Maybe the West misunderstands USSR history?

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#121

Sorry Rising Sun but your attempts to direct the problem to the East Vs West relation is …ridiculous;)
Coz the problem that we are discussing is not “exclusively Eastern” but international…
In fact the “jewish question” was under forbid in the East for the long time of Communist ideology and the peoples who try to study this theme were puirsuted by the soviet law.
For the 20 Centure this them developed mostly in the west, BTW i’ve knew a lot of interesting from the American site http://www.jewwatch.com/ :slight_smile:
So i think your claims for the East is just the way to change the topic:)
Becouse I know for the sure in the West are the manies peoples, who know what’s going on, and who asked the simular question for themself - why it heppend that some of the Ethnical groups have the adventage for the success.

Rather than dealing with each of your points individually, which would take a few weeks, I’ll pose a few questions.

  1. Given that America was founded by Christian religious refugees from England and that America has always been a strongly Christian nation, how do you explain the supposed prominence and influence of Jews in America as being the supposedly dominant religious group in the nation?

Sorry , but you do not hear me…
I’ve told you the reason of jewish success is the strong assistence between them.
And i repeat i/m not against the jewish help for each other - this is their right- but i think thet we , who have no the strong ethnical community assistence inside our states , losed the competition.
To understang how they jews do it - is the other interesting matter.
In fact today they dominated in the a lot of the USA fields , the social and state
Look for instance here
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-jewishsupremacyassociationsmovements-folder.html
The list where the jews played the dominated role.
I/m repeat im not against the participation of the jews- they could be a great good peoples, but … if they fully controlled something … i willl not sure that all will OK.
Just wath to the Bolshevick leaders - 80-90% of them were the jews . And what this was mean for the native peoles of USSR ( russian ukrainian and belorussians) - the destruction of their relogion, mass murders, famine and GULAG.
Another “interesting” example - the Israel where the jews are 100% of gov - the palestinian ethnical minority are the “second- sort” peoples in there.

  1. Especially when you say that Jews remain separate from the rest of all the nations they inhabit. How can a group which remains separate and won’t participate in national life be so strongly involved at the highest levels of the nation?

No No Risin Sun i never told the jews do not participate in national life . To the contrast - they played an extremaly active role in the manies fields.Some of them really a great peoples. But when they acted like a Ethncal group that according their religion are the “highest race” in the world - this could be danger for all us.

  1. You say that the Jewish lobby in America is responsible for involvement in Iraq etc, as if that is the whole story about Iraq and completely unrelated to oil and other American grand strategy.

The fact that the jewish lobby wanted the USA army in the Near East is determined not only oil interests (where the jews also dominated) but and political aslo - to help the Israel to “survive” among the hostitle environment - Syria , Iran ,Iraq.
And the american jews do not note that the USA lost its world authority of the attack of Iraq - they ONLY one more time demonstrated the fact that their ethnical community feelings has won the patriotic feelings of the state where they lives.i/e/ they demonstrate the interest of their nation is more importain than the interests of the state where they lives.
(exactly this situation were in the USSR in the 1949-52 when manies of soviet jews who were sympatised for the anti-soviet Israel, proved that the interests of their nation is higher then their sobiet patriotism).Certainly this is their right , but… could they be the our patiots in this case?

If the Jewish lobby matters, what about the crucial political significance in America of the votes of fundamentalist Christian groups which believe that Israel must be preserved to ensure the second coming of Christ

Why the Christ must come in second time in Isreal - for the jews could kill him one more time:)?
If serious it was a Palestine where the Christ lived and has died.
BTW this is not a single stopid mythical-religious explanation of creation and supportion the Israel - the jewish religion demand the right of the jews for own land in the Palestine- this is quite amazing case in the inernational law - the creation state according the religious prejudices.

, and of how they are the constituency to which Bush and Co owe more electoral allegiance than to numerically insignificant Jewish voters?

becouse yo know why…

in the modern Western world it means little more than one person, one vote, and all the equalities that flow from such a concept

As we know the first duty of the USA president ( i.e. Bush and Co) to serve for the USA i.e for the rulling financial elite and corporation. Coz the what is good for them - that good for the Americans, right?
And if the jewish community played the main role in the financial elite of the USA - thus this was not difficult to “justify” the entering in the Nearest East.( for the oil and ets)
As far as i know the congress recently voted for the withdrawal from Iraq - does it help for the voters to stop the Bush and Co ?

  1. You are concerned that Jews allegedly dominate various areas in business, science and so on.

Its not me who concerned that the jews dominated in the West but the some of the americans who study this question.
I know just about Russia.- i show you the figures that proved ABSOLUTE DOMINATION of the jews in the 1918-1939 in the soviet gov ( the figures that even do not disputable by the jewish authors).

At an evolutionary level, is it possible that a couple of thousand years of unreasoning persecution and mass executions have selected people who are more adept in many areas than the groups which never had such experiences?

