this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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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?”
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).
Everyone yearns for a J. Jonah Jameson