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Phew....
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| DaveSaenz |
It feels nice to be back to capitalism.
This is for Mr. Lenin:
My poker game with Carl is still on though.:) |
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| DaveSaenz |
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7177-13.cfm
| quote: |
May 11, 2003:
New York Times
May 11, 2003
book review
The Other Killing Machine
By Steven Merritt Miner
Steven Merritt Miner, a professor of history at Ohio University, is the author of "Stalin's Holy War."
GULAG
A History.
By Anne Applebaum.
Illustrated. 677 pp. New York:
Doubleday. $35.
In the introduction to this important book, Anne Applebaum, a columnist for The Washington Post, ponders why the Soviet and Nazi regimes are treated so differently in the popular imagination. Young people who would never purchase Nazi regalia think nothing of sporting T-shirts emblazoned with the Communist hammer and sickle. Yet, as Applebaum shows, the Soviet killing machine was certainly equal to its Nazi counterpart. Wisely, she avoids wandering into the muck of comparing the two totalitarian terror apparatus to decide which was worse, but she argues that "at a very deep level, the two systems are related."
Ever since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published his magisterial three-volume history of the Soviet concentration-camp network, "The Gulag Archipelago," in the early 1970's, the grim details of life in what he called the Soviet sewage system have been well known. From arrest by the Soviet secret police through interrogation, to deportation and hard labor, the life-and-death cycle of the gulag is a familiar story. Other witnesses, like Varlam Shalamov and Evgeniya Ginzburg, have also brilliantly described prisoners' constant struggle against hunger, cold and disease. So a great deal of what Applebaum writes about in "Gulag: A History" has been told before.
But that does not lessen her achievement. When Solzhenitsyn's volumes first appeared they had an enormous impact. Yet he soon fell from favor, dismissed by some as an anti-Communist crank, by others as a nationalist anti-Semite. As documents from the Soviet archives have now shown, much of this defamation campaign was financed and encouraged by the K.G.B. But the attacks had their effect: a group of so-called revisionist historians, who dominated the study of the Stalin years in the United States and Britain during the 1980's, waged a war against the portrayal of the Soviet Union by Solzhenitsyn and other anti-Soviet memoirists.
Instead of the slave empire, these historians stressed the country's rapid economic development and urbanization under Stalin, which supposedly fostered widespread support for the regime. None questioned the existence of the gulag. Rather, they minimized its place in Soviet life and denied that the population as a whole was ever terrorized.
Applebaum's book weighs in heavily in support of Solzhenitsyn on almost every point, and her account is backed not only by a careful use of the vast memoir literature but also by a thorough mining of the long-closed Soviet archives. Most important, she supports Solzhenitsyn's central argument: that the gulag was not some incidental Stalinist accretion to Lenin's visionary concept of Socialism. The cancer of police terror was embedded in the original DNA of Lenin's creation, "an integral part of the Soviet system," in Applebaum's words. Under Lenin, the first concentration camps were created; the first mass executions were carried out. He bequeathed to his successor a well-functioning police state.
Applebaum estimates that from 1929 through 1953 -- the years of high Stalinism -- more than 18 million people coursed through the camps, with a further six million being exiled to remote regions of the Soviet Union. The vast majority of these people were guilty of nothing. An Orwellian logic underlay the whole enterprise. As one police investigator explained to his victim: "We never arrest anyone who is not guilty. And even if you weren't guilty, we can't release you, because then people would say that we are picking up innocent people."
Particularly useful is Applebaum's account of the camps during World War II. It was precisely at this time that the system reached its peak of lethality. Fully a quarter of the inmates perished during 1942, but the appetite of the security forces was so insatiable that the gulag's population dropped less than 20 percent. Following the war, whole new categories of inmates flooded into the camps: German P.O.W.'s, anti-Communists from the western borderlands or from the new Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. Little known in the West, some 600,000 Japanese troops fell into Soviet hands, forced to labor for years after the cessation of hostilities; only a fraction ever returned home. Stalin also punished with deportation entire nationalities -- Chechens, Ingush and Crimean Tatars notably -- ostensibly for collaboration with the Nazis but, in fact, Applebaum argues persuasively, to eliminate nationalist resistance to Moscow.
