I'm Sick of Apologetics for the Red Army

submitted by Prathet from (self.history)

"It is said that bad men have no songs. How is it that Russians have songs?"
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I am against the Cold War and American fear mongering about Russia. But Russia is a shitty country with a shitty government and that's because it has shitty people and always has. Every decent Russian hates Russia and Russians.

I am fucking sick of hearing propaganda apologetics about the 'Great Patriotic War' regarding the subhuman and savage behavior of the Soviet soldiers as they entered real Europe.

The brutality of the Germans is just an excuse.

Soviets were brutal because communism is a doctrine of looting, rape and murder. Their home home country was already primitive, backward and with little regard for life and liberty even before the Bolshevik despotism. Communist tyranny implemented deliberate, sadistic terrorism and made these already damaged people even worse. This is why they acted this way, not merely toward Germans, but toward Jewish girls from concentration camps, Polish liberation fighters trying to expel the Nazis from their own countries (mostly enslaved and executed by the Red Army) , and many other people who had been victimized just as much, if not more, than the Russians.

What's more, these other victims - mistreated as much by the Soviets as by the NSDAP - had suffered with with far less provocation than the USSR had given the Germans. The slave driving, sociopath ruled, expansionist and war mongering Soviet Empire was feared and despised by everyone in a Europe and with good reason.

The truth is simply that Russians were mostly bad people produced by a bad society who were working for a willfully evil government with deliberately malicious policies. For all the exterminations and robbery the Germans engaged in in their rampage across Europe they were far more civilized, humane, and frankly human, than the Soviet hordes. There are no excuses for the criminal, cruel actions of the Red Army, which frequently included the majority of any given unit and its officers, with approval and encouragement from the Soviet government. Not only do I have little sympathy for the army that marched on Berlin in 1945, I believe that millions more Soviet soldiers deserved to die and its too bad the Wehrmacht didn't manage to kill them.

This is not an apologetic for the German military and government. It's a recognition of the reality that the Soviets were even worse, and that the Red Army was not fighting to heroically defend Russia but to enslave Eurasia.

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[–]Tiwaking 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The slave driving, sociopath ruled, expansionist and war mongering Soviet Empire was feared and despised by everyone in a Europe and with good reason.

Its funny right? Nothing good came out of the Soviet Union. I was trying to think of something, anything but nope. You could say Chess improved a lot in the Soviet Union. Thats not really worth decades of fear, uncertainty, and doubt though.

[–]Canbot 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

They made it to space first. I bet you would claim that a lot of great things came from the US space program. The soviet one was just as advanced, if not more. What you have to realize, and not just admit in a hand wavy fashion, is that all the information that you have access to is filtered by propagandists. You are not taught history by a benevolent third party. You are taught by propagandists who want you to think, behave, and believe in ways that benefits them. All scientific advancements push humanity forward, even soviet ones. And even if YOU were never taught about them, you can't deny that they went to space first. And that alone proves there was something there.

[–]Tiwaking 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They made it to space first

They also had Trofim Lysenko in charge of agriculture. India has space program, but has Designated Shitting Streets. China gets $100 Billion for Climate Change, but has rovers on the moon.
This is why I mentioned Chess. Chess was considered the battleground of the mind. Space isnt. Space demonstrates technological advancement as much as a Nuclear Bomb demonstrates World Peace.

[–]BravoVictor 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I didn't know there were apologetics for the Red Army. Does Russia even have a "Red Army" anymore? I thought that branding died with the USSR and Russian communism?

The truth is simply that Russians were mostly bad people produced by a bad society

I doubt this very much. In most revolutions, the people doing the revolting are usually not the majority of the people. In the US revolution, it's said only 45% of the population supported the revolution and only 1/3 actively fought the British. The the majority were either indifferent or supportive of the status quo. I suspect something similar is true about the Russian revolution against the Czar. Most people are just trying to live their lives.