I was curious how colonialism and slavery are taught in the UK school system? Here in the southern US schools always have been good a skipping and being vague on details prior to the world wars. Is there possibly a video in that? Like the differences of how event in history are taught in western allied nations.
@@MrMrchatcity I'm from the UK and while I cannot speak for every school certainly in mine we had a relatively detailed chunk of the curriculum based around slavery in the United States in year 8 (grade 7?). We learnt about slave boats, plantation life, and lynchings among other things and did a whole case study on Emmett Till. It was sometimes even quite upsetting for some students and I'd definitely say my teacher did a good in depth job. However, it must be noted that we didn't spend as much time on UK colonialism and slavery as such and I wish we'd gone more in depth. During my history gcse (which only a fraction of students will take, gcses are subjects you pick to do in depth) we learnt about Black rights and movements during the 20th century but obviously most students won't learn about that so I hope it becomes implemented in the system. I also didn't attend school in year 7 and much of year 8 and 9 so they full well could've studied things then that I'm not aware of. In English we briefly went over some great Black people in history whilst studying poetry and that was definitely interesting. From what I've heard about the teaching of these subjects in American schools I'd probably think we're slightly better? But there's still much work to do, especially with more implementations of Black British history! I hope that helped a little, though of course this is anecdotally :)
Everything depends on the teacher. One might praise him while another will do everything to worsen his image. I had 5 different history teachers and each one had a different opinion on him.
@@danialyousaf6456 Eh. It varies. Take how differently we talk about Alexander of Macedon vs Genghis Khan. Both were people who conquered large territories and had their newly formed empires crumble not long after their deaths yet how history classes teach them changes depending where you live. Stalin was in power for nearly thirty years during a time when Russia was rapidly changing. Most advancements during this time had his face on them so it becomes difficult to separate what is propaganda vs reality. Some of that old nationalist feeling carries over. We see something similar with how George Washington is taught to American school children.
@@danialyousaf6456 You simply repeat russophobic propaganda. Stalin was the enemy of your history teachers, this is the only reason why his image is so bad.
@@alexsilent5603 not at all in fact lol. I barely read anything about him when I was studying history. All his crimes I know of are from very recent biographies (some of them are on this channel too). The amount of people he had starved, hung, shot and had much worse things done to makes Hitler's actionslook like child's play. For example, the rape and murder of hundreds of thousands of German women and children by the red army, the road of bones, the hundreds of concentration camps (one that even resorted to cannibalism), all that and more done by one pathetic piece of shit in the span of 30 years. No wonder people celebrated his death.
I used to work at an airport that was served by British Air. Sometimes, when the flight crew showed up, I would call out "The British are coming! The British are coming. One if by land, two if by sea, three if by air." They just ignored me.
I talked to an English colleague about it once. He was actually shocked that the US is so fixated on it in our schools. To him it was taught as just one of many colonial defeats that the UK had over the many years. Similar to how x king lost x land in x war, so not really some earth-shattering crushing defeat like American schools sometimes like to portray it. In short, they know it happened but just shrug it off as not really important anymore. Not sure what the official stance is, but in talking to a local that's what I heard.
WilhelmUs fair point. Poland had some triumphs afterward, but they were overwhelmed by concurrent events. All this thinking about Polish history is interesting, if only there was an upcoming product that prominently featured Poland that could sponsor a video about an appropriate topic. Wait, you mean there’s two? Iron Harvest, and Crusader Kings III.
Was a time once when the Poles gave the Russians an absolutely great shit kicking. King Borsch or something. Out of history class 50+ yrs.so memories fading. But it's fact.
My history teacher once said: "If they ever raise a monument of Stalin in Yakutsk city and one night this monument suddenly explodes, you know who will be responsible, it's me"
@RadTheLad they are aware, and they think he was a great guy. it's the same story as stalin. he saved the nation and led it to prosperity, the hiccups along the way were regrettable but unavoidable in pursuit of great achievements. Instilling nationalist feelings in the youth and directing their passions outward is the best way to control them.
@RadTheLad which is fine but as they get older and more entrenched in where they stand in society (which the CCP is pushing further with their "societal number") then they fall in line so no better
Thank you for the video. Stalin is spreading in the modern textbooks that way mostly due to the existing government demand for the "strong national leader" narrative. As a relatively recent graduate of one of Russian state universities I can testify, that my history professor when he just met us in the begining of the semester, has taken then latest government recommended textbook on the subject of history of Russia in the 20th century and has offered an A in a semester and a right for a free admission of his lectures to anyone, who would be willing to write a critical essay on any of the chapters in a that book, provided that such chapter has at least 5 substantial mistakes or groundless conclusions. By the end of the month I got an A, my friend got an A, almost everybody in my group got a A. No chapter had left uncovered. There is a growing disparity between the existing human ability to think critically and the demand for critical thinking by some of those that work forces. And in Russia nowdays it sometimes feels too real.
"There is a growing disparity between the existing human ability to think critically and the demand for critical thinking by some of those that work forces." And that's why "Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses"
You are lucky to have such a teacher. He is as brilliant as brave, considering one can get a 2 years prison term for a couple of tweets in today's Russia.
@@m.chumakov1033 You can pour as much shit on stalin as you want, many people sarcastically call him "sralin" (from "srat"- "to take shit") and only people who care are dimwitted neo-stalinists.
Kinda obvious how they portray it Nelson Mandela bombed busses of children and led a terrorist organization that targeted random whites but today not one mention of that comes up
Lol "terrorists".. More like controlled opposition to the S.A government to ease over racial tension for a civil war breaking out. I mean who else gets convicted and goes to prison for over 20yrs and comes out to be president months after being "freed"
This is pretty much how our school taught us how Mao was to China, I guess my primary school put both Mao and Stalin"s portrait together in the classroom for a reason
OK, as a Russian, I know, they're full of shit. Mostly because during the 1990s there was a huge anti-Soviet propaganda movement across the entire Russian landscape. Especially with Solzhenitsyn books like "The GUALG Archipelago" being mandatory in the literature classes. Basically the entire 1990s were all about de-classifications of the Soviet documents and defaming of the Soviet government... However, many anti-Stalin historians, while perusing truth actually stumbled upon conflicting data about the numbers of arrested, pardoned and killed during the USSR: it turned-out, Stalin's so-called crimes were highly exaggerated. Not to mention, that higher percentage of Russians actually were murdered in the 1990s thanks to the Gorbachev and Yeltsin reforms than during Stalin's pre-war reign (when supposedly he was at the peak of his murder spree)... But, of course, the Capitalist propaganda machine is as efficient as ever. And as a Russian who was born and raised in Russia - I find this video laughable. Cause I remember the strong anti-Soviet movements of the 1990s. I've seen Russian movies where Stalin is portrayed as merely a monster, I've heard popular Russian radio stations, condemning the USSR from every conceivable angle and seen TV-talk-shows where Stalin was compared to Hitler. And I was required to read "The GUALG Archipelago" and even to make a report about this book at school. Only years later, after some independent research I realized how wrong it all was. And how exaggerated Stalin's actions were. But, of course, for every self-respecting Capitalist, a guy who turned a war-torn poor country into a Communist capital of the world deserves only condemnation. And today Russia has a huge backlash against the enforced anti-Soviet programs of the 1990s. But, of course, you don't care.
this actually makes me think: what if, just hypothatically, around 1941 Hitler would have made a peace agreement with the UK and US, and had used his forces to defeat the Sowjets, and instead of the Pact there would have been a similar organisation opposed to the West in the Cold war, but under a German Reich that was lead by Hitler for decades to come, and in the 90s it would have ended similar to the cold war, with the German Reich crumbled, but never defeated militarily. In this scenario, imagine the attrocities commited by the nazis would be seen today as "hard, but necessary sacrifices", and Hitler as a very devoted man who might have had some negative personality traits, but ultimately undertook a great effort in uniting ze German people in times of crisis. As a German, the sheer thought makes me want to vomit. And this is basically what is happening with Stalin.
All he had to do was simply refrain from declaring war on the US when the US declared on Japan. I'd suggest taking either that approach or alternatively imagining Japan surprise attacking the USSR instead of the US to avoid sounding too much like "The Big Switch" in Turtledove's "The War That Came Early" series.
You could just have the japanese actually succeed in their Northern doctrine of expansion and go through china to serbia, going to war with the ussr that way and keeping the US oficially out of the war
Hitler would have completely massacred the slavic populations and destroyed their cultures, there would have been hundreds of millions of deaths in the territories of the USSR and Poland. There would be no "pact", only Lebensraum. Nazis did collaborate with some local groups in eastern Europe during the war, but Hitler's end goal had no room for slavic autonomy.
What's funny is that in my experience British History post late 1800s isn't taught much at all in the UK & especially not anything related to the world during WW2.
The UK education system says nothing about brutal genocides and political suppression by the state well into the middle of the 20th century. I went to schools with indian/pakistani majorities, no mention of Churchill's direct decision making involved in the horrors of partition or the 1940's famines and shooting of protesters by british troops. Literally might as well pretend Hitler was a bit of a character. Churchill cut his teeth in combat in Imperial africa, where he was involved in the world's first concentration camps.
@@paulwhite7978 I agree. My great granndfather was given uniform and send to Burma from Dhaka in a single night. Not to mention, he had to settle in India post partition
Why am I even watching this? I was born and raised in Moscow and actually took a state exam in history. Guess the lockdowns are really getting to me lmao. Although, on a more serious note, the video does a good job of painting the picture regarding teaching Stalin in our schools. While his horrible crimes are common knowledge, schools really just skip the whole purges and gulags things entirely. Depends on the teacher, but federal guidelines don’t include it
Stalin: Murders 3 million of his own people. Enslaves his own people along the same lines. Makes his political opponents disappear. Also was a war time leader. Russia: It was all worth it! That kinda scares me. Sure, the US isn't perfect either, but at least we acknowledge that our bouts in slavery, concentration camps and whatnot were bad. Saying, "But it was all worth it" gives a bad precedent for the people to be willing to go through it again if a leader called on it to happen. "I'm going to a slave labor camp, but it's for the good of the country." "I can murder my political opponents for the good of the country." "I can kill people who disagree with me for the good of the country." Every dead person is one person less who can vote, who can make something beautiful with their hands, who can have an opinion or have a world changing idea or innovation. Each person dead is less chance for a better world. Even if they disagree with you, they have a right to live their disagreeable life. Viewing people as mere numbers in your favorability polls is a disaster. Stalin was a disaster. Don't be afraid to call it out.
Look at USA today. Number of prisoners in USA is much larger than it was in Stalin's USSR. Use of prisoners for labor is common. Death penalty is also legal in 28 American states. So how is it different from what Stalin did?