One great difference distinguished the Soviet and German systems: there was no Soviet equivalent of the death camps. People sentenced to death in the Soviet Union were generally shot before entering the camp network. Applebaum estimates these victims at just under one million during the Stalin years. Instead, Soviet prisoners were expected to earn their keep by contributing to the creation of Soviet Socialism. They mined gold, felled timber, dug canals or lay rails, most often in harsh areas to which free labor could never be enticed. By the outbreak of war in 1941, the gulag was the single largest employer in the world.
Yet the Soviets never managed to make it pay for itself. Leon Trotsky had once defiantly stated that it was "the worst sort of bourgeois prejudice" to call slave labor inefficient; such labor could contribute mightily to the growth of the Soviet economy. Lenin believed him, as did Stalin -- with even greater zeal.
Defenders of the Soviet system have all too often played Stalin's game, excusing -- or, rather, "explaining" -- the gulag as a direct descendant of the czarist Siberian exile system. But Applebaum's numbers tell their own story: on the eve of the 1917 revolution, under the czar, only 28,600 convicts were serving sentences of hard labor, compared with the millions committed to the gulag under Lenin and Stalin. At some point numbers matter; quantity becomes quality. It is simply wrong to maintain that the gulag was nothing more than a modernized version of its czarist predecessor.
In the end, bourgeois economic realities defeated Bolshevik will and ruthlessness. Projects created with slave labor proved to be shoddily built and inefficient. One notable Stalinist showpiece, the White Sea canal, was designed to allow warships and commercial vessels to pass between the Baltic and the White Seas. Perhaps 25,000 people died digging this canal, yet despite the enormous human cost the canal was too narrow for warships; only shallow draft boats could navigate its course. Touted at the time as one of the great achievements of Stalinist planning, it stands instead as proof of its titanic moral and economic failure.
Applebaum gives due consideration to the post-Stalin years of the gulag and to the way the memory of this vast crime against humanity has played out since the Soviet Union's collapse. It is all too easy to assume that Stalin's death in 1953 brought an immediate end to the camp system; in fact, it persisted and, though it wound down dramatically during Khrushchev's thaw, did not finally disappear until well into the Gorbachev years. A brave but small band of Russians, notably the organization Memorial, commemorates the victims of the gulag. But most of their countrymen seem uninterested. The revelations about the crimes of the Stalin era have all come too late, and life today in the former Soviet Union is so hard.
Significantly, there have been no trials, no truth and reconciliation commissions. Many of the mass graves have been unearthed, but these attract little notice in Russia and scarcely more than a paragraph in Western newspapers. Irreconcilable versions of the past contend for the current Russian soul. An astonishing number of Russians -- perhaps as many as 15 or 20 percent -- reject Memorial's documentation of the terror and view Stalin as a positive historical figure. Applebaum cites Russians saying that the gulag was somehow a historical necessity; that without it Russia could never have tapped the vast resources of the Far East.
Most worrisome, Russia's current leader is a product of the unrepentant and largely unreformed F.S.B., successor to the K.G.B. The talk in Moscow is of restoring the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky -- the first head of the secret police, and a man who can justly be called the Patriarch of the Gulag -- to its place in Lubyanka Square, right in front of the headquarters where so many innocent Soviets were swept into Solzhenitsyn's sewer system. This would be a historical obscenity. It is fervently to be hoped that people will read Anne Applebaum's excellent, tautly written and very damning history. Even more fervently, one hopes that it will soon be translated into Russian.
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| biznology |
so basically this arguement has to do with the fact that 'trendy' kids wear CCCP regalia as chic.
AND
that stalin was a bastard.
________________________________
to respond, stalin was a hugenormous bastard, and i think that most people know that. one quote I will never forget from my first Professor of Security Analysis went like this: "Stalin used the idea of ethnic cleansing only because he understood that 'Soviets' would never homogenize under one ethnicity - which had been the fallacy of all other Communist Russian leaders'. that about says it all - he was a murderer because he understood the impossibility of the Soviet goal.
and on the other hand - the Soviet emblems *may* have to do with people's beliefs (or lack of information) about socialism or Soviet Communism. but in large part I believe that the CCCP logo, flag, and general themes are attractive to people in the West because the followed a different ideology of pattern and theme in design. Lenin mobilized his people through the use of technology, and started a sort of 'machination' of the human element. this is evident in propaganda, and everything. whether it was a convincing tool, or not, is of no consequence. it was distinctly unique and unlike everything 'bourgeoisie' and Western - THAT is why it has appeal.
