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 BaronIveagh wrote:

Wait, this is actually happening?

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Communism? Please stop here already for you have already made it clear your knowledge of Communism is lacking. Unlike nazism, Communism does not advocate genocide or the killing of anyone. The Communist ideology, like almost everything in the world has been abused by ruthless dictators to further their political goals and remove their opponents, yes. But the killings under Stalin and Mao were not something inherent to Communism, nor were they genocides.

Funny, the Russian courts ruled otherwise, after Stalin's death. They did determine that the Голодомор was, in fact, genocide, IIRC.

I recall no such ruling.
The official position of the Russian government is that the Holodomor was a great tragedy for which the Soviet authorities were partly responsible but which was not a genocide because millions of non-Ukrainian Soviet citizens also died.

That makes it more of a genocide, not less.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Wait, this is actually happening?

A lot.
It often comes as a surprise to Westerners, but Stalin is still greatly admired by a very large part, if not the majority of modern Russians.

 Ashiraya wrote:


Wait, this is actually happening?

Happened, past tense. it proved somewhat unpopular in Zaporizhzhya, one of the areas bordering Donbas, and the statue was beheaded and then blown to pieces.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
A lot.
It often comes as a surprise to Westerners, but Stalin is still greatly admired by a very large part, if not the majority of modern Russians.

Actually this was the first statue of Stalin erected in the Ukraine since his death in 1953. I wouldn't call it 'all the time'. It's erection was met with protests and the eventual destruction of the statue.


It's funny how one mass murderer is celebrated and another condemned.


Speaking of Statues...


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29405089


Just like in the old days, Stalin goes up, Lenin comes down.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

But whatever definition you want to use, the main aim of the Holocaust was to exterminate people based on race. Political opponents were also killed, but this was not the main purpose of the nazi system of concentration and death camps.

The purpose of a digging machine is to excavate dirt, but when you fit it with nooses and use to hang hundreds of people, it's still mass murder. (I'm looking at you, VonBraun)

And what is the value of this comparison? You just compared a genocide with a digging machine. Comparing warm and soft much? If you fit a digging machine with nooses and use it to hang people, the digging machine does not become mass murder.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

wikipedia wrote:Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or a significant part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group via the (a) Killing of members of the group; (b) Causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberate inflicting on the group's conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing of measures intended to prevent births within the group; or (e) Forcible transferring of children of the group to another group. Genocide entails also the Conspiracy to commit genocide; Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; Attempt to commit genocide; and Complicity in genocide.

wikipedia wrote:Genocide is the systematic destruction of all or a significant part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group via the (a) Killing of members of the group; (b) Causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberate inflicting on the group's conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing of measures intended to prevent births within the group; or (e) Forcible transferring of children of the group to another group. Genocide entails also the Conspiracy to commit genocide; Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; Attempt to commit genocide; and Complicity in genocide.

The Holodomor would have been a genocide if it was aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian people. Judging from the fact that the Holodomor also heavily impacted large areas of Russia and Belarus, and that many non-Ukrainians also died in it, this was not the case.
I agree with Solzhenitsyn on this question:

Wikipedia wrote:Alexander Solzhenitsyn, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature and Soviet-Russian historian, opined in Izvestia that Holodomor was no different from the Russian famine of 1921 as both were caused by the ruthless robbery of peasants by Bolshevik grain procurements. According to him the lie of the Holodomor being genocide was invented decades later after the event and the Ukrainian effort to have the famine recognised as genocide is an act of historical revisionism that has now surpassed the level of Bolshevik agitprop. The writer cautions that the genocidal claim has its chances to be accepted by the West due to the general Western ignorance of Russian and Ukrainian history.[22]

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

The Ukraine alone suffered about 7 million casualties in WW2, 16.3% of its entire population.

We're talking about civilian deaths, since what the Russians inflicted were 100% civilian deaths. That 7 million includes military casualties.

Kosyk gives 2.5 million military and 4.5 million civilian deaths
Kondufor gives 3,898,457 civilians and 1,366,588 military and prisoners-of-war for a total of 5,265,045. He adds another 2 million or so were killed by the Allies.
"During this war over 20 million Soviet people were killed including many peaceful citizens. On the territory of Ukraine along the Hitlerites destroyed over 5 million people and more than 2 million people were carried off into slavery" Ukrainska Radyanska Entsyklopedia, Kyiv 1978, vol. 2, p. 152.

And why does military or civilian make a difference in this case? Soldiers are people too, and if Hitler had never unleashed his genocidal war on Ukraine, they would have lived. Nonetheless, the majority of those 7 million were still civilians.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

The Soviet Union in total suffered more than 20 million casualties, majority of which were civilians.

This has been hotly contested by writers both inside and outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union. It mostly comes from Krivosheev's Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses. the reason for it being contested is the surviving records don't add up by a sizable margin, never mind the unknown or unnamed dead.

Grand total Russian casualties for civilians was about 13 million, with three million of that in the form of rear area casualties that cannot be attributed to the Germans. 7 million came from combat or violence, including the sieges of Leningrad and Stalingrad, typically about half a million is given as the total number of persons actually purged by the Germans as part of their program of genocide. 4 million, give or take, died of famine and disease associated with the war.

Given that 4.5 million, it's not hard to see that the Ukrainians and Belorussians did the majority of the civilian dying in WW2. And the Ukrainian part was less than half the casualties they took during peace from the Russians, just a few years before.

