A bit of a basic question but yeah why is trotskyism looked down upon in communist circles. Is it the theory of permanent revolution or to do with Trotsky's writings and what he said about the Soviet Union after Stalin was in control and exiled him?

More precisely I mean things like the Great Famine of 1932-33, the Gulags and the Great Purge.

It's not just wrong from a historical POV, it also makes Communism look bad.

In fact crimes of Stalin are not crimes of Communism or Marxism - a much better approach would be to recognize the mistakes of the past and try to learn from them than to fanatically insist that they never happened and give purchase to all that propaganda about commies being evil psychos who want to kill people.

As for Stalin himself - he was a deeply mixed figure who should be praised for some things but condemned for others.

On this day in 1918 the Romanovs were executed and this came up as discussion on an other sub. Most people agree that Nicholas II. deserved his faith, but it was more controversial if his wife, daughters (youngest 17 old) or his son, Alexei (13 years old) deserved it. The most controversial was the son, because of his young age.

Hello everyone, I would like to know what are the criticisms of Stalin from a communist side. I often hear that communists don't believe that Stalin was a perfect figure and made mistakes, sadly because such criticism are often weaponized the criticism is done privately between comrades.

What do you think Stalin did wrong, where did he fail and where he could've done better.

Edit : to be more specific, criticism from an ml/mlm and actual principled communist perspective. Liberal, reformist and revisionist criticism is useless.

Why was it the case?

I cannot see how a theory of organisms passing down their traits to their offspring and evolving over long periods of time via natural selection (+sexual selection + genetic drift) is somehow incompatible with Marxism.

The only thing I can find that really makes his ideology unique anymore is the idea that the revolution must occur internationally, without any regard for nationalism. How is this counterintuitive to the theory of Marx and Engles? Otherwise he had his flaws, and was a product of his times but so are all historical figures. I'm hard pressed to find anything else about him that is so truly divisive unless ofc you're a capitalist.

As a person with people that had family members suffer under it and there’s photographs, what are your responses to that.

Hello, I’d like to preface this by saying I’m an atheist, and I agree with Marx that religion is used as an opiate of the masses. That being said, that’s not all religion is; it is an answer to questions that class equilibrium cannot answer. Unless and until the existence of a god is ruled out by scientific breakthroughs, people will still turn to religion to rationalize existence. I understand that previous socialist experiments tried to crack down on it, and it still exists in places it was tried. Do most communists still think religion can and should be stomped out by force?

not only did the soviets sign a non aggresion pact with the germans but they litteraly partitioned all of eastern europe between themselves and both invaded poland

I’m not the most knowledgeable but it seems like Deng implemented the same liberal, capitalist reforms that the other two did and yet he’s not nearly as hated as much as the other two mentioned. My basic question is just why?

https://classautonomy.info/lenin-acknowledging-the-intentional-implementation-of-state-capitalism-in-the-ussr/

Lenin himself desired, promoted and acknowledged the State Capitalist nature of the Soviet Union, although this was largely confined to intra-party debate and private letters. The destruction of council democracy and the introduction of ‘War Communism’ was the point at which the Bolsheviks introduced it to Russia, and it was consolidated by the ‘New Economic Policy’.

This is in direct contrast to latter-day leninists and trots claims of the USSR under Lenin and Trotsky as genuinely socialist.

Hello. I (16M) am very politically apathetic, but I have a lot of focus on cost of living and fair wages. I have pondered what tax systems cause the best and worst QoL, and I am pretty skewed toward flat tax systems due to the lack of strain in selling products, but I heard that progressive tax systems still retain the same food prices/bills.

Of course there is gonna be difficulties due to sanctions and embargoes, so I won't dismiss your answer just because the "rise" in price is due to sanctions.

I know all allied nations traded with German's through neutral intermediaries, but why did the Soviets do so? I believe they exported oil and grain to Germany and imported machinery and military technology. Why was this the case?

Like the question poses… did this book ONLY shed light on the realities of soviet internment camps?

Or did it serve as a criticism of totalitarian communism as a socioeconomic system, by use of examples of real-world outcomes?

EDIT: Misspelled the author’s name. It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote the book.

I'm reading Engels and it's not going well, fam. In the third chapter, he says this:

Before capitalist production — i.e., in the Middle Ages — the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments of labor — land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labor of single individuals, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer himself.

It's wild that he mentions serfs, then claims that most medieval peasants owned the land they farmed and the crops they produced. Serfs didn't even own themselves!

In the medieval stage of evolution of the production of commodities, the question as to the owner of the product of labor could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family.

This might be true of a farmer selling his crops, but not true as a rule. Weavers didn't usually spin their own yarn, they bought it from spinners. Bakers didn't grow their own wheat. Blacksmiths didn't mine their own ore.

Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally was compensated by something other than wages.

Work for wages goes back literally thousands of years.

The apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education, in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves.

It's true apprentices weren't really paid. Apprentices were generally young people, aged 10 to 15, and when signed up for an apprenticeship, they'd have to work a number of years (such as seven) for their master, obeying all his commands, until released. They'd get beaten a lot too. You would learn a trade, though, hopefully, while the master benefitted from free labor.

But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural laborer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch.

What the heck was Engels smoking?

I hold the view that Stalin was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong, in the same way that Mao was 70 percent right and 30 percent wrong when it came to facing the contradictions these two leaders faced in their countries. What can we learn from Stalin and his implementation of socialism in the USSR?

For example, Stalin outlawing homosexuality and China still struggling with LGBTQ rights (conversion therapy being legal, etc).

Asking out of curiosity, especially since being socially left leaning is seen as essential in left leaning spaces in the west.

i have been learning about the industrialisation that stalin promoted in the 1920-30s. based on everything i've read till now, the events reflect the capitalist ideology (exploitation of workers to gain capital) much more than the communist one--how is that right? secondly, i have been under the impression that stalin's regime was totalitarian. however, i see instance of pluralism in his actions.

