This author also wrote Archipelag Gulag, which is well known lecture in eastern europe. Take a look at that aswell, cold story bro.

read Grey Trylogy, it will blow your mind

read any brothers grimm story, it will also blow your mind

i did!

inb4 demiurge

what can i say, the guy is a prison snitch and talentless propagandist liar who helped destroy the best alternative to capitalism and 30 million people.

> best alternative to capitalism
If USSR was unable to defend itself against "prison snitch and talentless propagandist" then the whole system was just not sustainable and simply not viable at all.

What is even more interesting,is that in capitalist countries elites are interested in maintaining the system as a whole, generation after generation, and basically, this is why it lasts for more then two hundred years. But in USSR, greedy communist party elites destroyed the whole system only after 70 year. Care to know why?

because history is largely circumstantial?

No, because USSR (please note, that I not talking about communism - it was never built) became irrelevant ideologically, politically and economically after only 70 years.

So irrelevant that people still have to pour shit all over it, 20 years later.

i don't understand what you really mean. :)

If the ideology is irrelevant, why is all modern media still fighting it?

Because they are capitalist media, and capitalists are always defending their most important asset - capitalism system. So they fight not only ex USSR political and economical system - like Cuba - but also system which, for example, wants to be independent of modern capitalist world - like Lybia - or system, which doesn't want to give away for free it's leadership in some specific geographical region - like Syria.

This is what I told before - capitalism defends itself, sometimes very aggressively, but always very effectively.

And so it turns out the ideology of USSR was more relevant to the entire world than capitalism, as the only alternative for the future. And it still is, which is why capitalism still has to defend itself against it.

Well, population usually accepts any system, which is endorsed by elites. For example, you can remember Pol Pot in Kampuchea and his Khmer Rouge who did Cambodian Genocide killing hundreds of thousands of civilian people for nothing.

But in order to be sustainable over time system should be relevant in all major aspects to all participants, and be able to defend itself against other competing systems. USSR was simply not such system and it falls.

Also, it cannot be better alternative, because in the end almost nobody who lived in USSR supported this system - and this is the primary reason of its demise and collapse.

So, I guess Carthage was erased by Rome because it failed to be relevant in all aspects.

USSR fell not because of enemy invasion, but because corrupted elites decided to dismantle it (Belavezha Accords), and this decision was met with due support from lower classes. So your example is not applicable in this context.

Yes, because USSR existed in vacuum.

So you want to tell that USSR collapsed because of outer reasons? Could you mention, what it was?

oh boy, do I get to pick more than one reason?? can things really be related, interdependent, and circumstantial???
1. http://oper.ru/news/print.php?t=1051601039
2. http://oper.ru/news/print.php?t=1051601808

I need your opinion, not opinion of Goblin-Puchkov.

gorbochev was a bastard child of margaret thatcher and ronald reagan. i don't think it's my opinion, you can tell by the looks.

From what I could gather from the shitty Google translation is that life was good for the guy in the USSR?
Isn't that an utterly one-sided view on things?

Hehe, you are very close to the point. :)

No, it's not. Free education, healthcare, school, housing, transportation, all basic needs. For a working guy, it was definitely better than any other country, even if he didn't understand it and wanted to have 100 types of meats and wear Levi's jeans or get crack cocain at a street corner. But yes, of course, if you were a professor, you got payed barely more than a truck driver, and you couldn't own a business. It's one sided, but it's the side I would prefer.

Well, I dunno.
Isn't a state that's being kept in a dictatorship of the proletariat the opposite of progress?
In Marx' theory it was supposed to be a time of transition into socialist democracy, no?
Living under this dictatorship would mean that the struggle of classes is still ongoing since one is oppressing the other?!

I also cannot see how the USSR really was a dictatorship of the proletariat. Rosa Luxemburg has been questioning this from the beginning.

It depends on how you define progress. I think intellectually (science) and spiritually (culture), things were progressing better than anywhere else, even if the people thought the west was better at everything, but that was just because they were seeing top selections, not the academic infighting and corruption, not led toys and Britneys. And yes, the system was a multi-level representative democracy, because local party leaders were elected.

It was the dictatorship of the proletariate because the wages and rewards, such as promotion, were intended to be set based on how hard someone worked, not on how much virtual currency they generated. For example, Gorbochev was promoted because he was considered to be highly successful in agriculture.

Well, obviously they were elected. I do not question the direct democracy of soviets and I strongly believe that it's the way democracy should be like in theory.

What I do question is what the CPSU did with their power. I don't know if I'm mixing up things with the GDR now, but in reality it was the dictatorship of one party with no room for pluralism.
Again, that's what Luxemburg criticized about the Bloschewik revolution iirc.

