I was repeatedly told in school that Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, only to find out recently that places like UAE had not abolished slavery until 1967.
Most people I talk to don’t know that 80% of Russians were slaves until their emancipation in 1861, as well as a significant amount of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians and Estonians. There were no reparations paid, in fact they had to continue working for free for generations to pay bankers for the same land they have been enslaved for. Then just after the former serfs finally paid their “debt” the Bolsheviks came and took it
They took the slavery / serf distinction seriously in the Slavic world. While the distinctions might have mattered in the 1800s, by any modern-slavery standard the serfs were slaves, as you rightly say.
Whatever we might now think with hindsight of the communist revolution in Russia, if ever there was a country primed for the peasants to rise up against the ruling class, it was Russia.
Russia might have been a land of art, music, dance and literature, but you were pretty fucked if you weren't in the 20%.
Not just Russia, the Kingdom of Hungary (which contained large parts of Central Europe) abolished serfdom only in 1848 (the Serfdom Patent of 1781 was not really respected in the hungarian part of Austrian Empire until then).
As if they stopped... The whole middle east is a shit show in that regard.
And North Korea continues to show that literally nobody cares, really. Because if they did, at least that would've been prevent- or at least stopable with some concessions to China. The North Korean people would've at least been treated as humans if they became part of China and the NK dictator along with the whole government be executed.
I’m sorry but the current NK regime and the Kim family consolidating power is in large part due to American aggression indochina. The Korean War was more or less genocide on the part of the Americans and history would be different without Douglas MacArthur…
That's just fake history. The US didn't start the Korean war, they helped SK stand free of the oppression of the seriously evil NK government.
China then interfered because they didn't want a US aligned country at their border.
However there have been decades since the affair settled - and I stand by my opinion that if the US and by extension NATO cares whatsoever, they'd have just told China "we won't interfere as long as you free NK citizens into free people".
It would've not been perfect at all, but at least the horrendous reality they are in would've been prevented.
That's also somewhat fake history. The half of Korea under Syngman Rhee was almost as bad as the other half under Kim Il Sung, it's just that Rhee was "our son of a bitch" to quote Roosevelt while Kim was Stalin's son of a bitch. Rhee was just as keen to unite Korea using American blood as Kim was using Chinese blood.
> Slavery in the Arab world is a benign institution. Slaves are rarely used for industrial or agricultural labor. They are often treated as members of the family. Bright young slaves are educated and given positions of trust and are eventually freed. Mohammed Surur, the former Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, was born a slave. Two managers of one of Jidda's principal hotels were once slaves.
A family member stayed in a hotel in Dubai recently and on returning said how incredible the staff were and willing they were to help them, and my response was "no shit"
I went once. It feels like Disney Land but for the wealthy. I'll never go back, and I actually regret going to be honest. It's disgusting and it's right out in the open.