Soviet Union... an Evil Empire?

[Ice]

I want to here some of your opinions on weather the former CCCP (USSR) was an evil empire or was it a legitamate country?

I personally thing the communist country was crap, but I'm eager to hear what others think.

[Byzantine Prince]

What is this evil you speak of?

[Ice]

What is this evil you speak of?

Mass murder and opperssion of their citizens is what i speak of.

[IrishMike]

Hmmm...... were gonna have to be careful with this one being in the Monastery.

But overall I think they did more evil things than good. While communism isn't evil, some of their policies were. So yup, I'd say they were an evil empire, maybe not the worst around, but not the best.

[Pindar]

This is academic. The USSR was illegitimate by definition. It slaughtered tens of millions of its own people and oppressed millions of others. It was a dark force.

[Byzantine Prince]

I agree that they did some criminal things, sometimes through negligence and sometimes through their own will to survive. I wouldn't call any of it evil.

[IliaDN]

This is academic. The USSR was illegitimate by definition. It slaughtered tens of millions of its own people and oppressed millions of others. It was a dark force.

Dark force? ... Oh s#@t another damn jedi
I don't understand what is the meaning of the definition " evil empire " - was it evil for itself or for other nations?

[DukeofSerbia]

Of course that was evel "empire" - King of Serbs, Croats and Slovens Alexander I (and later king of Yugoslavia) never establish diplomatic contact with Soviets. He even maintined ambassador in Belgrade from Russian Empire. He rejected to accept Soviet ambassador and he opened borders for Russian refugees.

[cegorach]

OF COURSE !!!!
Millions of people dead - often starved to death, occupation of other countries, agressive and criminal foreign policy, destruction of cultural heritage of other countries and its own, enourmous destruction of nature in SU and above - literally everything including intentional annihilation of graveyards according to atheist policy of this rotten cancer-state.

One of the greatest mistakes in human history - along with the Third Reich, but it lasted longer and even some fools believe it was 'progress'...

IT WAS THE ULTIMATE EVIL !

[Meneldil]

I'm fairly sure the world would be much better now if the bolcheviks got their asses kicked in the late 10's.

And it was not a legitimate country on a legal basis, since it has been establish through violence and repression against its own people.

[Colovion]

bad leadership

evil leadership even

but not an evil empire, that's just ridiculous

[King Henry V]

The leadership was at the beginning cruel and wanted to propogate communism to the entire world (Lenin would have been as bad as Stalin had he lived long enough). Yet the whole post-war "the commies are out to get you" was just plain nonsense.

[Abokasee]

an evil empire would be on world domanation and would bring back slavery luckily they didn't but they killed millions of there own!!



which means it was an evil nation...not an empire

[Quietus]

which means it was an evil nation...not an empire

Russia/USSR was an Empire. It's made of many, many countries. Chechnya is current example of another trying to break off.

[The Wizard]

Communism is evil. It's simple really.



~Wiz

[ShadesPanther]

The soviet union was made up of "republics" eg Ukraine and Azerbajan

The Russian federation is made up of Russia. Chechnya is part of the federation that wants to leave. although Russia is frightningly more and more like a dictatorship.

I would count The soviet union as an evil empire. The Gulags, Great purges and terror. I have heard some reports that if people werent executed under stalin the Population would be double what it is today.

I would also count the Peoples "Republic" of China an evil empire.

[PanzerJaeger]

Ask some eastern Europeans if the USSR was an empire or just a nation.

[Petrus]

I do not think the soviet empire was evil.

It is not a question of ideology, you just need to read Dostoyevsky or Tolstoi, for example, to find the same elements that were used later by the soviets in the times of the tsars.

Considering soviet union as evil upon those bases would mean considering ancient russia as evil : the bases were the same.

Stalin was a paranoid dictator without scruple(?), Lenin or Trotsky were ready to submit and sacrifice anyone and anything to their personnal objectives so it is different for them, but i do not see soviet union as something evil.

