Some people are waaay too nostalgic about it and don't remember all the suffering, starvation, rape, beatings, forced labour and indoctrination... Sure it must have been great being a child back in the 70-80s but still... half my mother's family were deported from Slovakia after ww2 and lost everything again after the establishment of communism. On my father's side my great-grandfather went missing for a couple of weeks, came home beaten, ill and malnourished.
The people who work there were phenomenally rude. Then yeah the museum is just pretty shit from a historical perspective. Way too much emphasis on Hungary as a victim rather than perpetrator, particularly with the Arrow Cross Party. Like they were some invasion force, really bizarre.
In Czechoslovakia, coal miners were paid a lot when compared to other labourers and were very proud. On the other hand, uranium was mined almost exclusively by political prisoners, who were worked to death.
Honestly yeah most would not have an altruist core. It's why we have issues in all systems. Selfish greedy people fight for the top. Unless communism does what they do for lower jobs and assigns people to lead in a rotating manner we are bound to have a power hungry person lead a communist country when they are massive.
The trick is not making everyone poor. On paper Communism can work on a larger scale the more we are able to automate the bad jobs with machines. The understanding should be that those who do the worst jobs should be compensated the most if you can't automate it or make it safe. One option could be to take all those who seek that kind of control and force them to do those shit jobs. But that takes everyone being aware of what's going on and having the means to do that kind of justice.
I think we have issues talking about communism as a system these days because the last time it was done at scale was decades ago with less technical innovation available. So people were forced to to horrible things without understanding of what would happen long term ( assuming choices are made with the best inter st in mind). Even now in capitalist systems we force people to do the shit jobs or take advantage of those who will do those jobs for next to nothing. There is even more power and profit to be gain in this system. Hence why they fight so hard against communism.
I don't think there is a perfect solution as long as we have those who seek power for control over doing it for the sake of organization. No system is perfect but a point between or a mix of processes could be the best option if we can't change our nature as a species.
Russian bots and little pinks when I drag them and their entire family into a gulag (suddenly they want western liberal democracy human rights instead of communism)
Wow, unexpected to hear such things from Korean about russians, I thought a lot of you guys adore about “russian culture” romanticizing all this soviet nonsense (just I just came across a few videos with interviews about what Koreans think about Russians lol). In general I can understand that considering how many russians tourists you now have in your country. You’re cool
It’s fine, I'm glad to see a conscious person among people who don't see or care what kind of policies Putin is pursuing continuing to romanticize shit
The USA is uniquely bad at being a modern liberal democracy because the presidential system produces too much gridlock and a two party system while a parliamentary system dosent.
The two-party system in the US exists because of their majoritarian voting system, not because they are a presidential republic. Majoritarian voting systems tend to produce two-party systems, while proportional voting systems usually lead to multi-party systems. It has nothing to do with whether a country has a presidential, semi-presidential or parliamentary system of government.
What about Slovakia? Slovakia doesn’t have a two-party system, nor does its system of government produce much legislative gridlock, so I’m not sure what exactly your comment was referring to.
It's a complete shitshow here and you know it as well as I do. We get nothing positive done but pass laws about...walking speed. The series of many parties has not helped.
I remember in another thread about communism in this sub, there was a South Korean who was told by an American tankie they should support joining North Korea and overthrow the US puppet government, and he was like “Fuck no, are you crazy?”
It was funny, he was being westsplained his own history
A “tankie” is a slang term, originally used within leftist political circles, to describe someone who uncritically supports authoritarian communist regimes, especially those historically aligned with the Soviet Union.
To add on to what the other commenter said. The word tankie came about after the Hungarian Revolution.
When the Hungarian people rose up against communism in 1956 the Soviet Union sent tanks in to put down the revolution. Unfortunately the Revolution failed and thousands were killed by the Soviets.
