Comments by "Kameraden" (@Alte.Kameraden) on "History Hustle" channel.

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  4.  @nikhtose  And Lenin's policies led to a famine that made Stalin's two famines look not so bad. Lenin's war on the Kulaks lead to the destruction of entire villages, arrest and murder of untold numbers. This lead to the largest famine in known history within the former Russian Empire. In fact it's the primary reason Lenin "Liberalized" agriculture, ie gave farmers some Private Incentives, and stepped away from the ore Socialist style of agriculture Stalin would later impose. Yes Lenin pushed for a Liberal Economic style of Agricultural system to repair the damage that was done to their agriculture during civil unrest, and his handling of the peasant revolts. ie he allowed Farmers to be Capitalist. This more "Liberal" approach was the primary divide between Stalin and Trotsky as well. I mean liberal not in the 1930s style modern liberalism, but just general liberalism ie individualism. But to be blunt. Under Line, hundreds of thousands of Cossacks were killed, a few hundred thousand peasants were killed. We know that around 50,000 or so White Russian supporters were murdered. Between 4-8 million died through famine. All that with a shorter lived regime than Stalin or Hitler. Let alone the fact that Lenin's movement was the Counter Revolutionary movement, which by armed force Leninist crushed the Mensheviks which was the ruling Socialist party at the time in 1917. So ironically those who opposed Lenin were counter revolutionaries against an already existing counter revolution.
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  7.  @charlesdaloz2547  Issue with that is the Lenin era was awful. The Stalin era was horrific. Not really until the 1960s did lives in the USSR really started to improve... but the the USSR almost instantly started going into economic decline throughout the 1970s and would collapse by the end of the 80s. We know it was not good under Lenin or Stalin because of the famines. People blame the wars, but neither WWI or the Civil War explain the famine of 1921, as the Reds had won thar war by then. Any improvement in living standards literally only happened for the privileged minorities who lived in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev who benefited from the robbery of the rural peasants. Prodrazverstka was the State forced confiscation of grain for the Workers by the State regardless whether the peasants would have grain for seeding. The War is often blamed but the famine happened far from Poland, Western Ukraine, Crimea, Finland and the Baltic where most of the fighting happened. So it's lunacy to blame the war. Definitely being it happened after it was over and the Bolsheviks had established control. War isn't an excuse for the famine of 1932/33 either which was the worst of the great famines under the USSR. Which happened during peace time. War can be argued for the 1946/47 famine if.. it wasn't for the fact Stalin refused aid which the west was providing prior to keep Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians alive, so many millions of tons of food shipped to the USSR during the war, for free by the USA. The USA continued to supply food aid throughout Europe after the war but Stalin cut the USSR off from it as if he believed now that the war was over they didn't need it? So even though for the 1946/47 famine can be blamed as a result of the war it was still the failure of the State as a solution was there.. The first Link I provided earlier also States that people were pretty much starving in the Soviet Union from the USSRs founding up until Nikita Khrushchev who finally got the USSR's sh*t together and made food production more important than industrial and military... for the first time in the regime's history. In most respects it's the only reason the USSR survived into the 1980s. The USSR was a 50 long year humanitarian disaster.
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  14.  @MK-jc6us  1. Your argument about the Marshall Plan is a Fallacy. If the USSR could pay for War Aid, it shouldn't of had a problem with post war food aid. 2. What do you think TRADE is? You pay for goods provided by parts of the world outside your own borders. So the fact you see something wrong with the Marshall Plan yet have no problem with the USSR trading in the 1960s is hypocritical. That was the point that even a child should pick up on it. 3. This debate isn't about the failures of the British Empire and it's leaders.. "What Aboutism?" Arguments trying to strawman to other topics deemed similar is a sign of a person who has no argument. This has been about the Soviet Regime and that's the topic. 4. You actually think the USSR had strong economy in 1940? The USSR's GDP figures were entirely in industrial and military production. Not food or consumer goods. Nikita Khrushchev hammered Stalin for his prioritizing making drill presses and planes over potatoes and bread when he took power in the late 50s. He even accused Stalin of LYING about the data and figures ie what numbers you're likely using were never real. All the GDP was consumed and wasted by the State and the Citizens under Stalin did not benefit from it. To sum up how wasted, 14,000 aircraft for the Red Airforce yet the Red Airforce was almost extinct by 1942 why? They cared about showing how many planes they could build for the spreadsheets they'd show to Stalin for the pats on the back, but not the pilots to fly them, fuel to power them, ground crews to maintain them, parts to repair them. Russias entire Airforce was destroyed on the ground.
