A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union

Death tolls and the “170 million” claim

• Commenters question a cited figure of 170M “lost lives and unborn children,” noting lack of sourcing and unclear inclusion of abortions, war dead, and demographic projections.
• Some argue you can reach huge numbers by extrapolating lost births from WWII casualties and Stalinist repression; others call the figure obvious propaganda.
• Side debate: whether counting fetuses as “lost lives” is valid, which slides into an abortion–personhood argument.

Russia, Soviet legacy, and national identity

• One line of discussion claims Russia is more a coercive state than a nation, with a persistent “master–peasant” mindset from Tsarism through communism to today.
• Others push back, saying Russia does have shared culture and identity across ethnic groups, and that nationhood isn’t defined by the government.
• There is extensive back-and-forth over Soviet responsibility for WWII (Molotov–Ribbentrop, invasions of Poland/Finland, U.S. and Western business ties to Nazi Germany).

Communism’s nature, theory vs practice

• Repeated clash between: “communism isn’t inherently murderous, only specific implementations” and “every large-scale attempt ends in mass death and authoritarianism, so the theory is effectively invalid.”
• Some note small voluntary communes can work, but depend on surrounding market economies and lose appeal at scale.
• Others liken communism to 19th‑century pseudoscience; ideology in general is described as a tool to justify cruelty.

Economic systems and late capitalism

• Several participants want to step back from “capitalism vs communism” binaries, arguing all real systems are hybrids and both pure forms are inadequate for modern constraints (environment, inequality, slowing growth).
• Nordic welfare capitalism is cited as a successful mixed model; critics reply it’s still market-based, not socialist, and often aided by unique resources (e.g., oil).
• There’s a long subthread about whether it’s even coherent to propose an “alternative to capitalism” versus incremental reform of an evolved system.

Absurdities in science and daily life

• Lysenkoism is highlighted as emblematic: genetics banned, thousands of biologists jailed or killed, leaving Soviet molecular biology decades behind.
• Firsthand anecdotes describe guaranteed jobs and housing paired with scarcity, corruption, fear of the state, mass alcoholism, and a culture of pretending to work while the state pretended to pay.
• Some note that this “mollusk-like” security still appeals to many who face intense precarity in capitalist societies.