#soviet repression

[catskewl]

This looks like a very interesting read.

During the spring of 1968, as revolutionary sentiment began to grow in communist Czechoslovakia, a group of friendly foreigners began arriving in Prague, on flights from Helsinki and East Berlin, or by car from West Germany.

Among them were 11 western European men, a Swiss woman named Maria Weber and a Lebanese carpet dealer called Oganes Sarajian. They were all supporters of what would become known as the Prague Spring, an ultimately doomed attempt to build a more liberal and free ­version of socialism and escape from Moscow’s suffocating embrace. Many of the visitors sought to get close to the movement’s leading lights, offering support in the battle to reform communist rule.

But these visitors were not what they seemed. They were spies from the KGB’s “illegals” programme – Soviet citizens who spent years ­training to be able to pose convincingly as westerners. Previously, illegals had been used to burrow into western ­societies and ferret out secrets for Moscow. But now the KGB was terrified that the Prague movement could end Soviet influence in the country, and decided for the first time to deploy its most prized spies inside the eastern bloc, in a mission called Operation Progress. To this day, Russia’s intelligence ­services have never admitted it took place.

Unpublished documents about the mission, along with interviews with participants, shed new light on how Moscow used its spies to keep tabs on reformers in Prague: informing on its leaders, planting fake evidence, and in one case ­getting a man who planned a dramatic self-immolation as protest committed to a psychiatric institution before he could carry out the deed.

The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker, is out now (Profile Books, £22; Knopf in the US).

[thelittleukrainianwell-armedgirl]

Today, Ukraine marks the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression—a time to mourn the innocent murdered by the Soviet regime.

One of the most haunting sites is the Bykivnia Graves near Kyiv, where the NKVD secretly executed and buried thousands of "enemies of the state." Among them were writers, artists, clergy, and scholars, such as writer Mykhailo Semenko, Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivskyi, and priest Andriy Bandera.

Items linked to the Katyn massacre were also uncovered here. Long denied, these horrors were only acknowledged in the 1990s. In 1994, a memorial was unveiled; in 2006, President Yushchenko formally inaugurated the Bykivnia Graves as a national historical complex.

Today, services and wreaths mark this silent place. The exact number of victims remains uncertain—estimates range from 100,000 to 200,000—but their memory lives on.

What was once hidden is now remembered.

(c) @ euromaidanpress

[soficussoviet]

Tarot card with Nikolai Yezhov.Why this card?: The nine pentacles means success, achievement of goals, or a successful turn of events in life, due to a successful choice in the past. In the inverted meaning, the card foreshadows the collapse of a prosperous life, an unreliable environment/ rejection and loneliness. Despite success and material benefits, a person will not be happy.

Yezhov made a good choice in favor of the Bolsheviks, and Stalin in particular. In addition, career growth from the secretary of the Mari regional party committee to the People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR is already a successful success in the absolute. But the comrade did not receive ovations for long and the rapid success was replaced by an equally rapid fall.

[barnbridges]

im perhaps the only person on earth that like hates communism AND likes the ussr like as a country btw. if you even care. they should make tarragon soda mainstream.

[madragodon]

Genuinely I think if you can't wrap your head around "USA bad" and "USA's Main Enemies Also Usually Bad" that maybe you need to sit down with a history book from a reputable source and also work on your critical thinking skills.

[olivesbest]

What are some of the worst examples when Psychiatry was used as a Tool of Repression?

Punitive psychiatry represents one of the darkest and most tragic chapters in the history of psychiatric science, where this discipline was used not to provide help, but as a tool of terror. This was especially evident in the USSR.

In the closed Soviet society where the illusion of a free state with a rule of law was artificially upheld, there was an unspoken ban on publicizing facts of persecution. If prosecution was legally impossible, it was compensated for by falsifying medical diagnoses. Thus, psychiatry became a tool of repression against those who were deemed undesirable under the dictatorial regime.

Given that Russia hosts the main ideological center of the destructive network of agents from RACIRS, led by Alexander Dvorkin, who actively influence state processes that result in punitive measures against “undesirable” individuals and groups, including forced confinement in psychiatric facilities, this article will reference Russian sources.

