Proposing a Russian campaign

[andersson 285]

All this history about USSR doesnt make a RUSSIAN campaign less appealing for me. Btw, nothing I read in the pressrelease indicate that the russian faction is the "evil". The "evil" side is connected to Russia though as they want to join them (dismissed by Moscow).

There is a high probablity that russia will, direct or indirect, take part of the "evil side" (from team razor perspective) as Maruk (?) told in an interview I read that BIS see west as good and east as bad because of their country's history (something like that, better put though).

Regardless, I have problems putting the dirty deeds of USSR on todays Russia (which I compare more to todays USA when it comes to good/bad).

What I read so far about the campaign BIS is making makes me really look forward to it! Thay are making a believable situation where each faction has their own motivation. To see the motivation for your own side, and the other factions, is important to get 'sucked in' and care about the outcome of the story.

This topic about a russian campaign, I can see why I would have feelings for the east side too. If the story is tweaked some (told from the other side might be enough in itself, to early to say).

We have a civil war in a small neighbouring country, one part ("the people") want to be closer connected to you as russia while the government (a smaller elite with more economical interests) take help from USA. Just to have USA to interfere in a conflict that is on the doorstep of russia is enough to build tension, and what about the "people" that want help against a government that is not looking out for their interests.

I wouldnt mind playing that, I can see motivation. If you cant image the conflict, put it in place of a south american country in civil war where russia is coming in to help the government and the "people" taking help from US. Which side would you prefer in that situation?

[lecholas 2]

lecholas: Well, I simply don't trust political analyses that like to classify systems as 'bad' or 'good'. Just because you judge the Soviet Union to be a republic of evil, doesn't make it so.

I'd say that I judge the Soviet Union to be a republic of evil because it is so, not the other way round. But of course its only metaphorically because morality can be strictly applied to acts of an individual person not a state.

You can't force an absolute truth based on moral grounds.

Well, that's your position (not a fact) that there is no absoulte truth in morality. "Just because you judge that there is no absolute truth based on moral ground it doesn't make it so."

That doesn't mean I support the actions of the Soviet Union, but I don't try to establish an absolute truth that they were 'evil'. It's all shades of grey.

Hmm, would you say that Nazi Germany wasn't evil? That it was only grey as everything else?

Which East European countries are exactly you talking about? Not controlled by USSR?

Those within the Soviet sphere of influence, but not constituents of the former Soviet Union. Like (I'm taking a shot in the dark) your country, Poland. Did I guess right?

If you are saying that the USSR put pressure on them, which amounts to indirect manipulation or control, that is true. But then the same has to be said about the United States and NATO.

To say that Poland (or any any other of Eastern European countries) was just under Soviet pressure just like USA and NATO is (sorry, but it is) complete ignorance. Did any of Western countries have large Soviet military presence on its territory? Was the politics, education, economy (and as a matter of fact almost every sphere of social life) of any of Western under constant control of secret police (UB/SB in Poland, Stasi in DDR, Securitate in Romania, StB in Czechoslovakia etc.) which was in turn controlled by Soviet secret services.

The two sides are peas in a pod -- there isn't an "evil" one and a "good" one. They just happened to have opposing views.

Well, yes. They just happened to have opposing views. USSR thought that every its citizen should be invigilated, could be killed or tortured at any time for not accepting the regime etc. Western countries on the other hand thought that every its citizen is an individual who has its rights (to live, to travel, to have freedom of speech, with certain exceptions of course). Well, let's don't judge those opposite views.

Quote[/b] ]That's right. And as it was an international socialism its purpose was to spread around the world. That's why USSR's doctrine was war for peace and socialism.

The Soviets considered this doctrine failed after the Second World War (if the biggest war in mankind's history couldn't start a spark for a global socialist revolution, nothing could). Besides, the war was never supposed to be brought westward by the USSR but from within, by the proletariat of the Western nations themselves. Civil war, in essense, was the idea. Any historian will tell you that as soon as Stalin was out of the picture, Soviet foreign policy mindset underwent a colossal and permanent change.

No, not every historian will tell you that. Soviet war machine's military doctrine was allways offensive. Even in '80 there were still military plans to roll on the Western Europe.

Quote[/b] ]People sometimes want to play the bad (dark) side. But it's out of the quesition who was the bad guys.

You're right -- both sides are bad. Political ambitions are always based on greed and paranoia (help me to find an example of an exception). Therefore, it can be said that all political and, consequently, military action is bad.

Well, I can't even imagine what kind of argument could provide to prove this general thesis.

