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Comment by notastartup | Hacker News Reader

As someone very interested in Soviet Union, it's system, this is a great resource. I'd love it if this was available on kindle or a paperback.

Even Russians will say Soviet Union is shit or people will react like, 'why are you learning russian and so obsessed with Soviet Union', I think it's because I think it could've been a great system, it's a noble ideology that men and women of all races are integrated and all receive the similar dividends but human greed and corruption always ruins things. I don't like the way people have been persecuted because of Soviet Union, but I find it's technologies and philosophies very interesting.

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I hope your research leads to the correct conclusion that trying to force people into equality leads to the use of force to stop dissent, and leads people to flee or campaign against it.

Socialism ends in death and misery, every single time. At this point death and misery is a feature, not a bug that can be fixed.

i'd like to hear more about this, exactly how horribly miserable would you end up if you have trillions and you would be forced to give up 99% of your wealth?

Giving it all up was just the "equalizing" part. Being incriminated, prosecuted and sentenced for having employed in some way other people's work was the real face of the system.

you need to be careful at the terms because "socialism" in communists countries and USA means "communism" and socialism in nord & western europe means higher taxes and a bigger public sector & public services (with afferent bureaucracy). Communism didn't fare well for obvious reasons while europe with all its problems, endures.

I'd say pretty miserable, may end up in suicide.

But the biggest issue would be that someone else would now control that money. And there are no guarantees that they would do it better.

The loss of wealth is one thing. The loss of freedom to pursue your own lifes choices would be worse. Add to that the loss of the ability to leave and find a different society that suited your tastes - well, that would be a very miserable existence indeed.

That's not true, look at Sweden, France, Germany, UK ... all practising socialism. It's helped their people with free health care, education. There are many good things about socialism.

The Bolsheviks were dictatorial bastards, no doubt. And many people think Bolshevik communism is the only way to go, it certainly is not.

This is only true for the American populist definition of socialism. Here in Europe we usually talk about social democracy, where basic needs of people (healtcare, education, not starving) are addressed by the state, but one is free to form private enterprises (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model). This is quite different from the brand of socialism the USSR was aiming for, where all private property would have been abolished.

"The Bolsheviks were dictatorial bastards, no doubt. And many people think Bolshevik communism is the only way to go, it certainly is not."

Ah yes, the True Scotsman defense for socialism.

Not that it matters, because pointing to the UK of all places (or any place else on your list, for that matter) as an example of socialism is, to put it mildly, 'confused' about socialism, those countries, or both.

They're practicing it to a (very) limited degree. People are still allowed to do pretty much anything they want.

Also, USSR was not socialist, it was technically a state capitalism system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism

Add Canada to that list. Free market but it's definitely trying to emulate the socialist policy successes in Scandinavian countries.

> Socialism ends in death and misery, every single time.

Leninism and its descendents might, but every country in the developed West -- where the 19th Century socialists criticism of capitalism was focussed, and whose conditions their program was largely designed for -- adopted, between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, a substantial portion of the socialist program, and its generally not ended in "death and misery", indeed, compared to those same countries experience under the system for which the name "capitalism" was created, its alleviated the "death and misery".

You can't really judge "socialism" by the results of a particular family of efforts to implement it outside of the context for which it was designed, which is exactly what judging socialism by Leninism and its descendants is.

I don't agree with that at all.

For a start, socialism goes back further than Marx. The defining characteristic of socialism is the abolition of ownership of private property. Socialism, in the Marxian view, was what was going to arise given the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Everywhere this has been tried, it has ended in death and misery.

The creation of a welfare state is not socialism. It's not even close, unless you want to do some post-hoc rebranding.

The philosophies were a ruse, no-one at the top tier lived accordingly.

"To everyone according to their needs" sounds noble in theory but I'm not sure it would ever be workable in practice, without externalities (like labor camps, authoritarian force) subsidizing it.

That ideology was just a tool to prop up a system of occupation. What really happened behind all that was an ongoing russification all over the Soviet Union, effects of which make themselves visible in an outstanding manner today in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Latvia, and other countries. Yeah, it was pretty that red color from outside, but living under it was a nightmare (unless you were reaaally stupid, in which case the system took care of you).

You should be able to track down a reasonably priced copy of the hardback edition via a good used bookstore. The copy I have now I got via Alibris a few years back.

>I'd love it if this was available on kindle or a paperback.

I can mail you a copy in Russian (: If there is one in a local book store, not sure Rezun is popular currently.

please do, although it will take me forever to read with a Eng-Rus dictionary.

Challenge accepted.

Contact me at amborodin around acm.org Tomorrow morning i'll check if is it available, if not another book(aquarium, day m) will be ok for chellange? :) Info from ISA is common knowlege here (this does not imply info is true) and may be not very popular.

No ISA, sorry. Here's what I can get. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7610280/WP_20140415_001.... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7610280/WP_20140415_003.... BTW your defector is much more known here than ours. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7610280/WP_20140415_002....

ping

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