USSR is mostly to blame for the entire situation

USSR literally freed the Korean peninsula from Imperial Japanese occupation before the US even considered joining. Only when the US realized this may lead to communism in the region did they join in from the south to prevent total soviet liberation of Korea. The US then proceeded to bomb North Korea into hell, killing literal millions of people and leveling the entire country. How any of that is USSRs fault is beyond me.

I don’t particularly love the Juche ideology, it’s marked by very strong nationalism, but if you’re incapable of understanding why the government is so quirky, think about this: one terrorist attack in the USA, 9/11, led to mass hysteria, oppressive laws regarding freedom of movement, widespread islamophobia, mass state surveillance, and it’s one of the biggest scars of the country in recent history. If you don’t think that the leveling of 90% OF BUILDINGS IN THE COUNTRY and the MURDER OF 15% OF THE POPULATION through bombs for the sin of being communist may have long-lasting consequences in the government and population, I encourage you to rethink that.

I wasn’t condemning Ukraine for not holding elections during a war, I was seriously arguing about the difficulty of holding elections when you’re under severe economic and political duress because of consequences of mass-bombing of your country by the US (which is important and you failed to mention in your comment) and economic blockade.

I call it blockade not because it’s exerted militarily, but because it doesn’t consist of unilateral sanctions by the US, it consists of a prohibition of companies from trading in the largest economy in the world if they trade previously with North Korea, as is the case of the blockade of Cuba. In this manner, if a Chinese company wants to do any trade in the US, it cannot do trade in North Korea too. A sanction is applied only within your own jurisdiction in my opinion, as for example what the EU is doing to Russia.

As for the study I promised, in the findings it says these words:

We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict

This is why I don’t bother making a distinction between pressure to elections from military violence as from economic violence, both are equally harmful even in number of deaths, and both represent a similar strain on the institutions and the trust of people in the government. As I quoted in my previous comment, the US itself admits this, by talking of “bringing about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government”. I don’t bring up the frozen Korean war because as of today it doesn’t produce the amount of deaths and suffering that the American economic blockade does by any materialist metric. My point is not to argue about technicisms of whether a country is technically at war hence no elections, but rather about the measurable, material impact of western pressure, whatever form it may take.

Ok, now apply that beautiful logic of yours to North Korea.

North Korea was bombed to the stone age in 1955 by the glorious and democratic USA (without consulting its people), to the point that 15% of North Koreans were murdered and 90% of all buildings were leveled. Afterwards, the most thorough and long-lasting economic blockade in history was imposed by the USA, which left the economy in shambles and made it very hard for the country to recover. It was recovering when, in 1991, its greatest commercial partner during blockade, the USSR, was dissolved, which left food insecurity in a country that wasnt allowed to import grain and whose cold climate and mountainous geography make agriculture quite complicated. For reference, a recent study showed that US economic blockades murder 500.000 people a year, quite a bit more than death rates from war in Ukraine.

US could end the criminal blockade of North Korea right now if he simply chose to, but no, the US doesn’t want to stop murdering people through economic violence. As the Office of the Historian of the USA holds in its database:

every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

Hmmm, I wonder why they dont celebrate free elections in such critical conditions…

…and local businesses constantly close in favour of big companies, as countries develop the amount of self-employed people goes down:

Source

Local businesses simply cannot outcompete ever-growing big businesses, and because big businesses are in a need to ever-grow to satisfy the raising stock value imperative, they inevitably intrude the market share of local businesses. This is well-known since the mid-1800s.

The US has military bases and ships parked in Taiwan, South Korea, Phillipines and Japan, and regularly patrols ships in the Taiwan strait. Surely this is only for defensive purposes? I wonder, why would China have amphibian ships given these circumstances? Would you find it weird for, say, the US to have amphibian training exercises if Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Guatemala had Russian troops stationed and there were Russian military ships in the strait between Cuba and Florida?

