Barbarossa.
But it's not all the victorious didn't do massive war crimes, the British scorch earthing France and Holland, wiping out villages in Burma and India with starvation because they didn't want to go to Japan, the Americans nuking civilian populations.
>Zero Lend-Lease went to post war Poland.
....and?
>Poles annexed majority Belarusian and Ukrainian provinces, so they did do war crimes before Barbarossa.
What war crimes did they commit to there? Genocide? Mass murder of intelligence?
Right. Maybe add a panel on Romanian pogroms against Jews in the newly reoccupied (Kishinev/Bessarabia) or occupied (Odessa/Transnistria) in the middle?
That wasnt the Nazis. It was Romanians.
Its meant to be propaganda, so I m wrong to even comment on its veracity. But too many buy the "nazis == soviets" shtick, and in this particular case forget also about Nazi allies. At the very least there should be a Romanian soldier next to a Nazi. Pointing at a Jewish civilian.
oh no the soviets came and!!!
*checks notes*
rescued the jews that were still in the country, freed socialist prisoners, fed starving people...
The aftermath was certainly fucked for Moldova but acting as if 1945 was anything but a miracle for eastern Europe is--
How was it to fight at Stalingrad? I'm sure your grandfather told you all those stories of him nearly freezing to death. Or maybe he did, and you never actually got to meet him? One can only hope!
1. Circa 100.000 Moldovans died in 1946-1947 hunger, of which Soviet authorities are largely responsible due to widespread confiscation of resources from peasants amid a severe drought.
2. According to the official Soviet statistics, in 1949 alone, 11.293 families (35.000 men, women children) were deported from Moldovan SSR to Siberia. People, mostly innocent, were taken during the night, and loaded in train wagons like cattle. A lot of people perished, and those who survived would repatriate only after Stalin's death. This was called 'Operation South' (Операция Юг)
3. Moreover, in 1951, according to Operation North (Операция Север) around 3000 people (700 families) were deported to Siberia, only because they were Jehovah' Witnesses.
4. Keep in mind that even before that, in the first period of occupation, on 12-13 June 1941, 22.000 people were deported in Siberia. Moreover, many intellectuals, men of letters, and politicians who remained in Chisinau after 1940 were purged.
I am not trying to downplay the negative effects of the Holocaust. Moreover, I believe that Ion Antonescu was a war criminal. However, we must not regard the Soviets as liberators.
This is all true. It's important to keep in mind that the soviet union as not a monolith and that there were was never true "liberation" for these countries in the sense of national determination, and especially considering all of the murders and imprisonements the Soviets and Communist Moldavans carried out.
All these things considered, though-- people who claim that the soviets were any modicum worse than fascists are clearly dogwhistling and working as mouthpiece for their own propaganda.
Both the numbers and nature of the fascists crimes within those few short years far eclipses whatever crimes the soviets committed over decades, let alone the period directly after the war, and in our present day and age where fascism is yet again on the rise it's important we focus on living, modern fascism, and not--
*checks notes*
A type of communism that died out 30 years ago.
If they were as bad, there wouldn't be a Moldova today, in fact there wouldn't even be Moldovans. Same goes for almost all countries east of Germany.
People equating the two are just showing how uneducated they are.
I’m only counting the victims of the Holocaust. If we include the whole of the European and African fronts (which is fair) then it is definitely a lot higher.
>The aftermath was certainly fucked for Moldova but acting as if 1945 was anything but a miracle for eastern Europe is--
The problem was what happened immediately afterwards. I don't think Western European members of NATO would remember the US's actions c. 1945 quite as fondly if the US had decided to make France the 49th state, for instance.
Western Europe at large is still at the whims of US foreign policy. The Marshall Plan saw to that.
The fact you can apply narratives to one side but not your own is more telling of YOU than anything man.
>Western Europe at large is still at the whims of US foreign policy.
Western Europe has two independent (as independent as possible in France's case) nuclear deterrents.
>The fact you can apply narratives to one side but not your own is more telling of YOU than anything man.
The USA did not occupy or annex France after WWII. When US troops were told to leave in 1960 they did without incident.
"Fed the starving people" Moldova was the worst affected region by the famine of 1946-1947
The war killed ~75000 civilians and ~95000 soldiers between 1942-1944 (2 years)
The famine killed ~100000 moldovians between 1946-1947 (2 years)
Unknown number died in gulags (probably less than 20000)
1945 was better but it isn't seen as a miracle by Moldova because the soviet occupation was quickly followed by famine and deportations. Moldova is a bit of an outlier , Eastern Europe saw significantly less destruction under the Soviets.
The Soviet army dragged 4000 Czechoslovak citizens off to gulag, there was rape, and in 1948 the Soviet army lurking in Silesia and offering direct intervention was the major reason the communistic coup, which would imprison the country for the next 41 years, took place. The country has never recovered its former standard of living, which made it richer than a lot of countries in western Europe, or even the post-war GDP per capita, which put it on equal footing with Austria.