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  16.  @MK-jc6us  Being you so adamant about Presenting Lend Lease as Crippling, just to get the numbers being to my knowledge it was pretty much free. Quite surprisingly... I was right... as the specific cut off Date which ended when the war was over Lend Lease from the USA was 100% Free. So between 1941-1945 most parties involved did not accumulate debt as a result if it was considered essential to the war effort. If you've read the Lend Lease Act we loaned the equipment free of charge. To be returned after the war. If destroyed as a result of the war no parties had to pay for it. For equipment said parties decided to keep and keeping was voluntary... after the war rather than returning to the USA the equipment loaned, like giving back trucks and tanks etc post 1946 the USA offered said nations a 90% discount rather than having to return them where they could purchase all the equipment they still had. USSR paid that in a lump sum in the 1970s. So.. their was never any actual debt to the USSR from Lend Lease. So Lead Lease was ridiculously generous during WWII. In actuality the USA literally paid the bill for most of the nations that fought the war, with little repayments vs what the USA actually handed out. USA didn't want the tanks/trucks/planes back as we had to many already by 1945 making them almost worthless. Hence the 90% discount, we didn't want the stuff back. Why do you think that despite billions of aid the USSR only had to pay less that 700million? Oh to add insult to injury, the Marshall plan didn't exist until AFTER the 1946/47 famine. So it doesn't even play into the argument. Looked that one up for specifics as well as to my knowledge it was a very low interest loan program to help rebuild the continent. Being the USA was at the time an export economy it needed Europe to be back on it's feet. So the USA was willing to help rebuild otherwise there was no one to sell toasters to. So I just find it funny that you use examples that were very positive for the countries effected as a negative talking point.
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  18. There was some resistance but it wasn't on the same scale the Germans Faced in occupied countries. Some of it lasted for years, but you gotta remember, unlike occupied countries by the Germans, the Germans had no hope. So even if people wanted to resist who were they resisting for? Resistance groups mostly fought to weaken the occupier so someone else could come and save them later, they had no hope/dream of forcing the Germans out. on their own So ask yourself this. "Who was coming to save the Germans from their occupiers?" No one. They had no reason to resist, so even the hardliners who did form some forms of resistance didn't last but a few months to a few years. Even today there is some shadow resistance within Germany, as the Government often does raids on pro Nazi arms stashes now and then over the years, they're rare events but they have happened. So even today, they still exist. On top of that, a lot of Germans welcomed the peace, even if it might be a harsh one. 6 long years of war, and a country mostly devastated, let alone how nasty the Nazi regime progressively became year after year, peace was peace. Some of the reactions by the Allies and Soviets toward resistance was also pretty harsh. Combatants caught out of uniform were liable to be shot and executed by the Western Powers, and the Soviets burned down an entire town in response. One case in the West from a German sniper, caused the local American garrison to evacuate the town, and gave orders for the town to be shelled for hours by artillery. No one was going to put up with it in short, and few Germans had reason to go along with it, whether they wanted to resist or not.
