marathag
Banned
Difference is El Jefe was doing his Terror retail Uncle Joe did Wholesale.
Soccer Stadium full of dissidents tortured, that's just Tuesday Morning for Beria.
White Victory in Russia; Horrible?
- Thread starter Johnharry
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Soccer Stadium full of dissidents tortured, that's just Tuesday Morning for Beria.
Actually, just looking at the graph, there was a sustained dip that lasted through the early 1980s, and even then, while the mean GDP did go up, income inequality also skyrocketed--which means that the median GDP lagged behind significantly.
Either way, this thread isn't about quibbling over whether or not Pinochet's cartoon-villain "leadership" was justified--because dictatorships just aren't. This thread is about whether a theoretical White Russia would be better than the USSR, and so far, I see no reason to believe that such a state would be substantively better than the USSR. I would expect a decaying, kleptocratic military dictatorship that repressed minorities, probably some ethnic cleansing, and a lot of dead dissidents. In no way is that an improvement over a totalitarian communist dictatorship that repressed minorities, engaged in ethnic cleansing, and killed a lot of dissidents.
Indeed it isn't.
But I'd have to agree. A White victory would probably be, well, six of one, half a dozen of the other. Ethnic cleansing and repression of minorities are a given, as is the murder of dissidents. Whoever wins, the people of Russia and its Sphere of Influence lose one way or the other.
I am no fan of Pinochet, I just think he is better than Stalin was. That is a very low bar to exceed.
Stalin apologism doesn't require denial. You'll note that with the British apologist argument I brought up, that British apologists generally don't deny the Bengal Famine and Jallianwala Bagh massacre, rather it points out a way in which the British helped so as to say "look it's not that bad".
See the charts on pages 9 and 10 to have your mind blown. The more things change the more they really do stay the same.
Also, there were some industrial capacities that the Russian Empire had that weren't recovered under Stalin despite his best efforts (the capacity to domestically produce battleships leaps to mind).
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1) The sort of kill count the the USSR reached requires exceptional levels of totalitarian cruelty. Why do you think White Russia would oppress its citizens on the same level as Stalin and not the level of, say, Mussolini? I think the burden of proof is on you.
2) Without the ridiculous waste of communism the average Russian will be much better off than in OTL, and several million Ukrainians would be alive and not dead of starvation.
Honestly, I consider them about the same in terms of per capita evil vs. nation-building. They're both godawful scum.
Were at least a million Chileans shot, sent to die in prison camps in the Andes or starved because Pinochet refused to reverse idiotic policies? If that is the case, I would agree with you.
OK, first of all, bringing up Mussolini as a defense is not actually a great defense considering that he was literally a genocidal fascist kleptocrat.
Assuming that White Russia didn't descend into kleptocratic warlordism on the scale of China, which IMO is a relatively small but distinct possibility, we're looking at an authoritarian military junta within 4 years (no way a shaky ostensibly democratic government lasts longer than that without being couped), led by either Kolchak or Denikin, probably Denikin, who was a savage antisemitic asshole who had no business running a bath. This regime is going to have to re-conquer and suppress Ukraine, Belarus, the baltics, the Caucusus, central Asia, and then decide whether Poland is worth the fight; it's a vestigial empire, that's just what's expected to be done, and it's the natural way for a barbarian like Denikin to support his regime--nationalistic wars of imperialism and re-conquest. That means ethnic cleansing and mass murder of people in the Caucasus for certain (separatism there is going to be rampant and ferocious), and I don't see the Ukrainians cheerfully marching back into the fold of Mother Russia right as their nationalism really kicks off. Russia is going to be gutted after years of civil war, and the Dear Leader (Denikin, Kolchak, whoever) has no reason to invest in basically anything other than the military. Added to that, Denikin in particular would blame the Jews and expel or kill a lot of them; there are also a lot of fairly devoted Reds still hanging around who will not be long for this world. That's before we get into a theoretical WW2, which probably won't involve Hitler due to the incredibly specific set of circumstances that let him take power, but Russia will still be nowhere near ready for because the populace will still be largely illiterate and as a consequence the economy and military modernization will suffer.
As for part 2, this is assuming that a military dictatorship wouldn't be ridiculously wasteful, which is patently absurd, and that Kolchak/Denikin/whichever other right-wing authoritarian nationalist didn't just invade Ukraine and kill a bunch of them to beat down resistance. We've seen that even today a relatively small proxy war in a relatively small area of Ukraine has still led to the deaths of thousands and the displacement of over a million; there's no way that an outright invasion wouldn't cause far greater casualties.
How many millions of Italians were shot, worked to death, etc over the 20 years of Mussolini's peacetime rule?
The Reds also expanded from the Russian core in a series of wars. The only difference between this and Soviet expansionism was that Soviet aims were even more megalomaniacal. And I don't think the examples you provide would match the purges, Holodomor, and the mass murder of deportation of all sorts of minorities from Poles to Tartars.
I doubt it. According to Wikipedia, nearly all Russian children received education at schools, and I don't see why Denikin or anyone else would want to abandon this. I don't see why a White Russia would produce fewer skilled people than the USSR - and it would also retain a lot more others who died in OTL for being bourgeois traitors, or in pointless purges.
(EDIT: Children in Tsarist Russia)
Central planning is less efficient economic model. And the USSR consistently armed like crazy for its entire existence.
