[coldtea]

>* Huh? Connection with the Soviet Union and especially the Red Army surely destroys it for most, if not all, people I know. *

Those people are shallow. It's one of the most beloved anthems globally. Go check the comments in renditions of the anthem in YouTube.

Nobody cares if it was connected to USSR or not, the same way people can admire Gagarin and not care about the USSR connection.

Not to mention that there are worse things to be connected to than USSR -- USSR had several stages, including a more open stage (with many social firsts) in the NEP era, and a more or less conventional and more open post-60s part, it wasn't just stalinism and suppression all the way.

[TomMarius]

Oh please. Tell that to the people occupied by them from 1968 to 1989. I'm happy to put you in contact.

[coldtea]

Well, I just happened to have feedback from some of them, e.g. in Romania:

"The INSCOP Research poll revealed that 44.4 percent of the respondents believed that living conditions were better under communism, 15.6 said that they had stayed the same, while only 33.6 claimed that life was worse back then."

And that's from 2014.

[TomMarius]

Have you been in Romania? That place is comparable to a third world country outside of major cities. Of course it was better when it was heavily subsidised - at the cost of my (Czech) grandfathers' lives.

Source: Last year I spent 6 weeks travelling around Romania and Moldova

Your attempt to relativise what Soviets did is a spit in face of each one of the 65 million victims.

[coldtea]

>Have you been in Romania? That place is comparable to a third world country outside of major cities.

That's neither here nor there. Many countries who weren't communist at all are like that. And most of them are far worse.

>Your attempt to relativise what Soviets did is a spit in face of each one of the 65 million victims.

Well, the extravagant "65 million" number and summation of anybody that died during that era as a victim is a spit in the face of the billions who say it as their cause, overthrew colonialism in their countries, and died by the tens of millions fighting Nazis.

[TomMarius]

That "extravagant" number is from my school book and confirmed on Wikipedia. Another spit, great!

What I said about Romania is that it used to be heavily subsidized at the cost of their own people from other regions and other nations' people, so of course the people in these poor areas had it better than today and liked it more than when the subsidies are gone. That does not excuse anything in any case.

Fighting in the second world war also excuses nothing. My countrymen also fought there and actually didn't conspire to start the war, if we are to compare dicks. From my point of view, of course the Russians and other SSSR nations helped win the war and I'm thankful, but again - that excuses nothing.

Also, yeah, some people today don't value freedom and would like economic subsidies instead. I'm very sure that would change the minute they lost their freedom - that's proven historical experience, people usually want freedom more than to stay alive.

[coldtea]

>From my point of view, of course the Russians and other SSSR nations helped win the war and I'm thankful, but again - that excuses nothing.

Well, to me being crucial to not living in a Nazi Europe today, counts for a lot and excuses a lot. And I differentiate between bad actors like Stalin and co and their crimes, and a huge state with domestic (at least at first) and large global popular support.

>Also, yeah, some people today don't value freedom and would like economic subsidies instead.

Or they don't consider slavery to market forces and corporations freedom, and would rather have actual freedom from need with economic subsidies (which even the modern world is considering as UBI).

[nickpp]

Stop spreading your lies and propaganda. People living under communism hated it. Even today Romania is the largest emigration source in Europe, in large due to its communist past and corrupt socialist present.

Rather than desperately trying to rewrite history, why don't you take a stroll through Cuba or Venezuela, the current and latest communism victims? Ask those people how much they like it.