An innocent critique of a sci-fi series recently kicked off an unbelievable living room debate over Russian communism itself. The question on the table: Was the Soviet regime actually a cold, calculated, and murderous machine, or just a bunch of blubbering idiots who simply couldn’t figure out how to feed their own people?

The conversation started with me taking the position that the communists were, in fact, murderous dictators. My friends chose to argue that these leaders were trying something really stupendous, and it just wasn’t "executed" quite right, no pun intended. When I pointed out that while exact death tolls are difficult to lock down, reliable estimates range anywhere from 10 to 22 million people, my adversary in the debate paused. He conceded that, yes, many lives were lost during the transition to agricultural collectivism.

I found myself sitting there, astonished. How could someone so well-read mistake the murder of tens of millions of people for a poorly executed policy decision? The idea that starvation, deprivation, and mass slaughter could be casually written off as an administrative glitch in what was otherwise a decent directorate is a fascinating psychological leap.

It's Not a Bug. It's a Feature.

Many people are highly supportive of communism today, and they tend to believe historical examples simply failed because leaders veered off course from the original doctrine. Supporters rarely allow themselves to imagine that perhaps the unwritten rule of communism is, in fact, to rule with an iron fist from behind an iron curtain. In order to accept communism, you have to accept the reality that millions will die to sustain it.

This goes back to the often-repeated sentiment: "Communism is a great idea, but we’ve never actually tried it."

The prevailing thought is that every incarnation under the label of communism or Marxism possessed a fatal flaw that not only led to its ruin, but also made it incompatible with the "true" version of the ideology. Therefore, defenders argue, these regimes cannot be categorically labeled as real communism. The problem is that this entire philosophy takes humanity out of the equation. If people were computers that flawlessly followed programmed instructions, communism would be incredibly efficient and effective, and everyone would be happy.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, humans are not computers. Humans have feelings, and they have an innate need for autonomy. They require some measure of control and sovereignty over the outcomes of their actions, and ultimately, their lives. Communism, and every variation derived from it, structurally cannot allow for this. Meanwhile, it is worth noticing that every flawed version of capitalism is labeled exactly that, whether it technically meets the strict definition of capitalism or not.

The Game of Labels

We can get into the differences between socialism and communism another time, as there are distinct distinctions. However, it is important to note that people who claim these labels often use them to intentionally misguide the public into believing they are something they aren’t. Names can be exceptionally deceiving.

For example, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is neither democratic nor a republic. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China, presents the exact same contradiction. Here at home, politicians like Mayor Mamdani in New York use the terms democratic socialism, socialism, and communism almost interchangeably, and I am not entirely sure he actually knows the difference between the bunch. He recently suggested we need to elect more communists, an implication that makes his own ideological standing quite clear. As the old political joke goes, you only need to be a democratic socialist once; after that, you just become a socialist because elections are made "unnecessary."

The Seduction of the State

Collectivism, or Marxism, as a concept is an arrangement where the population contributes to the collective by surrendering all their worldly possessions and forfeiting any earnings to the state. In return, the state provides what you need to survive. In theory. But for the state to maintain ultimate control over your, or rather, [ahem] their, possessions and income, it must exert ultimate force. It is not natural for any living thing to willingly give up control of everything. Yet, that is exactly how the system is designed to work.

So, why would anyone claim to be a communist if historical examples were so disastrous? Does it have any benefits? Does any part of it actually work?

Yes, without a doubt, it is effective on many fronts. The USSR offered its people food, housing, universal healthcare, childcare, public transportation, military protection, local police, and municipal utilities like water and sewage. The public schools were also fully funded, and they were quite good. This comprehensive safety net is exactly why communism is experiencing a second wave right now. It is trendy, popular, and all the rage with a younger generation looking for stability.

The only downside, the one people really don't like to talk about at dinner parties, is that an enormous number of people were targeted and murdered in some of the most cold and callous ways imaginable, even when compared to the atrocities of Nazi Germany. In fact, in some ways, the communists were even more cruel, and by sheer numbers alone, they killed vastly more people.

The Bureaucracy of Extermination

So, in case anyone is unclear about exactly how many people died under the rule of communism or how they met their fate, let’s make that crystal clear right now.

The true measure of the Soviet state’s actions during those years isn't found simply in the sheer number of the dead, but in the sterile, administrative paperwork they left behind. When you look at surviving records like NKVD Order 00447, you find ordinary, bureaucratic ledgers that assigned specific numerical quotas for the execution and imprisonment of everyday citizens. It was treated as a completely routine function of managing the country.

Consider the decree issued on April 7, 1935. By that point, the state had already orphaned an astonishing number of children after executing their parents during widespread political sweeps. Rather than address the crisis of these desperate, wandering youths, the government simply lowered the age for the death penalty down to twelve. It was a calculated, legalistic mechanism designed to erase the very orphans the state itself had just manufactured.

Then there is the persistent argument that the massive famines were merely a tragic, unintended consequence of a clumsy shift to agricultural collectivization. If it were truly an economic misstep, the government’s response defies logic. The regime intentionally deployed armed military cordons and a strict internal passport system to physically barricade starving farming communities inside the famine zones. By actively blocking hungry people from moving to areas where food was available, the state revealed its actual intent. The mass starvation wasn't a policy error; it was a deliberately deployed weapon.

The Price of Provision

It is easy to look at the mounting pressures of modern life, the cost of groceries, the housing market, the stress of healthcare, and long for a system that simply takes care of everything for you. The desire for a collective embrace that provides for your basic needs is a deeply human instinct.

People often think there isn’t a place in the United States where the government controls everything you do, manages your time, takes care of your health, and supplies the food and housing required for your survival. Those people are wrong. We have that exact environment here; we just don’t call it communism. We call it a prison.

When you weigh the undeniable comforts of a state-provided existence against the historical reality that millions upon millions of people were murdered to maintain that exact structure, the math becomes fairly clear. While we certainly have our own profound societal issues to solve, handing over total sovereignty to a government with that kind of track record is simply not the right choice for us.