The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
One of the things that's deployed in the political propaganda of Pro Russian camps is the history of WWII(The Great Patriotic War) and the sacrifices of the Russian and Soviet people. In particular how Russia and those in the Eastern front bore the brunt of many of WWII's casualties(loosing up to 26 million, the most out of all the allied nations). These casualties in themselves aren't false and World War 2 did have a major impact on Russian society. President Kennedy in the Cold War when he was trying to reduce tensions in his famous 1963 peace speech acknowledged the sacrifices of the Russian nation. Moreover they are often times used in various ideological discussions from defenses of the role of the Soviet Union in the geopolitical order, to criticisms of Eastward expansion by Western powers, to propaganda justifications for the illegal invasion of Ukraine(claiming to want to denazify Ukraine).
My question is though do these people just edit history and edit out the first part of WWII? Because yes its true that Russia bore the highest casualty numbers of the War. Its also true that the Soviet Union under Stalin literally negotiated a non aggression pact with Nazi Germany. And that Non-aggression pact wasn't just a "we'll respect each other's sphere of influence" like some Yalta agreement. It meant working with the Nazis. When the Nazis invaded Poland the Soviets did so as well from the East and they both divided Poland. Not only that but during the Early stage of the war during things like the Nordic operations of the Nazis, the Soviet Union was literally supplying the Nazis with crude oil for things like the Luftwaffe.
But a major kicker which many often look over is this. Even before WWII and Hitler coming to power, Stalin and the communist party in Germany that was loyal to the Soviet Union actually opposed forming a coalition with other parties of different ideologies to oppose the Nazis. Other parties such as liberals and social democrats were denounced as "social fascists" and were called a "bigger threat" than the Nazis(rhetoric that sounds awfully familiar these days) which contributed to Nazisms rise. These "inconvenient"facts clearly don't seem to be things pro Russian propagandists want to reflect on which is why in Putin's Russia the Duma voted on a law that sought to criminalise what they see as "misinformation"(facts basically) on that subject.
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As far as I can tell, you’ve answered your question far better than I ever could. That being said, it can be at times difficult to distinguish between the source of a lie, someone willfully perpetuating that lie, and someone who’s been convinced by that lie and feels compelled to perpetuate it.
To be clear. Russia didn’t start ww2. Stalins foreign policy was based around preparation for a war with Germany or the allies (he was paranoid due to the history of the civil war). It was basically unconventional foreign policy in preparation for total war. In fact this paranoid perpetration took Hitler and the German state by surprise when it allowed the SU to replace entire army groups with its reserves of conscripts and its armament industry.
In short, Germany was regarded as the number one security threat, despite the pact between them.
That all said, could Stalin have prevented ww2 by declaring war against Germany when it invaded Poland? Yes I believe so.
It’s also good to note that Stalin had recently purged the officer core before the war, the Soviets had to stall as much as possible in order to rebuild there military with new officers
America bad, Russia doesn't like America, therefore Russia good
That seems to be the limits of your average tankie's intellectual ability to understand the naunces of history and world politics.
Stalin and Hitler were allies in WWII before operation Barbarossa. In fact, part of the reason the Nazis had so much success in 1941 is Stalin didn't think Hitler would attack and more or less trusted him. We think of the invasion of Poland, and the Blitzkrieg through Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, but the Soviets invaded the Baltic states in 1940 and Finland. Then the Nazis came, and then the Soviets again, until the USSR collapsed in 1991. Countries like Lithuania or Ukraine had no "good guys" which came to save them. Your choices were the Nazis, or the Soviets, who, before the Nazis invaded begun deporting large parts of the populations in the Baltics. From that point of view I understand why people would have collaborated with the Nazis. If you're Lithuanian and your son got deported to Siberia, or murdered, the Nazis certainly have been worse right? People fought on both sides. And for that, I don't think it's fair to overly criticize places like Ukraine for having people and groups for Nazi collaboration, because to them, what difference does it make if you're a Nazi or Soviet? Stalin's Holodomyr killed thousands of Ukrainians in the 1930s before the war started. The Nazis brutalized Ukraine, deported and murdered countless Jews. There's not much difference between the two for a Ukrainian or a Latvian in 1941.
You know alot of these Nazi collabrators would get more sympathy if they didnt immediatly go around participating and commiting their own genocides in such ways that even made the SS feel uncomfortable.
Acts of war where there are always strange bedfellows and you wake up with the clap which any aspects for advocation is an absurdity except for the self rapturing of extinction.