I’m not sure about rest Europe ,but i think you could not blame all the european nations for the “unreasoning persecution” if you do not know enought this theme.
And BTW does the “couple of thousand years of unreasoning persecution” is justify the murders of the millions of the native population of the former russian Imperia by the jewish-bolshevic gov of the Soviet Russia during ONLY 20 years?

How good would Russia be now if the various Soviet regimes had crushed and killed all the drones instead of those with the drive, ability, intelligence and independence to challenge the dictatorial regimes?

I/m not sure that understand you righ here.
I just wish to notice you who created those “various dictators regimes” , who created the first theroetical-communists basis for those regimes.
If you wath for the ethnical origin of those people - you will understand much more.

At a cultural level, is it possible that the rigors of Jewish education produce people who learn to learn better than many other people from more relaxed cultures?

And why the culture level of those other peoples has relaxed ?
May be becouse the native cultural activists has changed bu the jewish cultural activists due to its power international-ethnic supporting?

Is it possible that after a couple of thousand years of persecution the Jews have learned that their best hope of survival is to get themselves into positions where they can influence the decisions which previously led to their persecution?

Perhaps it right form the egoistic jewish point- but who do you say dear friend we need to get this point as right for all us?
AND if you think ( or the jews think) that the contemporaty generation of the Europeans is guilt for the “thousand years of persecution the Jews” in the Europe- does it mean the East Europeans must blame the all the contemporary jews for the mass crimes of their ethnical relatives in the Russia when the bolshevick took the power?
if according your ligic - yes, the jews guilf for the henocide of the native population.
But i do not think so coz i do not think your logic is true

Is it possible that a couple of thousand years of relentless persecution of a downtrodden people for no good reason has in fact succeeded in producing a strong and proud people who have determined that never again will they allow something like the Holocaust or any other persecution to harm them?

But it is absolute possible that the "educated , high-culture and proud " peoples sunctioned the blood therror of native population.
It was possible that some of them take active participation in the famine in Ukraine and Russia. Look for instance for the Lasaz Kaganovich - the jewish-bolshevic commander who created the this famine.
Does the Holocaus ( where were killed a disputable figure of 6 million) is REASON why we have to keep the silence about the mass murdering of christians by the jewish-bolshevic ( about 10-15 millions at all)?

#122

Well if our friend Rising Sun like to ask a question- i have a few ones too.
How could you explain the next publical expressions of diffent jewish leaders and religious activists:

[b]
" the chosen by the god, scattered throughout the whole world Jewish nation possesses the special mission".
Ahad Haam

“Jews, undoubtedly, are the cleanest race of all civilized nations of peace”.
Naum Sokolov

“Jews possess larger enterprise and large abilities, than average European, to say nothing of all these inert Asiatics or Africans”.
Max Nordau.

“History awarded us by rare ethnic and intellectual qualities, and this gives to us right and responsibility to be light-than among other nations”
Ben -Gurion.

“Our longings and our ideal are differed from longing and ideals of entire peace. Therefore we - others. And I solemnly declare, that we are higher than all nations of peace and none can be compared with us.”
rabbi Gaster.

“Jewish people - this is unique historical phenomenon. This simultaneously nation, religious whole, race and the world carrier of specific civilization. Not one concept in the Jewish people and the religion is capable of clearly expressing unique historical phenomenon - Jewish people… We are the world nation, connected with durable bonds with Israel, being incomprehensible society in the history of humanity”.
Naum Goldman.

"“Kindness -it is applied to the superman or to the super-Nation, which has the force in order to extend and to supplement its life and which has a will to become master of the universe, without considering with the fact that this can dearly manage to the masses of the lowest essences and lowest peoples, without considering the calamities, by which they they can because of this undergo. Since one only over the men and only one super-Nation is a color and the purpose of mankind: rest were created in order to serve this purpose in order to serve as the stairs, on which it would be possible to rise to the apex”.
Ahad Haam.[/b]
Source: “Palestina in the loop of zionism” F.Alestin… M.1988

As you could see gentlemens this is a different conclusiona of the peoples ( from a different) who belong to the one ethnical group.Shortly speaking this is public declaration for the moral and intellect race superiority toward the other nations in the world.
Could we ignore those ( in its sense) race-superiority claims of ONE ethhnic group just becouse the “other peoples are guilt in the thousands years discriminations of rules” of this ethnical group?

#123

Chevan

I’ve read your post #120 carefully.

Rather than respond to each point, which will pretty much cover what we’ve already covered, I’ll say only this.

Your post and comments about Jews in the Bolshevik regime etc confirms my view that there are still deep feelings and beliefs in Russia, and elsewhere in Europe, because of perceptions about Jews. It also confirms my view that an understanding of these issues is critical to an understanding of an important aspect of Soviet history, and wider European history including the Holocaust. The difficulty for me is that I don’t understand it because it’s just not part of the Australian experience or my heritage or national history.

