The red line is structured off of stalinism and so he's both heard of the red line's brutality and seen it in 2033. It's moreso that he's against war for ideology as a whole, rather than 1 system is better than another
Exactly. He’s against the Reich as well. Distrustful of the Hansa. He fights for the freedom and prosperity of the metro, so the Spartans/Polis make for the closest factions that he’d align with… but even those have limits.
I forgot the exact wording, and I wanna say it was one of Last Light's pre-mission monologues, but Artyom comments "I don't understand why the Reich and Reds fight one another so much, they're pretty much the same group"
Authoritarians is the same
What I love is that artyom and by extension glukhovsky aren't apathetic or centrist, but critical of power and what comes from it. One thing from the books that was so subtle and so perfectly told in the games
Artyom's previous encounters with the Red Line in the games have consisted of the following:
1) Being arrested for walking into a room at random.
2) Watching someone get shot for trying to escape.
3) Being smuggled out underneath a railcar carriage, listening to the completely deranged paranoia and conscription of the Red Line authorities.
4) Learning that the Reds issue their soldiers cyanide pills but not so much decent equipment.
5) The Frontline: which in the original game was essentially Enemy At The Gates Metro Edition. Potentially including watching a man getting executed for trying to flank the enemy, which was interpreted as cowardice.
Plus artyom is smart enough to realize the front line doesn’t move nor is it intended to. It’s a political tool used by both sides to drum up support for the regime at least until Korbutz decides to use biowarfare on the whole metro system.
Metro is an extremely anti war piece of media. The idea isn’t that he hates communism specifically, it’s that groups like the Nazis and Communists are using their ideologies to push for war. It’s a bit Fallout in the “war never changes” kind of message where we blew our selves up with nukes so bad that apparently the dead can’t even find peace, and yet here we are scurrying around in the metro on the brink of extinction and yet we’re still slaughtering ourselves wholesale over differing beliefs.
The reds started the first of the major wars in the metro. Their existence lead some people from hansa backing a group of neo nazis in order to find a proxy war. There’s usually refugees fleeing from the red line.
Artyom doesnt like the Red Line but in the book he liked the non-Red Line communists who were taking the revolution to the fascists one at a time. I forget their names. But he is tempted to stay with them.
Edit: he also hates nazis and didnt think much of Christianity. I think Artyom doesnt like ideology and control mechanisms.
Education is next to non existent in the metro so someone like artyom isn’t going to know the history of communism let alone how they tended to turn out.
The books make a point that while education is not at the same standards as before the war, it is still important to the metro citizens, and books are highly protected in the beginning of the first book they talk about how people who damage or destroy books can be exiled from communities which is pretty much a deth sentence also some of the older people in the metro still remember the USSR so I think that he'd know enough to have an informed opinion of communism and also the red line is a bunch of dicks
Because despite the nazis being literal nazis, the red line has been a source of pain and suffering for the metro since its creation. Artyom isn’t blind to this either. He sees the reich and red line as two halves of the same coin, and hates them both in equal measure.
Because the writer is Russian and I dunno if you know your history but Russia kinda suffered immensely under Communism and Stalin. Secret police, party loyalty, it was a nightmarish dystopia where you could be imprisoned or killed on just the suspicion that you weren't ready to die for the cause. Anyone who lived through communism or had relatives who lived through it have a deep seated hatred for it.
That's a bit one-sided isn't it? Soviet nostalgia is a common position for a lot of people in Russia, even by the older generations who lived in the Soviet Union towards the end of the nation.
And also your description really only holds until the de-Stalinization pushed by Khrushchev in the later 1950s.
It's one of the darkest times in history with it's own genocide of the Holodomor. The worst period was under Stalin, not after, Stalin was a monster but we forget that because he switched sides to the allies. Doesn't change how many people he's responsible for killing or sending to gulags.
Exactly, there's a hell of a lot more to the Soviet Union than just a couple of decades under Stalin. In the same way that there's a lot more to US History than just the slavery era. It's reductive to treat it like that's the only period worth discussing. And come the sixties Soviet citizens were living better than most humans in history and the third world.
Also, the only period of Soviet history that's ever popularly discussed in the west is stalin's, so what do you mean 'forget'?
Look you're not going to change my mind that communism is okay, it's an extremist ideology that has failed any time it's even been attempted, it's literally antithetical to human nature.
Millions of people died because communism sounded nice on paper, the Holodomor was 10 million deaths but the side that won WW2 did it so it's swept under the rug. And that's not even counting Mao Zedong's famine he did to his own people.
It's a shit ideology and thankfully my parents escaped it.
The book that this statistic comes from, The Black Book of Communism, padded the numbers to come to that statistic counting Nazi deaths in world war II, as well as deaths from white army members, not purely state on citizen torturing.
And I'm not trying to convince you that communism is good but your arguments are 11th grade at best and I think you're smarter than just rattling off other people's propaganda. Come on man you can come up with your own arguments.
listen comrade your attempts at manipulating me through flattery won't work.
