Today #Russia and #China play best friends forever and #USSR had been traditionally placed in the same “communist” basked as China. Some fun facts that especially tankies are getting completely wrong today.^1
Since 1950’s China and USSR were actually conflicted over each other’s interpretations of #Marxism and in 1960’s the conflict nearly escalated into a full-scale nuclear war between the two countries.
China criticised CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) over Soviet invasion of #Czechoslovakia (1968)^2 and “Brezhnev Doctrine” which denounced any Marxism version outside of the Soviet one as “reactionary” (Marxist newspeak for “heresy”). This included both Czechoslovak reforms and Mao’s Cultural Revolution in equal manner. At that time China actually developed complex relations with Eastern Bloc countries such as Romania and Czechoslovakia behind Kremlin’s back.
Essentially, everyone called each other “reactionary” and claimed their Marxism is the correct one. Any resemblance to past religious wars is entirely incidental. 😉 In 1968 Chinese diplomat Zhou Enlai speaking in Romanian embassy in Beijing called Soviets for “fascist politics, great power chauvinism, national egoism and social imperialism”.^3
Does that ring any bells? 😉
Soviets and China had a number of unresolved border issues in Manchuria. In 1968 China started escalating these, actually killing Soviet border guards. Moscow, knowing of China’s nuclear weapons and Mao’s confrontative attitude preferred to deescalate… which only encouraged Chinese.
Does that remind anything from contemporary history? 😉
At the peak of the conflict in 1969 USSR found itself in the position of a country with high-tech army challenged by a low-tech army which relied on millions of conscripts and human wave tactics.
Does this ring any bells? 😉
In 1969 Soviet army managed to push back overwhelming several Chinese offensives near the island of Zhenbao in spite of their overwhelming numbers with ratios up to 1:10 Soviet to Chinese. That was possible primarily due to the technical advantage, such as then-advanced T-62 tanks.
A ceasefire was signed in 1969 - on Chinese side by the very same Zhou Enlai who called Soviets “fascists” only a year before, but the actual peace agreement was only signed in 1991. The conflict was only completely resolved in 2008 (!) when Russia ceded 340 km² of the disputed lands to China.
As you can see, contrary to the mythology carefully constructed by modern “geopolitical realists”, there’s nothing constant in Russian or Soviet policies. Russia can not always win armed conflicts, it can cede territories and in general conflicts can be won in spite of imbalance of power. Oh, and calling others “fascists” was used by everyone and Russia was both an user and a recipient of this nomination.
A little known event from #USSR that happened 91 years ago, in May 1933. It’s hard to imagine any country could do it, but Soviets did - they dumped 6700 people on an uninhabited island on a river in Siberia… and left them there for 13 weeks with no food, tools or even clothes. 4000 people died, with the survivors resorting to widespread violence and cannibalism.
#Russia channel coordinating the work of trolls called “Digital Army of Russia” has posted a task: on Victory Day, remind the people of Eastern Europe what nightmares the German “Plan Ost” was preparing for them, from which the #USSR saved them: physical extermination, genocide by means of artificially induced famine, deportation of masses of people to Siberia, the Caucasus, etc., extermination of educated elites.
That certainly sounds terrible, but there is only one minor problem: most of these genocidal policies were carried out by the USSR itself. Mass executions (Katyn, liquidation of NKVD prisons, the Great Purge), the Ukrainian Holodomor, the deportation of hundreds of thousands of people to the same Siberia (including, for example, the ‘Polish NKVD operation’), mass murder of the intellectual elites of Poland, Baltics, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia itself. There’s simply no crime against humanity that the Soviets wouldn’t commit in Eastern Europe during the 70 years of their ruling.
Russian trolls shot themselves in the foot simply because they are unaware of all these colonial and genocidal policies of the USSR - this knowledge appeared in Russian education system briefly during 1990-2000’s but then was gradually reverted and NGOs documenting the historic repressions (e.g. “Memorial”) outlawed.
Dolores is an utterly charming and beautiful soul and I feel very lucky that I got to spend so much time in her company for this article – the first ever about her in the English language, I believe!
Recent science fiction purchase. My uncle, who passed away abruptly at 54, recommended it to me years and years ago but I never picked up a copy. #scifi#sciencefiction#USSR#coldwar#history#books
As well, since 1945, the USSR had a spy ring within Yugoslavia[128] and Stalin attempted to assassinate Tito several times. Stalin remarked "I will shake my little finger and there will be no more Tito".[129] However, these assassinations would fail, and Tito would write back to Stalin "Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. [...] If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second."[130] Yugoslavia would go on to become one of the main founders and leaders the Non-Aligned Movement.[131]
Today in Labor History March 29, 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. The Rosenberg’s sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol (adopted by Abel Meeropol, the composer of “Strange Fruit,”), maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated, but that their mother was innocent. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it. The Rosenberg’s sons were among the last students to attend the anarchist Modern School, in Lakewood, New Jersey, before it finally shut its doors in 1958.
Today in Labor History March 23, 1918: 101 IWW members went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I and for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft and encourage desertion. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial virtually destroyed the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later.
