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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I just want to know if those excess deaths are part of the Marxist ideology or not. You say the USSR was a country following Marxist theory. At least 7 million people died either because they were killed by the state or died through negligence. Are all those deaths explained away by “The war caused their deaths” and “They deserved it anyways”? Were a significant number of them killed despite the USSR being marxist or because of it?


  • The very next paragraph read as follows:

    Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin’s regime were 20 million or higher.[5][6][7] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8][9][10][11][12] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[13][14][15] some 390,000[16] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[17] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[18] According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were “purposive” while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility.

    You can’t blame all the deaths on Nazis.





  • In my mind, this is ironically why every time communism “has been tried”, those countries have slipped into authotarianism that had little to no similarity with the ideal of communism. Because the reality is, that if you focus too much power on one position that decides how resources are distributed fairly, those positions attract those that care for achieving and holding power above all.





  • Ah yes, you’re right. The Ukrainian situation sucks for everyone. Ukraine has the right to defend itself, including conscripting people. And Russia’s treatment of occupied land and its people gives even more reason why Ukraine should defend itself. At the same time, those who really don’t want to fight should have the opportunity to leave the country to escape conscription.

    There is only one way for both the Ukrainian state and people dodging conscription to not have conflicting goals and that is Russia stopping its war of aggression. Unless that happens, we’ll have to live with the fact that both Ukraine conscripting and the people dodging conscription have valid reasons to do so.