Crow posted:

Tom don't do bacon! TOM LIVES BACON

stegosaurus posted:
the gulag archipelago was kind of a watershed book for me, it was on my parent's shelf and it was a huge ass book, and if you've read it, objectively it is pretty intense. I read it when I was fourteen or so- imagine little ol stegosaurus, with his spindly arms, lugging around a six or seven hundred page book. all of my teachers were so proud.

I went on a serious solzhenitsyn kick and solzhenitsyn, and critical works on solzhenitsyn, and robert heinlein/arthur c clarke were all I read for like a year and a half. that means all three volumes of the gulag archipelago, a few of his shorter stories and all of the red wheel that had been published up until that point. plus like four biographies

maybe you can tell me what its about then for the love of all thats good and holy

stegosaurus posted:

babyfinland posted:

crustpunk_trotsky posted:
bsaically all justification of stalin and mao's actions comes down to "well if you look at the facts in a new light *pushes glasses up nose* it turns out they only killed a billion people through malice and idiocy, not a trillion as was once thought"

i once said basically this to my mother and i was like hrm that just came out of my mouth

I said that at a party and a syrian exchange student said "haha, yes, we are such progressives nowadays, it was not ten million it was five"

hahaha

babyfinland posted:

stegosaurus posted:

babyfinland posted:

crustpunk_trotsky posted:
bsaically all justification of stalin and mao's actions comes down to "well if you look at the facts in a new light *pushes glasses up nose* it turns out they only killed a billion people through malice and idiocy, not a trillion as was once thought"

i once said basically this to my mother and i was like hrm that just came out of my mouth

I said that at a party and a syrian exchange student said "haha, yes, we are such progressives nowadays, it was not ten million it was five"

hahaha

he said "lets look at your bookshelf" and we talked about different titles on it, it was cool but really weird, people were looking in my room at the two of us sitting on my bed next to each other, my girlfriend was making fun of me for weeks about it.

stegosaurus posted:

babyfinland posted:

stegosaurus posted:

babyfinland posted:

crustpunk_trotsky posted:
bsaically all justification of stalin and mao's actions comes down to "well if you look at the facts in a new light *pushes glasses up nose* it turns out they only killed a billion people through malice and idiocy, not a trillion as was once thought"

i once said basically this to my mother and i was like hrm that just came out of my mouth

I said that at a party and a syrian exchange student said "haha, yes, we are such progressives nowadays, it was not ten million it was five"

hahaha

he said "lets look at your bookshelf" and we talked about different titles on it, it was cool but really weird, people were looking in my room at the two of us sitting on my bed next to each other, my girlfriend was making fun of me for weeks about it.

arabs are hella gay

babyfinland posted:
it's assigned for my central asia writers under soviet colonialism class, i would assume the part in central asia? she's assigned a bunch of trashy horror story stuff but i'd like to know what i'm not reading so thx

the part in central asia has him building a house out of sod and buying fancy milk for the first time in years and teaching students physics. not really that world-shaking but I guess if the teacher wants to paint central asia as a soviet backwater/refuse dump it does kind of do that.

babyfinland posted:
arabs are hella gay

yeah an arab tried to kiss me once when i was on vacation in seattle but it wasn't actually an arab it was a white muslim dude named thomas

babyfinland posted:
today in class she said when you step of the plane in tashkent the first thing you notice is the smells like roses, the most powerful beautiful smell you've ever smelled.

my wife grew up in tashkent; she assures me the first thing you smell is lamb's blood and desperation

littlegreenpills posted:

babyfinland posted:
today in class she said when you step of the plane in tashkent the first thing you notice is the smells like roses, the most powerful beautiful smell you've ever smelled.

my wife grew up in tashkent; she assures me the first thing you smell is lamb's blood and desperation

is it true that the uzbek president dances with all the children when he hears music?

mistersix posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
To the communists in here. I haven’t read solzhenitsyn but I’ve heard the criticisms of him: Are there any books about the victims of communism you would recommend or is that impossible because there were no vicitms?

kolyma tales

shalamov was actually a trot. so not technically a 'victim' since that implies that it was an outside force responsible for his downfall and not his own wicked degeneracy.

Transient_Grace posted:
someone i know once told me that stalin's actions were neccesary because they prevented the ussr from "succumbing to liberalism" which would've "brought more death, misery and poverty".

agreed