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  21.  @MK-jc6us  Don't know what happened but you're last comment doesn't come up when I try to click on it. However, the source I used was many, I checked the US Government's official website, Wikipedia, and even checked Quora as you often get some interesting answers with references there, none of them said the Soviet Union paid anything more than 722million in debt as a result of Lend Lease. So out of the Billions of Aid the USSR paid but a tiny fraction of it. The reason it didn't happen until the 1970s was because the USSR insisted it would only pay 120million but eventually yielded to a larger sum. Issue is for a "State" a few hundred million dollars is relatively insignifgant. Unless the USSR was literally that poor. So out of 11 billion worth of aid the USSR paid less than 10% of that, the USSR insisted for years that it should only pay 1% of that which is why there was such a delay. USA twisted their arm and they paid around 7%. Being a majority of Lend Lease provided to the USSR was material, like food, coal, iron, fuel/oil with most of the military assets loaned being trucks which was like 14,000+. You can argue it was closer to 10% being who knows how much of the military equipment was lost in battle and would be voided as needed paid for. If you recall 90% Discount 7% is very close to that 10% the USA insisted that Lend Lease receivers pay, when you take into consideration what 722million is compared to 11 billion and that some of that 11 billion was likely lost at sea and in battle and would be forfeit from being repaid. However, that being said, the Math does reinforce that even the USSR was given that 90% discount. So the USSR never had to pay tens of billions back and wasn't really in debt in any significant way. Now I know some people use sources where the USSR spent a few billion USD worth on war materials during the war, but those were for things that Lend Lease did not provide, and much of it was to the UK, not the USA, as the UK had a completely different program. USA didn't have everything, heck not even for herself, like Rubber for example. So there are war materials the USA couldn't provide the USSR and the USSR still had to purchase from elsewhere. Even if you include that it's technically irrelevant as the Axis Powers post War paid the Soviet Union billions in reparations anyways. So if the USSR had to spend a few billion on war materials she was paid back with billions of material supplied by her former enemies. Quote for example.. "in addition to the large reparations paid to the Soviet Union by the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany and the eventual German Democratic Republic in the form of machinery (entire factories were dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union) as well as food, industrial products, and consumer goods...." "... amounting to approximately $12 billion in total..." cut out the bits about how much Italy, Romania, and other Axis powers paid, they collectively tie into that 12 billion but the quote would of been really long otherwise. So the USSR not only had to pay only 722million to the USA she received 12 billions in reparations, not even including the use of forced labor from Axis POWs well into the 1950s for construction projects/rebuilding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPVo9w79D6w btw this guy uses statistics often provided by the Soviet Union to prove that the USSR even by 1960s still haven't reached Pre-WWI levels, let alone Pre-WWII levels, even though the video is titled WWII. Being Grain figures in the USSR was still lower in the 60s than it was during Pre-War 1913 Imperial Russia, and he is using Soviet Statistics. They only topped out those 1913's figures after Nikita Khrushchev started a re-privatization program similar to Lenin's New Economic Policy which was also a Privatization Policy of Agriculture in spite what Soviet propaganda tries to state. Ushanka show and TIKhistory have pointed out that 80% of potatoes and grain in the USSR by the 1980s were produced by PRIVATE farms not collective farms. Yes the USSR had a privatization program, they just skirted around it and never used the word privatization.
