this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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Pro-tip for all you youngin's. If you wanna be against war crimes, don't get a Soviet tattoo.
Fuck… little late for that. I had “United Societies Solve Rabies” tattooed on my junk, but unless I’m erect it just looks like another USSR tatttoo.
It's because the political compass meme character has it and they've reused the character here.
Pre Stalin USSR was accepting of sexuality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_the_Soviet_Union
If someone had a Stalinist tattoo that would be another matter but the hammer and sickle or the raised fist are both for the working class.
Let's not forget that this was the time of chemical castration, murder and repression in the "civilised" countries
They decriminalized it during Lenin in Russia and Ukrain only but acceptance didn't really arrive, attitudes were mixed at best. At around 1925, if I remember correctly, it was labelled a mental disorder and after Stalin took power it was criminalised again with a minimum of 5 years of forced labour sentence. Any organising by gay people was labeled a fascist or anti revolutionary movement and punishments for that were much harsher.
So for a brief period of about 8 years attitudes were better than a lot of the world but it was by no means a good place to be gay. And for the rest of the USSR existence it was a lot worse.
If you mean that everyone was subject to murder and repression equally in the Soviet Union (not just gay or trans people), then you're right.
I watched a documentary on the Soviet Union that discussed Gorbachev at one point. He was from farm country. His paternal grandfather disliked the collectivization of the farms and was sent to the gulag. His maternal grandfather supported the collectivization of the farms and worked for the local farm collective. He was also send to the gulag...
No I mean exactly what I had said, and no I am speaking of pre Stalins USSR.
Russia was incredibly poor and exploited by the west as well as they're own ruling class pre USSR, things got much better for the Russian working class and its truly astonishing that a country of that time and coming from such turmoil would legalise homosexuality especially when contrasted with western countries.
So you're talking about the 2 year period after the USSR was ravaged by civil war?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin
Dude, just read their link. The Russian Soviet Republic from 1917 - 1933 (which also sported the hammer and sickle) was (for its time) extremely friendly to homosexual people.
They simply erroneously spoke of the precursor to the USSR as the USSR.
Given the topic it's not a big issue, especially since soviet republics as well as the hammer and sickle iconography predate the USSR by quite some time.
Steelmaning peoples arguments is cool, strawmaning them not.
Yeah it isn't like Imperial Russia had a framework for LGBT acceptance. That there was any period at all of acceptance, legal or otherwise, was revolutionary.
Yeah I thought that was an odd addition. I'm open to hearing an explanation like how the schwashtika (sp?) is also a religious symbol but idk. Weird choice.
While the hammer and sickle may have roots in the USSR, I think it's more likely inferred individuals and labor movements worldwide appropriate it for the symbolism around labor rather than anything ideological around a government. We aren't taught shit about the USSR in the US beyond "communist government bad," so I had to Google the origins of it just now myself. I associated it with communism as a whole, which is often conflated with the USSR, but I wouldn't personally assume someone with it tattooed is giving explicit signal toward support of the old regime in the way a swastika signals a nazi (maybe they are, but I'd ask first, whereas with the swastika I will absolutely assume). Especially given how many variations there are these days. The religious swastika is also has distinct differences - flipped to a mirror image with dots around it. I'm partial myself to the romcom style where the sickle is shaped more like a heart, personally, though I'm not out here looking to get it tattooed. I only know enough to say communism is an economic system opposed to capitalism in the same way a democratic government is opposed (or should be) to authoritarianism. Workers of the world unite, something something, we have nothing to lose but our chains 🛠️❤️
Even the swastika depends a little on context. In Europe or the US, 95% of the time, it's a nazi, and that goes to 99.99% if the person is white.
Seeing it on the wall of an Indian's house next to an aum and a lotus flower? That's likely just a Hindu blessing of well-being.
Dude thank you so much for taking the time out of your evening to type this up and look it up. I've always been a supporter of giving people a chance to explain themselves and now I have a solid explanation for the use of the hammer and sickle! Also +1 on losing chains. Hoping to see more movement like we have over the last couple years. Power to the people!
If you want to learn more about Communism, I suggest reading Critique of the Gotha Programme, where Marx critiques a weak Socialist program and actually makes organizational suggestions. If terminology is something you don't yet know much of, The Principles of Communism is a great, shorter work.
If you want to learn more about why Capitalism is structurally doomed, Wage Labor and Capital is much easier to get through than Capital. If you want to learn about the philosophy of Marxism, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is a great overview from Engels.
Good luck, comrade!
The hammer and sickle are sometimes used by more than just MLs and Sov apologists. But there's definitely... discourse around it.