• Jeanne-Paul Marat@lemmygrad.ml
    6·
    5 days ago

    Its hard to say exactly.

    But like, take maybe Nikolai Yezhov vs Lin Biao. Like if you look up stuff about Lin Biao, you’ll get the general story, the general explanation of the gang of four and his opportunism, and conflicting reports and what happened when he died. But its not impossible to find a fairly balanced story about what happened, and with a fair amount of sources of internal happenings

    But then for Yezhov, basically the only stuff you’ll find is the western story on the matter, with the general propaganda about him. And then even trying to dig deeper involves digging through a lot more layers of propaganda to get information.

    Another thing is the government of the ussr vs the government of the prc. Looking up how the prc works is fairly straightforward, and beyond the usual anticom stuff you can get a decent idea on the matter. But for the USSR, especially during the Stalin era, it very much feels like the answer is handwaved away as “stalin did everything” which is objectively impossible but whatever.

    • FinnTheComrade@lemmygrad.ml
      8·
      5 days ago

      I’d argue the propaganda campaign against the USSR was significantly stronger than the one currently going on against China, and that’s why it’s so much harder to find valid information.

    • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      4 days ago

      That sucks to hear. It does make me wonder if the fall of the USSR is part of the reason you’re struggling to find more straightforward info. Like if the USSR was still alive today, there’d probably be a lot of ongoing efforts to preserve its history and convey it in understandable format to new generations of people.