As for jewwatch.com, I’ve seen that site before and it’s a vicious joke run by a rabid anti-Semite who’d blame a Jewish conspiracy if his undies got half as twisted as he is. I’d put a smilie here except that I’m serious with that fruitcake.

How about taking the same approach to others in Soviet history as you do to the Jews?

What were the religious affiliations of other people prominent in Soviet history? What about atheists?

If that’s not important, why not? Apart from allegations about Jewish unity against the common good etc.

#124

Thank you Rising Sun for attempt to understand.
Yes this question still actual for my state coz afert downfall of communism we have learn a much that were frorbidden early. There a lot of the world historical researches devoted for wide participation of jews in the bolshevic gov.
I/m repeat - my point not againt the jews at all.
And i understand the sensless the anti-semitism and danger it for the society, but i do not think the dual-standarts and silence about the bad think that some of the jews made is a good too.

As for jewwatch.com, I’ve seen that site before and it’s a vicious joke run by a rabid anti-Semite who’d blame a Jewish conspiracy if his undies got half as twisted as he is. I’d put a smilie here except that I’m serious with that fruitcake.

Honestly speaking i don’t like this site too. Becouse its rusofobian.
But there a some interesting infor about ethnic origin of owner of the American and world madia , cinama and ets biggest corporations. THAT nobody could reject - instead we hear only blaiming as “rabid anti-semitism”.
But could you really refute this matter?
I/m not agree with the conclusions of authors of this site , but nevertheless…:wink:

How about taking the same approach to others in Soviet history as you do to the Jews?

There is no problem. Anything that you wish.

What were the religious affiliations of other people prominent in Soviet history? What about atheists?

If that’s not important, why not? Apart from allegations about Jewish unity against the common good etc.

What do you mean about ateists?

#125

I’m trying to understand.

I’d like to know more about what knowledge was forbidden to Soviet citizens about Jews, and what the new knowledge says.

I doubt that you can understand my perspective, any more than I can understand yours. Our national and personal histories are probably just too far apart to have any experience in common.

To try to understand why this is so, it might be useful to compare your history and personal experience with mine.

Here is mine.

Despite our early and often brutal convict origins, which are generally misunderstood as there was a lot more to our early settlement, Australia had a very gentle development compared with anywhere else in the New World, let alone European experience over the past 220 odd years since England colonised the land. We’ve had nothing even vaguely like the American experience with the War of Independence which occurred about the time the first convicts landed here, or the Civil War. Even our conflicts with our indigenous people never reached anything like the scale of the American experience. We’ve never experienced war on our mainland apart from some, by the rest of the world’s experience (excluding America, which got off much more lightly), trivial attacks during WWII. We’ve never experienced famine or forced relocation or any of the forms of oppression and even sheer terror and unbridled brutality which were common during various eras in various parts of Europe during the same period. After WWII we had a lot of migrants from all parts of Europe, from all sides in the war. We had a lot of post-war migrants working side by side who had been on opposite sides in the war, or in local conflicts, e.g. Serbs and Croats; Germans and Poles. After the war a lot of Australian farmers sponsored as migrants Italian POW’s who had worked for them during the war, because they respected their industriousness, skills and character. I knew one farmer who did this. In the sixties I worked with a German who was a Stalingrad veteran; in the seventies with a Pole who was a Nazi concentration camp survivor; and in the eighties with the Australian-born son of another Staligrad veteran. I’ve worked with Lithuanians, Latvians (no Estonians from memory), Ukranians, Turks, Greeks, Italians, Maltese, Lebanese and so on. My experience is common for Australians of my generation (born 1949) and since. Generally the migrants left their enmities behind. If they didn’t, they got this message from Australians: If you want to fight old wars, then piss off back to wherever you came from and do it there, because we don’t want your shit here. It ain’t all been sweetness and light, but generally we’ve absorbed an awful lot of people from a huge range of countries with very little conflict, including over the past 30 years or so refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Somalia, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan along with voluntary migrants from India, Pakistan, China (PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and just about everywhere else.

You might like to offer your personal perspective on your and Russia’s experiences over the same period.

I hope you’ll understand that I, and maybe some others, might mistake some of your views for anti-Semitism, not least because we’re not used to such views in public discussion in the West. So maybe we respond to what we think has been said, rather than what has actually been said, or intended. - I have a feeling that this comment is going to start a separate debate on censorship or political correctness or Jewish influence in the West. :smiley:

I/m repeat - my point not againt the jews at all.
And i understand the sensless the anti-semitism and danger it for the society, but i do not think the dual-standarts and silence about the bad think that some of the jews made is a good too.

Good.

