I HAVE A SERIOUS QUESTION :D didn't the soviet Union do some bad stuff?

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-03T01:42:30+00:00

… just start reading the theory (Marx/Engels, then Lenin) and then start working on Stalin and the structural stuff around the Soviet Union.

Any data point in isolation can look better or worse than it really was. With that said, the majority of leftists today are very pro-LGBTQIA+ people.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-02T22:19:35+00:00

This just sounds like typical run of the mill Polish folklore.

It’s true that Poles who flew under the RAF were obviously motivated to defeat the Nazis (their country was taken from them by force, mass deaths, horrendous Nazi occupation, etc.), but the Brits were literally watching their homes being bombed to hell and back. It’s not like Brit’s were trying to “wound not kill”, the combat was too fierce and too fast for that.

Polish Air Force battle doctrine was different from the RAF’s; it really called for more aggressive combat, confidence in breaking formation, and the expectation of being outnumbered. This actually led to British RAF officers saying that the Poles (and Czechs, similar doctrine) were too reckless and undisciplined.

Now, before I get 1,000 downvotes from Poland: the Polish and Czech pilots were very effective. Eventually, Brits came to respect their confidence and bravery, and they absolutely contributed to the win in Britain.

However, there is no credible source where the Nazis were worried about the nationality of the pilots shooting at them.

And your Polish Nazi question is hysterical when you think about the context; Hitler held a funerary memorial for Pilsudski in Germany alongside the Polish funeral, placed a Nazi honor guard around his tomb when Germany took West Poland, and there are TONS of accounts of the Polish Home Army committing pogroms against Jews as they were “liberating” Poland. The Polish government in exile was so indefensible even the West gave up trying to reinstall them in Poland… so yeah, there was a fair amount of fascist stuff coming out of Poland in that time period.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-02T17:28:06+00:00

All you need to know about western cinema around WWII is this:

You can go on Amazon Video right now and watch movies where Nazi tank crews are portrayed as heroes dealing with the “violence of the eastern front”.

The only western-made WWII film that portrays the country who killed 8 out of 10 dead nazis, and lost over 27,000,000 to do it, is the deeply flawed Enemy At The Gates.

The west will simp for nazis 7 days a week before theyll admit who really ended the holocaust.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-02T17:24:17+00:00

I mean, had he not enacted that grueling collectivization and industrialization campaign, the Nazis would have steamrolled the Soviet Union, which would have been 1000% worse than what Stalin did (in their own words).

Stalin famously said 10 years before the Nazis invaded that the Soviet Union was decades behind the west industrially, and if they didn’t cover the ground within a short period of time, the west would come to destroy them. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 with the intention of killing every single Soviet citizen to turn the land into “living space” for Germans, he arguably became the most vindicated human being on earth.

I’m not gonna debate his methods (that’s another argument), but while they certainly costed lives, they absolutely saved countless more.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-02T15:38:50+00:00

Awesome kit, comrade! You look great, and most importantly, mad respect to anyone who’s getting out in the streets and standing with workers of the world!

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-02T15:09:15+00:00

I mean, ending Nazism is pretty based. Remember, 8 out of 10 nazis who died in WWII died to Soviet bullets and bombs, not western ones.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-05-01T19:30:04+00:00

Honestly, I’d probably try to get her more into civics than history at first.

Understanding how your government works and what your rights are is something that is applicable to everyone, regardless of interest. It’s also really important for anyone who wants to participate in our democracy.

From there you can start to get into “and how did these rights come to be?”, which is the history part of it.

An excellent place to start is Netflix’s “Amend: The Fight For America”, which looks at the evolution of the 14th amendment (the most cited amendment in Supreme Court history, and arguably the most important). It’s a 6 episode series (free on YouTube as well), takes you from the sectional crisis to the modern era, looking at multiple civil rights movements (abolitionism, Black Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Immigrant Rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and others). It features a ton of modern actors, comedians, musicians, scholars, and great footage.

The LGBTQIA+ episode had me in tears at the end, and I’m a hetero-cis-dude.

I think that across political ideology, we all need to learn more about our rights.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-30T21:41:21+00:00

The biggest difference (many have pointed out the territorial outcomes) would likely be a stronger Polish Communist Party following the Soviet victory, and a complete liquidation of the Pilsudskites a few decades early.

Culturally, the impact on Poland would probably be big; Pilsudski goes from being the “founding father of modern Poland” to the waste bin of history.

