They make sense to me also because the fact Government changes, for example every 4-7 years due to election, so it gives a mechanism for a new government to get out of the treaty by simply letting it lapse without renewing it rather than being locked into unwanted treaties or face the potential repercussions of breaking or reneging on a treaty, as @romanpyatibratov4361 points out.
It does make sense to me. Without the treaty they both would have to potentially fight each other from the start, all the while they had no other allies. Make a timed treaty so both can built up and get strong enough to fight against the other enemies. It's purely strategical and not being allies
I’m all for having nuance conversations, particularly about how the Soviet union was the last power to make a deal with Germany in the build up. but I feel like he’s ignoring the fact that a lot of countries in Eastern Europe particularly those in Poland and Baltic states really didn’t like being under Russian control
I'm from Poland and I remember when my great-grandparents talked about WWII they always said that the Red Army was worse than the Wehrmacht. Now, I know it's a complex matter with many factions on both sides with Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS, Red Army, NKVD and so on, but it's quite telling that the common sentiment of many people at the time, unless they were Jewish, was to be more afraid of the Russians.
did these countries showed their resentment during "soviet occupation" or only after? Who are those people you mentioning? All the people? majority of people? only people that said that they didnt liked Soviet Union? All the hatred towards the USSR. All the claims about occupation. Comes from post-soviet time. As a boogey-tale to justify their terrible conditions in early capitalist state. "we not suffering because corporations privatized everything and exploits us. We suffering because evil soviets occupied us" Dont get me wrong, there were people during Soviet era who opposed it and were carrying out terrorist acts. Those also infamous for being nazi collaborators. But that's natural for any system and any country. People leaving US and coming to Russia, telling how bad and awful it is in US. People are leaving Russia and coming to US, telling how bad and awful it is in Russia.
I don't even know where to start... i guess you count the soviets committing genocide of Poles in 1937-1938 as a "maybe" that Poles didn't like the soviets?
Say what you want about the pact. The USSR still invaded not only Poland, but Finland Romania and the Baltic states as well, before propping up puppet regimes across all of Eastern Europe after the war
About the USSR invasion of Poland from roughly 21:30 in the video, Stephen Kotkin, an American conservative historian who is widely considered one of the most reputable historians on Stalin within America, has some important insights about this, among other things. Kotkin states that the USSR knew that Germany intentionally crossed east of the intended partition of Poland during the invasion, from witnessing the fact that they were eastward + getting to see German military maps. Not only that, but the territory Germany took was also rich in oil. When Big J confronted the Austrian Painter about this, the painter told the military to stand down and retreat from the territory, to which the German military actually deliberately fired on German positions independent of his orders while retreating. Another thing of note is that Big J thought that the Austrian painter would first demand something like a lease on Ukraine for 99 years rather than invade. This was partially based on previous German acquisitions of territory, like taking the Sudetenland, and demanding territory from Poland (Which Poland refused). The Germans also succeeded in informational warfare by making many fake plans for the invasion that intentionally got leaked. None but the last turned out to be true, so Big J thought the final plan was, based on that and many other factors like thinking Germany wouldn't invade until peace with the UK was made, a fake.
In addition to dividing up Poland the pact also set spheres of influence in Finland, the Baltics the Balkans, and Eastern European countries. It also set the framework for Hitler to import large amounts of oil, iron and other raw materials which he would use to build up his army. Something that Stalin would greatly regret.
it was more of a 'dont fucking go past this line in case borders begin changing' than a 'we're gonna build an empire in europe together' (ridiculous since the soviets and fascists despised each other). the trade was more payment for the non agression, the soviets had to give the germans something concrete so that they would actually take the non agression and allow the USSR to build up.
Yeah it was more of a way for the Soviets to extend time to get ready for the inevitable. Both sides knew what was gonna happen just not when. This was a long game plan as the longer the USSR had time to rebuild its army and build up industry the left Germany had since it was already losing resources. So Germany had to quickly take out everyone and the USSR just had to gain more time.
Hitler hated Communism. Stalin only cared about his own personal power and foolishly assumed Hitler was the same. He actually trusted him and was genuinely surprised when Hitler attacked. Stalin gave him not just concrete but desperately needed oil and iron used to build the German army.
I’ve never considered the pact and blaming USSR and NAZI Germany invading Poland as a propaganda attempt to link communism with facism. I think Hakim is a bit biased in his arguments here pretending USSR didn’t really want to invade Poland. It was blatant both Germany and Russia wanted to invade Poland, it was just a disagreement of when the invasion would happen. All major powers assumed a war was on the Horizon, but everyone including Italy and Russia was surprised when Germany started the war years before expected.
He seems to forget that germany before talking to the ussr literaly wanted to reach the agreement with poland to split the ussr(issue of danzig proposed by poland later became the german ultimatum and poland was suposed to gain ukraine after the ussr was dealt with) poland didn't agree with the propostition yet the non-agression pact was the same(like even if they settled on spliting the ussr it wouldn't be written it would be an understanding). Signing a deal with the ussr is as absurd not bc the ideoliegies differ so much bc it was the second propostiton. German economy would collapse without war(MEFO bills) so it was a now or never situation. If poland ceded danzig in 39 it would mean that they agreed to the unwritten proposal if they disagreed germany had a backup(the ussr). They needed a big country in the east(at the time poland or the ussr) to guarante that in case of invasion of france they wouldn't be stabbed in the back(again eather poland is on your side or ussr and you deal with poland so that they won't invade). If you are intrested on the topic i recomend reading "the beck-ribbentrop pact" some poles now are mad at the sanation government for not agreeing bc eather we defeat the ussr the allies defeat germany poland betrays germany poland gets what it wants or poland and germany lose wich literaly wouldn't change anything(stalin still would give all the land to poland bc he didn't know he would get germany for himself so he wanted to push the border as much west as possible poland wouldn't be annexed eather bc as stalin said they would be pain in the ass)
34:00 He is not against ukranians, he is most likely not thrilled about ukranian right wingers since he is a socialist... but saying that he is against ukranians feels a bit iffy?
@@talismanbrunski2582 It is a bit iffy and an unfair comment by Terry though. There was nothing in that statement to suggest that he doesn't like Ukrainians. If he doesn't then he should like Russians even less, since he has denounced the invasion of Ukraine by Russia
The Western European powers ( Britain and France) were far more concerned about the Soviets than the Germans, as Hitler knew and lead to his idea that Britain would either side with the Germans against Stalin or at least have no dog in that fight. In the early 1930’s Hitler had more support in Britain and France than in Italy. And the Congress of Vienna had reformed Poland only to allow the Czar to become the ruler of Poland. Stalin felt the Soviets could not be imperialists.
One big problem with Hakim is how he ignores the historical context of the Russian Empire in how Eastern European states viewed the Soviet Union. Is it really a big shock that Poland didn't trust Stalin or the USSR? Was it because of some antisemitic conspiracy that Hakim implies, or was it 100s of years of Russian imperialism and attempts to subjugate Poland?
And also need to add to that war in 1920 where Bolshevics invaded Poland. It was still fresh in memory and every politician or even citizen would remember that.
@ozyrysozi6186 that's the sort of thing ppl like hakim attempt to ignore in their apologetics for stalinism. That's why he glossed over it in less than 2 seconds.
He pretty much ignors the Baltikum and what happened there and also the joint Victory Parade of the Red Army and the german Wehrmacht in Brest-Litowsk. If it would just have been a devensive Pact I could see his point, but not with the joint Invasion of Poland. If anything the USSR would have profited from a puffer State inbetweent themselves and Germany. And yeah, what else was meant with the "reorganisation of Poland"? Come on. Of course the Soviets knew what this meant.
19:25 the soviets performed poorly at the start of the german invasion because they were still preparing for a war with germany at this time. Soviet planners had planned a war with the nazis for some time in 1943.
I think we spend far too much time trying to speculate on the "intentions" of various historical figures or groups and end up conflating the actions of potentially millions of people in incalculable different situations with the actions of a single person or ideology with little to no causative link between that ideology and the aforementioned actions. We can't know for certain what was in someone's mind and it's unproductive to speculate when all of our actions are dictated by the material conditions we've all existed in up to any given point. I think a more productive discussion would be to set out the desired goals in a given situation, consider the material and historical conditions in play, analyze whether or not the steps taken were more or less successful in achieving those goals and then determine which steps could be useful to repeat in the future for achieving similar goals and which ones should be avoided. Moralizing and speculating on intentions just leads to oversimplified quibbling about who is the "bad guy" and has to take the blame and who gets to feel smug and self-important while distracting from the actual productive process of determining how to reproduce and improve positive outcomes and avoid negative ones. There is no ontological evil to hunt down and defeat. “Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems.” - Michael Brooks
Well said. People who fixate too much on historic figures to understand history usually have a narrative they want to push or they are contrarians that just want to undermine popular opinion to feel smart. MLK being a socialist or a capitalist is a good example on this channel. You could paint him either way using his actions or words but at the end of the day what mattered was the current politician environment and what policies the man actually ran on.
About what Mr Terry said with regard to the Pact and its effectiveness + the motivation behind it for the USSR. If the USSR, whose military was in pretty poor shape, was to invade Germany, particularly with British and French approval, it would likely be invaded shortly after by the British and French, probably with the economic support of America. It could also be that the aforementioned powers join Germany in its defence. Big J also thought, which may not be a correct assessment but still informs his reasoning, that the UK was more likely than not to support Germany if they invaded the USSR. The weak USSR could not possibly face all of these powers at once. He needed the other powers to fight each other to weaken each other, while giving the USSR time to prepare, preferably to around 1943-44. While the pact was still a success, it was nowhere near a success as most people, in the USSR and outside of it, thought it was going to be. Next to nobody expected France to fall so quickly to German invasion. I think German command expected the invasion to surrender to take around a year, to which the French expected that they would never fall due to their prior defensive preparations. Relating to this, Blitzkrieg was far more effective than the USSR could predict. I'm pretty sure the doctrines of Tukhachevsky with him around, despite being made on the presumption of mobile warfare, could not have succeeded to a greater degree than OTL, especially considering that his more modern doctrines informed much of pre-1941 USSR military doctrines.
Hakim also ignores the military collaboration. Russia allowed Germany to avoid scrutiny by testing and training in Russia to avoid Versailles treaty violations
it's ironic that a game Hoi4 taught me about how many time Europe making a (peace) treaty that benefit the N@zi before even the Soviet make one at all.
@@lloydgush they allowed germans to invade Czechoslovakia. Pretty much said "yeah, we agree, you allowed to occupy that country. We will not interfrere" Without asking the Czechoslovakia itself. Furthermore why USSR not allowed to occupy territory? it's not polish anyway. Poland occupied these lands first
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again..."
Oh the Germans. So kind of them to have went around Poland & mean of the Soviets to invade. Wait, you mean the Germans invaded Poland. Well shoot. Should the soviets have went around Poland.
Poland. Plain and simple. If it was not a non-aggression pact with no offensive provisions, then Poland wouldn't have been invaded from both sides. Allies had just as much a casus belli on Soviet Union as well as the Third Reich.
this is untrue, see the reactions of the leadership of the allies to the soviet intervention. The polish government didn't exist by the time the soviets intervened and it was basically like the soviets eating up territory.
@@americancommunist6076 Oh noooo Stalin apologists are sooooo delusional. No, he purged most of his senior military staff and veterans who knew what they were doing... This is largely agreed on being the result of paranoia, they were not disloyal... Not only that, this is also nearly universally agreed on that this was a MAJOR contributing cause for how ineffective the soviets were at stopping the German invasion and the MAIN reason MILLIONS of soviets died in the defence.
I'm not sure if when he mentioned the US and demoracy, then showed the painting Manifest Destiny by John Gast if he did so to be ironic, or he just didn't know what the painting was about. Also "The Soviets made many mistakes...." Yeah, like THE KATYN MASSACRE!
My main complaint is that on this channel, as well as on many others, the presenters do not take into account the class contradictions in society when studying historical processes. Hakim also doesn't outline them clearly enough. Specifically, that in Poland, Scandinavia (Finland) and the Baltics after the First World War, literally fascist states sympathetic to the Nazis were established, established by the local capitalists and former monarchs to suppress the internal workers' revolutionary movements. When we talk about "Poland", we must not forget that this is a bourgeois state belonging to a small number of capitalists, with the help of which they oppress and exploit the local population - the proletariat. These two groups of people have diametrically opposed interests, it just so happened that they all call themselves "Poles" and live in Poland. This is especially advantageous for capitalists and their bourgeois historians, because in this way it is possible to unite the people, to unite them into one bundle (fascis). For example, in the Baltics during the "invasion" of the Red Army, the proletariat, the workers greeted their brothers and sisters with embraces (because before that there were decades of repressions and oppression, the Communist Party and the labor movement were destroyed, the workers were overexploited, it was then that we got the secret political police KAPO, which still exists today), while the bourgeois government had run away. Like, for example, in France, where the bourgeois government gave the country to the Nazi invaders, while the proletarians, led by the Communist Party, took up guerrilla warfare. Why would Soviet Russia, with a workers' state, a huge country, with a bunch of internal problems and a huge population, also forcibly annex half of Poland, except for a tactical maneuver? A proletarian state by definition cannot be an imperialist, how can some workers exploit other workers? Why did Soviet Russia and the USSR allow neighboring states to voluntarily secede or join throughout their history? Why did the USSR spend a huge amount of resources to help other proletarian states, and not exploit them? And if it did seize, exploit, as the schizo-Trotskyists say in their theory of the "nomenklatura", then where did all these resources went, where are all these legendary dozens of cars, mansions, yachts and millions in Stalin's offshore accounts? P.s. You talk about the "Polish independence", but is this independence for whom exactly? For the capitalists-exploiters or for the proletariat? P.p.s When Hakim talks about the US, he compares the policies of two superpowers: the bourgeois state of the US, under the guise of democracy, brings destruction and exploitation - imperialism, while the workers' state of the USSR brought real freedom to the workers of other nations. P.p.p.s On US helping the USSR. After the world saw what Nazi Germany was capable of, the US decided to side with the good guys. Not long before, they had called the USSR their worst enemy (and continued doing so immediately after the War), were selling resources and sponsoring Germany, which was then actively developing its heavy industry and military potential (hmm, I couldn't even imagine why the Germans were doing that). Pe.pe.sya Of course, this is a rather simplified comment, but I can't give a whole lecture here with all the nuances, I just wanted to convey the main idea - class struggle. *the shortest leftist comment on the internet* moment
I'm sorry, but you are biased to communism. And there's a lot of guesswork going on without rationalisation. "greeted their brothers and sisters" and the assumption of the "Benevolent Proletariat Soviet government" Communist revolts were rising all over Europe in the 1920s. And perhaps some Polish elites were anti-communist, or perhaps more anti-Bolsheviks enough to look favourably towards Fascism at first. But it's not a call to claim they are in league with neither the USSR nor the Reich. Calling the resistance of occupation, a conspiracy by the fascist Burgoues and saying Proletariat government cannot be imperialist by nature sounds like a perfect excuse to absolve any invasion. Much like how the US would say "We're not invading, we're freeing the oppressed and bringing democracy. If you resist it, you must be aligned with dictators." When you and I know it's an excuse to establish a co-operating puppet government that would benefit geopolitically.
@@ImpletorPotato What the Soviet did was replace the Czar as an 'electable' position (i.e. you can manoeuvre politically to get it), replacing the cross with Hammer and Sickle, the Bible with the Manifesto and the priests with commissars. It's the same corrupt system, façaded to appear proletariat. Just another form of psuedo-feudal repression.
LMAO FINLAND FASCIST LOL SWEDEN FASCIST 😂😂😂😂 NO WAY MAN SOCIAL DEMS ARE GETTING SLANDERED NO WAY CANT EVEN BE INVADED BY THE SOVIETS AND IM ALREADY A FASCIST Also lol, which idiot owns a shop and supports fascism, aka corporatism. You just repeated what the dumbest communists say, at least repeat what more decent ones say.
So how long until Hakim releases a video explaining why the Secret Speech was motivated by Khruschev's anger over getting picked last for the Party's weekly snowball fights?