I don’t like anti-Semitism, or any other form of prejudice against an ethnic or religious or social group which types all members of the group as the same. Every person is entitled to be judged on their own beliefs and behaviour, not what people think they believe and how they are supposed to behave because of their involuntarily inherited links to groups when they might not share whatever views that group is supposed to have. I don’t have a problem with, for example, saying that Nazi Party members subscribed to a perverted philosophy on many issues, but it’s not reasonable to assume that a Party member’s wife, children, parents, siblings and other relatives shared the same views. But that’s what happens if we say that “all Jews (or Muslims or Catholics or Russians or Americans etc) are …”

I’m interested in your comment about the wide participation of the Jews in the Bolshevik government.

I’m rusty on this area, and have only a superficial knowledge, but my recollection is that many of the leaders in the Revolution and in the next few years of internal turmoil in Russia were Jewish.

But my recollection also is that many of their opponents and victims were also Jews, although from memory I can’t give specific examples.

Be that as it may, the history of Jews in the West is that they have been prominent on both sides of the political spectrum, and at all points between, in all countries. On one side as successful capitalists. On the other side as committed socialists and communists. I doubt it was any different under the Tsar leading up to the 1917 Revolution.

Honestly speaking i don’t like this site too. Becouse its rusofobian.
But there a some interesting infor about ethnic origin of owner of the American and world madia , cinama and ets biggest corporations. THAT nobody could reject - instead we hear only blaiming as “rabid anti-semitism”.
But could you really refute this matter?
I/m not agree with the conclusions of authors of this site , but nevertheless…

I’m not that concerned about people’s backgrounds.

I generally judge them by their opinions.

Like all good propaganda, there is an element of truth in what he says on most things, but apart from that his opinions are just stupid.

What do you mean about ateists?

You mean there weren’t any atheists in the USSR! :smiley:

My God! :wink: And we were told all during the Cold War that the USSR was full of godless atheists whose first task on taking us over would be to tear down all our churches! Seriously. You should have been in a Catholic school here in the 1950’s. We were taught that in Germany the Jews were the first target and the Catholics second, and that the order would be reversed under the communists.

I suppose Mr Putin’s Orthodox faith, which apparently didn’t hold him back in the KGB, is an example of just how much religion was at the heart of the USSR. :wink:

Seriously, what I was getting at was: If Jews’ actions from 1917 onwards are to be judged by their religious affiliation, then shouldn’t we look at how people with other religious affiliations, or none, also behaved?

I’d be very surprised if Jews had a monopoly on any form of bad behaviour.

#126

I don’t really like discussions that deal with religion, especially those that aim to cast any single religion in either a good or a bad light. I admit it makes me uncomfortable, because we are discussing what should be closely held and private beliefs. And. lest we forget, religions are beliefs - they are not required to be rational because they are based on faith - faith that something is a miracle, faith in a virgin birth, faith that angels appeared on a mountaintop and led the way - you get the idea.
But this is a discussion forum so what the heck. The thing is Chevan, lots of things are said by lots of people belonging to religious groups including a lot of appalling things. If I were to go through the Christian Bible and mark all the violent passages, the intolerant passages, and the hundreds of contradictions, it would make all our heads spin. But it doesn’t make Christians themselves bad. The sayings of one person, or a collection of persons, are not the writ of law, at least not for me, that applies to everyone.
And what, pray tell, is the Bible? Who wrote it? Is it infallible, as some believe? What about all the texts consciously left out of the Bible? Were they not “holy enough”? At the very least it was written by many, ordinary and fallible human beings who put their pants on one leg at a time just like you and I. Are those writings holy? You decide, because you can decide,
Many people write many things and some of them are straightforward and sincere; others are twisted and insincere; still others are plain evil. But that is no reason to paint an entire socio-economic group with the same brush based on those writings.
If I were to take dozens and dozens of misanthropic quotes from our President’s speeches and remarks, you would be tempted to think all Americans are fools, idiots, deceivers and liars, which we are not.

Russia, Germany, the British, Americans and France, and the rest of Europe - all Christian nations and yet they fought the bloodiest war in history. Christianity and religion had nothing to do with it. Where Germany was concerned, race hatred certainly played a huge part. Personally, I don’t care what people believe so long as they don’t try to impose of force their beliefs on others.

When it starts to hurt others, I start to pay attention.

#127

Mate, I could trawl through the old and new Testaments; the Q’ran; the statements of Christian missionaries from about 1500 AD onwards; the statements of sundry supremacists from the Nazis to the Japanese militarists to the Ku Klux Klan to the skinheads in Britain and Europe a decade or two ago to the current crop of Islamic boneheads, to demonstrate that there is no shortage of people who think that they’re the top race and, where religion is involved, the only ones with a ticket to heaven.

None of it proves anything, except that some people think their shit don’t stink.

Having dug and filled in a few shit pits, my experience is that biology, microbial activity, and atmospheric dispersion don’t support such opinions. :slight_smile:

#128

Preeeee-cisely!