Yeah, the party totally dropped the ball. There were various fractions, and Andropov was a better alternative to Gorbachev, but the guy was a likable smooth talker, even if he was an idiot, and won the post.

Fractions? As in liberal parties, conservative parties, democratic parties in general?
Or do you mean CPSU members with different shades of red?

There was more difference in the communist party than there is between Republicans and Democrats in US. For example, there were plenty of people who wanted to go the Chinese way, and plenty that wanted to stick to planned economy. Yet, the liberals who won out are more liberal and pro-market than any US congressman. The immediately formed Russian parliament was largely made out of these former party members, but for some reason the 'liberal russia' party was the majority, with the former party member Boris Yeltsin leading the charge to privatization and kicking all countries out of the union DESPITE referendums saying vast majority of people wanted to preserve the union. Do you think he just just spawned from satans turd?

And this is another aspect of USSR system collapse - almost nobody wanted to defend it, and those who wanted, were as unfit for this purpose as you are. No offence intended. :)

Why would I take offense from someone who doesn't know what 'geopolitics' means?

Well, geopolitics is context where all systems do exist. And in this context stronger system will sustain (like USA), and weaker systems will perish (like USSR).

So you want to tell that USSR collapsed because USSR was weaker system? Could you mention, what it was that made it weaker relative to USA?

I already did. USSR weaknesses were outdated ideological, political and economical systems. I tend to agree though that USSR was superior in some aspects of science - but in the end it did not help to preserve the state.

And the most important - after death of Stalin USSR lost it's core principle around which it was built. Death of the Stalin is the moment when slow decay of all state systems has started, because the whole state lost that crucial component around which it was built. Do you want to know what it was?

Oh god, please. I'm dying to know the ultimate truth. Please, please, show me light. Was it eating Ukrainian babies? Oh, I'm getting ahead of you. Please tell me.

The Stalin itself and his unlimited dictatorship of terror on every citizen of the state - from factory worker to communist party elites.

Stalin did not eat babies - but he never hesitated when he had to execute some high-lever communist party executive if this executive became obsessed with his personal power and enrichment. So when Stalin gone, communist party elites were freed from this burden - and they started to rot immediately.

Basically, USSR system was created single-handedly by Stalin, is product of Stalin's mind and can function well enough only with Stalin as head of the state. Which naturally led to it's eventual collapse in around 40 years after Stalin death.

It would have functioned very well without Gorbachev working extremely hard to undermine it at every stage possible. What would happen to any country the leader of which clearly accepts the enemies premises that he is in charge of an evil country and clearly speaks about how hard he is working on dismantling it and giving everyone freedom?

I fully agree with you on this. And basically, what you wrote aligns pretty well with my passage about rotten elites in my comment above.

But in fact, this is only tip of the iceberg. USSR was ineffective in too many areas at once, apart from political one. And it started before Gorbachev was elected.

You seem to think Gorbachev and the "rot" was a product of USSR, but it was a product of the Western propaganda and advertising. The war started the moment revolution happened, way before Stalin, and to win, the West had to try a lot of things, like allowing unions win, increasing pay and working conditions. Like making Rambo and Rocky movies, like financing radio stations and border countries and everything else Goebbels loves, including the idea of inevitability of the crash of USSR.

What are you defending here by the way? Marxism? Leninism? Stalinism? Chruschtschow? Breschnew? Glasnost&Perestroika?

It's never really distinguishable through your comments imo. Serious question!

It's not distinguishable because I'm criticizing bullshit, not defending anything but history.

Sorry, I don't get it.
What is "the best alternative to capitalism" then?

genocide. stalin has to eat everyone before global warming does.

You could've just said 'cba' or something. I wasn't trying to imply anything. I'm just curious.

I think this picture will help you to understand Demiurge better.

You're curious, but you already know all you need to know, I can't say anything you haven't heard or had an opportunity to read before.

I'm asking you about your views on the matter. I can't possibly know them.

don't bother with him I've quickly realized he just throws shit out of his ass and refuses to take a concrete point on a subject so no one can dispute anything with him. he'll just fucking jump into a conversation and act like he's more sophisticated than everyone on the subject of politics and freedoms and in the end when you ask him "what's your stance on this, you think this is bad? or this is good?"

Typical Demiurge response would be: "I lyke french fry"

You don't know Demis views on Russian policies/politics by now?!

Say what you want about Russia, Ivan Drago used to scare the shit out of me as kid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6K3IvJzJRg

Auf auf, Genosse Yeltsin!

is dere pictures n shit?

Wow.