And how did you gain all this knowledge? And with such certainty? Did a magical pixie whisper it in your ear? Did it come to you in a dream?
Give reliable sources when making such claims, otherwise I won't even respond to them.

Krivosheyev's work has been widely accepted by the scientific community as it is the most thorough and extensive research into the matter so far. Like any controversial issue, it is contested, mostly for political goals. The vast majority of other studies into Soviet casualites also give numbers close to Krivosheyev's.
Until someone publishes a more reliable research than Krivosheyev, we should take his numbers as being the closest we can get to the unknowable truth.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

And the Russians did not cause anything, the Soviets did.

And Germany did not cause anything, that crazy Austrian corporal did. Do you think the Ukrainians see them as two separate things, or the same old thing. Particularly since the government they're setting up in the Donbas is embracing the Soviet system.

Only a fool would still blame the present-day Federal Republic of Germany for Hitler's crimes. The same should be the case for the Russian Federation and Stalin.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
A lot.
It often comes as a surprise to Westerners, but Stalin is still greatly admired by a very large part, if not the majority of modern Russians.

Actually this was the first statue of Stalin erected in the Ukraine since his death in 1953. I wouldn't call it 'all the time'. It's erection was met with protests and the eventual destruction of the statue.

I was speaking of Russia, not Ukraine, and even in Ukraine, one can still find statues of Stalin in almost any town.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

It's funny how one mass murderer is celebrated and another condemned.

If you think it is funny, you truly know little about Russia.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Speaking of Statues...


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29405089


Just like in the old days, Stalin goes up, Lenin comes down.

No, they only take those statues down to grieve the Russian community.

Germany admits and apologises at length for the crimes of the Nazis. You won't find many statues of Hitler in Germany. Russia is still an aggressor to its neighbours as they were soviet satellite states, Russia attempts to rewrite the past by airbrushing textbooks to be pro-Stalin. Germany is ashamed of Hitler and the nazis and apologise profusely for WW2. Don't hear many apologies for the way Russia butchered Germany and mass raped it's population of women and children, or for the millions imprisoned and killed by Stalin.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Germany admits and apologises at length for the crimes of the Nazis. You won't find many statues of Hitler in Germany. Russia is still an aggressor to its neighbours as they were soviet satellite states, Russia attempts to rewrite the past by airbrushing textbooks to be pro-Stalin. Germany is ashamed of Hitler and the nazis and apologise profusely for WW2.

More or less true. But Stalin is more ambiguous than Hitler.
Germany has clear groups it can apologise to for Hitler's behaviour. The Jews, the Slavs and all other groups that were singled out for ethnical or similar reasons.
To what groups should Russia apologise? Stalin mostly targetted political opponents, but how does one apologise to political opponents of Stalin when they no longer exist? The only groups that clearly can be apologised to are those that were forced into exile in Asia because they belonged to an ethnicity that was suspected of disloyalty to Stalin. But most of these groups, such as the Tatars, Cossacks, Ingrians or Kalmyks have been recompensated since then and have returned to their original lands, often with great autonomy.
What others do you think the Russian government should apologise to?

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Don't hear many apologies for the way Russia butchered Germany and mass raped it's population of women and children, or for the millions imprisoned and killed by Stalin.

If Germany wants an apology for that, they can wait forever. The Germans deserved what they got for the unspeakable acts they committed in the Soviet Union. Compared to how the Germans treated the Soviets, the Soviets treated the Germans very gently. And not only that, but the stories of the mass rapes are ridiculously exaggerated German propaganda. The nazis started it to frighten their population and inspire them to fight until the last against the Russians, and after the war it lived on in the West as Cold War propaganda. Rape was punished by summary execution in the Red Army. Quite unlike the Wehrmacht I might add.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Don't hear many apologies for the way Russia butchered Germany and mass raped it's population of women and children, or for the millions imprisoned and killed by Stalin.

If Germany wants an apology for that, they can wait forever. The Germans deserved what they got for the unspeakable acts they committed in the Soviet Union. Compared to how the Germans treated the Soviets, the Soviets treated the Germans very gently. And not only that, but the stories of the mass rapes are ridiculously exaggerated German propaganda. The nazis started it to frighten their population and inspire them to fight until the last against the Russians, and after the war it lived on in the West as Cold War propaganda. Rape was punished by summary execution in the Red Army. Quite unlike the Wehrmacht I might add.

And this is where you are wrong. Not civilian deserves to be punished for the actions of the military.

Nor does "Well their soldiers raped/murdered our civilians" mean their civilians deserve to be raped/murdered. That's just fething absurd.

Basically the summation is this,

The Nazi's were bad to only certain people.

The Commies were bad to everybody.

I'd say Communism is worse. Especially when you look at the body count.

Well, the communists were, the system was just their means to gain power. People like Stalin were never there for GLORIOUS COMMUNISM. He did not care about GLORIOUS COMMUNISM. He just used it go gt power.

Or youknow, or the Jews and Roma that the Soviets went after just as hard as the Nazis...

