I guess you never had relatives or relatives of friends killed by great brave Soviet Socialist soldiers merely for being a priest or a member of a priest's family.
> rugged individualists had been up against the evil Red Empire: 1776! And in
> any Gloranthan film we knew just what nationality of actors were going to be
> playing the Lunars.
There's a fascist/totalitarian nationality?
> 2: Most modern people reading about the Lunar Empire will probably see
> nothing wrong in the Lunar Way. It seems a benevolent and reasonable
> ideology. This is exactly the feeling which many of us (perhaps not in
The Lunar Way: We tolerate all living things, for whomever doesn't embrace us, we exterminate.
> America) have about Socialism. Yet the Soviet Union was an atrocious state,
> with hypocrisy, corruption and down-right evil from the top downwards. In
In other words, the reality of Socialism is very different from the mask it shows the world. Didn't you previously state that the badness of the Soviet Union was just an American fantasy?
> 3: For relations between Lunars and historic Pelorian cultures, the Soviet
> Union is an excellent model. It positively gloried in its ethnic diversity.
People who aren't just propaganda mouthpieces and actually LIVED in the old USSR for many years (as natives citizens) told me otherwise. "Diversity" only existed for the consumption of the foreign press. The ONLY thing that preserved any real diversity was the sheer impracticality of overnight Russification. The most effective checks upon Soviet tyranny were Soviet corruption and inefficiency.
> "Indissoluble Union" (the Soviet National anthem) goes on about it, and you
> could hardly buy an Intourist brochure which didn't have a pageant of the
> Peoples of the Soviet Union in colourful ethnic garb. The Union was
What makes the tourist propaganda of the USSR any more true than that of any other state?
> through all the minorities, Soviet Cossacks, Soviet Steppes Nomads, Soviet
> Shamans. They all existed in our real world for us to compare our visions.
There were no Soviet Cossacks, Soviet Steppes Nomads, and Soviet Shamans. There were CRIMEAN Cossacks, who were pretty much suppressed by the Soviet Union. SIBERIAN Nomads who were cordoned off onto reservations by Soviet authorities. SIBERIAN/UGUR Shamans who suffered fates similar to the "nomads". The entire Soviet system was hostile to anything not amenable to state management (however badly it was implemented).
> Tamberlane the Great must surely be one of the models of Sheng Seleris. And
> where are his stamping grounds and tomb? The Soviet Union.
Tamerlane was of the Soviet Union? Astonishing! I thought that the USSR was founded after 1900!
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