As Stalin himself has said, "never ask who is doing the voting, ask who is doing the counting".
Most Russian people do not care that much about Stalin since it's all too old and they care much more about Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who are much more recent butchers of Russia.
Some people do, but then again, some Italians, French and US campuses also give a lot of shits about people like Trotsky. An absolute majority of humanity are politically clueless, and the worst of them are also opinionated.
Spaniards and Italians, not to mention teenagers in Seattle, have no personal connection with Russian crimes and their ignorance is understandable. They have never lived under Russian control and have no real concept of what it means in practical terms. Russians have not extinguished entire branches of their family trees.
But why should any Russian approve Stalin, spew the same toxic imperialistic view of the world in many different forms like supporting the genocidal war against Ukraine remains a mystery. Germans are not holding military parades under swastikas, erecting monuments to their Führer, telling Jews that Germans suffered the most, harassing and shutting down Holocaust researchers and threatening rest of Europe that if they don't do as told, "we'll repeat it".
In the end, by not taking responsibility for your past and present actions like Germans have done, you will simply live shorter and poorer lives than other peoples of Europe, making endless excuses for your own suffering and the suffering inflicted upon others, while leaders are robbing you blind and partying on megayachts. My hope is that this degenerate russki mir will never reach me.
> Spaniards and Italians, not to mention teenagers in Seattle, have no personal connection with Soviet crimes and their ignorance is understandable. They have never lived under Soviet control and have no real concept of what it means in practical terms. Soviets have not extinguished entire branches of their family trees.
There, I've fixed it for you. But even then, it's not the only game in town. "Democrats" (Yeltsin's band of US loving nomenclature and friends) practically killed or dispersed just as many people as Stalin & company did.
There's a very significant number of monuments devoted to tragedies of Soviet period, in Russia. I'm not even sure Germany would match that. I believe their general approach was to pretend that nothing happened between 1933 and 1945. In short, stop trying to confront other people on their history and first confront yourself on your own history. Which would be?..
> "Democrats" (Yeltsin's band of US loving nomenclature and friends) practically killed or dispersed just as many people as Stalin & company did.
It was your own mismanagement that reached such level by 1990 that the economy was unable to provide even food to the population, forcing people from all social classes to subsistence farming for survival.
The constant passive-aggressive snark towards the Americans is distasteful and ungrateful given how much they helped you then with food aid.
> There's a very significant number of monuments devoted to tragedies of Soviet period, in Russia.
Mostly from 1990s and early 2000s, before Putin began rehabilitation of Stalin and incorporation of Soviet legacy into modern Russia. The monuments are now vanishing at an accelerating pace and incidents like these have become common: https://sakhaday.ru/news/v-yakutske-snesli-pamyatnik-polskim...
> In short, stop trying to confront other people on their history and first confront yourself on your own history.
That's what Europe has done - confronted own history and learned from it, Germans in particular. They do not pretend that nothing happened between 1933 and 1945, far from it. Disagreements are now solved calmly in EU cooperation formats, which have brought unprecedented peace to Europe.
The peace is being violated by Russians, who keep trying to bring back history by sending tanks with hammer-and-sickle flags into foreign countries, to shoot at peaceful people living there.
When will you confront your history and present actions, learn from them, and become a normal country where people are not living in filth and despair?
I'm glad that you have implicitly agreed that Soviet regime wasn't "our own".
> Americans... helped you then with food aid
As you've noted, I grew my potatoes myself and subsisted on them. Why would I be grateful to Americans then? shrug
> living in filth and despair
I wonder when you've last set foot in any Russian city or town, since they're actually quite nice these days. Of course, as they say, a swine will always find filth.
> I'm glad that you have implicitly agreed that Soviet regime wasn't "our own".
Of course it was. You've made it your own by flying its flags, by marching under its banners, by celebrating its dictators, and by continuing its traditions in how you treat domestic population and neighbours alike. Germany, in comparison, has made a clear break with its past and you see nothing like that there.
> As you've noted, I grew my potatoes myself and subsisted on them. Why would I be grateful to Americans then? shrug
The billions from American food aid program stabilized prices and prevented the situation from deteriorating into widespread hunger. Of particular importance was the grain required to feed livestock. I vividly remember newspaper photos of grain ships when they first arrived. The aid program lasted until 2000, and it wasn't the first time for Americans to give food aid to prevent starvation in Russia.
