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this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026
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Standing up only after you are betrayed isn't quite as impressive as standing up because it's the right thing to do. Soviets would have been happy to sit and do nothing until the Nazis started threatening the Soviets. But, still, yes the Soviets kicked ass
Hitler threatened the USSR over a decade before he invaded. He wrote it in Mein Kampf. It was out in the open. Stalin attempted to get Western Europe to take the threat seriously, but Western European leaders understood that the primary target of the Third Reich was the USSR and they all wanted the Third Reich to win that war. Stalin never believed that the Third Reich would be an ally, and the attempt of people to spin it that way is so intellectually dishonest it boggles the mind.
You can say whatever you want. The fact is the Soviets had a treaty with Nazi Germany and only fought back when forced. And honestly knowing that the Nazis would be a threat to them and still making the treaty just looks worse for them
So did Poland, France, and the UK. Your point is?
My point is just that the ussr was not some righteous world hero, as was seemingly being alluded to
So did the USSR not defeat 80% of the Nazi military, liberate every territory East of Berlin that the Nazis had captures, capture Berlin, and liberate the concentration camps? Or did they do that but you need to make sure everyone is aware that they only did that to protect themselves and shouldn't be considered heroes?
I mean, cuz what it sounds like you're saying is that defeating the Nazis isn't enough, you actually also have to be morally good according to a standard that you will never admit the USSR into but also could never apply to any country in the history of the world.
Enough for what? Extreme gratitude, yes. But the post is asking why so many people on the left seemingly ignore the faults of the Soviet Union. And no, winning ww2 does not justify turning a blind eye to any fault of the Soviet Union, that's ridiculous, as it would be for any nation. And especially so when they entered the war out of necessity.
Seriously. How are you able to say these things without a horn of self awareness. You know what it looks like to enter a war voluntarily? It looks like the US and Israel bombing Iran. It looks like the Third Reich invading every country on the path to Russia. Like what the fuck do you imagine you are saying? The USSR knew that engaging in war with the Third Reich was a necessity as soon as they got a copy of Mein Kampf. It's such a ridiculous statement to say that because the USSR joined the war out of necessity that therefore it is not appropriate to consider that their defeat of the Nazis was a good thing that the USSR did. Ludicrous.
Most leftists do NOT ignore the flaws of the USSR. In fact, those flaws are studied as part of the process of historical materialism. For example, every leftist knows that Stalin was a violent paranoid control freak. Every leftist knows that the repression of religion was a major mistake. Hell, even the USSR figured that one out and reversed the policy.
If you think leftists ignore the USSR's faults, that's on you. But if your problem is actually that you believe the faults of the USSR erase anything good that could possibly be attributed to them, then that's a different problem and it's intellectually dishonest to say that the only proper way of acknowledging the flaws of the USSR is to condemn the entire project, denounce it, and never use it as an example of something good. Those positions are not equivalent