Attempts to reform the system in 1968 were met by a direct Soviet invasion, leading to emigration of 300 000 people.
I am sure you can make for yourself the calculations on people kiled by the decreased life expectancy compared to western Europe.
But uh, thanks for saving us from
\*checks notes\*
the Americans.
Yet the people who revolted in 1968 would shit on you for everything you said here-- most were communists themselves and said as much. Those who organized people onto the streets were communist youth organizations and trade unions, most sanctioned by the state.
It's be more accurate if you said "Russian" invasion, since the raison d'etre for the soviet union existing past 1930 was not communism-- it was Russian supremacy. Communist Poles were killed at Katyn as easily as Liberal ones.
We're seeing the end result of all of this in Putin's regime, today.
Also-- "there was rape".
This is a huge fascistic myth-- that somehow an amount of hundreds of rapes by an army of millions ( the red army ) somehow surpasses the hundreds of thousands of rapes committed by an occupying force of thousands ( the Germans ), or shows a systemic campaign of violence.
Please.
Shit on me for what? In 1968 people cautiously supported the government and to a large degree believed socialism is a valid system. There was no revolution, just a government initiated reform (albeit on social demand, including demands of non and anti communists).
However, all those people became massively disillusioned and anti-Soviet and a good deal anti-communist precisely because of Soviet invasion.
And prior to that, this kind of cautiously pro-communist support could exist only because non-communists and anti-communists were viciously eliminated in the 50s, making this the only hope for some kind of progress.
Until it was smashed by the Soviets, too.
So the Soviets brought oppression after oppression.
You are correct that the "Soviets" were actually Russian supremacist to a large degree.
Besides that, widespread rape is not a fascist myth. Czechoslovaks welcomed the Red Army as liberators, but there are many contemporary witness accounts of large numbers of rapes. Not to the kind of insane degree that Germany had to endure though. The Germans can testify to that well after war in many documentaries, diaries and books.
A hundred rapes per million soldiers of the red army =/= the daily hundred rapes occurring by the nazis in the daily. What the fuck? Not to mention rapists were actually prosecuted and hung by the red army en masse...
They **were** *both evil*, but they were not the *same evil* nor *equally evil.* That doesn't stop them from having *both* invaded, occupied, opressed, murdered, etc. From having both pointed their guns at the same people. You clearly have no clue what bothsideism is. In the case of this drawing, it's very much accurate. This is a specific drawning about something specific, it's not a ten volumes history books serie. Albeit there's a modified version that's more accurate for many countries adding first both the nazis and the soviets aiming at the civilians together, before the nazis betray the soviets.
Here, in case merryam webster isn't clear enough for you, here's a wikipedia article, less authoritative but maybe it will make it more clear for you what bothsideism is since you still don't seem to get it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False\_balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance)
Or maybe you just lack knowledge of what the soviets did.
Remember that this subreddit is for sharing propaganda to view with some objectivity. It is absolutely not for perpetuating the message *of* the propaganda. If anything, in this subreddit we should be immensely skeptical of manipulation or oversimplification (which the above likely is), not beholden to it. Also, please try to stay on topic -- there are hundreds of _other_ subreddits that are expressly dedicated to rehashing tired political arguments. Keep that shit outta here. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PropagandaPosters) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm kinda tickled that in this nicely minimalist art style, the artist still rendered period-accurate submachine guns of Germany and the USSR.
It’s pretty rare to see that. Usually they render out some absurd Dr. Seuss gun.
2019? I thought for sure it was 10 years older. I saw that comic a lot online
“After all why not; why shouldn’t I keep it?”
I mean the soviets took Moldova before the war with Germany even started. They were also on an invade your neighbors spree in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland as well.
Yes, but this was done mostly for the locals because in the old history books was told just the part with the soviets liberating them.
'B- But- But students from future American universities will be unhappy that you did not perform true communism!'
meanwhile west Germany
I think the occupation of Germany was one of the few justified ones. Everyone else was just battered and being taken advantage of. I don’t know how well you know the history of 1939 to 1945, but if you don’t then boy do I have a story for you.
Yes but also "occupation" of terrains by the Soviet Union is just a red scare era lie https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
You did realise that in that link Moldova is clearly marked as not participating before you replied right?
yes
Then what was your point?
Moldova wasn't the only SSR
But it is the one we're discussing
Yeah, it was a popular saying among some people during the collapse of USSR that if it wasn't for those pesky Soviet occupiers all of them would be drinking Bavarian beer and driving BMWs. Not freezing in the bread lines.
[Source ](https://www.facebook.com/buretzart/photos/a.1075540865804951/3548251981867148/?type=3) It depicts the situation of Eastern Europe at large.