@@alexsilent5603 It's the difference between people being imprisoned or killed for actual crimes (although I agree that drug offenses need to be laxed in the US, which accounts for the majority of those inflated prison numbers) or killed for not going along with the leader's ideology. People can complain about Trump or Nancy Pelosi. They can claim vitriolic things about them, and they will not face legal consequences. You know it's true because people always talking trash on the news, social media, every day - and they're fine. Stalin wouldn't stand for that. He DIDN'T stand for that. It's not even comparable.
We have different issues in our history schooling. Rather than whitewash our recent history we omit it. I don't recall being taught anything about US mistakes after the atomic bombings except for Vietnam. It's easy to rile people up for war with Iran and North Korea when we don't teach about 1953 coup initiated in Iran by the US and Britain or how we dropped more bombs on North Korea than we did in the Pacific theater during WWII. These are just two examples but there are many more. Difficult foreign relations problems can't be solved rationally in a democracy whose citizens don't understand why the other side is upset.
@@johndoe9501 i don't remember Biden fans and supporters flying flags with his name on them on their trucks. The left can and has criticized Biden, the right is terrified and willfully blind to what the orange man does.
I can imagine most countries education systems gloss over the bad parts of their history and have lots of justifications. As a Brit, I feel we definitely do that.
I was talking to my wife the other day about the different disciplines in school and how history, while it does give you a sort of frame of reference for your place in the grand scheme, is more about indoctrination than the transmittal of balanced and accurate information. Told her about how the Nazis are taught about in Germany and pointed out how different we in the Southern U.S. would view the Civil War if we were taught that it was about the wealthy elite in the south forcing the South into a reckless and backwards war to protect their interest rather than this states' rights and lost cause stuff. Not that I know the former to be true, might be, just that as a form of indoctrination it would be effective and would fundamentally change the Southern view.
but it was indeed to protect their interests rather than the state's rights. there was even a law that they the south promugated prior to the civil war , so that escaped slavers that runs into an abolitionary state can be legally captured and send back to it's owner. So , the south was pretty much okay to diminish the North's rights in defense of the black people at the time , if it mantains their slavery machine.
Good luck with that whole "changing the story of the South" thing. Because getting a southerner to admit that SLAVERY and RACISM were the driving forces behind the Southern Secession that sparked the Civil War is the same as trying to get a Christian to admit that Jesus Christ is NOT the son of God...
I graduated in 2011, we were taught pretty in depth about the Civil War and slavery, even the real gritty stuff like the fact that Lincoln freed the slaves as an economic move not because he cared about them. BUT, we MAJORLY glossed over the Vietnam War. No talk of death tolls, protests, war crimes, any of it. They painted it like a small engagement that was largely ignored, obviously a complete fiction.
@@barneymiller7894 Admittedly it is hard to find any good account of Vietnam. Pretty much any book I read on it always portrays one side as the heroes and one side as the villains, whilst in reality both groups had their fair share of massacres of Civilians, and having a clear moral side is hard when one supported the extremely repressive South Vietnam government whilst the other was happy to support the genocidal Cambodian government.
@Hunter D Yeah, but I doubt it is taught that way. Some people just like to be contrarians especially when they are young and still in school, that gives a lot of breeding ground for counter factual movements
As a dictator and as a complete asshat, but you still find the odd idiot who says 'At least the trains ran on time'. His granddaughter is also considered pretty much a joke, as she's part of the far right and is rightly disliked as pretty much a fascist. She tends to be more on gossip news than actual political news, as it happened when she got angry with Jim Carrey and embarrassed herself on Twitter, or when she complained about Italy's celebration of WW2's end. And let's not forget when her husband was caught soliciting sex from minors, a case which served as the basis for Netflix's series 'Baby'.
I'm from Russia and I can say that this video is pretty accurate in its analysis, kudos for your work! I can also add that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, during the 90s the school textbook' regulations were much more loose and there was a lot of textbooks that either criticized Stalin directly or didn't draw any strict line at all, they consisted of pure historical facts and sum-up questions like "What do you think about it?" Unfortunately, the Neo-Stalinism is on the rise now and as years go by, Stalin is more and more, due to unofficial support of the Kremlin, considered one of the most prominent leaders in Russian history, so it's no wonder that his crimes are pretty much omitted in modern textbooks. If you shop around Russian book shops, you will find stacks that are crammed with books about "The Great Leader" and "Debunking of Perestroika myths", hundreds of them! That is just the way it is.
Well Stalin is one of the most prominent leaders in russian history, doesnt mean he was good. As a non russian hes the one ive learnt the most about, the only other russian leader that i know being putin
@@lindacuster1328 it is funny that nobody can agree who is evil or not, neo-stalinist day he is great and you say he is bad. I could make an entire paragraph on how much that unravels but I will just leave it as an exercise to you ;)
I went to school #550 in Petersburg (a public Jewish school) and he’s not taught in a very positive way. We were even told how he thought he was about to be arrested when the Nazis attacked the USSR. We even had a discussion about whether his death was natural or was a poison administered by perhaps Beria. Granted, Petersburg was blockaded during the war and it was awful. My school also had Israeli funding and teachers were paid more but my experience with how Stalin was taught, is not what you said though it was also not the truth either. His victims are down played. The atrocities taught but also downplayed. Still, he is portrayed as a relative monster.
Yes, this certainly would explain the stuff some Russians tend to say in online discussions. A general attitude of "my county can do no wrong". A few take it to the extreme with "Russia never lost a War" and perform some fascinating mental gymnastics when presented with examples to the contrary.
Oddly I'm far more interested in how Nikita Khrushchev is covered. Any time I have read anything mentioning Khrushchev from an east-of-the-iron-curtain perspective he seems the far more polarizing Soviet leader.
Greg The Flying Whale: I’m an American, and this reminds me of how we are educated on details about slavery and the civil rights movement. Sure, history education in America is not standardized on a national level as it is in Russia, which leads to widely varying lesson in every state, but the large number of local educational boards that “paint a pretty picture” is disturbing.
Ziprass it’s like how they depict the American revolution. The war ended up just being a war of attrition, and the British people got bored of it, not to mention the American soldiers were starving. They knew they couldn’t win the war militarily, because it was becoming attrition based, and the soldiers were mutinying (idk if that’s correct grammar), so they resorted to diplomatic peace, and the British just sort of said “our people don’t want the war so whatever take ur independence”. Meanwhile American schools make it seem like the Americans crushed the British when they were outnumbered 29929292929292192929 to one, and it was a mind boggling and gigantic victory and crushing defeat for the british
@@kairon5249 If that's what interests you I think you might be interested in this video and channel similar to this one. ruclips.net/video/-IkOktUiGe4/видео.html
Russian myself. Here's my truth. Shool says: he's controversial Parents say: he's controversial. I guess you can change your school, but those parents are with you forever.
If you were not liked by the local “government”( usually made of the local slick ones and shady people who didn’t care much about dignity etc)... you were getting sent to Siberia without trial or executed the same day- every thing you owned was confiscated, and your family left on the street. It still gives me chills as some of my family members survived after being almost killed by having the head smashed with rocks by a drunk city mayor and left on the street for dead... he was never charged with anything... Crazy times.
Assuming you are correct, this is maybe because Franco was an ally of Nazi Germany and was indeed a fascist that killed many and Stalin wasn't very relevant throughout the Civil War.
My cousin adopted her daughter from Russia and when she was a baby my cousin sponsored a foreign exchange student from Ukraine. One weekend they were at my house and my cousin was outside with my parents I was watching TV and Tania (student) was looking after Gracie, changing her diaper or something I wasn't paying attention. Gracie was fussing and all of a sudden I heard an exasperated sigh "Russia and Ukraine have always had problems". I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. She finished what she was doing and came sat down just said that girl.
As an American, I would love to see one of these regarding our education. Perhaps the American-Indian Wars, or something slightly closer to contemporary times like the dropping of the atomic bombs. Either way, I very much enjoy and support this channel, and Simon is a gloriously pleasant narrator.
@Alex W "Do they say the Indians died out by themselves?" From what I remember, no. It was made very clear that the colonists and later Americans were responsible for the death of the Native American Populace. I also learned that Andrew Jackson was a genocidal lunatic.
@Alex W My suburban midwestern public education acknowledged certain events like the Trail of Tears, but didn't really even mention the Native American population decline at all. So it's not so much "they died out on their own" as much as it is "there were a lot of them, but now we're going to only talk about the white people." In a way, it sort of gives a blank check for people like the guy you talked to to make up whatever insane fantasy history, while others who actually dig into the history a bit more on their own will learn what really happened. American education varies pretty heavily based on the state and other factors. You'll see very different history curricula in California and Mississippi, for example.
@Alex W The thing is, Stalin was rarely talked about specifically. When we were taught about the Cold War, it was in terms of the Soviet Union and the USA rather than its leaders. Most of our presidents weren't really glorified, either. Abraham Lincoln was the biggest exception and he freed the slaves, which sort of overshadows anything awful he may have done. (It doesn't really work that way, but I'm kind of fine with glorifying him over any of the other presidents.) I remember our look at Maoist China being particularly negative, but it was more targeted towards communism than Mao specifically. I have a pretty bad memory about a lot of this stuff and I tend to be pretty good at erasing my old mindset when I am presented with new information and have time to weave it into my understanding, so maybe there was more glorification than I remember. I know Stalin wasn't really covered, though, because I don't remember learning any Russian history outside of the Cold War.
Well I heard they wanted to remove the 20 dollar bill of Andrew Jackson and replace it with Harriet Tubman due too Jackson crimes against Indians. But I haven’t seen it yet the change
We're like... the ONLY nation who actually hates ourselves. Not only do we teach that, we ignore ALL the bad the Indians and Japanese did to us and JUST blame "the white man"
For some reason, I was under the impression that Stalin's purges of the 1930's are regarded as leaving Russia ill prepared to repulse the Nazi invasion, due to the loss of military intellect and experience in the "rivals" he eliminated. Do people not think this?
Don't you mean that Russia was under the threat of having someone other than Stalin as leader? Who's to say that none of the people Stalin eliminated could have done a better job than Stalin? He certainly doesn't appear to fit the description of "military genius," which was the point of my original post.
Purging most of the competent military officers was one of Stalin's best deeds. It saved Finland when the Soviet Union attacked in 1939. Even if I otherwise think Stalin was a monster equal to Hitler, he did perform that one good action.
First I have a lot of respect for Simon for his well informed and unbiased videos but this video did get me thinking. In the same context an interesting video would be how Churchil (a man who saved millions of British lives but was also an alcoholic racist responsible for the famine in Bengal) is taught in the UK, India and Bangladesh.