For many people, it depends on perspective. Like, "I'm a citizen of <blank>, so any event that benefits my country is good. Anyone who opposes my country is evil. Anyone who supports my country is good. Anyone who helps me in opposing the evil side is good." Et cetera. But anybody from anywhere can do that. It is a moral argument rooted in relativism.

Yes, for many people it epends on perspective. E.g. most of Germans at the beggining of the Second World War supported theirs countries actions. But some did not. Both options were equally bad?

Quote[/b] ]They really can tell who were the good guys and who were bad.

Since you venture to speak for them, please share with me -- what horrible things did the USSR do to BIS studios? I think the reason that the USA and USSR are portrayed as the good (former) and the bad (latter) is almost purely financial. Explanation:

The English-speaking sector of the games market is by far bigger than the Czech, Russian, German, Spanish, etc. As it happens, most of the people who speak English also live in countries harboring decades of anti-Soviet sentiment. If you were marketing a game, would you want to offend the biggest customer population, or to play into our stereotypes?

Well, I can be wrong, but I think I remember Maruk saying something similar in one of the interviews some time ago. I didn't say USSR did horrible things to BIS but I said they did them to Czechs (read about Prague spring or StB).

Quote[/b] ]You can ask yourself: in which direction people were escaping (risking their lifes) threw the Berlin Wall? Was it east or west? If Western countries were comparatively bad as USSR the traffic should be both ways the same...

You're probably right here (not that there weren't defections in the other direction also -- there were). The quality of life in the socialist bloc was worse than that in the Western nations. I doubt that so many people were hopping over the Berlin wall to make a political statement. They were trying to go to a better, wealthier state. It's the same here in the States with regard to immigrants from Mexico. Lots of people come here, legally and even illegally, because it's easier to live here. Not because the evil Mexican dictatorship creates an unbearable life for the citizens.

 You really belive it is the same as with Mexico?

Quote[/b] ]Flag of Chernarus is similar to Ukraine's one? In what respect? That it is rectangular?

Very clever!    In either case, they must have changed it since the first screenshots. For example:

http://www.arma2.com/images/stories/gallery/ArmA2_Ingame-35.jpg

You're right here. Those uniform badges do look similar to Ukraine's flag.

All this history about USSR doesnt make a RUSSIAN campaign less appealing for me.

Well, someone started talking about the USSR so the discussion went on that topic. Of course Russian Federation is a different thing and we could now start discussion about it

So let's better get back on topic now  

[NoRailgunner 0]

Its a marketing thing to make US units in games mostly look like heroes. Think that the average US player wouldnt buy a milgame without US units.

Imho different campaign on each faction would be great. Too many people think only black and white...

[Spokesperson 0]

I agree with Gustav. But as BIS is a company on a market, they have to look for profit maximization. Playing the US side means that millions of US people will buy it.

They aren't interested in playing some Africa-vs-Africa conflict for instance. Their country must be included or they lose interest. Now we're talking about the average kid at the store.

Russia is a smaller market than the US which means that we will play for the US side and that's what we see in all games that are produced with that market in mind. If you play some excellent eastern european games like "Stalin Subway" or "Hammer and Sickle" you'll see that they are played in the soviet perspective instead. Those games aren't sold to a big extent in the west.

Quote[/b] ]The Soviet Union had to be one of the most dark times in modern history, some proof

Lenin : Slaughtered the Russian Royal family

Stalin - Killed 35 million people

World War II - Hundreds of German Women and Children raped and executed by Soviet soldiers

Cold War - happened because the Soviets wanted more land (technically)

Afghanistan - Soviets invaded Afghanistan, thousands of civilians killed.

Are you saying the Soviet Union was a good thing? NO it wasn't. Lots of games base their story lines on the Cold war because it's a good story line, The USSR is no more so they can easily base their game on the cold war, like many game makers base their games on the Nazi Regime.

But....ArmA is in 2009 and Russia is the Russian Federation, I doubt the Russians will be against the Americans because they are described as a peacekeeping force.

It was a very good thing to get rid of the russian tyrants. I see nothing wrong with that. It's like executing Hitler.

Stalin didn't kill 35 million people. He was responsible for the death of 4 million people. The estimates above 10 million are from the Hitler-Hearst propaganda machinery, and other people with an anti-soviet agenda.

The maximum sentence in a gulag was 10 years. About 1% died. 30% were counter-revolutionaries, the rest thieves, murderers etc. Of course they didn't have enough money for TVs or computers with internet connection in the 30ies so the circumstances in prisons were generally poor. But they were no extermination camps. Today, there are more prisoners in the US than in the Gulags procentually of the population. And in the US you have sentences in the amount 100s of yrs.