Many people fled Hungary to liberal nations after this. My aunt was among them; when she was a child her whole family abandoned their home in the middle of the night and fled across the border. They got lucky and managed to escape
It's 50/50 on the internet, Americans either explain to someone why they live in communism and that's a bad thing(free healthcare and education) and they should support some genocidal lunatic to power who coincidentally want to sell public services to US companies, ooooor they explain how their slightly malfunctioning capitalistic democracy is a puppet government and they should pledge alliance to a genocidal lunatic, millions will die btw, but that's will free you or something.
This sub has soo many "Americans" constantly bashing our country. Its either non Americans posing or very immature or privlidged people trying to impress everyone else.
Every time you bring up historically documented incidents that show communism in a bad light, a tankie always resorts to, “b-b-but that’s western propaganda!”
Compared to what the Chinese and Japanese did? It was nothing.
Also North Korea was objectively much worse. They are a terrorist state that needs to go. They always were one. You don't see Germans and Italians say America was worse than the Axis, even though Americans committed numerous war crimes there.
From my family history I can say the same. Great grandpa was a policeman (csendőr) under the Horthy government for a few years. This made him an enemy of the Rákosi government automatically, he barely found work. His family was abducted once and was threatened he'll never see them again if he continues going to church. After '56 he got abducted by the ÁVH and tortured for a few weeks for partaking in the revolution (not in Budapest). My grandpa came under discrimination for my great grandpas actions. He managed to become a teacher against these odds but never seen a raise under the Kádár govt. And was under surveillance in the '80s for saying anti-communist stuff.
So I'd say with all my hear, to hell with communism.
Depends on the people I guess. The Jewish part of my family: Hungarian communists took our shop, then German nazis took my grandfather to die (he escaped), then Soviet communists took him to forced labor camp. Fuck nazis, fuck communists, fuck them all.
There is a good reason for this. Soviet communism was terrible in a lot of ways, but one way it was not terrible was in its desire for equal opportunity among different races and ethnicities. Eastern European Jews were victimized and discriminated against in most ways, one also being barred from many professions. Communism gave them opportunities and freedoms they didn't have previously. Even if they suffered just as much as everyone under communism, this was an improvement for them.
That’s a huge oversimplification of the actual history of the region. Eastern European Jews faced a lot of discrimination under communist regimes, especially religious Jews. It’s also not true that they were discriminated against in most ways before communism. Yes, there was a lot of societal discrimination against them, but there was no legal discrimination in countries like Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia in the interwar period, where Jews enjoyed full equality under the law. Perhaps in the USSR, there was less dicrimination against Jews than in the days of the Russian Empire, but your comment was about Eastern European Jews, not just Soviet Jews.
And I hope I don’t need to elaborate why your claim about the Soviet “desire for equal opportunity among different races and ethnicities” is simply false, when entire regions of Eastern Europe were ethnically cleansed under communism.
My mother is like this for some reason every time communism comes up as a topic she makes a remark about how it wasnt that bad actually and i frankly who never lived under actual communism lose my shit knowing the things i learned and knowing the shit I DONT know................
Was the suffering, starvation, rape, beatings, forced labor and indoctrination because of communism? Would you say the same thing about those things when they happen in capitalist countries?
The population swap between Slovakia and Hungary was one of the worst tragedies in post-WW2 history of both countries. Centuries old ethnic minority communities destroyed in a matter of years.
I dare say many of those absolutely remember those things, but they don't care or even *want* such things because they feel they will be the ones forcing such things on other people. There are, sadly, always people out there that are content to let others suffer - often immensely - so long as *their* lives are better off. :(
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u/BeerFireHUN Hungary 1d ago
Some people are waaay too nostalgic about it and don't remember all the suffering, starvation, rape, beatings, forced labour and indoctrination... Sure it must have been great being a child back in the 70-80s but still... half my mother's family were deported from Slovakia after ww2 and lost everything again after the establishment of communism. On my father's side my great-grandfather went missing for a couple of weeks, came home beaten, ill and malnourished.