• maynarkh@feddit.nl
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      3 months ago

      I am not a “westerner”, the word “Tankie” was literally invented to describe people who cheered on as the USSR crushed a revolution of my grandparents’ generation who were communists against vanguardism and Soviet Russian imperialism in Eastern Europe. It is a slur against people who were cheering for Soviet tanks against communists.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        you sound like the stereotypical anti-left westerner. most soviet grandpas were fond of russian socialism, especially in the balkans ironically. but i dont think anybody is claiming it to be perfect.

        you seem to forget the little nazi problem they had at the time, no?

        you also forget how the us is putting pressure all around the undeveloped world to keep us fucked, and all the red scare propaganda you guys put out through your media empire.

        • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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          3 months ago

          The Balkans were mostly never part of the Warsaw Pact, much less the USSR. IDK how life under Tito was, but it’s not what I’m talking about.

          Communist is still a swear word in most of Eastern Europe. The US never really had anything to do with my area’s development, the Soviets took whatever and whoever they could, though. In the generation above mine, a ton of people have family stories about relatives going for malenkiy robot never to be seen again. Doorbell scare was a thing as well. People were absolutely tortured to death, genocided, taken away, robbed, and so on.

          Nobody sane wishes for going back to the Warsaw Pact. And not because we had less money. Ironically, the few who are nostalgic liked the economy being more stable. The part everyone hated was the repression, the killings, the disappearances, the fear.

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            What?? You should look into how the US heavily invested in red scare propaganda and fascist think tanks in those places, after the soviets. Might give you an answer on how people this generation came to hate it, but the vast majority of them living at the time liked it.

            Also you don’t happen to be a nazi-adjacent decsendant do you? I hear those got rightfully terrorized. Same way how rich people now will insist they are the poor oppressed minorities.

            I guess you don’t remember the shock therapy that made the balkans all hate eachother.

            • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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              3 months ago

              Dude, the Balkans were non-aligned, they were never part of the Warsaw pact. Yes, the US did awful things there, but as far as I’ve heard from people who actually escaped the Yugoslav wars, nothing there was clear-cut. That said, it’s not what I’m talking about, the Balkans is not Eastern Europe, and Tito is not the USSR.

              What I’m talking about is the Warsaw Pact, the socialist republics in a military and economic alliance with the Soviet Union.

              Also you don’t happen to be a nazi-adjacent decsendant do you?

              You couldn’t be further from the truth.

              And I am sure all the people at Katyn, and all the people taken from their homes, and all the Jewish people who owned large flats in Budapest, and all the people just picked off the street, and all the people in the crowd when State Security fired into it, especially the students, and the previous chairman of the country’s communist party were all nazis or US plants or whatever.

              • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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                3 months ago

                like how you just gloss over the post-soviet us atrocities in there when its to blame for most of the problems there today.

                the balkans were part of russia at the time lol, and yugoslavia was fucked the most at the tail end/post soviet era.

                and yes, a lot of us meddling over there, just like it happened in my own country, or all over the planet after ww2 for that matter.

                im not claiming history to be black and white here but even language over there is similar as fuck to eachother in some cases, but they were artifiially separated and made to be enemies in the saddest way.