As used to be said of gentlemen fond of other gentlemen:

“I don’t care what they do in private, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.”. :smiley:

#129

Chevan

If you want to see how ridiculously well Australia has coped with the European past in many instances, have a look at this video involving a satirical television program which does silly things such as provoking a Polish club with Nazi visitors.

Use sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53Q1y5EAN4E

#130

Thats funny!

On religion thou…I think Karl Marx said “Religion is the opiate of the people” Clever guy but I strongly have to disagree with Karl on this one. Seems to me ppl around the world will move there ass pretty quick when it comes to religious issues. Especially ones where it involves guns.

#131

Only the believers.

If we could get rid of them, there’d be a lot less conflict.

#132

The one thing this thread proves-the people of the East/West are trying to understand each other and to learn more about their histories. This is one of the greatest benefits of the internet. Millions of people can exchange views without being blocked by borders or political dogma.

Sure there has been a misunderstanding of the Soviet Union/Russia/Czarist Russia by the west, but it has hardly been one way traffic, otherwise this thread would have died long ago.

The fortunate thing is history is constantly under review and revision and as more and more people from differing nations and cultures exchange their views a lot of the old anomosities and misunderstandings will be eroded away.

I require many books for my research and two recent acquisitions have brillantly shown the flaws and misconceptions of historians in regard to the Eastern Front fighting. This proves to me that historians continue to dig for the truth and as many of us do not totally understand this, they play a powerful role in demolishing the myths of the past.

History is always evolving, thankfully.

And a huge thankyou for everyone who has participated in this interesting thread without too much in the way of fisticuffs and fireworks.

Regards digger.

#133

Rising Sun:

I don’t think people in the west misunderstand the Russians they don’t care about the east enough for it to be important to them. Look the Russians paid a terrible price in world war ll some 30 million dead and so did Germany. I spent 4 years guarding the fulda gap in Germany and oh yes the Russians got there attention all I heard from the Germans was yea but you haven’t fought Ruskie. Here are some FACTS the Russians fought as hard as they did for several reasons.
1.The Germans gave them no other choice the Russians could have died with or without a gun in their hand.It was a war of extermination.
2.Stalin used penal troops in the front lines with the understanding that if they lived through the war they would be pardoned from their crimes. If they didnt’ fight or ran the commisars would shoot them.

Now if Hitler would have came into Russia as a liberator from the communist he would have probably won world war ll as most Russians who after 24 years of communist rule were ready to get rid of Joseph Stalin. Stalin hid for 12 days when the German Invasion started afraid that his own people were going to revolt and overthrow him it wasn’t till they understood Hitlers plans to exterminate all the Russians that they supported Stalin in the war effort.

Now there is a diffrence between the RUSSIAN PEOPLE and the RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. I don’t believe that the RUSSIAN PEOPLE wanted to expand the Communist domain the RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT did. The RUSSIAN PEOPLE were glad that they won the war as anyone fighting Hitler should have been.

The Berlin Airlift was a good example of this FACT. But now we are getting into the Cold War so lets not go there.

We have many Russians here in the U.S. that go back to the 1800’s many from the first and second world war the problem the Communists have always had is keeping people under there government. They built the Berlin wall to keep people in not to keep people out. And Stalin had that problem and Hitler knew it. He believed that if you kick the door in the whole rotten regime would fall in.And it would have if he haden’t been such a believer in the racial theorys of his national socialist party.
World War ll molded the world of today and believe me the Europeans don’t want to go through that again. I have no idea why anyone would think the west is evil when everyone and his brother is trying to get here. we have millions of citizens that come from there.

The results of world war ll

  1. It bankrupted the British
  2. It destroyed Germany
  3. It killed 30 million Russians and Destroyed 1/3rd of their country
  4. It took 50 years for all of them to recover

America had more money than it could spend
more food than it could eat
produced more things than it could use

Oh and we supplied RUSSIA with 7% of their war material and food.
And THATS A FACT JACK…

The communist government fell becuse it put more emphisis on building its military than feeding and caring for its people. One can’t eat a tank.
Funny the parallel between the communist and the nazis. Oh and now I tell all my German friends this. We did fight the Russians when they looked across that border and saw the West Germans driving Mercedes Benz cars and living good they concluded that if communism is so good how come we don’t have that? We had all those troops for all those years on the border and we took them without firing a shot or loosing one man… Now whos the smart guy…

Trudl Jung (Hitlers secratary) said it best “Once I got out of prison and saw for myself what Democracy can do i wish their will never ever be another Hitler”…

Cavalry Gunner

#134

Stalin hid for 12 days when the German Invasion started

Crap.
Stalin met just about any one in the goverment during the next several days.
If you want I can post the list of names with timing.

