I have only read the first page, and I realise this thread is most likely completely off-topic by now, but I was shocked to see nobody mentioned the fact that the US did indeed drop two atomic bombs. Even for those who can justify the use of one, I see no viable way of justifying the second: in fact, (I have no citations for the following claim and may be completely wrong) the only reason they dropped two bombs was to see which type of atomic bomb (Fat Man or Little Boy) worked better. Japan would have surely surrendered after Hiroshima: Nagasaki was a nuclear test zone.

I'll see if I can respond to some of this since you guys seem to be throwing everything at me but the kitchen sink. I hope that you reciprocate in kind and actually investigate the assertions being made without simply being content with making assertions without backing them up - and then saying "well I don't have time to back my statements up" or "let's not get bogged down in minutia". Not everybody is doing this, but some of you are.

I'll respond to Spyman's overall point first (and I'll note that I am not referring to Spyman in my above comment).

"When considering the advantages of a socio/economic/political system international relations can be just as important as questions of internal affairs. All factors must be considered."

I don't see the connection here. You're saying socialism is an inferior system because the international forces arrayed on the side of the capitalists were more powerful and/or more willing to use brutal force to impose their economic and political system on other countries. So because the Soviets weren't so hotheaded and didn't intervene to protect North Korea from the bombardment of the combined military might of the West, that means socialism is worse than capitalism. North Korea, without UN intervention, would have easily taken over and reunified the peninsula. The North withstood the combined firepower of the whole western world, and the UN still couldn't take the North over. How can we look at that and then conclude socialism is inferior?

Now if you're going to bring up Korea then we have to bring up Vietnam. Who won the Vietnamese civil war? The Communist north. They're still, against all odds, run by the Communist Party today. Can we conclude from that that socialism is superior? In these two civil wars the Communists fought to a draw in one case, and defeated a heavily supported US client in the second - both at great cost.

Or how about WWII. No one can deny that the Soviets did the heavy lifting defeating the fascists. Again, can we conclude socialism is superior?

"Indeed the best thing the North Koreans could do now would be to dismantle their government and unite with the South Koreans (after all they are all Korean). Sure it will be tough for the North for a few decades"

Ask the East Germans how well that worked out for them when that happened in 1990. Unemployment is still double what it is in the West and this a strong sense that the Berlin Wall falling was the worst thing that could have possibly happened. You talk as if "a few decades" is but a small price to pay. East Germany wasn't as rich as the West in terms of GDP, but they had a much higher standard of living than they did after they were annexed and dismantled by West Germany. Furthermore, who is to say that North Korea can't recover? You talk as if it's a done deal that North Korea is doomed to permanent economic malaise. The other communist-led states have proven to be versatile and adapt to the current global economy. Why can't North Korea do the same if allowed to by the US and Japanese militarists?

"Did the Soviet Union have "servile pawns in their grand strategy". I ask this in order to understand how you define "servile pawn". "

Yes the Soviets had client states, although I would say that the typical country that received Soviet aid had a lot more independence than American clients. For example, the Soviets gave Iraq plenty of hardware and signed treaties of friendship with Arab governments that had no qualms with executing communists in their own country. This happened in other places as well. The Soviets built up the Indian military, and India responded by leading the so-called "Non-Aligned Movement". Few American clients had such flexibility. So I'd argue that American 'pawns' which much more servile, if you will, than Soviet ones.

In eastern Europe you have a different situation, but even in those cases countries like Romania, Albania, and Yugoslavia exercised a great deal of independence from Moscow. The Soviets were more defensive in this region because eastern Europe was the corridor by which fascist quislings allowed German and Axis troops to invade Russia. I think anyone can see why the Soviets would be more jittery about pro-NATO rumblings in this region.

"You know, that little manmade famine that nearly killed as many people as the Holocaust. No, they must be Nazi sympathizers."

There's this persistent effort to try and rehabilitate the Germans by saying the Soviets were 'nearly as bad'. I guess it didn't matter which side we fought on during the war, huh? Numbers are being made up out of whole cloth. We haven't seen a single authoritative source on the numbers, so people just throw around millions (although you later retracted and say you don't like to throw around millions).

Anyway your source said 6-8 million, the Holocaust resulted in 12 million deaths. Of course, for whatever reason Soviet POWs are ignored in the total number killed by the Nazis. We'll ignore whatever numbers we can in order to make the Soviets, who liberated Europe from Hitler, look just as bad. Hey, what's several million Soviet deaths in defense of Europe among friends. We can spit on their graves all we want. We Americans are so fucking heroic aren't we?

Here's some inconvenient facts about the so-called Holodomor left out of the anti-Soviet propaganda fest.

1 - The famine occurred in numerous regions in the Soviet Union- including parts of Siberia, the North Caucasus, the Lower Volga and Kazakhstan. It wasn't specific to the Ukraine, , in some cases death rate was just as high as in Ukraine . The idea this was a genocidal plot to wipe out recalcitrant Ukrainian kulaks is just plain made up. It is made up because the perpetrators of this myth used only Ukrainian (pro-Nazi) nationalist memoirs and nothing else. So we're left with the impression that the government had some kind of axe to grind against Ukrainians from people most likely to make such a claim. These are the same people were deeply involved in helping the Hitlerites round up Jews for extermination, so they had every incentive to inflate numbers to ridiculous proportions. They wanted the world to think that as bad as they were, the Soviets were worse.
2 - The fact is that the harvest during 1931-1932 was extraordinarily low, this is supported even by Conquest's own numbers, when talks about the procurement of grain by the government from Ukraine. That number - 4.7 tons in 1932, is much lower than previous years or the years after 1932. Keep in mind the Holodomor crowd claim that the Soviets took all the grain in 1932, so if the procurement was lower than other years when they supposedly didn't take all the grain then that means they had a really really bad harvest due to wheat rust.
http://www.as.wvu.edu/mtauger/Reply%20to%20Wheatcroft.htm
3 - Many prominent Ukrainian politicians, including the current President - Yanukovich, admit that the famine took place throughout the former USSR and that it wasn't a "genocidal" policy aimed at killing off Ukrainians. Even Sholzhenitsyn, who did everything he could to hate on Stalin and the Soviet Union, denied the claims of the Holodomor crowd. This is a systematic campaign to vilify the Soviets and lay every conceivable crime at their feet.
4 - At least two members of the Politburo during this time were Ukrainian, including a Ukrainian Jew. How to the anti-communists explain this? Lazar Kaganovich - Politburo member from 1930 to 1957; Kliment Voroshilov, Politburo member from 1926 to 1960.
5 - There is documentary evidence which shows that the Soviet government was sending food aid to the victims of famine during 1932-1933. There is also documentary evidence that kulaks were destroying their own livestock and grain supplies rather than abide by collectivization. But I suppose it's the governments fault if kulaks are destroying food they are hoarding, right? So when the government comes in to take it to prevent it from getting destroyed, they are "purposely killing Ukrainians", I guess.
6 - Most damningly, I think, is the fact that despite the fact that the Soviet archives have been opened up, and scholars have poured over them looking for anything they can find to attack the Soviet Union, they can't find a single directive to implement the so-called Holodomor. They can't find a single directive to blockade grain distribution in the Ukraine.
7 - What is ignored in all of this is the fact that Soviet industrialization was necessary in order to defeat fascism. Industrialization had to happen quickly. Collectivization was needed in order to produce enough food to feed the cities of an industrial society. Without collectization, Soviets would farming small unproductive farms that didn't produce very much. So again it's thanks to collectization that we're free from Hitler. Ukrainian Nazis might not like it, but why do dupes in the West have to believe their every lie?