The term “punitive psychiatry” and its definition belong to Alexander Podrabinek, a well-known Soviet dissident, human rights advocate, and author of the book “Punitive Medicine”. Here’s a quote from the book:

“Punitive medicine is a tool to fight against dissidents who cannot be repressed by law for thinking differently than prescribed .”

In his book “Punitive Medicine,” A. Podrabinek provides a detailed analysis of how psychiatry was used in totalitarian regimes as a means to suppress dissent and turned into a tool of political repression.

Application of psychiatric diagnoses in such cases isn’t associated with actual mental illnesses, but serves as a method of persecuting individuals whose views or actions are deemed inconvenient.

This phenomenon illustrates how punitive psychiatry becomes a tool for oppressing those who have been stigmatized and stripped of their status as mentally competent citizens. These people do not violate the law and, on the contrary, make significant contributions to the development of their country. However, when it comes to repression in the context of attempts to revive totalitarian and anti-democratic regimes, human rights are violated. This aspect is crucial to the analysis of modern threats we face today.

Read more about this in the article:

Psychiatry as a Tool of Repression by Anticult Organizations

[lifewithaview]

Stranger Things (2016- ) Chapter Six: The Dive

S4E6

El continues to relive her earlier experience at the Nina Project. Joyce and Murray come up with a plan to rescue Jim, and Jim comes up with a plan to escape. Mike and the others turn to Suzie to help them locate El, while the Hawkins group try to find the gate in their reality.

*Disregarding the fact that IP geolocation doesn't exist in 1986, there wouldn't be an IP address to trace. They dialed directly, and did not use the internet at all. The peer-to-peer connection did not use TCP/IP, the technology that informs IP addresses.

[reasonsforhope]

"With Donald Trump set to take office after a fear-mongering campaign that reignited concerns about his desire to become a dictator, a reasonable question comes up: Can nonviolent struggle defeat a tyrant?

There are many great resources that answer this question, but the one that’s been on my mind lately is the Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers.  

At quick glance, the database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases — which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America — contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. What’s more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldn’t overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle.  

In a number of countries, the dictator had been embedded for years at the time they were pushed out. Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, for example, had ruled for over 29 years. In the 1990s, citizens usually whispered his name for fear of reprisal. Mubarak legalized a “state of emergency,” which meant censorship, expanded police powers and limits on the news media. Later, he “loosened” his rule, putting only 10 times as many police as the number of protesters at each demonstration.  

The GNAD case study describes how Egyptians grew their democracy movement despite repression, and finally won in 2011. However, gaining a measure of freedom doesn’t guarantee keeping it. As Egypt has shown in the years since, continued vigilance is needed, as is pro-active campaigning to deepen the degree of freedom won.  

Some countries repeated the feat of nonviolently deposing a ruler: In Chile, the people nonviolently threw out a dictator in 1931 and then deposed a new dictator in 1988. South Koreans also did it twice, once in 1960 and again in 1987. (They also just stopped their current president from seizing dictatorial powers, but that’s not yet in the database.)  

In each case people had to act without knowing what the reprisals would be...

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign...

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025. Article continues below.

East Germany’s peaceful revolution

When East Germans began their revolt against the German Democratic Republic in 1988, they knew that their dictatorship of 43 years was backed by the Soviet Union, which might stage a deadly invasion. They nevertheless acted for freedom, which they gained and kept.

Researcher Hanna King tells us that East Germans began their successful campaign in January 1988 by taking a traditional annual memorial march and turning it into a full-scale demonstration for human rights and democracy. They followed up by taking advantage of a weekly prayer for peace at a church in Leipzig to organize rallies and protests. Lutheran pastors helped protect the organizers from retaliation and groups in other cities began to stage their own “Monday night demonstrations.”  

The few hundred initial protesters quickly became 70,000, then 120,000, then 320,000, all participating in the weekly demonstrations. Organizers published a pamphlet outlining their vision for a unified German democracy and turned it into a petition. Prisoners of conscience began hunger strikes in solidarity.

By November 1988, a million people gathered in East Berlin, chanting, singing and waving banners calling for the dictatorship’s end. The government, hoping to ease the pressure, announced the opening of the border to West Germany. Citizens took sledgehammers to the hated Berlin Wall and broke it down. Political officials resigned to protest the continued rigidity of the ruling party and the party itself disintegrated. By March 1990 — a bit over two years after the campaign was launched — the first multi-party, democratic elections were held.