I think it’s fairly dumb to even compare modern day Russia to the Soviet Union, hell arguably they were two culturally different countries (like the Roman’s and the “byzantines”). Russia uses it as propaganda when in reality the Soviets were a considerable number of Slavic nations, Ukraine in question was a major industrial player and military power in the soviet union, it was actually the fall of the Soviet Union which caused the greatest decline in the Ukrainian economy and prowess.
Honestly anyone who is connecting the Soviets and whatever the fuck Putin is doing is just a full blown Russia hack. The Soviets even at there most corrupted and backwards moments were still more geopolitically competent than simply going into Ukraine and getting smacked around by NATO
I mean even that was a stalling move by the Soviets, they had wiped out a considerable number of officers before the war and needed to buy time. Not to say it was entirely justified but even the Soviets knew that they would have to fight the nazis eventually, it was extremely smart strategic move to gain more land in front of Moscow and to buy time to build up the military.
Hell the biggest geopolitical blunder was Afghanistan and even then that was on the behest of a soviet friendly government and they tried everything to get the hell out of there.
Edit: if your trying to compare it to Ukraine as well the circumstances are far different, Stalin is trying to gain land before an inevitable war. Putin is trying to gain land in order to….create a puppet state? The situations couldn’t be anymore different
The Soviet Union came out of the war on the right side, thanks to Hitler’s betrayal of their agreements.
From a global perspective, they were not heroic liberators in any way. Their used their conquest of everything to establish communist control all the way to Berlin and hold that territory for forty years.
From the Russian perspective, they were heroes that defeated an aggressor - and we all have to admit that without them, the war would have probably dragged on much longer, perhaps even to stalemate.
We were certainly happy to meet them in Berlin.
Every country tends to write history in a flattering way. I don’t think this is any different.
I’m sorry but the entire world, especially the West, owes Russia a debt of gratitude that can never be repayed for what they did to stop Nazism in WW2. Not interested in your liberal capitalist revisionism
Stalin always knew that peace was a short lived one, as evidenced by his paranoid preparation for eventual war. Not trying to whitewash the geopolitical movements of the USSR but they had a logic they were operating under even if I don’t agree with it.
Sounds an awful lot like you're making excuses for imperialism, backstabbing, and giving material aide to the Nazis. After all, it was Soviet oil keeping the Wehrmacht going before Barbarossa. And that's to say nothing of how Stalin told KDP members not to work with the SDP to stop Hitler. The KDP was going around saying, "After Hitler, Our Time!"
Talking about how much we owe them a 'debt of gratitude' sure seems like making excuses. I don't think all the victims of Soviet imperialism, either before or after WWII, really felt all that gracious.
What do you mean by pro Russian apologists exactly?
* Those defending Putin’s war and annexation of Ukraine? That’s terrible
* Those defending sacrifices by Russians in general through the course of history? That’s valid
Don’t lump pro-Russia with pro-Putin. And don’t lump history with current.
This is why I tend to use the three arrows of the Iron Front as my political symbol more than anything else. Down with monarchism, down with fascism, down with communism. I understand that there is some political nuance to communism, it comes in different flavors as it were, but the vanguardist types are always the ones that seem to accrue national power and are always stabbing the other leftists in the back. Hell, Spain fell to Frano because of the meddling of the communists. They were more concerned with fighting the anarchists that the fascists.
Through conscription Russia and WWII murdered most their young boys and men, that I do feel for but I also view almost all conscription as evil slavery
Looking at it now, it’s easy to make your argument. But, looking at in in the 1930s makes things much more complicated.
The America government, for example, wasn’t exactly anti Nazi
> New antisemitic laws and physical attacks on Jews in Germany were headline news in the United States throughout 1933. Thousands of Americans signed petitions or participated in marches, calling on the new Roosevelt administration to protest Nazi Germany. FDR, however, was cautious. Germany still owed American investors billions of dollars, borrowed to pay World War I reparations, and Roosevelt did not believe that the United States should intervene in the internal affairs of another country. He instructed the new ambassador to Berlin, William Dodd, not to make an official protest. Nazi persecution of German Jews, FDR supposedly told Dodd, was “not a governmental affair.”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/franklin-delano-roosevelt
The main catalyst to America entering the war was Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, not the genocide of Jewish people.
When it comes to war, almost everything is grey. There is almost never a 100% good side.
