Living in a 15-minute city, it’s almost as nice as the previously screeched-about “Shari’a no-go zones” in Paris. I was in one of those when that hysteria started, drinking an excellent bottle of wine with a friend of mine and a charming French-Algerian couple.
And if my quiet little city’s modest efforts at pedestrianisation are Stalinist, then I’ve misunderstood Stalinism and maybe it’s not so bad after all (except the purges, the Molotove-Ribbentripp pact and the Holodomor).
Note for the paranoid: you can easily be tracked if you drive a car, though in-car telemetry and ANPR cameras. But you’re nearly invisible to the authorities if you’re a pedestrian or a cyclist.
Here’s a fun mostly-unknown fact about this one: the pact(s) included military technology transfers, with one result being that advanced anti-aircraft guns earmarked for the battleship Bismarck were instead given to the USSR. Bismarck ended up being fatally crippled by British biplanes.
I’ve misunderstood Stalinism and maybe it’s not so bad after all (except the purges, the Molotove-Ribbentripp pact and the Holodomor).
This is actually correct, Stalin did sign some awful stuff into law (although it’s not the examples you are giving: the worst things are the LGBT ban, restrictions on worker’s soviets, and NKVD “troika” trials), but also did some pretty solid stuff like industrializing the country, improving employment and poverty rates, and defeating nazis.
Living in a 15-minute city, it’s almost as nice as the previously screeched-about “Shari’a no-go zones” in Paris. I was in one of those when that hysteria started, drinking an excellent bottle of wine with a friend of mine and a charming French-Algerian couple.
And if my quiet little city’s modest efforts at pedestrianisation are Stalinist, then I’ve misunderstood Stalinism and maybe it’s not so bad after all (except the purges, the Molotove-Ribbentripp pact and the Holodomor).
Note for the paranoid: you can easily be tracked if you drive a car, though in-car telemetry and ANPR cameras. But you’re nearly invisible to the authorities if you’re a pedestrian or a cyclist.
Here’s a fun mostly-unknown fact about this one: the pact(s) included military technology transfers, with one result being that advanced anti-aircraft guns earmarked for the battleship Bismarck were instead given to the USSR. Bismarck ended up being fatally crippled by British biplanes.
This is actually correct, Stalin did sign some awful stuff into law (although it’s not the examples you are giving: the worst things are the LGBT ban, restrictions on worker’s soviets, and NKVD “troika” trials), but also did some pretty solid stuff like industrializing the country, improving employment and poverty rates, and defeating nazis.