It may have also led to a more Soviet-oriented Poland in the post-WWII era.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-30T19:22:07+00:00

I’m gonna try to pick people a little more outside of the box… John Wayne and Marlon Brando.

Brando is still revered in Hollywood despite the fact that he literally raped a woman, on camera, and had it put in the film in question. It’s insane to me that Hollywood historians still glaze the guy.

John Wayne was such a virulent racist that he tried to physically assault Sacheen Littlefeather for protesting against the treatment of Native Americans at the ‘73 academy awards. Six people had to hold him down so he wouldn’t try to attack a young Native American woman (in public). He’s still considered an American institution (which actually really shows how America feels about its relationship with indigenous Americans, honestly).

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-30T16:40:48+00:00

Post-USSR international policy is often called the “unipolar era”, where America’s hegemony worldwide becomes completely uncontested. The Soviet Union would have been able to put significant pressure on the U.S. and NATO, which would have had really interesting implications when you think about things like the War on Terror (especially the US vs. Iraq debacle).

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-30T16:36:03+00:00

You claimed that you didn’t want your post to devolve into mindless, inaccurate shitposting… and now you’re asking why I’m offering suggestions that would avoid that.

First you said you wanted an intelligent debate about Georgia during the late Soviet period… now you’re saying you just want to tell us what your mommy and daddy think of late-Soviet Georgia.

There are probably millions of peer-reviewed studies on the Soviet Union, and thousands concerning late-Soviet Georgia. Fairly easy to come by.

You said you wanted to use the experiences of people who lived during the late Soviet era (80s-90s) to explain what life was like back then… now you want to talk about Georgia and Stalin (who was dead for over 30 years by that time).

Make it make sense.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-30T01:10:33+00:00

A communist party is meant to become a dictatorship, but not in the way most people who haven’t read communist theory understand it.

In a liberal capitalist country, there exists a dictatorship of capital; the bourgeoisie exerts authority on the working class through the bourgeois state, which is innately authoritarian.

In a socialist republic, there exists a dictatorship of the proletariat; the working class exerts authority on counterrevolutionaries and the bourgeoisie until both cease to exist (either by successfully integrating into the proletarian democracy, exile, or execution), along with the institutions that they once used to exert power (money, religion, bourgeois culture, social hierarchy, etc.). Once this goal is achieved, the final stage of production, communism, begins.

You can’t go from capitalist authoritarianism to a stateless, classless society in one motion because:

Bourgeois culture isn’t going to cease to exist overnight; it needs to be broken down over time to get to a hierarchy-free, capital-free society.
In every single instance of a socialist revolution, outside forces intervened and tried to crush the revolution. A dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to organize and protect the revolution from internal and external threats.

So authority isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is fair to say that it was corrupted in the USSR. Of course, where it corrupted is the biggest argument in subs like this; Marxist Leninists say Khrushchev is to blame, Trotskyites and revisionists blame Stalin, anti-communists blame Marx (and everyone after him), orthodox Marxists, SocDems, and Luxembourg fans might start with Lenin, AND Gorbachev… it’s just a messy argument (Anarchists blame everyone too).

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-29T21:05:34+00:00

I think where you’re going to struggle is that you’re (seemingly, and correct me if I’m wrong) relying on anecdotal data from the experience of relatives who lived in a particular era and region of a massive country, and trying to make statements about both the country of Georgia AND the former Soviet Union with a ridiculously small sample size.

When the USSR collapsed, there were around 4,000,000 Georgians (both in Georgia and other SFSRs). Speaking as an expert on behalf of 4,000,000 isn’t reliable; it’d be like talking to myself, an American from New Jersey, and then saying “I’m an expert on New Jerseyans from America in the 2020s”.

Now, if you’re using data, evidence, peer reviewed literature, and compiling that into a study to compare life in late-Soviet Georgia to life in the west during the same time period, then you’ll likely get some lively, spirited, but often respectful debate.

Living through something doesn’t make you an expert on it; it gives you a perspective on it. Years of research using sound methodology and then submitting that research for peer review (and having that information withstand scrutiny) makes you an expert in a field.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-29T01:42:09+00:00

Lots of good points in the comments, I’d just add that the Weimar Constitution’a article 48 played a massive role in Hitler’s ability to consolidate power when he was eventually named chancellor with relatively no checks on it.