Students lead the way in Pakistan

In Pakistan, it was university students (rather than religious clerics) who launched the 1968-69 uprising that forced Ayub Khan out of office after his decade as a dictator. Case researcher Aileen Eisenberg tells us that the campaign later required multiple sectors of society to join together to achieve critical mass, especially workers. 

It was the students, though, who took the initiative — and the initial risks. In 1968, they declared that the government’s declaration of a “decade of development” was a fraud, protesting nonviolently in major cities. They sang and marched to their own song called “The Decade of Sadness.” 

Police opened fire on one of the demonstrations, killing several students. In reaction the movement expanded, in numbers and demands. Boycotts grew, with masses of people refusing to pay the bus and railway fares on the government-run transportation system. Industrial workers joined the movement and practiced encirclement of factories and mills. An escalation of government repression followed, including more killings. 

As the campaign expanded from urban to rural parts of Pakistan, the movement’s songs and political theater thrived. Khan responded with more violence, which intensified the determination among a critical mass of Pakistanis that it was time for him to go.

After months of growing direct action met by repressive violence, the army decided its own reputation was being degraded by their orders from the president, and they demanded his resignation. He complied and an election was scheduled for 1970 — the first since Pakistan’s independence in 1947.

Why use nonviolent struggle?

The campaigns in East Germany and Pakistan are typical of all 40 cases in their lack of a pacifist ideology, although some individuals active in the movements had that foundation. What the cases do seem to have in common is that the organizers saw the strategic value of nonviolent action, since they were up against an opponent likely to use violent repression. Their commitment to nonviolence would then rally the masses to their side. 

That encourages me. There’s hardly time in the U.S. during Trump’s regime to convert enough people to an ideological commitment to nonviolence, but there is time to persuade people of the strategic value of a nonviolent discipline. 

It’s striking that in many of the cases I looked at, the movement avoided merely symbolic marches and rallies and instead focused on tactics that impose a cost on the regime. As Donald Trump wrestles to bring the armed forces under his control, for example, I can imagine picketing army recruiting offices with signs, “Don’t join a dictator’s army.”  

Another important takeaway: Occasional actions that simply protest a particular policy or egregious action aren’t enough. They may relieve an individual’s conscience for a moment, but, ultimately, episodic actions, even large ones, don’t assert enough power. Over and over, the Global Nonviolent Action Database shows that positive results come from a series of escalating, connected actions called a campaign — the importance of which is also outlined in my book “How We Win.”  

As research seminar students at Swarthmore continue to wade through history finding new cases, they are digging up details on struggles that go beyond democracy. The 1,400 already-published cases include campaigns for furthering environmental justice, racial and economic justice, and more. They are a resource for tactical ideas and strategy considerations, encouraging us to remember that even long-established dictators have been stopped by the power of nonviolent campaigns.

-via Waging Nonviolence, January 8, 2025.

[coolfandomfairy]

The fact that Aziraphale chose to listen to Shostakovich among all other classical composers says a lot.

Shostakovich was one of the brightest musicians of his time in the USSR. His ideas and music had revolutionary themes and pictures repressive power of Soviet Leaders.

Back then, Soviet Union eliminated anyone who thought differently or had different opinions on how the state should be governed and how people should live in there.

Shostakovich was terrified of the government and, for a while, stopped releasing his creative music, instead keeping a low profile and went with the flow until he didn’t.

I DONT KNOW WHAT THIS BASTARD IS DOING. But I believe in him. I think he has a plan.

Aziraphale, you go, girl ✨

[transmutationisms]

i've always been interested in how foreign communists feel about the soviet union and repressions. i can't change my mind about communism because my town was literally built by political prisoners. do you believe that communism is possible? i understand that repressions should not be part of a communist system, but i and many residents of the affected countries simply don't believe in "good" communism. no hate, just asking.

actually I'm a communist specifically because of how much I love repressive regimes and yearn to be part of them. it's an ego fantasy, for me, & also it's like a religion

[komsomolka]

so funny when you look up a cool russian thing (children trains system, romen theatre, moiseev ballet, etc) 8 times out of 10 turns out it was created during soviet ToTaLiTaRiAn 30s in which according to westerners and other anti stalin propaganda believers there was nothing but kulak genocide, holodomor, Repressions and soviets lived in constant fear and terror. lol.

