The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.
so they decided the potential industrial progress was worth however many deaths in the ukranian region
not someone i would like to associate with
also, it is a useless thought exercise, but would they have been crushed by the nazis? in the end, it was the winter that they didn’t prepare adequately for, plus the usa sent a bunch of equipment over, maybe they’d have sent more, if needed
Not potential, measurable and factual, sustained 15% growth in industrial output yearly, with it being the only defense possible against the upcoming imperialist invasion. You keep arguing as if the industrialization is something hypothetical, it’s an undeniable truth, and it’s the main factor in saving Europe from Nazism.
How many Ukrainians would have been exterminated without the Soviet Union having the capability to manufacture 30.000 T-34 tanks against the Nazi war machine? Some 7 million Ukrainians perished due to the Nazi invasion in “just” 2-3 years, imagine how many would have been exterminated if the Nazis had had even just a few more years of occupation. Also, you continue with the fixation in the Ukrainian region, similar numbers of people died from starvation inside Ukraine as in the rest of the USSR.
Yes, there is absolutely no doubt about this and it’s consensus among economists. A feudal country cannot defeat an industrialized nation bordering its lands if the latter invades it. It was not “winter” winning the war, that’s Napoleon, it was the battle of Stalingrad that resulted in a turning point in the war. The Soviets were THIS close to losing the war, and even in victory, 27 million Soviet citizens died as a consequence of the war.
Your speculation is nonsense. The USA did in fact send more equipment to England than to the USSR, and it is the latter that defeated the Nazis (80% of dead Nazi soldiers were killed in the Eastern Front). There is absolutely no doubt possible that the USSR would have been crushed with Blitzkrieg as were Poland and France had it not been for their industrialization efforts in the previous decade, this is the historical consensus. Stop trying to bend reality in a topic in which you’re clearly not well educated.