Finally, I'll ask this. Were the countless famines which took place in British controlled India prior to 1947 part of a calculated plot to wipe Indians out? How come liberal democracies aren't treated the same way when it comes to events which happen on their watch? How come we don't have any books titled "Churchill's genocides"? I

More on Ukraine, harvests, procurement quotas, etc.

http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20Chapter%20for%20Roter%20Holocaust%20book%20b.pdf

"Werth also does not support his claim about excessive
procurement quotas with any information on actual food
production, but rather with inaccurately-cited percentages of the
share of procurements from the harvests (179). For example, he
asserts that the procurement plan for 1932 was 32 percent greater
than that of 1931. His source, however, states (in one sentence)

3
For Bukharin's use of this term at the February 1929 Central
Committee plenum, see for example R. V. Daniels, The Conscience
of the Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1969), 364.
4
The Soviet regime acquired food supplies from the countryside
in this period (through 1932) by several means, including
contracts with producers, market exchange, and non-market
measures that involved coercion, usually summed up under the term
"procurements" [zagotovki]. The regime planned procurements
based on projections of agricultural production and of the amount
of grain and other food supplies needed for towns, villages, the
armed forces, export, and emergency reserves. 4
that the Supply Commissar A. I. Mikoian had set a high
procurement quota of 29 million tons of grain in early 1932, but
then reduced it in spring of that year to 18 million tons.
Werth thus omits the information that contradicts his argument.

The documents show that while officials did consider a high
quota in early 1932, the first officially published procurement
quota, issued in the well-known 6 May 1932 decree that also
legalized private trade in grain, was almost 20 percent lower
than that of 1931.
6
During the subsequent procurement campaign,
the regime cut procurement quotas sharply in the regions that had
the most difficulty in fulfilling them, including the North
Caucasus and Ukraine.
Werth does not mention these measures,
even though some of his sources did. In particular, Werth
asserts that Molotov rejected local officials' appeals for
reduced quotas (183) : according to the archives and Werth's
sources, Molotov did authorize reductions.


First, if Soviet leaders wanted to punish the peasants for
resistance to requisitions and collectivization, why did they
wait until the latter half of 1932? The only developments in
1931-1932, in Werth's account, that could have motivated a
decision to "crack down" on the peasants, were difficulties in
fulfilling the 1932 procurement quota. Yet, as noted above, and
despite Werth's claim to the contrary, the regime set the 1932
quota below that of 1931, and reduced it further, even at the
peak of the procurement crisis. These actions suggest a policy
of compromise rather than punishment. Werth does not explain why
the regime procured less grain in 1932 than in 1931, despite a
more violent procurement campaign in the latter year, and why
procurement of a smaller quantity of food from the villages in
comparison to the previous year led to a much worse famine (180-
181). These considerations suggest that the country faced a
problem of overall food production, a scenario that Werth does
not consider.
Second, if Soviet leaders wanted to punish the peasants, why
did they allow hundreds of thousands of workers and their
families to die of famine, even in Moscow, and thousands of Red 8
Army soldiers to be deprived of food? Werth underestimates the
extent of the famine (185, 188): he emphasizes that it affected
regions of rebellion against collectivization, yet peasants
rebelled throughout the USSR, from Belorussia to Siberia.
1l

Other sources show that famine affected townspeople, even workers
in high priority jobs who were entitled to larger rations, as
well as the Red Army.
12
This was Stalin's point in his letter to
Sholokhov: certain peasants, allegedly by refusing to work, were
"willing to leave the workers and the Red Army without bread"
(187). This evidence indicates that the famine reached even
those who were consumers of the food that the regime procured,
and again suggests an underlying problem of food production.

Werth's second argument, that the regime intentionally
imposed the famine to punish the peasantry, again misreads
sources (including Stalin's letter) and omits other aspects of
the situation that do not support the argument, especially that
concerning the needs of groups outside the villages. The
regime's explicitly punitive actions in this crisis also cast
doubt on this interpretation. In late 1932 and early 1933 the
regime exiled many of the Kuban peasants whom Stalin and other
officials accused of sabotage and sent peasants from provinces


with agrarian overpopulation and poor soils to the evacuated
Kuban villages. According to that region's party secretary B. P.
Sheboldaev, "We explicitly made public that malicious saboteurs,
accomplices of the kulaks and those who do not want to sow would
be exiled to the North region. ... we had better give the rich
land of Kuban to kolkhozniki of another region who have poor and
barren land. " Sheboldaev's statement suggests that leaders
distinguished between punishment and the famine: they seem to
have viewed the famine not as their own "weapon" but as a crisis
caused partly by peasant "sabotage" or resistance and which they
hoped to overcome in part with such genuine punitive measures.
1

http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20%27The%201932%20Harvest%20and%20the%20Famine%20of%201933,%20SR%2091.pdf

Specific numbers on the harvest of 1932.

"There's this persistent effort to try and rehabilitate the Germans by saying the Soviets were 'nearly as bad'. I guess it didn't matter which side we fought on during the war, huh? Numbers are being made up out of whole cloth. We haven't seen a single authoritative source on the numbers, so people just throw around millions (although you later retracted and say you don't like to throw around millions).

Anyway your source said 6-8 million, the Holocaust resulted in 12 million deaths. Of course, for whatever reason Soviet POWs are ignored in the total number killed by the Nazis. We'll ignore whatever numbers we can in order to make the Soviets, who liberated Europe from Hitler, look just as bad. Hey, what's several million Soviet deaths in defense of Europe among friends. We can spit on their graves all we want. We Americans are so fucking heroic aren't we?"

I think you're missing the point here. It's not "Soviets were x amount as bad as Nazis." I brought up the Holocaust simply as a reference to a crime against humanity on a colossal scale for point of comparison, because the initial numbers I had were at that size. I could have (and, had I known we would get this distracted, would have) chosen a different crime if you like -- maybe some of the things Japan did in WWII, maybe the Armenian Genocide, whatever. The point isn't to make the Holocaust look any better, and I thought I made that really clear. I've since used smaller estimates because we're getting bogged down in the details of a rhetorical device instead of addressing the actual point. That point, which I have stated repeatedly, is that Ukrainians have a valid grievance with the Soviets over Holodomor, and that your characterization of Ukrainians as Nazi sympathizers who are ungrateful for all the good the Soviets did and just want to complain because they're biased against the Soviets is bogus.

And I'm not "spitting on their graves." I've outright acknowledged repeatedly that the Soviets did plenty of good for Europe. I'm taking issue not with that but with this idea you seem to be perpetuating that the Soviets did no wrong, because... um... they did. Quite a lot.