"Hundreds of German Women and Children raped and executed by Soviet soldiers"

What a joke! 30 million soviet civilians and soldiers dead in the eastern front where 70-80% of the german troops were anihilated, while the west didn't do shit. The nazi invasion was one big atrocity. Rapes, burned villages, mass-executions of civilians etc, and you talk about some rapes in central europe?

"Cold War - happened because the Soviets wanted more land "

Bullshit! Stalin and the USSR wanted a united -neutral- Germany. But the western powers refused and created BRD, west germany. Shortly afterwards east responded and created the DDR. NATO was created right after the war. The Warszaw pact was created afterwards to respond to the threats of the capitalist world.

"Afghanistan - Soviets invaded Afghanistan, thousands of civilians killed."

The Afghan government, a socialist one, in what perhaps would be called the golden age of Afghanistan, wanted help for combatting islamic fundamentalists. So the USSR went in on the grounds of proletarian internationalism and killed reactionaries. That's splendid.

The US is there today, but they aren't there because of an invitation. They are there for the oil. And there are a lot of civilian casualties there as well.

In Vietnam the US killed 2 million people. In Cambodia hundreds of thousands, then they funded Pol Pot. The US has staged and backed about 50 coups in this last century everything to make business more profitable in South America, Africa and Asia. US backed governments in Indonesia killed a few millions left-wingers. South Korea during the Korean war, with the help of the US, mass murdered 500 000 left-wingers as well.

Compared to the Soviet atrocities the atrocities of imperialism and capitalism are a lot bigger. So if you can have a US campaign on the grounds that the US is "nice", it should be even better to have one with the USSR as protagonists. And then I don't mean the kind of USSR you see in western propaganda movies.

Quote[/b] ]Well, yes. They just happened to have opposing views. USSR thought that every its citizen should be invigilated, could be killed or tortured at any time for not accepting the regime etc. Western countries on the other hand thought that every its citizen is an individual who has its rights (to live, to travel, to have freedom of speech, with certain exceptions of course). Well, let's don't judge those opposite views.

Not at all, you're stuck in some western bias view of the USSR. In the USSR basic human rights were safe guarded. People couldn't be taken into custody just like that, maybe in the movies.

All people had a home (max 10% of income), they had food, a job, they could live off their pensions (start at 55-60 years of age). Free education and healthcare. I don't think there was more torture in the USSR than in the US today. You had the right to travel in USSR as well, you could go anywhere you wanted, Poland, Cz etc, but not to the west without a permit. A lot of people had such and crossed the border every day. The current chancellor of germany for instance. 65+ could go across the borders without permits. The wall was necessary because of economic and counter-espionage reasons.

In the west you only have freedom to travel in practice if you can afford it. In the USSR there were good social standards which meant that all people could go on a vacations. They had dachas or went to the Black Sea. Today it's completely different.

"Free Press", there is no free speech in the west. There's a private media monopoly acting in the interests of their owners, all from the same class of oppressors.

It's no wonder why most Russians (68%) and Ukrainians (50%+) prefer the USSR. A majority of the the East Germans dislike the market economy.

[andersson 285]

I hope for a continuation of the OFP example. 2 expansions with campaigns, east and res. For arma 2 you can even pump out 4-5 campaigns on the same story If BIS sells them as expansions like red hammer I will buy them all, for support and gameplay!

[ballistic09 241]

Quote[/b] ]The US is there today, but they aren't there because of an invitation. They are there for the oil. And there are a lot of civilian casualties there as well.

I have to disagree with you there. Next time 2,998 Russian civilians die in a terrorist attack, lets see what the response is.

Not to mention Afghanistan isn't exactly known as "the country with vast amounts of oil and money..."

[Deadfast 43]

Bullshit! Stalin and the USSR wanted a united -neutral- Germany. But the western powers refused and created BRD, west germany. Shortly afterwards east responded and created the DDR. NATO was created right after the war.

More like Stalin wanted Germany for himself.

That's why he didn't hesitate to send thousands of soldiers towards certain death.

The Warszaw pact was created afterwards to respond to the threats of the capitalist world.

Like Czechoslovakia getting too liberal in 1968?

And to protect all those poor people from the West by shooting them in the back while they tried to cross the border?

In the USSR basic human rights were safe guarded. People couldn't be taken into custody just like that, maybe in the movies.

