So I was reading through @sunaurus@lemm.ee 's comment about Estonian demographic history and felt intrigued by some of the claims, so I did a teeny tiny bit of digging to see what I could find. So here goes:
The Estonian population expanded rapidly during the industrial revolution right up to the 1910s.
World War 1 and the Great Depression manage to suppress population growth for the next decade.
Nazi occupation of Estonia (marked RKO) coincides with WW2. The vast majority of ethnic Jews flee to the USSR, and those whl stayed behind were exterminated. The nazis and their Estonian collaborators built concentration camps. This coincides with a dip in the graph.
After WW2, Estonia is back under the USSR. The first Estonian SSR was established in 1940-1941 when nazi occupation started. After some lag, the population begins climbing on the same curve it did before. The population of the country peaks in 1989.
20000 people were deported to Russia very early in the existence of the SSR
The nazis aimed to remove 50% of the population on paper but only had 4yrs to do so. This means using concentration camps on ethnic Estonians for germans to take their homes/land as in palestine today.
20k is not the same as sunaurus's 20% claim, not even close. 20% does however match the proportion of modern estonians who are russian. The obvious conclusion one can gather from this comparison is that this is not dissimilar to Great Replacement propaganda. The assumption here is that ethnic Russians are taking up Estonian space, because the evidence points to massive population growth under the ussr rather than a contraction like the one that occurred with German occupation.
Immigration was highest during that huge growth period, so I'm curious where all those excess deaths and gulags occurred to have not slowed or stopped said growth. It sounds to me like this person is just intimidated by people they consider foreign.
Another important facet of this: Communism doesn't have any malthusian elements in its ideology. There is no marxist theory which purports states are more efficient when they commit genocide.
Naziism very boldly and forwardly posits ethnic cleansing as one of its aims. Genocide is attractive to fascists because it frees up resources and capital for those considered deserving of them. In fascism, death balances the budget and every prominent fascist writer was not shy about saying so.
Capitalism is not addressing the tragedy of the commons, fascism is addressing it by stealing the resources from others, communism is a transgender polycule having an orgy behind the dumpster at dennys after a 3am rave party.
There is no tragedy of the commons. The coiner of the phrase as well as the concept of "lifeboat ethics", Garrett Hardin, was a fascist and white supremacist who used environmentalism as a tool to smuggle and propagate anti-immigrant and eugenicist ideologies.
So does liberal capitalism. Literally read anything by Peter Singer and he will wax on for pages and pages about how we should be donating to famie relief before at the very end (and it is in every single one of his works and literally on his website) saying that actually population control will have a higher marginal utility than famine relief so really we should be making sure the poors don't breed. Just disgusting stuff.
Malthus's argument as an analytical hypothesis has applied in many instances in history (in China, for instance).
However, Malthus also saw a normative and political dimension to in in that he believed it was right and good, inescapable, and the only way of restoring the 'natural order'. He was not able to foresee different economic conditions, technological innovations or different social systems which would obviate the problem.
Communism is also premised on a rejection of not only the Malthusian political idea which Fascism embraces as an active participant, but emphasizes that the predicament is not necessary and that it can be overcome.
Communism is the only ideology genuinely hopeful, and the only hope, for the future.
I don't have anything to add but the Baltikkks are notorious around here for just making up bizarre pseudo-history to justify their obsessive hatred of the USSR. I think they're mostly mad because the local equivalent of Naziism had near universal support and they weren't allowed to do Nazi shit for forty years, but that is admittedly very much prejudice.
Every single baltic person I have met without fail will say something along the lines of "i lived under communism" and they're like 30. Like they were only just born when the USSR collapsed they lived under none communism. Yet they'll use this to justify the most reactionary thinking...
Fuck Timothy Snyder. Fuck Anne Applebaum. Those two Nazi apologists need to be transported back in time to Eastern Europe in 1941 and live their fucking hot takes out.
Really good post. Cuts through the bullshit and presents it as it is.
Honestly if Sun shows up here and recognises how wrong they are I'll be surprised, but I do hope it happens. They genuinely have the ability to learn, the question is whether they'll close themselves off due to cognitive dissonance or not. I don't even want them to like the soviet union just realise that they've filled their brain with trash about it and maybe taking a more solidly open-minded stance is a good idea.
