But let’s assume that all of his claims are true, since both the soviets and the west spied on eachother a lot. So even if MI6 trained some hungarian it had a mere effect compared to the huge grass-roots uprising in various cities by the commoners.

Your source confirms that MI6 aided the fascists. The west took advantage of far-right elements and aided them, they didn’t invent new far-right elements.

The “fascist elements” author was expelled for a time by the CIA in suspicion of being biased towards the communists.

Reality aligns with the communists, any honest journalist would be found guilty of such bias.

Another CIA document which doesn’t believe there was a rise of fascism.

Former far-right elements made up a portion of the communist government and millitary, as this was only a decade out from World War II. The fact that they were retained doesn’t mean they weren’t fascists, or that they had pulled a full 180.

“Anti-semitism was marginal. From sources I checked, anti-semitic acts and various messages did happen and come up (mainly in the countryside), they were more sideline occurences that did not come to shape the overall tone of events.”

Downplaying the infestation of anti-semitic pograms described as especially bad in Hungary.

Just by seeing how many antisemite people every country has even now, it is reasonable to assume that these incidents weren’t way above than the average. However Stalin and Brezhnev used antisemitism extensively under their rule

Anti-semitism was punishable by death penalty in the USSR, this is largely Red Scare fearmongering. In fact, the soviets were accused of being jewish supremicists, hence the hysteria around “Judeo-Bolshevism.” The USSR was the opposite of anti-semitic.

On the other hand, killing communists by the revolutionaries was definitely a more common thing. Imagine as a young student seeing the Communist Party win with a huge blue ballot election fraud, implementing brutal planned economy tactics which lead to country-wide famine (my grandma as a child seen newspaper as a rich person’s item, life was so brutal), your people being deported to Gulag just because they dared to even question the dictatorship in any way, instilling fear by the ÁVH, political members being executed on false charges, etc. and not having the urges to kill hardliner stalinists with a lead pipe. Ofc killing people are awful, but brutal times can bring out the extremes of some people.

Linking a right-wing anti-communist think tank for the majority of your sources, and cherry picking tragic mistakes in order to justify killing communists is awful. Planned economy aided food production, and fascists were jailed, that doesn’t justify murdering leftists.

That CIA document happened way after 1956, and the CIA was caught in a surprise after the revolution have began. They were only doing small intelligence gathering before that.

The CIA did not spark the revolt, but they assisted with it, as did MI6.

Also if the CIA would have funded this uprising then the revolter party wouldn’t have been a socialist lead party by Imre Nagy.

The west has a proven track record of supporting liberalization and undermining socialism, which is what Imre Nagy was doing, along with allowing the lynching of Jews and communists.

Overall, your goal here seems to be to downplay antisemitic lynchings, paint lynching communists as a good thing, and try to pretend that the soviets were brutal monsters, all while linking right-wing anti-communist propaganda outlets.

Yep.

Yep, I wrote about that more in-depth here. What I’m talking about is the modern usage of the term, especially here on Lemmy.

There’s really no such thing as “politically neutral.” The US Empire and “Israel” have already been bombing Palestinians as they like, China’s presence likely would not stop them. Palestinian statehood, and the permanent disollution of Israel, are both necessities for Palestinian liberation.

By that point, though, Lenin had lost a great majority of his childhood privledges. His father died at 15, and he was expelled from university for his radicalism and participation in demonstrations. By the time Lenin would have had this picture taken, there’s no confusion about his material wealth.

I’m not sure bourgeois was the right label either, though his family was certainly well-off.

Bourgeois?

I’ve yet to be called a tankie.

Denouncing all existing socialism, present and historical, doesn’t meaningfully put you to the left of western liberalism unless you’re actively building socialism in another way.

I also think Marx could have gone a little harder

In what way?

I’m just not going to pretend that the few states that pretended to try communism didn’t also do horrible shit.

No communist party over a socialist state has claimed to have reached communism, nor do so-called “tankies” deny that there are struggles, flaws, and problems run into by existing socialism. These flaws come from existing in reality, and to use the ideal version of socialism, perfect, free from any blemish or struggle, as a club against existing socialism is a deeply western tendency.

It stems from the historic failures of western communists to actually succeed in revolution, coupled with the chauvanism culturally instilled in us westerners that tells us that nobody can be better than us, no matter how bad we are.

The ones called “tankies” don’t believe Stalin never made mistakes or did nothing wrong. We uphold current and formerly existing socialism, such as the USSR, as genuinely progressive movements, and leaders like Stalin as socialist leaders.

Comparing Trump to Stalin is funny, actually, because no matter the mistakes and errors Stalin made over his decades as the leader of the soviet union, he was never a genocidal imperialist. Looking at what the US Empire, helmed presently by Trump, is doing in Palestine, Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, and the entire global south, it’s obvious that Trump is far more of a negative impact on the world.

Of course, Stalin made mistakes, and committed errors, but as the leader of the soviet union helped facilitate doubling of life expectancies, tripling of literacy rates, huge scientific and industrial advancement, free education and healthcare at an expanded access, and more. The soviet union was dramatically better for the workers and peasants than Tsarism, and was better than modern-day capitalism.