[Ice]

\
Stalin was a paranoid dictator without scruple(?), Lenin or Trotsky were ready to submit and sacrifice anyone and anything to their personnal objectives .

Have you read/heard about any of Lenin's works? The guy was nuts. I think he once said that 1/3 of the world's population needed to be killed in order to insure the rebellion would be a sucess. He was insane. He would hvae most likely killed close to Stalin if he would have not died of a stroke at the age of around 50.

[Marquis of Roland]

uhhh....define evil.

While you're at it define good as well.

Really, the Nazis were no more evil than the United States. United States was no more evil than Great Britain. Great Britain was no more evil than the Soviet Union.

America and Britain killed for money. Stalin and Mao killed for national solidarity. Frankly I think Stalin and Mao's reasons for killing are better than killing for money.

There's plenty of times when countries kill and rape thousands if not millions of innocents. We are an aggressive species, it is in our nature to do these things.

Its not like Americans didn't persecute minorities in the past (and still do to a certain degree buts its been a lot better lately). The British forced others to become their colonies. Whats the big difference.

The strong and influential will always be right and good. The weak with no influence will always be wrong and evil.

In fact America has been trying to take over ther world for the past couple decades already. We have been focusing on attacking other people's cultures, and we have had a lot of success with that. McDonald's, Coke, and other American cultural icons deserve the congressional medal of honor.

Besides, people's minds are so fickle, you get the media to say America or whatever country is the "evil empire" everyone would believe it anyways.

Its ironic how we will fight and die for an ideal we hardly exercise.

And if we're gonna go with this good and evil thing, I'll go ahead and say that objectively Christianity is by far the most evil of all major religions, and I'm catholic. Never has another major religion been so oppressive on free thought, so greedy in its thirst for wealth and territory, and so bloody in its actions towards others (and used so extensively as a pawn and tool of the powerful).

[Red Harvest]

Really, the Nazis were no more evil than the United States. United States was no more evil than Great Britain. Great Britain was no more evil than the Soviet Union.

In fact America has been trying to take over ther world for the past couple decades already.

Sheesh, what a load of horse excrement.

[Watchman]

Word. I may not like the US of A or its hegemonic ambitions, but I draw the line somewhere.

As far as nasty people go, the Nazis have to be about the worst. Not really for trying to take over half to world by force of arms; that's been tried before, and aside the fact that war is a generally nasty and unwholesome business that's not a particularly vicious ambition.

No, it's the way the massacred millions of people for no better reason than for what they were. Most mass murderers have at least had some reasonably rational reason to get umpteen people killed, some ends for which the killing is a means. But the Nazis just hated.

Mind you, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge are then on about the same level. What they pulled was loony, excessively brutal and pointless by *any* standards.

[Pindar]

Really, the Nazis were no more evil than the United States. United States was no more evil than Great Britain. Great Britain was no more evil than the Soviet Union.

This type of moral myopia reminds me of Toynbee's quote:

"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder."


God save us from the enlightened ignorant.

[Gregoshi]

I'm not liking the direction this is going in. The thread is heading towards the Backroom or closure and the participants are taking the discussion to a personal level. Simply state your point or refute another's point. If you are unable to or unwilling to put forth the necessary effort, then also refrain from making comments about your fellow thread participants or tossing out mean spirited one-liners. Thank you.

[Aurelian]

I would say that the Soviet Union was an evil empire, but it was certainly not a historically unique example of evil.

Why was the Soviet Union evil? Because it was an authoritarian police state... highly militarized, and prone to using torture, disappearances, and gulags to control domestic dissent, and dissent in its empire.

The Soviet Union was an evil empire in the same way that the Third Reich, ancient Sparta, Chin China, or imperial Rome was evil. Focusing on the "communist" or "socialist" nature of the Soviet Union as the source of its evil is misleading, because authoritarian autocracy can show up in any economic system.

[Proletariat]

uhhh....define evil.

While you're at it define good as well.