Mr.Terry, please go on The Deprogram and have a whole history episode with them. Itd be a lot of fun to see you and the group talk history at a high level respectfully.
I'd enjoy that. I was thinking of it and wondering what the topic in history should be. It must be more specific location and time in history to keep a conversation grounded. I think something America-Centric as Teacher is American. Perhaps USA in Latam, the banana republics, etc. could be interesting. Perhaps US labour history, Teacher seems interested in this subject from the Second Thought video that talked about Debbs, the Wobblies, and so on.
Yea, I’m new here, and I’d like to see it. All those commie guys can be very chill and respectful especially if that’s what they receive. I genuinely think they want to teach the truth, and the topics they cover usually viewed in poor light with bad intentions. History never changes but our understanding and view of it absolutely does! Not to mention everyone involved has their own perspective or things, one reliable account can change the narrative in a big way even decades after that event has made it into the history books. It’s hard to deny the red scare and McCarthyism made vague discussion of Marx or his thoughts and theories very scary for Americans… I’ve had to teach myself everything after school and finding sources you can trust is very hard.
I think it's fair to say we have seen expansionistic tendencies in basically all ideological movements. Fascism, Liberalism, Communism, Free Market Capitalism ( think the Dole Fruit wars in the so-called Banana Republics) , Fuedalism . Hell even the Roman Republic was obviously incredibly expansionistic . Or even early USA with manifest destiny . Sometimes it takes the form of a military occupation, sometimes you have puppet governments and sometimes there's literal transfer of territory. People will always use arguments that make a case why territory is actually "theirs" by right because different populations moved in, and/or because they need to help an opressed group ( for example, middle eastern christians and muslim women, were used to justify the wars in the middle east) . You even see this kind of argument super strongly from the Russian propagandists with Ukraine ( Ukrainians are just Russians who want to feel special, after all... ) , and modern Russia is certainly a "free market capitalist" society, even though it is not a democracy, and the whole show is run by some mobs and Oligarchs. Personally, appeals to ethnicity and some thousand-year-old border doesn't ring as legitimate to me. The idea that someone "owns" land because of their racial identity seems like a quick walk to extreme racial discrimination and weird investigations into people's ethnicity. It doesn't matter if there were lots of Russians and Germans living in Poland. Maybe some old borders that were drawn up were unfair. Half of Germany has towns with Slavic names because the whole place was taken over by Germanic groups 700 years ago. It doesn't matter if Ukrainians are actually Russians or if there were lots of Russians in Ukraine. When you invade a place you are doing direct violence to the people who live there, and some old historical or racial argument doesn't justify it. Even legitimate arguments such as appeals to womens rights are only half legitimate : You must inspect if the argument is made out of real concern for these rights but to justify expansionism, which is an evil in every political ideology. Take the Iraq/Afghanistan war : did womens' lives get better, were they able to better escape the opression of radical Islam because of these conflicts? I don't think so. So in conclusion some of those arguments really don't matter, they're standard war justifications any political ideology makes. I do think that from the Soviets perspective, what they got out of the deal was a concrete buffer to keep the Nzs away for a while. I think that nobody is entitled to using another state as a "buffer" or "proxy" though, you're basically offloading your political problems by using another state as a war playground. Everyone does it but from a moral standpoint you can't justify it. I think in this case as is often the case the Soviets were bad but it's not really a feature of Communism, it's a political problem that exists in every nation state from every ideological perspective.
@@romant1596 I don't really like appeals to human nature... I studied neuroscience for my bachelor's and I think you can make evolutionary arguments for basically anything... Tldr I think evolutionary psychology and appeals to human nature - it's a inherently biased field. No I think historical context is everything and we have a moral obligation to curb a desire to dominante, but this requires a certain amount of trust that in forfeiting the quest for dominance you won't be dominated back. Those are conditions that just have never been historically met and we have never had the courage and grace to try.
@@romant1596game theory is written by people who also believe they know the rules of human behaviour. It's just another appeal to naturalism. As are most economic theories. In my opinion. In this way, I am much more optimistic and naive about human nature. Who knows what people will do with changes in technology, ideology and material conditions. I don't think our fate is written in stone by our evolution or game theory. I think it's in our hands , mostly, the hands of oligarchs. But that's historically contingent, it's not a law of nature.
Sir I have not finished the video yet, but I take issue with something you say around the 30 minute mark. You say that hindsight is what allows us to see the truth behind the Nazis early rise to power, when in fact that’s not the case. Hitler stated his goals plainly in mein kempf, the west just had more in common with the Nazis than the ussr.
Which was a lie, austrian man was just delusional about hid anglo saxon fanfic of superiority that he couldnt accept that the soviet political and economic system (despide not beign identical) was more similar to germany then the western capitalism. It becomes obvious when by 1939 germany's only real trade partners were sweden, itsly and the biggest...The ussr.
That flat open field is sooooo big that it still offers some defense, especially before mechanized transport… but with poor roads, train tracks too small to use… but obviously in modern times it’s certainly less effective but distance is often a good deterrent
@@swayback7375It would've been true If most of Russia's industry and population wouldn't be concentrated on European side making the size of flat field useless. I mean, it could be used in this way but only if the aggression comes from East Asia like China, not from Europe.
I would just like to point out that there’s a big difference between Germany claiming that Germans inside of Poland were being oppressed versus actual Ukrainians and Belarusians being oppressed within the occupied western part of those modern day countries. Poland had no claim to land that went almost right up next to Minsk.
exactly, poland stole those territories in the polish-soviet war. and by the time the USSR intervened the germans had annihilated the polish government so can it really be called an invasion if theres absolutely no resistance. Yes, but its still humorous.
What do you mean no claim? There were Polish people even on the soviet side of the border and even just Polish part of the Polish-Lithuenian Commonwealth streched into USSR.
Hakim just literally said that the invasion of eastern Poland by the soviets was done to save as many Polish people as possible... Can you sink lower than this?
Save? Not entirely but It did buy time to the USSR to build up in preparation for the Nazi war machine. The USSR is justified on that front that if they had less then the time that was granted of the history we know now it’s probably would’ve ended in Soviet defeat 🤷♂️
The point of Hakims video isn’t that the soviets didn’t want to invade Poland, didn’t plan to invade Poland, nor that the invasion was good. Just that the Soviets didn’t side with the Nazis, Didn’t agree with the Nazis, and were mostly reacting to the nazis. He acknowledges that the main justification for the invasion was regaining land, but the invasion wouldn’t of happened when it did without nazi pressure. Did the video do a good job of that? Thats for you to decide.
Which is even worse, since the secret protocols of the treaty and the massive amount of raw resourses that the moskals gave to the krauts talks about how much Stalin liked choking on hitler's dick
Pact or not, the two powers absolutely invaded Poland at about the same time and divided the country without any appreciable conflict between them. There are pictures of German and Soviet officers meeting in Poland in which they appear downright friendly with each other. That's what happened, and it's bad enough for the USSR.
@@danielviskythe moskals literally gifted thousands of jews for the krauts to kill That and the resourses that they gave them, which were instrumental to bypass the blokade imposed by the allies
I haven't watched the video yet but I will say, as someone with pretty similar politics to Hakim, thanks for these reactions. It's always good to see opinions on these sort of videos from people who either disagree with them or just aren't communists/socialists, but most responses/reactions are overly aggressive or/(Typically) and mostly just nonsense/repeating blatant propaganda so it's nice to see more reasonable and polite responses/analysis from someone who knows enough about history to actually point out anything the original videos get wrong. I don't think I phrased that very well, but I'm very tired and I presume that you know what I meant so I'm leaving it how it is. Edit: After watching the video I have a few notes. 1. His point about the supposed partitioning of Poland is that there isn't enough evidence to say that it happened and the USSR wasn't acting in a way that would make sense if it was a planned thing. Yes the provision was that if Poland was invaded it would be split between the countries, but it was proposed by the Germans and there isn't any evidence that there was a planned invasion or that the USSR wanted an invasion (That's not to say that the USSR wouldn't have wanted to control Poland, of course it did, in its opinion a socialist government is far superior to a capitalist one and Poland would be better off as part of the USSR, also of course more resources for the USSR would be good, especially thanks to its current state), additionally the USSR accepting the term isn't evidence of them wanting an invasion, more so it just being in their opinion a Poland split between them would be better than a Poland controlled by the Nazis. His other point was that the USSR was completely unprepared for the invasion, which wouldn't be normal if the invasion was planned, but would be normal if their side of the invasion was a hasty response to unexpected German actions. 2. His point wasn't that the Soviet invasion was good (As I presume you understand), just that it was not as bad as that of the Nazis. While obviously invading Poland was a horrible thing to do, they would have seen the invasion of half of Poland as a lesser evil than letting the much worse Nazi invasion cover all of Poland. He gave some reasons why he thinks the Soviet invasion wasn't as bad as that of the Nazis, another one of course is that the Soviets weren't committing genocide in their conquered territories. While there were war crimes as is typical for wars (Though from what I've heard (So don't necessarily believe this without fact checking it first) a lot of the supposed soviet war crimes showed a lot of signs of Nazi war crimes and the only people claiming that the Soviets committed them at the time were the Nazis), Hakim also pointed out that most of these happened later on in the war and the early occupation was in comparison fairly peaceful. 3. He has nothing against Ukrainians, he just said that at the time some groups of people including some Ukrainians fought for the Nazis against the Soviets thanks to an antisemitic conspiracy. He didn't say Ukrainians were bad or more likely to believe in conspiracies, just that at the time some small groups of Ukrainians believed in a conspiracy.
It's important that we retain the ability to discuss issues. I personally disagree with most points hakim made, but we should always be open to hearing what others are thinking and actually listening. The moment we stop talking is the moment we open the doors to violence. I do appreciate that he did include some of his resources in the video. So many now a days just create a video, and automatically, I must believe everything that video says just because they said it!
It is only natural for people to be defensive when it comes to communism. Many suffered in Eastern Europe for half a century, because of either mismanagement of the economy or simply because of gen*cide. So when people (most often Americans) say they want communism while ignoring it's many faults, people get defensive. Not to say the system itself can never work, there are a handful of instances where it has worked, but Hakim's method of ignoring all criticism of communism while hand-waving all the crimes of these regimes will not help his cause.
Stalin taking all of Ukraine's wheat production, dumping it on the open maket cheaply as a publicity stunt to show off the superiority of the Soviet Union's collective farms, and leaving thd Ukrainians to starve to death may have had something else to do with many Ukrainians joining with the Nazis.
One thing I don't like of Hakim is the constant mocking of the West whenever he gets a chance, like my guy we already understand you don't like us, who are you doing this for?
1941 Polish Gov in Exile: Hey, Soviet Union, Now that we're all allies, can you give us back our solders and officers that you interned so we can attack the Nazis together. Soviet Union: 😳 Polish Gov in Exile: What's with that look? Soviet Union: They..... Ummm... Oh! They escaped to Manchuria! Yeah that's it! Polish Gov in Exile:🤨
@@danielvisky womp womp the polish goverment was anti-elitist aswell so yeah quit with the socialist nonsense. Germany aswell was saying "we hate the rich" at the time, ARE YOU IMPLYING YOU ARE A NAZ-??? 🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱 Vaush moment
@@HOI4notsoproplayer so anti-elitist they chose to side with the elites of England and France. Ah the germans were so hating the rich they didn't depose any of them but that specific religious group we know about.
@@HOI4notsoproplayer anti elitist while siding with Europe's elites? Germans anti-rich while only targeting one specific religious group of rich people? Looney
What do you even mean? Interwar Poland was a horrific nightmare where the well off played at being western high society as regular people wasted away in squalor and filth. Anti-elitist must be some kind of a joke
NGL, I've been waiting on this one UA-camr, What Why How, to release his video critical of Hakim, which he said he is working on for quite a while. Watching this video makes me feel like I'm cheating. It's like I have the cheat sheet for potential responses to Hakim.
@@americancommunist6076 My favourite is going to responding to whataboutism with whataboutism, then saying his whataboutism is justified because states have a right to defend themselves (Ignore the origins of WW1) and that everyone but the West started the conflict (WW2).
Hopefully, you’ve now realized that it takes a long time to make an honest critique video about Hakim because there’s not much to critique in the first place. He always quotes his sources.
It doesn't matter what you call it. The facts are that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland together, conquered it, held a joint victory parade, and then divided conquered territories between themselves. Building a narrative the way it's done in that video is literally historical revisionism and totalitarian apologism.
And also they changed the secret agreement in terms of spheres of influence as Third Reich at first got Lithuania, but Soviets pushed for it in exhange of some more of polish land (if I remember correctly). So I doubt it can be callled just non-agression pact in any way. Both cooperated in dividing the Eastern Europe and Finland.
Totalitarism is a meme, and well, the talk about the spheres of influence was totally warranted. Or would you rather have moustache man right on your borders.
@@americancommunist6076They marched under victory arches that displayed the Swastika alongside the Hammer and Sickle. Russian and Soviet historians would later deny the parade occurred.
11:28 I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Terry. The consequences count for much more than the language used and if I'm not mistaken a lot of the Soviet archives from the 30s and 40s are still under lock and key, so we won't know about any potential secret side agreements from the Soviet side till these sources get released and even if there isn't anything, who is to say that Stalin, who killed about 20 million Soviet citizens by the way, hadn't any inconvenient files removed.
A lot of them were released during 1989... And it even includes the famine, drought records, and what was the response of Stalin on the "Holodomor". Which debunks the claim of "Ukrainian Genocide".
@@Real_OSHA_Unsafety_Engineer Well, depending on how one defines Genocide, you're right. Letting more than 10 percent of the population of a country starve, while the fields have by far enough grain to feed them, doesn't count. Even if it is used as a measure to force the kulaks into the kolkhoz, it still doesn't count. Anyway, more than 3 million people, at the low end, died, but to quote Stalin: "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." To be completely honest with you, I don't think killing10% of a population counts as Genocide, it's mass murder and a crime against humanity, for sure, but Genocide it's not. Attempted Genocide: yes, completed, no. Therefore, I actually agree with you, the Holodomor was an attempted Genocide, at most, though everybody who kills millions of innocent people deserves to burn in hell anyway, in my opinion. Also, that the Holodomor accounts just for 15 to 20% of Stalin's total body count of 20+ million. Just to make the point clear, to me a Genocide is only complete, if the whole people is dead and/or it gets wiped out from history. Fortunately, there have been no completed Genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries, as far as I can tell. Though unfortunately not for a lack of trying, Armenia, Holodomor, Holocaust, Rwanda, Dafur to name but the four that came to my mind.
@@MS-io6kl Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. "Grains fields enough to feed them" - The series of droughts from 1920s to 1930s led to food production output reduced significantly in Ukraine. This was is the soviet archives especially citing in agricultural report in 1920 to 1930. "Letting more than 10 percent of the population of a country starve, " Famine is caused by multiple events that occurred in USSR one of them is the growing migrating population to the industrial region in southern Russia, with food output reduced by series of droughts. "Anyway, more than 3 million people, at the low end, died, but to quote Stalin: "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." Leonard Lyons in “The Washington Post” wrote this quote attributing to Stalin, but there's no evidences nor links that that Lyons could prove that Stalin did say that quote. And even then, this quote existed before Stalin's period. 1759 a classics scholar named Beilby Porteus published a work titled “Death: A Poetical Essay”, In 1916 an anarchist publication based in California called “The Blast”, In 1925 a journalist named Kurt Tucholsky wrote a piece in a German newspaper, In 1956 the German novel “Der Schwarze Obelisk” by the prominent author Erich Maria Remarque was released. "Therefore, I actually agree with you, the Holodomor was an attempted Genocide, at most, though everybody who kills millions of innocent people deserves to burn in hell anyway, in my opinion. " There has been a series of post-Soviet Era journalists and historians who went to Soviet Archives in 1989 that disproves the support claim of "holodomor is a genocide" because first it has no clear intent, the genocide doesn't applied because they are Ukrainians, and all of the populace of USSR experienced the similar conditions of famine. Professors R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft state the famine was man-made but unintentional. They believe that a combination of rapid industrialization and two successive bad harvests (1931 and 1932) were the primary causes of the famine. Hiroaki Kuromiya founds no "engineered" and orchestrated order of genocide, and even further aside from scholars. There's a lot of scholars who are still in debate of whether "Holodomor" is a genocide or just a human failure to response in a disaster. End note: If killing groups of people counts as genocide for you even without intent nor engineered orders nor actions. This would make western governments even more liable to a lot of atrocities to be counted as genocide. And even to take this further by your logic, you would also count a lot of western proxy wars as "attempted" genocide, see the problem is that you are just looking at numbers and if it reaches certain threshold you immediately counts them as genocide. You are the person you critic by design.