As for authoritative source -- I'm using information from Tim Snyder's book "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin." He's a Yale historian specializing in Central and Eastern Europe, and I hope that the fact that he went to work on the Nazis in his book is enough to convince you that he's not some crazy pro-Nazi whackjob whitewashing everything. (For one, he backed up your numbers in your last post stating that the Nazis were responsible for about twice as many noncombatant deaths as the Soviets under Stalin. So he's not trying to paint Stalinist USSR as "almost as bad" as the Nazis.)

"1 - The famine occurred in numerous regions in the Soviet Union- including parts of Siberia, the North Caucasus, the Lower Volga and Kazakhstan. It wasn't specific to the Ukraine, , in some cases death rate was just as high as in Ukraine . The idea this was a genocidal plot to wipe out recalcitrant Ukrainian kulaks is just plain made up. It is made up because the perpetrators of this myth used only Ukrainian (pro-Nazi) nationalist memoirs and nothing else. So we're left with the impression that the government had some kind of axe to grind against Ukrainians from people most likely to make such a claim. These are the same people were deeply involved in helping the Hitlerites round up Jews for extermination, so they had every incentive to inflate numbers to ridiculous proportions. They wanted the world to think that as bad as they were, the Soviets were worse."

One, people I'm hearing these stories from are Ukrainian Jews. Not Nazi sympathizers. Continue calling Jews Nazi sympathizers if you like, but you look stupid doing so.

Two, and more importantly, while there was famine in general throughout the USSR, the USSR enacted specific policies that were more or less limited to Ukraine that drastically amplified the effect of the famine. Ukrainian peasants were required to return extra grain they earned for meeting past quotas; Ukrainian peasants who failed to meet grain quotas were required to surrender their livestock; Ukrainian collective farms who failed to meet grain quotas were required to surrender 15 times their quota; Stalin's security chief authorized terrorism against Ukrainian party officials to collect grain; Ukraine was required to provide one third of the USSR's grain production; Ukraine's borders were sealed to trap fleeing peasants in their starvation-ridden state [within a month of the policy being passed, nearly 200,000 Ukrainian peasants fleeing the famine had been forced to return to their farms and starve]; and the USSR continued collecting grain from 1932 even after Ukraine met the 1932 quota in January 1933. Most of these policies are by their nature limited specifically to Ukraine and intentionally saddled extra burdens on Ukraine that Ukraine was obviously ill-equipped to meet. So yes, while the famine as a whole was not specific to Ukraine, Stalin and co. enacted specific measures that made the famine much worse in Ukraine. And there's really no room to argue that the leadership simply didn't know this would happen; when you see a state failing to meet grain quotas in the face of a famine, you cannot justifiably say that you didn't expect the famine to get worse when you start trying to collect even more grain. No, they knew good and damn well it would make it worse, and intentionally targeted Ukraine with a no-immigration policy to keep the peasantry stuck in their starvation.

Now, I agree with you in saying that it was not a genocide. I'm not painting it as such. I am painting it as a crime against humanity that gives the Ukrainians valid reason to feel resentment against the USSR. How can you argue against that?

"2 - The fact is that the harvest during 1931-1932 was extraordinarily low, this is supported even by Conquest's own numbers, when talks about the procurement of grain by the government from Ukraine. That number - 4.7 tons in 1932, is much lower than previous years or the years after 1932. Keep in mind the Holodomor crowd claim that the Soviets took all the grain in 1932, so if the procurement was lower than other years when they supposedly didn't take all the grain then that means they had a really really bad harvest due to wheat rust."

I think my response to #1 covers this as well (and I leave it to you to correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm sure you will. ;D). Yes, there was famine. There was a bad harvest. The Soviets specifically targeted Ukraine with additional measures that exacerbated the famine. The Soviets took the grain, yeah. The harvest was lower than normal. The problems lay with the Soviets' decision to make the famine WORSE by adding additional measures cited in my response to your point 1. THAT is where the Ukrainians' anger lies.

"3 - Many prominent Ukrainian politicians, including the current President - Yanukovich, admit that the famine took place throughout the former USSR and that it wasn't a "genocidal" policy aimed at killing off Ukrainians. Even Sholzhenitsyn, who did everything he could to hate on Stalin and the Soviet Union, denied the claims of the Holodomor crowd. This is a systematic campaign to vilify the Soviets and lay every conceivable crime at their feet."

Never called it a genocide. I called it a crime against humanity. And the man you're quoting makes my point here: "The Holodomor was in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It was the result of Stalin's totalitarian regime. But it would be wrong and unfair to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against one nation." Holodomor wasn't unique to Ukraine, but Stalin's regime made it much worse in Ukraine than anywhere else and there is where Ukrainians' anger lies.

By the way, I'm not alone in calling it non-genocidal but laying the blame for Holodomor and the damage it did to Ukraine at the feet of Stalinist USSR's policies (which, as argued above, almost have to be intentional). The UN seems to agree:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Joint_Statement_on_Holodomor

So yeah, not using the term genocide because it obviously hurt more than ethnic Ukrainians. But there was certainly a crime against humanity done here with the purposeful additional mandates against a state that obviously could not meet the quota.

"4 - At least two members of the Politburo during this time were Ukrainian, including a Ukrainian Jew. How to the anti-communists explain this? Lazar Kaganovich - Politburo member from 1930 to 1957; Kliment Voroshilov, Politburo member from 1926 to 1960."

Simple. It wasn't a genocide. It targeted more than ethnic Ukrainians.

"5 - There is documentary evidence which shows that the Soviet government was sending food aid to the victims of famine during 1932-1933. There is also documentary evidence that kulaks were destroying their own livestock and grain supplies rather than abide by collectivization. But I suppose it's the governments fault if kulaks are destroying food they are hoarding, right? So when the government comes in to take it to prevent it from getting destroyed, they are "purposely killing Ukrainians", I guess."

See point #1 -- one of the policies Stalin's regime enacted was to force those who failed to meet quotas to destroy their livestock. They're not 'hoarding' it, either. The livestock were theirs to consume, they weren't illegally keeping it from Soviet collectors; it was their rations. The destruction of their own food comes directly on the heels of Soviet coercion to do so.

"6 - Most damningly, I think, is the fact that despite the fact that the Soviet archives have been opened up, and scholars have poured over them looking for anything they can find to attack the Soviet Union, they can't find a single directive to implement the so-called Holodomor. They can't find a single directive to blockade grain distribution in the Ukraine."

Oh, sure, they never said "Don't send them any grain." Rather it was "If they don't meet Impossible-To-Meet-Because-We're-In-A-F#@%ing-Famine Quota X, take a huge chunk of their rations." Distinction without an appreciable difference; Ukrainians starved because the Soviets put absurd extra rules on them.

"7 - What is ignored in all of this is the fact that Soviet industrialization was necessary in order to defeat fascism. Industrialization had to happen quickly. Collectivization was needed in order to produce enough food to feed the cities of an industrial society. Without collectization, Soviets would farming small unproductive farms that didn't produce very much. So again it's thanks to collectization that we're free from Hitler. Ukrainian Nazis might not like it, but why do dupes in the West have to believe their every lie?"

Ridiculous policies in Ukraine begin: November 1932
Nazi Germany is born: January 1933
Hitler breaks peace agreement with Soviet Union: June 22, 1941

So you're telling me that, in order to counter the threat of a Nazi Germany that didn't yet exist, Stalin rapidly collectivized farms, resulting in a severe famine, and then, because it was necessary for collectivization, put absurd conditions on Ukraine specifically, in the name of fighting a Nazi threat that didn't materialize until 1941 -- a Nazi threat that *Stalin himself ignored repeatedly before Operation Barbarossa began*?