#135

Oh Stalin was a rock after putting practicly his whole officer corp to death in the 30’s Every historian in the world teaches this and Stalin trusted no one.
Stalin was a tyrant only second to Hitler. Now you leaning hard to the Russian side of world war ll lets talk about a Russian one can respect like Georgi Zukov… Probably the best General of WWll and leave Stalin where he belongs IN THE GRAVE.

An overview of Josef Stalin:

By 1928, Stalin was entrenched as supreme Soviet leader, and he wasted little time in launching a series of national campaigns
(the so-called Five-Year Plans) aimed at “collectivizing” the peasantry and turning the USSR into a powerful industrial state.
Both campaigns featured murder on a massive scale. Collectivization especially targeted Ukraine, “the breadbasket of the Soviet Union,” which clung stubbornly to its own national identity and preference for village-level communal landholdings. In 1932-33, Stalin engineered a famine (by massively raising the grain quota that the peasantry had to turn over to the state); this killed between six and seven million people and broke the back of Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian famine has only recently been recognized as one of the most destructive genocides of the twentieth century (see Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, and the Web resources compiled by The Ukrainian Weekly). The Five-Year Plans for industry, too, were implemented in an extraordinarily brutal fashion, leading to the deaths of millions of convict labourers, overwhelmingly men. These atrocities are described in the corvée (forced) labour case study. The millions of deaths in Stalin’s “Gulag Archipelago” (the network of labour camps [gulags] scattered across the length and breath of Russia) are dealt with in the incarceration/death penalty case study.

A leader whose callous disregard for human life was matched only by his consuming paranoia, Stalin next turned his attention to the Communist Party itself. Various factions and networks opposed to his rule had managed to survive into the early 1930s; many in the party were now calling for reconciliation with the peasantry, a de-emphasizing of industrial production, and greater internal democracy.
For Stalin, these dissident viewpoints represented an unacceptable threat. Anyone not unquestioningly loyal to him – and many hundreds of thousands who had to be “weeded out.” The Communist Party would be rebuilt in the image of the “Great Leader.” This was the origin of the “cult of personality” that permeated Soviet politics and culture, depicting Stalin as infallible, almost deity-like. (The cult lasted until his death in 1953) Stalin’s drive for total control, and his pressing need for convict labour to fuel rapid industrialization, next spawned the series of immense internal purges – beginning in 1935 – that sent millions of party members and ordinary individuals to their deaths, either through summary executions or in the atrocious conditions of the “Gulag Archipelago”
By the time Stalin’s wrath descended on his countrymen and women, the USSR had already suffered a devastating decline in its cohort of younger adult males. World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent civil war that pitted “Reds” against “Whites,” had inflicted its “heaviest” losses “in the age group 16-49, particularly in its male contingent,” writes Richard Pipes, “of which it had eradicated by August 1920 – that is, before the famine [of 1922] had done its work – 29 percent.” The monstrous famines of the early 1920s and early 1930s were indiscriminate in their impact on the afflicted populations. But the campaign of mass executions launched against the kulaks – designated “wealthier” peasants – also overwhelmingly targeted males. “In Kiev jail they are reported at this time [1929-30] shooting 70-120 men a night,” reports Robert Conquest; a typical story “is of the Ukrainian village of Velyki Solontsi where, after 52 men had been removed as kulaks, their women and children were taken, dumped on a sandy stretch along the Vorskla River and left there.” (Excerpts from Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow.) The vast majority of “kulaks” imprisoned in the labour/death camps were also male (see the incarceration/death penalty case study). The gendered impact of the Purge period itself on Soviet society we now turn to consider.

Under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, tens of millions of ordinary individuals were executed or imprisoned in labour camps that
were little more than death camps. Perceived political orientation was the key variable in these mass atrocities. But gender played an important role, and in many respects the Purge period of Soviet history can be considered the worst gendercide of the twentieth century.

Cavalry Gunner
Wally

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#136

Hi Gunner!

What exactly do you mean by “after putting practicly his whole officer corp to death in the 30’s”? Is it a figurative speach?
If you have to put a number, what would you say was the share of the prosecuted officers in the total number of officers in RKKA?

We already touched this topic on this forum: http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101858&postcount=78

Every historian in the world teaches this and Stalin trusted no one.

I can assure you that not every historian teaches that. Besides, appart from historians there is also documents avaiaalbe.

Stalin was a tyrant only second to Hitler.

That is true. And the nations of USSR payed dearly for that historical experiment conducted on their soil. But I also think that what happened durin 1917 - 1985 in USSR happened also largerly due to direct and indirect support from the people. And much of it was actually inevitable considering all the mess that already existed.

Though Stalin was second to Hitler by very-very large margin. You can not compare directly the Nazism and Communism. The first one is evil aim and evil mechanism to reach it. The second one has “good” aim and evil mechanism for reaching it. That is the difference.

#137

The purge of the Red Army was claimed to be supported by Nazi-forged documents (said to have been correspondence between Marshal
Tukhachevsky and members of the German high command).