USSR wasn't unprepared for the German invasion. They just needed more time. They had been working on their military force at full speed. Something that showed when their factories after a while started performing at full speed and beat the Germans.
Well, Nazi Germany, according to that logic, was also defending itself when its war with the USSR started. And all 27,5 million people that were killed by Nazi Germany are totally justifiable because Nazi Germany was only defending itself from the USSR.
Here to recommend Badempanada's video "Guns, Germs and Steel: A Historical Critique". I was made to read this book in my publicly funded high school in North Carolina a little over a decade ago, but it's ahistorical propaganda. You've probably encountered this book at some point, and I think you would be a good person to watch this and add some extra context :) love the vids
I think it is very good to take a nuanced look at subjects like this, but, I also think Hakim ignores some rather relevant nuances. For example, the Polish USSR war during 1920/21... Ukraine was about to become part of the USSR, and one could argue part of the east of Ukraine already was, but a significant part wasn't. And in general, I think he quite often conveniently ignores nuances when they are not in favor of the narrative that the USSR shouldn't be blamed for their role in the division of Poland in 1939. There is much more to this, the obvious part is Poland being split between the USSR and Germany, but as you already bring up, there is the issue of what happened in the baltics. But there also is the little detail of Germany and the USSR having worked together on weapons programs for much of the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, which is a big factor in Germany being able to re-arm as fast as they did in the 1930s. USSR - German ties go back longer and deeper than just one pact from 1939, both before and after moustage-man came to power. 'alliance of convenience'? Maybe, likely even, as both sides knew they were going to see another war with eachother in due time. There is a very different approach to this. Yes, Stalin certainly was looking for ways to protect the USSR from the nazis, but he opted to go the same route Russia always took for this, expand so the fight will be further away from the heartland. Pushing west makes total sense there, the more west you go, the sorter the front will be (a simple consequence of geography in Europe which has been a huge deal for Russia for quite some time now, it still is). As Stalin knew his army would stand no chance if invaded in 1939, he'd do anything to postpone that for as long as possible. There is another issue I take with Hakim's argument, the non aggression pact is not the problem, the secret clause of it is. Arguing other countries also had a non aggression pact hence is not a good argument.
Any discussion of the M - R Pact without first mentioning the Munich agreement is dishonest from the start. Stalin offered to enforce the Treaty of Marseille by de-militarizing the nazi in 1936, and Western powers laughed him out of the room to signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1937. The M-R Pact was only signed in 1939.
While I was watching the video, a thought occurred to me. A thought experiment, if you like. Let's say there is a country in part of which there is a population that you consider your own. You know that this country will soon be attacked by a second country, and with a high probability the invasion will be successful. You are currently negotiating with the second country. Question: "How would you formulate the terms of the agreement to guarantee the safety of the population that you consider your own?" I don't want to get into the debate right now about whether this was Stalin's true intention. There are many comment threads where this is discussed. But the funny thing is that I couldn't come up with better wording than article 2 of the secret part.
I think the important thing that Hakim is touching on here is motivations. Generally, I think he did what he set out to do in bringing an effective counterargument overall that Hitler and Stalin were not at all aligned; the split of Poland specifically through military occupation was more a consequence of the Soviets wanting to create a buffer so that the Nazis wouldn't have two fronts to work with. There also was a level of ideological alignment when it comes to proletarian liberation, which the Soviets were pretty consistent with (even if they didn't necessarily do enough to guarantee more worker autonomy in the countries they would eventually conform to a Socialist organization, but I digress). I think the importance of motivation is - there is no perfect revolution, and people can and will make mistakes, but the result is ultimately going to be something. Something is going to happen, and if you don't have an objective that is more closely aligned with the majority of people (Socialism according to Socialists), the result will more likely be worse for the majority of people (Fascism, clearly). We can definitely argue that the Soviets made mistakes, but we can't honestly evaluate these mistakes in a vacuum without considering the alternative if the Soviets never took the opportunity: a total military occupation of Poland by the Nazis. Mr. Terry mentioned, after Hakim brought up the point that the Soviets agitated Polish people to attack their landlords and attempt to instill class consciousness, that how bad each occupation was depends on who is retelling the events. This is absolutely true. There's even an argument that I'd potentially concede to that there might have been a better way to do what the Soviets attempted to do in that instance Hakim mentioned since we could imagine at least some landlords were just as indoctrinated and stuck in the system as any other person. However, no revolution is perfect, and while I imagine no military occupation by anyone would have been better, I'm willing to bet that an uncontested Nazi occupation of Poland would have led to far more disastrous outcomes for the Polish, the Soviets, and the rest of the world as a result. The Soviets at least had convictions that would have made them more concerned for the well-being of the majority of the Polish citizenry. The Nazis, on the other hand, would have been far more likely to grind the majority of the citizenry down and literally shoot the remaining in the back after getting what they want as they did before. Overall, I've been enjoying the videos you've been putting out Mr. Terry! I think Socialist perspectives, particularly actual, educated Marxist analyses, are severely overlooked in favor of just assuming they're bad because the government says so. Therefore, it's nice to see someone have a healthy engagement and actually analyze these perspectives to the best of their ability from a more (for lack of a better word) "moderate" perspective. Socialists are people who are also subject to their material conditions that change their outlook on life - it's good to understand where they're coming from even if you don't agree with them.
13:28 Germany only occupied points 10 and 11 on his list (Estonia and Latvia) in 1941 after they had already been occupied by the USSR since 1939 and for obvious reasons the Germans were originally hailed as liberators till these peoples too came to realize that it wasn't the Kaiser's Reich, which had brought them freedom in 1918, that occupied them now, but the Führer's Third Reich which only brought them death and despair.
England and France wanted to protect Poland so they told Hitler that they would declare war if he attacked. Stalin wanted to protect Poland so he told Hitler if he attacked he would take half.
12:41 Also wrong, Stalin was quite eager to go to war with Hitler, but only after '44-'45 which would've been enough time, in Stalin's opinion, for the Red Army to recover from the 1936/7 purges.
I’m glad you’re reacting to these more opinionated videos. I’m a communist, but I feel like hakim is a bit biased and not completely honest. Like he definitely makes some correct points, I have things that I’d disagree with.
The guy has a "tiananman square never happened." Video. Just on optics alone that's a huge L, making it hard to take anything the guy has to say serious.
@@americancommunist6076 Soviet influenced media was never pro Nazi (I should have made that clear) But it's anti Nazi stance wasn't pushed during the pact Fascism: “Fascism”? Fascism, he said is purely “A matter of taste”. Molotov - Stalins replacement of the Jewish Foreign Minister
Poland is always the main point of contention. Should have mentioned the how and why was poland devided eg. there was the fascist military dictatorship of the Piłsudski's colonels, white terror, and collaboration on bothsides that is never mentioned, so ofcource there was quite alot of support for the bolsheviks. idk Maybe it was mentioned but glanced over not enough emphasis on this factor. there were dire conditions and civil wars at the time all around europe
I wouldn't go so far to call it fascist military dictatorship. It was authoritarian dictatoriship for sure, coup was created by Piłsudski and his supporters who were mostly military personel. But the goverment (which has a lot of sins on their councience) still was mostly civilian - made of BBWR and Piłsudski supporters.
19:23 Since the Nazis invasion came very close to taking Leningrad, Moscow and Astrakhan, I'd say the extra space the Russians got by mugging Poland, Finland, the Baltic countries and Romania, worked.
I think this is one of Hakim's weakest videos because he poorly explains the nature of the pact. I think more detail regarding who wrote what, and definitely a look into the Baltic States, would have gone a long way to support his arguments. Overall you still get his main thesis "The soviet union did what it had to, to avoid war and build up" One argument I make is that the seizing of the Sudetenland being allowed by the west is no different than Russia seizing half of Poland. Both got what ""they wanted"" by causing another power to suffer. Just because allied boots didn't walk into Czechoslovakia does not mean the allies were not just as responsible for the crimes committed in the German occupation as they let it happen.
2:21 that is evidently false if you have a look at history. There were hundreds or even thousands of orphaned and exiled sons of Clan chiefs on the Eurasian Steppes over the centuries, but there was only one Genghis Khan, who had at least three brothers by the way. There were dozens of Kings of Qi and the other six Kingdoms, but only one Qi-Shi Huangdi. There were hundreds of peasant revolts against the Chinese Empires, but only the leaders of two, the founders of the Han and the Ming dynasties, became Emperors in their own right. There were hundreds of (false, according to the Jews) Messiahs, but only one Jesus Christ. There were dozens of signatures on the Declaration of Independence, but there was only one Washington in America and one Franklin in France. There were hundreds of "new men" in France before, during and after 1789, but only one Napoleon. There were hundreds of young men, who failed to join the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, who fought in WW1, but only one of them became the Chancellor of Germany. There were hundreds of former priest seminarists in Georgia, but only one became the General Secretary of the Communist Party (and Leader) of the USSR. Great men and women (let's not forget about Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Theodora, Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc.) need special circumstances to shine, but only great men and women can use these circumstances to write their names into history and often, see Alexander III of Macedon you need other greats, Philipp II and Aristotle (and probably Olympias) in his case, to create these circumstances.´ To probably quote Einstein: "If I have seen farther than most, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants." The quote seems appropriate for Einstein, but to quote him (for almost sure this time): "If every quote attributed to me was mine originally, I would be the wisest and smartest man on earth." PS the best example is Jesus, whether you believe he was the son of God, which you do, if you're a Christian or you don't in any other case, (though HE is the greatest prophet in Islam next to Mohammed, and the Judge on Judgment Day), there is no denying that a carpenter from Galilee, who was crucified nigh on 2000 years ago, is the most influential person in human history. Number two was a 6th/7th century merchant from Mecca and number three is a three-way toss-up between Kyros the Great, (he created the Empire Alexander conquered), Qi-Shi Huangdi or Augustus. PPS without admiral Yi Sun Shin chances are, that Japan would have won the Imjin War and consecutively conquered China, as the Jurchens did some 70 years later, and we wouldn't have had a Qing dynasty, but the Tenno of Japan would have become the Son of Heaven and the Toyotomi Clan or maybe the Tokugawa Clan would have become the regents of the Middle Kingdom as well as the Realm of the Rising Sun.
This Hakim guy better have a good explanation. I will edit this comment if he did. Edit: 4:13 Okay, fair enough. Wait, who's out here teaching Germany and Soviet Union have a military alliance? 7:54 No allies? What about the mighty Tannu Tuva and Mongolia? 11:12 Yeah, you're right. This guy is talking nonsense now. 13:07 Hmm.... interesting. 16:22 I got nothing to add so I'm gonna put timestamp for some of Mr Terry's commentary. 18:37 20:30 21:17 22:03 Hold up, why didn't Hakim talk about the Great Purge? He said the Red Army was devastated because of WW1 and the RCW but not included the Great Purge. 23:08 23:43 24:35 27:22 28:13 29:07 30:04 30:42 Mr Terry from the future. 32:06 32:43 34:20 35:10 35:54 Final thoughts summarised.
The Great Purge mainly affected the High Command and various internal forces ( party and NKVD), while the army was shattered during the WW1 (with a lot of help from Bolsheviks, because it benefited them before th revolution) , after the WW1 the was the civil war and some wars with foreign powers (such as Poland), so yeah, the Red Army was crippled even before the Great Purge
This whole conversation revolves around belief in the rightness of a system, or its wrongness. If you are at least slightly educated on soviet history, and have left leaning values, you would accept USSR as the lesser wrong or even a right, over literal nazis any day of the week.
but it's not an either or situation... i in my case dont like either of the systems and think both are utter trash and the worst things to come out of the 20th century
What in the fuck are you on about? Poland wasn’t nazi Germany. Given they split another nation in two and split it between them, planned in advance, it’s fair to say it was a (temporary) alliance.
@@GamingPiper Respectfully I dont think your opinion is that viable. Capitalist mode of production causes environmental issues that fuck the whole planet over (yes this is caused specifically by the capitalist system). Market is unstable and uncaring of peoples needs. Now we are humans so obviously at large we aim as a species towards socialist like policies (because we care), therefore there are so many social democracts world wide... thats the best that we can do under this horrendous inhuman system, that above all else also causes unnecessary alienation amongst humans. It's blatant that the way things are going is simply unsustainable, we either go one extreme and try to devolve back to stone age for the sake of some mythical past... or actually rearrange our system to not be built around "merchants and traders". With all consideration I know that most centrist are scared of a socialist boogeyman, this supposed authoritarian giant. Well then be a damn anarchist if you care so much about power dynamics, since clearly you won't have much luck with fair redistribution of power under the current system.
If you think about it, nothing ever changes : if it's communist, capitalist, monarchist, feudalist , fascist , imperialist: Russia wants to invade Poland. Maybe a Nations' actions more depends on its geography and resources than an ideology.
7:31 Idk how you didn't notice this map is wrong. It is missing eastern Prussia. Also those earlier pacts were betrayed so quickly they don't matter. With the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact most were thrown out as Hitler sought a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Appeasement was done for a different reason than the pact was signed. Appeasement was done to keep peace in Europe, Molotov-Ribbentrop was because the Nazis didn't want a 2-front war and wanted spheres of influence.
@@jdotoz "Genuine" is about the last word I would use to describe the case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even at the time, I knew they were lying.
I completely agree with hakim till the latter part of the video. While I think most of his statements are generally accurate there is A LOT of missing context. I totally agree with Terry’s point that the polish people would rather just not be invaded, and saying that there wasn’t any motivation to take back previous territories is definitely untrue, but his statements just regarding the pact seem very solid.
After seeing this and his other "debunking" videos, it seems like Hakim uses a very simple apologetics check list. 1) Present actual anticommunist propaganda about the topic. 2) Paint socialist nations as benevolent heroes with no negative intentions while calling anything to the contrary more Western propaganda. 3) If the socialist power did something bad that cannot be shrugged off as a well-intentioned mistake, then just say everyone killed actually deserved it because they were evil, mustache-twirling capitalists.
@@TheNationalConservative Why don't you change your name to the "TheNationalSocialist" instead of keeping it as "TheNationalConservative". Considering Stephen Kotkin, foremost American historian on Big J, and arch conservative disagrees with you on USSR history, who is mentioned in the video as a source by Hakim at 25:24.
If you want another perspective from a self-proclaimed socialist who likes the USSR thinks would be a path to winning the Cold War, watch the video published by the UA-cam alternate history channel "Possible History" titled "What If The Soviets Won The Cold War?". The video was not made by him, but published with the permission of the creator. Also, it is a shortened version of a document that he submitted which goes into the reasoning he presented for why it failed to in our own timeline. It would probably involve a lot of future terry responding to himself and the video after reading the document, so there would be a lot of editing and take a bit more time to make. Since you seem interested in what modern day soviets believe, I suggest you check him out. I also chatted with him about the scenario, giving him feedback. He said he wants to redo the scenario because he thinks there would be a better path, and potentially a more likely path, but I'm not sure what he wants.
@@g1g4_ch4d7 To argue with a Soviet appologist, it's the same as to argue with a Chernobyl birth defect. Oh, I forgot the Chernobyl reactor is the greatest monument to Soviet culture and mentality.
@@MCADHD-rf5kl so the world had to choose between people exploding their nuclear reactors out of incompetence and people deliberately dropping nuclear bombs on civilian population centers
The thing about the "Horseshoe Theory" is I don't think the ideologies themselves become more alike the further you go to the extremes, but I do think the PEOPLE who hold those views start to look very similar to each other the further you go. Things like mental illness, irrational thought, propensity for supporting violence, low intelligence among other traits seem common among people on both the far left and far right. Social media has really opened my eyes to this, as we can see these extremists and how they think first hand unlike before things like Facebook and Twitter existed.
