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Do these people not realize Ukraine is a soviet country too? If using soviet standards the Russia Ukraine war is a civil war.
No, the average American has always viewed the Soviet Union as just Russia, and uses the two terms interchangeably. This is even funnier when you consider that Soviet Ukraine quite literally had its own representative in the UN, but of course the average American also knows nothing about the UN.
I actually would argue that we’re in a long Soviet civil war period post 1991 (counting all post Soviet conflicts)
Soviet rump states fighting over the scraps while Yeltsin opens his trenchcoat and asks if anyone wants to buy any state industries at 80% discount.
The dissolution of the ussr was an illegal act
Warring states period
Post-soviet sengoku jidai
Romance of the Three People’s Republics
Putin is a communist
The Ukraine war is Soviet infightingFDR was a commie
National Socialism
WW2 was a big ol leftist infight
The Soviets are not fighting in Ukraine
…that I cannot find an ounce of evidence to support
I’m doing yet another deep dive on Soviet history during the Stalin years (I’m an ML in a trot org and want receipts) and this statement perfectly encapsulates how fucking frustrating it all is. Even revisionist school historians, who tend to be more reasonable, cite Hoover Institution ghouls for like half of their sources.
Like I’ll read a chapter describing how bad something was. I make notes of anything sourced from the Soviet Archives or other firsthand accounts, cross out anything citing Robert Conquest and the like (or often just unsourced claims or “we don’t have evidence but it was probably blah”). And what I’m left with is a skeleton of facts that don’t really point one way or another. The narrative “skin and muscle” constructed around this skeleton more often than not just seems to corroborate the author’s pre-existing beliefs. I could just as easily invent a believable counter-narrative (which is what less-scrupulous authors have done), but it ultimately doesn’t prove anything.
No one ever really answers the question “if they were so bad at everything and starving, how did they compete with us in a space race and a Cold War?”
It has always been cope
Nowadays these same people are busy coping about China
In my experience they’ll usually have a retort for that with some bullshit about “authoritarianism” and how the Soviets were forcing the population to work focused only upon the will of the party. It doesn’t make sense of course, but it doesnt have to, it only has to fit with the narrative they already believe.
Fundamentally, a lot of people believe deep down in their heart that a mustached patriarch yelling at you to work harder is the best and most efficient way to run any given enterprise. If you have this assumption, then the only method that the Soviets had available to them to outcompete the “free” west was by yelling louder and forcing everyone to work harder than we were at the same time period (which flies in the face of facts about Soviet vacation days, job security, and so on, but facts are subordinate to feelings for most people most of the time).
Fundamentally, a lot of people believe deep down in their heart that a mustached patriot yelling at you to work harder is the best and most efficient way to run an enterprise.
Everyone yearns for a J. Jonah Jameson
“Our enemies are weak and incompetent. They are also an existential threat to not only our way of life but the entire world.”
it’s almost like there’s some kind of “continuous shifting of rhetorical focus”
There was a really good post on r/history from like 10 years ago about the Nazi efficiency myth and how much more effective the Soviet army over time. The emphasis was that the Soviets applied “scientific socialism” to their strategy and tactics and would pore over results of battles and incursions making constant adjustments to avoid prior mistakes.
Edit: I don’t remember if logistics were specifically mentioned but one assumes that planning would improve as the war went on.
The Soviets during WWII used planned obsolescence based on existing combat data. If a T-34’s average lifespan was 6 months (dropping to less than 24 hours when in actual combat), there was no need to make an engine that would last decades. It was all going to be stripped down later anyways or salvaged from wrecks.
This allowed them to build more quicker with lower tolerances and maintain a strong wartime economy. Remember, they were having to rip up railroad lines to get more steel. Operation Barbarossa was much sooner than they anticipated.
The Germans, in contrast, were overspending on their tanks in both labor and money. They thought quality was better than quantity, except it resulted in tanks that were still one-shot by Soviet tanks while German shells bounced off. Because of obsolescence, the Soviets were quicker to update and adapt. Meanwhile, German tanks would fall behind as production got clogged up with wunderwaffe ideas.