[agaypieceofcheese]

"Everything the USSR didn't like was a cia fbi capitalist western buzzword psyop" tankie ass

You make the mistake of assuming I support the USSR out of a dogmatic belief, but it is the opposite.

The USSR did many horrible things, religious repression and passive Russification mainly harmed non-Judaic and non-Christians.

The early deportations and relocations were also completely unnecessary and whatever benefits they got from these actions were far outweighed by the damage the capitalists have done with their propaganda.

That being said, it was also the first ever socialist experiment. I am also not dogmatically against the US, but the fact that the US is the main arbiter of imperialism, casts a light on every action they take and every word they say. A lot of the information we know now about the Soviet Union was from after its illegal dissolution, and as such we can’t ask the Soviet government for their side anymore. All we can do is take the information we have, compare it against all claims, and come to our own conclusion.

That process is called dialectics by the way, and it is the philosophy which underpins all of Marxism. Marxism. Is. A. Scientific. Method. It is the application of dialectical materialism to the historical materialism and using that analysis to synthesize a hypothesis. Like all historians, the Marxist hypothesis can’t be tested because we don’t have a Time Machine. So what do we do? We create experiments

That’s what the USSR was, and it did many things right and quite a bit wrong. We have a lot to learn, but we can only learn from history when we learn it truthfully. Shutting down and going ‘Muh authoritarianism!1!1!1!1 buzzword!1!1!1!1 100 gorbillion dead!1!1!1” isn’t an argument, it isn’t a hypothesis, it isn’t analysis. It’s a dogmatic thought-terminating cliche.

[mariacallous]

Culturally, Russia today has little to offer the world. It is even a diminished version of its Soviet past when—despite repression—plenty of people perceived Moscow as a champion of progress and justice. Now, Russia is just another authoritarian state with no clear vision of the future.

It is also a nation marred by war crimes and seemingly unprepared to reckon with this fact. Many Russians today believe that they are fighting “Ukrainian Nazis,” not bombing schools and hospitals. When the awakening comes, it will be even harsher than the one triggered by Gorbachev’s glasnost. This time, Russians will have to behold atrocities committed in their name.

The politics of great leaders outlive them, yet Putin’s stratagems will likely end with him. He is the epitome of personalized power, with no institutions, coherent ideology, or successor class capable of sustaining his model without him.

Whether the final blow comes from a new U.S. administration, an ascendant China, or a resurgent Europe, Putin’s strategic game is already lost. The only question is who will recognize the limits of his position—and respond accordingly. Perhaps Europe is finally getting ready to do it.

Putin Is a Gambler, not a Grand Master

[txttletale]

It is so fucking embarrassing watching you promote liberal ideas against censorship. I thought you were better than that. It's bad when the UK punishes you for criticizing J. K. Rowling because they're serving capital, not because anyone should be allowed to say anything. Ideally they would have much harsher libel laws, and they would enforce them against capital rather than in its favor.

ideally the UK would be made of pudding. it's a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, dummy, all its laws are enforced in favour of capital and as a result it would be better if they didn't exist. libel laws and restrictions on speech in capitalist countries are in fact always bad for this reason and the UK's uniquely repressive ones are uniquely bad.

anyway freedom of speech is great, the reason the liberal conception of it is ridiculous is because it is fundamentally freedom of the rich to speak, like all bourgeois rights--read pat sloan's soviet democracy: all sorts of institutions in the early soviet union, from workplaces to schools, had their own worker-controlled newspapers in which the conduct of managers and administrators could freely be criticised and issues brought to their attention. this is a clear and obvious social good and what a real genuine freedom of speech looks like.

[selkiesstories]

As promised all the antisemitic tropes associated with the Greens in House of the Dragon because I guess when you double down on the divinely ordained Aryan as heroes you need Jewish coded villains. Please note that I am not accusing anyone including Condal or other producers of secretly sympathizing with Nazis or antisemitism if for no other reason that I suspect they are simply too ill informed to realize what their playing with. (for a better understanding about the metaphysical role Jews played in Nazism see Alon Confino's A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide)

Let's start with casting:

And Alicent is the embodiement of the Beautiful Jewess- curly dark reddish hair, and big beautiful eyes ( It's over a year since I read Höss's complaining about how his officers were susceptible to Jewish women and their "beautiful eyes" and I am still not over it.)