You should also check out hexbear, it’s the most trans inclusive place on Lemmy and it’s defederated from .world so you don’t get the libs constantly on your feed

What in my comments makes you think I like one bit the nationalist Russian brand of fascism going on nowadays in Moscow? It’s the polar opposite of everything the Soviets fought and died for. How about you engage with the content of my comments instead of labelling me and doing a thought-terminating cliche? You still haven’t answered to how returning the city of Lviv to Ukraine and the city of Vilnius to Lithuania is an act of imperialism.

Russian maps from 2015 show Crimea to be Russian, do you agree it’s a Russian city? My entire point is that Lviv, one of the most important cities in Ukraine, was invaded by Poland in 1919. Soviets “invading” it in 1939 effectively meant returning it to Ukraine.

Hitler famously didn’t pull Germany out of poverty, that’s just Nazi propaganda. He literally starved his people to buy weapons for genocide. Fascists famously don’t improve the living conditions of the working class, that’s what communists do, unsurprisingly.

You also didn’t mention anything about the policy of China itself, you just generally pointed to a Wikipedia article fully based on western news outlets (I wonder what motives western capitalist outlets would have to lie about socialist China?) and speak of anti-humanitarian traits.

And yes, I’m a westerner. I’m a Spaniard communist who yesterday was gluing signs on the streets of Madrid with my org calling for the Student Strike organized for the 2nd of October, and for the mass protest of the 4th of October calling for a general strike to force the government to cut ties with Israel. You’re attacking the wrong enemy here, there’s no “tankie threat” in Europe, the enemies are the far right and I’m on the right side of things. How about you worry about stopping fascism in your own country and system? China doesn’t have a blossoming fascist party.

Believe it or not, your average far-right European voter isn’t concerned with Ukraine and doesn’t admire the invasion, they’re mostly racist misogynist islamophobes who have been progressively impoverished by every party in the political spectrum of their country for a decade and a half in a row.

Westerners hate China and hate Muslims, but for some reason care so much about Chinese Muslims. Notice how even the Wikipedia article title got changed from “Genocide” to “Persecution”, I wonder why that is.

You, as a westerner of a country actively supporting actual genocide in Palestine, the one you can actually go online TODAY and watch videos of how many kids got bombed yesterday, are criticising the Chinese government for a harsh reeducation campaign in a province that hosted radical Islamist groups carrying out terror attacks in China which killed hundreds of people. Your fucking homeland of Canada (assuming from your instance) has all but eliminated the native populations of the region, and you have the courage of crying “TaNkIe” because I think that a country that uplifted 1/10th the world population from poverty in 30 years is admirable in that regard.

“Holodomor” is just a scary word to refer to the 1931-1933 Soviet famine. Do you also use special scary words to describe capitalist-driven famines such as the Bengal Famine that the British created in India, or is it a privilege only reserved for the last serious non-war-made famine in the USSR?

Famines, believe it or not, were commonplace in preindustrial Russian Empire, which had a terribly low life expectancy. Between 1917 (Bolshevik revolution) and 1941 (Soviet Union entering WW2) life expectancy rose from 30 years to about 41. The Socialist project in Eastern Europe made some mistakes, such as errors in the collectivization of 1929-1934 during the first 5-year plan that led to unexpected sabotage and failed crops, but ultimately these mistakes were more than compensated for through social policy, universal healthcare and education, and probably most importantly, enabling the industrialization of the Soviet Union that allowed for the mechanization of agriculture and the end of famines (which by itself saved millions of lives) and the win against the Nazis 10 years afterwards (which by itself saved tens of millions of lives from the planned genocide against the slavic peoples by the Nazis according to the Generalplan Ost. The Soviet project saved tens if not millions of lives from hunger, disease, exploitation, and worst of all, colonisation and extermination by Nazis.