Logistics was a whole other problem for a variety of reasons. For one, the Germans kept running out of oil. They famously abandoned fully functional vehicles in North Africa simply because they ran out of gas during their retreat (which were promptly captured and studied by the Allies). Tiger tank transmissions would give out after 100 miles, meaning they had to be railroaded to the front…also a problem because of Allied bombing and resources diverted to the Holocaust.
One way ideology would impact German logistics was their refusal to believe they were being beaten by untermensch. Soviet partisans would raid a convoy, wiping out a platoon of Germans. The Germans thought only a barbarian horde could wipe out the mighty German, so obviously that’s where the Red Army is positioned! They’d send a force of matching size to go look for this horde out in the woods. Except it was just a dozen locals with old bolt actions. Then the real Red Army was able to overrun German positions which were now understaffed.
Edit: I don’t remember if logistics were specifically mentioned but one assumes that planning would improve as the war went on.
By necessity, it would have to.
how many newspapers a week does your trotskyite org make you sell?
I sell newspapers constantly because I’m trapped in a Trotskyite cult where comrades (white college students) criticize me mercilessly for having a flag from the USSR (degenerate workers state)
They won’t let me order vegan pizza anymore because the phone is Stalinist and “summoning my pizza slaves with a bureaucratic app" is “bad vibes”
Seems to be a running theme of Soviet history from a western perspective
When you become unstuck in time and past, present and future are all mixed up like a half melted Dairy Queen Blizzard.
come on dude, it’s like… everyone just knows it man… we don’t need proof when everyone just knows it
haha your front lines are moving forward too quickly for you to supply them properly
The actual answer to this is that the Soviets did have legitimate logistics issues during WW2, as well as pretty serious quality control issues with many kinds of fighting vehicles, as well as a lack of repair parts for said vehicles actually being with the units that needed them.
At least some of these issues were significantly helped by the US lend-leasing them fucktons of supply trucks and various spare/repair parts.
But uh, by the Cold War, they had largely gotten their shit together and were not really signifcantly better or worse than other major militaries…
…you could perhaps say the Soviets were overly fond of building all kinds of vehicles that other militaries would use a more fuel efficient chassis as a basis for… the Soviets a bit more so just kept basing things off of the same, reliable and proven, but fuel inefficient chassis and engines originally designed for tanks…
… but they also directly held an outsized proportion of oil reserves, compared to other countries… so its kind of moot.
But, then, after the Soviet Union collapsed… well, now nobody in charge of fuel depots, vehicle depots, ammo depots, etc, is getting paid much, or anything, so… now they are having an unofficial yard sale.
And this kind of corruption just became normalized, as… everyone of the oligarchs after the collapse basically became so by just getting handed some chunk of the previously state run economy to now manage as a private enterprise… shock doctrine, austerity on steroids… so, if all the leaders of society are operating this way, well why not do it yourself?
IIRC, Pepsi at one point purchased a submarine.
Putin tried to reform the military out of this culture, but he uh… didn’t quite achieve all that he thought he had.
…
Its sorta like how a lot of people in the US just view the French as utterly militarily inept… because they got overrun in WW2.
Despite that they played a very major role in WW1, they, basically maintained an empire of colonial holdings by fighting a whole bunch of minor wars during the cold war, and still to this day have not actually granted full autonomy to their ‘former colonies’, still have a military presence in them…
But general layman American understanding of anything military basically always starts at, or directly refers back to WW2.
basing things off of the same, reliable and proven, but fuel inefficient chassis and engines originally designed for tanks…
Which is why one of the only vehicles still operable in the arctic circle is a Soviet science lab built on a tank chassis.
Soviet science lab built on a tank chassis
I looked this up and immediately saw an article subtitled: “The Soviet monster machines that conquered Antarctica”
The Pepsi thing happened during the Soviet Union. The pepsi co would barter with the Soviet Union to import pepsi. Normally they would exchange for vodka, but in one instance they took ownership of some ex Soviet naval assets which they then sold for scrap.
This is then spun up into a bullshit clickbait story about pepsi having the worlds third largest navy at one point.