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He happily invaded Ethiopia and deliberately trampled on international law, murdered hundreds of thousands of people there, mass-murdered and ethnically cleansed people in Libya, deliberately starved Greece, ethnically cleansed areas of former Yugoslavia and conducted mass murders, was himself quite antisemitic, built lots of concentration camps, happily worked with Hitler despite having personal beef with him over the Dolfuss assassination and the Anschluss (that's more of a spheres of influence thing than anything tho), and was generally a gleefully murderous leader whose fondness for ethnic replacement schemes IMO constitutes a genocidal policy. That he was not as genocidal as Adolf Hitler doesn't really change that.
Ignoring the rest of your post, because I don't have time to state yet again why I don't really see much of a substantive difference between a repressive communist regime and a repressive right-wing military regime, how the heck do you think a theoretical White dictatorship would structure its economy? It'd be some form of central planning, much like fascist Italy or Nazi Germany.
marathag
Banned
By tome of the Purges, had the most modern, as well as largest Army with the most tanks, as well as Air Force.
Doctrine was above average, until the Purges started.
Thousands of aircraft and thousands of Tanks is not cheap, or a light burden on the economy
You refer to all as "repressive" as if there were no varying levels of repressiveness. But there were, and the bodycount as a percentage of the population is can be a good way of comparing represiveness. Germany and Italy were also socialist to a degree, but they didn't take central planning nearly as far as the Soviets did.
the whites would commit some atrocities as per anyone in war and then an authoratatarian goverment would , especialy in the case the jews would it be as bad as nazi germany not all .
they would most likely be rigth wing slavic nationalist since the western style reformers would not gain enough support.
industralization would be slower however it was industralization was already happening prior to ww1 in a rapid pace.
the soviets really did advance heavy industry but at the cost of everyhting else making rusian economy a skeleton .
the comunist destroyed the russian economy since they destroyed the agricultural base that supports an industralized by killing the kulags and forcing migrations , they destroyed economic initiateves , by killing the kulags collectivizing agriculture and creating goverment monopolies .
the natiolist would not kill the economy this way but migth underdevolped it by controling to much of it or maybe the oppsite occurs.
the nationalist would invade to reconquer the lost territory of the rusian empire ,despite this rusia would never be seen as the boogyman to the west that it became in the OTL
how would all this developed? it could become like modern china a powefull and "wealthy country" but with a harsh goverment
or maybe as time pases they become more democratic capitalist country
they would most likely be rigth wing slavic nationalist since the western style reformers would not gain enough support.
industralization would be slower however it was industralization was already happening prior to ww1 in a rapid pace.
the soviets really did advance heavy industry but at the cost of everyhting else making rusian economy a skeleton .
the comunist destroyed the russian economy since they destroyed the agricultural base that supports an industralized by killing the kulags and forcing migrations , they destroyed economic initiateves , by killing the kulags collectivizing agriculture and creating goverment monopolies .
the natiolist would not kill the economy this way but migth underdevolped it by controling to much of it or maybe the oppsite occurs.
the nationalist would invade to reconquer the lost territory of the rusian empire ,despite this rusia would never be seen as the boogyman to the west that it became in the OTL
how would all this developed? it could become like modern china a powefull and "wealthy country" but with a harsh goverment
or maybe as time pases they become more democratic capitalist country
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ferdi254
Banned
Folks I cannot wrap my mind around this. We are talking the worst mass murderer in history until 1941 who sponsored two other and the defense is industrialization. Ulyanowsk I perfectly know that‘s why I chose this example. Russia would have industrialized with or without Stalin but with a couple million (hey do you realize this we are talking millions of people) people less killed.
Defending Stalin with industrialization is exactly like defending Hitler with Autobahnen.
Defending Stalin with industrialization is exactly like defending Hitler with Autobahnen.
A white victory would be very bad for many people as it would continue the civil war for several years longer with infighting among the whites until a Victor comes out on top yet this is better than a socalist victory as if the reds never win socalists like Stalin Mao and Hitler never take power and commit their attrocities against humanity
Do you actually know how the German and Italian economies worked under fascist rule?
Nazi Germany was a fucking nightmare. Hitler was a Social Darwinist, he fostered needless internal competition at every level. At least under the Soviets, when a decision was made on what to do and build, that decision was implemented on pain of gulag. Under Nazi Germany, you'd have it disseminated to a bunch of different people who'd all try to implement it in their own way, causing a cartoonish amount of waste, mismanagement, and general loss of time, materials, and money. Half the reason the Wansee conference happened was because Hitler needed all the various bickering bureaucracies of the Nazi regime to work together to wipe out the Jews, so he had Heydrich scare them all into compliance.
If anything, the command economy of the USSR worked better than the Nazi one, especially under wartime conditions. And that's saying a lot considering some of the comical bullshit that went on in early Soviet Russia. (I read a book by a guy who emigrated to the USSR, worked at Magnitogorsk, and later returned to the USA, he said that there was one place where they had three tractors, and the State said they had to have 3 tractors. But 2 of them broke down and they didn't have spare parts. So, IIRC, they used the broken ones to boil potatoes for snacks and just cannibalized them for parts for the third. They got in trouble for only having one operational tractor, so, if I remember correctly and I could be wrong because I read this in junior year when my mental state was collapsing, they put the parts from the working tractor back on the broken ones (which had by this point had chunks carved out of them to better serve as makeshift stoves), and had zero working tractors)
Yeah, well, I figure that if they were really lucky, the Russians under White rule might be able to reach the efficient, free and egalitarian heights of Nationalist China.
(sarcasm intended)