It's important to remember that perspective is everything. The judgement you pass on something is very much dependent upon how you see it relative to the context of other events and situations of history and what personal connections you may or may not have had to the subject. In the same way an African, Chinese, Italian, Spanish or Irish American will have a very different personal story than an English, Scottish, German or Dutch American, so too will a Ukrainian, Kazakh, Moldovan or Latvian have a different outlook on Soviet history than a Russian would. There's also the element of "he might've been a tyrant, but he was OUR tyrant" at play and Russians are no more anxious to be moralized at for their history than anyone else... certainly not Americans, British, Germans or French; all of which have plenty to answer for themselves without pointing fingers at others.
In our version of WW2, the bad guys won against the other somewhat lesser evil and Churchill and Roosevelt are monsters on par with Stalin himself for selling us (Eastern Europe) to him. This is why we never celebrate VE Day in my country, because there's nothing to celebrate, it was the day our subjugation became official. I cringe every time I hear the "liberated Europe" rhetoric, if you look at a map less than half of Europe was liberated and there is way more Europe East of Germany and Austria. Europe ends at the Ural mountains. Our liberation came in 1989 when communism fell. This is why don't be surprised if you see East Europeans sympathise with the far-right (fun fact: Russia has a lot of neo-nazis) or if Hitler is seen as less of a monster than in the West. The explanation can be attributed that despite what he did, at least he fought against Stalin and communism, the bigger evils and that redeems him a little and makes him better than Stalin. And it's not like people are running around denying what Hitler did, we know what he did, but still... despite all of that... still better than Stalin.
I studied in the USSR as an American. I don’t need Babel, lol. One of my friends asked a professor who had just finished lecturing on Russian literature from the Stalin era without mentioning the persecutions. He asked about the millions who died. The professor, who was young, answered that it may have been a few hundred. He seemed to be very sincere about it. He apparently did not know himself what had happened 😮
Aside from the famine, the deaths during the purges where not just "random killings", but execution for actual crimes like sabotage and treason. Even outside observers noted that, but deep research of the subject will shock the reader at the willfulness of many official in attempting to shriek the new rules. And one particular case the entire judiciary of Belarus were arrested tried and shot when it came to Moscow detention that they or refusing to enforce criminal for worker absenteeism during the Industrial Drive, even threatening to arrest and jail prosecutors who brought the cases.
@@tylernilson7021 I suppose. However, if you research the matter, even American and European technical expert hired by the Soviet government complained about wrecking and sabotage by workers. Peasants forced into working in a regimented system, that is working by the clock for a fixed number of hour with fixed breaks, cause quite a bit of resentment. They really have to be forced. Henry Ford once built a town in the 1910s in Brazil, with an 8 hour workday and a $5 a day wage (40× nationalaverage; the peasants works burned the town down twice.
@@andrefalksmen1264 I'm not entirely disagreeing with you either. I just wanted to mention how easy it was/is to point fingers at a person in an authoritarian/dictatorship system to have them removed
@@tylernilson7021 Yeah, that was the price Russia paid for modernity and to be a superpower. Unlike with the West, and America in particular, at least those who paid the price reaped the benefits.
I'm Russian and was graduated from school in Moscow 10 years ago. He was presented at school as a weak ruler who made mistakes, especially mistake of taking part in first world war. Due to that mistakes and connected revolution powers he had to renounce the throne. After October revolution he and his family was executed. While learning history of that period after school I found out that I had been tought not a detailed picture but generally right.
@@gis-m4o Tzar Nicholas had to join WW1 to help Russias ally ( Serbia ) . he made many mistakes, and did some good things aswell. it's very obvious that he should've ruled Russia until WW1 was over. It was a very turbulent time for the country, so him keeping power was very imortant for the stability of Russia at that time. After he lost his power, civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks and White army, causing the death of 9,5 million Russians, it was a disaster for Russia that he lost his power. And anything the communists achieved in terms of economic growth could've been achieved by any other regime, also Tzar regime, in fact the economic growth under Tzar Nicholas regime was the same as the economic growth under Stalin's regime. Of course the murder of Tzar Nicholas and his family was a disgusting crime, commited by Lenin's mass murderer Bolshevik regime. It's not suprising at all that the Bolsheviks killed the Romanov family, they killed anyone who could be a potential political opponent to Lenin's Bolshevik party. The Bolshevik leaders identified the Romanovs as a political treat, so they had their soldiers kill the Romanov family.
@@dragoncrown2029 you are right. But I would also add some details not mentioned. The power which Nicholas lost was taken by temporal government. It’s mission was to state a new democratic government. Maybe it could have been a great chance for country as Russia during Tzar’s rulership was not so perfect. All the real power was concentrated in hands of one, there wasn’t freedom of speech as well as other basic freedoms too. There were political repressions. The chance for democracy failed as October revolution happened and “Lenin & Co” overthowed temporal government. After all bolshevism regime became much worse and thyranic than Tzar’s. For me the key question about this story is: could it really happen another way or this stuff was strongly determined by society features of that time and place.
I went through the Russian educational system, admittedly, quite long ago, but at least at that time there was a lot of attention paid to his atrocities, the GULAG, etc. Not sure about the present day, though. A lot of attention was drawn to the fact that he opposed to the preparation to the imminent German invasion even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the invasion would probably happen any day now. He was not presented to us as "harsh, but fair", but as a genuinely terrible thing that happened to the country. It was in the nineties, though, when the general attitude towards the communist past was very negative.
Generally, Russian school program tries to avoid presenting any event and personalities in strictly positive or negative light, so "bothsidesism" is a big problem. It's not just about Stalin, it's a symptom of a trend when our government is trying to stop people from forming strong opinions on history and society.
Also worth mentioning, is that from August 1939 through June 22, 1941, Stalin was a full, if secret ally of Hitler, splitting Eastern Europe between them. They were really two bad guys. Stalin only became a 'Good Guy' when one of the bad guys betrayed the other, instead of being content with his huge winnings. It was this arrangement that allowed Hitler a chance to overrun mainland Europe. It allowed Hitler to deal with his enemies one at a time. First Poland. Then France. Then the Soviet Union. Without this arrangement, the Soviet people would not have had to fight desperately, at such great costs, to survive as a people. And it was probably the bad behavior of the Nazis that inspired the fierce resistance of the Soviet army and it's people much more than the 'inspiring' leadership of Stalin. The arguments of weather Moscow, or the Ukraine, or the Caucasus should be the principle target of Germany misses the main point. An invader needs to offer something to the people they invade, unless they have overwhelming strength. Rome didn't offer only slavery or death to the people of the areas they invaded. If one cooperated, a people could live and even prosper under Roman rule. No such option was offered to the 'Slavs' until it was starting to be clear that Germany was going to lose the war. Then it was too late. The principle reason, I think, why Germany succeeded against Russia in World War I, but not in World War II. In World War I, they were much less unreasonable.
Say what you will about the man, I always liked his mustache. Edit: I’m curious how Italy teaches WW2 since their country was basically split in half to begin with.
@@RenzoM2811 Italy as much as Mussolini wanted, never had the same unified people that Germany and Japan had. I mean look at when the allies invaded Italy, half the country had turned against the man and he ran to Himler for help (some times YT sensors comments so I have to be careful how I post). I mean they strung up their own leader, no allied power did anything with him. they (for a large portion) welcomed the allies with open arms.
I’m just going to predict this is along the lines of Japan’s teaching of, “One day, Japan visited other countries, and suddenly, for no reason, the USA dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki” Edit: called it
12:07 I'm not even listening anymore, just mesmerized by the dead guy laying on the curb and peoples reactions. You can tell he's dead...how his body is resting.
Ah, yes, the terrible occupation. I remember how people described its horrors. How there were supposedly hordes of red barbarians rushing through defenseless cities, leaving behind schools, hospitals, libraries, factories...
I'm from Russia and I can say that there is an "official" point of view on Stalin, which is promoted by modern Russian government, that praises Stalin as a war leader, however in reality how Stalinism is being learned in schools and universities heavily depends on the teacher. I hope soon this official misconception will come to an end and government won't try to hide numbers of Stalin's victims thinking that this would change image of this terrifying dictator
As a Georgian, I remember hearing that Stalin took a nearly ruined Russia, and then left it as an industrial powerhouse. But that was the only "positive" thing that was said about him...
Quality over quantity matters here. And also, he saved billions of lives by defeating Hitler. That is another one. These two make up for the crimes he committed, I think.
@@HungNguyen-fy8hf Not at all. If the USSR had fallen, then Hitler would have more likely than not won WW2. And I think there are more than a billion people in the world who belong to minority groups.
My gran-grandmother (which i never met) got deported by russians to a gulak, where she worked and starved to death. Her crime was being a german, but at the time my familiy was living for generations in Romania, only my grandmother fleed from the east to west Germany by selling everything they had to bribe police and such.
My Gran-grandmother was also german and the first generation settled in Ukraine. When the war came, he got deported to Tajikistan, where she worked for the victory and stayed there afterwards until the 90-s.
My coworker is from Russia and I've asked him about Stalin before. He basically feels the way this video lays it out. Good leader who was good for Russia. Took a war torn country, set up infrastructure, everyone had food, Jobs. Etc. I asked him about the bad stuff, like mass death? He attributed it to American propaganda. Like I grew up here so his view was that my history was tainted with an anti-russian slant. Really smart guy actually, just thought it was interesting how he thought Stalin was good
"I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy." -Joseph Stalin
As a German, try imagine some teachers manual would say this: We must make every school child aware of the grandeur of our struggle and our victories, we must show him the cost of these great successes in labor and blood, we must tell him how great the people of our epoch-- Hitler, Goebbels and their companions in arms-- organized the german people in the struggle for a new hapy life (in the east). lol.
Yea that would never fly. And the good thing is Germany probably teaches Hitler more harshly than anywhere. Its pretty scary that another monster is being praised. Its fucking 2020 and they're still claiming he did what he had to do? Thats kind of terrifying frankly.
@@aggonzalezdc nope they are informed about hitler but with time no one cares! Imagine hating mongolia for what chengiz khan did 1000 years ago its been 70 years since ww2 so with hitler from a monster will turn into another historical figure humans are moving and advancing ahead
@@jyostsnadalvi4796 Maybe I didnt word that well. My point is only that something like this would never fly in Germany. They dont pull any punches when it comes to what happened in WWII. They are brutally honest about it.
@@aggonzalezdc i think its pointless to talk about past events of any country! Same for imperial japan and their war crimes its their past its like hating on other for what their grandparents did!
And yet the US presidents, cburchill and many other are aggrandised and praised... Many of them committing crimes against humanity just as bad if not worse. Hmm ok... Perspective.