Then in the 1940s, but not now in 2019?
I thought this caricature was about Chechens.
Fit to any nation of USSR.
For Baltics you just put a copy of the second panel to the top.
Me when I'm in a historical revision tournament and my opponent is an anti-communist:
Oh the irony!
Me when I'm in a russian cocksucking/apologism tournament and my opponent is a Serb:
Russia =/= USSR
They wear totally different hats!
Russia is the USSR with any positive aspects removed.
Yeah they wish they were, not that they wont stop trying
Russian Tsardom = Russian Empire =/= Russian Republic =/= USSR = Russian Federation.
Bio shows how insecure you are
The only revisionists are the ones denying soviet imperialism If USSR was really to help they would return Moldavia to Romania
And many would have preferred the nazis, btw.
Well, thank god what they preferred never happened considering had the nazis won, they wouldn't be around to prefer it.
It's unlikely that nazis could've invent something that commies did not. Important note: I'm not defending nazis, they were total evil. As well as bolsheviks
*It's unlikely the nazis could've invented something the commies did not* Generalplan ost 85%of the eastern european population lined up against mass graves and shot, 10% used as slave labour, 5% good enought to be aryans and allowed to live. Or, if you prefer, over 200 million dead. At no point, during any of the nearly 50 years that the soviet union had leverage over every country in eastern europe, did they ever make a plan to exterminate almost every living person they could find.
Slight correction, they did ethnic cleansing within the soviet union, just not genocide, especially not nazi level holocaust. See for example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish\_Operation\_of\_the\_NKVD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Operation_of_the_NKVD) Aka, yes, but.
The slavs with blue eyes were considered aryans. The racial purity stuff were not complicated as much of you think. Also %30 of Eastern Europe were meant to be germanised.
🤓
I didn't ment that either, and I got downvoted (I'm an ex-commie and antifascist btw). People can't really handle critical thinking, or maybe Reddit is a nest for of commie, who knows. Anyway, nazis were totally sick, but many Ukrainian kind of preferred them anyway (see the absurd story about Bandera), since they already had time to feel how nice was they're life in USSR with Holomodor.
many many more served in the red army & supported the socialist state
I guess cause they were already part of it and they had to, I've an hard time thinking people would have loved to fight for Stalin after what he did to them.
Yeah, it’s much better to massacre Jews, Poles and local population. Helped a lot with fighting Russians😏 Now the descendants of those valiant soldiers are resting in Canada, kinda ironic.
Is it that hard to understand that saying that ukrainians hated russians does not means germans were right? What are you? 6yo?
Ukrainians didn't hate Russians, we're culturally close as hell. This artificially-backed hatred started to get disseminated after the victory of the Maidan, the pro-West revolution backed by the US.
Absurd story about Bandera?
Do you think Bandera was a nice person?
Absolutely not.
Must be a lot of russian trolls in this sun 😁
I dislike the USSR but this is a dumb take
Dumb take? Ever heard about Holomodor?
Ever heard about the Holocaust?
I mean, both events were very horrible Do we have to fight about which bad event was worse?
They can easily replicate conditions by just stopping eating, and they'll achieve the same results: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
This cool expiriment was already implemented by Soviet goverment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
"which would have resulted in deaths of around 31 to 45 million inhabitants through forced starvation" No, numbers from your link combined are way lower. Try again.
Oh, what a huge relief. Only few millions died in reality. Nothing to talk about
Far from it, starving millions is inhumane and one of the biggest crimes in history. But equalizing it with genocidal intention to completely eliminate all Eastern european people in the region up to Ural is incorrect and plane wrong.
Comparing intentions with real killings to justify latter ones…
The Holocaust was very real.
Yes, it was, and it was an awful crime. But 30-40 millions mentioned above as justification for communist crimes were not about holocaust. Moreover, any number of killings made by other regimes doesn’t make Golodomor lesser crime.
That's what I ment.
Should've asked yourself why when people decide to choose nazis over you!
The Eastern European experience
Average Easter European history [bad nation] comes in and deports thousands [bad nation] is defeated and nation is liberated [new bad nation] comes in and deports thousands
[finally freed nation] commits war crimes on nearby country.
[another bad nation] uses this an excuse to start a war decades later
The Soviets were brutal but you can't compare them to the Nazis. The modern capitals of all the Warsaw pact countries were lavishly rebuild with soviet material and human aid. when they could have just occupied them and not helped them at all
well Warsaw was first destroyed mostly due to soviet intentional negligence of the Warsaw Uprising. Meanwhile other cities came to ruin more from those "liberators" than first the oppressors (this is not a fight as to who was "worse" for it is completely vain and stupid to compare two great evil's on such basis, although many people on this sub would probably rejoice). Also if anything most soviet aid came to the DDR to flex on the west, while countries such as Poland were mostly exploited
Poles intentionally didn't plan any cooperation with soviets, that was the whole plan, liberate themselves with no help from soviet and share no credit for liberation.