I don't know about the USSR itself, but in CSSR, the USSR's puppet country, Dr. Milada Horáková would think otherwise.

In the west you only have freedom to travel in practice if you can afford it. In the USSR there were good social standards which meant that all people could go on a vacations. They had dachas or went to the Black Sea. Today it's completely different.

What?

I can take just my ID card and travel through 90% of Europe thanks to the Schengen Agreement. Of course I still need to pay for the fuel and a place to stay, but I don't think it was any different back then...

It's no wonder why most Russians (68%) and Ukrainians (50%+) prefer the USSR. A majority of the the East Germans dislike the market economy.

Source please!

[dmakatra 1]

In response to lecholas. (Also note to moderators: If this topic would be deemed off-topic, which it most certainly is, could we instead of closing it move it to the Off-Topic Forum? No matter how off-topic it is, it's still an interesting and important discussion.)

Quote[/b] ]I'd say that I judge the Soviet Union to be a republic of evil because it is so, not the other way round. But of course its only metaphorically because morality can be strictly applied to acts of an individual person not a state.

Of course it can! A state is a juridical person and the actions of a state is quite comparable to the actions of a human being. Otherwise we wouldn't have this conversation, as any form of political morality would be non-existent.

Quote[/b] ]Well, that's your position (not a fact) that there is no absoulte truth in morality. "Just because you judge that there is no absolute truth based on moral ground it doesn't make it so."

I'd say it's a bloody well cemented fact and not an opinion. There's no doubt that morality is culturally, socially and mentally dependant. Otherwise there would be no murderers, no psychopaths, no neo-nazis, etcetera. Their moral views are different from the moral views of the society surrounding them. From a strictly philosophical viewpoint, in which you are aiming to be as objective and analytical as possible, none of these moral viewpoints can be classify as 'right' or 'wrong'. All you can do is compare them to the norm of the, now ruling, society.

Just look at Ancient Greece and the Catholic Church of the medieval period. In Ancient Greece, homosexual behaviour wasn't frowned upon. However, in the Catholic Church, it was (and still is?) a death sin. Who's to say who is right and who is wrong?

Now, as an objective moral/political/philosophical analyser, where your aim is to separate concrete facts from your personal views, there is no way in hell that you can judge either the moral views of the Catholic Church or those of Ancient Greece as 'bad'.

HOWEVER, as an individual, you are free to pass down your judgement however you like. Just don't mix up your personal views, based on the values that you have received from your surroundings, with an objective perspective from above.

I'm not saying that your moral standpoints are wrong. Feel free to take a dump at Stalin's grave any day, I definitely won't stop you. All I'm saying is that you are making your personal moral views out to be an absolute truth. They aren't. They may be the leading moral views of today's society, but that doesn't make them absolute true in every society, in every mind, in every time.

Quote[/b] ]Hmm, would you say that Nazi Germany wasn't evil? That it was only grey as everything else?

Yes. Yes I would.

I don't support the actions of Nazi Germany. From a strictly personal viewpoint, the actions of Nazi Germany are among the most horrific in the history of man. For me, personally, they were morally 'bad' (I tend to avoid the usage of the word 'evil' altogether) to say the least.

From the perspective of Himmler, Göring or Hitler however, the actions were not 'bad'. Quite the contrary. Even in this horrific example, there's no doubt that the actions of Nazi Germany can be objectively morally described in no other terms than 'shades of grey'.

Please excuse my English, it is not my first language.

[Deathstruck 375]

Take this political BS into the Off Topic part, will ya ?

[TankCommander 3]

Apart from being so off topic, I find it slightly offensive on whether or not the Soviets were evil. I'll put it this way, the Soviet Union regime was evil which caused untold suffering to it's people and the peoples behind it's Iron Curtain. This is not to say that it's population as a collective was at all evil. The government was.

I come from a Polish background so naturally I hear stories of how it was in communist Poland and how it came to be after the second world war. Basically the Soviets attacked Poland along with Germany in September 1939, the Soviets were betrayed (first) and then they pushed back through Poland eventually and into Berlin with a supposed 'free Polish army'. After that, Soviets imposed their governmental influences over everything past East Germany (in a really small nut shell). Everything from the education system to the economy was bastardised to suit the Soviet Union. Travel became incredibly difficult, freedom of speech non existent (of course there were protests at times, but they ended in bloodshed) and the ever looming presence of the Soviet military at arms length. These things and a whole lot more which I don't care to mention, can be easily confirmed with a bit of research. I adopt a non biased attitude when it comes to nationalistic talk so I don't say this on account of some past heritage.

