Socialism

How do you define what a Nazi is?

This is an odd question in the context of the USSR and WWII. It’s not like we’re debating about Milo Yiannopoulos on Twitter and whether it’s correct to call him a Nazi because technically he wasn’t a member of the party from the early 20th century. “Nazis” here refers to members of the Wehrmacht and the Nazi party. It may also include, as a shorthand, people who were not formally party of the Nazi party but provided material aid to the Nazis. That’s treason in any country, especially during wartime.

Do counter revolutionaries deserve to be sent to worker camps where the conditions are so bad many die?

No. To the extent that imprisoning people is necessary, they deserve humane conditions. The goal should be rehabilitation, but that’s not possible in all circumstances. It’s my understanding that the harsh conditions of Soviet prisons were largely due to wartime scarcity and improved as time went on.

"Send people who don't agree with my world view to worker camps" Doesn't feel like a good thing

“disagreeing with my world view” is a weird way to say “stealing vast swaths of wealth” or “enslaving people” or “invading a sovereign nation” or “committing mass murder of Jews, Romani, queer people, and socialists”. I’m not going to pretend that 100% of Soviet prisoners deserved to be there or that everyone who died deserved to die. For example, the USSR was very progressive on queer issues at its inception, but Stalin later criminalized homosexuality. That was clearly wrong. But to act like the entire system was a systemic way to imprison people for thought crimes is disingenuous. Probably not your intention, but rather because that’s the framing of decades of propaganda surrounding Soviet prisons.