Maybe a unpopular opinion, but I think this is the ideal way to teach your own dark history. Children should be taught about things their ancestors did, but not be instilled with a sense of shame and/or guilt for it. I remember in school being taught about how terrible certain things in US history were and how we were responsible (i.e. the people living now), and getting pissed off since my thought process was "Why the hell am I responsible for shit some guy did 200 years ago?" I think developing a guilt complex for children for something they didn't do is not just unhealthy, but also morally wrong.
How imperialism is teached in England?...It's very surprising how nationalisms can afect history work in the classroom...no matter if you're russian, american, bresilian or polish...thanks a lot for your work.
My father was editor of the University of Denver’s paper, the Denver Clarion. Shortly before Trotsky’s death, my father went down to Mexico to interview him. While the interview itself is interesting and shows Trotsky as someone who reasonably contradicts the then prevalent US view of the world, what was most impactful to me as a child was the realization that had the timing of the interview been different, my father might’ve been killed along with Trotsky, and then I would never have been. And yet this is the very scenario played out for the millions of men and women who died at Stalin’s behest during his lifetime, whose children were never to be....
@Black Solid Sorry, don't give out personal info on the net :) However, if you have access to the Denver Clarion, you can find the interview in its archives.
There are many falsifications regarding the number of deaths during Stalin's reign that were spread during the Cold war and it was also propagated that whoever was tried and imprisoned, either was killed or died in prison. This is a 1993 research on the Soviet archives by the American Historical review regarding the Gulag system of imprisonement during Stalin's time it refutes the supposed millions of victims :,,www.google.bg/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.mariosousa.se/The%2520American%2520Historical%2520Review%2520October%25201993%2520Soviet%2520Union%2520penal%2520system.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiPy-fd6_PrAhUsi8MKHZQ3C2YQFjAEegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2A5FKuoM9-UFMs0PA9InCF&cshid=1600471192597; the more detailed information of the NKVD statictics also refutes the claim for the millions of victims of Stalin :kgbespionagemuseum.org/shocking-nkvd-statistics-of-the-destroyed-lives/. Also if the victims of Stalin were millions, there would be found hundreds and thousands of mass graves but the estimated number of all the bodies in the found mass graves, is around 200 000 and some of the bodies are of victims of the Civil war (1917-1922) ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_executions). This is an article about the roots of the myth of the supposed millions of the victims of Stalin, are (including the sources of the the propaganda about the supposedly deliberate famine in Ukraine was started by Goebbels and constantly repeated during the Cold war) - the main sources are Joseph Goebbels, William Randolph Hurst, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Robert Conquest: www.mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html.
joshin bama how bout this , so you have to be so wordy and exact. Stalin ORDERED the killing of tens of millions of people . And his soldiers carried out his orders🤦♂️. Good enough for you? Or are you so stupid that I have to break it down some more for you? Please don’t be a troll or worse yet, a total idiot
Would love to hear your take on Irish history from our perspective vs the British perspective. It is taught in two very different ways - much of Britain's history is eschewed but I can understand given that they have a lot more recorded history than most nations
@@anagnorisis1522 sending many innocent people to gulags becouse of paranoia, being a dictatorship where there are almost no human rights, letting his son die, ya know, nothing much
Simon, i legit got a mail order bride ad on this video (not the first time on your channels) i have personalized ads turned off so there's something about this channel that google thinks mail order brides from the Philippines is an adequate thing to advertise 😂
My grandmother and her peers grew up in USSR, I was born in 1996. Sometimes we compare our knowledge about history. She tells me, how instead of talking about the atrocities Stalin committed, she was forced to study some "meeting" papers. How awful it was and any question was met with dismissal. She honestly did not know what Stalin and his "comrades" did to our people until I told her. We live in one of the countries occupied by the soviets. Here we have a joke "Only nation which made us hate Germans are Russians". Due to our history, this rings a sad note.
@@fullmetalalchemist9126 genocide. Up to 4 million bengalis staved to death at his hands. Also here is a link to some other actions of his, medium.com/@write_12958/the-crimes-of-winston-churchill-c5e3ecb229b3
@@loadless2265 they didn't starve to death at his hands go read any proper paper labelling out the the entire famine it's prelude , succession and aftermath , I suggest you read less medium articles and more factual informative sources
People have to remember that regardless of what people think of Communism/Leninism/Stalinism/etc. the people of Russia were almost all serfs (virtual slaves) for centuries and even the end of serfdom under Tsar Alexander II was only really change in their job titles with no change to their duties. I do think the Russian intelligencia saw the Dickinson-like social problems in the West and tried to skip all that, but unwittingly triggered a different kind of dystopia instead.
Start learning a new language today with Babbel! Get 50% off for six months for a limited time only! bit.ly/BabbelbyBrainfood
I was curious how colonialism and slavery are taught in the UK school system?
Here in the southern US schools always have been good a skipping and being vague on details prior to the world wars.
Is there possibly a video in that? Like the differences of how event in history are taught in western allied nations.
@@MrMrchatcity I'm from the UK and while I cannot speak for every school certainly in mine we had a relatively detailed chunk of the curriculum based around slavery in the United States in year 8 (grade 7?). We learnt about slave boats, plantation life, and lynchings among other things and did a whole case study on Emmett Till. It was sometimes even quite upsetting for some students and I'd definitely say my teacher did a good in depth job.
However, it must be noted that we didn't spend as much time on UK colonialism and slavery as such and I wish we'd gone more in depth. During my history gcse (which only a fraction of students will take, gcses are subjects you pick to do in depth) we learnt about Black rights and movements during the 20th century but obviously most students won't learn about that so I hope it becomes implemented in the system.
I also didn't attend school in year 7 and much of year 8 and 9 so they full well could've studied things then that I'm not aware of.
In English we briefly went over some great Black people in history whilst studying poetry and that was definitely interesting. From what I've heard about the teaching of these subjects in American schools I'd probably think we're slightly better? But there's still much work to do, especially with more implementations of Black British history! I hope that helped a little, though of course this is anecdotally :)
Kind of like how the party that formed the KKK and advocates for the killing of unborn black babies is becoming a repressed part of history.
@@Stacy_Smith omg what party? who's doing all that?
@@MrMrchatcity Do your own research.
They don't teach Stalin. Since he's dead he wouldn't learn a thing.
I admit I LOLed
Buh dum buh
Badum ba tssssss (allegedly)
@@user-rn3rn6nl3h I see that you too have exceptional taste.
Comedic gold, my good sir.
Everything depends on the teacher. One might praise him while another will do everything to worsen his image.
I had 5 different history teachers and each one had a different opinion on him.
Impossible to worsen the image of Stalin. Unless you're a commie you already have a real bad image of Stalin in your mind.
@@danialyousaf6456 Eh. It varies. Take how differently we talk about Alexander of Macedon vs Genghis Khan. Both were people who conquered large territories and had their newly formed empires crumble not long after their deaths yet how history classes teach them changes depending where you live.
Stalin was in power for nearly thirty years during a time when Russia was rapidly changing. Most advancements during this time had his face on them so it becomes difficult to separate what is propaganda vs reality. Some of that old nationalist feeling carries over. We see something similar with how George Washington is taught to American school children.
@@surprisinglyblank2392 true. But unlike Alexander and genghis, Stalin treated his own people like complete and utter shit.
@@danialyousaf6456 You simply repeat russophobic propaganda. Stalin was the enemy of your history teachers, this is the only reason why his image is so bad.
@@alexsilent5603 not at all in fact lol. I barely read anything about him when I was studying history. All his crimes I know of are from very recent biographies (some of them are on this channel too). The amount of people he had starved, hung, shot and had much worse things done to makes Hitler's actionslook like child's play. For example, the rape and murder of hundreds of thousands of German women and children by the red army, the road of bones, the hundreds of concentration camps (one that even resorted to cannibalism), all that and more done by one pathetic piece of shit in the span of 30 years. No wonder people celebrated his death.
Curious how The American Revolution is taught in British Schools.
I used to work at an airport that was served by British Air. Sometimes, when the flight crew showed up, I would call out "The British are coming! The British are coming. One if by land, two if by sea, three if by air." They just ignored me.
@@marcpeterson1092 gee I wonder why
I talked to an English colleague about it once. He was actually shocked that the US is so fixated on it in our schools. To him it was taught as just one of many colonial defeats that the UK had over the many years. Similar to how x king lost x land in x war, so not really some earth-shattering crushing defeat like American schools sometimes like to portray it. In short, they know it happened but just shrug it off as not really important anymore. Not sure what the official stance is, but in talking to a local that's what I heard.
@@alrox1 pfft he can't handle his defeat
It's not. Or at least was not a part of any of my curriculum during late 90's-mid 00's.
Imagine learning history in Poland
then THEY occupied us, and then THEY occupied us.......
WilhelmUs but then the winged hussars arrived?
@@CAP198462 That's BEFORE the occupations, that must be one of the few things of their history that isn't despressing!
WilhelmUs fair point. Poland had some triumphs afterward, but they were overwhelmed by concurrent events. All this thinking about Polish history is interesting, if only there was an upcoming product that prominently featured Poland that could sponsor a video about an appropriate topic. Wait, you mean there’s two? Iron Harvest, and Crusader Kings III.
As a Pole, yeah I agree... now I am sad. 😔
Was a time once when the Poles gave the Russians an absolutely great shit kicking. King Borsch or something. Out of history class 50+ yrs.so memories fading. But it's fact.
My history teacher once said: "If they ever raise a monument of Stalin in Yakutsk city and one night this monument suddenly explodes, you know who will be responsible, it's me"
Lol
because he taught people about stalin or beacause he would destroy it?
@@sebastianmallon343 why not both?
@@sebastianmallon343 *she; and yes, the latter.
sounds like one hell of a teacher
Easy, they say they'll cover it later
Ba-dum-tish 🥁
This comment is gold! 👌
Stud
"You'll learn that next year"
Next year: "you should have learned that last year"
Teachers there be stall-in
Next: How is Mao taught in China? .... Wait, the party he founded is still in power, so we already know how he is taught.
as god like being in ccp, that's for sure.
ALL HAIL PLANKTON.....i mean ALL HAIL MAO
@RadTheLad they are aware, and they think he was a great guy. it's the same story as stalin. he saved the nation and led it to prosperity, the hiccups along the way were regrettable but unavoidable in pursuit of great achievements. Instilling nationalist feelings in the youth and directing their passions outward is the best way to control them.
@RadTheLad which is fine but as they get older and more entrenched in where they stand in society (which the CCP is pushing further with their "societal number") then they fall in line so no better
the officially (party-)sanctioned narrative is that Mao did "70% good and 30% bad" for China
He must be very dim if he's still trying to graduate from school.
I was thinking that too.
How can you be a good student when you only visit school for a few years.