Matters like these should be acknowledged on both sides. There are countless numbers of people who would never go back to the times of the USSR but then there are those who lived well under it and would like it back. But it really is ridiculous to argue that the Soviet Union in general was a good and righteous nation. And as it is Russia in Arma2, who cares right? I would like to see a Russian campaign.

Some references to Soviet mass atrocities based on Gulag. Enough said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

http://www.ukemonde.com/genocide/margolisholocaust.html

http://www.essortment.com/all/historyrussiag_rfpb.htm

[evilnate 0]

The USSR was bad, but N. Korea is worse. + All games don't have the NATO as the good guy, check into Digital Combat Simulator's combat helicopter simulation "Black Shark". It will have you whistling Gosudarstvenny Gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii in no time.

The good thing about the OFP/arma series is that the community can make campaigns (sometimes better campaigns). I would expect that with 6 factions/entities there will be many SP missions and campaigns released by the community.

Don't let the out-of-the-box presentation distract you Gustav62, arma 2 will be a gg.

[Spokesperson 0]

Quote[/b] ]Like Czechoslovakia getting too liberal in 1968?

And to protect all those poor people from the West by shooting them in the back while they tried to cross the border?

Yes, they did the right thing in Cz. A revolution is way too expensive, many lives have been lost in order to achieve that freedom from exploitation and from the dictatorship of the capital and the minority of owners. Any counter-revolution that seeks to reestablish that slavery has to be crushed by all means possible. In the same way the bourgeois states do everything in their power to crush revolutionary movements. The slave owners try to stop the slaves from getting the edge and vice versa.

Yes, some people were shot at the border crossing. Why not? Anyone would expect that people going to an enemy state and who don't want to go through the normal checkpoints get shot. That's the normal routine at the South-Northkorean border too. People (americans, koreans) who fled to North Korea in thousands were shot from the southside and so on. Were not talking about ordinary borders between states with good relations here.

Those who went to the west side illegaly were criminals. A lot of border guards were killed by them. So of course, the routine is to shoot first and ask later.

Quote[/b] ]What?

I can take just my ID card and travel through 90% of Europe thanks to the Schengen Agreement. Of course I still need to pay for the fuel and a place to stay, but I don't think it was any different back then...

Schengen is a new agreement. Sure you can travel around in the west without problems, just like the citizens of the east could travel around in the east.

Quote[/b] ]Source please!

Sources:

http://www.upi.com/NewsTra....878

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....reforms

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....stroika

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls...._russia

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls...._russia

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....yeltsin

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....ourably

http://www.angus-reid.com/analysi....stroika

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....c_event

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....rezhnev

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls....rbachev

Quote[/b] ]I have to disagree with you there. Next time 2,998 Russian civilians die in a terrorist attack, lets see what the response is.

Russia is not the same thing as the USSR. 2998 people is nothing compared to the amount of killed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia, Angola, Namibia, Argentina, Korea etc. That's normal in a global perspective. The difference is that we're talking about US civilians.

And what's this crap talk about evil/good. There is no such thing as good or evil. Those are only a fool's words to explain things they don't understand. It's ok for simple fairy tales where the author doesn't want to complicate the plot with reasons, arguments and outlining the interests of the different sides.

The USSR government acted in the interests of the majority, the working class. And crushed all attempts to introduce the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In the end it  didn't do anything, because the working class wanted change. So they got liberalism, and 2 years later they regretted this change and wanted the USSR back. Tens of thousands of people went out on the streets to protest. The liberals and yeltsin saw their capitalist dictatorship shatter so they called in tanks. Up to 2000 civilians were killed in Moscow those days in 1993. But in the west nobody cared or cares, because Russia was a bought ally of the west at that time. From that day on the fundament of modern Russia is based on a coup.

If I didn't know what I know about the USSR etc, I would dislike it just as you do. But I have more information to judge from. Things have been exaggerated and falsely assumed in the west. It's a huge propaganda machinery that seeks to limit people from knowing (if they don't devote a lot of time and look real hard for information). "Truth" is being made up by the private media monopoly, and that's horrible.

[Xanthus 0]

Quote[/b] ]Stalin didn't kill 35 million people. He was responsible for the death of 4 million people. The estimates above 10 million are from the Hitler-Hearst propaganda machinery, and other people with an anti-soviet agenda.

Roughly 10 million ukrainians died during 1932-1933 starveling in Ukraine, which was a direct result of Stalin's industrialisation and collectivisation policy. And these are pre-war numbers.