Yeah, not like "We can mantain a system that requires infinite, exponential growth in a world with finite resources!" That is absolutly not mental ilnnes and/or irrational thought, and the decades of Capitalist agression to the rest of the world and the support people in the first world do of it isn't at all propensity for supporting violence!
I think it’s because extremists turn to extreme measures to ensure their way is the only way. Both extreme left and right wings will use various forms of oppression to impose their ideologies.
"Things like mental illness" Do you have any statistics to support that or is it just an assumption you've made based off a few observations ? Mental illness doesn't play a significant role in political affiliation as opposed to environment, education, life experiences etc... "Propensity for supporting violence" Let's be nuanced here, violence against minorities trying to live their lives and violence (and might I add violent retaliation) against the people in power who are directly spitting on us isn't the same thing. Without the French revolution for example the monarchy would've prospered for lord knows how long "Low intelligence" Lmao how condescending "Social media has really opened my eyes to this" I was originally just gonna be mean and tell you to go outside, but instead I'll just repeat what has got to be my catchphrase atp: social media is NOT a reflection of real life. Think how many far-left/right individuals you've seen express violent intent/have mental illnesses/be of "low intelligence" (whatever you think that means) online, now think just how many of those people there are in this world, and tell me your personal experience reflects reality A few internet folks' actions or personality do not necessarily reflect their or the entire group's political beliefs, take a look at the philosophy of those ideologies instead of people acting crazy on the internet if you want to understand them, because that's a massive lack of critical thinking right here
Come on man, don't be like that. Most of us have no love for the USSR, Stalin or even communism in general. The word you're looking for is tankies, the left wing is a huge spectrum.
@@christiangudmundsson8390 social democrats believe in capitalism so they aren't leftists. The ideology is more like liberalism with strong social safety nets.
At this point social dems are far right I found three coments made by (totally experts) who said FINLAND, SWEDEN AND SWITZERLAND were fascist nations stabilished by the capitalists. Its joever social dems yall are beign slandered@@christiangudmundsson8390
the argument that everyone had a pact with him is actually the worst argument out there. the soviets pact was to annex half a country, the allies pact like czechoslovakia was to try and save/spare half a country. the soviets pact involved gauranteed some death and violence, while the other was trying to avoid it. theres completely different intentions behind them and they're not equal.
Poland was not incorporated into the USSR, and Big J, out of all of the representatives for the post-war division of Europe, proposed and gave Poland the most land from Germany.
Except if you watch the video, Terry himself agrees that there were no misrepresentations here. Admittedly the title of Hakim's video is extremely clickbaity, and what it's actually about is "Nazi Germany and the USSR were never allies, actually" which is a statement that anyone even a little bit educated on the subject would have no problem agreeing with (Terry himself did agree). Terry's criticisms are very fair, some claims by Hakim should've been more substantiated and there are questions left unanswered, but most people are so seeped with Red Scare propaganda that they aren't even ready to have that discussion yet, and I don't think "misrepresentation" is a fair characteristic here.
About Stalin knowing the invation of USSR... That it would be another war against USSR was known by their inteligence since late 1920, they just din't know when in the next 10 or 20 years after the time they knew it (actualy it was kind of predicted by Frederich Engels in one of his late books that it would be one imperialist war, and then another in any time soon after the first so the Soviet saw already the first and where seeing it coming again) it wasn't first known that it would be Germany thought, it was clarified after, at the late 1930. About the preparing of the USSR for the war being insuficient to stop the invasion. Yes it wasn't great but see this, they where making a industrial revolution at the same time they where preparing for war and with poor support of other countrys, and it Russia is an imense borders, and there where nazis supporters to, like in Ukraine under the flag of Stepan Bandera and so on. By the other hand Germany was full prepared and in the end who really won the war in Europe wans't the US, something between 8 by every 10 nazis went down by the hands of the red army and partisans. Cheers from Brasil
The soviets went first to England and France for an alliance, but they were all "not in your lifetime, commie". Poland wasn't also that fond of USSR. So USSR went on it's own and tried to buy as much time to itself as possible. I don't see any problem about them taking half of it, if the literal nazis were going to take it all
I don't understand your line of thinking. Stalin was fine to take what, half of Poland, since Hitler was aiming to take 100%? Wouldn't a better notion be that Stalin shouldn't have taken anything, either? I assume your belief is that Hitler shouldn't have taken anything, and should have been stopped instantly by the Western powers? I believe the same holds true for the Communists. You either have a solid argument somewhere in there, or you're simply pro-Stalin and a Communist.
@@MCharlesPainting fella the soviets didn't want the devils to have their borders directly into USSR and Poland alongside the western allies were of no help. Zero cares about helping polish, even if the soviets did help, they were only worried about protecting the revolution. As I said, the soviets were all alone there. The only time they could buy was as much time as germany's fear of fighting two fronts would give them. Everyone knew the germans would attack the commies, it's in their main ideals.
@@MCharlesPainting I ain't talking about helping no polish, their leaders picked their side for them. The soviets were on their own, the invasion was to put a buffer between german agression and soviet lands, while the germans were still afraid of fighting in two fronts. Who knows what would have happened if there were no nazis in Poland.
Soviet ocupation, saved thousands from the nazis. He's not saying that there were no pact, but there were no secret protocol. There are plenty of evividence to support that, like the signature of Molotov could not be confirmed to be ligitimate. These secret protocol, still is to be found in the ex Soviet archives (we only have the copy that the US "found" in Germany). The spelling (in russian) of various names are grammatically incorrect.
the documents from the soviet archives have been declassified during the 90s, including the pact and it's secret protocols (by the russian government). then later, in 2019 they were published in their full form
I have liked that you're willing to engage with more put there and more opinionated pieces of history content on YT recently. But videoes like this Hakim video is historical revisionism, and I trust you to be verry carefull when watching them that you dont give an impression of them being correct. I used to watch Hakim once, but ever since starting to study history you learn how he works his way arround the truth to spread a political point.
every form of retelling history will have a certain level of bias to get their point across or to make something/them selves look better than it was, there is a reason why the "winners" in history write the history
you literally could have not finished the video by now. You are simply hating on hakim, you provide no counter arguments. Stop hating and enjoy content.
Correct. He blames mostly the west and NATO for Putin's war. Even though Putin himself has said multiple time that Ukraine is not a real country and it is part of Russia. Finland just joined NATO and he only said Finland can do whatever it wants. So much for worrying about NATO next to its border.
@@the0ne809 Blatant lie? he literally has a video talking about the Imperialist ambitions of Putin, he isn't defending Russia, simply illuminating the other side as well.
These takes of his (Hakim) are getting worse and worse. Almost physically painful to listen to the squirming. If he bent over backwards in his apologism any further he'd be standing with his feet on top of his own head.
4:10 the founder of Fascism, Benito Mussolini, used to be a socialist, till the Italian Socialist threw him out of the party because he supported Italy's entry into WW1. And no, Socialism and Fascism are not the same, though they share some common roots (at least according to most of the at least 18 different definitions of fascism), however every kind of Authoritarian Totalitarianism is effectively the same, whatever the original ideological base.
from my understanding, the Germans were still worse. and when people like Hakim and myself talk about stuff like this to defend it, its because by nature of holding the positions we do, we are expected to defend the stuff we don't really think was handled well, and when we bring up stuff like "well the so called good guys, the Americans hold socialism to a standard they rarely meet, both at home and abroad" it just either makes others confused or angry that we're holding up a mirror to the double standard
But talking about Ribbentrop-Molotov and calling it just a non-agression pact is just purely false. You don't have to call it alliance, maybe cooperation, but still. You can talk about topic where there are no good guys honesty (example of WWI where pretty much every country involved is at false with starting the war). Third Reich was evil, but USSR under Stalin was also evil regime, so I don't see why you can't call out both.
@@ozyrysozi6186 and to that, we bring up the fact that they were the last to sign any pacts and that many polticians and businesses from the west were collaborating, which absolutely played a role in appeasement I and I think its foolish to ignore that. and also there is a report by the CIA that shows the US government knows that the strong man image of Stalin is false. that is a declassifed document that I would link if that wouldn't trigger UA-cam's autofilter, but it attributes it to a lack of understanding on the wests part, but its still a myth perpetuated through Operation Mocking Bird channels to this day. also the findings J Arch Getty show a more complex picture of the USSR, and he's the guy that translated all the secret documents and records
@@tekdaystar345 I mean every topic is most often pretty complex. Can we criticise appeasment strategy created and promoted by Neville Chamberlain? Yes, we can also criticise Stalin for cooperating witn Third Reich in pretty important way and even supporting the Nazis economically. Though it doesn'g nit mean that only Soviets support Third Reich economically, not to get me wrong here. But even when we mock appeasment, we can see why Chamberlain pursuit it and how it could be even more logicall than we thing (whole argument about biding your time untill you are ready for war). I don't think you have to mirror double standard to fight with it, you can just prove it wrong and if other person mocks you or just can't engage, then it is their fault as they seem too stubborn to even try taking other perspectives. For Stalin cooperation with Third Reich made sense in many ways, doesn't mean I will call him good or better becouse of it.
@@ozyrysozi6186 yeah, and Hakim doesn’t make that moral statement. Nor do I. Just that it was the only choice left open after Britain and France refused. Russia was on the Lebensraum shtlist you know. If you knew the most advanced military was coming for you, would you not do whatever it took to save yourself until you find a way to fight back?
@@tekdaystar345 Looking at how I would just purge whole military from all the competent people and punish other ones - I think I get why Stalin took a deal haha. I mean I understand why he would accept such a proposal, but Hakim downplays the Molotov-Ribbentrop, saying it wasn't obvious cooperation and dividing of Eastern Europe and Finland by Third Reich and Soviet Union. That's with what I have the biggest problem.
At the 8:00 minute mark. There is just something so bizarrely off for me about seeing an ardent socialist, Soviet appologist, tankie reading ad copy. 😅
@@g1g4_ch4d7hakim is a openly socialidt who uses a freaking socialidt stylized profile picture and constantly ignored soviet gexnocides while denying obvious clues. Toyally not propaganda In that case prageru is also a great source of information
"What about the fact that that's what happened though?"
Have mercy
Adolf:so then i began to build My army so there was never a limitation on germanies armed forces.
Part of me believes these Breadtubers are just using the free market to sell communist fiction.
@@samfire3067 tucker: so why did you guys invade poland?
Adolf and stalin: you see, bilions of years ago when the earth started to cool down...
Timed treaties make sense to me. Things change and I’d rather simply not renew a treaty rather than break/cancel it
true. And breaking a treaty can lead to tarnished reputation and repercussions
They make sense to me also because the fact Government changes, for example every 4-7 years due to election, so it gives a mechanism for a new government to get out of the treaty by simply letting it lapse without renewing it rather than being locked into unwanted treaties or face the potential repercussions of breaking or reneging on a treaty, as @romanpyatibratov4361 points out.
It does make sense to me. Without the treaty they both would have to potentially fight each other from the start, all the while they had no other allies. Make a timed treaty so both can built up and get strong enough to fight against the other enemies. It's purely strategical and not being allies
I wrote a whole reply to this.
YT is terrible sometiems. :(
@@CIndy_The_Skull I swear YT deletes my replies more often when I put more thought into them
I’m all for having nuance conversations, particularly about how the Soviet union was the last power to make a deal with Germany in the build up. but I feel like he’s ignoring the fact that a lot of countries in Eastern Europe particularly those in Poland and Baltic states really didn’t like being under Russian control
Which seems really fair when we look at history of those countries or even recent events at the time.
I'm from Poland and I remember when my great-grandparents talked about WWII they always said that the Red Army was worse than the Wehrmacht. Now, I know it's a complex matter with many factions on both sides with Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS, Red Army, NKVD and so on, but it's quite telling that the common sentiment of many people at the time, unless they were Jewish, was to be more afraid of the Russians.
did these countries showed their resentment during "soviet occupation" or only after? Who are those people you mentioning? All the people? majority of people? only people that said that they didnt liked Soviet Union?
All the hatred towards the USSR. All the claims about occupation. Comes from post-soviet time. As a boogey-tale to justify their terrible conditions in early capitalist state. "we not suffering because corporations privatized everything and exploits us. We suffering because evil soviets occupied us"
Dont get me wrong, there were people during Soviet era who opposed it and were carrying out terrorist acts. Those also infamous for being nazi collaborators. But that's natural for any system and any country. People leaving US and coming to Russia, telling how bad and awful it is in US. People are leaving Russia and coming to US, telling how bad and awful it is in Russia.
@@romanpyatibratov4361 Tankie!
I don't even know where to start... i guess you count the soviets committing genocide of
Poles in 1937-1938 as a "maybe" that Poles didn't like the soviets?
Say what you want about the pact. The USSR still invaded not only Poland, but Finland Romania and the Baltic states as well, before propping up puppet regimes across all of Eastern Europe after the war
About the USSR invasion of Poland from roughly 21:30 in the video, Stephen Kotkin, an American conservative historian who is widely considered one of the most reputable historians on Stalin within America, has some important insights about this, among other things. Kotkin states that the USSR knew that Germany intentionally crossed east of the intended partition of Poland during the invasion, from witnessing the fact that they were eastward + getting to see German military maps. Not only that, but the territory Germany took was also rich in oil. When Big J confronted the Austrian Painter about this, the painter told the military to stand down and retreat from the territory, to which the German military actually deliberately fired on German positions independent of his orders while retreating.
Another thing of note is that Big J thought that the Austrian painter would first demand something like a lease on Ukraine for 99 years rather than invade. This was partially based on previous German acquisitions of territory, like taking the Sudetenland, and demanding territory from Poland (Which Poland refused). The Germans also succeeded in informational warfare by making many fake plans for the invasion that intentionally got leaked. None but the last turned out to be true, so Big J thought the final plan was, based on that and many other factors like thinking Germany wouldn't invade until peace with the UK was made, a fake.
25:24 Kotkin is also just referenced here.
I can’t see a WW2 where the Germans are just kind enough to go around Poland…
Comrade Terry going well on his radicalization
Go away commie lmfao😂 it's the furher terry
In addition to dividing up Poland the pact also set spheres of influence in Finland, the Baltics the Balkans, and Eastern European countries. It also set the framework for Hitler to import large amounts of oil, iron and other raw materials which he would use to build up his army. Something that Stalin would greatly regret.
it was more of a 'dont fucking go past this line in case borders begin changing' than a 'we're gonna build an empire in europe together' (ridiculous since the soviets and fascists despised each other).
the trade was more payment for the non agression, the soviets had to give the germans something concrete so that they would actually take the non agression and allow the USSR to build up.
He was a gambling man
Yeah it was more of a way for the Soviets to extend time to get ready for the inevitable. Both sides knew what was gonna happen just not when. This was a long game plan as the longer the USSR had time to rebuild its army and build up industry the left Germany had since it was already losing resources. So Germany had to quickly take out everyone and the USSR just had to gain more time.
Hitler hated Communism. Stalin only cared about his own personal power and foolishly assumed Hitler was the same. He actually trusted him and was genuinely surprised when Hitler attacked. Stalin gave him not just concrete but desperately needed oil and iron used to build the German army.
I’ve never considered the pact and blaming USSR and NAZI Germany invading Poland as a propaganda attempt to link communism with facism. I think Hakim is a bit biased in his arguments here pretending USSR didn’t really want to invade Poland. It was blatant both Germany and Russia wanted to invade Poland, it was just a disagreement of when the invasion would happen. All major powers assumed a war was on the Horizon, but everyone including Italy and Russia was surprised when Germany started the war years before expected.