More years = more experience.
@@TheGoukaruma what about those super smart kids who have a masters degree at 15?
@@femke6313 What about the marathon runners who only run 5k?
This joke has received the dad stamp of approval.
Duolingo is better than Babbel, if you dont think so, the Owl will come.
GoaDog7
¿Por qué no los dos?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Duolingo is like stalin...
Does the owl bring a Hogwarts letter?
@@morphingninja sadly no, or idk.
Blink twice if the owl is holding you hostage
Thank you for the video. Stalin is spreading in the modern textbooks that way mostly due to the existing government demand for the "strong national leader" narrative.
As a relatively recent graduate of one of Russian state universities I can testify, that my history professor when he just met us in the begining of the semester, has taken then latest government recommended textbook on the subject of history of Russia in the 20th century and has offered an A in a semester and a right for a free admission of his lectures to anyone, who would be willing to write a critical essay on any of the chapters in a that book, provided that such chapter has at least 5 substantial mistakes or groundless conclusions. By the end of the month I got an A, my friend got an A, almost everybody in my group got a A. No chapter had left uncovered.
There is a growing disparity between the existing human ability to think critically and the demand for critical thinking by some of those that work forces. And in Russia nowdays it sometimes feels too real.
"There is a growing disparity between the existing human ability to think critically and the demand for critical thinking by some of those that work forces."
And that's why
"Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses"
That's an actively brilliant way of dealing with regulations.
Some love "The Uneducated", so it was good of you to take that challenge upon yourselves!
You are lucky to have such a teacher. He is as brilliant as brave, considering one can get a 2 years prison term for a couple of tweets in today's Russia.
@@m.chumakov1033 You can pour as much shit on stalin as you want, many people sarcastically call him "sralin" (from "srat"- "to take shit") and only people who care are dimwitted neo-stalinists.
Suggestion: How does South Africa teach Apartheid?
* I am a South African. *
You could tell us then. How do they teach it today?
Depends on which school you go to really. I was taught it from a largely Brit perspective before highschool.
Kinda obvious how they portray it
Nelson Mandela bombed busses of children and led a terrorist organization that targeted random whites but today not one mention of that comes up
Lol "terrorists".. More like controlled opposition to the S.A government to ease over racial tension for a civil war breaking out.
I mean who else gets convicted and goes to prison for over 20yrs and comes out to be president months after being "freed"
@@fishbuckethead lol you guys are insane
Please do a video about Japan schools and WWII.
during war: america bad
after war: america good!!!
@@gaeshows1938 kids who were taught both: wait.....WHAT!
They did it today :D
@@FakeBlocks I saw
Morgil they did
This is pretty much how our school taught us how Mao was to China, I guess my primary school put both Mao and Stalin"s portrait together in the classroom for a reason
In italian
OK, as a Russian, I know, they're full of shit. Mostly because during the 1990s there was a huge anti-Soviet propaganda movement across the entire Russian landscape. Especially with Solzhenitsyn books like "The GUALG Archipelago" being mandatory in the literature classes. Basically the entire 1990s were all about de-classifications of the Soviet documents and defaming of the Soviet government...
However, many anti-Stalin historians, while perusing truth actually stumbled upon conflicting data about the numbers of arrested, pardoned and killed during the USSR: it turned-out, Stalin's so-called crimes were highly exaggerated. Not to mention, that higher percentage of Russians actually were murdered in the 1990s thanks to the Gorbachev and Yeltsin reforms than during Stalin's pre-war reign (when supposedly he was at the peak of his murder spree)...
But, of course, the Capitalist propaganda machine is as efficient as ever. And as a Russian who was born and raised in Russia - I find this video laughable. Cause I remember the strong anti-Soviet movements of the 1990s. I've seen Russian movies where Stalin is portrayed as merely a monster, I've heard popular Russian radio stations, condemning the USSR from every conceivable angle and seen TV-talk-shows where Stalin was compared to Hitler. And I was required to read "The GUALG Archipelago" and even to make a report about this book at school.
Only years later, after some independent research I realized how wrong it all was. And how exaggerated Stalin's actions were. But, of course, for every self-respecting Capitalist, a guy who turned a war-torn poor country into a Communist capital of the world deserves only condemnation. And today Russia has a huge backlash against the enforced anti-Soviet programs of the 1990s.
But, of course, you don't care.
@@V9incent no one cares and I wasted my time reading this instead of ignoring it like everyone else
That must be one scary classroom.
good
04:20 - And that line in "Rasputin vs. Stalin" ("I even crush motherfuckers when I'm lying in state") makes so much more sense.
Pride of Lenin took Trostsky out of the picture
Then he dropped the hammer on Rasputin harder that he bitch-slapped Hitler
@@Vohlfied it was an ice pick
Desalination: Making water less salty.
DeStalination: Making Russia less salty.
Makes sense.
Haha
this actually makes me think: what if, just hypothatically, around 1941 Hitler would have made a peace agreement with the UK and US, and had used his forces to defeat the Sowjets, and instead of the Pact there would have been a similar organisation opposed to the West in the Cold war, but under a German Reich that was lead by Hitler for decades to come, and in the 90s it would have ended similar to the cold war, with the German Reich crumbled, but never defeated militarily. In this scenario, imagine the attrocities commited by the nazis would be seen today as "hard, but necessary sacrifices", and Hitler as a very devoted man who might have had some negative personality traits, but ultimately undertook a great effort in uniting ze German people in times of crisis.
As a German, the sheer thought makes me want to vomit. And this is basically what is happening with Stalin.
Write a book. Someone would love to read the particularly plausible piece of fiction.
All he had to do was simply refrain from declaring war on the US when the US declared on Japan. I'd suggest taking either that approach or alternatively imagining Japan surprise attacking the USSR instead of the US to avoid sounding too much like "The Big Switch" in Turtledove's "The War That Came Early" series.
I shudder to think of an alternate history where the holocaust was seen as a necessary evil.
You could just have the japanese actually succeed in their Northern doctrine of expansion and go through china to serbia, going to war with the ussr that way and keeping the US oficially out of the war
Hitler would have completely massacred the slavic populations and destroyed their cultures, there would have been hundreds of millions of deaths in the territories of the USSR and Poland. There would be no "pact", only Lebensraum. Nazis did collaborate with some local groups in eastern Europe during the war, but Hitler's end goal had no room for slavic autonomy.
Look how they teach history regarding Winston Churchill in Britain. More of a 'super cut' than a biography.
read his not south african escape
What's funny is that in my experience British History post late 1800s isn't taught much at all in the UK & especially not anything related to the world during WW2.
The UK education system says nothing about brutal genocides and political suppression by the state well into the middle of the 20th century. I went to schools with indian/pakistani majorities, no mention of Churchill's direct decision making involved in the horrors of partition or the 1940's famines and shooting of protesters by british troops. Literally might as well pretend Hitler was a bit of a character. Churchill cut his teeth in combat in Imperial africa, where he was involved in the world's first concentration camps.
@@paulwhite7978 I agree. My great granndfather was given uniform and send to Burma from Dhaka in a single night. Not to mention, he had to settle in India post partition
2:55 GULag in Russian stands for Main Office of Camps, it was the structure that managed the prison camps, not the camps themselves.
But GULAG sounds scarier ;) .
Why am I even watching this? I was born and raised in Moscow and actually took a state exam in history. Guess the lockdowns are really getting to me lmao. Although, on a more serious note, the video does a good job of painting the picture regarding teaching Stalin in our schools. While his horrible crimes are common knowledge, schools really just skip the whole purges and gulags things entirely. Depends on the teacher, but federal guidelines don’t include it
Dude.... that's *****d.
"He made us a world power, have a nice day"
too easy, in soviet russia , stalin teaches you...
in america you learn about stalin. in soviet russia stalin learns about you
Stalin: Murders 3 million of his own people. Enslaves his own people along the same lines. Makes his political opponents disappear. Also was a war time leader.
Russia: It was all worth it!
That kinda scares me. Sure, the US isn't perfect either, but at least we acknowledge that our bouts in slavery, concentration camps and whatnot were bad. Saying, "But it was all worth it" gives a bad precedent for the people to be willing to go through it again if a leader called on it to happen.
"I'm going to a slave labor camp, but it's for the good of the country."
"I can murder my political opponents for the good of the country."
"I can kill people who disagree with me for the good of the country."
Every dead person is one person less who can vote, who can make something beautiful with their hands, who can have an opinion or have a world changing idea or innovation. Each person dead is less chance for a better world.
Even if they disagree with you, they have a right to live their disagreeable life.
Viewing people as mere numbers in your favorability polls is a disaster. Stalin was a disaster. Don't be afraid to call it out.
Look at USA today. Number of prisoners in USA is much larger than it was in Stalin's USSR. Use of prisoners for labor is common. Death penalty is also legal in 28 American states. So how is it different from what Stalin did?
There are people in the US who push for it to be seen as a necessary evil. Jim Jordan, a member of Congress, recently called slavery just that.
@@alexsilent5603 It's the difference between people being imprisoned or killed for actual crimes (although I agree that drug offenses need to be laxed in the US, which accounts for the majority of those inflated prison numbers) or killed for not going along with the leader's ideology.
People can complain about Trump or Nancy Pelosi. They can claim vitriolic things about them, and they will not face legal consequences. You know it's true because people always talking trash on the news, social media, every day - and they're fine.
Stalin wouldn't stand for that. He DIDN'T stand for that. It's not even comparable.
We have different issues in our history schooling. Rather than whitewash our recent history we omit it. I don't recall being taught anything about US mistakes after the atomic bombings except for Vietnam. It's easy to rile people up for war with Iran and North Korea when we don't teach about 1953 coup initiated in Iran by the US and Britain or how we dropped more bombs on North Korea than we did in the Pacific theater during WWII. These are just two examples but there are many more. Difficult foreign relations problems can't be solved rationally in a democracy whose citizens don't understand why the other side is upset.
@@hysop9 Do you automatically assume that all criminals shot during Stalin's rule were actually innocent?
Stalin was so harsh on Ukraine that in fact some of the Ukrainians switched sides in WWII after their German occupation.
Meh, only those who liked the Aryan BS
The Soviet Union, I thought you guys broke up?
Yeeees, that's what we wanted you to think!
Nice Simpsons reference.
Must... Crush...Capitalism...!
Ahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!
The soviet union, is watching you~ ♫ ♬!
I mean they still want to be the same geopolitical power yeah, but now they are unabashedly capitalist
Sounds familiar somehow.
People are weird, especially when it comes to power.
Very... Very familiar... Especially to the americans.
Trump cult
@@bengrogan3620 Biden cult
@@johndoe9501 i don't remember Biden fans and supporters flying flags with his name on them on their trucks. The left can and has criticized Biden, the right is terrified and willfully blind to what the orange man does.