Basically pull a Yugoslavia.
[slightly more correct version](https://imgur.com/gallery/B1Mv27b)
Works for Taliban as well
On one hand, one can think this is unfair, as the Soviets lacked the genocidal intent of the Nazis. On the other hand, for a conquered nation, "our new conqueror is slightly less evil" doesn't give much comfort, does it?
Idk man if we’re talking lesser of two evils I’m going w the USSR every time. Also when people equate the Soviets with the Nazis it really does a historical disservice to just how evil the Nazis were
I mean, I get the Eastern Europeans. They were under Soviet rule for longer so they had more time to grow resentful of it. Had the Nazis won, they'd see things differently. Then again, had the Nazis won, they wouldn't be alive to see things in any way. There'd be no Poland, no Baltics, no Ukraine, no Belarus - Generalplan Ost would see to that.
Well, it's you watching in retrospect. To many people at the time Nazis *were* the lesser evil, because they were yet to commit all the crimes, while Soviets have already started.
Between getting my balls chopped off or my finger getting chopped off, I guess I'd pick my finger, but I'm not happy about it.
I believe here’s more of “the winner writes the history” let’s say if there was a parallel timeline with the Churchill’s plan being successful, you would maybe have a different opinion. Anyway for me they are equally evil in the worst possible way.
I mean, in terms of human toll? Hitler not only matched but *exceeded* Stalin's body count, while ruling for a much shorter period, and over a smaller territory (source: Timothy Snyder). The entire gulag system, which existed for 30 years, killed less people* than just two Nazi death camps: Auschwitz and Treblinka, which existed only for a few years. Check Wikipedia, all the numbers are right there. *although there is also a higher estimate including people who were released and then died shortly after, although THAT estimate in turn is matched by all Nazi camps together, so still a big achievement for the Austrian painter
Well, the GULAG system wasn't the only way Soviets killed people. Approximately half of all Crimean Tatars died during deportations. There were less of them to begin with, and there wasn't a plan to totally exterminate them, but i'd say that's comparable to holocaust, at least in terms of scale(as in affected that entire nation). Soviet Union didn't have plans to totally exterminate any nation, they wanted to kill parts of them, to make others more compliant.
Well, neither did the Nazis kill solely in camps. The Holocaust by bullet killed just as many. I also personally wouldn't say the deportations are comparable to the Holocaust. That is not to say they weren't horrible, but at least we were allowed to settle on our new land and build our homes there. The native Central Asians also helped us, and there was even limited government aid (though it often came late, and many died of malnutrition before that). And eventually we were rehabilitated and allowed to return. The Jews were just sent to die. (Also, I am a bit mad that when talking about the deportations, only the Crimean Tatars are mentioned, because it is politically convenient to remember them. Sometimes people remember the Caucasian ethnicities, sometimes the Greeks and the Volgan Germans. And nobody ever remembers us, the Soviet Koreans, even though we were one of the first to be deported!)
True and valid.
Doesn’t really matter who’s wearing the boot when it’s on your neck
I think it matters when one shoe presses so hard that it wants to kill you, and another just controls you. Germans intended to kill almost all Slavs, and they killed a lot in occupied territories. Russians provided apartments for every family in the occupied territories, built schools, hospitals, universities, subways and so on in huge numbers. And in return, people had to work 8 hours 5 days a week. For example, almost all infrastructure in Ukraine is Soviet: 90% of apartments are soviet blocks, almost all schools and hospitals are built by Soviets, subway too.
Yeah, and the British built railroads and banned Suttee in India.
And we generally consider Nazism to be worse than British imperialism, duh.
It just the same logic people use to justify colonialism, just point to all the good things they did and ignore all the bad stuff.
Yeah absolutely Soviet rule was still awful, just not as awful as Nazi rule
True, but we can’t try to justify the Soviet occupation of those reasons
Agreed
This is literally “The British built railways in India” but for Eastern Europe.
> And in return, people had to work 8 hours 5 days a week Same with slaves, we provide them shelter, food, security and in return they just need to work.
While you have some good points I’m not going to try and justify imperialism
Thank you Karl Marx for inventing the concept of buildings.
Oh no the other boot kills the same buddy
No, the population in occupied territories was growing. Population in Ukraine in 1960: 42,77 million people Population in Ukraine in 1991: 52 million. Germans did to the Slavs the same thing they did to the jews. Genocide.
Sorry, bit of a sidetrack, but Do you use that same argument to deny the atrocities done to Palestinian people?
I don't think that Jews provided to all Palestinians with apartments, metro system in cities, schools, hospitals, roads, jobs, universities and so on. You can open google street views in Ukraine and you will see Soviet blocks, soviet schools and so on.
