No, lol. This was like a bingo-card for generic, lazy, unsourced anti-communism. I’ve heard every one of these arguments before.
Deaths by the state - Capitalists, fascists, sabateurs, Tsarists, landlords, and kulaks were targeted by the state. These weren’t random killings, but targeted attacks towards classes of people that had taken up arms against the people, and as such this was popularly supported. The communists weren’t butchers, nor were they killing people willy-nilly.
Famine - Prior to collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s, famine was common in Russia. The kulak system of farming, itself a bourgeois model, was extremely exploitative and very inefficient. The 1930s famine was the last outright famine outside of wartime, and was caused by a combination of weather disaster (which collectivized farming was capable of resisting better) and kulaks killing their crops and livestock to resist the Red Army.
Life Expectancy - Life expectancy climbed not just because of general sanitation, but because housing and employment were gaurunteed, healthcare and education were free and high quality, and millions were directly lifted from poverty. Housing itself didn’t just increase in quantity, but quality, as prior living conditions outside of major cities were in horrible shacks. Deaths due to hypothermia went down dramatically thanks to improved soviet housing.
Lend-Lease - The soviets are understood to have been capable of beating the Nazis without lend-lease. Lend-Lease was very helpful, no doubt, but it arrived after the soviets had turned the tides on the Nazi onslaught. The Red Army was responsible for 85% of the combat against the Nazis, and their large investment in heavy industry prior to the war was crucial in their success, despite coming into the 20th century far behind the rest of Europe.
From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. And it is a salient point that the majority of the aid was received after the tide of the war had already turned against the Germans on the Eastern Front. The Soviets had already won the critical battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. Germany was already losing the war when Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union had any significant effect, and that effect was minuscule compared with Soviet production at the time. By the time the first Sherman laid its tracks on Soviet soil, the writing was already very much on the wall for the Third Reich.
Although Stalin, Khrushchev, and other Soviet politicians were very complimentary about the Lend-Lease program helping them win the war, the statistics tell a very different story. The noted historian David M. Glantz points out in this regard,
“Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941–1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates….”
He further states that without Lend-Lease, the Soviets still would have won, but the war would have taken 12 to 18 months longer.
Foreign Aid - In all reality, the USSR, Cuba, PRC, and Vietnam don’t recieve much, if anything, in aid. The US Empire is the one that relies on aid, though it doesn’t call it that. The US Empire runs on imperialism. Through export of capital, setting up comprador regimes, and outsourcing while maintaining monopoly on tech, the US Empire plunders the entire global south. Unequal exchange with the global south keeps the south underdeveloped, it’s equal exchange with fellow global south countries like the PRC that is causing actual development in the global south.
Oh I know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re just brainwashed. Too far gone for anyone to talk sense into. And if you truly think that the USSR and Cuba didn’t get much aid from other countries including the US, you really are just dumb. I do not have the time nor do I care enough to educate you. All I can say is, you really need to learn how to research FACTS not myths and lies. Also I have one more truth for you. COMMUNISM HAS NEVER WORKED. I know I know, maybe just another 20 or 30 genocides and world wars from now and they’ll get the kinks worked out. But I doubt it. And maybe just maybe one will be able to survive without the help of a capitalist system and not end up being a 3rd world country with a shit economy. I personally have friends who grew up in Russia (it was still the USSR when they were about 10) and China and south Korea and Mexico and Vietnam. Every one of them will tell you how much better the US is than where they grew up. Communism is perfect on paper, but it will never ever work because it requires people to be perfect in order for it to work properly. And people will never be perfect. That’s why capitalism and democracy works better because they at least somewhat keep that in check. My olive branch and honestly my best idea for what the US could become would be a socialist democracy similar to Sweden. That would actually be able to work and would be very beneficial for all the citizens.
“Here, then, is the brief history of brainwashing,” [Timothy] Melley writes in a 2011 paper for Grey Room. “The concept began as an [O]rientalist propaganda fiction created by the CIA to mobilize domestic support for a massive military build-up. This fiction proved so effective that the CIA’s operations directorate believed it and began a furious search for a real mind control weapon. The search resulted not in a miraculous new weapon but a program of simulated brainwashing designed as a prophylactic against enemy mistreatment. This simulation in turn became the real basis for interrogating detainees in the war on terror.”
The US being “better” to live in - As I explained, the US is an imperialist country that plunders the world for its resources. It isn’t a closed loop with a system that works, it’s a global parasite.
Surviving without aid - Socialist countries recieve sanctions, embargoes, coup attempts, and genocide from capitalist countries, not aid. The US Empire has committed genocide against Koreans, Vietnamese, and far more to serve its own interests. Socialist countries do often start in the third world, not as imperialist countries, and develop on their own labor and not via imperialism like the US Empire.
Communism on paper - There’s absolutely nothing about communism that requires people to be in perfect order for it to work. I genuinely have no clue what you mean by this, I’ve heard this before but it doesn’t actually make any sense.
Communism and democracy - Communism and socialism are more democratic than capitalism can be, because the working classes are in control, rather than private capitalists.
Sweden - Sweden is a capitalist country that, like the US, depends on imperialism to fund its safety nets. Like the US, Sweden is a dictatorship of capital.
