David Mandl wrote:
>
> I'm not sure I follow you, Curtiss. I was replying to the claim that
> "the crushing of the Hungarian uprising and the invasion of
> Afghanistan were both supported by the bulk of the Soviet
> population." By that logic, popular support in the U.S. for an
> invasion of Iraq makes that defensible (and I don't think it is, just
> for the record). Whether you have unanimity in a dictatorship
> through intimidation or in a "democracy" through more subtle means
> (corporate-controlled media, advertising, etc.), "popular opinion"
> has to be taken with a big grain of salt. And even if the Soviet
> population was really, truly in favor of the '56 and '68 invasions,
> surely that didn't make it right to send the tanks in?
>
The point is that for 70 years the myth in the west (which continues on this list) was that the Soviet Union was a prison camp for its _whole_ population, which lived in abject fear and misery, and which had no other deep down desire but to flee to the glorious utopia of the capitalist states. The current question has nothing to do, one way or the other, with the weaknesses or crimes of the Soviet state. The state is horribly missed by the bulk of its population now. That doesn't say it couldn't have done much better.
But at its worse, on the other hand, it never threatened the very existence of humanity as John Kennedy did at the time of the missile crisis. Incidentally, the invasion of Afghanistan was an attempt to save the only even semi-decent state Afghanistan has ever had.
In comparison to the world outside the initial coterie of capitalist states (Germany, France, England, U.S.) and a handful of other states, the USSR was paradise. I used to be totally anti-soviet myself; I've learned better since the fall. Surely the USSR of the 1960s was a better place for the overwhelming part of its population than is Brazil for the overwhelming part of its population today.
Carrol