Have you been to meetings with management? I used to work at a government-run place in Belarus. The meetings were precisely as what I described them. I had a longer explanation typed out, but then lost it; I might redo it at a later date.

you still have many comments wasting... ...time

I wanted to know the reason behind you thinking it was democratic. The first reason you gave was the welfare. I've provided several reasons which were true for USSR at the time for why they would want to keep the proletariat pacified and disarmed. Speaking of which, the proletariat was literally disarmed in 1924.

The second reason you gave is the electoral system. So now we're talking about the electoral system.

As opposed to doing what? Representatives cannot manage the day to day affairs of the government. No government on earth does that.

US House and Senate are in session approximately 150(+/-20) days a year, for most weeks there's at least one day they're in session. There's also not a separate group which makes decisions for the rest of the parliament in the meantime.

And I cannot comment on whether or not you are cherry picking or misrepresenting anything from the reports.

You have the link now. You can always ask someone else to look through them for you to verify if I'm right or wrong. You can also ask me - pick out any session of any convocation out there and I will get you a translation of at least the key points, the votes, stuff like that.

This is a problem because?

Ok, I think I was vague here. There are reports, there are congratulations, there are suggestions. I don't see any discussions, nor appeals, nor debates. I don't see disagreement. What I see is a lot of self-congratulation. Even if I can't prove it by giving you an authoritative translation here and now, you will remember this characterization and it will sit there in your head when you'll hear similar things in the future.

I [don't] trust that you have actually read and remember the contents of that many speeches

You would be right to do so, as what I meant and keep meaning when I talk here was only the speeches I looked through, which is only like 5 or 6, picked randomly from random sessions of the 1st convocation (I think we're both would be mostly interested in the 1st convocation, as that is the one which lasted from 1937 to 1945). One of the sessions I clicked was the 7th session, which had the Molotov's speech - I stumbled upon it mostly by chance. Being friendly with the Nazi state would be an obviously contentious topic among leftists, so it piqued my interest to see the Soviet's reaction to the report. Which is also why I mentioned it to you - it's much easier to disregard absence of dissent on a matter of industrial or agricultural administration than on this topic.

but what does “talking about [friendly relationships with Nazi Germany and Italy]” mean exactly?

I will try to summarize the part of the speech which pertains to the Nazis here. You're free to disregard it as me bs-ing you.

Italy has joined the war
France was quickly defeated and capitulated
- France signed a ceasefire and is under occupation
- Reasons for France's defeat
  - Poor military readiness
  - French leadership, unlike Germany, underestimated USSR's role in Europe
  - French leadership was afraid of its people, known for its revolutionary potential
- France now has to lick its wounds and rebuild
England is still at war with USA's support
Germany achieved great successes, but it wants to end the war on the terms it desires.
German reichschancellor offered peace to England on July 19th
Despite that, England decided to continue the war.
- It even cut ties with France
- That is because England doesn't want to lose its colonies and lose this war for war domination.
- It does this even though the Italy's participation and France's defeat make it harder for England
The war is far from the end
USSR holds to peace and neutrality
- The agreement has prevented any potential tensions with Germany, and gave it confidence about its eastern borders.
- Voices from England want to scare USSR with potential disagreements with Germany, with Germany becoming too powerful
The relationships between USSR and Germany are neighborly and friendly.
- That is not due to situation-specific factors, but because of the core interests of both states.

This is only a part of the larger report on foreign policy, but I would still expect there to be some voices of concern regarding the shit Nazis were doing, or the fact that the report puts the blame for the war and its continuation on primarily UK and USA and their "imperialist ambitions". The "peace or destruction" threat from Hitler's July 19th speech is framed as a humble peace offer, which the greedy Britain has unreasonable refused. The cutting ties with the Nazi puppet Vichy is framed as Britain abandoning its former ally. No mention of persecution of Jews by the Nazis. Also neither terms "Nazi", "National Socialist", nor Hitler's name appear in the report - he's referred to as "the reichschancellor".

Not all of these things I would expect from Molotov's report itself - but I would be appalled if there was no other delegates to point at least one of the things I've outlined.

Instead, the report was accepted unanimously and without any debate.

The stenogram link for that place precisely

Those who are in favor of accepting this proposal, please raise your hands... Please lower them. Who's against it? No. Who abstains? No. The proposal is accepted.

This phrase is everywhere in those stenograms. No against, no abstentions, accepted.

[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 6 months ago

Forgive me if I seem overly pedantic in this reply, but you seem to know quite a bit, so I would like to extract as much information as possible.

Have you been to meetings with management? I used to work at a government-run place in Belarus. The meetings were precisely as what I described them.

Did you go to a government run place when the soviet union existed? I mean, it seems strange to me that you specify "government-run" for a workplace that existed during the soviet times. And even if you were there, I imagine that the late soviet union worked differently from the early soviet union. I cannot say if this applies to the meetings themselves.

Those who are in favor of accepting this proposal, please raise your hands… Please lower them. Who’s against it? No. Who abstains? No. The proposal is accepted.

That doesn't sound any different from what one would say for voting as it is done in other situations. Who votes, who is against, who abstains is common. Do the "no" parts mean that no-one abstained in Russian? Because in English it doesn't make sense. Did you mean to wrote "no one abstained"?

1rst convocation

Part of this maybe that during these years, the soviet government was heavily focused on war aims. 1937 incidentally is the year when the soviet government switched to focusing on preparing for war. Another part of it maybe the small sample size (maybe you just looked at the wrong section). And another part maybe that the stwnographix reports aren't capturing all of the discussions. From whay I know about the us government, most of the discussion for policies happens outside the official convening times. Legislators negotiate with each other, they discuss bills in committees before even presenting them for a vote, etc.

Not all of these things I would expect from Molotov’s report itself - but I would be appalled if there was no other delegates to point at least one of the things I’ve outlined.

I can imagine nobody in the supereme soviet taking objection to such statements. They had relatively recently been subject to a brutal war of aggression from these states. Certainly their opinion of Britain and the United States would be very low enough that they would blame everything on them (especially since these were actively genocidal empires at the time). On the other hand, I believe attempts were made to form an alliance against Hitler previously, which the British and French rejected. It was also a widespread belief at the time that the treaty of versailles was responsible for the rise of Hitler. Certainly, the French could be blamed for their occupation of the rhineland and rural valley.