Thanks for the ping, OP. I don't expect much good to come out of commenting here - I assume if you guys see "only" 20k people being repressed as not evil, then there's not much I can do to defend myself here. Nevertheless, I can try.
First of all, the 20k number is certainly downplaying reality a lot (which is quite typically done in Russian sources). The amount of real victims is certainly higher. Also remember that Estonia is a very small country - even if the soviets "only" deported, imprisoned and/or executed a five digit number of Estonians, then that is still something between one in every hundred to one in every ten Estonians being directly repressed (not to mention the families and close ones of victims, who were of course also indirectly affected).
As for the 20% population replacement - on the very graph you posted, you can see that the size of the Estonian population was quite similar during the 30s and the 50s (around 1.1mil). According to a 1934 census, the population was ~90% of Estonian descent. Another census in 1959 showed that demographics had changed significantly - the population was ~75% of Estonian descent. I assure you that ~165 000 people did not magically change their descent in that period of time - this change was the direct result of deportations, executions, forced drafts into dictator-led armies, etc. The occupiers straight up had an official policy of "russification" - the goal to replace Estonian people and culture with a soviet people.
Finally, let me be clear that I don't really care what the percentage of repressed people is. It might as well be just 1% - I would still consider the soviet union evil. In fact, they took away the freedom of 100% of my nation, so arguing over percentages seems completely useless.
It's honestly one of the weirdest experiences on Lemmy so far to have to defend my condemnation of invaders and occupiers. I have received several DMs and comments trying to tell me that in fact my sovereign country having it's independence taken away was not such a bad thing, and really the occupation was all the west's fault anyway. It's the same kind of rhetoric I see used against Ukraine today. It's messed up to see a full post about how crimes against humanity are not actually that bad, but here we are.
Another census in 1959 showed that demographics had changed significantly - the population was ~75% of Estonian descent. I assure you that ~165 000 people did not magically change their descent in that period of time - this change was the direct result of deportations, executions, forced drafts into dictator-led armies, etc.
Assuming that the migration of every single person to and from Estonia was forced and done in deliberate pursuit of russification is a pretty major flaw in this argument. Economic migration in the rest of the USSR was common. Why do you rule that out completely for Estonia?
I don't make the assumption that every single person was forced. As I said, I think it serves no purpose to argue over what percentage was forced (even though it's pretty clear that the majority of that number was indeed repressed).
By the way, there has been significant research and investigation done into the exact extent of losses and repression during the occupation (both by nazis and soviets). If you're interested, have a look at this report. Quoting from the foreword:
In 1992, the Riigikogu of the Republic of Estonia established the Estonian State Commission on Examination of the Policies of Repression (ESCEPR) and set it „the final goal to publish a scientific investigation into all the losses and damages suffered by the Estonian nation during the occupation regimes”.
Only now, after twelve years of investigation work, the ESCEPR is able to publish a survey, which sums up the present state of our knowledge, in the form of eight original papers dedicated to the following fields: population, cultural life, environment and economy.
Also, if you read the report, please read it with the awareness that Estonia was a neutral country before being invaded by the soviets.
According to a 1934 census, the population was ~90% of Estonian descent. Another census in 1959 showed that demographics had changed significantly - the population was ~75% of Estonian descent
hmmm, I wonder what happened between 1934 and 1959, it's almost like you ignore the actual occupiers and genociders and just baseline wartime migration in favor of constructing a myth of a Russian ethnic cleansing of Estonians
Finally, let me be clear that I don't really care what the percentage of repressed people is. It might as well be just 1% - I would still consider the soviet union evil.
"I don't care what the facts are, I've made up my mind."
they took away the freedom of 100% of my nation
There was a native communist party which eventually split over the question of independence from the USSR. Did all those people who supported the Estonian SSR somehow have their freedoms taken away? At worst Estonia had a Cold War government that had some popular support, but not the support of a wide majority, which is hardly unique to Estonia.
defend my condemnation of invaders and occupiers
Maybe people would take you more seriously on this if you (1) cited your claims and (2) applied the same standard to other "invaders and occupiers." For instance, I'm sure you don't deny the genocide of American Indians or the fact that the U.S. stole their land and occupied it. But somehow that's different and you don't take down American flag emojis (or comments praising America) on sight.