To say that the atrocities that the Soviets committed are exaggerated may be true, but their soldiers were by no means shining examples of morality. That something's punishable by court marshal certainly didn't stop all the murdering of civilians, destruction of property, thievery (hey if you want to talk about propaganda shall we do a quick search of all those edited images of Soviet soldiers which removed non-standard and totally not looted from the local populace gear) and of course rape. Sure soldiers from other countries were at it as well (the Americans in particular were known for looting), but hell, at least by and large the Western nations admit to all the crap they pulled during that era. The regime under Stalin was horrible and as the popular historical perception goes (one backed up by evidence, not just "Western propaganda") under his regime more political dissidents, those of minorities, and well just undesirables died than through Nazism.

Stalin did nothing for Communism but shred any remnants of that the system was any sort of socialist ideal. He created a cult of personality and screwed over anyone who got in his way, no matter what detriment that caused to the USSR's well being. That people apparently worship him is absurd, as it either shows a complete lack of knowledge over his actions, or that they're perfectly willing to ignore that the guy was a genocidal sociopath. Given the rampart anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and right wing nationalism in Russia right now though (which is naturally state approved of course) I can see why people would think that the man did great things for the state, but I couldn't condone such thinking.

So. ah, the line that the Russian government has nothing to apologise for (especially given that other nations involved in that conflict have already done so) and that Stalin was a cool guy who didn't order the deaths of millions (or at least his regime did) is a tad offensive. This is OT though, so such attitudes are to be expected. Still, bother considering the facts a bit before being a detractor of them. Given that parties here seem to be in denial over the actions of the Russian Federation in general over the past century, particularly in the past year, that's probably a tall order. =P

As I recall some idiots have actually said they think the UK is a communist paradise.

Stalin did eliminate political opponents, but that quickly devolved into paranoia. He specifically targeted national minorities, such as with the Polish action. In total, Poles consisted of 1/8 of the total victims of the terror in 37-38. For the whole of the Soviet Union this is a disproportionate amount. Or in Ukraine during the famine in 32-33, where out of the estimated 3.3 million victims, 3 million were Ukranians. If the Russian part is taken into account, the amount of victims would be 4.3 million, with 3.2 million of them Ukranians. With the remainder being Russian, German, Polish, Jewish etc. [Snyder, Bloodlands]

Did the Russian government ever apologize to the Koreans?

Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Don't hear many apologies for the way Russia butchered Germany and mass raped it's population of women and children, or for the millions imprisoned and killed by Stalin.

If Germany wants an apology for that, they can wait forever. The Germans deserved what they got for the unspeakable acts they committed in the Soviet Union. Compared to how the Germans treated the Soviets, the Soviets treated the Germans very gently. And not only that, but the stories of the mass rapes are ridiculously exaggerated German propaganda. The nazis started it to frighten their population and inspire them to fight until the last against the Russians, and after the war it lived on in the West as Cold War propaganda. Rape was punished by summary execution in the Red Army. Quite unlike the Wehrmacht I might add.

And this is where you are wrong. Not civilian deserves to be punished for the actions of the military.

While I agree in principle with this, I think it is important to imagine the viewpoint of the young Soviet soldier who has lost many friends and family members to the Germans. It is easy to pass judgement from a cozy chair without having suffered so much. And those civilians did vote Hitler into power...

MrDwhitey wrote:Nor does "Well their soldiers raped/murdered our civilians" mean their civilians deserve to be raped/murdered. That's just fething absurd.

Never heard of the concept of 'revenge'? Even the Bible says it: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The Germans themselves were quite fond of this idea. Again, if you had been in the position these men were in, you would have probably said something different.

Grey Templar wrote:Basically the summation is this,

The Nazi's were bad to only certain people.

The Commies were bad to everybody.

I'd say Communism is worse. Especially when you look at the body count.

You couldn't be farther from the truth. At least if you are talking about the Russian communists. The nazis aimed to exterminate entire peoples and races, the communists (or rather Stalinists) only to exterminate political opponents.
If you claim communism to be worse than nazism, you must clearly be either mad or ignorant. Not only would the death toll of Nazism been much larger if it hadn't been stopped by the valiant sacrifice of millions of people from all over the world, but nazism kills innocent men, women and children based on nothing but race or ethnicity. Stalinist atrocities on the other hand were usually aimed at people who (willingly) opposed Stalinist authorities. Nazim was bad to entire peoples, Stalinism usually only to certain political groups in society.
Besides that, Nazism is inherently evil. The division of people into superior and inferior humans based on ethnicity and the extermination or enslavement of 'inferior' peoples are core principles of Nazi ideology. Communism on the other hand is inherently good. It does not advocate the killing of anyone, it only advocates absolute (economical) equality.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Or youknow, or the Jews and Roma that the Soviets went after just as hard as the Nazis...

Oh really? Than were are all those death camps the Soviets built to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe? I have never heard of them.

 Wyrmalla wrote:

To say that the atrocities that the Soviets committed are exaggerated may be true, but their soldiers were by no means shining examples of morality. That something's punishable by court marshal certainly didn't stop all the murdering of civilians, destruction of property, thievery (hey if you want to talk about propaganda shall we do a quick search of all those edited images of Soviet soldiers which removed non-standard and totally not looted from the local populace gear) and of course rape. Sure soldiers from other countries were at it as well (the Americans in particular were known for looting), but hell, at least by and large the Western nations admit to all the crap they pulled during that era.

