# A non-Communist Russian Empire and WW2 **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 16, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836 "2015-10-16T19:10:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/41 "2015-10-18T09:52:42Z")
So, would the corporations support the Tzars as much as they did the nazis ? You could possibly make up for the backwardness of Russia somewhat by running similar deals. If you believe Anthony Sutton then they did. I haven’t read anything by Sutton so I don’t know how reliable he is, though he was a history professor. type…type…google…type… Ah, how handy, his stuff is on the web now > **[Sutton\_Wall\_Street\_and\_the\_bolshevik\_revolution-5.pdf](https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Sutton_Wall_Street_and_the_bolshevik_revolution-5.pdf)** > > 586.21 KB ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/42 "2015-10-18T14:22:51Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#): > > [Prison Labor Booms As Unemployment Remains High; Companies Reap Benefits | HuffPost Latest News](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/prison-labor_n_2272036.html) > > I believe the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio runs chains gangs and sweat boxes for meth users. Can’t begin to list the ways this is foolish: There are no political prisoners in the USA (jailed solely for their political beliefs) ALL prisoners in the USA are protected against cruel or unusual punishment Prisoners aren’t worked to death Comparing us prisons to gulags is like comparing your TV police to the gestapo ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/43 "2015-10-18T14:24:09Z")
> [@MrQwertyasd](#): > > The US was crucial in rearming Germany and giving it essential technology too. > OK, probably for a separate thread. Links please ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/44 "2015-10-18T14:36:51Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Also there were factors in the ussr that kept the crime rate down [Crime in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_Soviet_Union) Not everybody would concur on this. Wiki as linked above says, “According to Western experts, robberies, homicide and other violent crimes were less prevalent in the Soviet Union than in the United States because the Soviet Union had a larger police force, strict gun controls, and had a low occurrence of drug abuse”. I recall reading in Solzhenitsyn’s _Gulag_, about how right from the end of the Russian Civil War, into the 1970s (after which the author was in exile): often-violent crime was an ever-present factor which the law-abiding Soviet citizen had to deal with – including robbery, often with violence; and random violence for no reason. Although few people had guns, sharp-edged weapons were everywhere, and freely used by the lawless element. The law-abiding person often had little redress re crime directed at them, because of one of the Communist ideology’s bizarre beliefs being, that ordinary criminals were basically “on the side of the angels” – they belonging with the for-the-moment disadvantaged underclass, rather than the smug bourgeoisie – whereby they were treated leniently by the “justice” system. One of the miseries of the Gulag, was the way that ordinary criminals were favoured, and treated preferentially, there: and their frequent terrorising of political prisoners, was encouraged by the camp administrations. In the civilian milieu: any kind of crime against foreign visitors, was harshly and expeditiously dealt with – ordinary citizens, though, had to take their (often poor) chances. Plus, vis-a-vis the ordinary citizen, the police were often apathetic and / or corrupt. Summarising here, what I recall as Solzhenitsyn’s description of things: I acknowledge that he was a highly partial commentator, with a tendency to see nothing good, and everything bad, about Communism; and to blame it for anything and everything that was negative in Russia post-1917. I’m apolitical; but get the picture that in many ways, the Soviet Union was a nasty place to have to live in – and don’t find it improbable that for law-abiding inhabitants, it may indeed have been distressingly crime-ridden. ---
**Author:** ![Sangahyando](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f14d63/32.png) [@Sangahyando](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sangahyando)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/45 "2015-10-18T14:52:56Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > Bringing a bit of levity into a serious, and very interesting, thread: am reminded of something seen on SDMB in the past few years (would seek it out if I had any idea how to) – was in a thread about crazy and ignorant stuff which people had heard from schoolteachers who had no business to be in that profession. > > Told by a “history” teacher: Tzar Nicholas II and his advisors deliberately set things up for the Bolshevik Revolution to take place (including the liquidation of N II himself and his family, and many of the Russian nobility), out of self-sacrificing patriotism: because they were aware that their feeble regime would not be able to hold against the German onslaught in the World War II which would happen in the future – that would require a truly iron-hard dictatorship with an all-powerful and totally ruthless leader; both, likely, needing to be Communist. > > One might say – here’s one, particularly, for the conspiracy-theories file: involving the ability to foresee the future, more than most CTs seem to do. > [@Flyer](#): > > That’s a new one. > > It’s a bit hard to imagine the Tzarist leaders