I do not. I have not seen valid proof of the BS body count. I am not a liberal. I do not need to "show both sides."
Disregarding the other side weakens your cause and your argument. I'm pretty sure I went over this in another thread with civman, in reference to nationalists who refuse to acknowledge history. Turning a blind eye to historical atrocities, gruesomeness, and overall disregard for the human condition only makes someone out to be some sort of absurd reactionary. I'd think something as progressive as communism would fully embrace the evils the Soviet state committed, because then they can say "look at the barbarity of the state, our goal is the dissolution of the state, join us in its destruction."
Dismissing the destructive capabilities and actions of historical polities only makes someone instead look like an apologist. Civman did this (and continues to do this) with the issue of slavery. "The past wasn't
all that bad, I mean, all these people were held in bondage but *points to other outdated cultural practice.*" Terrible line of reasoning, only serves to deny the violent history of the United States, missing the opportunity to say "we're no longer like that, we've changed for the better." In your case, saying the Soviet Union didn't kill anybody only serves to tacitly endorse all the death it caused.
As for the deaths themselves, I don't need to look at the internal situation which you'd deny existed. Instead, I can look at an external situation the Soviet's embraced. Because of the Soviet Union, 800,000 Germans died. The Soviet Union, as a state, ended close to a million German lives because of its existence. Unless one denies the existence of Operation Barbarossa (which would be strange, since the Soviets themselves embraced the bloodshed and death) one must admit that the Soviet Union was a violent entity.
This applies to other states as well (as a progressive liberal, I don't hold back judgment!). Germany as a state ended 4,000,000 Russian lives on the Eastern front. The American state, the British state, and the French state killed 5,000,000 Germans in the West. The Japanese state killed 3-10,000,000 Chinese people, and the Chinese states killed 2-4,000,000 Japanese people.
I was going to note this if civman followed up his argument, but one cannot hold civilians accountable for the actions of the state. He claimed that it was due to civilian support that these states existed, therefore they are responsible for all the death caused by states. I think this is a poor argument, civilians have very limited control over their state. Even in liberal states, like America, civilian control over government ends at the ballot box. One can protest, and hope to change the mind of elected representatives, but ultimately, all the decisions are the representative's until their term is up. In other less democratic states, like the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany, civilians are coaxed and threatened into supporting the state. If they are non-conformist, they are threatened with being ostracized from the national community or even with death. Humans, I've heard, tend to follow the path of least resistance. If this means kowtowing to the violent entity of the state so that they can continue living, even if that means being forced into the army and invading another country, they will do it. The fault does not lie with them, but with the state-entity that forced that culture onto them.
From there, the argument I thought would go "they can revolt if they wanted to, they have that power." The idea being if the people collectively disliked the state, found it violent and contrary to their goals of living, they can choose to overthrow it. I posit that it is extremely difficult to do so. Look how much effort it took the Russians to get rid of the Tsarist state, and then to choose what government would follow. Years and years of death. Look at how long it took to get rid of the Soviet state. It took decades until the populace was ready to collectively destroy the state, they would not have been able to previously due to the strength and violence the state was capable of. As a state's primary goal is to continue being a state, it builds up a very strong foundation that is not easily destroyed. It takes a lot of civilian effort to even break into the base, let along dismantle it completely. For the most part, a person is stuck with the state they are born in. Because they have very little power to change the situation, which requires (I'd argue) a very specific set of circumstances, nothing the state does is their fault. They cannot be blamed for things out of their control.
What I'm basically getting at here after that tangent is two things. States are extremely violent entities. They cause death by virtue of their existence. One cannot deny that. Secondly, states are coercive and conformist. To deny the state is to risk death, so people choose not to and instead may join up with it. It's safer to be friends with that which may kill you rather than enemies. War, then, is two states fighting one another with civilians who are forced into a machinery not of their choosing, but under duress. Even in states where dissent is allowed and in fact encouraged, like a Western democracy, the people still have very little control over the state and its decisions. They cannot be held accountable for the death and destruction they cause, because ultimately they can only choose who makes the decisions, and very rarely have control over the decisions themselves.
What the second part also means is that one does not need to endorse state entities to further any sort of goal! To feel for the Russian people who suffered on the Eastern front does not mean I endorse the Soviet state! To feel for the suffering of the Germans on the Eastern front does not mean I endorse the Nazi state! Humanity is disconnected from the violence that controls them. To feel for collective human suffering does not mean one needs to recognize the silly borders and institutions that divide it up. This is quite the roundabout way of saying to support communism and socialism, one does not need to defend and support a historically violent entity like the Soviet Union, which I believe is more harmful to one's cause than it is good.
