Comments by "Geeky Radical" (@geekyradical4985) on "Vladimir Lenin: The Founder of the Soviet Union" video.

@rojoskies81 Why are you so triggered over your precious Confederate monuments being removed? You just can't stand to acknowledge American history, a digraceful history of slavery and white supremacy.
15
@Alex-dc3xp 'The confederates had a terrible oppressive system for blacks (which was also bad for poor whites as slavery stopped the development of a middle class'. In other words, the Confederacy had a hyper-capitalist system that allowed rich slave owners to prosper and hoard wealth at the expense of the downtrodden. The capitalists of today now treat basic human rights like health and education as commodities, like they treated human beings as commodities in the nineteenth century. As Martin Luther King Jr said: "We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor-both black and white, here and abroad".
8
@Alex-dc3xp There's not much of a comparison there. The Soviet Union and the Confederacy were both oppressive but at least the Soviets didn't just own and sell human beings for profit. Women were treated much better in the Soviet Union than in the Confederacy, and everyone in the Soviet Union was guaranteed health care, education and a place to live. It wasn't perfect, but it was a far more equal society than the Confederacy. Sorry you don't like the truth. You might rather live in a society in which folks who aren't white men are enslaved and given sub-human status, but I'm afraid you're part of a very distinct minority.
5
Yep. According to the memoirs of Yakov Yurovsky (who oversaw the killings), the order was indeed given by the local Soviet. This is also supported by letters sent by Yakov Sverdlov to the local authorities, as reported by Nikolai Sokolov, who was a rabidly antisemitic and anti-communist investigator appointed by the White Armies (so not the type who'd be biased toward the Soviet government!). It is generally agreed that the actual order to kill the Czarist family was given by the Ural Soviet. Lenin, Sverdlov and co did ultimately approve the Ural Soviet's decision (exactly when they did this is unknown and also irrelevant for me, personally), but I think the notion of full responsibility on their part is far-fetched and ridiculous.
2
Yep
2
@polsenOO7 What are you even talking about? The Nazis had no problem with capitalism. Private enterprise wasn't discouraged in Nazi Germany. If that weren't the case, business owners like Ozkar Schindler wouldn't have got rich off the German war effort. Many large business monopolies also profited from concentration camps.
2
Well, many of the deaths under socialist governments aren't directly related to the socialist ideology, unlike with fascism. The millions of deaths under Stalin were largely due to his extreme paraparanoia and the millions of death under Mao were largely due to the failure of his Great Leap Forward which led to a famine, but you might as well blame the person behind the Great Depression for countless deaths.
2
Yeah, the bias in this video is pretty obvious! However, on that note, didn't Lenin himself refer to the Narodnaya Volya as a terrorist group? Based on what I've heard, the failures of that group convinced him of the futility of individual terrorism
1
@SymphonyBrahms Sverdlov said that to Trotsky, not Lenin. And according to Pavel Bykov, Chairman of the Ural Soviet, the local Bolsheviks were the ones who actually gave the order. He recounts this in his book, 'The Last Days of Czardom' (which is available online by the way). Yakov Yurovsky, who oversaw the killings, also stated in his memoirs (published in 1922 and also available online) that it was an initiative of the Ural Soviet. After the killings, the local Bolsheviks informed the central government in Moscow, including Lenin and Sverdlov, who then approved the decision. That must have been what Sverdlov was referring to when he told Trotsky, "We decided it here".
1
You hope that Bernie will cause millions of deaths?
1
Well, the Democratic Party is actually full of many center-right people who are too afraid to go further to the left, thinking that they will lose support. There's an awful lot of division and in-fighting in the Democratic Party instead of focusing on the true enemy, Donald Trump, who has essentially become the Republican Party.
1
@polsenOO7 'There was no such thing as Capitalism in Nazi Germany back then'. If there was no such thing as capitalism in Nazi Germany, businesses wouldn't have been able to profit from the war and concentration camps. All they had to do was declare loyalty to the regime and they'd be left to their own devices. That's why Hitler got so much support from industrialists and business owners, who feared the spread of communism.
1
 @Lowlandlord But in his diary, Trotsky clearly mentions being told by Sverdlov that the central government and Lenin specifically were behind the decision to execute the Romanov family.
1