He seems to forget that germany before talking to the ussr literaly wanted to reach the agreement with poland to split the ussr(issue of danzig proposed by poland later became the german ultimatum and poland was suposed to gain ukraine after the ussr was dealt with) poland didn't agree with the propostition yet the non-agression pact was the same(like even if they settled on spliting the ussr it wouldn't be written it would be an understanding). Signing a deal with the ussr is as absurd not bc the ideoliegies differ so much bc it was the second propostiton. German economy would collapse without war(MEFO bills) so it was a now or never situation. If poland ceded danzig in 39 it would mean that they agreed to the unwritten proposal if they disagreed germany had a backup(the ussr). They needed a big country in the east(at the time poland or the ussr) to guarante that in case of invasion of france they wouldn't be stabbed in the back(again eather poland is on your side or ussr and you deal with poland so that they won't invade). If you are intrested on the topic i recomend reading "the beck-ribbentrop pact" some poles now are mad at the sanation government for not agreeing bc eather we defeat the ussr the allies defeat germany poland betrays germany poland gets what it wants or poland and germany lose wich literaly wouldn't change anything(stalin still would give all the land to poland bc he didn't know he would get germany for himself so he wanted to push the border as much west as possible poland wouldn't be annexed eather bc as stalin said they would be pain in the ass)
*either (sorry)
34:00 He is not against ukranians, he is most likely not thrilled about ukranian right wingers since he is a socialist... but saying that he is against ukranians feels a bit iffy?
like most things that come out of Hakims mouth
@@talismanbrunski2582 It is a bit iffy and an unfair comment by Terry though. There was nothing in that statement to suggest that he doesn't like Ukrainians. If he doesn't then he should like Russians even less, since he has denounced the invasion of Ukraine by Russia
The Western European powers ( Britain and France) were far more concerned about the Soviets than the Germans, as Hitler knew and lead to his idea that Britain would either side with the Germans against Stalin or at least have no dog in that fight. In the early 1930’s Hitler had more support in Britain and France than in Italy. And the Congress of Vienna had reformed Poland only to allow the Czar to become the ruler of Poland. Stalin felt the Soviets could not be imperialists.
One big problem with Hakim is how he ignores the historical context of the Russian Empire in how Eastern European states viewed the Soviet Union. Is it really a big shock that Poland didn't trust Stalin or the USSR? Was it because of some antisemitic conspiracy that Hakim implies, or was it 100s of years of Russian imperialism and attempts to subjugate Poland?
And also need to add to that war in 1920 where Bolshevics invaded Poland. It was still fresh in memory and every politician or even citizen would remember that.
The USSR was embarrassed in the war and wanted revenge
@ozyrysozi6186 that's the sort of thing ppl like hakim attempt to ignore in their apologetics for stalinism. That's why he glossed over it in less than 2 seconds.
@@mosser-wm3dx Which is worth critique in my opinion for sure. But I agree with you.
@@jeffslote9671 Especilly Stalin who took part in the polish campaign as he was a political officer under Voroshilov in Cavalry Army of Budyonny.
He pretty much ignors the Baltikum and what happened there and also the joint Victory Parade of the Red Army and the german Wehrmacht in Brest-Litowsk.
If it would just have been a devensive Pact I could see his point, but not with the joint Invasion of Poland. If anything the USSR would have profited from a puffer State inbetweent themselves and Germany.
And yeah, what else was meant with the "reorganisation of Poland"? Come on. Of course the Soviets knew what this meant.
It's an agreement on multiple decisions set to take place over a set time. *so it's a pact.*
19:25 the soviets performed poorly at the start of the german invasion because they were still preparing for a war with germany at this time. Soviet planners had planned a war with the nazis for some time in 1943.
I think we spend far too much time trying to speculate on the "intentions" of various historical figures or groups and end up conflating the actions of potentially millions of people in incalculable different situations with the actions of a single person or ideology with little to no causative link between that ideology and the aforementioned actions. We can't know for certain what was in someone's mind and it's unproductive to speculate when all of our actions are dictated by the material conditions we've all existed in up to any given point. I think a more productive discussion would be to set out the desired goals in a given situation, consider the material and historical conditions in play, analyze whether or not the steps taken were more or less successful in achieving those goals and then determine which steps could be useful to repeat in the future for achieving similar goals and which ones should be avoided.
Moralizing and speculating on intentions just leads to oversimplified quibbling about who is the "bad guy" and has to take the blame and who gets to feel smug and self-important while distracting from the actual productive process of determining how to reproduce and improve positive outcomes and avoid negative ones. There is no ontological evil to hunt down and defeat.
“Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems.”
- Michael Brooks
Well said. People who fixate too much on historic figures to understand history usually have a narrative they want to push or they are contrarians that just want to undermine popular opinion to feel smart. MLK being a socialist or a capitalist is a good example on this channel. You could paint him either way using his actions or words but at the end of the day what mattered was the current politician environment and what policies the man actually ran on.
About what Mr Terry said with regard to the Pact and its effectiveness + the motivation behind it for the USSR. If the USSR, whose military was in pretty poor shape, was to invade Germany, particularly with British and French approval, it would likely be invaded shortly after by the British and French, probably with the economic support of America. It could also be that the aforementioned powers join Germany in its defence. Big J also thought, which may not be a correct assessment but still informs his reasoning, that the UK was more likely than not to support Germany if they invaded the USSR. The weak USSR could not possibly face all of these powers at once. He needed the other powers to fight each other to weaken each other, while giving the USSR time to prepare, preferably to around 1943-44. While the pact was still a success, it was nowhere near a success as most people, in the USSR and outside of it, thought it was going to be.
Next to nobody expected France to fall so quickly to German invasion. I think German command expected the invasion to surrender to take around a year, to which the French expected that they would never fall due to their prior defensive preparations. Relating to this, Blitzkrieg was far more effective than the USSR could predict. I'm pretty sure the doctrines of Tukhachevsky with him around, despite being made on the presumption of mobile warfare, could not have succeeded to a greater degree than OTL, especially considering that his more modern doctrines informed much of pre-1941 USSR military doctrines.
Yeah, USSR was on their own and acted accordingly.
It was more of a cocktail.
A Molotov cocktail ;)
Amusing considering the origin of the term relates to the same person.
Hakim also ignores the military collaboration. Russia allowed Germany to avoid scrutiny by testing and training in Russia to avoid Versailles treaty violations
it's ironic that a game Hoi4 taught me about how many time Europe making a (peace) treaty that benefit the N@zi before even the Soviet make one at all.
You mean checkoslovakia?
It wasn't an extensive trade alliance and they invaded nothing with the nazis, but go on.
Well, we don't talk about Zaolzie here...
@@lloydgush they allowed germans to invade Czechoslovakia. Pretty much said "yeah, we agree, you allowed to occupy that country. We will not interfrere"
Without asking the Czechoslovakia itself.
Furthermore why USSR not allowed to occupy territory? it's not polish anyway. Poland occupied these lands first
@romanpyatibratov4361 "allowed" they just didn't defend checkia from nazi germany.
Quite different from invading and taking poland with the soviets.
@@lloydgush What about Poland annexing Zaolzie
Must be nice to pick and choose which parts of history to believe
yeah liberals amirite?
@@americancommunist6076 that's what they do
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again..."
Oh the Germans. So kind of them to have went around Poland & mean of the Soviets to invade.
Wait, you mean the Germans invaded Poland. Well shoot. Should the soviets have went around Poland.
Poland. Plain and simple. If it was not a non-aggression pact with no offensive provisions, then Poland wouldn't have been invaded from both sides. Allies had just as much a casus belli on Soviet Union as well as the Third Reich.
this is untrue, see the reactions of the leadership of the allies to the soviet intervention. The polish government didn't exist by the time the soviets intervened and it was basically like the soviets eating up territory.
Somebody doesn't understand what a casus belli is.
@@BloodHarzard Yeah sounds like you don't.
@@americancommunist6076 Revisionist much? Completely untrue. There's always some Soviet apologists gotta try to make up lies.
Also Stalin had purged his military prior to the invasion by Germany.
and it was good
a good thing tbh, you want your military under control in any country
@@americancommunist6076 Oh noooo Stalin apologists are sooooo delusional.
No, he purged most of his senior military staff and veterans who knew what they were doing... This is largely agreed on being the result of paranoia, they were not disloyal... Not only that, this is also nearly universally agreed on that this was a MAJOR contributing cause for how ineffective the soviets were at stopping the German invasion and the MAIN reason MILLIONS of soviets died in the defence.
@@luciencron6655lmao killed lots of competent generals
@@Dan1elAndrade competent doesn't mean loyal to the cause
I'm not sure if when he mentioned the US and demoracy, then showed the painting Manifest Destiny by John Gast if he did so to be ironic, or he just didn't know what the painting was about.
Also "The Soviets made many mistakes...." Yeah, like THE KATYN MASSACRE!
My main complaint is that on this channel, as well as on many others, the presenters do not take into account the class contradictions in society when studying historical processes. Hakim also doesn't outline them clearly enough. Specifically, that in Poland, Scandinavia (Finland) and the Baltics after the First World War, literally fascist states sympathetic to the Nazis were established, established by the local capitalists and former monarchs to suppress the internal workers' revolutionary movements. When we talk about "Poland", we must not forget that this is a bourgeois state belonging to a small number of capitalists, with the help of which they oppress and exploit the local population - the proletariat. These two groups of people have diametrically opposed interests, it just so happened that they all call themselves "Poles" and live in Poland. This is especially advantageous for capitalists and their bourgeois historians, because in this way it is possible to unite the people, to unite them into one bundle (fascis). For example, in the Baltics during the "invasion" of the Red Army, the proletariat, the workers greeted their brothers and sisters with embraces (because before that there were decades of repressions and oppression, the Communist Party and the labor movement were destroyed, the workers were overexploited, it was then that we got the secret political police KAPO, which still exists today), while the bourgeois government had run away. Like, for example, in France, where the bourgeois government gave the country to the Nazi invaders, while the proletarians, led by the Communist Party, took up guerrilla warfare. Why would Soviet Russia, with a workers' state, a huge country, with a bunch of internal problems and a huge population, also forcibly annex half of Poland, except for a tactical maneuver? A proletarian state by definition cannot be an imperialist, how can some workers exploit other workers? Why did Soviet Russia and the USSR allow neighboring states to voluntarily secede or join throughout their history? Why did the USSR spend a huge amount of resources to help other proletarian states, and not exploit them? And if it did seize, exploit, as the schizo-Trotskyists say in their theory of the "nomenklatura", then where did all these resources went, where are all these legendary dozens of cars, mansions, yachts and millions in Stalin's offshore accounts?
P.s. You talk about the "Polish independence", but is this independence for whom exactly? For the capitalists-exploiters or for the proletariat?
P.p.s When Hakim talks about the US, he compares the policies of two superpowers: the bourgeois state of the US, under the guise of democracy, brings destruction and exploitation - imperialism, while the workers' state of the USSR brought real freedom to the workers of other nations.
P.p.p.s On US helping the USSR. After the world saw what Nazi Germany was capable of, the US decided to side with the good guys. Not long before, they had called the USSR their worst enemy (and continued doing so immediately after the War), were selling resources and sponsoring Germany, which was then actively developing its heavy industry and military potential (hmm, I couldn't even imagine why the Germans were doing that).
Pe.pe.sya Of course, this is a rather simplified comment, but I can't give a whole lecture here with all the nuances, I just wanted to convey the main idea - class struggle.
*the shortest leftist comment on the internet* moment
an average peasant living in the ussr during the 20s and 30s would disagree that it was better under the soviet rule...
I'm sorry, but you are biased to communism. And there's a lot of guesswork going on without rationalisation. "greeted their brothers and sisters" and the assumption of the "Benevolent Proletariat Soviet government"
Communist revolts were rising all over Europe in the 1920s. And perhaps some Polish elites were anti-communist, or perhaps more anti-Bolsheviks enough to look favourably towards Fascism at first. But it's not a call to claim they are in league with neither the USSR nor the Reich.
Calling the resistance of occupation, a conspiracy by the fascist Burgoues and saying Proletariat government cannot be imperialist by nature sounds like a perfect excuse to absolve any invasion.
Much like how the US would say "We're not invading, we're freeing the oppressed and bringing democracy. If you resist it, you must be aligned with dictators." When you and I know it's an excuse to establish a co-operating puppet government that would benefit geopolitically.
@@ImpletorPotato What the Soviet did was replace the Czar as an 'electable' position (i.e. you can manoeuvre politically to get it), replacing the cross with Hammer and Sickle, the Bible with the Manifesto and the priests with commissars.
It's the same corrupt system, façaded to appear proletariat. Just another form of psuedo-feudal repression.
LMAO FINLAND FASCIST LOL
SWEDEN FASCIST 😂😂😂😂
NO WAY MAN SOCIAL DEMS ARE GETTING SLANDERED NO WAY
CANT EVEN BE INVADED BY THE SOVIETS AND IM ALREADY A FASCIST
Also lol, which idiot owns a shop and supports fascism, aka corporatism.
You just repeated what the dumbest communists say, at least repeat what more decent ones say.
Hakim is a tankie what did you expect from him
So how long until Hakim releases a video explaining why the Secret Speech was motivated by Khruschev's anger over getting picked last for the Party's weekly snowball fights?
the secret speech was motivated by kruschev's own opportunism and the entire thing is factually incorrect
@@americancommunist6076 Doesn't count, you have to make a video about it.
Manlet rage from Big J and King Corn.
Mr.Terry, please go on The Deprogram and have a whole history episode with them. Itd be a lot of fun to see you and the group talk history at a high level respectfully.
I'd enjoy that. I was thinking of it and wondering what the topic in history should be. It must be more specific location and time in history to keep a conversation grounded.
I think something America-Centric as Teacher is American. Perhaps USA in Latam, the banana republics, etc. could be interesting. Perhaps US labour history, Teacher seems interested in this subject from the Second Thought video that talked about Debbs, the Wobblies, and so on.
Do they have people on their podcast that disagree with them? I assumed it was just a socialist circle jerk.
Yea, I’m new here, and I’d like to see it. All those commie guys can be very chill and respectful especially if that’s what they receive.
I genuinely think they want to teach the truth, and the topics they cover usually viewed in poor light with bad intentions.
History never changes but our understanding and view of it absolutely does! Not to mention everyone involved has their own perspective or things, one reliable account can change the narrative in a big way even decades after that event has made it into the history books.
It’s hard to deny the red scare and McCarthyism made vague discussion of Marx or his thoughts and theories very scary for Americans… I’ve had to teach myself everything after school and finding sources you can trust is very hard.
I think it's fair to say we have seen expansionistic tendencies in basically all ideological movements. Fascism, Liberalism, Communism, Free Market Capitalism ( think the Dole Fruit wars in the so-called Banana Republics) , Fuedalism . Hell even the Roman Republic was obviously incredibly expansionistic . Or even early USA with manifest destiny . Sometimes it takes the form of a military occupation, sometimes you have puppet governments and sometimes there's literal transfer of territory. People will always use arguments that make a case why territory is actually "theirs" by right because different populations moved in, and/or because they need to help an opressed group ( for example, middle eastern christians and muslim women, were used to justify the wars in the middle east) . You even see this kind of argument super strongly from the Russian propagandists with Ukraine ( Ukrainians are just Russians who want to feel special, after all... ) , and modern Russia is certainly a "free market capitalist" society, even though it is not a democracy, and the whole show is run by some mobs and Oligarchs.
Personally, appeals to ethnicity and some thousand-year-old border doesn't ring as legitimate to me. The idea that someone "owns" land because of their racial identity seems like a quick walk to extreme racial discrimination and weird investigations into people's ethnicity. It doesn't matter if there were lots of Russians and Germans living in Poland. Maybe some old borders that were drawn up were unfair. Half of Germany has towns with Slavic names because the whole place was taken over by Germanic groups 700 years ago. It doesn't matter if Ukrainians are actually Russians or if there were lots of Russians in Ukraine. When you invade a place you are doing direct violence to the people who live there, and some old historical or racial argument doesn't justify it. Even legitimate arguments such as appeals to womens rights are only half legitimate : You must inspect if the argument is made out of real concern for these rights but to justify expansionism, which is an evil in every political ideology. Take the Iraq/Afghanistan war : did womens' lives get better, were they able to better escape the opression of radical Islam because of these conflicts? I don't think so.