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  42.  @d.c.8828  "Allow me to preemptively state that defensive violence in the face of territorial conquest is justified." I do not see why anyone would think otherwise. So I don't get what the point of that statement is. "Organizing collectives and having a known "leader", figure, or spokesperson, is not the same thing as centralizing power." Centralized Power is a result of Organized Society. A Collective will always result in the creation of Centralized Power. Maybe not right away, but it is an inevitability. So the only way for Anarchism to work is to not have a collective, and to have no organized society. Why I said it is a contradiction is because, most Anarchist are Collectivist, which is the contradiction. If you're part of an organized society you're not an Anarchist. However, the concept of having a Collective will result in creating a Social hierarchy, which in turn will create Centralized Power, and it only gets worse when said society gets larger, and larger. As it becomes next to impossible for individuals within said society to have any real possibility of representation in that hierarchy, and that doesn't matter whether it's a Monarchy, a Dictatorship or even a Democratic or Republic system, you will not be represented, as you're at the very bottom of that social hierarchy. As I said though, hierarchies will always form, even within a collective. Very simple example a union gets large enough the workers have to have some form of control/management of some kind, even if it's elected among themselves who will be in charge of paper work, and maybe representation when communicating with the outside world, those people get a fancy office chair while the workers who elected them bones wither away while mining as a small example. USA being a pretty darn good example of that actually. America was founded by people who wanted no centralization, the very first iteration of the USA was a Confederation for example as an attempt to hopefully not have centralized power. However, it didn't work out very well. We in turn created a Federal Government but one with a lot of checks/balances in some hope it would keep those in power, checked, or locked in a way so they couldn't gain absolute power. Which is how the USA operated for relatively a century afterwards. Yes there are many in the USA who want to erode those checks/balances and it's sad to see. Most of them really have no effect on curving power anymore. Despite this... people still fled the eastern United States to the western territories to escape an unfair system. Long before the erosion began. Because, despite being a collection of States, internally all those mini states also developed social hierarchies. Land was scarce, you had to play by rules you may not agree with created by people you may of never even supported politically among many other things. People, a lot of people didn't like it, it wasn't the freedom that the American Dream promised. In many respects it shows how unfair democracy is, for those who are not represented ie those who fail to gain a voice politically in said society. I hate to quote a character played by Mel Gibson but "An elected Legislator can trample the rights of a man as easily as a king can." I will circle back to the beginning as a reminder. If a Social Hierarchy forms, you will have centralized power. It doesn't matter what kind of system you're living under either. This is why Socialist systems turn into tyrannical systems. As to have a socialist system you to put society in control of the state, in who runs a socialist society? Those at the top of the New Revolutionary movement, or "New Society." Because? Even within a Socialist movement you have a social hierarchy. Despite that a socialist movement is supposed to be a populous movement, or a collectivist movement, in which everyone should supposedly be fairly represented, but never is. Because push comes to shove, individuals in society are selfish and greedy, if you have a choice between a office chair or a shovel you will take the chair, and you will do whatever you need to do to ensure you get that chair. This goes all the way to the top of society. ^ Actually why I laugh my ass off at Socialist who call Capitalist greedy. I would just reply "And Socialist are any different?" History has proven that socialist are literally no different.
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  46.  Just An Observer On The Internet  Well that is nonsense. Do you really think there is a possibility of having a Just Hierarchy? That is hopeless romanticism. We humans are too fickle for that to be a possibility, it's impractical to think it would be. The concept of a Hierarchy literally prevents that. Good example being, a phycological analysis of most political is that they're narcissist self obsessed people, getting higher up the political ladder isn't for the people but for their own EGO, Putin is a good modern example of this, as well as Trump, both narcissist, ego driven public figures which their followers who support them view them as the highest of society, ie best of society and drool over them... yet... in most cases these narcissist political figures don't even give a crap about their own followers just use them for their own ends. Similar analysis of CEOs is that they're psychopaths, often to rise to a ranks of a business as large as a multi national corporation pretty much requires a person that willingly crushes their rivals with no mercy, no remorse, which often leads to psychopaths getting to the top of the social ladder of major corporations as more morally excellent people are the ones they crush and exploit. But partners, including other stock holding employees don't care they just care about how successful the company is so if that means said individual can get away with absolutely destroying the lives of their rivals. These are not good qualities but yet seem to be universally common among Public Figures, and yes CEOs are public figures. You see it in Hollywood among writers and actors as well. So... yes people who rise up the social ladder rarely if ever do so for good reasons. There is no Justice, and having anything but an unjust hierarchy is literally a pipe dream. I mean it's why Twitter emotionalism is a joke that people often make fun of as again, ego driven narcissist constantly finding battles to fight for to make themselves feel better than they are, because they enjoy the social recognition ie narcissism.
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