Speaking of being knowledgeable about history,
I guarantee you there are virtually no conservatives here who know, without googling, who Aleksandr Kerensky is, what the difference between Boksheviks, Mensheviks, and the Socialist Revolutionary Party is, what the White movement was, what the distinctions between Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin was, what the distinctions between the February and October Revolution were, what the origin and nature of the Russian civil war was, who Leon Trotsky was, what Article 58 of the penal code was and how Stalin used it, nor could they speak intelligently or at depth about the history of the Siberian labour camps and the Gulag, and there are almost no rightwing message board posters who have actually read Gulag Archipelago from front to back cover .
Yes, what conservatives think they know about the USSR originate from non-Russians on American rightwing talk radio or the right wing media.
My perspective is this: my Grandfather and several great Uncles were pro-tsarist, served in the imperial army, and had sympathies for the White movement during the Russian civil war. Several of them ended up being arrested and sentenced to the Gulag forced labor camps.
On the flip side, a great- great uncle was a noted member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, advocated for a democratic socialist Republic to replace the autocracy of the Tsar, and fought on the barricades of the Presnya district of Moscow in the 1905 revolution. These same Socialist Revolutionaries were among the first to take up arms and resist the totalitarian Bolsheviks after the 1917 coup overthrow of the provisional government.
I feel like I have a rich perspective and understanding of the history of Soviet comnunism in a way rightwing posters do not.