Equating the soviet achievements and mistakes entirely to Stalin is also more of a liberal, “great man” critique. Stalin was a leader, yes, but the tremendous gains made by socialism were built by billions of workers and peasants. So too were mistakes and struggles run into along the way. Trying to blame all of the failings of socialism on Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc. is to also place all of their successes on their shoulders. Both are equally wrong frames of analysis.

So yes, “tankies” are just those that uphold existing socialism, not your strawman.

“Tankie” isn’t a position, it’s a pejorative for those that support and uphold existing socialism.

That would be very interesting, yes I would be! And welcome back, comrade!

Russia isn’t trying to overtake all of Ukraine, though, just the four oblasts that already want to be a part of the Russian Federation. Further, as strongholds are taken, it accelerates Russia’s advance, while willingness and ability to fight in Kiev falls. There’s no reason to expect this strady rate will be the only rate the war proceeds at until its conclusion.

Another reason for the slow advance is the advent of drone warfare, which is extremely deadly and slows any movement.

Tibet was a feudal slave society backed by the CIA. The PLA liberated Tibet.

Two excerpts from Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:

Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Selection two, shorter: (CW sexual violence and mutilation)

The Tibetan serfs were something more than superstitious victims, blind to their own oppression. As we have seen, some ran away; others openly resisted, sometimes suffering dire consequences. In feudal Tibet, torture and mutilation — including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation — were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, and runaway or resistant serfs. [22]

Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: “When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.” [23] Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then “left to God” in the freezing night to die. “The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,” concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [24]

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, breaking off hands, and hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who wasremovedd and then had her nose sliced away. [25]

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W. F. T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. […] The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.” [26] As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri-La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.

-Dr. Michael Parenti

The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.

"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”

“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”

“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)

“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”

"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:

During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”

Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."

Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:

Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.

TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.

As expected. China’s maintained that Palestinian statehood is a necessity and that the resistance must not and cannot be disarmed.

That’s incredibly cool! Arabic has always struck me as such a beautiful language, too.

I mean, you definitely should read theory. Summaries are helpful, as are cool ways to explain complex concepts, such as dialectics4kids when it comes to teaching dialectical materialism. However, advanced theory is helpful for accurate analysis and advanced practice. It better informs us on our conditions and our necessary tasks in building a better world. I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list to help facilitate that process of learning, and to help expand my own knowledge to help my IRL organizing.

When we reject theory, and reject advanced analysis, it’s akin to a factory abandoning best practices and doing whatever feels best at the moment. Such a factory would probably work fine at first, but would run into far more hiccups, accidents, slow production, and even fall apart. So too do revolutionary projects need accurate analysis, best practices, and a solid understanding of the forces at play that go beyond simple vibes.

Revolution is like designing a smartphone, you need to analyze social development, its behavior and laws, history and trajectory, just like you need to analyze material science, physics, electrical engineering, chemistry, and more, not to mention logistics, shipping, mining, packing, and more to develop a smartphone.

Russian territory control is verified by both Kiev and Russia. You can watch it on video as well, if you want, or follow live map updates, such as from this pro-UA account. Russia is steadily gaining more territory, bit by bit, because this is an attrition war where Russia can afford to take its time while Ukraine cannot, due to having a lower industrial capacity and fewer people willing and able to fight.

Its easy to control a populus when you control what news they can get. literally the only reason russians support the war.

The reason Russians support the war, including communists and the nationalists, is because Donetsk and Luhansk are predominantly ethnically Russian. After the Banderites, backed by the west, took over Ukraine in 2014, Donetsk and Luhansk seceded. The president they supported was coup’d by the far-right, and the new regime began suppressing the Russian language. This started a decade of civil war. Russians are united in opposing the west, and in supporting the seperatists, leading to steady support.

You’re using semantics to try to make it seem like I dont know what happened. No shit the UNION was created of a bunch of countries UNDER A SINGLE GOVERNCE.

It was a side note, and you did say it was a country. The important distinction is that the federation was broken up, not the individual countries. These countries had their own governments, and participated in the broader socialist system as well. Lots of these countries have had nationalist movements gain power, such as in Ukraine. It isn’t really me trying to get a win on you, just a minor correction in terminology.

Go on tell me I dont know anything, go on. Idiot

I’m not trying to get a cheap win on you or insult your intelligence. You’re fully capable of carrying this conversation, I just see absolutely no chance of Russian collapse nor Kiev’s victory.

This isn’t material reality, though. Kiev is fighting back, but is losing, both in terms of ground and those willing to fight. NATO does not have the industrial capacity to continue fielding the war, and the war itself is increasingly unpopular in western Ukraine. By focusing on what damage Kiev has succeeded in dealing, you’re turning a blind eye to conditions within western Ukraine itself, where the material reality is steady and consistent loss.

There’s no sign of the Russian Federation breaking up. The population is, as I said, relatively united in support for the war. The two major factions, the nationalists and the communists, agree seemingly only on continuing the war. Putin’s still popular enough that the idea that there will be a collapse is closer to fantasy than material analysis.

As a side-note, the USSR was several countries united, it was a multinational federation, not one big country.

Her comment is satire.

And yet Kiev is doing worse, and is losing ground steadily, with an increasingly unpopular war effort. Again, how do you see Kiev winning? What does that look like?