No, I’m not “brainwashed,” I’ve just done far more research into the subject of socialism and communism both in theory and in practice. It’s like you’re trying to be someone’s hyper-conservative uncle right now, I’ve heard all of these before and none of them are valid.
Big fat 0, unless you mean the genocide communists thwarted in 1945
World wars
Holy shit lmao, the sheer desperation and illiteracy it takes to try and pin the world wars on communism when ww1 started before there were any communist countries and ww2 was started by genocidal german capitalists. You are flailing, my guy. Red, mad and nude in the extreme.
No, lol. This was like a bingo-card for generic, lazy, unsourced anti-communism. I’ve heard every one of these arguments before.
Deaths by the state - Capitalists, fascists, sabateurs, Tsarists, landlords, and kulaks were targeted by the state. These weren’t random killings, but targeted attacks towards classes of people that had taken up arms against the people, and as such this was popularly supported. The communists weren’t butchers, nor were they killing people willy-nilly.
Famine - Prior to collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s, famine was common in Russia. The kulak system of farming, itself a bourgeois model, was extremely exploitative and very inefficient. The 1930s famine was the last outright famine outside of wartime, and was caused by a combination of weather disaster (which collectivized farming was capable of resisting better) and kulaks killing their crops and livestock to resist the Red Army.
Life Expectancy - Life expectancy climbed not just because of general sanitation, but because housing and employment were gaurunteed, healthcare and education were free and high quality, and millions were directly lifted from poverty. Housing itself didn’t just increase in quantity, but quality, as prior living conditions outside of major cities were in horrible shacks. Deaths due to hypothermia went down dramatically thanks to improved soviet housing.
Lend-Lease - The soviets are understood to have been capable of beating the Nazis without lend-lease. Lend-Lease was very helpful, no doubt, but it arrived after the soviets had turned the tides on the Nazi onslaught. The Red Army was responsible for 85% of the combat against the Nazis, and their large investment in heavy industry prior to the war was crucial in their success, despite coming into the 20th century far behind the rest of Europe.
Source.
You have no clue what you’re talking about.
Surgical Dissasembly of a Proud Cultist, Cowbee, oil and pastel, 2025. Acquired by museum same year
Thanks comrade 🫡
Oh I know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re just brainwashed. Too far gone for anyone to talk sense into. And if you truly think that the USSR and Cuba didn’t get much aid from other countries including the US, you really are just dumb. I do not have the time nor do I care enough to educate you. All I can say is, you really need to learn how to research FACTS not myths and lies. Also I have one more truth for you. COMMUNISM HAS NEVER WORKED. I know I know, maybe just another 20 or 30 genocides and world wars from now and they’ll get the kinks worked out. But I doubt it. And maybe just maybe one will be able to survive without the help of a capitalist system and not end up being a 3rd world country with a shit economy. I personally have friends who grew up in Russia (it was still the USSR when they were about 10) and China and south Korea and Mexico and Vietnam. Every one of them will tell you how much better the US is than where they grew up. Communism is perfect on paper, but it will never ever work because it requires people to be perfect in order for it to work properly. And people will never be perfect. That’s why capitalism and democracy works better because they at least somewhat keep that in check. My olive branch and honestly my best idea for what the US could become would be a socialist democracy similar to Sweden. That would actually be able to work and would be very beneficial for all the citizens.
You just arrived here on Lemmy, parroting every Redditor talking point, and we’re brainwashed? Sorry to pop the media bubble you’d been living under.
Also brainwashing isn’t real, in fact it was a CIA cold war psyop. The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America
Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”
Good Lord, imagine rattling off all these stale, pre-programmed thought terminating cliches, and trying to call other people brainwashed
This is another ridiculous comment.
The US being “better” to live in - As I explained, the US is an imperialist country that plunders the world for its resources. It isn’t a closed loop with a system that works, it’s a global parasite.
Surviving without aid - Socialist countries recieve sanctions, embargoes, coup attempts, and genocide from capitalist countries, not aid. The US Empire has committed genocide against Koreans, Vietnamese, and far more to serve its own interests. Socialist countries do often start in the third world, not as imperialist countries, and develop on their own labor and not via imperialism like the US Empire.
Communism on paper - There’s absolutely nothing about communism that requires people to be in perfect order for it to work. I genuinely have no clue what you mean by this, I’ve heard this before but it doesn’t actually make any sense.
Communism and democracy - Communism and socialism are more democratic than capitalism can be, because the working classes are in control, rather than private capitalists.
Sweden - Sweden is a capitalist country that, like the US, depends on imperialism to fund its safety nets. Like the US, Sweden is a dictatorship of capital.
No, I’m not “brainwashed,” I’ve just done far more research into the subject of socialism and communism both in theory and in practice. It’s like you’re trying to be someone’s hyper-conservative uncle right now, I’ve heard all of these before and none of them are valid.
Big fat 0, unless you mean the genocide communists thwarted in 1945
Holy shit lmao, the sheer desperation and illiteracy it takes to try and pin the world wars on communism when ww1 started before there were any communist countries and ww2 was started by genocidal german capitalists. You are flailing, my guy. Red, mad and nude in the extreme.
Also, format your shit