# When evil triumphs: The USSR
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 4, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867 "2009-07-04T03:17:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/1 "2009-07-04T03:17:32Z")
I recently read a fictional novel, _ **Child 44** _ by Tom Rob Smith. It is set in the USSR mainly around the time of Stalin’s death, and the fact that it’s about a serial killer who gruesomely kills scores of children is the least horrendous thing depicted in the story. Stalin’s Soviet Union was something close to Hell on Earth, the more so because unlike Nazi Germany or Khmer Rouge Cambodia, it was not a brief abberation that was destroyed because of it’s shortcomings. The Communist Party ruled the Soviet Union for almost the biblical threescore and ten years, about 1920-1990. And quite simply, evil triumphed. Horrendous evil, against which those who resisted miserably perished. The best that can be said about it is (1). After about 1960 or so (forty years!), the very worst of the purges and mass deportations finally abated. (2). By threatening to blow up the world in a nuclear Armageddon, the United States managed to keep the Soviet Union from claiming even more victims than it did. (3). Although it was never truly defeated, the USSR finally rotted from within.
And the legacy of the USSR? A nation of decaying rust-belt cities, the highest rate of alcoholism in the world, a population crash that if unabated will eventually depopulate half a continent, and an economy based on exporting fossil fuels, organized crime and prostitution. Sauron’s friggin’ Mordor could hardly be said to be worse than the USSR. The history of the Soviet Union puts the lie to any claim that “good will win in the end”. Apparently if you simply have enough raw brutal force, an efficient police apparatus, and you choose your wars carefully, you can fullfill the vision of **1984** - a boot stomping the face of humanity- almost forever. It may even be that the end of the USSR was a historical accident, caused by the chance ascendancy of a would-be reformer (Gorbachev) instead of a die-hard neo-Stalinist attempt to solve the USSR’s problems by more brute force.
The more I think about it the more bummed out I am.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2009, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/2 "2009-07-04T03:30:42Z")
Well, for one thing, it’s a novel, dude.
For another, while the USSR was a nasty dictatorship, it was nothing at all like Oceania in 1984. The fact is with countries like the USSR that for the great majority of the populace, politics just wasn’t a factor in their lives. They went to work, raised their kids, and did normal human things. The standard of living was not up to ours, but it was a hell of a lot better than most human beings in history have had it.
And finally, 70 years, in the scope of human history, is a blip.
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2009, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/3 "2009-07-04T04:05:45Z")
> [@](#):
>
> For another, while the USSR was a nasty dictatorship, it was nothing at all like Oceania in 1984.
Overall no. But under Stalin it approached 1984 levels.
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### Author:  [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/4 "2009-07-04T05:15:16Z")
Yep, a novel; so, to get you less bummed: From Austin Powers, international man of mystery.
Basil introduces the Russian intelligence commander while at British HQ.
\ ***Austin Powers:** \*Russian Intelligence!?! [Looks at Basil] are you mad?
\ ***Basil Exposition:** \*A lot has happened since you were frozen! The Cold War is over!
\*\*\*Austin Powers: \*\*\*Well!! Finally those capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
_ **Basil Exposition:** _ Austin… we won.
_ **Austin Powers:** _ Oh, smashing, groovy, yay capitalism!
🙂
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### Author:  [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2009, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/5 "2009-07-04T05:56:40Z")
Or, you might enjoy this:
[Stalin’s Secret Lair](http://www.hulu.com/watch/79487/cities-of-the-underworld-stalins-secret-lair)
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### Author:  [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)
#### Post date: [July 4, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/6 "2009-07-04T06:16:53Z")
Was there ever a _good_ period in Russian history?
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2009, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/7 "2009-07-05T01:42:56Z")
> [@Miller](#):
>
> Was there ever a _good_ period in Russian history?
It all depended what end of the Вилы you were on, comrade.
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### Author:  [@athelas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/athelas)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2009, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/8 "2009-07-05T02:00:54Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> It all depended what end of the Вилы you were on, comrade.
Or, as Lenin said, the question is “Who? Whom?”
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### Author:  [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2009, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/9 "2009-07-06T14:02:59Z")
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> Stalin’s Soviet Union was something close to Hell on Earth, the more so because unlike Nazi Germany or Khmer Rouge Cambodia, it was not a brief abberation that was destroyed because of it’s shortcomings.
Funny. I thought Nazi Germany and Kampuchea fell because they were invaded and conquered.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/10 "2009-07-06T14:53:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> Overall no. But under Stalin it approached 1984 levels.
That’s no coincidence. Orwell based _Nineteen Eighty-Four_ on the USSR. In particular, the state’s ability to rewrite history and erase memory of the change. E.g., the scene during Hate Week when the enemy abruptly changes from Eurasia to Eastasia and it immediately becomes true that it has always been so clearly is based on the European Left’s abrupt change of party line WRT Nazis when Hitler turned on Stalin. Orwell had previously observed, and written about, such selective revision/destruction of history in the Spanish Civil War – and both sides and both sides’ sympathizers were guilty of it. From [“Looking Back on the Spanish War”](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part16) (1942):
> [@](#):
>
> I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’. Yet in a way, horrible as all this was, it was unimportant. It concerned secondary issues— namely, the struggle for power between the Comintern and the Spanish left-wing parties, and the efforts of the Russian Government to prevent revolution in Spain. But the broad picture of the war which the Spanish Government presented to the world was not untruthful. The main issues were what it said they were. But as for the Fascists and their backers, how could they come even as near to the truth as that? How could they possibly mention their real aims? Their version of the war was pure fantasy, and in the circumstances it could not have been otherwise.