So in conclusion some of those arguments really don't matter, they're standard war justifications any political ideology makes. I do think that from the Soviets perspective, what they got out of the deal was a concrete buffer to keep the Nzs away for a while. I think that nobody is entitled to using another state as a "buffer" or "proxy" though, you're basically offloading your political problems by using another state as a war playground. Everyone does it but from a moral standpoint you can't justify it. I think in this case as is often the case the Soviets were bad but it's not really a feature of Communism, it's a political problem that exists in every nation state from every ideological perspective.
@@Saironi It just that even in peaceful life we fight and compete with each other, so i think it's more about bad sides of human nature
@@romant1596 I don't really like appeals to human nature... I studied neuroscience for my bachelor's and I think you can make evolutionary arguments for basically anything... Tldr I think evolutionary psychology and appeals to human nature - it's a inherently biased field.
No I think historical context is everything and we have a moral obligation to curb a desire to dominante, but this requires a certain amount of trust that in forfeiting the quest for dominance you won't be dominated back. Those are conditions that just have never been historically met and we have never had the courage and grace to try.
@@Saironi then the best course of action is to proceed according to game theory
But not everyone will understand it, and not everyone even wants to stop these problems as they benefit from it
@@romant1596game theory is written by people who also believe they know the rules of human behaviour. It's just another appeal to naturalism. As are most economic theories. In my opinion.
In this way, I am much more optimistic and naive about human nature. Who knows what people will do with changes in technology, ideology and material conditions.
I don't think our fate is written in stone by our evolution or game theory. I think it's in our hands , mostly, the hands of oligarchs. But that's historically contingent, it's not a law of nature.
Sir I have not finished the video yet, but I take issue with something you say around the 30 minute mark. You say that hindsight is what allows us to see the truth behind the Nazis early rise to power, when in fact that’s not the case. Hitler stated his goals plainly in mein kempf, the west just had more in common with the Nazis than the ussr.
Which was a lie, austrian man was just delusional about hid anglo saxon fanfic of superiority that he couldnt accept that the soviet political and economic system (despide not beign identical) was more similar to germany then the western capitalism.
It becomes obvious when by 1939 germany's only real trade partners were sweden, itsly and the biggest...The ussr.
the west, and usa in particular, have made alliances with the worse people in existence to fight against communism.
Geography is key to the Russian psyche. The flat open plains on the west offer no defensive advantage.
Good point
That flat open field is sooooo big that it still offers some defense, especially before mechanized transport… but with poor roads, train tracks too small to use… but obviously in modern times it’s certainly less effective but distance is often a good deterrent
@@swayback7375It would've been true If most of Russia's industry and population wouldn't be concentrated on European side making the size of flat field useless. I mean, it could be used in this way but only if the aggression comes from East Asia like China, not from Europe.
I would just like to point out that there’s a big difference between Germany claiming that Germans inside of Poland were being oppressed versus actual Ukrainians and Belarusians being oppressed within the occupied western part of those modern day countries. Poland had no claim to land that went almost right up next to Minsk.
exactly, poland stole those territories in the polish-soviet war. and by the time the USSR intervened the germans had annihilated the polish government so can it really be called an invasion if theres absolutely no resistance. Yes, but its still humorous.
What do you mean no claim? There were Polish people even on the soviet side of the border and even just Polish part of the Polish-Lithuenian Commonwealth streched into USSR.
Hakim just literally said that the invasion of eastern Poland by the soviets was done to save as many Polish people as possible... Can you sink lower than this?
Maybe Holocaust denial? I mean it's down there damn near either way. Hakim is an admitted Muslim-Communist apologist.
Save? Not entirely but It did buy time to the USSR to build up in preparation for the Nazi war machine.
The USSR is justified on that front that if they had less then the time that was granted of the history we know now it’s probably would’ve ended in Soviet defeat 🤷♂️
@@g1g4_ch4d7 yeah you are moving the goal post now
Yes, the Soviets were trying to genocide the Poles first. They couldn't let the Germans steal their victims.
@@g1g4_ch4d7 I love when arguments are ignored and we move the flag post, that's totally how you win
The point of Hakims video isn’t that the soviets didn’t want to invade Poland, didn’t plan to invade Poland, nor that the invasion was good. Just that the Soviets didn’t side with the Nazis, Didn’t agree with the Nazis, and were mostly reacting to the nazis. He acknowledges that the main justification for the invasion was regaining land, but the invasion wouldn’t of happened when it did without nazi pressure.
Did the video do a good job of that? Thats for you to decide.
He gets a bit enfuriated bur it's understandable to hate imperialists
@@danielvisky invading and taking land that used to belong to your EMPIRE isn't imperialism?
Which is even worse, since the secret protocols of the treaty and the massive amount of raw resourses that the moskals gave to the krauts talks about how much Stalin liked choking on hitler's dick
@@danielvisky Stalin is a literal imperialist.
@@danielvisky If it's to hate imperialism then why is the Soviet Union not targetted by Hakim the same as the US?
Pact or not, the two powers absolutely invaded Poland at about the same time and divided the country without any appreciable conflict between them. There are pictures of German and Soviet officers meeting in Poland in which they appear downright friendly with each other. That's what happened, and it's bad enough for the USSR.
You're usually friendly to those you don't want to engage in conflict with
@@danielvisky Polite, not friendly.
@@danielviskythe moskals literally gifted thousands of jews for the krauts to kill
That and the resourses that they gave them, which were instrumental to bypass the blokade imposed by the allies
It wasn’t a matter of German, Soviet, or Polish control. Because of the Germans, Polish control was out of the question.
I'm seeing a distinct lack of Socialists in this comment section compared to other Hakim reactions. Hmm, weird 🤔
because there’s a bunch of brainwashed weirdos this time around
the kids with nazi collaborator ancestors came out to defend their right to love nazis
@@luciencron6655 yep, that's what I'm seeing mostly
@@luciencron6655 Nah that’s not the problem
Because they haven't got their Starbucks yet.
I haven't watched the video yet but I will say, as someone with pretty similar politics to Hakim, thanks for these reactions. It's always good to see opinions on these sort of videos from people who either disagree with them or just aren't communists/socialists, but most responses/reactions are overly aggressive or/(Typically) and mostly just nonsense/repeating blatant propaganda so it's nice to see more reasonable and polite responses/analysis from someone who knows enough about history to actually point out anything the original videos get wrong. I don't think I phrased that very well, but I'm very tired and I presume that you know what I meant so I'm leaving it how it is.
Edit: After watching the video I have a few notes.
1. His point about the supposed partitioning of Poland is that there isn't enough evidence to say that it happened and the USSR wasn't acting in a way that would make sense if it was a planned thing. Yes the provision was that if Poland was invaded it would be split between the countries, but it was proposed by the Germans and there isn't any evidence that there was a planned invasion or that the USSR wanted an invasion (That's not to say that the USSR wouldn't have wanted to control Poland, of course it did, in its opinion a socialist government is far superior to a capitalist one and Poland would be better off as part of the USSR, also of course more resources for the USSR would be good, especially thanks to its current state), additionally the USSR accepting the term isn't evidence of them wanting an invasion, more so it just being in their opinion a Poland split between them would be better than a Poland controlled by the Nazis. His other point was that the USSR was completely unprepared for the invasion, which wouldn't be normal if the invasion was planned, but would be normal if their side of the invasion was a hasty response to unexpected German actions.
2. His point wasn't that the Soviet invasion was good (As I presume you understand), just that it was not as bad as that of the Nazis. While obviously invading Poland was a horrible thing to do, they would have seen the invasion of half of Poland as a lesser evil than letting the much worse Nazi invasion cover all of Poland. He gave some reasons why he thinks the Soviet invasion wasn't as bad as that of the Nazis, another one of course is that the Soviets weren't committing genocide in their conquered territories. While there were war crimes as is typical for wars (Though from what I've heard (So don't necessarily believe this without fact checking it first) a lot of the supposed soviet war crimes showed a lot of signs of Nazi war crimes and the only people claiming that the Soviets committed them at the time were the Nazis), Hakim also pointed out that most of these happened later on in the war and the early occupation was in comparison fairly peaceful.
3. He has nothing against Ukrainians, he just said that at the time some groups of people including some Ukrainians fought for the Nazis against the Soviets thanks to an antisemitic conspiracy. He didn't say Ukrainians were bad or more likely to believe in conspiracies, just that at the time some small groups of Ukrainians believed in a conspiracy.
It's important that we retain the ability to discuss issues. I personally disagree with most points hakim made, but we should always be open to hearing what others are thinking and actually listening. The moment we stop talking is the moment we open the doors to violence.
I do appreciate that he did include some of his resources in the video. So many now a days just create a video, and automatically, I must believe everything that video says just because they said it!
It is only natural for people to be defensive when it comes to communism. Many suffered in Eastern Europe for half a century, because of either mismanagement of the economy or simply because of gen*cide. So when people (most often Americans) say they want communism while ignoring it's many faults, people get defensive. Not to say the system itself can never work, there are a handful of instances where it has worked, but Hakim's method of ignoring all criticism of communism while hand-waving all the crimes of these regimes will not help his cause.
Stalin taking all of Ukraine's wheat production, dumping it on the open maket cheaply as a publicity stunt to show off the superiority of the Soviet Union's collective farms, and leaving thd Ukrainians to starve to death may have had something else to do with many Ukrainians joining with the Nazis.
One thing I don't like of Hakim is the constant mocking of the West whenever he gets a chance, like my guy we already understand you don't like us, who are you doing this for?
@knighthunter1791 Well, I think that is pretty clear! I mean, we are in October. It's been 126 years, probably a big month for him!
1941
Polish Gov in Exile: Hey, Soviet Union, Now that we're all allies, can you give us back our solders and officers that you interned so we can attack the Nazis together.
Soviet Union: 😳
Polish Gov in Exile: What's with that look?
Soviet Union: They..... Ummm... Oh! They escaped to Manchuria! Yeah that's it!
Polish Gov in Exile:🤨
@@jtilton5 no dealing with the bourgeoisie
@@danielvisky womp womp the polish goverment was anti-elitist aswell so yeah quit with the socialist nonsense.
Germany aswell was saying "we hate the rich" at the time, ARE YOU IMPLYING YOU ARE A NAZ-??? 🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱
Vaush moment
@@HOI4notsoproplayer so anti-elitist they chose to side with the elites of England and France. Ah the germans were so hating the rich they didn't depose any of them but that specific religious group we know about.
@@HOI4notsoproplayer anti elitist while siding with Europe's elites? Germans anti-rich while only targeting one specific religious group of rich people? Looney
What do you even mean? Interwar Poland was a horrific nightmare where the well off played at being western high society as regular people wasted away in squalor and filth. Anti-elitist must be some kind of a joke
NGL, I've been waiting on this one UA-camr, What Why How, to release his video critical of Hakim, which he said he is working on for quite a while. Watching this video makes me feel like I'm cheating. It's like I have the cheat sheet for potential responses to Hakim.
lmao itll be funny to just see classic nonsense pulled from news articles and no primary sources i guess
@@americancommunist6076 My favourite is going to responding to whataboutism with whataboutism, then saying his whataboutism is justified because states have a right to defend themselves (Ignore the origins of WW1) and that everyone but the West started the conflict (WW2).
Hopefully, you’ve now realized that it takes a long time to make an honest critique video about Hakim because there’s not much to critique in the first place. He always quotes his sources.
@@americancommunist6076 so like a Michael Parenti book??
It doesn't matter what you call it. The facts are that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland together, conquered it, held a joint victory parade, and then divided conquered territories between themselves. Building a narrative the way it's done in that video is literally historical revisionism and totalitarian apologism.
And also they changed the secret agreement in terms of spheres of influence as Third Reich at first got Lithuania, but Soviets pushed for it in exhange of some more of polish land (if I remember correctly). So I doubt it can be callled just non-agression pact in any way. Both cooperated in dividing the Eastern Europe and Finland.
Totalitarism is a meme, and well, the talk about the spheres of influence was totally warranted. Or would you rather have moustache man right on your borders.
@@TheBigWall3284”totalitarianism is a meme”
Found the psychopath
@@jordanclark4635 it's a literal cold war meme coined to legitimate horseshoe theory.
Also. Found the dumbass! See, two can play this game.
Its true tho@@jordanclark4635
12:00 barely learning about that myself, very enlightening to learn this
Then I suppose it's weird both armies had a joint parade in Poland.
they were more trying to show up the other
@@americancommunist6076They marched under victory arches that displayed the Swastika alongside the Hammer and Sickle.
Russian and Soviet historians would later deny the parade occurred.
11:28 I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Terry. The consequences count for much more than the language used and if I'm not mistaken a lot of the Soviet archives from the 30s and 40s are still under lock and key, so we won't know about any potential secret side agreements from the Soviet side till these sources get released and even if there isn't anything, who is to say that Stalin, who killed about 20 million Soviet citizens by the way, hadn't any inconvenient files removed.
A lot of them were released during 1989... And it even includes the famine, drought records, and what was the response of Stalin on the "Holodomor".
Which debunks the claim of "Ukrainian Genocide".
@@Real_OSHA_Unsafety_Engineer Well, depending on how one defines Genocide, you're right. Letting more than 10 percent of the population of a country starve, while the fields have by far enough grain to feed them, doesn't count. Even if it is used as a measure to force the kulaks into the kolkhoz, it still doesn't count.
Anyway, more than 3 million people, at the low end, died, but to quote Stalin: "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
To be completely honest with you, I don't think killing10% of a population counts as Genocide, it's mass murder and a crime against humanity, for sure, but Genocide it's not. Attempted Genocide: yes, completed, no. Therefore, I actually agree with you, the Holodomor was an attempted Genocide, at most, though everybody who kills millions of innocent people deserves to burn in hell anyway, in my opinion.
Also, that the Holodomor accounts just for 15 to 20% of Stalin's total body count of 20+ million.
Just to make the point clear, to me a Genocide is only complete, if the whole people is dead and/or it gets wiped out from history. Fortunately, there have been no completed Genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries, as far as I can tell.
Though unfortunately not for a lack of trying, Armenia, Holodomor, Holocaust, Rwanda, Dafur to name but the four that came to my mind.
@@MS-io6kl
Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.
"Grains fields enough to feed them"
- The series of droughts from 1920s to 1930s led to food production output reduced significantly in Ukraine. This was is the soviet archives especially citing in agricultural report in 1920 to 1930.
"Letting more than 10 percent of the population of a country starve, "
Famine is caused by multiple events that occurred in USSR one of them is the growing migrating population to the industrial region in southern Russia, with food output reduced by series of droughts.
"Anyway, more than 3 million people, at the low end, died, but to quote Stalin: "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic."
Leonard Lyons in “The Washington Post” wrote this quote attributing to Stalin, but there's no evidences nor links that that Lyons could prove that Stalin did say that quote. And even then, this quote existed before Stalin's period. 1759 a classics scholar named Beilby Porteus published a work titled “Death: A Poetical Essay”, In 1916 an anarchist publication based in California called “The Blast”, In 1925 a journalist named Kurt Tucholsky wrote a piece in a German newspaper, In 1956 the German novel “Der Schwarze Obelisk” by the prominent author Erich Maria Remarque was released.
"Therefore, I actually agree with you, the Holodomor was an attempted Genocide, at most, though everybody who kills millions of innocent people deserves to burn in hell anyway, in my opinion. "
There has been a series of post-Soviet Era journalists and historians who went to Soviet Archives in 1989 that disproves the support claim of "holodomor is a genocide" because first it has no clear intent, the genocide doesn't applied because they are Ukrainians, and all of the populace of USSR experienced the similar conditions of famine. Professors R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft state the famine was man-made but unintentional. They believe that a combination of rapid industrialization and two successive bad harvests (1931 and 1932) were the primary causes of the famine. Hiroaki Kuromiya founds no "engineered" and orchestrated order of genocide, and even further aside from scholars. There's a lot of scholars who are still in debate of whether "Holodomor" is a genocide or just a human failure to response in a disaster.
End note: If killing groups of people counts as genocide for you even without intent nor engineered orders nor actions. This would make western governments even more liable to a lot of atrocities to be counted as genocide. And even to take this further by your logic, you would also count a lot of western proxy wars as "attempted" genocide, see the problem is that you are just looking at numbers and if it reaches certain threshold you immediately counts them as genocide. You are the person you critic by design.