I’m a Spaniard who proudly participated in the sabotage of La Vuelta Ciclista in favour of Palestine just over a week ago with my communist organization, and who yesterday was glueing signs in Madrid calling for the Student Strike on the 2nd of October and the general protest on the 4th of October pushing for a general strike against genocide. You’re attacking the wrong people here, the enemies are European fascists, not European communists.

Unfortunately, both of them suffered the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR, which led to the greatest humanitarian crisis and loss of life in Europe since WW2, with scholars such as Paul Cockshott estimating the deaths in more than 5 million after demographic analysis of the region, with Ukraine being hit especially hard due to becoming the poorest country in Europe after the dismantling of its entire economy in the 90s. Unemployment, depression, alcoholism, homelessness, drug addiction, violent crime, mental health problems and even hunger and preventable disease turned the 90s and early 2000s into some of the worst that Europe has seen in more than half a century, and I therefore condemn the capitalist government of both countries extensively for all the damage they’re doing to their own populations.

The Soviet Union invaded the famously Polish cities of looks map… Lviv (6th largest city in modern Ukraine), Pinsk (10th largest city in modern Belarus) and Vilnius (capital of Lithuania)? Most of the territories invaded by the Soviets in “Poland” were actually Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian territories that had been invaded by Poland in their 1919 expansionist war against Ukraine. Or are you a Ukrainophobe saying that Lviv belongs to Poland?

For reference: Poland in 1938

And a map of the territories the Soviets invaded:

The USSR had a blatant disregard for the lives of their own people before WW2, which explains why life expectancy looks at chart …increased from 30ish years old to 40+?

Yeah, you’re actually right. Sorry for being a smug ass, I guess I’m sensitive about this part of history which is heavily misunderstood and propagandized against socialists like me, but you’re right and I’ll try to be more chill about it. Thanks for the chat

Most voted party is still far-right, at least Italians just organized a general strike against genocide in Palestine.

they didn’t “fight against fascism” until Germany invaded

Did you not read my comment? I specifically mentioned the Soviets being the only country in the world that meaningfully helped the antifascists in Spain with weapons, tanks, artillery and aviation, back in 1936, 3 years before the start of WW2 while all of western Europe was doing appeasement with the Nazis and “non-intervention” against fascism in my homeland.

Before the start of the war, the Soviets were famously trying to urge all of Europe against Fascism and in particular against Nazi Germany through mutual defense agreements. They signed one with Czechoslovakia together with France, which France refused to honour (see Munich Betrayal), which, and I quote Wikipedia: “The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia’s assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused.”, again back in 1938, before any Fascist invasion of the Soviets. Furthermore, the USSR under the Litvinov doctrine sought after mutual defense agreements with Poland, France and England, to the point of offering to send ONE MILLION SOLDIERS to France (Archive mirror to bypass paywall) together with tanks, aviation and artillery to France on exchange for a mutual defense agreement, which France declined.

Looking into Soviet interwar policy, it’s patently obvious that they were the strongest antifascist formation in Europe except possibly for the Spanish republicans during the Spanish civil war.

I’m also over-simplifying a bit in that I’m focusing mostly on leadership

My point stands though. Fascism was fought predominantly by Communist and Anarchist leadership. China against fascist Japan, Cuban revolutionaries against fascist dictator Batista, Spanish Republican government in the Spanish civil war… Whereas it was capitalist countries funding fascist coups all over the world such as that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile against socialdemocrat Allende, the Iranian coup against socialist-aligned Mosaddeq…

Single example? 80% of Nazi soldiers died in the Eastern Front against the Soviets. Communist China kicked out fascist Japan from the mainland through unthinkable armed struggle. Communist Cubans kicked out fascist dictator Batista from the island. Tell me now about my single examples. You don’t have to support each of those movements to see the historical fact: communists and anarchists are historically the first and most successful to fight fascism. Please provide counterexamples of capitalist countries or movements fighting against fascism and winning, until then stop spitting on the memory of the antifascist partisans in Spain and Italy.

France is going down the same path, as are Italy and Spain.