> I wonder when you've last set foot in any Russian city or town, since they're actually quite nice these days.
2019, but since I mentioned Narva earlier, this Varlamov's video is better than any personal anecdote ands sums up very well what I meant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMSwO7lS5QY In 2014, the EU provided Narva and its Russian counterpart Ivangorod on the other bank of the river 5M EUR to reconstruct the riverbanks in an initiative to improve neighbourly relations. Estonian side built a modern and very popular public space with lighted walkways, open air gyms and playgrounds along the riverbank. On the Russian side, the money got stolen and fishermen continue to sit on piles of rocks between weeds.
And may I remind that Narva in 2024 is a run-down and declining provincial town, that is, nothing spectacular and no "model city" in any way.
All in all, I see no objective reasons why Russians couldn't share the same standard of living as Norwegians, if they hanged their Kremlin rat, dropped the idiotic and violent belief in Russian exceptionalism and xenophobia, and focused on improving life at home one step at a time instead of trying to drag everyone around them down the drain. This too is a Soviet legacy that Russians have adopted and willingly embrace. After losing the war, Germans gave up on their stupid world domination plans. When will Russians do the same?
Unfortunately no. I was born in the USSR, and have traveled extensively to visit distant relatives, near Perm. That's why I understand very well the difference between what most tourists visiting only St Petersburg and Moscow see and the real Russia that starts beyond MKAD. Those relatives are from a branch of family tree who were taken from their homes on a cold night in March 1949, forced into cattle cars, and sent deep into Russia. When one of them had terminal cancer, I often brought medical supplies other basic necessities, because the level of care given to cancer patients in Russian hospices would get people jailed for neglect in Europe.
That experience in particular was like stepping into a time machine and arriving in 1980s Soviet Union. People in the west would never notice most details, like the way superiors yell, boss around and humiliate their subordinates in most mundane situations.
Another random detail was the way people treat their homes. Where I live, every apartment building has a legally established cooperative that manages jointly-owned parts of the building (parking lots, green areas, walkways, roof, exterior walls of the building and public spaces like hallways inside). Often this is delegated to professional management companies, but it's pretty common for someone from the building to take the management responsibility. Over time, from jointly collected maintenance fee, buildings have been renovated. New roofs, new insulation, solar panels, regular cleaning, etc.
In Russia, the concept of "home" seems to end at the front door. Even if people have made a modern yevroremont in their apartments, the hallways and exteriors are dirty, ugly, unmaintained and falling apart. When entering a typical commie block, the interior looks like it hasn't been renovated since it was built sometime during the Brezhnev era. Paint peeling, phone and internet cables dangling, electrical wiring unchanged since the 1970s. Nobody gives a shit about public areas. And it goes both ways. One of the first things Russian tourists in Europe notice and mention, especially in smaller places: how well maintained everything is.
While this may seem insignificant, I believe it is a key reason why Russia is still such a shithole. A cooperative means that people pool together their resources, democratically vote how to manage the building, choose people to act in their name and keep them accountable. It's the place where every homeowner learns how the entire country runs. How public finances are managed. How laws enable and restrict things that you can and cannot do. How to apply for things like renovation grants and coordinate them with government institutions. How to choose the right people for the job. How to analyze past performance and plan for the future. Capable people will quickly move on to local elections, becoming members of local government or council. The most capable will rise to become cabinet ministers and presidents. The most basic level of jointly taking care of the parking lot in front of the house or repairing stormwater drains is where the entire free society starts from.
I haven't seen that in Russia. Instead, I see people living in filth, with paint peeling and lights broken in hallways and cars parking on grass turning everything into a mud field, while shaking a fist at the Americans and "Gayrope" in jealousy and bitterness and unwillingness to admit your failures and in naive hope that by murdering enough people in foreign countries, you somehow gain the respect of the world and return to a past glory that never actually existed. And this is very convenient for the Kremlin rat and his cronies, because this way you will stay complacent, politically and societally inactive ("I am not interested in politics yada yada") and will never become a risk to their palaces and megayachts and NYC penthouses.
Sometimes I can't believe that people this stupid exist. If only the world knew how you actually lived outside of MKAD.
Most Russian people do not care that much about Stalin since it's all too old and they care much more about Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who are much more recent butchers of Russia.
Some people do, but then again, some Italians, French and US campuses also give a lot of shits about people like Trotsky. An absolute majority of humanity are politically clueless, and the worst of them are also opinionated.