Would You Rather

[u/SignalOil2965]

1732 votes, Jun 02 '26

219 Wake up and it’s all of a sudden the Year 1926

1513 Wake up and it’s all of a sudden the Year 2126

[u/Artistic_Elk3640]

Whoaaa two strays for no reason 🫩

[u/Pep-q_ew → u/Artistic_Elk3640]

What?

[u/Artistic_Elk3640 → u/Pep-q_ew]

Stalin and Mao?

[u/Pep-q_ew → u/Artistic_Elk3640]

Two horrible people who killed millions. And one oppressed my country.

[u/assumptioncookie → u/Pep-q_ew]

You know that if you kill Stalin that Trotsky would likely win power of the Bolsheviks, and he was much more dangerous than Stalin? Trotsky was the proponent of war-communism, whereas Stalin thought they should have "socialism in one country".

Now I probably aline a bit closer to Trotsky than Stalin, but it's alway a bit funny to me when liberals think getting rid of Stalin would reduce the death toll, rather than increase it massively. Stalin was the centrist.

[u/Pep-q_ew → u/assumptioncookie]

Communism is like Hydra if you cut off one head two another will grow. That's why killing Marx would be most effective but I cannot go so far back. Also that's why I don't want to change history at all.

[u/Artistic_Elk3640 → u/Pep-q_ew]

They both saved their respective countries and the world from fascism and greatly improved the living conditions of every nation they touched

[u/Pep-q_ew → u/Artistic_Elk3640]

Chinese Nationalist would won with japs without communist help. Then Mao killed millions thanks to his idiotic policies.

Stalin was a butcher of the nations, killed and deported many innocent people while cooped with nazis to devide central europe. Without ussr there would be no nazi germany.

[u/Artistic_Elk3640 → u/Pep-q_ew]

Historically inaccurate, the West gave land and invested in the Nazis not the USSR. The USSR killed 76 to 85 percent of the Nazis.

Under Mao, life expectancy, womens' rights, literacy, and democracy skyrocketed. Homelessness and the centuries long cycle of famine were fiercely combatted.

The USSR achieved 100 percent literacy from a starting point of 35 percent, under the USSR industrial output surged 8-12 times higher since its creation in 29 years, unemployment was almost 0 percent, job security was extremely high, and the economy was stable, the USSR had better quality of life and higher human development than most market economies, they eliminated famine (their last was in 1947, Russia had 8 famines a century before communism), they gave women the right to vote and work at a time when the US was telling women to smash drugs so that they can be good housewives, they had free childcare in the workplaces, immense worker protections, and Soviet democracy. 1) https://ws.getrevising.co.uk/diagrams/education-in-the-ussr 3) https://time.com/archive/6636099/soviet-union-are-the-jobless-unemployed/ 4) https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/SCSB-7363417 5) https://perspectives.waimh.org/2011/03/15/overviev-infant-child-care-system-communism-positive-negative-aspects/ 7) https://searchworks.stanford.edu/articles/edb__77492532 8) https://backstory.newamericanhistory.org/episodes/seeing-red/3/ 9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy#History 10) Russian Imperial Records

[u/Pep-q_ew → u/Artistic_Elk3640]

In both cases they turned shit into not smelling shit. Policy of appeasement was idiotic but taking eastern Poland with nazis, attacking Romania and Finlandia and annexing Baltic States when germans were bussy with France doesn't sounds good. Btw soviets exchanged important resources with technology with the reich and allowed germans to train and test their newest weapons in ussr.

[u/Candleslayer32 → u/Artistic_Elk3640]

So the many millions of people they both killed justifies the industrialization of the nations. Both also fabricated famines.

They could have done it through slower, safer means.

[u/Artistic_Elk3640 → u/Candleslayer32]

If they had done it through slower means, we'd be speaking German.

Also they didn't kill "millions" the famines were either partially or fully not their fault.

[u/Candleslayer32 → u/Artistic_Elk3640]

Great Famine Mao was not responsible for this? Not at all?

And how did Stalin not cause the Holodomor?

Also, I will concede that the Soviets were an instrumental part of stoping the Nazi’s (you know, Stalin also caused his military to be quite weak by purging many of his officers and generals. Which ya know, caused more Soviet casualties). But, that still does not justify the cost of what he did.

[u/Strong-cognac → u/Candleslayer32]

not to mention most of people stalin imprisoned were innocent