Obviously the Soviet soldiers were far from shining examples of morality. Like all sides in the conflict, they too inflicted many war crimes. It is only the exaggerations that sting so much. Especially since it usually is only the Soviets who were singled out for contemporary political reasons. It does only increase the hostility many Russians feel towards the West.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Stalin did nothing for Communism but shred any remnants of that the system was any sort of socialist ideal. He created a cult of personality and screwed over anyone who got in his way, no matter what detriment that caused to the USSR's well being. That people apparently worship him is absurd, as it either shows a complete lack of knowledge over his actions, or that they're perfectly willing to ignore that the guy was a genocidal sociopath. Given the rampart anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia and right wing nationalism in Russia right now though (which is naturally state approved of course) I can see why people would think that the man did great things for the state, but I couldn't condone such thinking.

Stalin was no true Communist, he was a Stalinist. He may have been a Communist once, but when he got a taste of power, it became nothing more than a justification and way to increase and hold his power for him.
Nonetheless, Stalin thanks his popularity among the Russian people to the fact he changed Russia from a backwards, agrarian state plagued by civil war and internal unrest into a modern superpower. And on top of that, he also defeated the Nazis.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
So. ah, the line that the Russian government has nothing to apologise for (especially given that other nations involved in that conflict have already done so) and that Stalin was a cool guy who didn't order the deaths of millions (or at least his regime did) is a tad offensive. This is OT though, so such attitudes are to be expected. Still, bother considering the facts a bit before being a detractor of them. Given that parties here seem to be in denial over the actions of the Russian Federation in general over the past century, particularly in the past year, that's probably a tall order. =P

So who do you think the Russian government should apologise to?

And it's still absurd.

I can understand why such things happen, but just because you can understand the reasoning of something doesn't make it right.

Eugh, Off Topic. Someone else can answer those questions if they want. I'm not in the mood to spend more time tonight discussing this topic with someone who opens their reply with "because people happen to live in a country that soldiers are fighting in that makes them legitimate targets. Come on if they weren't the enemy they wouldn't be there!". That and go and talk to the Israelis about the number of Jews who weren't killed by the Soviets (that 4% of their population which are ethnically Russian just decided to live their because of the nice weather). Meh, go post some silly .gifs, the level of denial in your posts isn't quite so fun any more.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Don't hear many apologies for the way Russia butchered Germany and mass raped it's population of women and children, or for the millions imprisoned and killed by Stalin.

If Germany wants an apology for that, they can wait forever. The Germans deserved what they got for the unspeakable acts they committed in the Soviet Union. Compared to how the Germans treated the Soviets, the Soviets treated the Germans very gently. And not only that, but the stories of the mass rapes are ridiculously exaggerated German propaganda. The nazis started it to frighten their population and inspire them to fight until the last against the Russians, and after the war it lived on in the West as Cold War propaganda. Rape was punished by summary execution in the Red Army. Quite unlike the Wehrmacht I might add.

And this is where you are wrong. Not civilian deserves to be punished for the actions of the military.

While I agree in principle with this, I think it is important to imagine the viewpoint of the young Soviet soldier who has lost many friends and family members to the Germans. It is easy to pass judgement from a cozy chair without having suffered so much. And those civilians did vote Hitler into power...

MrDwhitey wrote:Nor does "Well their soldiers raped/murdered our civilians" mean their civilians deserve to be raped/murdered. That's just fething absurd.

Never heard of the concept of 'revenge'? Even the Bible says it: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The Germans themselves were quite fond of this idea. Again, if you had been in the position these men were in, you would have probably said something different.

You protest rather too hard too convince. The way you dismiss the actions of Soviet forces on multiple points starting with the statement that the Germans 'got what they deserved', justified by legitimising revenge and excusing the actions of soldiers as being those of young men that had suffered, rather makes me doubt that you really have faith that the rapes are so 'ridiculously exaggerated'. That Germany admits to their actions and people like you and Russia generally does not and choose to brush it away as western propaganda, is exactly the point I was making. If you think the soviet forces went 'very gently' on the Germans you need to pick up a non-Putin approved history book and do some fething reading. Recognising what was done to Germany doesn't lessen Russian suffering one bit, but the historical revisionism on display here is quite something.

While I agree in principle with this, I think it is important to imagine the viewpoint of the young Soviet soldier who has lost many friends and family members to the Germans. It is easy to pass judgement from a cozy chair without having suffered so much. And those civilians did vote Hitler into power...

I don't think the German civilians got what they deserved, however I don't think the Red Army or the Soviet people can be blamed collectively. Think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Dresden, not only non nuclear bombing of German and Japanese civilians took on huge amounts of resources that could have been better spent. These bombings that served very little purpose accept to indiscriminately kill civilians are written off as military operations.


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That makes it more of a genocide, not less.

Well the Ukrainians allege that they were targeted as an ethnic group, denying that fact can land you in prison in the modern Ukraine(I haven't checked the news so maybe not any more...)

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And what is the value of this comparison? You just compared a genocide with a digging machine. Comparing warm and soft much? If you fit a digging machine with nooses and use it to hang people, the digging machine does not become mass murder.

Not sure if you're just being obtuse deliberately or are really just not getting it.

the point was that you can make pretty much anything a tool for mass murder. The direct comparison was the engineers at Peenemünde Army Research Center turning a digging machine into a means to execute slave laborers more quickly. England had already showed how mass starvation could be used as a tool for genocide.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

The Holodomor would have been a genocide if it was aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian people. Judging from the fact that the Holodomor also heavily impacted large areas of Russia and Belarus, and that many non-Ukrainians also died in it, this was not the case.
I agree with Solzhenitsyn on this question.

You seem to forget that Solzhenitsyn was writing for a Soviet Paper while living in the Soviet Union and hoping not to go back to the Gulags.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

And why does military or civilian make a difference in this case? Soldiers are people too, and if Hitler had never unleashed his genocidal war on Ukraine, they would have lived. Nonetheless, the majority of those 7 million were still civilians.

Probably not, Stalin was winding up for another purge, IIRC, when Hitler invaded.

The reason that we strictly look at civilian casualties is, in war, soldiers are fair game. Soldiers killing soldiers does not constitute a warcrime (outside of certain circumstances, which Russia was guilty of violating just as much as Germany. I seem to recall a particularly chilling interview with an NKVD officer where they simply took the POWs behind the building and shot them once they were done torturing them.).

The other reason was that the Holodomor was directed entirely on civilians.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And how did you gain all this knowledge? And with such certainty? Did a magical pixie whisper it in your ear? Did it come to you in a dream?
Give reliable sources when making such claims, otherwise I won't even respond to them.

You won't even respond to them when I do. If you'd bothered to read my post, I did name a few. I'll throw in the records of the Central Bureau for Registration of Personnel Losses in the Active Armies, which wasn't fully cataloged until after Krivosheyev's work was finished. He still doesn't refer to this source in Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the Twentieth Century.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Krivosheyev's work has been widely accepted by the scientific community as it is the most thorough and extensive research into the matter so far. Like any controversial issue, it is contested, mostly for political goals. The vast majority of other studies into Soviet casualites also give numbers close to Krivosheyev's.

Krivosheyev's work is statistically sound, but does not match historical records. His researchers were working with partial data and his work got the official stamp of the Army at the time, and thus has stood.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Until someone publishes a more reliable research than Krivosheyev, we should take his numbers as being the closest we can get to the unknowable truth.

I suggest the report of Assistant chief for scientific work of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Sergey Aleksandrovich Il’enkov,. His findings were... interesting, though the process or correlating it with graves registry is ongoing.

Solonin's examination of the records suggests that Stalinist reprisals against civilians in formerly German occupied territory were blamed on the Germans and a chunk of that 13.7 odd million civilian deaths are attributable to Russia.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Only a fool would still blame the present-day Federal Republic of Germany for Hitler's crimes. The same should be the case for the Russian Federation and Stalin.

You don't see the Germans putting up Statues of Hitler, and trying to white wash his crimes, while waving flags with his picture on them. Right now, Putin's minions in Eastern Ukraine are doing exactly that.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

I was speaking of Russia, not Ukraine, and even in Ukraine, one can still find statues of Stalin in almost any town.

Nope. Most were demolished when Khrushchev came to power. The Ukrainians REALLY didn't like old Joe, for obvious reasons.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

No, they only take those statues down to grieve the Russian community.

The fact that they're symbols of a hated totalitarian regime that ruled with unparalleled brutality for 80 odd years is no never-mind.

Making me wish for the good ole days when we fought under the Eagle and SPQR

 Jihadin wrote:
Making me wish for the good ole days when we fought under the Eagle and SPQR

Or at least Gen. Pershing... if you know of some of his antics, you'll know exactly what I'm referring to

In all honesty, I feel like Putin could be stabbing this guy in front of us with an electric carving knife and he'd be insisting that it didn't hurt, and was his fault even if it did.

BTW: mulled over Solzhenitsyn's claim about the 1921 famine vs the 32 Famine: Between multiple armies fighting in Russia, the drought, the disintegration of the rail system due to fighting,and the fact that less had been planted due to the fighting, the region was on the brink already, with no one person to blame.. Lenin was forced with a choice to seize crops and food stores or have his army go hungry.

This triggered a 'perfect storm' that went from the usual wartime hunger to disaster. Once Lenin was convinced that there was an actual disaster in progress, he acted to improve the situation. He even used the famine in an effort to bring closer ties between Russia and the west, efforts that did bare some fruit. Steps were taken, aid was delivered, food was distributed.

Stalin, on the other hand, knew what was going on, in detail, and did everything he could to intensify the suffering of the people, taking steps to ensure maximum body count, including rounding up over 190k people who had fled and forcing them to return to their homes to die. International offers of aid were rebuffed and a disinformation campaign started to conceal what went on. Indeed, Stalin followed the British example to the letter, setting impossible quotas and then seizing all available food, regardless of the effects on the citizens.

Unlike in 1921 there was no wide spread shortage of food. Indeed, surpluses were harvested and exported in many regions of Russia. Unlike in 1921, there was a much improved, modern transportation system for goods. Unlike in 1921, there was not a war going on in the area to disrupt harvests and inflict armies foraging for food on the people.

I have to conclude that Solzhenitsyn's assertion is somewhat ludicrous on the face of it. The two situations could not have been more dissimilar.

Karen Dawisha wrote exiting (and cheap) book about real roots of the present Russian regime (involving no Stalin/Hitler comparisons). I highly recommend to read it, was kind of eye opener for some of my foreign friends.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And what is the value of this comparison? You just compared a genocide with a digging machine. Comparing warm and soft much? If you fit a digging machine with nooses and use it to hang people, the digging machine does not become mass murder.

Not sure if you're just being obtuse deliberately or are really just not getting it.

the point was that you can make pretty much anything a tool for mass murder. The direct comparison was the engineers at Peenemünde Army Research Center turning a digging machine into a means to execute slave laborers more quickly. England had already showed how mass starvation could be used as a tool for genocide.

Your comparison still does not have any value. Everything can be used as tool for genocide. One could even use pencil to commit genocide. So what?

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

The Holodomor would have been a genocide if it was aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian people. Judging from the fact that the Holodomor also heavily impacted large areas of Russia and Belarus, and that many non-Ukrainians also died in it, this was not the case.
I agree with Solzhenitsyn on this question.

You seem to forget that Solzhenitsyn was writing for a Soviet Paper while living in the Soviet Union and hoping not to go back to the Gulags.

You seem to forget that when Solzhenitsyn wrote this, the Soviet Union did not even exist.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
In all honesty, I feel like Putin could be stabbing this guy in front of us with an electric carving knife and he'd be insisting that it didn't hurt, and was his fault even if it did.

BTW: mulled over Solzhenitsyn's claim about the 1921 famine vs the 32 Famine: Between multiple armies fighting in Russia, the drought, the disintegration of the rail system due to fighting,and the fact that less had been planted due to the fighting, the region was on the brink already, with no one person to blame.. Lenin was forced with a choice to seize crops and food stores or have his army go hungry.

This triggered a 'perfect storm' that went from the usual wartime hunger to disaster. Once Lenin was convinced that there was an actual disaster in progress, he acted to improve the situation. He even used the famine in an effort to bring closer ties between Russia and the west, efforts that did bare some fruit. Steps were taken, aid was delivered, food was distributed.

Stalin, on the other hand, knew what was going on, in detail, and did everything he could to intensify the suffering of the people, taking steps to ensure maximum body count, including rounding up over 190k people who had fled and forcing them to return to their homes to die. International offers of aid were rebuffed and a disinformation campaign started to conceal what went on. Indeed, Stalin followed the British example to the letter, setting impossible quotas and then seizing all available food, regardless of the effects on the citizens.

Unlike in 1921 there was no wide spread shortage of food. Indeed, surpluses were harvested and exported in many regions of Russia. Unlike in 1921, there was a much improved, modern transportation system for goods. Unlike in 1921, there was not a war going on in the area to disrupt harvests and inflict armies foraging for food on the people.

I have to conclude that Solzhenitsyn's assertion is somewhat ludicrous on the face of it. The two situations could not have been more dissimilar.

Valid arguments. It shows very well the difference between Stalin and Lenin.
But what I think Solzhenitsyn is aiming at is that the cause of both events was similar. Both were caused by Bolshevik mismanagement of agricultural economy. The famine in 1932 was not deliberately created to kill as many Ukrainians as possible, but was the result of radical and disastrous Bolshevik policies aimed at the destruction of the independent farmer class and force collectivisation. The difference is that Lenin tried to restore damage done as much as possible, whereas Stalin didn't do anything as this famine actually helped his plans along. And in '32, there was not a war like in '21, but the damages of the civil war were not yet fully restored, and under Stalin Bolshevik policies aimed at destroying independent farmers were much more harsh and severe.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

And why does military or civilian make a difference in this case? Soldiers are people too, and if Hitler had never unleashed his genocidal war on Ukraine, they would have lived. Nonetheless, the majority of those 7 million were still civilians.

Probably not, Stalin was winding up for another purge, IIRC, when Hitler invaded.

The reason that we strictly look at civilian casualties is, in war, soldiers are fair game. Soldiers killing soldiers does not constitute a warcrime (outside of certain circumstances, which Russia was guilty of violating just as much as Germany. I seem to recall a particularly chilling interview with an NKVD officer where they simply took the POWs behind the building and shot them once they were done torturing them.).

The other reason was that the Holodomor was directed entirely on civilians.

Stalin was purging people all the time, even during the war.
Whether killing soldiers is a warcrime or not is irrelevant. Those soldiers were conscripts. They were no different from civilians except for their uniform, and their deaths are directly attributable to Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
And how did you gain all this knowledge? And with such certainty? Did a magical pixie whisper it in your ear? Did it come to you in a dream?
Give reliable sources when making such claims, otherwise I won't even respond to them.

You won't even respond to them when I do. If you'd bothered to read my post, I did name a few. I'll throw in the records of the Central Bureau for Registration of Personnel Losses in the Active Armies, which wasn't fully cataloged until after Krivosheyev's work was finished. He still doesn't refer to this source in Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the Twentieth Century.

The Central Registration Bureau is not frequently used by scholars because it has many issues. There are for example duplicated entries, as well as many ones missing. Nonetheless, it is a valid source for research. However, if we now start a debate over what sources are better, we will go completely off-topic and end nowhere, as neither of us is a scholar in this area or has access to the Russian archives.
I'll just finish by saying that if you look at the most recent studies into the number of Soviet casualties in WW2, most of them come up with numbers close to Krivosheyev.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Krivosheyev's work has been widely accepted by the scientific community as it is the most thorough and extensive research into the matter so far. Like any controversial issue, it is contested, mostly for political goals. The vast majority of other studies into Soviet casualites also give numbers close to Krivosheyev's.

Krivosheyev's work is statistically sound, but does not match historical records. His researchers were working with partial data and his work got the official stamp of the Army at the time, and thus has stood.

Krivosheyev based his work on historical records.
It is also not the official figure used by the Russian government, this is the 1990 ADK (Andreyev, Darski, Kharkova) study which cites 26.6 million war dead iirc. Krivosheyev's study simply is the one that has been most widely accepted by the international scientific community.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Until someone publishes a more reliable research than Krivosheyev, we should take his numbers as being the closest we can get to the unknowable truth.

I suggest the report of Assistant chief for scientific work of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, Sergey Aleksandrovich Il’enkov,. His findings were... interesting, though the process or correlating it with graves registry is ongoing.

Solonin's examination of the records suggests that Stalinist reprisals against civilians in formerly German occupied territory were blamed on the Germans and a chunk of that 13.7 odd million civilian deaths are attributable to Russia.

Il'yenkov's work is very interesting yes, but he bases his research only on the central database, the accuracy of which is disputed. Another important thing to note is that his research is incomplete because it only takes military deaths into account, thus not giving an entire picture of Soviet losses.

Solonin's research on the other hand is quite controversial. It is based on a different demographic model than most studies use. Further it isn't really that notable except in that it has 'victims of Stalinist repression' as a separate category. The problem with this is not only that casualties were never recorded as such but also that it is higly dubious what exactly qualifies as a 'victim of Stalinist repression'. Most researches just include this in the general 'civilian casualties' category without making distinction between which side was responsible.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Only a fool would still blame the present-day Federal Republic of Germany for Hitler's crimes. The same should be the case for the Russian Federation and Stalin.

You don't see the Germans putting up Statues of Hitler, and trying to white wash his crimes, while waving flags with his picture on them. Right now, Putin's minions in Eastern Ukraine are doing exactly that.

That is true, but you can't blame actions of individual Russians or Ukrainians on the Russian government. It is not like Putin is giving orders to put up statues of Stalin. In fact, the Russian government has distanced itself from Stalin multiple times and it even prevented Stalin from winning the 'Greatest Russian' contest

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

I was speaking of Russia, not Ukraine, and even in Ukraine, one can still find statues of Stalin in almost any town.

Nope. Most were demolished when Khrushchev came to power. The Ukrainians REALLY didn't like old Joe, for obvious reasons.

We should visit Ukraine together. I can show you statues of Stalin in Sevastopol, Yalta and Simferopol and outside of Crimea in Odessa, Kharkov, Kiev, Zaporozh'ye, Donetsk and Luhansk. There may be more in other cities I don't know about. Of course some of them may also not be there anymore because of the crisis. There is even statues of Stalin in the Netherlands, I know one in Arnhem.
Most Stalin statues were indeed demolished during destalinisation, but a lot of smaller ones have remained.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

No, they only take those statues down to grieve the Russian community.

The fact that they're symbols of a hated totalitarian regime that ruled with unparalleled brutality for 80 odd years is no never-mind.

Nobody ever seemed bothered about them before the conflict. Only now that they have become rallying points for the pro-Russian community they are taken down.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
You seem to forget that when Solzhenitsyn wrote this, the Soviet Union did not even exist.

Yeah, that was my bad. I had forgotten he wrote that after his return to Russia.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Valid arguments. It shows very well the difference between Stalin and Lenin.
But what I think Solzhenitsyn is aiming at is that the cause of both events was similar. Both were caused by Bolshevik mismanagement of agricultural economy. The famine in 1932 was not deliberately created to kill as many Ukrainians as possible, but was the result of radical and disastrous Bolshevik policies aimed at the destruction of the independent farmer class and force collectivisation. The difference is that Lenin tried to restore damage done as much as possible, whereas Stalin didn't do anything as this famine actually helped his plans along. And in '32, there was not a war like in '21, but the damages of the civil war were not yet fully restored, and under Stalin Bolshevik policies aimed at destroying independent farmers were much more harsh and severe.

Eh.... No, the 1921 was not caused by anything to do with Bolshevik economic policies. It was a case of natural disaster coupled with a human disaster. Economics didn't come into it, large scale devastation coupled with desperate leaders (on all sides) seizing as much food for their armies as they could slammed into a large scale drought and poor harvest.

I suppose the biggest difference that I doubt even you can argue against was that Lenin tried to stop it, and Stalin locked them in and forced them to starve. That's what makes it genocide. Failed economic policies and poor decisions only make a disaster. Willfully ordering people to be held prisoner in their villages to die of starvation takes it to that level.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Whether killing soldiers is a warcrime or not is irrelevant. Those soldiers were conscripts. They were no different from civilians except for their uniform, and their deaths are directly attributable to Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union.

and not, say, Order 227?

And, let's not be dishonest, Stalin was considering the same thing Hitler was when they made the pact. It was just a matter of who attacked who first. Stalin was delayed due to having purged too many of his better officers and the fact that the Red Army suffered severe logistical issues at the time.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Solonin's research on the other hand is quite controversial. It is based on a different demographic model than most studies use. Further it isn't really that notable except in that it has 'victims of Stalinist repression' as a separate category. The problem with this is not only that casualties were never recorded as such but also that it is higly dubious what exactly qualifies as a 'victim of Stalinist repression'. Most researches just include this in the general 'civilian casualties' category without making distinction between which side was responsible.