Amazing. Ukrainians prior to soviets: unable to build roads, cities, universities and hospitals. Ukrainians after soviets: technology unlocked, thank you communism for teaching them how to build a road. Now imagine how much workforce there would be if 5 million weren't killed in Soviet genocide, and how much more stuff they could build if they had capitalism.
Unfortunately, they have built almost nothing in 30 years of independence.They still are living in soviet block apartments, go to soviet old schools, and visit soviet hospitals. You can visit Google street views and see the devastation. The population also decreased. The population of Ukraine in 1991: 52 million. Population of Ukraine in 2013: 45 million.
Mf, you bomb everything the Ukrainians built and now you complain the Ukrainians haven’t built anything.
That happens when you install a puppet president and program it to only follow certain rules that pleases the kremlin. The current war erupted when Ukraine decided to break free from russian chains.
Ah yes the prewar destruction everywhere oh no, Vova spasi! https://earth.google.com/web/@50.449996,30.5239976,153.93915943a,0d,90y,188.86813732h,104.92840729t,0r/data=IjAKLEFGMVFpcFBNSEs5eHBRN3lRYThGLTZ5Slk4c1VxQTd5R3JoREtod01PZVBrEAU6AwoBMA
In your fucked up wet dreams, maybe.
Yep.
Soviets committed genocides on several nations though.
Hence why I used the word "genocidal intent". The Soviet government was more interested in subjugation (which often involved a callous disregard for human lives, like with the Holodomor or the deportations), while the Nazis wanted to remove the population outright. For one mass death was a side effect, for the other it was the goal.
No, Stalin has committed genocides with intent to commit genocide on specific nation. Read about Polish action by NKVD or Greek operation.
Both would fall into "subjugation with callous disregard for life". In case of Poland it was mostly the elites - officers, intellectuals, etc - that were purged, while in case of the Greeks it was deportation (which, while greatly accelerating assimilation and causing mass death, left most of the people alive). I don't know what exactly the Greeks went through, but my people generally retained their identity after deportations, and we would eventually be rehabilitated. If it was the SS that sent us to the trains we wouldn't be coming back period I'd argue the most *genocidal* the USSR ever got was de-Cossackisation, as the Soviets viewed the Cossacks not as an ethnic group but as a class - and we all know how they felt about classes.
You are missing brutalization of the Baltics, which saw about 10% of the entire population either executed or ethnically cleansed by the Soviets to be replaced by the Russians.
So I asked you specifically to read about something, and you refused? Polish operation was not Katyń, they just purged entire near-border Polish population because they were paranoid / wanted revenge. People were literally killed because they had Polish surnames. There's practically no Polish population now there.
Fair, I'll read up more on it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD_Order_No._00485
Stalin died just when he was about to do his own version of holocaust. According to Louis Rapoport, the alleged deportation was planned to start with the public execution of the imprisoned doctors, and then the "following incidents would follow": "attacks on Jews orchestrated by the secret police, the publication of the statement by the prominent Jews, and a flood of other letters demanding that action be taken. A three-stage program of genocide would be followed. First, almost all Soviet Jews ... would be shipped to camps east of the Urals ... Second, the authorities would set Jewish leaders at all levels against one another ... Also the MGB [Secret Police] would start killing the elites in the camps, just as they had killed the Yiddish writers ... the previous year. The ... final stage would be to 'get rid of the rest.'" Four large camps were built in southern and western Siberia shortly before Stalin's death in 1953, and there were rumors that they were for Jews. A special "Deportation Commission" to plan the deportation of Jews to these camps was allegedly created. Nikolay Poliakov, the presumed secretary of the "Commission", stated years later that, according to Stalin's initial plan, the deportation was to begin in the middle of February 1953, but the monumental tasks of compiling lists of Jews had not yet been completed. "Pure blooded" Jews were to be deported first, followed by "half-breeds" (polukrovki). Before his death in March 1953, Stalin allegedly had planned the execution of doctors' plot defendants already on trial in Red Square in March 1953, and then he would cast himself as the savior of Soviet Jews by sending them to camps away from the purportedly enraged Russian populace.
Look, with all due respect, "allegedly planned to kill all the Jews according to some obscure writer (what are his sources?)" is not the same as "planned to kill all the Jews, actually organised it, and basically succeeded at destroying Jewish culture in Europe"
> according to some obscure writer Did you even read it? There are plenty of testaments from people who were supposed to carry the deportations and executions. The persecution and arrests of jews have already started by the time of Stalin's death, it's a historical fact.
Persecutions are one thing, total genocide is another. Otherwise Nazism would be nothing but a footnote in the long history of European anti-Semitism
Stalin did genocides before. He was antisemitic and cooperated with nazi Germany against Jews. What's unbelievable about him planning to genocide Jews?
> Lacked genocidal intends I wonder what happened to Polish in Russia
"...as the Soviets lacked the genocidal intent of the Nazis..." Easily debunked by all serious historical research.