Quote[/b] ]The maximum sentence in a gulag was 10 years. About 1% died. 30% were counter-revolutionaries, the rest thieves, murderers etc. Of course they didn't have enough money for TVs or computers with internet connection in the 30ies so the circumstances in prisons were generally poor. But they were no extermination camps. Today, there are more prisoners in the US than in the Gulags procentually of the population. And in the US you have sentences in the amount 100s of yrs.

I'd really like to see where you got those numbers from. Unlike you I'm grounding my arguments based on primary sources. My grandfather was expatriated to Siberia and his only crime (he was a teenager at the time) was that he came from a somewhat large farmers' family. Surely they'd give a hundred years sentence for such an atrocity in America nowadays. Moreover, gulags weren't just prisons where you sit around all day doing nothing, they weren't much different from nazi labour camps, only soviet repressions were carried on based on class, not race or ethnicity. Gulag prisoners are accountable for laying major communication networks and errecting massive hydroelectric power stations in Siberia.

Quote[/b] ]What a joke! 30 million soviet civilians and soldiers dead in the eastern front where 70-80% of the german troops were anihilated, while the west didn't do shit. The nazi invasion was one big atrocity. Rapes, burned villages, mass-executions of civilians etc, and you talk about some rapes in central europe?

Soviet troops requited like for like. Read up on fates of german civilians in east Prussia after the war.

Quote[/b] ]Bullshit! Stalin and the USSR wanted a united -neutral- Germany. But the western powers refused and created BRD, west germany. Shortly afterwards east responded and created the DDR. NATO was created right after the war. The Warszaw pact was created afterwards to respond to the threats of the capitalist world.

It's funny how you bitterly dismiss western propaganda and swallow soviet propaganda so easily.

Quote[/b] ]in what perhaps would be called the golden age of Afghanistan

You can't be serious.

Quote[/b] ]...wanted help for combatting islamic fundamentalists. So the USSR went in on the grounds of proletarian internationalism and killed reactionaries. That's splendid.

The situation was much more complex than that, and still is. And I wouldn't call any action that requires numerous sacrifices of human life splendid.

Quote[/b] ]All people had a home (max 10% of income), they had food, a job, they could live off their pensions (start at 55-60 years of age). Free education and healthcare.

Rights of speech, free religion or free election aren't that important, as long as you have something to fill your stomach with, right?

Quote[/b] ]I don't think there was more torture in the USSR than in the US today.

I've heard that people who criticize government in private conversations in the US disappear without a trace everyday.

Quote[/b] ]You had the right to travel in USSR as well, you could go anywhere you wanted, Poland, Cz etc, but not to the west without a permit. A lot of people had such and crossed the border every day.

This is somewhat true, however neglecting simple market laws was one of the main reasons why the Soviet Union collapsed.

Quote[/b] ]In the USSR there were good social standards which meant that all people could go on a vacations. They had dachas or went to the Black Sea. Today it's completely different.

Only high functionaries of the Communist party could afford having a dacha.

Quote[/b] ]It's no wonder why most Russians (68%) and Ukrainians (50%+) prefer the USSR. A majority of the the East Germans dislike the market economy.

The fall of Soviet Union was extremely traumataizing for it's citizens, even in countries like mine, which are blamed for it. Shifting to market economy was painful in most post soviet countries, wihich led to high average of suicides and ultimately brought former communists back to power.

There was no Soviet campaign for a reason, it would be hard to imagine a game from a soviet point of view made by a Czech developer. I don't think there will be a campaign from Russian point fo view either.

[Spokesperson 0]

If you count starvation (6 million total, whole of Russia), then there's a total amount of 9-10 million deaths, during the 25 years when Stalin was leader.

But on the other hand, if you count starvation, you'll see that capitalism is no better. A few hundred thousand starve to death every day in the liberal countries (neo-colonies and not). And people starved during the industrialisation in Europe and America too. The most important thing is that starvation was abolished after the industrialisation. Not in Russia any longer though, plus some cases in the US and UK.

The collectivisation and industrialisation were completely necessary for the USSR to survive. Stalin said that the country in 10 years had to do what the west had done in a hundred. And they succeeded, but the cost was high as well. Question is what would've happened otherwise. The capitalists (nazis) would've invaded and crushed the revolution. Extermination of non-arians would've continued and so on.