to make everyone feel better tho - at the height of the Cold War the US had a larger share of the worlds GDP than it does today (and it was considered more 'just' than today).
and on the other hand the US used the fear of "Communism" to effect change in our favor - when the truth is the Soviet Army couldnt sufficiently mobilize to defeat and control the Finns to their North. today, that capability is moreso non-existant as Ukraine took most of the Soviet military with it when leaving| |
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| DaveSaenz |
Meh, my first post isn't really a coherent argument, but rather more an attempt to get acclimated to a new avatar. Perhaps that would then make it chillout room material lol. I do find the "trendiness" factor of young people sporting communist regalia a bit interesting though. Perhaps it's because the belief persists that the theory of communism was never implemented in the way that Marx had intended, and that it's possible that the theory could have worked.
I do see a disturbing trend with the way the Putin government is running things now. Whether Putin will bring Russia back into a state of authoritarian rule will remain to be seen, however his new party, The United Russia Party, has yesterday won a sweeping victory in parliament.
| quote: |
West concerned over Putin party win
08.12.2003 - 22:45
By Oliver Bullough
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised a poll that placed his allies in firm control of parliament as a boost to
democracy but Washington and Europe's top democracy watchdog voiced concern.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe said the fourth parliamentary election since the Soviet Union's collapse,
which crushed Putin's Communist and liberal opponents, was a regression for Russian democracy. The United States said it shared the
concern.
The outcome, with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party winning nearly half the State Duma's seats, made the president's re-election for a
second term next March a near certainty. It could also give him enough votes to change the constitution.
Putin's backers say the majority will hand him more powers to push economic reform and fight corruption. Critics fear democracy is in
danger after a new nationalist party surged into the lower house and two liberal parties were all but wiped out.
"The election is another step in strengthening democracy in the Russian Federation," Putin told senior officials.
But the rights and democracy watchdog OSCE said United Russia had inordinate access to state resources.
"In this election the enormous advantage of incumbency and access to state equipment, resources and buildings led to the election result
being overwhelmingly distorted," said Bruce George, president of the OSCE's parliamentary assembly.
"It is even more regrettable that the main impression of the overall electoral process is that it was one of regression in the democratisation
process of this country."
In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "We share those concerns." Of particular concern, he said, were the "media
environment and the use of government resources".
KREMLIN RETORTS
Stung by the remarks, the Kremlin fought back.
Interfax news agency quoted a Kremlin source as saying authorities "truly do not understand" the criticism.
"The experience of the latest U.S. elections hardly gives the Americans the right to make such comments," the source said, referring to the
lengthy disputes in Florida during the 2000 election in which George W. Bush became U.S. president.
A Kremlin statement said British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had congratulated Putin on the
staging of the election.
The leader of the Communist Party, facing a second death after its rebirth in the chaos of the 1990s, called the election a farce and accused
the Kremlin of rigging the vote.
"You are all participants in a revolting spectacle which for some reason is called an election," Gennady Zyuganov said.
Created in 1999 to help Putin's rise to power, United Russia won 37.1 percent of the vote. The opposition communists had only 12.7
percent, well down from the 24 percent they won in 1999.
Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's party, which mostly backs the Kremlin, won 11.6 percent and Motherland, seen by many as a Kremlin
creation to take communist votes, had 9.1 percent.
Pro-Kremlin deputies could get the two-thirds majority for constitutional change. Putin has ruled out any suggestions that he might alter the
rules to seek a third term, but has spoken of plans to overhaul national and regional institutions.
Sunday's vote reflected support for his efforts to restore central control since succeeding Boris Yeltsin in 2000 and ending the chaos of the
early reform years. |
That, and eagles rock. |
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| rizen |
| quote: | Originally posted by biznology
so basically this arguement has to do with the fact that 'trendy' kids wear CCCP regalia as chic. |
I want a CCCP hockey jersey, because its awsome and to piss people off :D |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by biznology
and on the other hand the US used the fear of "Communism" to effect change in our favor - when the truth is the Soviet Army couldnt sufficiently mobilize to defeat and control the Finns to their North.
