I find it disturbing that so many people are so very willing to ignore or defend the atrocities of communism in the 20th century.
Just after the end of WWII the Soviets adopted a "plunder" policy with regard to occupied Eastern European countries. Forcing them to produce huge quantities of raw materials and industrial goods to be used within the USSR, extracting as much wealth from the beleaguered post-war economies as the US and allies pumped into Western Europe with the Marshall plan. They also set up "state owned" Eastern Block companies such that the USSR maintained majority ownership (up through the mid-1950s).
This pattern continued through the 1950s as the Soviets retained near direct control over Eastern Bloc economies and morphed in the 1960s into COMECON which merely provided political cover for the same sort of plunder policies up until industrial production in Eastern Europe started to become significant in the 1970s.
In October of 1956 the Hungarian people rose up and threw off their violent totalitarian government. One day later Soviet tanks were in the country's capital (in direct violation of the terms of the Warsaw Pact), within the next month 2500 Hungarians were killed and ten times as many were arrested, hundreds of which were deported to gulags in siberia or executed.
In January of 1968 Czechoslovakia elected a reformist government, which instituted many liberalizing reforms. In August Soviet tanks and forces from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations invaded, toppled the government, and killed any Czechs or Slovaks who stood in their way (though few were foolhardy enough to throw themselves against an army of 2,000 tanks and 200,000 soldiers).
The formalization of Eastern Bloc countries as effective satellite states of the USSR came about with the codification of the Brezhnev Doctrine in the 1960s, though it only legalized the status quo.
I feel like I harp on this a lot, but a quick reminder: that's not communism. I know there isn't really a better name for the ideology/policies of the USSR (and other "communist" states) but I think it's worth (repeatedly) pointing out the huge and longstanding misnomer, since they have very few and very tenuous and/or butchered connections to any philosophy of Marx.
These are not atrocities of an ideology, however misinterpreted, these are atrocities of people and of a state.
Which country whose ideology was officially Communist is or was least bad for its people?
I'm not a scholar of ex(communist) states but I'm thinking either Cuba or the former Yugoslavia. I am not aware of any attempt to bring communism into practice that could be called a humanitarian success. The other totalitarianism isn't exactly great either but it at least seems less murderous internally.
If I believed all politicians were power hungry amoral bastards then this wouldn't be that strong of evidence against communism but depressingly enough they're mostly sincere[0]. Communism appears to be a wonderful system for social insects. Humans, not so much.
[0] It would be extremely surprising if they didn't show the same over representation of psychopaths as corporate executives but that still leaves 24 out of 25 politicians as moral creatures.
From your link: "Initially, COMECON served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods.[46]"
So it looks like they used eastern bloc resources to restore Soviet Union devastated after the war. Explainable action under their their (enforced) ideology of socialist countries mutual aid etc
Very explainable, if you replace now common mindset of "well being of people, their liberty to participate in market" with mindset of "world revolution, opposition to capitalist, imperialistic powers". Priority of restoration of SU first, as a power house of world revolution, becomes explainable. There was a Cold War going on, you know. Suppression of democratic reforms too - "if people don't want our brand of hierarchical command communism, then they're mistaken, they're not ready, we know better". Governments always say they know what's better for people. Of course "communism" in some far future is better than living a better life today, in eyes of communist government ideologue.
Considering SU later become net subsidizer of Eastern Bloc, and that these countries were in pretty good shape right after SU dissolution, with all the limitations of "socialist economy", one-sided interpretation of history as exploitation, plunder, and atrocities and nothing more, sounds to me extremely stupid and narrow minded. As stupid as "killing his own people" meme.
I'm disgusted by people who do moral interpretations of history with today's dominating moral standards. "Let's not forget atrocities of Roman Empire, plunder, enslavement, domination, exploitation of neighboring peoples ." Whole world history is one big atrocity.
Also, people who consider Soviet Union, a primitive oriental despotism, as a communist regime, without quotation marks - have no class.
> do moral interpretations of history with today's dominating moral standards
I cannot upvote this enough. I feel sad when people forget that most of the history has been rewritten to suit newer regimes, newer philosophies. And the practice is still very dominant. Howsoever informed we may try to be about past, especially past that we haven't lived through but heard about in books or media or discussions, we are still aware of only part of the story. The part that survived, the part that dominated. And what is worse, we often tend to classify some leaders as well as their supporters who have failed and then replaced by their antitheses, to have this innate evil - while forgetting that they may very well be not 'evil' in their own morality; and hence ignorance not evilness causes their evil actions.
Who exactly is defending what the Soviets did? I'm skeptical that there's a pile of people out there who are gungho about what a great job Stalin & co did.
Just after the end of WWII the Soviets adopted a "plunder" policy with regard to occupied Eastern European countries. Forcing them to produce huge quantities of raw materials and industrial goods to be used within the USSR, extracting as much wealth from the beleaguered post-war economies as the US and allies pumped into Western Europe with the Marshall plan. They also set up "state owned" Eastern Block companies such that the USSR maintained majority ownership (up through the mid-1950s).
This pattern continued through the 1950s as the Soviets retained near direct control over Eastern Bloc economies and morphed in the 1960s into COMECON which merely provided political cover for the same sort of plunder policies up until industrial production in Eastern Europe started to become significant in the 1970s.
In October of 1956 the Hungarian people rose up and threw off their violent totalitarian government. One day later Soviet tanks were in the country's capital (in direct violation of the terms of the Warsaw Pact), within the next month 2500 Hungarians were killed and ten times as many were arrested, hundreds of which were deported to gulags in siberia or executed.
In January of 1968 Czechoslovakia elected a reformist government, which instituted many liberalizing reforms. In August Soviet tanks and forces from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations invaded, toppled the government, and killed any Czechs or Slovaks who stood in their way (though few were foolhardy enough to throw themselves against an army of 2,000 tanks and 200,000 soldiers).
The formalization of Eastern Bloc countries as effective satellite states of the USSR came about with the codification of the Brezhnev Doctrine in the 1960s, though it only legalized the status quo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc_economies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_revolution_of_1956
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine