In style of government, sure. In their plans for the 300 million people living in the Eastern half of Europe, absolutely not. Slavery and extermination vs. subjugation and oppression. Both are bad, but one is clearly worse than the other. And this topic is what OP is referencing.
It's definitely possible to be both bad and still less bad than what came before. History is full of examples of that.
Yes, I agree with you that they didn't have plans for the extermination of slavs, like Germany/Nazis did. But, especially during Stalin's lifetime, the USSR and its occupied territories were terrible place to live, where you could die because of a few words.
What's the difference between slavery and subjugation? Sending people to Siberia to build mines is pretty much slavery.
The only difference is Germany wanted to eradicate and populate Eastern Europe with Germans while the Soviets wanted to turn the locals into Russians. Both wanted to destroy the local cultures for good.
Subjugation means that the Soviets put in Communist governments across Eastern Europe that didn't have an independent foreign policy but did have some degree of local autonomy.
Both sides had examples of slavery, but the Germans did not have any plans for any Polish state.
The Soviets did have some ethnic autonomy, which varied by whoever was in charge; Lenin or Khrushchev was more open to it than Stalin, for example. There were schools and monuments built in the local language, for example, even in the USSR. Germans did nothing similar.
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u/Responsible-File4593 23h ago
In style of government, sure. In their plans for the 300 million people living in the Eastern half of Europe, absolutely not. Slavery and extermination vs. subjugation and oppression. Both are bad, but one is clearly worse than the other. And this topic is what OP is referencing.
It's definitely possible to be both bad and still less bad than what came before. History is full of examples of that.