If the invasion of Poland is an ok defensive measure kind of hangs on if Germany would have invaded the USSR eventually anyway. I believe yes.
USSR wasn't unprepared for the German invasion. They just needed more time. They had been working on their military force at full speed. Something that showed when their factories after a while started performing at full speed and beat the Germans.
Poles where never gonna be left alone as long as Hitler hated slavs, jews and socialists.
The American concentration camps with japanese in them was very silly compared to the real prospect of Nazi Germany taking all of Poland...
The second one being a real fear and the first one not so much...
Well, Nazi Germany, according to that logic, was also defending itself when its war with the USSR started. And all 27,5 million people that were killed by Nazi Germany are totally justifiable because Nazi Germany was only defending itself from the USSR.
Here to recommend Badempanada's video "Guns, Germs and Steel: A Historical Critique". I was made to read this book in my publicly funded high school in North Carolina a little over a decade ago, but it's ahistorical propaganda. You've probably encountered this book at some point, and I think you would be a good person to watch this and add some extra context :) love the vids
I think it is very good to take a nuanced look at subjects like this, but, I also think Hakim ignores some rather relevant nuances.
For example, the Polish USSR war during 1920/21... Ukraine was about to become part of the USSR, and one could argue part of the east of Ukraine already was, but a significant part wasn't.
And in general, I think he quite often conveniently ignores nuances when they are not in favor of the narrative that the USSR shouldn't be blamed for their role in the division of Poland in 1939.
There is much more to this, the obvious part is Poland being split between the USSR and Germany, but as you already bring up, there is the issue of what happened in the baltics. But there also is the little detail of Germany and the USSR having worked together on weapons programs for much of the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, which is a big factor in Germany being able to re-arm as fast as they did in the 1930s. USSR - German ties go back longer and deeper than just one pact from 1939, both before and after moustage-man came to power. 'alliance of convenience'? Maybe, likely even, as both sides knew they were going to see another war with eachother in due time.
There is a very different approach to this. Yes, Stalin certainly was looking for ways to protect the USSR from the nazis, but he opted to go the same route Russia always took for this, expand so the fight will be further away from the heartland. Pushing west makes total sense there, the more west you go, the sorter the front will be (a simple consequence of geography in Europe which has been a huge deal for Russia for quite some time now, it still is). As Stalin knew his army would stand no chance if invaded in 1939, he'd do anything to postpone that for as long as possible.
There is another issue I take with Hakim's argument, the non aggression pact is not the problem, the secret clause of it is. Arguing other countries also had a non aggression pact hence is not a good argument.
11:20 Without the pact the Nazis simply would have occupied all of Poland
Yep
@@McHobotheBobo But they couldn't have gone west.
Any discussion of the M - R Pact without first mentioning the Munich agreement is dishonest from the start. Stalin offered to enforce the Treaty of Marseille by de-militarizing the nazi in 1936, and Western powers laughed him out of the room to signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1937. The M-R Pact was only signed in 1939.
Western powers were making Billions lending money and equipping the illegal nazi army.
While I was watching the video, a thought occurred to me. A thought experiment, if you like. Let's say there is a country in part of which there is a population that you consider your own. You know that this country will soon be attacked by a second country, and with a high probability the invasion will be successful. You are currently negotiating with the second country.
Question: "How would you formulate the terms of the agreement to guarantee the safety of the population that you consider your own?"
I don't want to get into the debate right now about whether this was Stalin's true intention. There are many comment threads where this is discussed. But the funny thing is that I couldn't come up with better wording than article 2 of the secret part.
Mr. Terry, just want to let you know that you are really awesome and cool. Have a great day.
I think the important thing that Hakim is touching on here is motivations. Generally, I think he did what he set out to do in bringing an effective counterargument overall that Hitler and Stalin were not at all aligned; the split of Poland specifically through military occupation was more a consequence of the Soviets wanting to create a buffer so that the Nazis wouldn't have two fronts to work with. There also was a level of ideological alignment when it comes to proletarian liberation, which the Soviets were pretty consistent with (even if they didn't necessarily do enough to guarantee more worker autonomy in the countries they would eventually conform to a Socialist organization, but I digress).
I think the importance of motivation is - there is no perfect revolution, and people can and will make mistakes, but the result is ultimately going to be something. Something is going to happen, and if you don't have an objective that is more closely aligned with the majority of people (Socialism according to Socialists), the result will more likely be worse for the majority of people (Fascism, clearly). We can definitely argue that the Soviets made mistakes, but we can't honestly evaluate these mistakes in a vacuum without considering the alternative if the Soviets never took the opportunity: a total military occupation of Poland by the Nazis.
Mr. Terry mentioned, after Hakim brought up the point that the Soviets agitated Polish people to attack their landlords and attempt to instill class consciousness, that how bad each occupation was depends on who is retelling the events. This is absolutely true. There's even an argument that I'd potentially concede to that there might have been a better way to do what the Soviets attempted to do in that instance Hakim mentioned since we could imagine at least some landlords were just as indoctrinated and stuck in the system as any other person. However, no revolution is perfect, and while I imagine no military occupation by anyone would have been better, I'm willing to bet that an uncontested Nazi occupation of Poland would have led to far more disastrous outcomes for the Polish, the Soviets, and the rest of the world as a result. The Soviets at least had convictions that would have made them more concerned for the well-being of the majority of the Polish citizenry. The Nazis, on the other hand, would have been far more likely to grind the majority of the citizenry down and literally shoot the remaining in the back after getting what they want as they did before.
Overall, I've been enjoying the videos you've been putting out Mr. Terry! I think Socialist perspectives, particularly actual, educated Marxist analyses, are severely overlooked in favor of just assuming they're bad because the government says so. Therefore, it's nice to see someone have a healthy engagement and actually analyze these perspectives to the best of their ability from a more (for lack of a better word) "moderate" perspective. Socialists are people who are also subject to their material conditions that change their outlook on life - it's good to understand where they're coming from even if you don't agree with them.
@@danielcoats713 yeah, it's about learning from history and cleaning the anti-communist propaganda away, to allow us to move to a better society.
13:28 Germany only occupied points 10 and 11 on his list (Estonia and Latvia) in 1941 after they had already been occupied by the USSR since 1939 and for obvious reasons the Germans were originally hailed as liberators till these peoples too came to realize that it wasn't the Kaiser's Reich, which had brought them freedom in 1918, that occupied them now, but the Führer's Third Reich which only brought them death and despair.
England and France wanted to protect Poland so they told Hitler that they would declare war if he attacked. Stalin wanted to protect Poland so he told Hitler if he attacked he would take half.
poland could have been nice to the soviets but decided to try to make nice with the fascists over supporting themselves
Ah yes england and France wanted to protect Poland so bad they did nothing as Adolf H was invading 😂😂😂
If the Poles wanted to make nice with Hitler they would have offered to ally against the Russians.
As opposed to Stalin who told Hitler he would do nothing to Protect Poland
12:41 Also wrong, Stalin was quite eager to go to war with Hitler, but only after '44-'45 which would've been enough time, in Stalin's opinion, for the Red Army to recover from the 1936/7 purges.
I’m glad you’re reacting to these more opinionated videos. I’m a communist, but I feel like hakim is a bit biased and not completely honest. Like he definitely makes some correct points, I have things that I’d disagree with.
The guy has a "tiananman square never happened." Video. Just on optics alone that's a huge L, making it hard to take anything the guy has to say serious.
Look into how the soviet propaganda changed. It helps to understand how the soviets wanted to see the pact. Anti Nazi sentiment disappeared.
they were anti nazi
@@americancommunist6076 Soviet influenced media was never pro Nazi (I should have made that clear) But it's anti Nazi stance wasn't pushed during the pact
Fascism: “Fascism”? Fascism, he said is purely “A matter of taste”. Molotov - Stalins replacement of the Jewish Foreign Minister
World war one was triggered because of Germanys meteoric rise industrially and economically
22:01 and the winter war, and Stalin's great purge.
Thank you Terry for covering socialist videos
Poland is always the main point of contention. Should have mentioned the how and why was poland devided eg. there was the fascist military dictatorship of the Piłsudski's colonels, white terror, and collaboration on bothsides that is never mentioned, so ofcource there was quite alot of support for the bolsheviks.
idk Maybe it was mentioned but glanced over not enough emphasis on this factor. there were dire conditions and civil wars at the time all around europe
I wouldn't go so far to call it fascist military dictatorship. It was authoritarian dictatoriship for sure, coup was created by Piłsudski and his supporters who were mostly military personel. But the goverment (which has a lot of sins on their councience) still was mostly civilian - made of BBWR and Piłsudski supporters.
19:23 Since the Nazis invasion came very close to taking Leningrad, Moscow and Astrakhan, I'd say the extra space the Russians got by mugging Poland, Finland, the Baltic countries and Romania, worked.
I think this is one of Hakim's weakest videos because he poorly explains the nature of the pact. I think more detail regarding who wrote what, and definitely a look into the Baltic States, would have gone a long way to support his arguments.
Overall you still get his main thesis "The soviet union did what it had to, to avoid war and build up"
One argument I make is that the seizing of the Sudetenland being allowed by the west is no different than Russia seizing half of Poland. Both got what ""they wanted"" by causing another power to suffer. Just because allied boots didn't walk into Czechoslovakia does not mean the allies were not just as responsible for the crimes committed in the German occupation as they let it happen.
Tankies will say anything to escape from the responsibility of their actions 😂
🤣🤣
stfu liberal, you love fascism and imperialism and genocide
Nah man Poland had it coming
Bro, you're a roman statue pfp, wouldn't be calling the kettle black you know
2:21 that is evidently false if you have a look at history.
There were hundreds or even thousands of orphaned and exiled sons of Clan chiefs on the Eurasian Steppes over the centuries, but there was only one Genghis Khan, who had at least three brothers by the way.
There were dozens of Kings of Qi and the other six Kingdoms, but only one Qi-Shi Huangdi.
There were hundreds of peasant revolts against the Chinese Empires, but only the leaders of two, the founders of the Han and the Ming dynasties, became Emperors in their own right.
There were hundreds of (false, according to the Jews) Messiahs, but only one Jesus Christ.
There were dozens of signatures on the Declaration of Independence, but there was only one Washington in America and one Franklin in France.
There were hundreds of "new men" in France before, during and after 1789, but only one Napoleon.
There were hundreds of young men, who failed to join the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, who fought in WW1, but only one of them became the Chancellor of Germany. There were hundreds of former priest seminarists in Georgia, but only one became the General Secretary of the Communist Party (and Leader) of the USSR.
Great men and women (let's not forget about Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Theodora, Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc.) need special circumstances to shine, but only great men and women can use these circumstances to write their names into history and often, see Alexander III of Macedon you need other greats, Philipp II and Aristotle (and probably Olympias) in his case, to create these circumstances.´
To probably quote Einstein: "If I have seen farther than most, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants." The quote seems appropriate for Einstein, but to quote him (for almost sure this time): "If every quote attributed to me was mine originally, I would be the wisest and smartest man on earth."
PS the best example is Jesus, whether you believe he was the son of God, which you do, if you're a Christian or you don't in any other case, (though HE is the greatest prophet in Islam next to Mohammed, and the Judge on Judgment Day), there is no denying that a carpenter from Galilee, who was crucified nigh on 2000 years ago, is the most influential person in human history. Number two was a 6th/7th century merchant from Mecca and number three is a three-way toss-up between Kyros the Great, (he created the Empire Alexander conquered), Qi-Shi Huangdi or Augustus.
PPS without admiral Yi Sun Shin chances are, that Japan would have won the Imjin War and consecutively conquered China, as the Jurchens did some 70 years later, and we wouldn't have had a Qing dynasty, but the Tenno of Japan would have become the Son of Heaven and the Toyotomi Clan or maybe the Tokugawa Clan would have become the regents of the Middle Kingdom as well as the Realm of the Rising Sun.
This Hakim guy better have a good explanation. I will edit this comment if he did.
Edit:
4:13 Okay, fair enough. Wait, who's out here teaching Germany and Soviet Union have a military alliance?
7:54 No allies? What about the mighty Tannu Tuva and Mongolia?
11:12 Yeah, you're right. This guy is talking nonsense now.
13:07 Hmm.... interesting.
16:22 I got nothing to add so I'm gonna put timestamp for some of Mr Terry's commentary.
18:37
20:30
21:17
22:03 Hold up, why didn't Hakim talk about the Great Purge? He said the Red Army was devastated because of WW1 and the RCW but not included the Great Purge.
23:08
23:43
24:35
27:22
28:13
29:07
30:04
30:42 Mr Terry from the future.
32:06
32:43
34:20
35:10
35:54 Final thoughts summarised.
He believes the purges were necessary. Included in his failings of socialism video
He said in another video that Stalin didn't go far enough with the purges in the 1930s and they were actually necessary for the security of the USSR.
@@David-sl6xf Necessary? Debatable. Was it a stupid decision? In my honest opinion, yes it is.
@@David-sl6xf they were?
The Great Purge mainly affected the High Command and various internal forces ( party and NKVD), while the army was shattered during the WW1 (with a lot of help from Bolsheviks, because it benefited them before th revolution) , after the WW1 the was the civil war and some wars with foreign powers (such as Poland), so yeah, the Red Army was crippled even before the Great Purge
This whole conversation revolves around belief in the rightness of a system, or its wrongness. If you are at least slightly educated on soviet history, and have left leaning values, you would accept USSR as the lesser wrong or even a right, over literal nazis any day of the week.
but it's not an either or situation... i in my case dont like either of the systems and think both are utter trash and the worst things to come out of the 20th century
What in the fuck are you on about?
Poland wasn’t nazi Germany. Given they split another nation in two and split it between them, planned in advance, it’s fair to say it was a (temporary) alliance.
@@GamingPiper on not siding with socialists you enpower nazis, as you'll have no say in the current status-quo, in which nazis sprout from capitalism
@@GamingPiper Respectfully I dont think your opinion is that viable. Capitalist mode of production causes environmental issues that fuck the whole planet over (yes this is caused specifically by the capitalist system). Market is unstable and uncaring of peoples needs. Now we are humans so obviously at large we aim as a species towards socialist like policies (because we care), therefore there are so many social democracts world wide... thats the best that we can do under this horrendous inhuman system, that above all else also causes unnecessary alienation amongst humans.
It's blatant that the way things are going is simply unsustainable, we either go one extreme and try to devolve back to stone age for the sake of some mythical past... or actually rearrange our system to not be built around "merchants and traders".
With all consideration I know that most centrist are scared of a socialist boogeyman, this supposed authoritarian giant.
Well then be a damn anarchist if you care so much about power dynamics, since clearly you won't have much luck with fair redistribution of power under the current system.
If you think about it, nothing ever changes : if it's communist, capitalist, monarchist, feudalist , fascist , imperialist: Russia wants to invade Poland. Maybe a Nations' actions more depends on its geography and resources than an ideology.
@@Saironi yeah, which we'd accept depends on what we want for humanity. In my view, communism is the only one which will be able to save humanity
As a Communist myself, I must say, this is one of the worst videos Hakim ever published.
7:31 Idk how you didn't notice this map is wrong. It is missing eastern Prussia. Also those earlier pacts were betrayed so quickly they don't matter. With the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact most were thrown out as Hitler sought a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Appeasement was done for a different reason than the pact was signed. Appeasement was done to keep peace in Europe, Molotov-Ribbentrop was because the Nazis didn't want a 2-front war and wanted spheres of influence.
Damn Mr Terry responding to Tankies now this should be good.
Oh he was responding to hakim videos and second thought for a while now
Stalin 😝😻
Define tankie liberal
Ok Liberal
@@CamaradaDoppio found another one
You have to forgive Hakim injecting the US occupations of countries, he is Iraqi after all, and it is an example he has first hand knowledge of.
But that just isnt the point of his video.
@@Sheepybearry Occupations and the quality of the occupation is relevant in order to draw comparisons to establish the quality of the occupation.
25:20 The Soviets "genuinely believed" they were liberating the Polish. Sound sort of like something in recent Iraq history to you?
