Comment by eaa | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eaa | Hacker News Reader

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Well, your post has no question, but I will comment anyway.

First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism.

As for popularity of communism, well, Red Army was victorious, USSR was one of those who survived and won, so it's ideology was gaining supporters. There were many true believers in ideas of communism. E.g in socialist Czechoslovakia there was an attempt to build "socialism with a human face." In USSR there was a generation called "sixtiers" who were true believers in communism but saw stalinism as something horrible that should never happen again. But, for better or for worse, it looks like believers was the last thing the communist party needed.

By the way, the book "Monday begins on Saturday" by Strugatsky brothers is exactly about a RnD institute (almost) full of people sincerely trying to make world a better place. Strugatsky brothers were believers themselves. To the end of USSR they have become bitter haters.

PS. I am not stating that communism is good or better than capitalism.

The double agent Oleg Gordievsky was at heart a sixtier, and after hearing about the demise of the prague spring, while either drunk, stupid, or unbelievably brave - if I have the story right - actually indicated his desire to defect, while on duty as a KGB officer in Denmark, by phoning his wife and going on a tearful tirade against the Soviet Union.

He knew the line was bugged, likely by both PET and the KGB. His cries were heard, and after a "chance" meeting at a squash game he became a double agent, years later stationed in London where he nearly became the rezident (~CEO) at the Embassy. He was betrayed by Aldrich Ames at some point around 1985, and went on to become the only (as far as I'm aware) person to be exfiltrated from the Soviet Union directly under the nose of the KGB. Not a bad life story.

"First of all, I am not going to defend soviet concentration camps, USSR has had it's own share of sins. But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist. So, no matter how disgusting the stalinism was, it cannot be compared to nazism."

Wait, your whole argument for why Stalinism can not be compared to Naziism was that jews could become members of the communist party?

And the Jews who became members of the Communist Party, even those at the top of it, were still not safe from the anti-semitism of the regime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1nsk%C3%BD_trial

Not quite.

Stalinism/communism provided you a moral/ideological choice: to be part of it or to oppose it. Although sometimes people who were taking the side of stalinism and were active in whistleblowing and finger pointing in the name of ideological purity were later repressed themselves.

Nazism, on the other hand, gives you no choice if you are a jew. It is already decided for you.

But again, stalinism was awful. I am not going to defend it. I too have some far relatives who died because of it. My grandmother survived thanks to luck. But to compare communism or even stalinism to nazism is wrong.

Not quite.

> Stalinism/communism provided you a moral/ideological choice: to be part of it or to oppose it. Although sometimes people who were taking the side of stalinism and were active in whistleblowing and finger pointing in the name of ideological purity were later repressed themselves.

The point is there them being repressed themselves. Stalin, & Co. were rather indifferent to who was pointing fingers at whom with regards to who goes to GULAG first.

Very often both the "stukach," and his victim were sharing the same train to Magadan.

The irony of course being that the soviet union was no stranger to antisemitism (an heritage that a lot of modern leftist organisations perpetuate).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Uni...

"But comparison of Third Reich and USSR is an anti-communist propaganda cliché. For obvious reasons: no jew could become a member of national-socialist party, but anyone could become a communist."

The main reason Jews could become communist in the USSR is that Stalin died before he could commit his own explusion/genocide. Had he lived, he would have likely used the Doctor's Plot to deport Soviet Jews to Siberia. Read Stalin's Last Crime:

https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Last-Crime-Against-1948-1953-...

several million people died in the famine during the initial forced collectivization in Ukraine and other soviet states. Walter Duranty, an American reporter lied to the West about the extent of the famines and added to many elites' delusions about soviet communism. this isn't propaganda, it's history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

I know. Four little sisters & brothers of my grandma among them.

"no jew could become a member of national-socialist party"

Hitler's no.2 was Jewish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice

That a one-eighth Jewish man was allowed to stay in the Party due to a personal dispensation from the Führer, against Himmler's strenuous objections, does not make the point you seem to be aiming at.

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