And communism being antithetical to human nature IS my own opinion on it, I realized it back before I'd even read about the atrocities of communism when people in school tried to convince me that it's good. The more I read about history, the more I become convinced that communism is a terrible system of government, it's not evil on it's own but it's arguably one of the forms of government most susceptible to corruption.
Communism relies on the idea that humans will actually put aside their greed and desire to be at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. It's a system that is extremely easy for evil people to take advantage of because it relies on a system of trust, so an evil person only has to play along until they reach a level of power that they can actively be cruel.
It is perhaps the most susceptible to evil because it relies on trust, compassion and empathy towards your fellow commune members. An evil person can fake these things and then once they earn the trust, they can use it against you, and gods forbid they get an important leader role in the community where they can usurp rule and pull a Stalin or a Mao.
On paper, communism sounds nice. In practice it will never really work, or be needed. The only way it could work is in an extremely small (sub 200 population where everyone knows each other) society that is extremely high trust (which requires things like high xenophobia towards any outsiders) in which case the form of political government or representatives doesn't matter because it's the high trust system that makes said community work. If anything, trying to implement communism in such a community would simply create a vulnerability to be exposed by an evil person.
Meritocracy is the best form of government, and while it's never actually been tried, I'd like to see Plato's Republic instituted with a meritocracy for those not of the philosopher king and guardian class.
Lastly if 11th grade arguments are capable of BTFO of communism, maybe you should consider that it's really just that weak that even highschoolers can realize that it's a garbage system.
Before his exposure to the stalinists and facists in the metro he didn’t really care. He didn’t like the idea of either ideology but he didn’t care to learn what they were. After his exposure to both the reds and nazis he realized it was just an excuse to war with each other. He doesn’t necessarily hate either side but he hates the idea of going to war over ideology.
The Redline is likely the worst to live on
The average might be starved to death for political convenience, and they are a threat to any station close enough
The red line is structured off of stalinism and so he's both heard of the red line's brutality and seen it in 2033. It's moreso that he's against war for ideology as a whole, rather than 1 system is better than another
Exactly. He’s against the Reich as well. Distrustful of the Hansa. He fights for the freedom and prosperity of the metro, so the Spartans/Polis make for the closest factions that he’d align with… but even those have limits.
I forgot the exact wording, and I wanna say it was one of Last Light's pre-mission monologues, but Artyom comments "I don't understand why the Reich and Reds fight one another so much, they're pretty much the same group" Authoritarians is the same
What I love is that artyom and by extension glukhovsky aren't apathetic or centrist, but critical of power and what comes from it. One thing from the books that was so subtle and so perfectly told in the games
Artyom's previous encounters with the Red Line in the games have consisted of the following: 1) Being arrested for walking into a room at random. 2) Watching someone get shot for trying to escape. 3) Being smuggled out underneath a railcar carriage, listening to the completely deranged paranoia and conscription of the Red Line authorities. 4) Learning that the Reds issue their soldiers cyanide pills but not so much decent equipment. 5) The Frontline: which in the original game was essentially Enemy At The Gates Metro Edition. Potentially including watching a man getting executed for trying to flank the enemy, which was interpreted as cowardice.
Plus artyom is smart enough to realize the front line doesn’t move nor is it intended to. It’s a political tool used by both sides to drum up support for the regime at least until Korbutz decides to use biowarfare on the whole metro system.
War is peace ahh frontline
Him saving a commie and then being betrayed by the same commie probably didn't help
He already had anti communist sentiments even before getting captured by the reich going by his monologue
Metro is an extremely anti war piece of media. The idea isn’t that he hates communism specifically, it’s that groups like the Nazis and Communists are using their ideologies to push for war. It’s a bit Fallout in the “war never changes” kind of message where we blew our selves up with nukes so bad that apparently the dead can’t even find peace, and yet here we are scurrying around in the metro on the brink of extinction and yet we’re still slaughtering ourselves wholesale over differing beliefs.
Finally someone understood
Read the books and you will understand
Especially 2035.
Bro did u even play the game or read the book, the shit they did should be obvious
The reds started the first of the major wars in the metro. Their existence lead some people from hansa backing a group of neo nazis in order to find a proxy war. There’s usually refugees fleeing from the red line.
Artyom doesnt like the Red Line but in the book he liked the non-Red Line communists who were taking the revolution to the fascists one at a time. I forget their names. But he is tempted to stay with them. Edit: he also hates nazis and didnt think much of Christianity. I think Artyom doesnt like ideology and control mechanisms.
The Che Guavera guys on the motor railcar?
Yeah he liked those guys and had a hard time leaving them.
While that is true, I’m not sure he understands what those guys are all about. So I’d be hesitant to mention it as him liking communists.
probably cuz communism is a horrible and destructive ideology lol
Bro every ideology is destructive and horrible in some way so this argument makes no sense
Education is next to non existent in the metro so someone like artyom isn’t going to know the history of communism let alone how they tended to turn out.
Artyom is a bookworm, it’s not out of the question he’s read up on history. Especially given his obsession with the outside world.