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Perhaps in 1940 yes! But the Red Army from 1942-80's was a completely different animal than the red army pre-1942/today. We really would have been fighting alongside the Germans (as they had thought was going to happen) had the allies gone to war against Russia following the defeat of the Nazis :nervous: |
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| biznology |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Perhaps in 1940 yes! But the Red Army from 1942-80's was a completely different animal than the red army pre-1942/today. We really would have been fighting alongside the Germans (as they had thought was going to happen) had the allies gone to war against Russia following the defeat of the Nazis :nervous: |
Well yes, because that is the Western Front for the Soviets. What about the other 85%+ of their borders that they would be unable to control? Its a common misconception that the Soviets under the Cold War could match up with the US in terms of numbers and strength - that couldnt be farther from the truth. Russia has always used her size and nukes to her advantage - not wealth or military might| |
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| rupert |
Approximately 20 million Soviet Citizens died during the Great Terror.
7 million Ukrainians were deliberately starved during the terror famine of the 1930's
I forget how many millions starved immediately after the Communists came to power.
Lets not forget the hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Chechens, Koreans, and Cossacks who were "ethnically cleansed"
Stalin and Lenin were absolutely evil, which was made worse by the fact they were both mentally ill and the system they put in place, that of absolute concentration of power inevitably led to mass murder.
Communism has a facade of respectability because its victims dont have Hollywood films made about their suffering.
"There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin."
John F Kennedy |
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| biznology |
Well,
Mao starved 30 million peasants during the Great Leap Forward intentionally/unintentionally. If you consider that means he also killed ~30 million unborn, then the travesties of the world sorta come into perspective| |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by biznology
Well yes, because that is the Western Front for the Soviets. What about the other 85%+ of their borders that they would be unable to control? Its a common misconception that the Soviets under the Cold War could match up with the US in terms of numbers and strength - that couldnt be farther from the truth. Russia has always used her size and nukes to her advantage - not wealth or military might| |
I would disagree with that assessment, by 1945, the Soviets had accumulated over 80 divisions for their invasion of Manchuria alone, compare this with 69 divisions the allies were able to field in the western theater of operations. I'll see if I can find figures of the number of troops based in west Germany, but I believe it was always standard doctrine that if the Soviets invaded Europe, it would likely fall if only conventional weapons were used. I believe that tactical nuclear weapons were to be used by the Americans as one of its major defenses against the Soviets in light of their materiale advantages. At either rate, most of the American weapons systems and technology were developed by taking into account the Soviet Union's man and material superiority ... for example, tank busters such as the A-10, AH-64, TOW missiles, etc. |
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| biznology |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
I would disagree with that assessment, by 1945, the Soviets had accumulated over 80 divisions for their invasion of Manchuria alone, compare this with 69 divisions the allies were able to field in the western theater of operations. I'll see if I can find figures of the number of troops based in west Germany, but I believe it was always standard doctrine that if the Soviets invaded Europe, it would likely fall if only conventional weapons were used. I believe that tactical nuclear weapons were to be used by the Americans as one of its major defenses against the Soviets in light of their materiale advantages. At either rate, most of the American weapons systems and technology were developed by taking into account the Soviet Union's man and material superiority ... for example, tank busters such as the A-10, AH-64, TOW missiles, etc. |
mmm I see your point, but you are also discussing the Soviet bloc as if it were entirely transparent and truthful.
i think comparing the present to the past makes a difference, but I also think that the Soviets werent quite the amazing power they may have claimed to be. and while the state of the current Russian military is largely pathetic, I do think that it makes some statement about its roots in the past| |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by biznology
mmm I see your point, but you are also discussing the Soviet bloc as if it were entirely transparent and truthful.
i think comparing the present to the past makes a difference, but I also think that the Soviets werent quite the amazing power they may have claimed to be. and while the state of the current Russian military is largely pathetic, I do think that it makes some statement about its roots in the past| |
I'll stand by claims that in 1945 the Soviet Army was at its pinnacle in terms of weapons, training, size, leadership, and definetely a veritable force to be reckoned with (and feared). However, I agree with you that it's true we cannot know with absolute certainty how powerful the Soviets really were during the Cold War years ... ah well one of those things I guess we are better off without knowing. |
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