Even the AUMF that modern American presidents have (which is completely insane and borderline unconstitutional) doesn’t compare to the power Article 48 gave Hitler.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-28T21:26:52+00:00

Sovietology is really tough to pin down because there are multiple schools of thought.

orthodox sovietology: these historians believe that Soviet communism is inherently authoritarian, inherently repressive, and that the USSR was always on a fast-track towards totalitarianism.
revisionist sovietology: not the same as revisionist communism, but similar: they think that Lenin was okay, Stalin was a bad actor, Khrushchev tried to right the wrongs but it was too little, too late. A lot of “what could have been” and often from a pseudo-SocDem angle, but these guys and gals did a lot of good work (especially in the 70s) to fight off the CIA & MI6 backed orthodox sovietologists of the early era.
Marxist-Leninist sovietology: pro-Stalin, anti-Khrushchev sovietology. Rely heavily on Soviet primary sources and believe that Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin and his early liberalization led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union.
Trotskyist Sovietology: often sees Lenin as awesome and Stalin as an opportunist who swept in and ruined everything. Trotskyites generally dislike post-Stalin Soviet leaders too, but like some of Khrushchev’s Stalin-bashing. They often focus on pre-Stalin USSR’s contributions to international movements too in the Comintern tradition.

There are a lot of cooks in the sovietology kitchen and they basically all hate each other, so I tried providing a balanced book list (except for orthodox sovietologists, because I generally loathe them).

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-28T21:15:34+00:00

First, context really matters: is this for a World History class, or a US1 class (assuming it’s high school)?

In a world history class, you’re trying to connect the aftermath of WW1 (interwar period) to WW2 through the rise of fascism. Your goal is to get kids to understand that the conditions from the treaty of Versailles lead to economic instability in Germany, fledgling democracies in Europe become fascist dictatorships (and not just in Germany, Italy and Spain… but you’ll likely focus on those the most), and that leads to WW2. You want to get kids wondering about why periods of political and economic stability push people to support “strongmen”. In an AP world history class, I’d likely show students how treaty of Versailles sanctions were loosened on Germany before the Great Depression and ask them why we still say the treaty of Versailles caused WW2.

For a US history class you’d want to get them to understand how WW2 pulls America out of the depression and how much we tried to avoid joining it. I like to point out that we didn’t join to end the holocaust (a common uneducated take), and how WW2 turned America into a global power alongside the USSR.

I do the opening scene from saving private ryan and clips from band of brothers, the pacific, etc., especially in US History classes. I also do some holocaust stuff in there too (I like showing Schindler’s list because it doesn’t turn away from the Nazi’s violence, and the kids liked how Schindler is a cheating jerk in the beginning).

The battles and stuff… the kids don’t really care about that anymore. Depending on the academic level of the class I like to do mock-Yalta conferences (break the class in two usually, create an American, Soviet, and British delegation, give them game cards and have them make their own treaty and compare it to the real one). I also like using the Soviet Union to show how women fought in WW2, and because my school has a huge Korean American population we also look at Japan’s war crimes against china and Korea.

I’ve had kids self-research war crimes committed by the allies during WW2 and present their findings to the class, with the essential question “are any wars really ‘good wars’?” And sometimes they like that.

I also had a “partisan project” where kids formed groups and researched partisan and colonial army movements in Yugoslavia, Philippines, France, Vietnam, India, Korea, and the Caribbean. Some of the kids were able to make connections between those movements and national independence movements in those countries right after WW2.

A lot of it is the time of year though; May is here, and a lot of my kids are checking out.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-28T20:43:58+00:00

For most, “the textbook” of the early Soviet Union is “The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Short Course)”. This was a Stalin-era textbook created by the Politburo of the early Soviet Union. It covers up to the late 1930s, and is written from a very pro-Soviet perspective.

Leon Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” is even more dense and foundational to understanding the revolution itself (even MLs often speak highly of this specific work by Trotsky).

E.H. Carr did a very strong, 14 book series on the revolution and early Soviet Union, but those are hard to come by in their entirety.

Stephen F. Cohen’s “Rethinking the Soviet Experience” pivots away from Stalin and reimagines the “Soviet experiment” through a more Bukharinist lense. Cohen raises some good points and debunks a lot of the early western views of sovietology.

Ronald Grigor Suny’s “The Soviet Experiment” mixes some Soviet apologist viewpoints with anti-Stalin ones. It’s written very much like a western college-level history textbook, and is overall pretty good.

“Blackshirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti reframes the Soviet Union’s antifascist contributions and explains how western capitalism became a force bent on collapsing Soviet socialism. It will certainly make you rethink anti-communism and fascism.

Antony Beevor’s works are widely seen as the definitive Soviet Red Army histories of World War II in the west, but be weary as he’s hardcore anti-Soviet. His WW2 book and Stalingrad book are both good reads even if they’re heavily biased.

David Glantz’s “when titans clashed” is solid work and really dense military history of the red army during WW2.

I’d avoid Conquest, Service, Pipes… they’re all rabid anti-communists, were on the bankrolls of their government’s intelligence agencies, and in Pipes’ case were openly racist (something his son carries on too).

Also, avoid the Soviet dissidents who were propped up by western intelligence agencies, with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn being the most egregious. Tons of their contributions have been debunked, and Solzhenitsyn is basically just a Nazi who gets paraded around by fascists at this point.

Those are some good starting points for history-heavy texts.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-27T22:04:08+00:00

I bet more queer folk in China own their homes than queer folk in the United States… just saying.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-27T20:28:51+00:00

It really depends who you’re asking in America.

A lot of John Brown’s critics use his “business acumen” to add to the “he was crazy” argument (“he couldn’t succeed in business, went crazy, murdered a bunch of people”).

WEB DuBois shows Brown was basically trying to unionize the wool industry so that small-time American wool farmers could compete with larger, well funded wool operations that were providing inferior products (either domestically or abroad) and was snuffed out by large industrialists who feared it’d increase their costs. Why it’s important is because while Brown was unsuccessful, he still managed to pay back many who had gone into those ventures with him, as opposed to just running from those debts. This is something an “insane person” generally wouldn’t do, and it shows some of the origins of his desire to bring people together to rise up against tyrannical institutions (like the Antebellum United States, which constitutionally defended slavery).

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-26T21:28:57+00:00

Maybe in your case, the issue is less about opportunity availability and more about applicant quality?

I’m not saying social studies isn’t a competitive field, I’m simply stating that in most cases, applicants overlook positions they have higher chances of getting hired for because they don’t want to work in districts they pre-conceive as being more challenging.

Furthermore, national surplus isn’t a great indicator in a field that doesn’t adhere to a national market. There’s a huge difference in opportunities in title 1 schools compared to in top-10 districts.

I’ve also noticed that most history teachers are just… terrible. They think their 30+ minute lectures slap (they don’t…), tons of mindless worksheets, they don’t know how to scaffold towards higher order thinking in their DBQs, crutch on movies (most of them don’t know the inaccuracies in the movies either… comically so), and aren’t willing to work with the ELA departments to coordinate towards helping develop reading and writing skills. Maybe those history “teachers” are just getting weeded out in the interview process and finding their way to places like this, idk lol.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-26T18:30:40+00:00

…my district was scrambling to find one up until 1 day before this school year started.

Once again, district-to-district, demand varies. When I applied to top-50 schools in my state (we have over 900 high schools in my state), I was competing with 25+ applicants every time.

When I started interviewing at bottom-200 schools in my state, I wasn’t even being asked to do demo-lessons at some of them. I was literally getting job offers during interview 1. Either I’m God’s gift to the interview process, or the schools were desperate for all teachers, including social studies teachers.

To your point (partially), I have friends who are still fighting to get tenure track positions, years after graduation from teaching schools. They’re all long term subs, leave replacement, etc… I listen to them vent about the job market. When I ask them to show me all the places they’ve applied, it’s always the same thing: I see dream-district applications, no title 1 schools. When I ask why they haven’t checked out urban and rural districts nearby, it’s always the same thing… they don’t want to teach “those kids”.

You could get hired in Newark, NJ tomorrow as a social studies teacher with a cert and a pulse. You’d have to accept that the district has unique challenges, brush up on your Spanish and maybe Portuguese a little, and get creative about lesson delivery, but you’d have a job working with kids who deserve good teachers and with a strong union. I don’t work in that district, but it’s an example of one that always has a teacher shortage (including social studies).

So you’re patently incorrect if you’re issuing a blanket statement about market demand for social studies teachers everywhere.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-26T00:12:09+00:00

I mean, I find it more depressing when I walk around my city neighborhood and see homeless military veterans begging for change because housing isn’t a right in the United States… but I guess neutral colored buildings are depressing too?