@@jdotoz "Genuine" is about the last word I would use to describe the case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even at the time, I knew they were lying.
@@AdanALW Good for you. But I'm sure we can trust Stalin.
I love Hakim
I completely agree with hakim till the latter part of the video. While I think most of his statements are generally accurate there is A LOT of missing context.
I totally agree with Terry’s point that the polish people would rather just not be invaded, and saying that there wasn’t any motivation to take back previous territories is definitely untrue, but his statements just regarding the pact seem very solid.
he's saying there was not an alliance (which there wasn't) you muppet.
After seeing this and his other "debunking" videos, it seems like Hakim uses a very simple apologetics check list.
1) Present actual anticommunist propaganda about the topic.
2) Paint socialist nations as benevolent heroes with no negative intentions while calling anything to the contrary more Western propaganda.
3) If the socialist power did something bad that cannot be shrugged off as a well-intentioned mistake, then just say everyone killed actually deserved it because they were evil, mustache-twirling capitalists.
hakim my beloved
What utter bollocks. I normally hate dismissing an opponent so brusquely, but…
… he literally does Communism a disservice with this line of argument.
how tho
Of course all history content is sponsored by Keeps. 😂😂😂
history doesn't apply to hakim videos lol
@@TheNationalConservativeyet you have arguments 💀
@@TheNationalConservative Why don't you change your name to the "TheNationalSocialist" instead of keeping it as "TheNationalConservative". Considering Stephen Kotkin, foremost American historian on Big J, and arch conservative disagrees with you on USSR history, who is mentioned in the video as a source by Hakim at 25:24.
@@lljkgktudjlrsmygilug how the hell am I a national socialist I'm saying Stalin was just as bad as Hitler
Blatant soviet propaganda from the creator of the original video. Regurgitating talking points directly from the Politbiuro
If you want another perspective from a self-proclaimed socialist who likes the USSR thinks would be a path to winning the Cold War, watch the video published by the UA-cam alternate history channel "Possible History" titled "What If The Soviets Won The Cold War?". The video was not made by him, but published with the permission of the creator. Also, it is a shortened version of a document that he submitted which goes into the reasoning he presented for why it failed to in our own timeline. It would probably involve a lot of future terry responding to himself and the video after reading the document, so there would be a lot of editing and take a bit more time to make. Since you seem interested in what modern day soviets believe, I suggest you check him out. I also chatted with him about the scenario, giving him feedback. He said he wants to redo the scenario because he thinks there would be a better path, and potentially a more likely path, but I'm not sure what he wants.
It’s hard to argue with Hakim, in the way that it is hard to argue with flat earthers.
No points lol get lost
@@g1g4_ch4d7 To argue with a Soviet appologist, it's the same as to argue with a Chernobyl birth defect. Oh, I forgot the Chernobyl reactor is the greatest monument to Soviet culture and mentality.
@@g1g4_ch4d7 And yet you just proved his.
@@MCADHD-rf5kl so the world had to choose between people exploding their nuclear reactors out of incompetence and people deliberately dropping nuclear bombs on civilian population centers
The thing about the "Horseshoe Theory" is I don't think the ideologies themselves become more alike the further you go to the extremes, but I do think the PEOPLE who hold those views start to look very similar to each other the further you go. Things like mental illness, irrational thought, propensity for supporting violence, low intelligence among other traits seem common among people on both the far left and far right. Social media has really opened my eyes to this, as we can see these extremists and how they think first hand unlike before things like Facebook and Twitter existed.
Yeah, not like "We can mantain a system that requires infinite, exponential growth in a world with finite resources!" That is absolutly not mental ilnnes and/or irrational thought, and the decades of Capitalist agression to the rest of the world and the support people in the first world do of it isn't at all propensity for supporting violence!
I think it’s because extremists turn to extreme measures to ensure their way is the only way. Both extreme left and right wings will use various forms of oppression to impose their ideologies.
They are all left wing to me. Nazis, fascist or communists. They were collectivists. Direct contrast to individualism.
horseshoe theory is fucking stupid libshit
"Things like mental illness"
Do you have any statistics to support that or is it just an assumption you've made based off a few observations ? Mental illness doesn't play a significant role in political affiliation as opposed to environment, education, life experiences etc...
"Propensity for supporting violence"
Let's be nuanced here, violence against minorities trying to live their lives and violence (and might I add violent retaliation) against the people in power who are directly spitting on us isn't the same thing. Without the French revolution for example the monarchy would've prospered for lord knows how long
"Low intelligence"
Lmao how condescending
"Social media has really opened my eyes to this"
I was originally just gonna be mean and tell you to go outside, but instead I'll just repeat what has got to be my catchphrase atp: social media is NOT a reflection of real life. Think how many far-left/right individuals you've seen express violent intent/have mental illnesses/be of "low intelligence" (whatever you think that means) online, now think just how many of those people there are in this world, and tell me your personal experience reflects reality
A few internet folks' actions or personality do not necessarily reflect their or the entire group's political beliefs, take a look at the philosophy of those ideologies instead of people acting crazy on the internet if you want to understand them, because that's a massive lack of critical thinking right here
I feel like hakim's newer content is not as good as his previous ones, i say focus there.
He's always been full of shit with his acting like he's not biased and then throwing incredibly bias. Unsubstantiated claims out
@@captaingramcrackergrams5990 ...Does Hakim pretend to be unbiased? I really feel like that's not true, he's pretty explicit in his political biases.
I'd say that's probably just because this bullshit is a lot harder to justify
@@captaingramcrackergrams5990He makes it clear he's biased. His profile picture is a Lenin head ffs
You can tell when the leftists join the comment section because they all speak in paragraphs
Come on man, don't be like that. Most of us have no love for the USSR, Stalin or even communism in general. The word you're looking for is tankies, the left wing is a huge spectrum.
@@christiangudmundsson8390You are not a leftist if you're not an anarchist or a socialist/communist
@@riztiz Traditionally there are three branches, including social democrats, which is where I'd put myself.
@@christiangudmundsson8390 social democrats believe in capitalism so they aren't leftists. The ideology is more like liberalism with strong social safety nets.
At this point social dems are far right
I found three coments made by (totally experts) who said FINLAND, SWEDEN AND SWITZERLAND were fascist nations stabilished by the capitalists.
Its joever social dems yall are beign slandered@@christiangudmundsson8390
Hakim and SecondThought are well known revisitionists with tanky sentiments. They have built communities that defend terrible historical possitions.
bot account
@@americancommunist6076 says the american communist 6076
Bootlicker
@@danielvisky Nice projection there, would you like to try again?
the argument that everyone had a pact with him is actually the worst argument out there.
the soviets pact was to annex half a country, the allies pact like czechoslovakia was to try and save/spare half a country.
the soviets pact involved gauranteed some death and violence, while the other was trying to avoid it.
theres completely different intentions behind them and they're not equal.
NATO are murderous imperialists occupiers and genociders.
spare? yeah im sure the czechs felt very spared by nazi occupation
😂😂😂😂 "spare"
Poland was not incorporated into the USSR, and Big J, out of all of the representatives for the post-war division of Europe, proposed and gave Poland the most land from Germany.
Hakim is a tankie, and regularly misrepresents history to support his worldview
Except if you watch the video, Terry himself agrees that there were no misrepresentations here. Admittedly the title of Hakim's video is extremely clickbaity, and what it's actually about is "Nazi Germany and the USSR were never allies, actually" which is a statement that anyone even a little bit educated on the subject would have no problem agreeing with (Terry himself did agree). Terry's criticisms are very fair, some claims by Hakim should've been more substantiated and there are questions left unanswered, but most people are so seeped with Red Scare propaganda that they aren't even ready to have that discussion yet, and I don't think "misrepresentation" is a fair characteristic here.
About Stalin knowing the invation of USSR... That it would be another war against USSR was known by their inteligence since late 1920, they just din't know when in the next 10 or 20 years after the time they knew it (actualy it was kind of predicted by Frederich Engels in one of his late books that it would be one imperialist war, and then another in any time soon after the first so the Soviet saw already the first and where seeing it coming again) it wasn't first known that it would be Germany thought, it was clarified after, at the late 1930. About the preparing of the USSR for the war being insuficient to stop the invasion. Yes it wasn't great but see this, they where making a industrial revolution at the same time they where preparing for war and with poor support of other countrys, and it Russia is an imense borders, and there where nazis supporters to, like in Ukraine under the flag of Stepan Bandera and so on. By the other hand Germany was full prepared and in the end who really won the war in Europe wans't the US, something between 8 by every 10 nazis went down by the hands of the red army and partisans. Cheers from Brasil
The soviets went first to England and France for an alliance, but they were all "not in your lifetime, commie". Poland wasn't also that fond of USSR. So USSR went on it's own and tried to buy as much time to itself as possible. I don't see any problem about them taking half of it, if the literal nazis were going to take it all
There's a large hole in the Katyn Forrest that tells you how well the Soviets "protected" Poland.
@@jtilton5 that and the thousands of polish in concentration camps don't undo my point
I don't understand your line of thinking. Stalin was fine to take what, half of Poland, since Hitler was aiming to take 100%?
Wouldn't a better notion be that Stalin shouldn't have taken anything, either? I assume your belief is that Hitler shouldn't have taken anything, and should have been stopped instantly by the Western powers? I believe the same holds true for the Communists.
You either have a solid argument somewhere in there, or you're simply pro-Stalin and a Communist.
@@MCharlesPainting fella the soviets didn't want the devils to have their borders directly into USSR and Poland alongside the western allies were of no help. Zero cares about helping polish, even if the soviets did help, they were only worried about protecting the revolution.
As I said, the soviets were all alone there. The only time they could buy was as much time as germany's fear of fighting two fronts would give them. Everyone knew the germans would attack the commies, it's in their main ideals.
@@MCharlesPainting I ain't talking about helping no polish, their leaders picked their side for them. The soviets were on their own, the invasion was to put a buffer between german agression and soviet lands, while the germans were still afraid of fighting in two fronts. Who knows what would have happened if there were no nazis in Poland.
Soviet ocupation, saved thousands from the nazis.
He's not saying that there were no pact, but there were no secret protocol. There are plenty of evividence to support that, like the signature of Molotov could not be confirmed to be ligitimate. These secret protocol, still is to be found in the ex Soviet archives (we only have the copy that the US "found" in Germany). The spelling (in russian) of various names are grammatically incorrect.
the documents from the soviet archives have been declassified during the 90s, including the pact and it's secret protocols (by the russian government). then later, in 2019 they were published in their full form
There's a big hole in the Katyn Forrest that tells you how well the Soviets "Protected" the Poles.
@@ImpletorPotato the secret protocol wasn't there.
@@wishmaster82 The Katyn Forest victims were not available for comment.
@@jdotoz sadly they were killed by the Germans.
I have liked that you're willing to engage with more put there and more opinionated pieces of history content on YT recently. But videoes like this Hakim video is historical revisionism, and I trust you to be verry carefull when watching them that you dont give an impression of them being correct. I used to watch Hakim once, but ever since starting to study history you learn how he works his way arround the truth to spread a political point.
every form of retelling history will have a certain level of bias to get their point across or to make something/them selves look better than it was, there is a reason why the "winners" in history write the history
you literally could have not finished the video by now. You are simply hating on hakim, you provide no counter arguments. Stop hating and enjoy content.
Correct. He blames mostly the west and NATO for Putin's war. Even though Putin himself has said multiple time that Ukraine is not a real country and it is part of Russia. Finland just joined NATO and he only said Finland can do whatever it wants. So much for worrying about NATO next to its border.
@@the0ne809 Blatant lie? he literally has a video talking about the Imperialist ambitions of Putin, he isn't defending Russia, simply illuminating the other side as well.
@@Rulo7800 mehhh. doing both sides when it was obvious it is just Putin being insane. Hakim will never do both sides on Israel and Palestine.
think he is a conspirator.
These takes of his (Hakim) are getting worse and worse. Almost physically painful to listen to the squirming.
If he bent over backwards in his apologism any further he'd be standing with his feet on top of his own head.
youre squirming because your brain cant handle anything nuanced
This whole video by Hakim is horrible communist apologia, not that surprising coming from him though.
explaining history is apparently apologia
Yeah try to debate facts, liberal
@@americancommunist6076 Explaining, no. Twisting and revisionism, yes.
Horseshoe is real, it explains bill maher, Russell brand etc
Especially former Hungarian Fascist moving after ww2 from the facist to the communist government
horshoe theory is for those too stupid to comprehend politics so they stick with the status quo
How about you don't push BS theories?
Bill Maher is a liberal so what are you talking about
4:10 the founder of Fascism, Benito Mussolini, used to be a socialist, till the Italian Socialist threw him out of the party because he supported Italy's entry into WW1. And no, Socialism and Fascism are not the same, though they share some common roots (at least according to most of the at least 18 different definitions of fascism), however every kind of Authoritarian Totalitarianism is effectively the same, whatever the original ideological base.
Socialism is just the abolition of private property, not inherently linked to any form government
from my understanding, the Germans were still worse. and when people like Hakim and myself talk about stuff like this to defend it, its because by nature of holding the positions we do, we are expected to defend the stuff we don't really think was handled well, and when we bring up stuff like "well the so called good guys, the Americans hold socialism to a standard they rarely meet, both at home and abroad" it just either makes others confused or angry that we're holding up a mirror to the double standard
But talking about Ribbentrop-Molotov and calling it just a non-agression pact is just purely false. You don't have to call it alliance, maybe cooperation, but still. You can talk about topic where there are no good guys honesty (example of WWI where pretty much every country involved is at false with starting the war). Third Reich was evil, but USSR under Stalin was also evil regime, so I don't see why you can't call out both.
@@ozyrysozi6186 and to that, we bring up the fact that they were the last to sign any pacts and that many polticians and businesses from the west were collaborating, which absolutely played a role in appeasement I and I think its foolish to ignore that. and also there is a report by the CIA that shows the US government knows that the strong man image of Stalin is false. that is a declassifed document that I would link if that wouldn't trigger UA-cam's autofilter, but it attributes it to a lack of understanding on the wests part, but its still a myth perpetuated through Operation Mocking Bird channels to this day. also the findings J Arch Getty show a more complex picture of the USSR, and he's the guy that translated all the secret documents and records
@@tekdaystar345 I mean every topic is most often pretty complex. Can we criticise appeasment strategy created and promoted by Neville Chamberlain? Yes, we can also criticise Stalin for cooperating witn Third Reich in pretty important way and even supporting the Nazis economically. Though it doesn'g nit mean that only Soviets support Third Reich economically, not to get me wrong here.
But even when we mock appeasment, we can see why Chamberlain pursuit it and how it could be even more logicall than we thing (whole argument about biding your time untill you are ready for war).
I don't think you have to mirror double standard to fight with it, you can just prove it wrong and if other person mocks you or just can't engage, then it is their fault as they seem too stubborn to even try taking other perspectives. For Stalin cooperation with Third Reich made sense in many ways, doesn't mean I will call him good or better becouse of it.
@@ozyrysozi6186 yeah, and Hakim doesn’t make that moral statement. Nor do I. Just that it was the only choice left open after Britain and France refused. Russia was on the Lebensraum shtlist you know. If you knew the most advanced military was coming for you, would you not do whatever it took to save yourself until you find a way to fight back?
@@tekdaystar345 Looking at how I would just purge whole military from all the competent people and punish other ones - I think I get why Stalin took a deal haha. I mean I understand why he would accept such a proposal, but Hakim downplays the Molotov-Ribbentrop, saying it wasn't obvious cooperation and dividing of Eastern Europe and Finland by Third Reich and Soviet Union. That's with what I have the biggest problem.
At the 8:00 minute mark.
There is just something so bizarrely off for me about seeing an ardent socialist, Soviet appologist, tankie reading ad copy. 😅
Buzz word buzz word buzz word
@@plebasaurues buzz words? yes. An apt description? Also yes.
Time for the weekly propaganda review
No argument lol
@@g1g4_ch4d7hakim is a openly socialidt who uses a freaking socialidt stylized profile picture and constantly ignored soviet gexnocides while denying obvious clues.
Toyally not propaganda
In that case prageru is also a great source of information