Moving on-

1) Alicent and by extension the Greens are portrayed as religious. This religion is implied or certainly interpreted by fans to be oppressive towards the Targaryens (Valeryians) notably by setting rules and thus bringing them to the level of mortals. Hitler considered Christianity to be a Jewish invention that was a “scar” on the German race by imposing a conscience.

2) The Hightowers and the Citadel/maesters are implied in the fandom to be running a conspiracy to bring down the Targaryens. Some fans have them poisoning Viserys and/or responsible for all the Targaryen stillbirths, and dismal maternal and infant mortality rates. The Protocols of Zion are an old debunked many times conspiracy theory about how Jews secretly work to run the world. Jewish doctors were accused of damaging Aryan women. The Doctor’s Plot is actually Soviet where Jewish doctors were accused of poisoning Stalin.

3) Heleana who coincidentally fits the Targaryen aesthetic is considered the only redeemable one so long as she supports Rhaenyra (and marries Jace- who according to Rhaenyra and therefore the show/fans is a Targaryen- and raises her children to be loyal to the true Targs). Nazis would sometimes accept a half Jewish woman if she was married to a full German and had his children whom she raised with no connection to her family/faith (sometime a man but a woman was more likely since they were seen as more passive and therefore less of a threat to the all sacred race)

4) the Greens are portrayed as both overly sexual and sexually repressed. The Nazis were obsessed with sex and variously accused Jews of being sexual predators or of being unnaturally restrained which tied in with (1).

5) Aegon is an alcoholic and Aemond is implied to have an opioid addiction. Jews were associated with drugs especially morphine (for a summary of the Nazis relationship with drugs see Norman Ohler’s Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich)

5) The men on the Greens are either dangerous predators or emasculated "simps" or "mama's boys". Jewish men were variously dangerous predators or unmanly men who were dominated by their women.

6) Alicent is either sexually repressed or a slut who sexually entices good Valyrian men to their doom. (1) and (4)

7) Alicent is an overbearing mother. She occasionally seems to overstep her designated feminine boundaries to assert her opinions over men's.

8) the Greens are either too close knit or they betray each other. Höss described Jews as both extremely attached to their families to the point where news of their death had a fatal effect and as eager to betray their families even at no benefit to themselves.

9) Alicent schemes to betray the righteous Valyrian princess and supplant her with her own sons. She is considered redeemable only when she serves Rhaenyra and places her on a pedestal even at the expense of her and her children's well being. This is the basis of many Jewish female characters in literature

10) Alicent's children are never considered to be real Targaryens. In F&B Aegon and Helaena are described as plumper and less striking than most Targaryens, Jaehaerys has extra fingers/ toes and Jaehaera as neurodivergent. Jaehaera dies and is replaced by the perfect Valyrian girl.

I'm open for asks and DMs. For context my MA was set in Nazi Germany and I took several courses on the subject.

[dre759]

It can well be argued that the existence of formal freedoms, which are utilized by only an isolated few to challenge the dominant ideology and institutions, actually contribute to real unfreedom; that permitting a few people, who have little or no impact, to speak against the system is, in fact, more repressive of real freedoms than the denial of that formal right. The existence of a few small newspapers, critical speakers, university professors, or very small leftist parties on the ballot, implies that formal freedom is real, that people are free to choose, and, they do in fact, choose freely to accept the system... Such 'repressive tolerance' is an important mechanism whereby people in the West are convinced that they are free, and that those in the socialist countries are not. The focus on formal liberties, rather than on either substantive liberties, or on the degree to which people actually use, or are permitted to use, their formal freedom, the range of popular debate or the effect of the exercise of formal freedom, thus comes to serve the capitalist system, which since around 1950 has been very stable in the West, and very effective in preserving its ideological hegemony.

Outside the approximately dozen wealthiest countries, however, the capitalist world cannot afford the luxury of 'repressive tolerance'. There the most brutal suppression of civil liberties is necessary in order to preserve the capitalist system, just as the most brutal suppression of civil liberties was necessary in the inter-war period, when the ideological hegemony of capitalist rule was no longer effective. The correlation between formal civil liberties/parliamentary forms and capitalism is actually very tenuous.

-Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Szymanski Page.303