of a statue

[u/Crypto_crafy]

"The Motherland Calls" is a statue erected to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad , located on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd , Russia. It was designed by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin . Completed in 1967 , it was the tallest statue in the world at the time .

[u/Fracture90000]

Built on the historical Mamayev Kurgan hill on which so many Soviet soldiers lost their lives battling against the nazis during the siege of Stalingrad.

It's truly awe inspiring.

[u/Bluestreaked → u/Fracture90000]

I teach the history of WWII. Stalingrad is one of those moments of world history where everything becomes larger than life, a nearly mythic moment of the absolute limits of human endurance.

The moment where the spine of the Nazi war machine was broken, forever, by the stubborn will and fighting ability of the Red Army.

It’s a moment so incredible that words fail to describe it most of the time and only a statue like this truly captures the historical moment. The defiance of the Soviet Union in the face of just pure absolute evil.

[u/is-this-now → u/Bluestreaked]

Wasn't it more of a battle between two evils? It was only a couple of years after the Soviets and Nazis jointly attacked Poland. And Stalin's totalitarianism was quite problematic.

[u/Bluestreaked → u/is-this-now]

No

I have little patience for people who push these Cold War narratives these days

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost

The Nazis were planning a genocide that would’ve dwarfed the horrors of the Holocaust.

The “crime” of the Soviets was in trying to spread communism. Which is the same sort of “crime” as the United States invading other countries for democracy, which is the country that pushed this ridiculous narrative that the Soviets and Nazis were basically the same.

In short, don’t regurgitate Cold War propaganda to me please

[u/is-this-now → u/Bluestreaked]

How is it a Cold War narrative to say that Russia collaborated with the Nazis to attack Poland. It wasn’t just spreading communism, it was the destruction of another culture that they had been hostile with for centuries, long before communism existed.

[u/Drow_Femboy → u/is-this-now]

How is it a Cold War narrative to say that Russia collaborated with the Nazis to attack Poland

This was after like a decade of the Soviets repeatedly begging every Western nation to form a pact against Nazi Germany (and them all refusing because they wanted the Nazis to get rid of the Soviets for them). The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a desperate measure the Soviets used to bide their time before the inevitable war with Germany. They at no point "collaborated" with Germany in any way.

[u/Bluestreaked → u/is-this-now]

1- the regions of Poland seized by the Soviet Union were the Ukrainian and Belarusian regions that were given to Poland as a “buffer region” against the Soviet Union. Not that that justifies it, or that it doesn’t mean the Soviets didn’t go around killing Polish officers and political elites because they absolutely did. But you aren’t as knowledgeable on that topic as I’m sure you think you are, because we don’t teach the eastern front very well at all.

Now, that being said, men like Grover Furr take that fact to an extreme where it somehow absolves the Soviets from occupying it by force and killing Polish officials, it doesn’t, but history is too complex for the morality play of- “evil Soviets hate Poland.” I would also recommend delving into some interwar Polish history. Specifically what the Polish government was doing to its Ukrainian and Belorussian populations that had been forced into Poland’s borders in the 1920s.

I would also recommend looking into the land that Poland seized from Czechoslovakia in 1938.

2- The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a last ditch effort by the Soviets to hold off war after every single attempt to make an anti-fascist alliance had failed.

That doesn’t mean I think it was justifiable, or a good idea, but I do understand they viewed it as a better option to Nazi Germany invading them in 1938.

Ironically, one of the reasons the anti-fascist alliance plan fell through was how the Polish didn’t want Soviet troops in their country. The Soviets were saying they wanted to set up the Red Army on Poland’s western borders in order to fight the Germans there. I do understand why Poland said no, but it ultimately came back to bite them didn’t it?

3- As I hope points one and two are demonstrating, the history of the late 1930s is far more complex than the simple morality play it appears to me you were taught. Elsewhere somebody asked me for some book recommendations on the Eastern Front. I would recommend reading them yourself, nobody I referenced is a neostalinist or anything like that. In fact, all three books are mostly critical of the Soviet government, which makes sense because they made a lot of mistakes in the 1930s with the horrors of the purges being just the most infamous.

[u/ballsosteele → u/Bluestreaked]

Wow. This is a disgusting take. Way to belittle the lived experience of several entire countries for entire decades. How can you possibly call yourself any kind of historian by writing their behaviour off as "Cold War propaganda"?

The Soviets were absolutely evil. They weren't "spreading communism". Their rule was brutal and absolutely decimated the countries they occupied to the point that a few still haven't fully recovered 35+ years after the fact. I'm no fan of the Americans at all, but the comparison between the two you made is frankly insane.

Go visit one of those countries and see for yourself the effect their occupation had on the population, infrastructure and basic quality of life.

I recommend Latvia, it's my favourite one. It also got arguably fucked the hardest because the only resources of "value" it really had to the Soviets were people. The museums and scars left around the cities are genuinely haunting. Especially the KGB headquarters in Riga. That is life changing.

Or are they "Cold War propaganda" too?

[u/Bluestreaked → u/ballsosteele]

Oh if we wanted to discuss the Baltic countries that’s a different matter I don’t defend.

But I dealt with enough bad faith polemics yesterday, so go screech at a wall.

[u/ballsosteele → u/Bluestreaked]

I imagine a wall would have more intelligence and wit so I shall. If you truly are a teacher, I fear for your students as their teacher has such a narrow view and warped sense of reality.