Really, the Nazis were no more evil than the United States. United States was no more evil than Great Britain. Great Britain was no more evil than the Soviet Union.
------------------------------------
There's plenty of times when countries kill and rape thousands if not millions of innocents. We are an aggressive species, it is in our nature to do these things.
------------------------------------
And if we're gonna go with this good and evil thing, I'll go ahead and say that objectively Christianity is by far the most evil of all major religions, and I'm catholic. Never has another major religion been so oppressive on free thought, so greedy in its thirst for wealth and territory, and so bloody in its actions towards others (and used so extensively as a pawn and tool of the powerful).

People believe this stuff? I always figured this point of view was a fictitious one that was just the height of strawman against moral relativism.

You learn something new everyday! ...But really, wow.

[Samurai Waki]

I really don't believe in the black and white ideologies... Communism is evil... Capitalism is evil... Socialism is Evil... Faschism is evil... anarchy is Very Evil. You can't poke and prod the USSR and call them evil for mistreating countries and killing millions of people, if that were true, than the USA is too a much lesser extent evil as well, how about the constant blood bath Contra wars going on between Capitalist and Communist forces in Central and South America? weren't the Contra forces supported by the USA? these wars led to losing thousands of lives... same goes for Africa. I think both sides were mutually responsible for the Cold War... and the atrocities committed. Was the USSR responsible for the Vietnam war? the Korean War? the Communist China takeover? Somewhat, but not legitametly, it was more so Karl Marx. Was Karl Marx and evil man for designing the ground work for Communism? No. That would be like saying Henry David Thoreau was a bad man because he was essentially the father of Transcendentalism (basically Communism). The USSR wasn't an evil empire... Stalin was an evil dictator... Kruschev wasn't terribly evil either... Gorbi' wasn't all that bad either. People wake Up, Communism is dead, it was dead the instant Lenin took power... the Russian Revolution the fight for Communism was lost on behalf oh it's selfish leaders. However, I must also digress... had Stalin not taken power... I am sure that Russia would not have been able to sustain itself against the Nazi war machine. I would rather live in a world with Communism as a major political power, than Faschism as a major political power...

[cegorach]

I don't understand people who believe that the SU can't be called evil because its people were not evil - rubbish !
This way NONE form of government can be called good or bad.
I know the world isn't black and white, but there are limits !

You can say that even Hitler was good because he built so good motorways... .

THe outcome doesn't justify the means especially in such extreme cases like the SU and Nazi Germany. IN fact where is the result which justified killing so many people in the SU ? WHERE ?
Do you really think so that it was necessary, that there was no other way. In fact WITHOUT the SU the world would be a better place for everybody including the Russians who lost so many people FOR NOTHING !

The SU was a militaristic state which gave nothing good, which did nothing useful in the end...

[Watchman]

I don't think anyone ever claimed the massive death toll the USSR managed, nevermind Stalin's paranoid purging sprees, to be justified. That'd take a whole new level of fairly purebred (ie. extreme and dogmatic) moral relativism, for which a concept of justification is likely rather alien anyway, or a really determined (ie. extreme and dogmatic) Stalinist apologist.

IMHO what barely saves them from the categorization "evil" (aside from the fact that I generally dislike that slogan-like term) is the fact that in its own way it really did try to "do good" - just with about all the wrong methods and ending in a rather utter failure. However there does seem to have a shortage of genuine malice involved - rather it appears to have been more of a case of rank incompetence and willingness to turn to brutality and terror when stumped.

It's rather ironic that at least the two main Communist states, China and the USSR, and presumably also most of the smaller ones, ended up with even greater differences in quality of living and about anything else between the "haves" (there meaning Party bigshots and similar folks) and "have-nots" (pretty much all the rest) than came to be the case in the Western "reformed" capitalism. For something that started out trying to eradicate class differences and secure reasonable equality for everyone that's a pretty sure sign of general failure.

[bmolsson]

USSR lost, therefore it's evil. The victor writes the history......