THAT, good sir, is whitewashing.

"Finally, I'll ask this. Were the countless famines which took place in British controlled India prior to 1947 part of a calculated plot to wipe Indians out? How come liberal democracies aren't treated the same way when it comes to events which happen on their watch? How come we don't have any books titled "Churchill's genocides"?"

Because whether or not Britain caused famines in India has absolutely nothing to do with my attack on your bogus claim that Ukrainians have no reason to resent the USSR.

And why are you playing the "Liberal democracies are worse than us!" card and condemning people for (allegedly; note that no one has defended Nazis in here) playing the "Soviets were worse than us!" card in defense of Nazis?

And another thought concerning the disparity between attacking Nazis and attacking Soviets that you seem to be observing generally. Firstly, no one here is defending Nazis, and aside from a few dissidents in every crowd no one defends Nazis. Everyone accepts that Nazism was a terrible blight on humanity and condemns it accordingly. Meanwhile, we still have people who whitewash every bit of the Soviet Union's history, people who would have you think that every single alleged killing, rape or looting that ever occurred by someone representing the Soviet leadership is a giant fabrication by a vast anti-Soviet conspiracy. If you actually saw a significant group of people defending Nazism you'd probably see more people bashing it. Your argument is akin to a creationist complaining that the people who condemn creationism don't spend enough time condemning the geocentric theory of the universe. That absurdity has been thoroughly discredited. This one has not.

Secondly, the Nazis were actually punished for their crimes. Nazi leadership received their day in court and paid the price for their atrocities. Stalin died without a trial for his atrocities. The Communist leadership by and large never received punishment for their gross violations of human rights. So of course there's resentment for the Soviets still; those bastards did so much harm to so many people and never got what was coming for it!

And yes, the Soviets did good. I'll say it again, though I question myself as I do so, considering that I was ignored the last few times I said it. The Soviets were a huge factor in the downfall of Hitler. This doesn't excuse the terrible atrocities they committed, nor does it remove the right of the victims of these atrocities to feel resentment for being so brutally mistreated. Contemporary knowledge of how the human body reacts to freezing is almost entirely based on the research done by the Nazis on humans and their brutal experimentation; does that excuse their crimes? Does that remove the right of Holocaust victims to feel resentment? Of course it fucking doesn't, just like the notion that because the Soviets helped beat the Nazis they get a free pass for their brutality.

I think I've adequately made the point that Ukrainians have reason to resent the Soviets. We could go back and forth endlessly, in theory, but in practice I don't think I have much more to say. I found myself repeating previous statements a lot, and I suspect further discussion will be nothing but a repetitive circle of the same things being said over and over. Since I started it off, I'll leave you the last word, you can proclaim yourself victor if you like, and move on to addressing the others here.

spyman: When considering the advantages of a socio/economic/political system international relations can be just as important as questions of internal affairs. All factors must be considered."

putin: I don't see the connection here. You're saying socialism is an inferior system because the international forces arrayed on the side of the capitalists were more powerful and/or more willing to use brutal force to impose their economic and political system on other countries.

I don’t think I have made any objective statement about the merits of socialism, rather that North Korea's choices have had unfortunate consequences (even if some of those consequences have been imposed from outside). But I concede my argument, above, could just as easily apply to South Vietnam. Perhaps they would have been better off acquiescing to the North from the outset. This might have saved everyone a lot pain and suffering. But I have changed my mind about this argument. Neither North Korea nor South Vietnam could have foreseen how things would turn out. So it is a moot point. + 1 Putin

One thing that makes me quetion the benefits of socialism: why in communist states do they have to build a wall to keep people in. Take the Berlin Wall for example, why did so many people try to escape from east to west and not the other way around?

"I don’t think I have made any objective statement about the merits of socialism, rather that North Korea's choices have had unfortunate consequences"

I thought you were discussing the 'advantages of socio/economic/political systems', so I misinterpreted your point. I suppose your point is more case-by-case than I assumed. My apologies. So, your point was more that, in North Korea's case its choice of the socialist economic system ended up having bad consequences, but in others it might not be bad? I know you said it was a moot point but I'm just trying to clarify here.

"One thing that makes me quetion the benefits of socialism: why in communist states do they have to build a wall to keep people in. Take the Berlin Wall for example, why did so many people try to escape from east to west and not the other way around?"

Well, there were a number of factors. First, East Germany was left with a weird situation in which West Berlin, which was fully in the Soviet occupied sector of Germany, remained in control of what would become NATO. NATO made it a policy to rearm and remilitarize West Germany, including West Berlin (this was against all the agreements made in Yalta and Potsdam). Prior to the building of the Wall in 1961, you had repeated military crises between NATO and the Soviets, with potentially nuclear consequences. West German politicians repeatedly and openly stated their ambitions of taking over East Germany, which was no more clearly stated than with their "sole representation" policy, which effectively meant they did not recognize the sovereignty of the GDR. They said that Germans living in the GDR, Poland, and outside the Federal Republic were Federal Republic subjects. East Germany had proposed measures to prevent the wall from having to be built - military neutrality, peaceful co-existence, normal relations between the two German states, the conclusion of a peace treaty, a demilitarized Free City of West Berlin. All rejected. So, the Berlin Wall is responsible for keeping the peace in Europe. Kennedy even admitted as much. His famous quote is the wall was "a hell of a lot better than war". Furthermore, West German newspapers lamented that "“A reunification with the Bundeswehr marching victoriously through the Brandenburg Gate to the beating of drums - such a reunification will not take place in the foreseeable future.” That's the main reason why it was built.

Now, there was no reason for East Berliners to risk illegal immigration, had the West German authorities not closed off legal immigration between the two sides. GDR had implemented a policy of entry permits, and set up entry permit stations in West Berlin. These stations were shut down by West Germany by force. So, it was West Germany who closed off contacts between the two zones, making it possible only to move across the border through dangerous illegal means.

There was also the issue of East Germany subsidizing professionals who take advantage of their high quality free education system and then being lured by West Germany to lucrative contracts. That's why many tried to emigrate. The Wall prevented this brain drain.

"is that Ukrainians have a valid grievance with the Soviets over Holodomor, and that your characterization of Ukrainians as Nazi sympathizers who are ungrateful for all the good the Soviets did and just want to complain because they're biased against the Soviets is bogus."

But you have to recognize where this idea of Ukrainian genocide comes from. Who is the person most responsible for propagating this idea of Ukrainian genocide? Robert Conquest. In virtually every "Holodomor" account I've read, Conquest is a main person cited. Where did he get his sources from? Heck, where did he get the funding to write the book "Harvest of Sorrow"? Ukrainian Nazis. That's a fact. The Ukrainian National Association gave him $80,000 to write the book. This organization ran a newspaper during WWII that was banned in Canada for being pro-Nazi. But more important than even that, look at his sources. Conquest cites "Black Deeds of the Kremlin" 145 times. Gee, I wonder who these two volumes were written by? SUZERO & DOBRUS, two Ukrainian nationalist organizations. Black Deeds has contributors such as Petro Pavlovich, a vehement Nazi sympathizer/collaborator who published pro-Nazi propaganda under the name "Apollon Trembotvetskiy". This man proclaimed Hitler to be a "great humanitarian and Savior" and said "Only by hard work and our lives will we be able to repay our debt to Hitler, and defeat Judeo-communism". Many photos taken from Black Deeds come from Nazi publications.