The claim is, however, unsupported by facts, since by the time the documents were supposedly created, two people from the eight
in the Tukhachevsky group were already imprisoned, and by the time the document was said to reach Stalin, the purging process was
already underway. However the actual evidence introduced at trial was obtained from forced confessions. The purge of the army removed
three of five marshals (then equivalent to six-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to four- and five-star
generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for
foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army
corps commissars. All told, 30,000 members of the armed forces were executed.
The chaos caused by the purge of the Soviet Army aided in their early defeat at the onset of the Nazi invasion of 1941. It has also
been observed that the aforementioned chaos may actually have encouraged Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany to launch Operation Barbarossa,
after they learned of the weakness of the Red Army.

Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917, or in Lenin’s Soviet
government afterwards, were executed. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 October Revolution who lived until
the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who survived. Four of the other five were executed. The fifth, Leon Trotsky, went
into exile in Mexico after being expelled from the Party but was assassinated by a Soviet agent in 1940. Of the seven members elected
to the Politburo between the October Revolution and Lenin’s death in 1924, four were executed, one (Tomsky) committed suicide and two
(Molotov and Kalinin) lived. Of 1,966 delegates to the 17th Communist Party congress in 1934 (the last congress before the trials),
1,108 were arrested and nearly all died.

The trials and executions of the former Bolshevik leaders were, however, only a minor part of the purges:

A series of national operations of the NKVD was carried out during 1937–1940, justified by the fear of the fifth column in the
expectation of war with “the most probable adversary”, i.e. Germany, as well as according to the notion of the “hostile capitalist
surrounding”, which wants to destabilize the country. The Polish operation of the NKVD was the first of this kind, setting an example
of dealing with other targeted minorities. Many such operations were conducted on a quota system. NKVD local officials were mandated
to arrest and execute a specific number of “counter-revolutionaries”, produced by upper officials based on various statistics

By the summer of 1938, Stalin and his circle realized that the purges had gone too far, and Yezhov was relieved from his head of NKVD
post (remaining People’s Commisariat of Internal Affairs) and eventually purged. Lavrenty Beria, a fellow Georgian and Stalin confidant,
succeeded him as head of the NKVD. On November 17, 1938 a joint decree of Sovnarkom USSR and Central Committee of VKP(b) (Decree about
Arrests, Prosecutor Supervision and Course of Investigation) and the subsequent order of NKVD undersigned by Beria cancelled most of
the NKVD orders of systematic repression and suspended implementation of death sentences. The decree signaled the end of massive Soviet
purges. Nevertheless, the practice of mass arrest and exile was continued until Stalin’s death in 1953. Political executions also
continued, but, with the exception of Katyn and other NKVD massacres during WWII, on a vastly smaller scale. One notorious example is
the “Night of the Murdered Poets,” in which at least thirteen prominent Yiddish writers were executed on August 12, 1952.

Western Reaction

Although the trials of former Soviet leaders were widely publicized, the hundreds of thousands of other arrests and executions
were not. These became known in the west only as a few former gulag inmates reached the West with their stories. Not only did foreign
correspondents from the West fail to report on the purges, but in many Western nations, especially France, attempts were made to
silence or discredit these witnesses; Jean-Paul Sartre took the position that evidence of the camps should be ignored, in order that
the French proletariat not be discouraged. A series of legal actions ensued at which definitive evidence was presented which
established the validity of the former concentration camp inmates’ testimony.

Robert Conquest wrote the book The Great Terror in 1968. According to Conquest, writing in The Great Terror, with respect to the
trials of former leaders, some Western observers were unable to see through the fraudulent nature of the charges and evidence, notably
Walter Duranty of The New York Times, a Russian speaker; the American Ambassador, Joseph Davis, who reported, “proof…beyond
reasonable doubt to justify the verdict of treason” and Beatrice and Sidney Webb, authors of Soviet Communism: A New Civilization.
According to Conquest, writing in The Great Terror, while “Communist Parties everywhere simply transmitted the Soviet line”, some of
the most critical reporting also came from the left, notably The Manchester Guardian.

Despite great skepticism regarding the show trials and occasional reports of Gulag survivors, many western intellectuals retained a
favorable view of the Soviet Union. Some of them dissociated themselves from the Communist party, but not from Communist convictions,
only in 1956, when the Stalinist crimes were made public within the inner communist circles in Russia. With the beginning of the Cold
War and McCarthyism, some supporters of the USSR were persecuted, so there were personal motives for a number of intellectuals to
change their mind. Also, evidence and the results of research began to appear after Stalin’s death which revealed the full enormity of
the Purges. The first of these sources were the revelations of Nikita Khrushchev, which particularly affected the American editors of
the Communist Party USA newspaper, the Daily Worker, who, following the lead of The New York Times, published the Secret Speech in
full. In 1968, Robert Conquest published The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag
Archipelago followed in 1973. By the Glasnost era of the late 1980s, Stalin was denounced openly by Mikhail Gorbachev as a criminal,
and Soviet records were opened to Western and Soviet researchers after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Finally, in France, where the
intellectual climate was most sympathetic to Soviet communism, The Black Book of Communism (1997), relying in part on revelations of
the Great Purge, compared communism unfavorably to Nazism. Nevertheless, minimization of the extent of the Great Purge continues among
revisionist scholars in the United States (see, e.g., pp. 15-17, In Denial, ISBN 1-893554-72-4) and small but passionate groups of
modern-day Stalinists.

