1/?
Y'all...I just talked to my genius 70 year old Jewish-Russian-American friend for 4 hours about the 20th century. He left the Soviet Union in 1990 & had thoughts on everything from Kropotkin to an overview of Soviet Union history to the Holodomor to the Allies missed opportunity in WW2, the UN, the current state of China, to the Korean War to current Ukraine-Russia war.
#AMA 😅
What work did he do in the Soviet Union, or after he left?
3/?
He got out in 1990 & told me some stories involving that.
It's clear that his experiences have made him leary of anything authoritarian, fascist or Bolshevik.
That FDR capitulated too much to the Soviets and could've prevented China from become a superpower early on by focusing on the Soviet Union. They had so many spies in defense and government, even as early as the 1930s, that allowed them to advance capabilities way quicker than they should have.
The UN veto should've never transferred to Russia & therfore time to start a new one. Might at well expand NATO into a new version & just not invite Russia. League of Nations > UN because the LoN had no teeth.
UN was able to enforce Korea, but could not occur now. All the proof you need.
He said the Allies missed a big opportunity in landing in Balkans instead of Normandy & put pressure on the Soviet Union. He said that Churchill was on board with that plan.
4/?
Lenin invading Poland in 1920(?) was stupid, but he came back and started actually investing in transforming the country.
Stalin was always going to Stalin & the end of the Soviet Union was guranteed from the moment Lenin consolidated power among the central committee.
Stalin used his position
"After taking power in the 1920s, Joseph Stalin killed at least 9 million people through mass murder, forced labor, and famine, but the true figure may be as high as 60 million.
From the 1920s through his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union through fear and violence. He instituted punitive policies that resulted in devastating famines, sent his enemies to prison camps, and executed those he believed opposed him."
https://allthatsinteresting.com/how-many-people-did-stalin-kill
5/?
Stalin used his administrative position on the central committee to put the most loyal and brutal people in crucial positions all over the union.
These people helped him carry out the first purge, then most of them were purged in the 2nd or 3rd round.
Karma is a bitch, though, and Stalin laid in a puddle of his own piss for 2 days after having a stroke with people carrying on like he wasn't there. Probably conscious and able to see/hear but not say or do anything.
Karma. Don't be a Stalin.
Vitaly said that in 1989, he had no indoor plumbing or telephone. He DID have a car, that he wasn't supposed to have because there is no way he could officially afford it on his official salary.
He said that he was there for "the best of times" because the purging was over and the state had lost some of it's bite. It was basically just decades of a slow decline and decay.
