this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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What "horrific crimes" did the soviets commit? Free healthcare and education? You're making it seem like they were equivalent to the Nazis.
Guaranteed housing. It genocided the landlords.
I'm not sure if my phrasing was unclear or if that many people actually consider hating two things with equating them. Either way, I did not mean to equate them, just to state the reasonability of hating both!
The horrific crime at the top of my mind when writing my comment was the Katyn massacre.
Katyn is interesting because the method of execution was widespread among the Nazis and unheard of among the soviets, NKVD included, and that German ammo was found on the gravesite, with manufacturing dates indicating that the soviets could not have committed the massacre. The Nazis "find" the site and then the narrative crops up that the soviets committed it, but the evidence found points to the Nazis.
Personally, I can't think hating the first worker state is reasonable, especially not in the same breath as one of the most extremely genocidal bourgeois dictatorships in history. Even if the Soviets were responsible for Katyn, there is still such a wide gulf between the two. The Soviets were ultimately a progressive force around the world.
Thinking, for no reason, about the Wikipedia page for the Korean War where it says that massacres were committed by both sides. As evidence for this, it cited some DPRK killing at a hospital during the war (~100 dead) with the Bodo League Massacre carried out by the South Korean dictatorship that kicked off the war in the first place (~60,000-200,000 dead).
But you know, the smart thing to do is to hate both sides for their violent ways.
Liberal false consciousness is fucking pernicious.
Not to mention the Jeju Island Massacre and the later Gwangju Massacre. The workers in the ROK have what they do manage to have despite the chaebol and US semi-colonization through incredibly bloody resistance struggles and militant trade unionism. The DPRK already won much of that simply by not being in the colonized half of Korea.
I'm well aware of the disagreements about who's responsible, my impression was very much that the evidence points towards the Soviets, but I won't pretend to be knowledgeable enough to argue it with you.
Excuse me for bringing up both the Nazis and the Soviets in the same breath, I'm sure you see how follows from the premise of the original meme. I don't want to downplay any progressive effects on the world that the Soviets have, for me good simply does not cancel out evil but coexists confusingly alongside it. The Soviets have done enough bad for me to hate the whole even if there's plenty of good in there, and I don't blame other people or nationals of invaded countries for doing the same.
This is actually a common misconception that is maintained and spread for obvious reasons. The "official" version relies on everyone already accepting it as true and proceeding from there.
The reality is that there is EXACTLY ZERO evidence that Soviets did it and all evidence is compatible or strongly suggests German guilt. All the "evidence" the proponents of Soviet guilt cite is either circular citations or proven forgeries.
You can read an exhaustive analysis of all relevant evidence here:
https://archive.org/details/the-mystery-of-the-katyn-massacre-the-evidence-the-solution-grover-furr-2018
The book is structured such that Chapter 1 already presents the full argument, then the next few chapters scrutinize the unimpeachable evidence in detail, and then the next few present some secondary and confirmatory evidence.
It's not about good and evil, it's about what class benefitted. There's no such thing as "good" or "evil," that's not how the locomotive of history moves forward. Instead, history progresses alongside the class struggle. The reason I defend the Soviet Union, and so many socialists do as well, is because it is the first socialist state where workers became the new ruling class. I don't pretend the Soviet Union was perfect, but I don't hide my intention to support the working classes taking control the way the soviets did.
Put simply, the Soviet Union made the lives of their own workers and peasants much better, and supported national liberation movements the world over as well.