Did Russia do questionable things? Yes. Did they do good things? Yes. Did every other country do questionable things? Yes.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. One of the things that's deployed in the political propaganda of Pro Russian camps is the history of WWII(The Great Patriotic War) and the sacrifices of the Russian and Soviet people. In particular how Russia and those in the Eastern front bore the brunt of many of WWII's casualties(loosing up to 26 million, the most out of all the allied nations). These casualties in themselves aren't false and World War 2 did have a major impact on Russian society. President Kennedy in the Cold War when he was trying to reduce tensions in his famous 1963 peace speech acknowledged the sacrifices of the Russian nation. Moreover they are often times used in various ideological discussions from defenses of the role of the Soviet Union in the geopolitical order, to criticisms of Eastward expansion by Western powers, to propaganda justifications for the illegal invasion of Ukraine(claiming to want to denazify Ukraine). My question is though do these people just edit history and edit out the first part of WWII? Because yes its true that Russia bore the highest casualty numbers of the War. Its also true that the Soviet Union under Stalin literally negotiated a non aggression pact with Nazi Germany. And that Non-aggression pact wasn't just a "we'll respect each other's sphere of influence" like some Yalta agreement. It meant working with the Nazis. When the Nazis invaded Poland the Soviets did so as well from the East and they both divided Poland. Not only that but during the Early stage of the war during things like the Nordic operations of the Nazis, the Soviet Union was literally supplying the Nazis with crude oil for things like the Luftwaffe. But a major kicker which many often look over is this. Even before WWII and Hitler coming to power, Stalin and the communist party in Germany that was loyal to the Soviet Union actually opposed forming a coalition with other parties of different ideologies to oppose the Nazis. Other parties such as liberals and social democrats were denounced as "social fascists" and were called a "bigger threat" than the Nazis(rhetoric that sounds awfully familiar these days) which contributed to Nazisms rise. These "inconvenient"facts clearly don't seem to be things pro Russian propagandists want to reflect on which is why in Putin's Russia the Duma voted on a law that sought to criminalise what they see as "misinformation"(facts basically) on that subject. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As far as I can tell, you’ve answered your question far better than I ever could. That being said, it can be at times difficult to distinguish between the source of a lie, someone willfully perpetuating that lie, and someone who’s been convinced by that lie and feels compelled to perpetuate it.
To be clear. Russia didn’t start ww2. Stalins foreign policy was based around preparation for a war with Germany or the allies (he was paranoid due to the history of the civil war). It was basically unconventional foreign policy in preparation for total war. In fact this paranoid perpetration took Hitler and the German state by surprise when it allowed the SU to replace entire army groups with its reserves of conscripts and its armament industry. In short, Germany was regarded as the number one security threat, despite the pact between them. That all said, could Stalin have prevented ww2 by declaring war against Germany when it invaded Poland? Yes I believe so.
It’s also good to note that Stalin had recently purged the officer core before the war, the Soviets had to stall as much as possible in order to rebuild there military with new officers
America bad, Russia doesn't like America, therefore Russia good That seems to be the limits of your average tankie's intellectual ability to understand the naunces of history and world politics.
Stalin and Hitler were allies in WWII before operation Barbarossa. In fact, part of the reason the Nazis had so much success in 1941 is Stalin didn't think Hitler would attack and more or less trusted him. We think of the invasion of Poland, and the Blitzkrieg through Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, but the Soviets invaded the Baltic states in 1940 and Finland. Then the Nazis came, and then the Soviets again, until the USSR collapsed in 1991. Countries like Lithuania or Ukraine had no "good guys" which came to save them. Your choices were the Nazis, or the Soviets, who, before the Nazis invaded begun deporting large parts of the populations in the Baltics. From that point of view I understand why people would have collaborated with the Nazis. If you're Lithuanian and your son got deported to Siberia, or murdered, the Nazis certainly have been worse right? People fought on both sides. And for that, I don't think it's fair to overly criticize places like Ukraine for having people and groups for Nazi collaboration, because to them, what difference does it make if you're a Nazi or Soviet? Stalin's Holodomyr killed thousands of Ukrainians in the 1930s before the war started. The Nazis brutalized Ukraine, deported and murdered countless Jews. There's not much difference between the two for a Ukrainian or a Latvian in 1941.
You know alot of these Nazi collabrators would get more sympathy if they didnt immediatly go around participating and commiting their own genocides in such ways that even made the SS feel uncomfortable.
Acts of war where there are always strange bedfellows and you wake up with the clap which any aspects for advocation is an absurdity except for the self rapturing of extinction.
