someone’s personal anecdotes, especially anonymously given on the internet, without hard evidence to back it up, are meaningless in the face of data and detailed reports, this is a basic aspect of any serious research. it is absolutely absurd to accept everyone’s interpretation of events equally given the material conditions that shape people’s beliefs. the poster screenshotted lived through capitalism, not communism, and uses that time period to denigrate communism, even though it was not the dominant ideology at the time for a while. that is absurd, and recognizing that is not ‘’‘invalidating someone’s experiences’‘’.

and then you randomly jump to defending ukrainian (alleged) nazi militias. Which group did you meet i wonder, and what would i find if i googled their history or iconography? like, it is an objective fact that many of the militias in the country are nazis and use nazi iconography and espouse beliefs identical to nazi beliefs, in addition to their war crimes against ethnic russians, jews, roma, LGBT people, and the disabled. there is ample UN reporting on this issue, and your nice, friendly interaction with these alleged nazis does not counter that.

https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/e/7/233896.pdf

https://press.un.org/en/2022/ga12483.doc.htm

https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14823.doc.htm

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Countries/UA/Ukraine_14th_HRMMU_Report.pdf

https://www.state.gov/reports/2018-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/ukraine/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/the-historian-whitewashing-ukraines-past-volodymyr-viatrovych/

https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/white-supremacists-other-extremists-respond-russian-invasion-ukraine

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/359609-the-reality-of-neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-is-far-from-kremlin-propaganda/

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headline/

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/azov-battalion

My point isn’t that my lived experience is more valid. My point, which I should have made explicit, is that lived, inherited, whatever experiences are inherently contradictory, so they are not useful alone. You have to look at the current and historical sociopolitical and economic situations in order to properly place testimony into context. Also it’s a reddit post from a kid who is regurgitating half-baked information from their parents. It’s not some important testimony about living conditions in the soviet union, its someone looking for attention.

Lots of fascists love Israel and zionism btw, it allows them to avoid accusations of antisemitism while pushing adjusted nazi propaganda and at the same time accuse others of antisemitism. So call the significant Ukrainian far right segments neo-fascists, banderites, ultranationalists, they are tied into the history of nazi reaction in Ukrainian history regardless of their current, individual stance on jews (plenty still hate jews). And not every Ukranian is a fascist, of course. Plenty of forced conscripts. Plenty of people who felt compelled to fight and have been callously sent into a meat grinder. I’m not really interested in maintaining the “brave defender” romanticized narrative bullshit. It ignores the realities of opinions of people living near the front on both sides, they don’t care how things end up they just want the killing to stop. These deaths are in no small part the fault of the Ukrainian far right which has consistently escalated and refused to stop attacking the breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine prior to the outbreak of the war. Regardless of how one feels about this war or Russia these ultranationalist groups have only worsened the situation and everyone would’ve been better off with them being jailed or executed by the state. Perhaps a peace accord with the DPR and LPR as federated entities within Ukraine, rather than a series of bullet ridden ceasefires.