Student to Russian teacher: "Why did the Russian people follow Joseph Stalin?"
Russian teacher: begins Stalin for time*
Lol
Quite your stalin and start Russian!!
I can imagine most countries education systems gloss over the bad parts of their history and have lots of justifications. As a Brit, I feel we definitely do that.
Same in America, only hear positive things about the British empire after 1812.
Though in it's defense, it was much more gentle than other empires.
I was talking to my wife the other day about the different disciplines in school and how history, while it does give you a sort of frame of reference for your place in the grand scheme, is more about indoctrination than the transmittal of balanced and accurate information. Told her about how the Nazis are taught about in Germany and pointed out how different we in the Southern U.S. would view the Civil War if we were taught that it was about the wealthy elite in the south forcing the South into a reckless and backwards war to protect their interest rather than this states' rights and lost cause stuff. Not that I know the former to be true, might be, just that as a form of indoctrination it would be effective and would fundamentally change the Southern view.
you'd love Atun-Shei Films channel
but it was indeed to protect their interests rather than the state's rights. there was even a law that they the south promugated prior to the civil war , so that escaped slavers that runs into an abolitionary state can be legally captured and send back to it's owner.
So , the south was pretty much okay to diminish the North's rights in defense of the black people at the time , if it mantains their slavery machine.
Good luck with that whole "changing the story of the South" thing. Because getting a southerner to admit that SLAVERY and RACISM were the driving forces behind the Southern Secession that sparked the Civil War is the same as trying to get a Christian to admit that Jesus Christ is NOT the son of God...
I graduated in 2011, we were taught pretty in depth about the Civil War and slavery, even the real gritty stuff like the fact that Lincoln freed the slaves as an economic move not because he cared about them. BUT, we MAJORLY glossed over the Vietnam War. No talk of death tolls, protests, war crimes, any of it. They painted it like a small engagement that was largely ignored, obviously a complete fiction.
@@barneymiller7894 Admittedly it is hard to find any good account of Vietnam. Pretty much any book I read on it always portrays one side as the heroes and one side as the villains, whilst in reality both groups had their fair share of massacres of Civilians, and having a clear moral side is hard when one supported the extremely repressive South Vietnam government whilst the other was happy to support the genocidal Cambodian government.
It sounds a lot more similar to how different things are taught in the US than I thought it'd be.
“How do the Italians teach Mussolini?”
With pasta.
From speaking to Italians: He is remembered as an incompetent dictator, a fool and tyrant.
Him being summarily executed by an Italian towards the end of WW2 actually tells us a lot in this regard.
@Hunter D Yeah, but I doubt it is taught that way. Some people just like to be contrarians especially when they are young and still in school, that gives a lot of breeding ground for counter factual movements
As a dictator and as a complete asshat, but you still find the odd idiot who says 'At least the trains ran on time'.
His granddaughter is also considered pretty much a joke, as she's part of the far right and is rightly disliked as pretty much a fascist.
She tends to be more on gossip news than actual political news, as it happened when she got angry with Jim Carrey and embarrassed herself on Twitter, or when she complained about Italy's celebration of WW2's end.
And let's not forget when her husband was caught soliciting sex from minors, a case which served as the basis for Netflix's series 'Baby'.
I'm from Russia and I can say that this video is pretty accurate in its analysis, kudos for your work! I can also add that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, during the 90s the school textbook' regulations were much more loose and there was a lot of textbooks that either criticized Stalin directly or didn't draw any strict line at all, they consisted of pure historical facts and sum-up questions like "What do you think about it?" Unfortunately, the Neo-Stalinism is on the rise now and as years go by, Stalin is more and more, due to unofficial support of the Kremlin, considered one of the most prominent leaders in Russian history, so it's no wonder that his crimes are pretty much omitted in modern textbooks. If you shop around Russian book shops, you will find stacks that are crammed with books about "The Great Leader" and "Debunking of Perestroika myths", hundreds of them! That is just the way it is.
Well Stalin is one of the most prominent leaders in russian history, doesnt mean he was good. As a non russian hes the one ive learnt the most about, the only other russian leader that i know being putin
Stalin was evil!!
@@lindacuster1328 it is funny that nobody can agree who is evil or not, neo-stalinist day he is great and you say he is bad. I could make an entire paragraph on how much that unravels but I will just leave it as an exercise to you ;)
I am actually pretty proud to say that i can name more Zars than Leaders of the UdSSR. Because at least the Zars let their people belive in god.
Perestroika myths are accurate.
I went to school #550 in Petersburg (a public Jewish school) and he’s not taught in a very positive way. We were even told how he thought he was about to be arrested when the Nazis attacked the USSR. We even had a discussion about whether his death was natural or was a poison administered by perhaps Beria. Granted, Petersburg was blockaded during the war and it was awful. My school also had Israeli funding and teachers were paid more but my experience with how Stalin was taught, is not what you said though it was also not the truth either. His victims are down played. The atrocities taught but also downplayed. Still, he is portrayed as a relative monster.
Just curious, when was this?
Of course you jews hate him. Stalin chased out all the Jewish capitalists from Russia!
Yes, this certainly would explain the stuff some Russians tend to say in online discussions. A general attitude of "my county can do no wrong". A few take it to the extreme with "Russia never lost a War" and perform some fascinating mental gymnastics when presented with examples to the contrary.
Russians sound very American
Oddly I'm far more interested in how Nikita Khrushchev is covered. Any time I have read anything mentioning Khrushchev from an east-of-the-iron-curtain perspective he seems the far more polarizing Soviet leader.
I'm Russian myself, let me tell ya the truth:
School says: he's a HERO!
Parents say: he was a GHOUL! (the correct answer)
Greg The Flying Whale: I’m an American, and this reminds me of how we are educated on details about slavery and the civil rights movement. Sure, history education in America is not standardized on a national level as it is in Russia, which leads to widely varying lesson in every state, but the large number of local educational boards that “paint a pretty picture” is disturbing.
Декоммунизатор великий.
Ziprass it’s like how they depict the American revolution. The war ended up just being a war of attrition, and the British people got bored of it, not to mention the American soldiers were starving. They knew they couldn’t win the war militarily, because it was becoming attrition based, and the soldiers were mutinying (idk if that’s correct grammar), so they resorted to diplomatic peace, and the British just sort of said “our people don’t want the war so whatever take ur independence”. Meanwhile American schools make it seem like the Americans crushed the British when they were outnumbered 29929292929292192929 to one, and it was a mind boggling and gigantic victory and crushing defeat for the british
@@kairon5249 If that's what interests you I think you might be interested in this video and channel similar to this one.
ruclips.net/video/-IkOktUiGe4/видео.html
Russian myself. Here's my truth.
Shool says: he's controversial
Parents say: he's controversial.
I guess you can change your school, but those parents are with you forever.
In Soviet Russia, you don’t teach Stalin, Stalin teaches you.
🤢
If you were not liked by the local “government”( usually made of the local slick ones and shady people who didn’t care much about dignity etc)... you were getting sent to Siberia without trial or executed the same day- every thing you owned was confiscated, and your family left on the street.
It still gives me chills as some of my family members survived after being almost killed by having the head smashed with rocks by a drunk city mayor and left on the street for dead... he was never charged with anything...
Crazy times.
I love how Spain teaches Stalin.
Franco:"Literally Hitler"
Stalin:"leader ofrece the USSR
Franco and Hitler were fascists, far right, and Stalin was communist, far left
@C De how was Stalin fascist ?
Maybe because a dictator in your own country is more important than one in another?
Assuming you are correct, this is maybe because Franco was an ally of Nazi Germany and was indeed a fascist that killed many and Stalin wasn't very relevant throughout the Civil War.
@@jamertheramer240 how was Stalin not relevant ? He was chief editor of the main communist newspaper, the main propaganda tool back then ...
Weird that you took a minute and a half to tell us in an add that the app you're selling is add free.
My cousin adopted her daughter from Russia and when she was a baby my cousin sponsored a foreign exchange student from Ukraine. One weekend they were at my house and my cousin was outside with my parents I was watching TV and Tania (student) was looking after Gracie, changing her diaper or something I wasn't paying attention. Gracie was fussing and all of a sudden I heard an exasperated sigh "Russia and Ukraine have always had problems". I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. She finished what she was doing and came sat down just said that girl.
As an American, I would love to see one of these regarding our education. Perhaps the American-Indian Wars, or something slightly closer to contemporary times like the dropping of the atomic bombs. Either way, I very much enjoy and support this channel, and Simon is a gloriously pleasant narrator.
@Alex W
"Do they say the Indians died out by themselves?"
From what I remember, no. It was made very clear that the colonists and later Americans were responsible for the death of the Native American Populace. I also learned that Andrew Jackson was a genocidal lunatic.
@Alex W My suburban midwestern public education acknowledged certain events like the Trail of Tears, but didn't really even mention the Native American population decline at all. So it's not so much "they died out on their own" as much as it is "there were a lot of them, but now we're going to only talk about the white people." In a way, it sort of gives a blank check for people like the guy you talked to to make up whatever insane fantasy history, while others who actually dig into the history a bit more on their own will learn what really happened.
American education varies pretty heavily based on the state and other factors. You'll see very different history curricula in California and Mississippi, for example.
@Alex W The thing is, Stalin was rarely talked about specifically. When we were taught about the Cold War, it was in terms of the Soviet Union and the USA rather than its leaders. Most of our presidents weren't really glorified, either. Abraham Lincoln was the biggest exception and he freed the slaves, which sort of overshadows anything awful he may have done. (It doesn't really work that way, but I'm kind of fine with glorifying him over any of the other presidents.)
I remember our look at Maoist China being particularly negative, but it was more targeted towards communism than Mao specifically.
I have a pretty bad memory about a lot of this stuff and I tend to be pretty good at erasing my old mindset when I am presented with new information and have time to weave it into my understanding, so maybe there was more glorification than I remember. I know Stalin wasn't really covered, though, because I don't remember learning any Russian history outside of the Cold War.
Well I heard they wanted to remove the 20 dollar bill of Andrew Jackson and replace it with Harriet Tubman due too Jackson crimes against Indians. But I haven’t seen it yet the change
We're like... the ONLY nation who actually hates ourselves. Not only do we teach that, we ignore ALL the bad the Indians and Japanese did to us and JUST blame "the white man"
For some reason, I was under the impression that Stalin's purges of the 1930's are regarded as leaving Russia ill prepared to repulse the Nazi invasion, due to the loss of military intellect and experience in the "rivals" he eliminated. Do people not think this?
Better than fighting a civil war AND the Nazis
What Vassili Soklaridis said, Russia was very much under the threat of a 2nd civil war if the Great Purge didn't occur.
Don't you mean that Russia was under the threat of having someone other than Stalin as leader?
Who's to say that none of the people Stalin eliminated could have done a better job than Stalin?
He certainly doesn't appear to fit the description of "military genius," which was the point of my original post.
@@1_in_8_billion No he means the germans could easily defeat the Soviet Union if it fought a civil war, use your head.
Purging most of the competent military officers was one of Stalin's best deeds. It saved Finland when the Soviet Union attacked in 1939. Even if I otherwise think Stalin was a monster equal to Hitler, he did perform that one good action.
First I have a lot of respect for Simon for his well informed and unbiased videos but this video did get me thinking. In the same context an interesting video would be how Churchil (a man who saved millions of British lives but was also an alcoholic racist responsible for the famine in Bengal) is taught in the UK, India and Bangladesh.
9:30 I remember learning about the Nanjing Massacre in great detail while in middle school.
Actually the topic of how to teach about Stalin in school is quite controversial, so much so they're still Stallin' to this day.
Excellent overview of how to think about history from different perspectives.
In short: we don't even get to Stalin, history course stops at the end ww2 because the school year ends
"I've broken Stalins house" is all I can think about watching this.
Tonight on bottom gear:
I encircle the Germans at Stalingrad,
Richard executes political dissidents,
And James is sent to the gulag.
Dude, that's a massive introduction. I was waiting for the title to start
It's important to remember that perspective is everything. The judgement you pass on something is very much dependent upon how you see it relative to the context of other events and situations of history and what personal connections you may or may not have had to the subject.
In the same way an African, Chinese, Italian, Spanish or Irish American will have a very different personal story than an English, Scottish, German or Dutch American, so too will a Ukrainian, Kazakh, Moldovan or Latvian have a different outlook on Soviet history than a Russian would.
There's also the element of "he might've been a tyrant, but he was OUR tyrant" at play and Russians are no more anxious to be moralized at for their history than anyone else... certainly not Americans, British, Germans or French; all of which have plenty to answer for themselves without pointing fingers at others.
In our version of WW2, the bad guys won against the other somewhat lesser evil and Churchill and Roosevelt are monsters on par with Stalin himself for selling us (Eastern Europe) to him. This is why we never celebrate VE Day in my country, because there's nothing to celebrate, it was the day our subjugation became official. I cringe every time I hear the "liberated Europe" rhetoric, if you look at a map less than half of Europe was liberated and there is way more Europe East of Germany and Austria. Europe ends at the Ural mountains. Our liberation came in 1989 when communism fell.
This is why don't be surprised if you see East Europeans sympathise with the far-right (fun fact: Russia has a lot of neo-nazis) or if Hitler is seen as less of a monster than in the West. The explanation can be attributed that despite what he did, at least he fought against Stalin and communism, the bigger evils and that redeems him a little and makes him better than Stalin. And it's not like people are running around denying what Hitler did, we know what he did, but still... despite all of that... still better than Stalin.
I can't afford to pay my library fines let alone sign up for a new language learning app but kudos, glad ya got a sponsor hahaha.
another good one, dude!
OUR history
How? Your last name is Garza lol
@@mindytenerias2927 it's a meme about communism
Да comrade
I studied in the USSR as an American. I don’t need Babel, lol. One of my friends asked a professor who had just finished lecturing on Russian literature from the Stalin era without mentioning the persecutions. He asked about the millions who died. The professor, who was young, answered that it may have been a few hundred. He seemed to be very sincere about it. He apparently did not know himself what had happened 😮
Aside from the famine, the deaths during the purges where not just "random killings", but execution for actual crimes like sabotage and treason. Even outside observers noted that, but deep research of the subject will shock the reader at the willfulness of many official in attempting to shriek the new rules. And one particular case the entire judiciary of Belarus were arrested tried and shot when it came to Moscow detention that they or refusing to enforce criminal for worker absenteeism during the Industrial Drive, even threatening to arrest and jail prosecutors who brought the cases.
@@andrefalksmen1264 it is easy to say someone is a saboteur or traitor
@@tylernilson7021 I suppose. However, if you research the matter, even American and European technical expert hired by the Soviet government complained about wrecking and sabotage by workers.
Peasants forced into working in a regimented system, that is working by the clock for a fixed number of hour with fixed breaks, cause quite a bit of resentment. They really have to be forced.
Henry Ford once built a town in the 1910s in Brazil, with an 8 hour workday and a $5 a day wage (40× nationalaverage; the peasants works burned the town down twice.
@@andrefalksmen1264 I'm not entirely disagreeing with you either. I just wanted to mention how easy it was/is to point fingers at a person in an authoritarian/dictatorship system to have them removed
@@tylernilson7021 Yeah, that was the price Russia paid for modernity and to be a superpower. Unlike with the West, and America in particular, at least those who paid the price reaped the benefits.
Interesting Video Simon!
How do the Russians teach about the Romanov family?
with vodka and horrid horrid horrid death.
*chop
I'm Russian and was graduated from school in Moscow 10 years ago.
He was presented at school as a weak ruler who made mistakes, especially mistake of taking part in first world war. Due to that mistakes and connected revolution powers he had to renounce the throne. After October revolution he and his family was executed.
While learning history of that period after school I found out that I had been tought not a detailed picture but generally right.
@@gis-m4o Tzar Nicholas had to join WW1 to help Russias ally ( Serbia ) . he made many mistakes, and did some good things aswell. it's very obvious that he should've ruled Russia until WW1 was over. It was a very turbulent time for the country, so him keeping power was very imortant for the stability of Russia at that time. After he lost his power, civil war broke out between the Bolsheviks and White army, causing the death of 9,5 million Russians, it was a disaster for Russia that he lost his power. And anything the communists achieved in terms of economic growth could've been achieved by any other regime, also Tzar regime, in fact the economic growth under Tzar Nicholas regime was the same as the economic growth under Stalin's regime. Of course the murder of Tzar Nicholas and his family was a disgusting crime, commited by Lenin's mass murderer Bolshevik regime. It's not suprising at all that the Bolsheviks killed the Romanov family, they killed anyone who could be a potential political opponent to Lenin's Bolshevik party. The Bolshevik leaders identified the Romanovs as a political treat, so they had their soldiers kill the Romanov family.
@@dragoncrown2029 you are right. But I would also add some details not mentioned. The power which Nicholas lost was taken by temporal government. It’s mission was to state a new democratic government. Maybe it could have been a great chance for country as Russia during Tzar’s rulership was not so perfect. All the real power was concentrated in hands of one, there wasn’t freedom of speech as well as other basic freedoms too. There were political repressions. The chance for democracy failed as October revolution happened and “Lenin & Co” overthowed temporal government. After all bolshevism regime became much worse and thyranic than Tzar’s.
For me the key question about this story is: could it really happen another way or this stuff was strongly determined by society features of that time and place.
I went through the Russian educational system, admittedly, quite long ago, but at least at that time there was a lot of attention paid to his atrocities, the GULAG, etc. Not sure about the present day, though. A lot of attention was drawn to the fact that he opposed to the preparation to the imminent German invasion even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the invasion would probably happen any day now. He was not presented to us as "harsh, but fair", but as a genuinely terrible thing that happened to the country. It was in the nineties, though, when the general attitude towards the communist past was very negative.
Episode suggestion: Hungarian Tokaji wine and the relationship with the Czars of Russia...truly fascinating!
Generally, Russian school program tries to avoid presenting any event and personalities in strictly positive or negative light, so "bothsidesism" is a big problem.
It's not just about Stalin, it's a symptom of a trend when our government is trying to stop people from forming strong opinions on history and society.
It makes sense. Look at what happened when people formed strong opinions in 1917
stalin has my second favorite historical mustache
To be fair he does have one of the best mustaches in History, doesn't matter politics, most people agree he had a great stache.
Also worth mentioning, is that from August 1939 through June 22, 1941, Stalin was a full, if secret ally of Hitler, splitting Eastern Europe between them. They were really two bad guys. Stalin only became a 'Good Guy' when one of the bad guys betrayed the other, instead of being content with his huge winnings.
It was this arrangement that allowed Hitler a chance to overrun mainland Europe. It allowed Hitler to deal with his enemies one at a time. First Poland. Then France. Then the Soviet Union. Without this arrangement, the Soviet people would not have had to fight desperately, at such great costs, to survive as a people.
And it was probably the bad behavior of the Nazis that inspired the fierce resistance of the Soviet army and it's people much more than the 'inspiring' leadership of Stalin. The arguments of weather Moscow, or the Ukraine, or the Caucasus should be the principle target of Germany misses the main point. An invader needs to offer something to the people they invade, unless they have overwhelming strength. Rome didn't offer only slavery or death to the people of the areas they invaded. If one cooperated, a people could live and even prosper under Roman rule. No such option was offered to the 'Slavs' until it was starting to be clear that Germany was going to lose the war. Then it was too late. The principle reason, I think, why Germany succeeded against Russia in World War I, but not in World War II. In World War I, they were much less unreasonable.
Say what you will about the man, I always liked his mustache.
Edit: I’m curious how Italy teaches WW2 since their country was basically split in half to begin with.
What do you mean, split in half?
@@RenzoM2811 Italy as much as Mussolini wanted, never had the same unified people that Germany and Japan had. I mean look at when the allies invaded Italy, half the country had turned against the man and he ran to Himler for help (some times YT sensors comments so I have to be careful how I post). I mean they strung up their own leader, no allied power did anything with him. they (for a large portion) welcomed the allies with open arms.
I’m just going to predict this is along the lines of Japan’s teaching of,
“One day, Japan visited other countries, and suddenly, for no reason, the USA dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki”
Edit: called it
12:07 I'm not even listening anymore, just mesmerized by the dead guy laying on the curb and peoples reactions. You can tell he's dead...how his body is resting.
in Estonia Stalin and Soviet Union in general was all we learned for years. the occupation was harsh on us
"Joseph is running and Adolf is chasing him"
Ah, yes, the terrible occupation. I remember how people described its horrors. How there were supposedly hordes of red barbarians rushing through defenseless cities, leaving behind schools, hospitals, libraries, factories...
@@cheekibreeki904 and with that remark you made it 100% obvious that you know nothing
“Russia today is a capitalist country”
I have several questions
We failed you papa :(
Imagine capitalism controlled by KGB.
@@m.chumakov1033 Gorbachev
Russia Today is a newspaper
@@rockyfalldownstairs Its a propaganda tool aggressively supporting the Kremlins' view, directly financed from the russian government.
