Even if they didn’t kill or imprison anywhere near as many people as the USA does, and not just because a murderer who murders two people isn’t magically a good guy because he’s standing next to a murderer who murdered twenty.

I think it’s important because they were leftists.  Because in a lot of ways they were us and just because we say “oh that’s not my tendency, we’d never do those things” doesn’t mean we won’t, because 1. Read Lenin, because the USSR is very very thoroughly, very very clearly not what he intended to create but also you can see exactly how shit ended up the way it did. 2. You don’t know where the bucket’s leaking till you put water in it, most of us haven’t been faced with the reality of being in charge, we don’t know where our ideas leak and when you’re in charge and your ideas about agriculture turn out to be not quite right people die. 3. It’s really easy to write the Bolsh off as monsters but like most of them were idealistic people, most of them had the best of intentions.  Most of them BELIEVED in communism, and democracy and somehow this shit still happened.

It’s superbly important to look at the shit that went wrong with the USSR because we’re not going to make do the same shit the USA does, not committing those particular atrocities is kind of the point, but the mistakes and atrocities committed by the USSR… that’s shit dedicated, true believing commies did, stuff we could do and that’s worth looking at long and hard.

It’s much scarier to look at Stalin and Mao and see true believers rather than monsters, because Stalin especially but both of them did and caused a lot of unforgivable things.  It’s easier for us if they just had terrible intentions, easier if they were opportunists who didn’t believe in this stuff.  I’m not saying this as some dismissal of their crimes “oh they had good intentions” no, I’m saying that as with a lot of shit, intent isn’t the fucking point.  Results are the fucking point.  

Idealism won’t protect us from our flaws, our fear, our incapacities.  We have to look and we have to look hard because if we don’t work really goddamned hard to make sure we build something that isn’t just good intentions and a vague idea of how shit works, we have to build shit that works and doesn’t create an absurdly huge police state with people constantly informing on each other or famines or what the fuck ever.

Being a committed anti-authoritarian in your ideals isn’t enough to save you from becoming an authoritarian under the right circumstances and pressures