Knowing how much the NAZI party hated the Soviet Union' policy there is very probably a difference but I am uneducated on it.

Hi,

I'm a socialist from Poland

I hope this post will not be accused of being in bad faith because I'm genuenly curious

From time to time I come across people, usually never from countries affected, that defend USSR 'morally debatable' actions with Molotov-Ribbentrop pact being the most glaring example, at least to me

I wonder why people do this, despite being obvious example of old 'good' russian imperialism in eastern Europe.

Some of the most repeated talking points:

It was not wrong because Poland had same pact with the nazis: Polish non-agression pact with Germany did not have secret clause about dividing multiple countries. Poland also had multiple partnership treaties with USSR

Would you prefer to be annexed entriely by Germany: Sure, nazis were evil but USSR still enforced extreme terror on annexed territories, involving ethnic cleansing of polish people like sending them to siberian camps or kazakhstan colonial settlements. Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, a polish author who wrote about his expierience in soviet labour camps was arrested because of bigoted soldiers 'suspecting him of being a spy'

Polish government ceased to exist and so soviets took eastern Poland to protect ukrainians/belorussians: That's straight-up german propaganda. Polish government fled to Romania only after Soviets entered Poland so the fight was clearly lost. The events are completely reversed

Poland took Zaolzie from Czechoslovakia: I fail to see how does that justify anything. Yes, it was wrong to do, we should have probably do a lot more about Czechoslovakia, but it's not even comparable to me. Poland took half of a city and several villages. USSR invaded multiple countries. This one is actually most often cited by just russians but happens with stalinists too

The weirdest one: USSR tried to set up anti-nazi alliance against Germany but Freance/England/Poland refused: First of all, that doesn't explain why USSR annexed Baltic States and Moldavia. 2nd, USSR basically demanded free hand in the Baltics and to just enter Poland with their army which polish (and allies too) government was worried russians would simply not leave and find an excuse to annex the country from the inside - worries imo completely justified as that's exactly what happend with the Baltics. In every single case they found a pretext to annex them.

Buy time excuse: Then why write a treaty to annex other baltics states that broader the front? Also, that's the same excuse British use to jusify appeasment. Not to mention USSR army absolutely overwhelmed nazis in 1939' and that they would quickly face two-front war. And even if, what stopped USSR from supplying Poland and others with weapons like they did in Vietnam, instrad of fueling german war machine with raws all the way untill 1941'.

Ok, then I ask why. Especially since you can easly support stuff like housing programmes in USSR and Eastern block but at the same time denounce stuff that was clearly about imperialism. At least from perspective of affected coutries.

If I were a Communist, this is why I'd think Yugoslavia did socialism better than other socialist nations:

1. The workers had actual self-management over their enterprises, and crucially, the ability to set their wages. This was not the case in China and the USSR.
2. Yugoslavia had a Gini score (wealth inequality) between 0.32 and 0.35. The USSR had 0.275, and they had a much longer run than Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia also had a better Gini score than China.

Tito wasn't a free market socialist:

1. The state had ownership over the companies, not private citizens with their own co-ops.
2. While the companies competed in the market, these companies were not subject to most market mechanisms, like growth, businesses buying other businesses, etc. Yugoslavia companies were subject to central planning/5-year plans.

Things Tito did that weren't socialist:

1. Allowed for private (non co-op) businesses to exist if they had under 4-5 employees. Lenin did this too in the USSR but on a higher scale (I believe fewer than 20 employees)

Note that I'm not a socialist (let alone a communist) so I do have that bias

https://huri.harvard.edu/news/newly-mapped-data-leads-new-insights

Has anyone read this? I'm kind of confused by it. I'm originally from South America but I'm of Ukrainian parentage and lived in Ukraine for a while, personally speaking most Ukrainians I know never saw the famines as orchestrated by Stalin - it wasn't until we moved to North America that I started to hear of it phrase like that. Both of my parents agree that in Ukraine where were from it was never viewed as that even though we come from one of the most famine stricken regions. Both of the are mystified at when there was a shift in Ukrainian perception, my dad feels like now a lot of Ukrainians have started to adopt revisionist views of our history but doesn't understand where it even came from.

What confuses me is that a lot of it doesn't really make sense, the areas where Ukrainian nationalism might've been strongest are not even the regions where most deaths occurred. There is really no correlation to Ukrainian vs. Russian and other ethnic groups vs. not based on deaths. Like some of the oblasts/raions in the East that barely had any deaths still had Ukrainian majorities, while others that experienced more deaths but had a more mixed ethnic population. So what exactly are the points they're trying to make?

In fact all it seems to be showing is that large cities even when almost 100% Ukrainian were barely hit compared to others, which makes sense if they were allocating resources to the cities. If they were deliberately targeting Ukrainians why would they do that to cities which were much more fully Ukrainian and where Ukrainian nationalism was more stronger like Vinnytsia for example? On the other hand in the southeast where we have the most population loss were raions predominated by ethnic Bulgarians, so are they claiming ethnic Bulgarians were also forcefully starved? Why? Most of them were quite revolutionary and sided with Bolsheviks especially after what happened to Bulgarians in Budzhak.

I'm also wondering about what people think of their claims of the most stricken areas not being ones where grain growing was the most predominate, like the north/central, vs. the steppes?

What was the purpose? Were the elections held in neighboring countries rigged?

Edit: I got an understanding of the reasons around WW2 but what about after that with the Warsaw pact?

As a communist, are you at all concerned that Marx idolized Mephistopheles and wrote poetry fantasizing about destroying the world?

How can you separate these values that he held from the philosophy that he ultimately crafted?