This doesn't even get into the fact that Conquest uses fraudulent pictures of his own from the Volga famine of 1921 and portrays these pictures as victims of the so-called manmade Ukrainian famine of 1933.

So, please understand MY point, if you claim I'm misinterpreting you. You say I'm portraying all Ukrainians who complain about the USSR as Nazi sympathizers. Not at all. That's absolutely not true. I'm saying this whole legend of Ukraine being purposely targeted by the Soviets during the famine has been carefully cultivated by Ukrainian nationalists, through Robert Conquest's (in)famous work on the subject. The reason people (not you, but many anti-Soviet Ukrainians) believe there was a policy of "genocide" against them is because of a lie that has been told over and over again which relies virtually exclusively on pro-Nazi sources.

Now, please don't tell me I'm portraying all anti-Soviet Ukrainians as Nazis, thanks.

" I'm taking issue not with that but with this idea you seem to be perpetuating that the Soviets did no wrong, because... um... they did. Quite a lot."

I didn't say the Soviets "did no wrong". I'm saying the famine of 1932-1933 was not a man-made famine. It was not a policy of genocide. It did not disproportionately affect the Ukraine. It did not result in the deaths of anywhere close to the number that died in the Holocaust, like you earlier claimed but since retracted. You can't simply ignore the context by which these kinds of claims are made, as might as you might wish to. The Soviet Union has plenty of detractors, I don't need to make their job any easier. I'm sick and tired of the lies and distortions which are told. I'm simply defending against these lies and distortions. If you want me to say something critical of the Soviet Union, then ask me about that. But I don't need to buy into every damn myth concocted about the USSR else I "think they did no wrong". Do you need to accept every lie told about the United States, else people can accuse you of being an unthinking American jingoist? Of course not.

"I'm using information from Tim Snyder's book "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.""

Yes, now you're using Snyder's book. Here's a review of (by no means a Communist) Snyder's book, which says that "Unhappily, Timothy Snyder's historical reassessment of the Nazi-Soviet pact coincides with Baltic ultra-nationalist agendas". http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/30/baltic-nazi-soviet-snyder

He says the following, which is what people need to keep in mind when making the kinds of comments you're making:

"Now Professor Snyder is absolutely right to call for a much-increased attention to the lands occupied by the Nazis after their June 1941 invasion of the western Soviet Union, where a million Jewish civilians were murdered, with massive local help, by the end of 1941 in "the Holocaust by bullets". But where he is unfortunately aligned with the current political trends into the far-out is in the acrobatics of trying to make Soviet evils of 1940-41 "somewhat equal" to that. They are not equal.

"The Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles and Ukrainians are still thankfully with us in 2010, as great nations with deservedly inspirational futures, precisely because there was no genocide. There were horrible crimes, but not genocide. East European Jewry is not there anymore, beyond a tiny and vanishing remnant, because there was genocide. Moreover, as Snyder must know, a Nazi victory in the east, with all that was being planned for the various "inferior races of the east" would not have left these nations ready for independence in 1991."

Another review is even more hostile which I link below. Both reviews make the claim that Snyder is buying into the "double genocide" theories of WWII which downplay German guilt and have played a horrific role in today's eastern Europe in terms of the memory of the war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/29/secondworldwar-holocaust

So, if you claim Snyder isn't trying to equalize Soviet and Nazi crimes, apparently people aren't getting that picture from his book. Especially because Snyder makes the usual false equivalence argument by playing up the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

On the substantive point of the famine, Snyder says "3.3 million" died from the famine of 1932-1933. I'm puzzled as to where he gets this number from because he doesn't cite it, but I see yet again the usual suspects when it comes to sources for the overall narrative: A slew of Ukrainian sources and Robert Conquest cited on numerous occasions.

Furthermore, he says: "n policies meant to kill civilians or prisoners of war, Nazi Germany murdered, by Snyder’s count, "about ten million people in the bloodlands (and perhaps 11 million people in total)" , while the Soviet Union under Stalin murdered "over four million people in the bloodlands (and about 6 million in total). If foreseeable deaths resulting from famine, ethnic cleansing and long stays in camps are added, the Stalinist total rises to perhaps nine million and the Nazi to perhaps twelve.""

So he's not exactly saying what you claim he's saying. 9 million to 12 million is his count.

"One, people I'm hearing these stories from are Ukrainian Jews. Not Nazi sympathizers. Continue calling Jews Nazi sympathizers if you like, but you look stupid doing so."

Once again I refer you to my above comments since I never said the people who are anti-Soviet in and from Ukraine are all Nazis. I could care less about your anecdotal stories. The people most vociferously objecting to the book you rely on are Jews - one of which is a Jewish person who currently lives in Lithuania and is witnessing the consequences of Snyder-like arguments. The purveyor of the Ukrainian genocide myth in Ukraine today is the former President Yushchenko, who is in bed with all sorts of nationalists and anti-Semites. I think these facts say it all.

Now to the meat of the matter.

"Ukrainian peasants were required to return extra grain they earned for meeting past quotas; Ukrainian peasants who failed to meet grain quotas were required to surrender their livestock; Ukrainian collective farms who failed to meet grain quotas were required to surrender 15 times their quota; Stalin's security chief authorized terrorism against Ukrainian party officials to collect grain; Ukraine was required to provide one third of the USSR's grain production; Ukraine's borders were sealed to trap fleeing peasants in their starvation-ridden state [within a month of the policy being passed, nearly 200,000 Ukrainian peasants fleeing the famine had been forced to return to their farms and starve]; and the USSR continued collecting grain from 1932 even after Ukraine met the 1932 quota in January 1933. Most of these policies are by their nature limited specifically to Ukraine and intentionally saddled extra burdens on Ukraine that Ukraine was obviously ill-equipped to meet. So yes, while the famine as a whole was not specific to Ukraine, Stalin and co. enacted specific measures that made the famine much worse in Ukraine. And there's really no room to argue that the leadership simply didn't know this would happen; when you see a state failing to meet grain quotas in the face of a famine, you cannot justifiably say that you didn't expect the famine to get worse when you start trying to collect even more grain. No, they knew good and damn well it would make it worse, and intentionally targeted Ukraine with a no-immigration policy to keep the peasantry stuck in their starvation."