[The Guardian]: The Long Hangover by Shaun Walker – book review This account of how Putin’s new Russia rose from the ruins of the Soviet Union is judicious, humane and highly entertaining. February 15, 2018
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New Russian high school textbooks – introduced in August 2023 on the instruction of President Vladimir Putin – attempt to whitewash Stalinist crimes and rehabilitate the Soviet Union’s legacy.
(...)
Putin’s efforts to redeem the Soviet past may help explain why Stalin is up in the polls, with 63% of Russians asked in June 2023 expressing a positive attitude toward the Soviet dictator.
"""
@nadiaalbelushi if you’d pay attention to Ukrainian voices, you’d hear that this great communist monolith unity you’re nostalgic for was nothing but oppression and gaslighting.
Really baffling to me that you can in the same breath say you don’t want Kuwait absorbed into Iraq and also say the USSR represented a better world.
I really don’t think the Baltic states or any of the other satellite republics that gained independence would see it that way. Stalin was a cold blooded murderer of ethnic minorities.
Putin is continuing the tradition. Most of the combat deaths are Russia’s ethnic minorities. The closer you get to Moscow, the harder it is to find anyone who was killed in the war.
Today in Labor History March 13, 1968: Student demonstrations in Warsaw led to street riots. All Polish universities went out on strike against the repressive communist regime, with students occupying the campus buildings. The strike, which came in the wake of Soviet withdrawals of diplomatic relations with Israel, in the protest of the 1967 war, spread throughout the country, leading to a violent government crackdown and antisemitic purge that was branded as anti-Zionism. Thousands of Jews fled the country because of political harassment and being fired from their jobs.
Today in Labor History March 11, 1919: Ukrainian Jewish anarchist Mollie Steimer was arrested in New York City and charged with inciting to riot. She was charged with sedition and eventually deported to Soviet Russia, where she met her lifelong partner Senya Fleshin. The two agitated for the rights of anarchist political prisoners in the USSR. The authorities there deported her again, this time to western Europe, where she and Fleshin organized aid for political prisoners. With the rise of the Nazis in Europe, she and Fleshin fled to Mexico, where they spent the rest of their lives working as photographers. She died in 1980.
Today in Labor History March 8, 1911: The first modern International Women’s Day was celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany and the U.S. IWD has its roots in the suffrage movement of New Zealand, and leftist labor organizing in the U.S. and Europe. The earliest Women’s Days were organized by the Socialist Party of America, in New York, in 1909, and by German socialists in 1910. They chose the date of March 8 in honor of the garment workers strikes in New York that occurred on March 8, in 1857 and 1908. However, the first IWD celebrated on March 8, the current date, was in 1911. The holiday was associated primarily with far-left movements until the feminist movement adopted it in the 1960s, when it became a more mainstream celebration.
Today in Labor History March 1, 1921: Anarchist and leftwing communist soldiers and sailors rose up against the Russian Bolsheviks in the Kronstadt uprising. The rebellion, which lasted until March 16, was the last major revolt against the Bolsheviks. It began when they sent delegates to Petrograd in solidarity with strikes going on in that city, and demanded the restoration of civil rights for workers, economic and political freedom for workers and peasants, including free speech, and that soviet councils include anarchists and left socialists. The Bolshevik forces, directed by Trotsky, killed over 1,000 Kronstadt rebels in battle, and executed another 2,100 in the aftermath. As many as 1,400 government troops died in their attempt to quash the rebellion.
Today in Labor History February 24, 1917: The Petrograd bread riot that started yesterday (March 8 on Western calendars) turned into a revolution. Soldiers refused to fire on demonstrators and turned on their officers. Then they stormed the arsenal and liberated 20,000 automatic pistols, torched the police stations and emptied the prisons.
Today in Labor History February 23, 1944: The Soviet Union began the forced deportation of Chechen and Ingush people from the North Caucasus to Central Asia. The Soviets forcibly deported millions of ethnic minorities from the 1930s-1950s. At least 25% of the Chechen and Ingush deportees died at the hands of soldiers or from cold and hunger.
"In memory of #Navalny, #EU must give money to #Ukraine and defeat #Russia"
Absolutely.
Throughout history, west has been particularly good supporting #Nazis against #USSR.
Why not do the same thing again?
Is there any merit to framing conflicts of the recent past in ideological terms?
For example, the events leading up to WWII could be described as #fascism vs #communism, until you learn about the economic and military pacts Bolsheviks made with Hitler and Mussolini.
Sure, Brownshirts were fighting communists on the streets of Berlin, but once each side captured their own state, differences were set aside for the greater project of making their respective nations stronger.
Similarly, the Cold War was supposedly about capitalism vs communism, until you learn about China embracing Kissinger and the Sino-Soviet split.
It feels like nationalism is the singular dominant ideology of the XX and XXI century and all other ideologies are incidental and need to align themselves with the ultimate goal of "how to make our country strong".
#Russia Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a comment condemning 1945 Allies bombing of Dresden^1 in Nazi #Germany and calling it “barbarian”. What Russia forgot to mention that the bombing was performed on request from #USSR marshal Ivan Konev 🤷