Quote[/b] ]I'd really like to see where you got those numbers from. Unlike you I'm grounding my arguments based on primary sources. My grandfather was expatriated to Siberia and his only crime (he was a teenager at the time) was that he came from a somewhat large farmers' family. Surely they'd give a hundred years sentence for such an atrocity in America nowadays. Moreover, gulags weren't just prisons where you sit around all day doing nothing, they weren't much different from nazi labour camps, only soviet repressions were carried on based on class, not race or ethnicity. Gulag prisoners are accountable for laying major communication networks and errecting massive hydroelectric power stations in Siberia.

The numbers are from the American Historical Review, the USSR archives, and probably Wikipedia has them too. The highest death toll was during the war (still lower than the population in general, so statistically it was better to be in the gulags than in western russia at that time) and before the penicillin was invented.

I can't say anything about your grandfather, other than an unbiased account is necessary as well. And sure the gulags were labour camps, nothing wrong with that. People don't just sit and do nothing, they pay back to the country. Nazi camps were extermination camps. Liberal countries like the UK, US, and Sweden had concentration camps too. UK, US in the 19th century (and early 20th). Sweden during WW2.

Quote[/b] ]Soviet troops requited like for like. Read up on fates of german civilians in east Prussia after the war.

Germans from "east" Europe were moved to Germany. Prussia, Sudetenland, Poland etc, in order to avoid future german claims.

Quote[/b] ]It's funny how you bitterly dismiss western propaganda and swallow soviet propaganda so easily.

What Soviet propaganda. I'm not exposed to any. The only propaganda I'm exposed to and have looked through is the western one. You can look up the years for the events I mentioned.

Quote[/b] ]You can't be serious.

I am.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki....1978-79

It's a bit biased, but it's ok. Women could go to school and study. The role of religion in politics was removed etc. Industry and commerce worked. Afghanistan was on the road to modernization and freedom. Then after a decade those US-funded reactionary fascist fundamentalists won the civil war.

Quote[/b] ]Rights of speech, free religion or free election aren't that important, as long as you have something to fill your stomach with, right?

Those rights (apart from free religion) don't exist in a capitalist society.

Quote[/b] ]I've heard that people who criticize government in private conversations in the US disappear without a trace everyday.

Then tell me some people who disappeared in the USSR.

Quote[/b] ]Only high functionaries of the Communist party could afford having a dacha.

Not at all. That's more like the situation today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha#Dachas_of_the_elite

Quote[/b] ]There was no Soviet campaign for a reason, it would be hard to imagine a game from a soviet point of view made by a Czech developer. I don't think there will be a campaign from Russian point fo view either.

Yes, and that's a problem.

[andersson 285]

O please continue this in Offtopic

I would rather see peoples input and thoughts about a russian campaign, or any other faction for that matter.

[Deathstruck 375]

O please continue this in Offtopic

I would rather see peoples input and thoughts about a russian campaign, or any other faction for that matter.

Righto, so we can kill those kevlar-and-m4-wearing soldiers (and score will be settled, no more arguments )

[Deadfast 43]

Yes, they did the right thing in Cz. A revolution is way too expensive, many lives have been lost in order to achieve that freedom from exploitation and from the dictatorship of the capital and the minority of owners. Any counter-revolution that seeks to reestablish that slavery has to be crushed by all means possible. In the same way the bourgeois states do everything in their power to crush revolutionary movements. The slave owners try to stop the slaves from getting the edge and vice versa.

Hang on, what revolution?

The whole Prague Spring was about liberalizing the regime.

There was no violence until Russia and other members of the Warsaw Pact (excluding Romania) invaded the country.

Yes, some people were shot at the border crossing. Why not?

I don't know.

Like because they're people perhaps?

Civilians on top of that...

Anyone would expect that people going to an enemy state and who don't want to go through the normal checkpoints get shot.

You mean those checkpoints that you couldn't cross unless they were damn sure you're coming back?

Hell, BS they wanted to "protect" the country - they were just pretty scared if they let people cross freely nobody's gonna stay in it.

Just take a look on your lovely GDR. Before they built the wall (again it was not to protect anybody) people were crossing to the West in hundreds.

And I sure as hell don't know of that many people going the other way...

[Spokesperson 0]

The revolution as in the socialist system introduced in 1948 through elections.

The Prague Spring was about liberalizing the country yes, and that's completely wrong. Because "liberalizing" in the sense mentioned means market reforms, and a re-introduction of capitalism. That's completely unacceptable. It's like re-introducing aristocracy and monarchy in a liberal state.

Liberalizations of other kinds were needed, the socialism had frozen, but a status quo due to the cold war was necessary for the eastern bloc to survive. There aren't many other alternatives.