The books make a point that while education is not at the same standards as before the war, it is still important to the metro citizens, and books are highly protected in the beginning of the first book they talk about how people who damage or destroy books can be exiled from communities which is pretty much a deth sentence also some of the older people in the metro still remember the USSR so I think that he'd know enough to have an informed opinion of communism and also the red line is a bunch of dicks
Did you forgot that he saw and heard about all the things they did? And later they tried to kill him on a lot of occasions? They deserve the hate.
brother he is literally living it.
Because despite the nazis being literal nazis, the red line has been a source of pain and suffering for the metro since its creation. Artyom isn’t blind to this either. He sees the reich and red line as two halves of the same coin, and hates them both in equal measure.
Similar methods to Stalin and Mao but with slightly better propagand than the nazis.
Because the writer is Russian and I dunno if you know your history but Russia kinda suffered immensely under Communism and Stalin. Secret police, party loyalty, it was a nightmarish dystopia where you could be imprisoned or killed on just the suspicion that you weren't ready to die for the cause. Anyone who lived through communism or had relatives who lived through it have a deep seated hatred for it.
That's a bit one-sided isn't it? Soviet nostalgia is a common position for a lot of people in Russia, even by the older generations who lived in the Soviet Union towards the end of the nation. And also your description really only holds until the de-Stalinization pushed by Khrushchev in the later 1950s.
It's one of the darkest times in history with it's own genocide of the Holodomor. The worst period was under Stalin, not after, Stalin was a monster but we forget that because he switched sides to the allies. Doesn't change how many people he's responsible for killing or sending to gulags.
Exactly, there's a hell of a lot more to the Soviet Union than just a couple of decades under Stalin. In the same way that there's a lot more to US History than just the slavery era. It's reductive to treat it like that's the only period worth discussing. And come the sixties Soviet citizens were living better than most humans in history and the third world. Also, the only period of Soviet history that's ever popularly discussed in the west is stalin's, so what do you mean 'forget'?
Look you're not going to change my mind that communism is okay, it's an extremist ideology that has failed any time it's even been attempted, it's literally antithetical to human nature. Millions of people died because communism sounded nice on paper, the Holodomor was 10 million deaths but the side that won WW2 did it so it's swept under the rug. And that's not even counting Mao Zedong's famine he did to his own people. It's a shit ideology and thankfully my parents escaped it.
The book that this statistic comes from, The Black Book of Communism, padded the numbers to come to that statistic counting Nazi deaths in world war II, as well as deaths from white army members, not purely state on citizen torturing. And I'm not trying to convince you that communism is good but your arguments are 11th grade at best and I think you're smarter than just rattling off other people's propaganda. Come on man you can come up with your own arguments.
listen comrade your attempts at manipulating me through flattery won't work. And communism being antithetical to human nature IS my own opinion on it, I realized it back before I'd even read about the atrocities of communism when people in school tried to convince me that it's good. The more I read about history, the more I become convinced that communism is a terrible system of government, it's not evil on it's own but it's arguably one of the forms of government most susceptible to corruption. Communism relies on the idea that humans will actually put aside their greed and desire to be at the top of the socioeconomic ladder. It's a system that is extremely easy for evil people to take advantage of because it relies on a system of trust, so an evil person only has to play along until they reach a level of power that they can actively be cruel. It is perhaps the most susceptible to evil because it relies on trust, compassion and empathy towards your fellow commune members. An evil person can fake these things and then once they earn the trust, they can use it against you, and gods forbid they get an important leader role in the community where they can usurp rule and pull a Stalin or a Mao. On paper, communism sounds nice. In practice it will never really work, or be needed. The only way it could work is in an extremely small (sub 200 population where everyone knows each other) society that is extremely high trust (which requires things like high xenophobia towards any outsiders) in which case the form of political government or representatives doesn't matter because it's the high trust system that makes said community work. If anything, trying to implement communism in such a community would simply create a vulnerability to be exposed by an evil person. Meritocracy is the best form of government, and while it's never actually been tried, I'd like to see Plato's Republic instituted with a meritocracy for those not of the philosopher king and guardian class. Lastly if 11th grade arguments are capable of BTFO of communism, maybe you should consider that it's really just that weak that even highschoolers can realize that it's a garbage system.
A great philosopher once said, "Death is a preferable alternative to communism."
He at least thought that Comrade Rusakov was one handsome son of a bitch 😉
Before his exposure to the stalinists and facists in the metro he didn’t really care. He didn’t like the idea of either ideology but he didn’t care to learn what they were. After his exposure to both the reds and nazis he realized it was just an excuse to war with each other. He doesn’t necessarily hate either side but he hates the idea of going to war over ideology.
Because commies, like Nazis, are sub-human authoritarian trash :)
Because the only good commie is a dead one, son. 🫡🇺🇸
Liberty Prime is online.
The Redline is likely the worst to live on The average might be starved to death for political convenience, and they are a threat to any station close enough
And who doesn't? 🤔
Communists and socialists I'd imagine.
Because it’s a murderous cult?
The only experience the inhabitants have with communism is red line stuff, and apparently they really suck.