I don't know where you're getting this from, I'm assuming Snyder again. But I'll say right away that the "no-immigration" policy was not specific to Ukraine. This policy was implemented nation-wide. They did this because if people fled grain producing regions en mass the famine would have been even worse. So right there you're flat out wrong. You elsewhere say that livestock was ordered destroyed by Soviet authorities for not meeting quotas. This doesn't make a damn bit of sense. I'd like to see one iota of proof for such an order. However, even anti-Soviet historians/biographers document how kulaks resisted collectivization through scorched earth tactics.

http://books.google.com/books?id=lsKClpnX8qwC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=kulaks+destroyed+own+livestock&source=bl&ots=Zwt50twbHX&sig=IaaR_FYjatHQ76kCVJ04c2GGiLs&hl=en&ei=6Bu1TfPKBIyGtwfH0oDqDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=kulaks%20destroyed%20own%20livestock&f=false

So on that count you are absolutely wrong as well. You are also wrong that kulaks weren't hoarding. The whole idea of "kulak" referred to peasants who acquired surplus grain and profited through the NEP and who kept these profits after the NEP. That's where the term originates. They were only 3.5% of the population. So this wasn't about people simply wanting to hold onto their rations.

" Ukraine was required to provide one third of the USSR's grain production"

This isn't true either. The numbers are clear. Procurements for 1932 totalled 18.5 million tons of grain in 1932, and 4.7 from Ukraine. For 1933 it was 22.9 for the USSR and 5.0 for Ukraine (which is less than 1/4). Ukraine was one of the major grain producing regions of the USSR, so of course they will be expected to produce quite a bit. But your 1/3 number is made up, and as I mentioned earlier, they reduced the procurement number for regions badly affected by the famine, which is why the procurement number was so low for Ukraine in 1932.

"Ukrainian collective farms who failed to meet grain quotas were required to surrender 15 times their quota"

I'd really like to see where you came up with this. The fact is procurement quotas were lowered for the Ukraine (and other regions) after it was clear they were having problems producing food.

Please read page 73 of this article.

http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20%27The%201932%20Harvest%20and%20the%20Famine%20of%201933,%20SR%2091.pdf

@Putin: I'll answer the questions relating to the source material later on today (after getting some sleep here!) for clarification's sake, but as noted before I intend to give you the final word, so I'll let your rebuttal stand (unless you're particularly dying to hear more of this neophyte history student's take... yeah, I can picture you just waiting with bated breath. Haha.). And regardless I'm going to read the links you sent. But I believe I did, in fact, misinterpret what you were saying to some extent.

"Ukrainians starved because the Soviets put absurd extra rules on them."

Why would they put "extra rules" on Ukrainians? Explain this to me. Why would they make policies to induce a famine in Ukraine when they were dreadfully afraid of another war with Germany? A country that had occupied Ukraine not so long ago. Why would a state supposedly biased against Ukrainians be ruled by a Ukrainian premier for 26 years (Khrushchov and Brezhnev were both Ukrainian - they ruled the USSR from 1956-1982)?

"So you're telling me that, in order to counter the threat of a Nazi Germany that didn't yet exist, Stalin rapidly collectivized farms, resulting in a severe famine, and then, because it was necessary for collectivization, put absurd conditions on Ukraine specifically, in the name of fighting a Nazi threat that didn't materialize until 1941 -- a Nazi threat that *Stalin himself ignored repeatedly before Operation Barbarossa began*?"

No, I'm not saying anything of the sort. Again, you distort my views while wagging your finger at me about distortions. If you'll recall, Germany fought a devastating war with Russia not long before the 1930s. It wasn't as if there wasn't fear of another war with Germany at this time. The Soviet Union had to fight off numerous imperialist powers after the Bolsheviks took over in 1917. Already in the 1930s Japan was in Manchuria and making threats against the USSR. The point is rapid industrialization was necessary to be prepared for a possible imperialist invasion, which the Soviets believed to be inevitable - and for good reason. So no, I'm not "whitewashing" anything.

"a Nazi threat that *Stalin himself ignored repeatedly before Operation Barbarossa began*"

Really, funny that Hitler didn't seem to think so, which is why he decided to invade to begin with. If the Soviets were "ignoring" the possibility of future war with Germany, why did the government try repeatedly to organize an anti-German alliance? Why the purges of the army of suspected Nazi sympathizers? Why did defense production rise by 39% annually from 1938 to 1940? Military deliveries from 1939-1941 included 92,578 new artillery units, including 29,637 canons and 52,407 mortars. The 82mm and 120mm mortar were also introduced just before the war. During this same period the Soviets produced 17,745 fighter aircraft and 7,000 tanks. Production of the famous T-34 tank began in 1940, 1,840 T-34s and KV heavy tanks were made before the war.

So now that that ridiculous argument is out of the way.

"Because whether or not Britain caused famines in India has absolutely nothing to do with my attack on your bogus claim that Ukrainians have no reason to resent the USSR."

The point is anti-communists invent all sorts of crimes or imply that any bad thing that happens in the USSR must be a deliberate policy but when it comes to bad things that happen in the western empires there's not a word about it.There's no effort to minimize British contributions to the war effort by pointing out the horrible policies implemented by Churchill. But the effort is ceaseless in trying to discredit the Soviet Union and thereby nullify any possible good they did for the world.

"Firstly, no one here is defending Nazis, and aside from a few dissidents in every crowd no one defends Nazis."

A few dissidents, no. As the article I linked you to earlier points out, there is a widespread campaign of rehabilitating Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in eastern Europe. SS parades are openly held. Organizations whose history included collaboration with the Nazis have open and public ties with supposedly mainstream politicians in these countries. Countless books come out purporting that the Soviets were "just as bad, or worse" than the Nazis in terms of crimes committed. History is rewritten so collaborators are painted as "independence fighters". The reason is because this period is very problematic for the self-image and self-esteem of numerous countries in this region. To look upon themselves in a positive light, they have to rehabilitate Nazi Germany. If you don't see that happening, you're willfully blind.


And my main point is not that nobody bashes Nazi Germany (again, you're simply distorting what I'm saying), my point is that people try to make the Soviets out to be worse by inventing crimes or distorting history. The idea is that German crimes need to be "contextualized". They aren't uniquely evil, or they're even less evil than the Soviets or an almost justifiable reaction to Soviet "crimes". Even if nobody anywhere was a Nazi sympathizer or motivated by such ideas, I'd still object to manufacturing crimes to lay at the feet of the Soviet Union. If nothing else, this serves the purpose of solidifying capitalism as the *most moral* economic system so the billions of workers around the world have to accept their fate of exploitation, because any alternative is *more evil*.

"Stalin died without a trial for his atrocities. The Communist leadership by and large never received punishment for their gross violations of human rights. So of course there's resentment for the Soviets still; those bastards did so much harm to so many people and never got what was coming for it!"

Many Communist leaders or functionaries were killed or were imprisoned or at the very least deprived of employment for crimes real or (mostly) imagined. So what you're saying is again, false. Ceausescu and his wife are famous examples, arrested in a coup, put on a show trial, and murdered in cold blood on Christmas Day. In many countries there was a policy of lustration - in which communists or anyone who worked for the communist government were blacklisted from working for the government. Stalin himself was likely murdered by Beria. Khrushchov had the pro-Stalin leader of Poland murdered. Erich Honecker was put on a show trial and only released due to ill-health. Meanwhile numerous Nazis escaped persecution thanks to US and Vatican aid, moved to South America, or got employment working for the US or West German governments.

And one more thing, and then I'm done with this. But this can't be left without a reply:

"Contemporary knowledge of how the human body reacts to freezing is almost entirely based on the research done by the Nazis on humans and their brutal experimentation; does that excuse their crimes?"