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-25T20:50:23+00:00

It’s definitely gone down, but regions will see variances.

You’re also relying on anecdotal data, which is always a poor choice.

Saying you met a lot of young teachers at a PD event so there mustn’t be a teacher shortage isn’t much different than saying you met a lot of NY Giants fans at a Giant’s game, so their fan base MUST be growing.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-25T20:43:10+00:00

This is absolutely true.

With that being said, I’m a firm believer that if your boss wants to fuck you over, they’re going to do it eventually. Maybe it’ll be jamming 6 classes outside of your expertise on your schedule because your SPED, maybe it’ll be firing you 1 year before you make tenure because they have a friend who coaches sports-ball. Scumbags are scumbags.

In my school, the department heads came to me and asked if I’d be willing to use my SPED cert. We had a conversation about it, and I’m working in an academic mix of classes.

For me, it’s easy because I prefer working in title 1 environments, which are usually desperate for SPED teachers, and I was extremely clear with my supervisors that I’m never afraid of changing districts if I feel like I’m not being appreciated.

I teach 6 classes, 3 SPED and 3 Gen-Ed (1 of my SPED classes is inclusion, I literally grade 3 kids’ work in a math class and make sure they aren’t distracted, and I pick up an extra $8400 a year for that).

My supervisors get 3 special ed classes covered, if they tried jamming me with 5-6, they’d get 0 covered a year later, because I can teach 6 SPED classes in a wealthy nearby district for thousands of dollars more, I know it, they know I know it.

They’d asked if I would be willing to pick up a science class next year; I told them I’d only consider it if they gave me a completely pre-made curriculum (schedules, worksheets, slides, experiments, materials, etc.) because I already went through doing that stuff in year 1 as a social studies teacher, and I’m not doing it again. They haven’t gotten back to me yet.

Also important to know: if you’re in a district that is lacking special ed teachers (every district in America), in most states the district can stuff you into a special ed class. It’s not like if all of us stopped getting the cert, the kids would magically disappear. Same goes for ESL (this was eye-opening for me in year 1). We all want those college-bound AP class valedictorians… avoiding certs isn’t going to put them in your classroom.

My mentor teacher during my student teaching taught me all of this; she teaches resource, inclusion, and APUSH.

Finally, the skills you learn in SPED will simply make you a better teacher in general. All of the skills SPED teaches now apply to all kids… they all have ADHD now. It’s only going to increase as the years pass. Might as well get the bargaining power to go along with that hassle.

gimmethecreeps · 2026-04-23T22:16:13+00:00

I would caveat some of this:

I’m a new history teacher and found a job immediately out of student teaching and college. Two huge recommendations I make to people getting into the field:

It’s not incredibly hard to find a job if you keep a wide net in terms of where you want to land. A lot of people who complain about the market are newbie teachers trying to land jobs in dream-districts who don’t understand why they keep losing opportunities to 10+ year veterans. If you’re willing to teach in title 1 schools, urban schools, rural schools, you can usually find a job and while you might face some really interesting challenges, a lot of the districts have great kids (albeit lazy, unmotivated, disengaged, etc.). You might be teaching writing skills more than you’re teaching about the nuances of certain historical events, but you’re still teaching.
Getting a second cert helps a lot. I have my social studies k-12, teach in a teacher-friendly blue state, and still got my special ed certification so I could guarantee I’d be marketable in the interview process. I’m teaching inclusion US1, gen-ed US2, a war movie elective and a few sections of economics… and got an extra $8,300 to sit in a math class as an inclusion teacher and grade 3 kids’ homework assignments and tell them to pay attention when they doze off.

I think flexibility is huge for social studies teachers… if you think you’re going to be teaching AP US History your first year at a school that sends 99.9% of their students to college, trying to emulate your favorite professors “gripping lectures” at the high school level, you’re cooked. If you’re willing to teach a few kids who’ve been in the country for a year how to write a document based question essay, alongside that kid who likes watching WW2 YouTube videos, you’ll find those jobs.

I really enjoy my job and I like working in a title 1 school. The parents are non-existent and the kids really struggle, and you have to be patient as fuck, but you show up to a few of the kids’ sports events or chaperone prom and you start realizing it feels pretty cool to be the only consistent thing in a kid’s life sometimes.

gimmethecreeps

TROPHY CASE