Hasn't Communism Been A Tremendous Boon For Russian & Chinese People?

Question

Its hard for Americans, who only see themselves and have no empathy, to understand what life was like for the Russian and Chinese peasantry before the Communist revolutions in their two countries. For countless centuries they lived the most primitive poverty-stricken hopeless existence; nameless faces powerless.

After just fifty years of Communism Russians had moved to be the second world's superpower, educated all their people had health-care etc for all. A fantastic transformation..

In China the same thing. After just 50 years they are set to overwhelm even America as the preeminent power on Earth.

It must be said that in both cases millions (the "millions that Stalin and Mao murdered') died from famine as a result of a ill-advised attempts to transform their agricultural systems overnight when the basic logistical needs were not in place. Nothing compared to the billions who died from neglect and wars by their respective kings and emperors over the centuries.

Answer 1

Communism certainly did improve the lives of those peoples. It was much better than the previous regimes.
It is possible that the communist regimes would have done better economically if they had been able to relinquish some of the control they exercised over the people. We will never know what effects, the west hostility had on the USSR and if they had done better without it.

Answer 2

What is a boon? do you mean boom? Yeah Stalin was agreat guy, maybe just misunderstood. Lets talk about humanity and compassion that liberals spread around the world like bombing Sereavo? Doing nothing in Rawanda while genocide took place. Doing nothing about the Huto's slaughtering the Tootsi's. yeah, all happen under Clinton's watch. Such compassion, such heroism. The only hero's in the later conflict was a small Polish army force of 200 that stood against thousands, they remained to protect a village where victims fled. Madalin Notso Bright argued agianst helping them at the U.N. on behalf of the Clinton admin., the U.N. did nothing. Yeah, way to go for compassion. Liberals voted against supporting the South American Contra's, when rebels where attacking and trying to dipose a legitimate and soveriegn government. It was Ollie North that sold arms (old WWII relics) and used that money to fund the defense. Instead of being seen as a hero, the Liberal Senate kicked him out of he military. Talk about compassion. Where are the libs now during the current war? Freeing an occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, where are you guys? Oh yeah, Crying about how unjust it is, unfair, too costly, blah, blah, blah. tell me, how do you spread this compassion by letting evil remain? Is rape rooms, wholesale slaughter of Kurds, or even stalins own people compassion? And who has "voted agianst & begrudged others every inch of the way"? It wasn't the GOP, thats right, the Dim-o-rats! 50 million killed under communism, and that is a kind estimate. But real quick, communism failed in both Russia and China. Both now are trying out some form of democracy. They are not totally Democratic, but they now have more freedom then ever before. and when you talk about top heavy elitist rule, are you talking about Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, John Edwards, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Shummer all of which are multi-millionaires. Maybe the influencial Hollywood Lefty's (again all super rich). You guys push the class envy issue, but ignore all the excesively rich elitist's that are liberal. You point out what you detest about Republicans, yet totally ignore what your own party does. Hypocrite!

Answer 3

Look at North Korea today its hermit kingdom and the people are straving because communist ideology is used to promote a cult of personality for the leader. USSR failed because of no one is allowed to be person and no one was allowed to travel within the country if they wanted too. China opened up slowly to the world after it realized that isolation would doom its regime, but China is not communist anymore its authoriain regime similar to the ones in Chile, and South Korea back in the 70s and 80s. Russia economy never really grew after WW2 because of inefficent allocation of resources by Glosplan, and people older than 25 remember the seeing on TV during when the USSR existed that stores shevles were empty of food, gas stations did not have fuel, and people were dying out in the cold. People that praise communism should watch TV clips from the last days of the USSR you quickly realize it was no workers paradise.

Answer 4

umm...
no
no
no
no
nononononono

sorry had to get that out...

I don't think anyone woudl agree with you here besides the leaders of those countries and their highly paid beurocrats...
not the people (alive or dead..)

examples:
.china's one child policy
.Tibet (what can one say - taken by china!)
.the USSR
.a communist leader in one of the east european counties (while still under ussr rule) explaining that there was no aids problem in his country as aids is a western disease - and hading all the people and children suffering and dying from aids....
.the gulag
.the secret police
.no freedom of speech
.only 1 condom a year !!! (ussr only issued 1 a year that was washed and re-used - apparently it was like rubber and they were called little truncheons.... sorry heard this years ago - can someone back me up here?)
.east germany, poland, ukraine, hungary, etc etc
.the plans he USSR had for the west that were found out after the collapse of the usssr
.tianamin square, china - you can't see this happening in the free west can you ? seriously ever seen something like this?
nuclear missiles held by ussr and china

over the centuries people died in all countries from neglect but in our time the world is supposed to be a little more helpful but the ussr and china is/was not allowing help from the outside so people died NEEDLESSLY

poor planning form beurocrats over what people could farm causeed the deaths of millions - rather than allowing market forces or the locals to decide what can be or should be grown

remember india moved to a superpower without the need of communism - just hard work and a lot of people.

and I thought the european union was looking to move past america? I doubt china will ever do it as if we (the free west...) ever decide to not buy their things they are so screwed....

we can survive without them but they can't survive without us.....

Answer 5

That's a point, but it's sort of a case of the 'best of the worst'. Both the russians, chinese, N. Korea, Vietnam and to a lesser extent Cuba were or are at the base simply another form of 'thugocracy'. These bums dressed up their economic and social BS with all kinds of flag waving and goofy intellectualism, but when you strip all that away it's just another 'Al Capone' setup. Granted, they did make these backward agricultural #$%^ holes into industrial #$%^ holes, and I suppose some good was generated, but bad is still bad. A lesson for our country as well. If something sounds too good to be true....it's too good to be true!

Answer 6

give me some numbers on neglect and then we'll talk.

I hardly think forced labor, slave camps (gulags on the steppes of Russia sir), and forced military conscription into the military to fight is hardly a boon...

I could go on... 2nd superpower, with an economy that was tanking faster than the senate immigration bill. Health care, dude, their health care, sure nationalized, but that doesn't mean it works. People were scrambling to leave, how could it have been a boon?

Same with China. Just cause their nation is on the verge on possibly eclipsing the United States economically, possibly militarily and politically, doesn't mean its been good to them. Personally, I would rather live in a weak country where I can do my thing... but maybe thats just cause I'm American.

Answer 7

Cost of communism in Soviet Union and China...

8 to 10 million under Lenin.
30 million+ under Stalin.
100,000 to 250,000 under later Soviet dictators.

2.5 million in the Chinese Communist Revolution
40 to 60 million under Mao

Answer 8

Communism is a flawed economic system because its central premise--that human empathy for the collective good of every person is as efficient an incentive for production as rational self interest--is wrong. You only have to compare the productivity of centrally planned economies to free market ones to find all the evidence necessary to definitively disprove this premise.

Answer 9

In truth Communism has been a failure in any Nation it was tried in. The Famines you belittle were effords by the leadership to crush an emerging middle class. In China they are mixing a free economy in and its working.

Answer 10

it is such a boon that they went from abject poverty to abject poverty, hard to beat a system like that. you need to look past the propaganda and see what is really there. these peoples lives have not changed much since the time of the October revolution and Mao.