You're really comparing the good the Soviets did by defeating fascism to discoveries produced by Nazi torture? Gee, I'm thoroughly convinced you actually believe the Soviets did good things for the world.

I'm not excusing any crimes, but make sure they're actual crimes. The Soviets (and communists more generally) did a lot more than just defeat fascism, they also were instrumental in defeating colonialism and apartheid. If not for competition with the Soviets, America likely would never had ended segregation or bothered to improve the living standards of the working class. This doesn't even speak to the monumental advancements for women, which is made more apparent by the fact that as soon as the communist states collapsed in eastern europe, women came under attack and were reduced to their former status. Was the Soviet Union perfect? Not at all. But they did done more good for the world than any government I can think of.

I'll reply to that last bit real quick before bed, because I kind of expected it not to get taken the right way (serves me right for using bad examples...)

"You're really comparing the good the Soviets did by defeating fascism to discoveries produced by Nazi torture? Gee, I'm thoroughly convinced you actually believe the Soviets did good things for the world."

Only in the sense that doing good doesn't excuse doing bad. Otherwise they're very obviously not the same. I'm not equating the two in any other sense. And yeah, terrible example, I seem to have a track record with these. (I guess it would have helped to explain that my examples generally only apply in the specific sense I use them for, and almost never in a more general context...)

I'll cover the explanation of the source-related questions tomorrow, because I'm seconds away from falling asleep right here, and after that let this rest. If you don't mind, though, I'm going to start a separate thread (tomorrow) about something completely different for which I'd like your input. Nothing controversial or anything, I promise. Bona nocte! =]

@Putin33 #usefulidiot

Actually, both Putin and President are partially right here. The USSR initially did not fear Germany - it was actually its closest ally - which is just logical, considering both nations were heavily isolated. The extensive defense cooperation (both in manufacturing and training) + the Treaty of Rapallo are an irrefutable proof of that. Also, the discussion that led to the collectivization of agriculture had been going on since long before Hitler even became a significant political figure, in fact it was one of the first ideas the bolshevik regime started working on immediately after the revolution. Moreover, the exact strand of debate between the leninists, trotskyists and stalinists that produced the final plan of the collectivization can be basically backtracked to the momento of Lenin's death.

It is not true, however, that Stalin ignored Hitler once he came to power. Not only did he enact economic policies that were aimed at creating an independent Soviet defense industry, he also tried to discourage Germany from becoming more hostile by extending the trade treaties between the USSSR and Germany (in fact, Stalin refused to believe the reports of the imminent German attack because he calculated the Germans would wait until 1943 when they would reap all the benefits of the treaties - that became even more important when France was defeated because the plans for industrialization had to be reworked to allow a faster growth rate - and 1943 was estimated to be the year when the Red Army could reach parity with the Wehrmacht). He also completely changed his attitude towards European socialists whom he had considered traitors and tried to get their their support.

Overall, Stalin was well aware he would have to fight Hitler but he hoped he could avoid the situation Russia experienced during the WWI - to be dragged into a war in which it has no actual interest, to be exploited by the western countries trying to use Russia so they don't have to deal with the full German force only to try to get control of Russia afterwards. That's why he considered the wester appeasement a more dangerous thing than working with Hitler. What he didn't expect was that Hitler would manage to defeat the allies, rendering Stalin's plans largely useless.

+whom he had previously considered traitors and now tried to get their their support. +

Going back in time to page 8, reply to Putin’s points about Katyn.
1. “The bodies were found with German bullets”

Sure, Dmitry Tokarev said during his interrogation on 20.3.1991 that Blochin, Sinegubov and Krivenko brought a briefcase full of Walthers to the site. One usually loads German guns with German ammunition.

2. ”No "mass executions" without trial ever took place in the USSR after the Russian civil war, why then would they suddenly do this with the Poles?”

The prisoners from Ostashkov, Kozelsk and Starobelsk (and Lvov for instance) were sentenced to ВМН based on documents collected during procedures conducted against them (since they were POWs and interned). Of course, they were not executed without binding resolutions.

3. ” After the date this supposed Soviet execution took place, there were reports that from 6-8,000 Polish prisoners were held by the Soviets. Why weren't they 'destroyed'?“

And why should the Soviets execute every single Polish prisoner? After all, Stanislaw Swianiewicz was spared even though he was already in the Katyn forest before the executions took place. Some prisoners were sent to Gryazovets and were spared from execution as well.
Apart from emptying the camps (Vasiliy Chernyshev reported on 9.6.1940 that the camps were empty and ready to accept new prisoners), the argument that comes to mind is the nature of the prisoners held at Kozelsk etc. They were mostly (that’s important) officers and members of Polish intelligentsia, staunch supporters of Miedzymorze and upper class nationalistic colonists of eastern parts of Greater Poland. Not to mention their strong anti-Soviet and anti-semitic views.

4. “Pathologists who examined the corpses claimed the time of death had to be when the Germans occupied the area.“

Which ones and when they conducted the exhumations? Definitely not those from ICRC, whose participation was vetoed from the Soviet side in 1943.

5. “The Germans were known for shooting people in the back of the head.“

So were the Soviets. In fact, two men were executed this way in Belarus last year.


6. “The Germans had an ideology of annihilating the Slavs, and einsatzgruppen did exactly this throughout Poland through the duration of the war.“

Sure they did. If one digs somewhere around the Polish-Belarussian-Ukrainian borders, it is easy to find abundant evidence of their bestiality. Soviets, however, had different objectives than annihilating Polish nation when they executed their prisoners.

7. “There is plenty of reason to believe the "orders" are forgeries.“
”F - Victor Iliukhin has brought forward rough drafts of the forged Beria letter.“

Dear Viktor, former eminence grise of KPRF (did Americans tooked him out?), who asserted that Jews were commiting a genocide of indigenous Russian population, who asserted that Ukrainians helped Osama, who asserted that Invasion of Dagestan was orchestrated by Berezovsky and a vocal (gasp) critic of Mr Putin, has branched out into historical conspirationist theories, too? That’s one nifty lawyer, really. But then again his death was met with condolence from AUCPB so I guess he’s OK. Sorry, couldn’t have helped myself.

Anyway, it’s not as if attacking the genuity of 794/B was enough. On 1 April 1940, there were 4599 prisoners in Kozelsk and 3893 prisoners in Starobelsk alone. The statistics created by Pyotr Soprunenko in May 1940 cites transporation of 6399 prisoners from Ostashkov, 4609 from Kozelsk and 3974 from Starobelsk to somewhere else. When lieutenant colonel Berling inquired in late 1940 about incorporation of these officers into newly formed Polish unit in Soviet Union, Beria replied “Not these, we made a great mistake with them“. Despite Polish attempts to gain information about these prisoners, Soviets never gave a convincing explanation of their fate. The official Soviet explanation as late as on 8 July 1942 was that they were released and headed back home or fled abroad or died on the way or were seriously ill. That was two weeks after Germans gained control over Starobelsk. No assertion that Nazis executed the prisoners was made, apart from the one statement of Stalin in March, when he said that they might’ve fled from the camps conquered by Germans.

Then there is the Ukrainian trace to Katyn, with the documentation sent by first lieutenant Cvetuchin to Bashtakhov on 25 november 1940, which contains 3435 alphabetically listed names of Poles shot in jails in western Ukraine.