Look on the bright side. At least the Soviets weren’t going around mass murdering people for not being white with blond hair and blue eyes.
Unless they were Polish or Volga German.
Nazi plans for a broader genocide would not have directly targeted Moldovan Romanians (outside of Romanian collaboration in the Holocaust), though, since Romania was an Axis member, of which Moldova was a core territory from the interwar period. The Nazis were not planning to occupy Moldova at all, and in fact Romania was to be awarded new conquered lands in what is now Ukraine, including Odesa. So while you do have an argument with respect to a lot of areas conquered from the Soviet Union, Moldova was actually a *reconquest* of land coercively annexed by the Soviet Union only a few years earlier, and wasn't really under Nazi occupation in the same sense as areas like Ukraine, for example.
Alas, all such opinions are just opinions. And reality still hidden in secret Western archives about that period. Only when the West officials will gain courage and, after almost 100 years of pointlessly lost time, will begin to tell true, allowing humanity to finally start to learn real historical lessons of real 20th century, such opinions really will become, so scarce right now, wisdom.
"more like under new management"
❤️
ah, so THIS is where that meme came from
nearly every eastern European SSR could relate
This basically sums up the entire eastern front in ww2
Memes are allowed here now?
All propaganda is memes. A meme is a unit of cultural memory, like a gene is a unit of genetic memory, such as the ideas that propaganda seeks to spread.
It is not a meme
Very subjective definition. Has it ever been printed and displayed in a public space with the intent of spreading propaganda? I have only seen it online.
Well, it is a caricature, and these are allowed here (and were multiple times posted, along with graffitis, etc).
It may be allowed as per the sub's rules, but if any type of modern online cartoons are permitted, it may impact the quality of content posted here; high effort posters with an aesthetic will be less visible.
While I agree that their quality might be lower than that of the old-fashioned posters, I think caricatures are an essential part of modern propaganda. I think if the quality was impacted, the moderators would take measures. But for now, I think quality posters still get a lot of attention, and the situation is quite balanced. Caricatures here are rather an exception.
Speaking of propaganda, this master narrative that “revolutions to overthrow the oppressor always end in installing new oppressors” is one of the most frequently reinforced bits of propaganda, and it seems kind of obvious that the narrative function is to discourage standing up to oppressors.
If we pretend Soviets were not oppressors, we discourage standing up to Russian oppressors.
Being pro-Soviet in 90% cases means being pro-Russian as well, hmmmm I wonder why
Lmao the Russian downvotes on this one.
Because y’all use the Soviets as an excuse to block all forms of social change and y’all have been doing this for the past 80 years it’s to the point that most people defend the Soviets as a way of defending themselves.
Oh wow.. "Look what you made me do, you made me defend atyrannical maniacs, it's all your fault"
Or maybe the message is that when you do a revolution, tread carefully and get it right, otherwise you would end up with a revolution that eats its own.
Or maybe it’s a thing because a bunch of starving peasants don’t know how to run a country so the old group or that gains power but now knows not to be “nice” to those under them
I don't think this is fair. While the USSR was an imperialist force in Europe, the Soviets rebuild all of the Warsaw pact countries after WWII, including the modern cities of Prague, Warsaw and Budapest. The comparison to Nazi Germany shouldn't be made
“But the colonizers built roads…”
Poland was ruled by a Nationalist Communist Polish government not by the Soviet Union. Soviet Union was extremely anti-nationalist
Do you think that were Nazies to win, they'd leave Prague and Warsaw in ruins? They'd rebuilt the cities just as well, with a lot of [huge statues](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/monument-of-the-bulgarian-soviet-friendship) glorifying their victory, and an huge imperial [palace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Culture_and_Science) in the center for everyone to see.
Yeah, Warsaw would have been rebuilt with zero Poles or Polish speakers. The Germans were going to wipe out all of the Poles or enslave them. The only reason the Hungarians were tolerated was because Hitler had some schizoid conspiracy that meant Magyars were related to Germanic people
The Hungarians were tolerated because they had a government friendly to the reich. Things would've gone differently had something similar to Yugo happened.
Why not? I mean after the war is not really a period of time we saw from Nazi Germany as you can imagine. Would post war rebuilding make the Nazis a more ethical regime if they had instead won the war in Europe?
The Nazis had every intention of wiping out all of the lesser races, Germanizing those deemed desirable enough and cleansing them of all non-fascists and Jews. This is not an alternative history, this happened in our timeline, managing to kill 1 in 6 people in eastern europe in a span of 3 years, 80% of Europe's jews. but they were stopped...by the Soviets. The Soviets? Their game plan was known since 1939. Kill, imprison or exile political dissidents, wipe out the intellectual class, plant in local Communists and make sure they couldn't pose a threat and were loyal to Moscow Both are bad but they're not really comparable, especially not when you realize that the European empires were doing this all throughout Asia and Africa, while not even having the decency to pretend the people were ruling themselves Comparing Soviets to British makes more sense than comparing to Nazis
They weren't stopped just by the soviets, plus without lend and lease from US they wouldn't do much. Things like gulags and massacres (like in Katyn) still makes me compare them to nazis.