According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot -
an average of 1,000 executions a day. Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet
Repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million - i.e. about a million – which includes deaths in detention and
those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. He also states that this is the
estimate which should be used by historians and teachers of Russian history. According to Memorial society

On the cases investigated by the State Security Department of NKVD (GUGB NKVD):
At least 1,710,000 people were arrested
At least 1,440,000 people were sentenced
At least 724,000 were executed. Among them:
At least 436,000 people were sentenced to death by NKVD troikas as part of the Kulak operation
At least 247,000 people were sentenced to death by NKVD Dvoikas’ and the Local Special Troykas as part of the Ethnic Operation
At least 41,000 people were sentenced to death by Military Courts
Among other cases in October 1936-November 1938:
At least 400,000 were sentenced to labor camps by Police Troikas as Socially Harmful Elements (социально-вредный элемент, СВЭ)
At least 200,000 were exiled or deported by Administrative procedures
At least 2 million were sentenced by courts for common crimes, among them 800,000 were sentenced to Gulag camps.
Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable. For example, Robert
Conquest suggests that the probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but some two and a half
times as high. He believes that the KGB was covering its tracks by falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims,
although this is speculation as no evidence of this cover-up has come to light.

Maybe the Russian Government shouldn’t have let us westerners in to reveal there own classified archives…

Both the Nazis and the Communists kept power at the expense of their peoples.

Unfortuneately it took the German People 12 years to get rid of Hitler and the Russians took 74 years to get rid of theirs and both are better for it.

Cavalry Gunner
Wally

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#138

at Cavalry Gunner.

I am sorry, is your post #136 the answer to my post #135?

#139

Yes #136 is my reply to #135

Cavalry Gunner
Wally

stalin.bmp (87.3 KB)

#140

Ok, I just wanted to make sure before I start critisising it. You did not quote a single word from my post , so it is difficult for me to follow your logic in what part of your post answers what part of my post.

You see, most of your post has little bearing with the purge in the RKKA in the 1930s. So I will not comment on it.

Regarding the purge in the RKKA the numbers are the following:

Memo

During the last 5 years (1934 - 25 Oct 1939) the following number of the officers was being dismissed:

1934: 6596 ppl. or 5,9% of the total.[INDENT]
a) for drinking and moral decay - 1513
b) due to illness, invalids, death - 4604
c) arrested and convicted - 479

1935: 8560 ppl. or 7,2% of the total.
a) politico-moral issues, incomepetence, volountiraly - 6719
b) due to illness, invalids, death - 1492
c) arrested and convicted - 349

1936: 4918 ppl. or 3,9% of the total.
a) or drinking and moral decay - 1942
b) due to illness, invalids, death - 1937
c) arrested and convicted - 782

1937: 18658 ppl. or 13,6% of the total.
a) for politcal reason (excluded from the party, connection to enemies of the state) - 11104
b) arrested and convicted - 4474
c) for drinking and moral decay - 1139
d) due to illness, invalids, death -1941

1938: 16362 ppl. or 11,3% of the total.
a) political motives - 3580
b) foreign nationals, bourn aboad and connected with abroad - 4138
c) arrested - 5032
d) for drinking and moral decay - 2671
b) due to illness, invalids, death - 941

1939 until 25 Oct: 1691 ppl. or 1,6% of the total.
a) political motives - 277
b) arrested - 67
c) for drinking and moral decay - 197
b) due to illness, invalids - 725
c) death - 425

The total for the 6 years period - 56785 people.
Total for 1937 - 1938 : 35020 people. Of those arrested - 9506 (27,2% of dismissed)
…
…
…
The leader of the 6th unit
Colonel Shiryaev
20 October 1939

[/INDENT]

Source: Document “РГВА. Ф.37837. Оп.19. Д.87. Л.42-52.” citied as it appears in the book “Statistics of anti army terror” by N.Cherushev, 1998

I already reffered to it in an other thread.

As you, Cavalry Gunner, can see your statement about “All told, 30,000 members of the armed forces were executed.” is WRONG.
35020 people is the number of discharged from the force for different reasons including fatal accidents. Not “executed”!
Further more several thousand of them were returned into the RKKA and restored in their ranks the following year as the result of the victims complains.