writing about Soviet history at https://xitter.cf/t.co/ayItpd4Pqi
Joined July 2009
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The Soviets did pathologize anti-communist dissent as mental illness, but the framing of political critique in psychiatric terms was hardly unique to so-called “totalitarian” regimes. Western psychiatrists closely collaborate with counter-terrorism agencies to pathologize muslims and there is next to no evidence that "terrorism" is caused by psychological abnormality or mental illness
As another example, the British governments abuse of IRA prisoners involved horrific torture, which was legitimized by their belief that the prisoners suffered a kind of psychological abnormality that blocked "normal reasoning."
The West has long cited the USSR to reinforce its own claims to scientific objectivity, obscuring and deflecting from the ways in which their regimes have instrumentalized science to political imperatives
This is the exact argument Stalin used to shutter cultural institutions of "enemy nations." By bringing back collective punishment and persecution of wrongthink with none of the socialism, the EU would be making the worst possible version of 21st century Stalinism
Dozens of EU lawmakers have called for Russian cultural centres to be shut down across the bloc, describing them as hubs for espionage and influence operations.
A cross-party group of 71 MEPs is demanding legal mechanisms to close the Russian Houses still operating in 15 member states.
The initiative was led by Lithuanian MEP Rasa Jukneviciene. The centres are operated by Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia’s state cultural cooperation agency, which is under EU sanctions.
after history 👤 retweeted
Off the top of my head... Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Solaris and Andrei Rublev; Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, Klimov’s Come and See and Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don amd Grossman’s Life and Fate. Shostakovich’s symphonies and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Deineka’s paintings.
Matt, can you seriously claim that the art Russia has produced in the 35 years since the USSR collapsed is superior to what it produced during the Soviet period?
This is pretty much indistinguishable from the defense offered by Nazis on trial in Nuremberg who insisted that the genocide of Jews fell outside their departmental purview or decision-making. Of course, that did not absolve their active participation within a genocidal enterprise.
Even without military command authority, the VP is a statutory member of the National Security Council and a participant in war planning cabinet meetings. That means she helped facilitate and legitimize a genocide. The whole state apparatus bears responsibility
after history 👤 retweeted
With respect, i think we're gonna be more than okay. We've got Sam Kriss, Ben Burgis, Catherine Liu—and that's not even counting wise elders like Vivek Chibber and Wolfgang Streeck, firebrand writers like Bhaskar Sunkara and Tyler Austin Harper, and scholar-activists like Aaron B
What exactly is it about Stalin that Mamdani's treachery helps you understand? That selling out to Zionists and helping create Israel was actually awesome? Cretin.
The notion that China's market reforms are Stalinist is pretty absurd, given that its architects framed it as a break from the centralist anti-market policies derived from Stalin. It's wrong to say Bukharin was a proto-dengist precisely because he was far too much of a Stalinist. As Lih shows, he had enthusiastically supported Stalin's post-NEP heavy handed policies.
after history 👤 retweeted
My latest in Jacobin
Karl Kautsky predicted that capitalist powers could cooperate in a stable “ultra-imperialist” order.
Two world wars made the theory look absurd — but the US-led postwar system complicates the verdict. jacobin.com/2026/10/kautsky-…
Like you, Stalin's Comintern advocated for Palestinian and Jewish workers to organize together. You don't get to scold Marxist-Leninists and Maoists while holding the most intellectually bankrupt, vulgar Stalinist position. On this, you are more Stalinist than the Stalinists
This guy's brilliant advice to the Palestinians being genocided is to "overthrow capitalism." Is it any surprise that these people are considered a total joke by everyone outside their marginal and irrelevant sect?
after history 👤 retweeted
I’m so tired of people treating October 7th like it was fucking Srebrenica. Only 1200 Israelis were killed, hundreds of whom were soldiers! Gaza has been under nonstop siege since 2007, and on 10/7 Palestinians were able to break that siege. Why shouldn’t we defend that?
after history 👤 retweeted
The first statement is an interesting one because applied to a number of historical situations, it’s nonsense.
The Puritans were anti-indigenous because they were “traumatized” by continuous warfare with Indigenous nations, not because of racism.