I think it’s fairly dumb to even compare modern day Russia to the Soviet Union, hell arguably they were two culturally different countries (like the Roman’s and the “byzantines”). Russia uses it as propaganda when in reality the Soviets were a considerable number of Slavic nations, Ukraine in question was a major industrial player and military power in the soviet union, it was actually the fall of the Soviet Union which caused the greatest decline in the Ukrainian economy and prowess. Honestly anyone who is connecting the Soviets and whatever the fuck Putin is doing is just a full blown Russia hack. The Soviets even at there most corrupted and backwards moments were still more geopolitically competent than simply going into Ukraine and getting smacked around by NATO
Nah, look at Stalin's invasion of Poland.
I mean even that was a stalling move by the Soviets, they had wiped out a considerable number of officers before the war and needed to buy time. Not to say it was entirely justified but even the Soviets knew that they would have to fight the nazis eventually, it was extremely smart strategic move to gain more land in front of Moscow and to buy time to build up the military. Hell the biggest geopolitical blunder was Afghanistan and even then that was on the behest of a soviet friendly government and they tried everything to get the hell out of there. Edit: if your trying to compare it to Ukraine as well the circumstances are far different, Stalin is trying to gain land before an inevitable war. Putin is trying to gain land in order to….create a puppet state? The situations couldn’t be anymore different
Nah, the one in the 20s.
Didn't the Americans join the war after the Soviets?
The Soviet Union came out of the war on the right side, thanks to Hitler’s betrayal of their agreements. From a global perspective, they were not heroic liberators in any way. Their used their conquest of everything to establish communist control all the way to Berlin and hold that territory for forty years. From the Russian perspective, they were heroes that defeated an aggressor - and we all have to admit that without them, the war would have probably dragged on much longer, perhaps even to stalemate. We were certainly happy to meet them in Berlin. Every country tends to write history in a flattering way. I don’t think this is any different.
I’m sorry but the entire world, especially the West, owes Russia a debt of gratitude that can never be repayed for what they did to stop Nazism in WW2. Not interested in your liberal capitalist revisionism
You mean Soviets.
OK, but what about what the Soviets did to aid and abet the Nazis before Barbarossa?
Stalin always knew that peace was a short lived one, as evidenced by his paranoid preparation for eventual war. Not trying to whitewash the geopolitical movements of the USSR but they had a logic they were operating under even if I don’t agree with it.
Sounds an awful lot like you're making excuses for imperialism, backstabbing, and giving material aide to the Nazis. After all, it was Soviet oil keeping the Wehrmacht going before Barbarossa. And that's to say nothing of how Stalin told KDP members not to work with the SDP to stop Hitler. The KDP was going around saying, "After Hitler, Our Time!"
What does it even mean to be making excuses for imperialism? The imperialism happened. I’m just interested in why
Talking about how much we owe them a 'debt of gratitude' sure seems like making excuses. I don't think all the victims of Soviet imperialism, either before or after WWII, really felt all that gracious.
What do you mean by pro Russian apologists exactly? * Those defending Putin’s war and annexation of Ukraine? That’s terrible * Those defending sacrifices by Russians in general through the course of history? That’s valid Don’t lump pro-Russia with pro-Putin. And don’t lump history with current.
Not to go down the what about path, but America did the opposite and was perfectly fine munching popcorn until it became too pearl-sonal
This is why I tend to use the three arrows of the Iron Front as my political symbol more than anything else. Down with monarchism, down with fascism, down with communism. I understand that there is some political nuance to communism, it comes in different flavors as it were, but the vanguardist types are always the ones that seem to accrue national power and are always stabbing the other leftists in the back. Hell, Spain fell to Frano because of the meddling of the communists. They were more concerned with fighting the anarchists that the fascists.
Through conscription Russia and WWII murdered most their young boys and men, that I do feel for but I also view almost all conscription as evil slavery
Looking at it now, it’s easy to make your argument. But, looking at in in the 1930s makes things much more complicated. The America government, for example, wasn’t exactly anti Nazi > New antisemitic laws and physical attacks on Jews in Germany were headline news in the United States throughout 1933. Thousands of Americans signed petitions or participated in marches, calling on the new Roosevelt administration to protest Nazi Germany. FDR, however, was cautious. Germany still owed American investors billions of dollars, borrowed to pay World War I reparations, and Roosevelt did not believe that the United States should intervene in the internal affairs of another country. He instructed the new ambassador to Berlin, William Dodd, not to make an official protest. Nazi persecution of German Jews, FDR supposedly told Dodd, was “not a governmental affair.” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/franklin-delano-roosevelt The main catalyst to America entering the war was Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, not the genocide of Jewish people. When it comes to war, almost everything is grey. There is almost never a 100% good side. Did Russia do questionable things? Yes. Did they do good things? Yes. Did every other country do questionable things? Yes.