A topic has its own thread. It was brought up earlier within the same thread.
Who gives a shit? How is this relevant to your point?
How is it relevent to yours? What is your interest in this?
The OP asked what was the cause of bad status of freedom in post-war Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. I said the final nail was the West forcing Stalins hand in the 1945-48 period that definetely nailed the economic prospects of Eastern Europe for the time being. You shrugg this off claiming it was actually Roosevelts aid to Stalin in his capture that was decisive for the region`s prospects.
Whose side Roosevelt was on from day one is irrelevant for your point. You need to prove that it was really Roosevelts role that shifted the balance and that without Roosevelt Stalin would not have been able to capture these lands AND that this would have meant that the regions prospects for freedom would have been better than they ended up being under the Soviets.
No, I did not. I said that Roosevelt helped Stalin do it.
Although I certainly would reject the claim that Stalin would have intended one square millimeter on Earth to not be communist.
Given that the Nazi Party was basically communist as well, it may be a slim doubt that it would have made a difference, but slim doubt is better than no doubt.
And you did this by replying to my very specific post with:
“You mean, what if Franklin Roosevelt had not intentionally aided the Soviet Union in capturing half of Europe.”
Next time you want to say Roosevelt helped Stalin, write: Roosevelt helped Stalin**.** Do not write rhetorical questions in a reply to my own post, I could not care less who helped Stalin. It is not pertinent to the topic. The help was in the first place not decisive and even if it were it would stil be irrelevant to the topic of what killed freedom in the region because the freedom in the region would have been even much worse off without the Soviet takeover - under the Nazis.
I was not replying to you…
Let me guess. You are an anarcho-syndicalist.
Marko really seems determined to defend the Communists for someone on an Austrian Economics forum.
It probably means I am a Communist… on an Austrian Economics forum.
The Czechs are among the peoples with the strongest liberal tradition. You will note that Vaclav Klaus is Czech. He is a dinosaur, a curiousity even in the Czech Republic, but it is not a coincidence that he is from the Czech Repulic rather than some place else.
Czechs have a fairly unique history. First Catholicism was basicaly re-imposed on them after they had abandoned it. Also in 1620 their nobility was destroyed. This left the Czechs a people without an aristocratic class and without any taste for clericalism. The two pillars the conservatism of the 19th century was built on. So the Czechs hurled themselves into 19th century liberalism. First as pragmatic liberals, then when growing more self-confident as radical liberals. The thing is in the second half of 19th century the meaning of liberalism was already shifting so the Czech liberal tradition came to be of a somewhat more Jacobin variety in favour of democratic sanction and centralism. Still compared to the subsequent alternatives it was considerably less menacing. You will note that in the interwar period as Europen states one by one became authoritarian, Czechoslovakia remained a liberal democracy until the last. This because even the socialist currents in the country were strongly influenced by the Czech liberal tradition and while predictably terrible on other issues were non-authoritarian and good on “civil liberties” and the democratic process.
Also before the communist takeover Bohemia had been an economic powerhouse. In the Habsburg monarchy it was probably the most developed region, so the Czechs never lacked for enterprenurs and industrialists. Their view of themselves at the time was as of a very modern, very proggressive people.