Today in history 12-30

[remrogers]

1922
December 30
USSR established

On December 30, 1922, in post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism.

During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent three-year Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin dominated the soviet forces, a coalition of workers' and soldiers' committees that called for the establishment of a socialist state in the former Russian Empire. In the USSR, all levels of government were controlled by the Communist Party, and the party's politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary, effectively ruled the country. Soviet industry was owned and managed by the state, and agricultural land was divided into state-run collective farms.

In the decades after it was established, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grew into one of the world's most powerful and influential states and eventually encompassed 15 republics—Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.

[Okanagan]

The most fascinating thing to me about the Soviet Union is that it died internally rather than being defeated by an outside power.  It died of doing what Communism does.  The Soviet Union was based on lies at its core, and though it propped up the lies for 70 years with bullets and terror, ultimately reality prevailed and it collapsed from within.  You can only fight against reality for so long.  Ultimately, reality wins. 

The lies are deep, at the presupposition or world view level: false ideas about human nature, human motivation, economics, the spiritual dimension of humans, science--- the Soviet claims about each of these is not true.  Real people, and the real world, do not work the way Communism says they do.

 

[JohnP]

Are you talking about the USSR or USA?

[Okanagan]

Are you talking about the USSR or USA?

USSR but we are taking sides with them as fast as we can.

The leftists in the US and the clueless hoard who follow them have shifted their world view to that of the Bolsheviks of 1917.  The basic struggle in the US is between reality and a government controlled uptopia based on baloney.  Reality is not always sweet and nice, but it is TRUE.  Socialism/communism (different shades of the same color) promises sweet and nice and NEVER delivers anything but pain.