[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).

[TomMarius]

https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/domaci/stb-ruda-zare-statni-bezp...?

I wonder what was the motivation behind that, huh

[TomMarius]

The USSR had a global support during the cold war? Could you be more delusional?

And no, communism never had popular support anywhere, especially not in Central Europe, but not really even in Russia except for the two major cities. It's just that those who didn't agree had no way of disagreement (and it was same in my country and everywhere in the Eastern Bloc). Note that I live with a Russian national/citizen, these are her words.

In my country, they had to literally throw our pro-West (we were supposed to be a part of the Marshall plan, btw) prime minister out of the window and kill some more people to establish their rule - not cool. They had 31% (not universal) popular support because people had no idea about this and frankly no idea about what happened during the war as well, and that popular support was lost not even a year into their rule. This all happened AFTER the second world war.

> Well, to me being crucial to not living in a Nazi Europe today, counts for a lot and excuses a lot

Well, not to me. They could've went home after the war but instead (this is the key part) they decided to kill the people they helped save - not cool; and then they returned again in 1968 to occupy some more - not cool. My country could've been a free place with happy people instead of dead and sad people for past 70 years if it wasn't for them. Our economy would not be destroyed and our wages and pensions would be comparable to Austrian. I feel absolutely zero sympathy. None of the people who fought in second world war are alive anyways; most of those who occupied us in 1968 still are.

BTW were you paying attention during history classes? Have you forgotten that it was also the USSR who actually started the second world war because of their hunger for more power and global communism (God save us)?

> slavery to market forces and corporations freedom

Stop with this shit already. There was actual slavery in communist/socialist countries, can't you feel how wrong and unemphatic what you're saying is? It seems like you have absolutely no idea of the horrors that happened, or you're soulless. Our grandfathers died in uranium mines, and this uranium was then "given" (give or we destroy you, what a choice! What a nice people!) to the Soviets for free so they could subsidize other places (these are the places where they liked it). NOT COOL. (my country was left with absolutely no uranium and zero repayment, btw)

No one is a slave to any market force in the Czech Republic or in most other Eastern Bloc countries (the problem here lies in corruption which in turn lobbies for harder debt collection laws - entirely government fault!), go solve your USA shit elsewhere, it's not my problem that "the land of the free" can't handle its market when even formerly communist countries can (btw many of my countrymen and friends live in the USA and their experience is vastly different, they always return with pockets full of money - seems interesting; maybe there is a problem with you Americans if foreigners that barely speak English are more successful in your own country).