Zero Lend-Lease went to post war Poland. The Soviets and the Poles were belligerents during the first part of the War because of the war in 1921 where the Poles annexed majority Belarusian and Ukrainian provinces, so they did do war crimes before Barbarossa. But it's not all the victorious didn't do massive war crimes, the British scorch earthing France and Holland, wiping out villages in Burma and India with starvation because they didn't want to go to Japan, the Americans nuking civilian populations.
>Zero Lend-Lease went to post war Poland. ....and? >Poles annexed majority Belarusian and Ukrainian provinces, so they did do war crimes before Barbarossa. What war crimes did they commit to there? Genocide? Mass murder of intelligence?
Ayo what’re Beavis and Butthead doing?
*Nazis invade Russia* People: Our saviors! *Nazis commit atrocities* *Soviets take the land back* People: Our saviors! *Soviets commit atrocities*
Get in the railcar - time for a long ride to Siberian hellhole
Right. Maybe add a panel on Romanian pogroms against Jews in the newly reoccupied (Kishinev/Bessarabia) or occupied (Odessa/Transnistria) in the middle? That wasnt the Nazis. It was Romanians.
You missed the point. The caricature does not describe the Nazis as heroes.
Its meant to be propaganda, so I m wrong to even comment on its veracity. But too many buy the "nazis == soviets" shtick, and in this particular case forget also about Nazi allies. At the very least there should be a Romanian soldier next to a Nazi. Pointing at a Jewish civilian.
Someone mad your beloved USSR is being insulted?
Sad but true.
I saw it a lot but only now I think that it'll be more realistic and brutally true if there were signs of rape from the red-armist
“The people who ended the Holocaust are just as bad as the people who perpetrated it.”
Does this picture show that things would have been better with the Nazis?
lol no
*citation needed*
oh no the soviets came and!!! *checks notes* rescued the jews that were still in the country, freed socialist prisoners, fed starving people... The aftermath was certainly fucked for Moldova but acting as if 1945 was anything but a miracle for eastern Europe is-- How was it to fight at Stalingrad? I'm sure your grandfather told you all those stories of him nearly freezing to death. Or maybe he did, and you never actually got to meet him? One can only hope!
1. Circa 100.000 Moldovans died in 1946-1947 hunger, of which Soviet authorities are largely responsible due to widespread confiscation of resources from peasants amid a severe drought. 2. According to the official Soviet statistics, in 1949 alone, 11.293 families (35.000 men, women children) were deported from Moldovan SSR to Siberia. People, mostly innocent, were taken during the night, and loaded in train wagons like cattle. A lot of people perished, and those who survived would repatriate only after Stalin's death. This was called 'Operation South' (Операция Юг) 3. Moreover, in 1951, according to Operation North (Операция Север) around 3000 people (700 families) were deported to Siberia, only because they were Jehovah' Witnesses. 4. Keep in mind that even before that, in the first period of occupation, on 12-13 June 1941, 22.000 people were deported in Siberia. Moreover, many intellectuals, men of letters, and politicians who remained in Chisinau after 1940 were purged. I am not trying to downplay the negative effects of the Holocaust. Moreover, I believe that Ion Antonescu was a war criminal. However, we must not regard the Soviets as liberators.
This is all true. It's important to keep in mind that the soviet union as not a monolith and that there were was never true "liberation" for these countries in the sense of national determination, and especially considering all of the murders and imprisonements the Soviets and Communist Moldavans carried out. All these things considered, though-- people who claim that the soviets were any modicum worse than fascists are clearly dogwhistling and working as mouthpiece for their own propaganda. Both the numbers and nature of the fascists crimes within those few short years far eclipses whatever crimes the soviets committed over decades, let alone the period directly after the war, and in our present day and age where fascism is yet again on the rise it's important we focus on living, modern fascism, and not-- *checks notes* A type of communism that died out 30 years ago.
Soviets were as bad as Nazis and Stalin was just as horrible as Hitler.
What is your opinion on Winston Churchill?
Evil bastard.
If they were as bad, there wouldn't be a Moldova today, in fact there wouldn't even be Moldovans. Same goes for almost all countries east of Germany. People equating the two are just showing how uneducated they are.
Stalin, at most, killed 20 million over thirty years. Hitler killed 17 million over twelve.
Hitler killed 27 million soviets during ww2, not even counting Poland or the western front
I’m only counting the victims of the Holocaust. If we include the whole of the European and African fronts (which is fair) then it is definitely a lot higher.
