How Stalin Rebranded the USSR



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Hey boys and girls, who wants to talk about communism? As much as it’s a meme to say “no one’s ever tried real communism”, the USSR under Stalin… was the world’s largest company town?

Music (in order of appearance):
J.S. Bach – Ricercar a 3 BWV 1079
Wheatman – Garage Rock
Kevin Macleod – Hidden Past
Suno – Red Mist
Dmitri Shostakovich – The Gadfly Suite, Overture
Moments – Runaway Quartet
Orchestralis – Sneaky Bassoon
Orchestralis – Soviet Red Army Military March
Febri Ultra – USSR National Anthem but it’s lofi
Shostakovich – Jazz Suite No. 1 III. Foxtrot
Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra – Lezginka
Blacksmith – Russian Folk Ensemble
Alexander Alexandrov – The Sacred War
Shostakovich – The Gadfly Suite, Op. 97a II. Contredanse

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32 thoughts on “How Stalin Rebranded the USSR”

  1. It's crazy how there are still people who claim to be "influenced by Marxist teachings" when the story of Communist Russia is one of conceited, deluded radicals slamming headfirst into the practical realities of government, requiring them to contradict basically everything about the ideology they claimed to support, and ended with them building an oppressive autocratic state that was more violent and destructive than the regime they replaced.

    Like, you'd think people would be clever enough to not want to be associated with that xD

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  2. Fun fact, Trotsky is not quiet the Communist purist as he’s portrayed. He, not Stalin, was the one who instituted the Officer corp, and re-established discipline in the Army. He was more in favour of War Communism then NEP (New Economic Policy), despite you know, the 600,000-2 million deaths it caused. Furthermore the Grain Requisitions he was also heavily in favour for, as it supplied the army with much needed rations. So comparing him to Napoleon, with whole betrayal of the ideas of Revolution, for a stronger revolution is pretty spot on, he was also a key General, pretty good at his job so that also works. He was also in favour of the Red Terror, which is where Stalin got his ideas for the Great Terror. Think of it like, Lenins is Coke Classic, Stalins is Raspberry Coke (because it’s tasteless and detestable) and Trotsky is Coke Zero, supposedly better for you, until you do a quick google on what aspartame does to you.

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  3. The thing I find funny about Stalin is like a lot of American conservatives he really liked John Wayne as this epitome of masculinity and coolness in Hollywood movies. For all his positioning as this bogeyman of communism Stalin was in reality just a stealth capitalist.

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  4. Hearing how the Soviets controlled wages, labor, and what the workers could buy reminded me of the coal mine strikes of the 1920s. In that instance the miners got armed and fought the company. The coal mine companies weren't communists, they just acted like them. Incidentally controlling all the land and the people on it reminds me more of feudalism which the Russians were already practicing before.

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  5. I think Trostky often gets really favorable treatment in histories of the Russian Revolution because we know what happened with Stalin, and it's hard to imagine anything worse, but it's worth pointing out that Trotsky was totally down with the Red Terror and many of the collectivist policies that killed so many under Stalin were actually originally Trotsky's idea.

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  6. A small but important correction: A lot of times in this video, you say "Russian" when you should be saying "Soviet". Like when discussing the death toll of the lands that were invaded by the Germans. Ukrainians and Belarussians suffered a lot as did the other ethnic minorities of the USSR (making up about half of the overall Soviet death toll due to the war). In terms of percentage death toll relative to the pre-war population, Belarus lost 25% of it's population and Ukraine lost about 16, Russia lost about 13. And the Soviet lands that the Germans occupied and brutalized were mostly Ukrainian, Belarussian, and Polish lands

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