And indeed, if one disputes the authenticity of 794/B, one must also dispute the handsigned letter from 3 March 1959, sent to Khrushchev from head of KGB Alexander Shelepin, where he stated that a grand total of 21857 were shot according to the orders of NKVD troika along the lines outlined by Central Committee on 5 March 1940. 4421 were executed in Katyn, 3820 in Starobelsk, 6311 in Ostashkov and 7305 in other places in western Soviet Union. Shelepin gives reasons why his numbers differs from those of Soprunenko – he used numbers only from parts of the possible sources. He argues that the information about the identity of those executed should be destroyed and raises appropriate draft. When Khrushchev hesitated with the resolution, Shelepin ordered on his own that some evidence should be burned.

I could go on but to conclude, I would like to quote (albeit through double translation) Stalin’s words from Pravda, 24 December 1939. “Friendship between the people of Germany and Soviet Union sealed by blood“ which “has all the perspectives for being long-term and permanent“. Friendship sealed by blood of many Poles, I add.

"This doesn't even speak to the monumental advancements for women, which is made more apparent by the fact that as soon as the communist states collapsed in eastern europe, women came under attack and were reduced to their former status."

You see, working as a bus driver or crane operator, which is the kind emancipation communists offered to women here in the Czech Republic with pompous propaganda, is not exactly the most important thing in equality of sexes. Women worked because their income was needed in securing enough resources for the household and because their labour was needed in building of socialism not because of some ideal of equality.

If you assert that getting married in very early 20s, which was a norm then, or visiting abortion commissions, where one had to explain why exactly should the bureaucrats allow you the abortion, is a monumental advancement for women as compared to today's situation, then you are wrong. Even the salary gap between the sexes was not lower before 1989 than it is today.

ulytau, regarding wages in the communist days, were women paid the same as men for the same job?

... or was that not really the issue, rather the lack of women in higher-ranked positions?

"You see, working as a bus driver or crane operator, which is the kind emancipation communists offered to women here in the Czech Republic with pompous propaganda, is not exactly the most important thing in equality of sexes."

Right, so we're supposed to believe that segregating women in the service sector and/or having them do part-time work, which is what capitalist countries do, is real "emancipation". Between 70 and 90 percent of working age women were employed in communist countries in 1989. Under socialism in Czechoslovakia, women were on par with men in terms of percentage employed in 10 of 18 industries, as opposed to being crowded into 2 particular industries before communist rule (agriculture and health/welfare services). The fact that in communist Czechoslovakia 40% of doctors were women, and there were far more women in professional sectors than in the west is of course not impressive to the counterrevolutionaries. Of course the fact that at least 25% of parliamentary members were women during the era of socialism is also negated. I'm sure you'll say parliament had no real power so it doesn't matter. Now the Czech Republic is congratulating itself on getting 44 women MPs out of 200 seats, a "record" they say. Nevermind the fact that when women asked for a cabinet seat they were effectively told to "go to hell". Hands will be wrung about how under socialism the Central Committee didn't have 50% women, but the fact that in capitalist Czech there are absolutely zero women in the cabinet doesn't seem to bother anybody.

Please ignore the fact that according any objective measurement, such as GDI and the index known as the Relative Status of Women, socialist countries ranked much higher than their western counterparts. They even ranked higher than the much balleyhooed Scandinavian countries. In 1990 - Czechoslovakia ranked 8th in gender HDI; by 1998 it was ranked 33rd. [Women, work and equal opportunities in
post-Communist transition, Anna Pollert, 336]

But don't worry, what women in Czech really care about is being able to pose in racy calendars, right? That's freedom eh.

I happen to have stats on women in parliament for Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic (1993-onward)

From 1976 - 1980 - 29.5%; 1981-1985 - 28%; 1985-1989 - 29.5%; 1990-1991 - 8.7%;
1993 - 1995 - 10%; 1996-2001 - 15%.

Yay progress.

In East Germany, when the first child reached primary school age, 36% of mothers worked full time, only 38% were unemployed. In the West, only 10% were employed full time, 59% were unemployed.
http://www.demogr.mpg.de/Papers/Working/wp-2001-027.pdf

"some six out of 10 west German women and three-quarters of east German women who had a first child and were employed beforehand had returned to their job three years after the birth of the child. While in west Germany, women often change to a part-time job after parental leave, in east Germany they generally continue to work full-time"
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2001/08/feature/de0108240f.htm

But you know, who wants state-funded child care?

Putin, have you ever travelled to some communist, or even ex-communists state?

All your sources seem to be Soviet propaganda.

Do you actually have any real experience or first-hand info?

I've lived half my life on this environment - and nothing that you state has any connection to what reality was, and is.

Communism is a system that goes against the laws of nature and humans. These are all dictatorship regimes who don't allow any opposition. If communism was so great, why don't communists just run for office in competition with other people. Why is it always a dictatorship ruling with brutal force?

The Soviets were no better than the Nazis btw. They just won and wrote the history books you're copying from...

Seems like we have some people who like to romanticize the Soviets in here.

Btw, for all those who are impressed by the zero unemployment rates in communist states and why women work, here're a couple of really simple answers:

1. Where you lived and where you worked, in the communist states, was decided by the state. You don't apply for a job - when you graduate you are assigned to some company and you stay there until they decide to assign you some place else. You cannot change workplaces or move to another town at your own will.

2. When the average salary is less than 200 USD (which is what it was for the whole eastern block in 1988), women simply had to work in order for the family to be able to survive. At the end of WWII the Soviets had a large part of their male population killed or crippled (or still in the army). So they needed workers - and mobilized the women. This was a trend copied and institutionalized later on. This however, didn't mean women really had much rights or chances to advance in the workplaces. They all worked, but it was primarily the low-paying jobs. You can use the same logic to argue that Chinese or Vietnamese or North Korean women are doing well... if working in a sweatshop is your idea of social elevation.

Ivo, I'm not impressed by the fact that you're from Bulgaria. I also find it disgusting that you think if the Nazis had won and exterminated all Jews and Slavs, it'd have made no difference for the world than the fact that they lost. That speaks volumes about you, however.

So, proceed to tell me that I need to move to North Korea or something. But yes, I have been to both China and the former Yugoslavia, so you can shut up.

The idiot doesn't know the difference between visiting a country and living there.

I'm sick and tired of you jokers who come in here and wave your personal anecdote wand and think everyone is just going to shut up and defer to you. Ivo and his ilk can shout their fascist drivel and insist everyone listen to them because they have so-called "first hand experience", but sorry a man who has admitted that he has contempt for his own people can't then go on to claim he represents their views on the matter. He's a rich Nazi who plays diplomacy all day and he thinks he represents the typical Bulgarian, who has been bilked by the counterrevolutionaries who took over the country by any objective measure. Bulgaria today is run by a known mobster. Borisov has deep connections with the mafia and the government is essentially a gangster state. Lukoil runs the country. To Ivo and his ilk this might be 'progress', but I don't really care what he thinks. To most people it's a damn tragedy.

He asked me if I'd visited and had "first-hand-experience", jackass. Yes I have first hand experience and know many people who "live there" and aren't reactionary wastes of space like Ivo.