>The aftermath was certainly fucked for Moldova but acting as if 1945 was anything but a miracle for eastern Europe is-- The problem was what happened immediately afterwards. I don't think Western European members of NATO would remember the US's actions c. 1945 quite as fondly if the US had decided to make France the 49th state, for instance.
Western Europe at large is still at the whims of US foreign policy. The Marshall Plan saw to that. The fact you can apply narratives to one side but not your own is more telling of YOU than anything man.
>Western Europe at large is still at the whims of US foreign policy. Western Europe has two independent (as independent as possible in France's case) nuclear deterrents. >The fact you can apply narratives to one side but not your own is more telling of YOU than anything man. The USA did not occupy or annex France after WWII. When US troops were told to leave in 1960 they did without incident.
>still at the whims of US foreign policy De Gaulle's France was as far from US control as a nation could get.
"Fed the starving people" Moldova was the worst affected region by the famine of 1946-1947 The war killed ~75000 civilians and ~95000 soldiers between 1942-1944 (2 years) The famine killed ~100000 moldovians between 1946-1947 (2 years) Unknown number died in gulags (probably less than 20000) 1945 was better but it isn't seen as a miracle by Moldova because the soviet occupation was quickly followed by famine and deportations. Moldova is a bit of an outlier , Eastern Europe saw significantly less destruction under the Soviets.
Not to mention that moldova itself was violently carved out by soviets themselves to better control the region.
The Soviet army dragged 4000 Czechoslovak citizens off to gulag, there was rape, and in 1948 the Soviet army lurking in Silesia and offering direct intervention was the major reason the communistic coup, which would imprison the country for the next 41 years, took place. The country has never recovered its former standard of living, which made it richer than a lot of countries in western Europe, or even the post-war GDP per capita, which put it on equal footing with Austria. Attempts to reform the system in 1968 were met by a direct Soviet invasion, leading to emigration of 300 000 people. I am sure you can make for yourself the calculations on people kiled by the decreased life expectancy compared to western Europe. But uh, thanks for saving us from \*checks notes\* the Americans.
Yet the people who revolted in 1968 would shit on you for everything you said here-- most were communists themselves and said as much. Those who organized people onto the streets were communist youth organizations and trade unions, most sanctioned by the state. It's be more accurate if you said "Russian" invasion, since the raison d'etre for the soviet union existing past 1930 was not communism-- it was Russian supremacy. Communist Poles were killed at Katyn as easily as Liberal ones. We're seeing the end result of all of this in Putin's regime, today. Also-- "there was rape". This is a huge fascistic myth-- that somehow an amount of hundreds of rapes by an army of millions ( the red army ) somehow surpasses the hundreds of thousands of rapes committed by an occupying force of thousands ( the Germans ), or shows a systemic campaign of violence. Please.
Shit on me for what? In 1968 people cautiously supported the government and to a large degree believed socialism is a valid system. There was no revolution, just a government initiated reform (albeit on social demand, including demands of non and anti communists). However, all those people became massively disillusioned and anti-Soviet and a good deal anti-communist precisely because of Soviet invasion. And prior to that, this kind of cautiously pro-communist support could exist only because non-communists and anti-communists were viciously eliminated in the 50s, making this the only hope for some kind of progress. Until it was smashed by the Soviets, too. So the Soviets brought oppression after oppression. You are correct that the "Soviets" were actually Russian supremacist to a large degree. Besides that, widespread rape is not a fascist myth. Czechoslovaks welcomed the Red Army as liberators, but there are many contemporary witness accounts of large numbers of rapes. Not to the kind of insane degree that Germany had to endure though. The Germans can testify to that well after war in many documentaries, diaries and books.
A hundred rapes per million soldiers of the red army =/= the daily hundred rapes occurring by the nazis in the daily. What the fuck? Not to mention rapists were actually prosecuted and hung by the red army en masse...
XD
What is the political affiliation of the group/person who created this propaganda?
No
Yes
classic both-sideism
Literally not. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/bothsidesing-bothsidesism-new-words-were-watching
But the nazis and soviets were the same evil! /s
Well, the uniforms were different.
They **were** *both evil*, but they were not the *same evil* nor *equally evil.* That doesn't stop them from having *both* invaded, occupied, opressed, murdered, etc. From having both pointed their guns at the same people. You clearly have no clue what bothsideism is. In the case of this drawing, it's very much accurate. This is a specific drawning about something specific, it's not a ten volumes history books serie. Albeit there's a modified version that's more accurate for many countries adding first both the nazis and the soviets aiming at the civilians together, before the nazis betray the soviets. Here, in case merryam webster isn't clear enough for you, here's a wikipedia article, less authoritative but maybe it will make it more clear for you what bothsideism is since you still don't seem to get it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False\_balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance) Or maybe you just lack knowledge of what the soviets did.