>
> The only propaganda line open to the Nazis and Fascists was to represent themselves as Christian patriots saving Spain from a Russian dictatorship. This involved pretending that life in Government Spain was just one long massacre (VIDE the CATHOLIC HERALD or the DAILY MAIL—but these were child’s play compared with the Continental Fascist press), and it involved immensely exaggerating the scale of Russian intervention. Out of the huge pyramid of lies which the Catholic and reactionary press all over the world built up, let me take just one point—the presence in Spain of a Russian army. Devout Franco partisans all believed in this; estimates of its strength went as high as half a million. Now, there was no Russian army in Spain. There may have been a handful of airmen and other technicians, a few hundred at the most, but an army there was not. Some thousands of foreigners who fought in Spain, not to mention millions of Spaniards, were witnesses of this. Well, their testimony made no impression at all upon the Franco propagandists, not one of whom had set foot in Government Spain. Simultaneously these people refused utterly to admit the fact of German or Italian intervention at the same time as the Germany and Italian press were openly boasting about the exploits of their’ legionaries’. I have chosen to mention only one point, but in fact the whole of Fascist propaganda about the war was on this level.
>
> This kind of thing is frightening to me, because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. After all, the chances are that those lies, or at any rate similar lies, will pass into history. How will the history of the Spanish war be written? If Franco remains in power his nominees will write the history books, and (to stick to my chosen point) that Russian army which never existed will become historical fact, and schoolchildren will learn about it generations hence. But suppose Fascism is finally defeated and some kind of democratic government restored in Spain in the fairly near future; even then, how is the history of the war to be written? What kind of records will Franco have left behind him? Suppose even that the records kept on the Government side are recoverable—even so, how is a true history of the war to be written? For, as I have pointed out already, the Government, also dealt extensively in lies. From the anti-Fascist angle one could write a broadly truthful history of the war, but it would be a partisan history, unreliable on every minor point. Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth.
>
> I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history COULD be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone. If you look up the history of the last war in, for instance, the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, you will find that a respectable amount of the material is drawn from German sources. A British and a German historian would disagree deeply on many things, even on fundamentals, but there would still be that body of, as it were, neutral fact on which neither would seriously challenge the other. It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys. Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as ‘the truth’ exists. There is, for instance, no such thing as ‘Science’. There is only ‘German Science’, ‘Jewish Science’, etc. The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but THE PAST. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs—and after our experiences of the last few years that is not a frivolous statement.
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### Author:  [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/11 "2009-07-06T15:37:13Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> For another, while the USSR was a nasty dictatorship, it was nothing at all like Oceania in 1984.
At certain times and places, it was far worse. Even the proles in Oceania had rubbery food and cheap beer, but the peasants in the Ukraine in the 1930’s had no food at all, because Stalin ordered it all confiscated. A large portion of the population was reduced to the brink of starvation, merely to break their will and end resistance to collectivization.
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> The fact is with countries like the USSR that for the great majority of the populace, politics just wasn’t a factor in their lives. They went to work, raised their kids, and did normal human things. The standard of living was not up to ours, but it was a hell of a lot better than most human beings in history have had it.
That may have been true for the Brezhnev era, but not under Stalin. Estimates of the number of people arrested during the 1936-38 purges vary wildly, but it seems likely that several million people were involved out of a population of a little less than 200 million. Add in family members effected, and others terrorized but not necessarily arrested, and this is a significant fraction of the population. Conditions in the labor camps, to which many of those arrested were deported, were worse than the norm even for landless peasants through most of human history.
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### Author:  [@Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gam_Zeh_Yaavor)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2009, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/12 "2009-07-06T16:46:54Z")
Stalin’s USSR was indeed absolutely horrific, but the the period of “De-Stalinization” following his death was called that for a reason. While the USSR was certainly not a happy land of freedom before or after Stalin, the amount of nightmarish 1984-ness decreased drastically thereafter. I would argue that the truly dystopian period in the USSR (apart from the current semi-apocalyptic dystopia, which I think is preferable) lasted from Lenin’s death to Stalin’s death (1924-1953). 29 years is a long time, certainly, but it’s not 70.
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### Author:  [@Burton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Burton)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/13 "2009-07-06T16:55:20Z")
I don’t disagree that it’s a super fucked up country and is still in the grasp of criminals today. Russia’s behavior post WWII starting with mass rape and theft of everything that was of possible use in Germany to their “absorption” of Eastern Europe is rightly described as evil.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2009, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-evil-triumphs-the-ussr/501867/14 "2009-07-07T04:13:17Z")
> [@Gam\_Zeh\_Yaavor](#):
>
> Stalin’s USSR was indeed absolutely horrific, but the the period of “De-Stalinization” following his death was called that for a reason. While the USSR was certainly not a happy land of freedom before or after Stalin, the amount of nightmarish 1984-ness decreased drastically thereafter. I would argue that the truly dystopian period in the USSR (apart from the current semi-apocalyptic dystopia, which I think is preferable) lasted from Lenin’s death to Stalin’s death (1924-1953). 29 years is a long time, certainly, but it’s not 70.
I think I couldn’t argue that anything really changed until after the Brezhnev era, though. Indeed, largely the USSR wasn’t killing people off as much because it simply couldn’t afford it - they had run out of resources to confiscate, and had too few people as it was. Although on paper it had a large population, so much of it was actively hateful towards the Russians that they needed more people just to keep them down. And they couldn’t really massacre any of the other groups, because they were often the biggest producers.