There were also plans to drop off thousands of NATO paratroopers over Cz before the military intervention.

Those "civilians" could be spies, and as I said earlier the civilians shot many border guards (20-30). West let them go despite having witnessed the murders from the other side.

Quote[/b] ]You mean those checkpoints that you couldn't cross unless they were damn sure you're coming back?

Yes, almost. However, people were allowed to live in the west permanently, I know people who did that, and they could go back and forth as they pleased if they were considered thrustworthy. It was a cold war after all.

Quote[/b] ]Hell, BS they wanted to "protect" the country - they were just pretty scared if they let people cross freely nobody's gonna stay in it.

That was not the problem, the problem was that people could study in east and then move to the west (who offered better wages, but lower social benefits). Western people could also go and shop freely in the east (where things were a lot cheaper) exploiting the system. So there had to be control. The Wall also marked the difference and dislike between the both states. The US broke many agreements (Potsdam etc), introduced the D-Mark etc, which led to the construction of the wall.

Tens of thousands of people went both east and west. The DDR-head of state Honecker moved from western Saarland to DDR. American artists like Dean Reed settled in East Germany too. People didn't go one way only as we are told in the west. Sometimes people were stopped at the border and weren't allowed to go to the east by western border guards. That was the case during the World Youth Festival for example.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Sorry but this is not an thread/discussion about ideologies and theories. There was already one discussion about such things in OT International Politics Thread.  

[*KEEPER* 0]

The Soviet Union had to be one of the most dark times in modern history, some proof

Lenin : Slaughtered the Russian Royal family

Stalin - Killed 35 million people

World War II - Hundreds of German Women and Children raped and executed by Soviet soldiers

Cold War - happened because the Soviets wanted more land (technically)

Afghanistan - Soviets invaded Afghanistan, thousands of civilians killed.

Are you saying the Soviet Union was a good thing? NO it wasn't. Lots of games base their story lines on the Cold war because it's a good story line, The USSR is no more so they can easily base their game on the cold war, like many game makers base their games on the Nazi Regime.

But....ArmA is in 2009 and Russia is the Russian Federation, I doubt the Russians will be against the Americans because they are described as a peacekeeping force.

Lenin - Slaughtered the Russian Royal family

- GOOD! Someone should have do the same thing to his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm

Stalin - Killed 35 million people

- Worked to death when the USSR advanced 100 years in 10. Taking them from the Backwater status of Europe to a full fledged industrialized nation. Their deaths in no small part secured the means for the defeat of Nazi Germany. So thank you to the millions of Soviet Citizens that gave their lives for their country's survival.

World War II - Hundreds of German Women and Children raped and executed by Soviet soldiers

- So Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian women and children are not as important as your German ones? Not to mention that the amount of German abuses perpatrated against the soviet people was on a magnitude of at least 5to1. So a couple of Nazi widows and kids got snuffed out in retaliation for 3 years of rape and pillage in Russia, Its not like they killed 27 million Germans.

Cold War - happened because the Soviets wanted more land (technically)

- No not even close. Might I point out that they just lost 27m people because they didn't keep a close watch on their western boarders in 1941. They just wanted to make sure that if "we" tried this again, It wouldn't be fought on Soviet territory like it was last time. Better to fight it out in Germany and Poland then to fight it out in Ukraine and Russia.

Afghanistan - Soviets invaded Afghanistan, thousands of civilians killed

- Got me there, cause the west would never invade a country and wage a war were thousands of civilians die in the conflict(before 2001 that is). Unless that country is called Vietnam, then they drop more explosives on that country and others bordering it than all the weapons used (by ALL SIDES) in World War 2. All so we can prop up a Southern Military Dictatorship led by the former puppet leader of Japanise occupided Fench indochina.

[Commando84 0]

Just a spy or two that crossed over really :P

majority of people wanted to go west, where they didn't need to fear that their neighbours would turn them in to the secret police or Bs like that.

a swedish band even made a song about the berlin wall and it really showed how people feelt like when they got seperated from their loved ones suddenly..  

About a russian campaign I think It should be made with razor doing joint ops with the russian spetnaz team or something, could be great, and they could trash talk each other about the cold war and stuff like that.  

Could be a DLC for roughly 10 dollars or something  

or a mid size expansion pack like red hammer with new vehicles and weapons and stuff.. throw in a few new music tracks and stuff.

[franze 196]

I was tempted to leave this thread open and clean it up, but upon review all I see is nationalistic bickering and nonsense. Therefore, it's getting a lock.