julietvalcouer said:If that's the attitude people have, we owe Germany, Italy, and Japan WHOPPING huge apologies for World War II and the Nuremberg trials. Because hey, all countries do bad things. (Ask the Koreans or Chinese how they'd feel about Japan saying "Hey, everyone does it." Especially the Koreans. Just don't say I didn't warn you.) And neither the slave trade (which America hardly started as it didn't even exist) nor Japanese internment camps are equatable with what the Soviet Union did, before, during, and after Stalin. The tendency to say "oh, it was all Stalin and before and after him it was just a worker's paradise" is naive at best. Think that there's a moral equivalency if you want. Some of us know better.
And I'm surprised there isn't a rule at the Olympics about wearing official team clothing. It seems as though that could cause confusion in addition to political faux pas if someone started wearing team jackets from extant countries.
I understand the argument for him not wearing the jacket because it's the Olympics. But as for it being related to past atrocities that's probably looking into things more than is necessary. Not everything is political.
As for the slave trade not being started be the US you are right. The term slave has its roots in 'slav' relating to Slavic people. The Japanese camps were a pretty serious human rights infringement but it can be argued that many countries were doing the same thing. It may not have been right but it's what was going on at the time.
The US treatment of Natives, OTOH, was completely disgusting. The same is true for Canada. There is nothing that can be said to repair the damage done.
Yes it is possible to look at the USSR in light of how different leaders did things. Things in the USSR were never worse than when Stalin ruled. It does not belittle any atrocities committed under other Soviet leaders, but let's look at this realistically: the collectivization programs were Stalin's baby and this, combined with the Communist Party purges and Stalin basically losing his mind from paranoia, were the things that led to so many Soviet citizens' needless deaths. If Stalin had not come to power during the years after Lenin's death one can only guess as to where the USSR would have gone or what it would have become. This is not saying that Lenin was innocent of anything. It would, however, be interesting to see where things would have gone if his NEP would have continued, and how communism would have developed. Under the NEP things were looking up. The parallels between the NEP and Gorbachev's perestroika are fascinating. Perestroika unravelled in a different way, however, and it helped contribute to the USSR's demise.
No, there was not any kind of worker's paradise in the USSR. But to paint the USSR in bold strokes is making sweeping generalizations. No one is being naive. It's simply an interesting debate.
Since you seem to be interested in this topic let me recommend a book for you. It's called 'Execution by Hunger', written as a memoir by Miron Dolot about living in the USSR during the famines. It's completely absorbing and heartwrenching. I think you'll enjoy it. Cheers.