Well, usually being summarily executed for treason following a German withdrawal would be a good sign. Solonin's work may be controversial, but it also cannot be dismissed out of hand. Thus, the 'controversy' part.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Nobody ever seemed bothered about them before the conflict. Only now that they have become rallying points for the pro-Russian community they are taken down.

Actually the one outside the Communist party HQ in Zaporizhya blown up back in 2010. So, yes, I'd say that they bothered people even before the current conflict. In fact, it was commented on at the time that the Statue caused division and controversy.

Following DeStalinisation, there were not a lot of public Stalin statues. Following the fall of the USSR they got fewer fast, most being vandalized and damaged before being dumped or melted down.


Albania
A statue of Soviet premier Joseph Stalin was in Tirana, Albania, but was taken down in December 1990.
A large statue of Stalin, along with one of Lenin, can be found behind the Art Museum in Tirana

Czech Republic
Statue of Stalin & Lenin in Olomouc, Czech Republic
A massive granite statue of Stalin, the largest depiction of Stalin, stood in Letná Park, Prague, Czech Republic, from 1955 to 1962.

Germany
Statue of Stalin in Stalinallee, Berlin, Germany
Plastic Statue of Vladimir Lenin and Stalin at the Leipzig Autumn Fair of 1954.
A large statue of Stalin raising his right hand was in Riesa, Germany
There is a statue of Stalin and Klement Gottwald at the Gundelfingen stone-cutting company

Georgia
Small bust in front of the Batumi Stalin Museum in Batumi, Georgia.
A statue of Stalin stood at the town hall in Gori, Georgia until taken down in June 2010.
A Bust and a statue of Stalin in the Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori, Georgia
A silver statue of Stalin is in Shovi in Georgia.

Hungary
Former Stalin Monument at the edge of Városliget in Budapest, Hungary

Lithuania
Grutas Park, Lithuania (aka 'Stalin World' due to the statues of Stalin from around the country being dumped there)

Mongolia
A statue of Stalin stands at Isimuss Club in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
A statue of Stalin stood at front of the National Library of Mongolia until 1991.

The Netherlands
A statue of Stalin is displayed in water in Sonsbeek Park, Arnhem, Netherlands

Romania
A statue of Stalin stood at the entrance of Parcul I. V. Stalin in Bucharest (now renamed Parcul Herăstrău), which was torn down in 1956 during the De-Stalinization in Romania.

Russia
Many at Fallen Monument Park, Moscow, Russia
Bust at his tomb in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow, Russia
Bust in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Moscow.
Statue of Stalin along with Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the All-Russia Exhibition Center, Moscow, Russia
A large Stalin statue stood at the All-Russia Exhibition Center until 1948.
A bust stands at the Memorial of Glory in Vladikavkaz.
A bust stands at School No. 2 in Ardon, North Ossetia.
In Bryansk, there is a bust of Stalin in the Communist Party's regional headquarters.
A bust of Stalin is in Kizel.
A statue is in Nogir, North Ossetia–Alania.
A statue of Stalin is in the yard of School No.2, Ardon, North Ossetia–Alania.
A bust of Stalin in the village of Chokh, Dagestan
A bust of Stalin at a square in Derbent, Dagestan

Tajikistan
A Stalin statue stands at a nursery school in Asht, Tajikistan

Ukraine
A bust of Stalin formerly was exhibited in front of the Communist Party of Ukraine's headquarters in Zaporizhya, Ukraine, but was destroyed.

United States
A bust of Stalin is displayed at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia, United States


Lenin did much better. Being seen as a man of the people, regardless of his political views, did a lot to save his statuary after the fall.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

I can show you statues of Stalin in Sevastopol, Yalta and Simferopol and outside of Crimea in Odessa, Kharkov, Kiev, Zaporozh'ye, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Not entirely sure, but the one's I've seen in those places are actually Lenin. Only Zaporizhya had Stalin.

This can't be good... eh?

Tank column crosses from Russia into Ukraine: Kiev military

KIEV (Reuters) - A column of 32 tanks, 16 howitzer artillery systems and trucks carrying ammunition and fighters has crossed into eastern Ukraine from Russia, the Kiev military said on Friday.

"The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines," spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a televised briefing referring to Thursday's cross-border incursion.

The report of a new Russian movement of armor across the border follows a charge on Thursday by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that Kiev government forces had launched a new offensive - which Kiev immediately denied.

Sporadic violence has continued since a Sept. 5 truce in a conflict that has cost over 4,000 lives.

But the ceasefire has looked particularly fragile this week, with separatists and the central government accusing each other of violations after separatist leaders held elections in self-proclaimed 'people's republics' last Sunday.

"Supplies of military equipment and enemy fighters from the Russian Federation are continuing," Lysenko said. He added that five Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 16 wounded in the past 24 hours despite the ceasefire.

With ISIS grabbing all the headlines Putin can do pretty much whatever he wants now. No one even remembers where Ukraine is anymore.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
With ISIS grabbing all the headlines Putin can do pretty much whatever he wants now. No one even remembers where Ukraine is anymore.

Isn't that a part of Canada??

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
With ISIS grabbing all the headlines Putin can do pretty much whatever he wants now. No one even remembers where Ukraine is anymore.

That is pretty cynical. I see headlines daily regarding Russia/Ukraine on sites like Yahoo, BBC, HuffPost, ect., i.e. mainstream sites, so I am not sure people have forgotten about the situation in Ukraine.