I really enjoy your videos sir
do "how is the indigenous genocide taught in the us" next pls
I'm from Russia and I can say that there is an "official" point of view on Stalin, which is promoted by modern Russian government, that praises Stalin as a war leader, however in reality how Stalinism is being learned in schools and universities heavily depends on the teacher. I hope soon this official misconception will come to an end and government won't try to hide numbers of Stalin's victims thinking that this would change image of this terrifying dictator
Love your Content 👌
As a Georgian, I remember hearing that Stalin took a nearly ruined Russia, and then left it as an industrial powerhouse. But that was the only "positive" thing that was said about him...
Quality over quantity matters here. And also, he saved billions of lives by defeating Hitler. That is another one. These two make up for the crimes he committed, I think.
@@aninditapaul9291 Billions? Quite of an exaggeration there.
@@HungNguyen-fy8hf Not at all. If the USSR had fallen, then Hitler would have more likely than not won WW2. And I think there are more than a billion people in the world who belong to minority groups.
@@aninditapaul9291 hitler didn't have chance at winning under any circumstances
@@theskiypdee The only way he could have won was if he did not attack the USSR.
4:06 that word in Russian means Chief (chief sure is a leader though)
so like commander-in-chief?
@@RUclipsChannel-ll6sw like an Indian chief
Interesting video. Thank you for continuing to provide quality content. 🙂
My gran-grandmother (which i never met) got deported by russians to a gulak, where she worked and starved to death. Her crime was being a german, but at the time my familiy was living for generations in Romania, only my grandmother fleed from the east to west Germany by selling everything they had to bribe police and such.
I'm getting mad Nazi vibes
Ah yes, she was one of the Bucovina Germans... A tragic story indeed
Ahh, your Nazi grandmother.
My Gran-grandmother was also german and the first generation settled in Ukraine. When the war came, he got deported to Tajikistan, where she worked for the victory and stayed there afterwards until the 90-s.
Good
My coworker is from Russia and I've asked him about Stalin before. He basically feels the way this video lays it out. Good leader who was good for Russia. Took a war torn country, set up infrastructure, everyone had food, Jobs. Etc. I asked him about the bad stuff, like mass death? He attributed it to American propaganda. Like I grew up here so his view was that my history was tainted with an anti-russian slant. Really smart guy actually, just thought it was interesting how he thought Stalin was good
Who else watched Oversimplified's History of the Russian Revolution yesterday and then saw this today?
Economic downturn
"I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy."
-Joseph Stalin
Eventually they'll see that genocide is a good thing right?
Excellent and well balanced !
Every time I hear the name Stalin, I can't stop thinking about Agent Orange. All traits of behavior just ticked all the boxes.
As a German, try imagine some teachers manual would say this: We must make every school child aware of the grandeur of our struggle and our victories, we must show him the cost of these great successes in labor and blood, we must tell him how great the people of our epoch-- Hitler, Goebbels and their companions in arms-- organized the german people in the struggle for a new hapy life (in the east). lol.
Yea that would never fly. And the good thing is Germany probably teaches Hitler more harshly than anywhere. Its pretty scary that another monster is being praised. Its fucking 2020 and they're still claiming he did what he had to do? Thats kind of terrifying frankly.
@@aggonzalezdc nope they are informed about hitler but with time no one cares! Imagine hating mongolia for what chengiz khan did 1000 years ago its been 70 years since ww2 so with hitler from a monster will turn into another historical figure humans are moving and advancing ahead
@@jyostsnadalvi4796 Maybe I didnt word that well. My point is only that something like this would never fly in Germany. They dont pull any punches when it comes to what happened in WWII. They are brutally honest about it.
@@aggonzalezdc i think its pointless to talk about past events of any country! Same for imperial japan and their war crimes its their past its like hating on other for what their grandparents did!
And yet the US presidents, cburchill and many other are aggrandised and praised...
Many of them committing crimes against humanity just as bad if not worse.
Hmm ok...
Perspective.
Maybe a unpopular opinion, but I think this is the ideal way to teach your own dark history. Children should be taught about things their ancestors did, but not be instilled with a sense of shame and/or guilt for it. I remember in school being taught about how terrible certain things in US history were and how we were responsible (i.e. the people living now), and getting pissed off since my thought process was "Why the hell am I responsible for shit some guy did 200 years ago?"
I think developing a guilt complex for children for something they didn't do is not just unhealthy, but also morally wrong.
Your boy roman, the friendly neighbourhood Russian could of answered this in 5 minutes
How imperialism is teached in England?...It's very surprising how nationalisms can afect history work in the classroom...no matter if you're russian, american, bresilian or polish...thanks a lot for your work.
My father was editor of the University of Denver’s paper, the Denver Clarion. Shortly before Trotsky’s death, my father went down to Mexico to interview him.
While the interview itself is interesting and shows Trotsky as someone who reasonably contradicts the then prevalent US view of the world, what was most impactful to me as a child was the realization that had the timing of the interview been different, my father might’ve been killed along with Trotsky, and then I would never have been. And yet this is the very scenario played out for the millions of men and women who died at Stalin’s behest during his lifetime, whose children were never to be....
@Black Solid
Sorry, don't give out personal info on the net :)
However, if you have access to the Denver Clarion, you can find the interview in its archives.
I would recommend reading The Gulag Archipelago, to truly understand the depth of Stalin's evil.
Solzhenitsyn was a liar.
It's recomended since 2009 in russian high schools but missed in this biased video
Listens to Jordan Peterson once...
@@НиколайИванов-в8ы1я Didn't he write that book on his experiences? I think many would agree Stalin was pure evil....millions died under his "rule"
There are many falsifications regarding the number of deaths during Stalin's reign that were spread during the Cold war and it was also propagated that whoever was tried and imprisoned, either was killed or died in prison. This is a 1993 research on the Soviet archives by the American Historical review regarding the Gulag system of imprisonement during Stalin's time it refutes the supposed millions of victims :,,www.google.bg/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.mariosousa.se/The%2520American%2520Historical%2520Review%2520October%25201993%2520Soviet%2520Union%2520penal%2520system.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiPy-fd6_PrAhUsi8MKHZQ3C2YQFjAEegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw2A5FKuoM9-UFMs0PA9InCF&cshid=1600471192597; the more detailed information of the NKVD statictics also refutes the claim for the millions of victims of Stalin :kgbespionagemuseum.org/shocking-nkvd-statistics-of-the-destroyed-lives/. Also if the victims of Stalin were millions, there would be found hundreds and thousands of mass graves but the estimated number of all the bodies in the found mass graves, is around 200 000 and some of the bodies are of victims of the Civil war (1917-1922) ( en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_from_Soviet_mass_executions).
This is an article about the roots of the myth of the supposed millions of the victims of Stalin, are (including the sources of the
the propaganda about the supposedly deliberate famine in Ukraine was started by Goebbels and constantly repeated during the Cold war) - the main sources are Joseph Goebbels, William Randolph Hurst, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Robert Conquest: www.mariosousa.se/LiesconcerningthehistoryoftheSovietUnion.html.
Gorbachev would be an interesting biographic
Great man!
He killed 10’s of millions of his own people. One of the biggest monsters in history.
tsartomato that’s what I said 🤦♂️
@@moomoomoo33ass that's something totally different than what you said you dope 🤦🏻♂️
@@joshinbama83 Killing in the name of....
joshin bama how bout this , so you have to be so wordy and exact. Stalin ORDERED the killing of tens of millions of people . And his soldiers carried out his orders🤦♂️. Good enough for you? Or are you so stupid that I have to break it down some more for you? Please don’t be a troll or worse yet, a total idiot
@@moomoomoo33ass mighty hateful words for someone who's wrong and made themselves look like an idiot 🤷🏻♂️
When you visit a country, you would find a party, when you visit soviet russia, the party will find YOU!
Would love to hear your take on Irish history from our perspective vs the British perspective.
It is taught in two very different ways - much of Britain's history is eschewed but I can understand given that they have a lot more recorded history than most nations
Wasn't there a recent poll down about Russians' view on Stalin? I'm pretty sure a majority of them have a positive view on him
Well the scars of his regime might make them unsure of sharing their true beliefs
@@CitsVariants What would you highlight as wrongdoings ?
Well that itself shows they admire the comrade Stalin, despite of all stupid anti Stalinist propagandas,he still lives on in our hearts
Why wouldn’t they?
@@anagnorisis1522 sending many innocent people to gulags becouse of paranoia, being a dictatorship where there are almost no human rights, letting his son die, ya know, nothing much
Simon, i legit got a mail order bride ad on this video (not the first time on your channels) i have personalized ads turned off so there's something about this channel that google thinks mail order brides from the Philippines is an adequate thing to advertise 😂
My grandmother and her peers grew up in USSR, I was born in 1996. Sometimes we compare our knowledge about history.
She tells me, how instead of talking about the atrocities Stalin committed, she was forced to study some "meeting" papers. How awful it was and any question was met with dismissal.
She honestly did not know what Stalin and his "comrades" did to our people until I told her.
We live in one of the countries occupied by the soviets.
Here we have a joke "Only nation which made us hate Germans are Russians". Due to our history, this rings a sad note.
Stalin is good
"wow Stalin forced my poor grandma to read papers, how cruel!"
Sort of like how Winston Chirchills atrocities are ignored in British schools
What atrocities
@@fullmetalalchemist9126 genocide. Up to 4 million bengalis staved to death at his hands. Also here is a link to some other actions of his, medium.com/@write_12958/the-crimes-of-winston-churchill-c5e3ecb229b3
@@loadless2265 they didn't starve to death at his hands go read any proper paper labelling out the the entire famine it's prelude , succession and aftermath , I suggest you read less medium articles and more factual informative sources
Wow I'm early. Guess I chose the right time for a poop break.
till I read this I didnt notice but ditto 😂
Haha! I found this while pooping too. Decent.
One mistake that political and historical analysts often make is thinking that their enemy should be our enemy.
You forgot to mention that "GULAG Archipelago" is a part of school program since 2009.
That's a bs propaganda book
Provide proof or you're just a random goofball. @@zurdddtk3025
@@amorey67 How about you look it up?
@@christopherkeehn9962 and there you have it, someone makes a baseless statement citing no sources and I am to prove it positive.😂
@@amorey67 I'm not being aggressive , I meant like figure it out yourself kind of deal.
“Russian cubs, Georgian cubs, Ukrainian cubs...” *airplane engine noises*
massively underrated comment
Thank you
People have to remember that regardless of what people think of Communism/Leninism/Stalinism/etc. the people of Russia were almost all serfs (virtual slaves) for centuries and even the end of serfdom under Tsar Alexander II was only really change in their job titles with no change to their duties.
I do think the Russian intelligencia saw the Dickinson-like social problems in the West and tried to skip all that, but unwittingly triggered a different kind of dystopia instead.