thinking that their regime was “feeble.” Although I’ve read that – with Russia in 1914 being weaker and less stable than its rulers fondly imagined – Rasputin earnestly implored Nicholas II, to keep Russia out of the mid-1914 building-up World War I; disaster envisaged, if he did not. One of the few instances of Rasputin giving wise counsel, and the Imperial family rejecting his advice. The teacher’s “thesis” indeed looks like one of the barmiest conspiracy theories, imaginable; but, I suppose, kind-of understandable as being formed by someone not very bright, and muddle-headed, and applying much hindsight re what they had read / heard. For sure, the guy had absolutely no business to be teaching history. Writing alternative history / fantasy, perhaps – Harry Turtledove on steroids? (Wish I could find the thread concerned – don’t know: maybe Search something like “schoolteachers nonsense” ?) ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/46 "2015-10-18T16:24:22Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > Not everybody would concur on this. > > Wiki as linked above says, “According to Western experts, robberies, homicide and other violent crimes were less prevalent in the Soviet Union than in the United States because the Soviet Union had a larger police force, strict gun controls, and had a low occurrence of drug abuse”. I recall reading in Solzhenitsyn’s _Gulag_, about how right from the end of the Russian Civil War, into the 1970s (after which the author was in exile): often-violent crime was an ever-present factor which the law-abiding Soviet citizen had to deal with – including robbery, often with violence; and random violence for no reason. Although few people had guns, sharp-edged weapons were everywhere, and freely used by the lawless element. > > The law-abiding person often had little redress re crime directed at them, because of one of the Communist ideology’s bizarre beliefs being, that ordinary criminals were basically “on the side of the angels” – they belonging with the for-the-moment disadvantaged underclass, rather than the smug bourgeoisie – whereby they were treated leniently by the “justice” system. One of the miseries of the Gulag, was the way that ordinary criminals were favoured, and treated preferentially, there: and their frequent terrorising of political prisoners, was encouraged by the camp administrations. In the civilian milieu: any kind of crime against foreign visitors, was harshly and expeditiously dealt with – ordinary citizens, though, had to take their (often poor) chances. Plus, vis-a-vis the ordinary citizen, the police were often apathetic and / or corrupt. > > Summarising here, what I recall as Solzhenitsyn’s description of things: I acknowledge that he was a highly partial commentator, with a tendency to see nothing good, and everything bad, about Communism; and to blame it for anything and everything that was negative in Russia post-1917. I’m apolitical; but get the picture that in many ways, the Soviet Union was a nasty place to have to live in – and don’t find it improbable that for law-abiding inhabitants, it may indeed have been distressingly crime-ridden. Thank you for this very I formative post Sangahyando. This is why I love these forums. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/47 "2015-10-18T17:07:40Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Can’t begin to list the ways this is foolish: > > There are no political prisoners in the USA (jailed solely for their political beliefs) > > ALL prisoners in the USA are protected against cruel or unusual punishment > > Prisoners aren’t worked to death > > Comparing us prisons to gulags is like comparing your TV police to the gestapo Cooked to death, chain gangs, prison labour, private prisons, cruel and unusual. Yeah I’d say that was cruel and unusual, and as close to slavery as you can get. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/48 "2015-10-18T17:15:13Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Links please http://www.amazon.co.uk/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/091415303X > **[How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar)** > > Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's... > **[10 Global Businesses that Worked With the Nazis](https://www.businesspundit.com/10-global-businesses-that-worked-with-the-nazis/)** > > It’s scary just how efficient the Nazis were at directing an entire country, including its population and industry, towards their evil goals. Everyone knows about the big three corporations that worked with the Nazis. Hugo Boss designed the... Yeah that’ll do for now. The most poignent evidence is Edwin Black’s IBM/Third Reich contract dated _during_ the war. OK, now put your debunk hat on and have a go. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/49 "2015-10-18T17:19:43Z")
But the original question was about Russia, and given that the whys and wherefores of the Russian revolution are one of the most studied historical topics It’d be nice if someone could offer a criticism of [Anthony Sutton](http://www.antonysutton.com/) - was he right or not ? What’s the straight dope on Dr Sutton ? ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/50 "2015-10-18T21:56:03Z")
[QUOTE=madsircool] ALL prisoners in the USA are protected against cruel or unusual punishment Prisoners aren’t worked to death [/QUOTE] Suffering of Supermax prisoners is beyond our worst nightmares. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/51 "2015-10-18T22:22:38Z")
