Any source for that made up number? "The black book of communism"? The one book who listed fascists killed by communists as "victims of communism"? That book lists people killed in wars started by the USA as victims of communism, for gods sake!
That book has been laughed out of the room of serious conversation for being basically capitalist propaganda and complete bullshit.
Stalin and Mao had nothing in common with communism they just called it "communism" (or more precise Stalinism/Maoism...the difference here is really important), please read Marx.
BTW: I don't say it's a perfect system but worth a look, and maybe one could mix both systems together.
When all practical realizations of a political ideology end up as being oppressive one party states, perhaps there's something wrong with the ideology.
Then again, seeing the current state of "market-based" Russia, I'm giving more credence to the idea that it was not communism than ruined Russia, but vice versa. They seem to have that effect on many things.
Stalin and Mao were communists and they handsomely defended communism and transformed their respective countries into global powers. You have bought into capitalist demonization of Stalin and Mao. Stalin in particular was responsible for the enormous growth of the USSR and for providing high standars of living to all citizens in the Soviet Union like they never experienced before. They both also had to defend themselves against imperialist aggresion while trying to support global communist struggle.
Don't be so quick to jump into cold war propaganda against Stalin, with all his failures and shortcomings he was still an amazing leader.
Its amazing how propaganda can shape human perception. Stalin literally oversaw transforming the Soviet Union from agrarian society to world superpower, yet it is "unbelievable". This is what capitalist propaganda does to your brain, you literally believe lies are true, and actual reality is false. The USSR was not an industrialized, first world nation, no, it was a cartoon nightmare. I pity you. Your brain is completely consumed by propaganda. Wish you the best in freeing yourself from propaganda.
Those are buzzwords the capitalist world uses. Of course a primary agrarian society can have famines. It's not a surprise that an agrarian, semi-feudal society such as the USSR when the bolsheviks took power could suffer such a disaster. What they never tell you is that:
a) It was the last big famine that the USSR suffered in its history (after a long history of famines), after it the union of republics experienced tremendous growth and prosperity and famines were erradicated once and for all
b) Famines such as that were common in capitalist countries, like Ireland, and in colonies of capitalist countries, such as India. There, the british killed dozens of millions of people, maybe surpassing the famines in the USSR, and it was a conscicious policy of the british (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_famine_of_1899%E2%80%93...). Yet you never hear about how England is an abhorrent country that should be shamed and erradicated from this world. They killed far more people and it was a completely conscicious decision, but THEY are the ones to judge which famines we remember and which ones we forget.
Gulags: another western buzzword. The famous book that popularized the concept in the West was the "Gulag Archipielago", which has throughly debunked as a fabrication, made up from folk tales, oral testimonies without proof and just made up bullshit. Even wikipedia admits it:
"Natalya Reshetovskaya described her husband's book as "folklore", telling a newspaper in 1974 that "the subject of 'Gulag Archipelago,' as I felt at the moment when he was writing it, is not in fact the life of the country and not even the life of the camps but the folklore of the camps."" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago)
Yes, there were gulgas, but those were centers of detention, not death camps. The average prison length was around 5 years. And yes, prisons with forced labor are horrible, but America has them and they consider themselves to be the most "democratic" country in the world, right? There isn't any aspect of the gulags that is much different from what we have today in most democratic countries, yet they are singled out as an extraordinary fact, while Guantanamo Bay is just America being democratic and promoting freedom and stuff.
Finally, you have to remember that the Soviet Union was under extreme internal and external pressure to destroy communism and bring back the burgeois class to power. There were plenty of reactionary, anti-revolutionary spies, saboteours, nazis, fascists, tzarists and so on that wanted to destroy the revolution. How do you deal with that, if you want to preserve the revolution? Yes, a lot of innocent people were unjustly condemned (again, not too different from our current system), but you have to have prisons to deal with people (a lot of them nazis) who want to destroy communism and bring back capitalist exploitation.
> fabrication, made up from folk tales, oral testimonies without proof and just made up bullshit
I believe most of what we know about the alleged Holocaust was also from oral testimonies. And I don't think they were cross-examined at all in Nuremberg? Other highly suspicious sources include a young girl's diary.
You sound very biased to assume that only side did propaganda. You have an extremely provocative theory, that the alleged massacres of Katyn and Holodomor didn't happen, very interesting.
It's also quite damning that skepticism of this event has been brutally criminalized.
> Even wikipedia admits it
It's a known thing that Wikipedia (it's inner cadre of editors) has been taken over by commies. It's unreliable when it comes to anything even mildly "political", unfortunately.
You can see that Stalin was directly responsible for increasing life expectancy from 37 years (in 1930) to 58 (in 1955). That's 20 more years! And the communist policies almost doubled life expectancy until it started to stagnate in the 60s.
Also, part Stalin, part Lenin were responsibly for erradicating illiteracy from the Soviet Union, read about the Likbez.
Those are facts, not some works of fiction written by some dude 20 years before the russian revolution.
You've never experienced communism. So stop talking out your ass.
I'd take it over this abomination that we have now any time.
Vietnam. Cheap life, good life, friendly people. None of this "I'll try to screw you over and steal your money, because money is all that interests me"
Try being a communist in America. You will get fired and your life ruined for your political opinions.