this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Communism
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I'm not disagreeing with your point, but colonialism doesn't require millions of deaths. It requires external rule without consent of the people
Colonialism also requires extraction of surplus, and if you read my edited comment you can see that the opposite was the case. There was real frustration in the Baltics specifically, but ultimately the socialist system was uplifting and democratic, while British colonialism was the opposite.
So forced collectivization and requisitioning of land, goods and production facilities isn't extraction? Political repression, censorship and demographic engineering are democratic? I'm not against communism, I'm against the Soviet union.
Implementing a socialist mode of production is not the same as extracting the surplus and natural resources of a country to the detriment of their development and economic health. The Baltics gained unequally from the soviets, not the inverse. Capitalists and fascists were censored and repressed, yes, but this is often necessary for any revolutionary society to do with those who would support reversion to the previous system, just like those who wish to bring back feudalism following bourgeois revolutions.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
How could they have materially been more democratic in a way that would satisfy you?
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
In what way were they more repressive than their peers?
When you seem to cry about supposed "colonialism," where the "colonized" gained more than they produced, it reeks of malformed analysis.
Forced collectivization only has negative connotations if you're the person who owns privately that which is worked socially.