> [@CCitizen](#): > > Suffering of Supermax prisoners is beyond our worst nightmares. Indeed? I would believe that the prisoners there are more closely watched and less abused. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/52 "2015-10-18T22:30:46Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Indeed? I would believe that the prisoners there are more closely watched and less abused. Mainly they are going insane from the isolation, or more insane from lack of treatment for their mental disorders. These guys are all multiple murderers, most of them sent there after violent attacks on prison personnel and other prisoners, so there’s nothing left to do with them if we aren’t going to execute them. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/53 "2015-10-18T22:36:29Z")
There has been a sub-population of criminal punks in Russia since the Time of Troubles, and the Soviet Union devoted its main crime-fighting energies elsewhere. This was [Zinaida Reich](http://beautifulrus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Zinaida-Reich.jpg). After Stalin’s police took her husband away, common thugs were free to enter their apartment and take what they liked. They cut out her eyes, following the folk belief that a murder victim’s pupils retains the image of the killer. In the USA, right up until the end, Julius Rosenberg was threatened that unless he told everything he knew, Ethel would die too, and that they’d use the same hood on him as she’d just worn, so that the last thing he’d know was the smell of her death. It was a bluff, but she had to die so that the good people of the USA kept their faith in a government that would never take innocent hostages. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/54 "2015-10-18T22:43:40Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > There has been a sub-population of criminal punks in Russia since the Time of Troubles They produce very good music called Shanson – I listen to it hours every day. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/55 "2015-10-18T23:31:31Z")
Shanson songs have lots of empathy for people who are in prison – a concept foreign to most modern Americans. Modern Russian (and in Canada and in most Europe) Justice System is much more humane then US Justice System. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/56 "2015-10-19T02:02:35Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > In the USA, right up until the end, Julius Rosenberg was threatened that unless he told everything he knew, Ethel would die too, and that they’d use the same hood on him as she’d just worn, so that the last thing he’d know was the smell of her death. It was a bluff, but she had to die so that the good people of the USA kept their faith in a government that would never take innocent hostages. Come on, give us a cite. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/57 "2015-10-19T11:11:27Z")
Oh God, we should derail this perfectly interesting thread topic\* to discuss the Rosenberg trial, which can then be derailed to discuss the War on Drugs, where, although a wife cannot be compelled to give evidence against her husband, she can face trumped-up charges of co-conspiracy unless she fucking does. \*Non-Communist Russia would have been just as badass against the Nazis, if not worse. By the middle of World War One, they’d overcome production problems and all that kept them from adequately supplying the troops was Russia’s old rotten roads. By the time Stalin took over from Lenin, the economy had returned to prewar levels, because Lenin (and Bukharin) had been forced to allow limited free enterprise in the face of disaster. Stalin’s dragging the USSR into the 20th C. was in large part done with the help of Americans like Henry Ford; and by 1937, when all the Russian kids who’d been educated under Communism came out of engineering school, Stalin expelled the Americans and shot the old Tsarist engineers. By 1939 the USSR was further ahead in literacy and healthcare that it would have been under the Tsar (though not under what would have developed from the Provisional government). But a command economy will always step on its own feet after a few years. Think about how well your workplace fared through the Recession. Would it really have done better if your boss had been allowed to shoot a few of you? ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/58 "2015-10-19T12:39:41Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > By 1939 the USSR was further ahead in literacy and healthcare that it would have been under the Tsar (though not under what would have developed from the Provisional government). But a command economy will always step on its own feet after a few years. Think about how well your workplace fared through the Recession. Would it really have done better if your boss had been allowed to shoot a few of you? Pfff, that command economy beat everyone into space and continued the space program until the Berlin wall went down. It wasn’t \*that \*bad. Why would a provisional government have made better education ? And what about Anthony Sutton ? ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/59 "2015-10-19T13:05:58Z")
That’s only impressive is you could use one of those spaceships while on the 5-year waiting list for a trabi. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836/60 "2015-10-19T13:31:45Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > That’s only impressive is you could use one of those spaceships while on the 5-year waiting list for a trabi. How did it get to the point where space travel is seen as banal after 6,000,000,000 years of being earthbound ? :dubious: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-non-communist-russian-empire-and-ww2/734836.md?page=4)