The American Century 21st that is

[BSB]

There is no defense for Stalin.

BSB

[Plane]

     I certainly would not defend Stalin, I think of him as one of historys greatest thugs.  What he lacked in brainpower he made up for in cruelty.

      Really, where elese are you going to go and find an argument on that subject?       

   

[Michael Tee]

<<Everyone that does not love Stalin thinks him a stupid cruel thug.>>

I'm sure that's not true.  There must be plenty of people whose attitude to Uncle Joe falls short of love and yet nevertheless are capable of seeing all the good he's accomplished, of looking at his alleged crimes and separating the wheat from the chaff (i.e. separating some of the things he may actually have done from the huge crimes attributed to him by Cold War propaganda and by fugitive Nazi collaborators eager to "prove" that they were not fighting for Hitler (as in fact they actually were) but against Stalin, who, in order to make their pathetic little lies barely plausible, had to be made into a much worse monster than Hitler.  Whatever Stalin may ultimately be accused of doing must further be evaluated in the context of the times - - the looming war with Hitler, which could not be forever postponed by placating him, the need to "clear the decks" inside the USSR by eliminating enemies and potential collaborators with Hitler from Stalin's left (the Trotskyites) and right (the remnants of the Czarist and Social Democratic parties.)

<<Then what love him love him enough to overlook little foibles like forbidding real science . . . >>

Come on plane, we both know that the only "real science" that Stalin interfered with was genetics, that there's no record anywhere of Stalin ever interfering in any other branch of science.  In 1958, three Russian scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for work and discoveries that were made in 1934.  The same three scientists won State Prizes in 1946 and 1951 for this work, while Stalin was still alive and in charge.  Science in Russia was alive and well all through Stalin's reign.  Unfortunately he entered the field of genetics to support Lysenko against other geneticists because the Lysenko theory agreed with Communist doctrine.  A foolish and incredibly stupid move, but  all great men make them - - look at Churchill and Gallipoli.

<<engendering famines  . . . >>

plane that is total bullshit.  It's a lie invented by fugitive Nazi collaborators from the Ukraine trying to justify their treasonous pro-Nazi activities in WWII and it's just one huge lie, which unfortunately the West and its MSM  picked up on during the Cold War for purely political reasons.

<< . . .  invading neighboring countrys for aggrandisement>>

You are kidding me, right?  YOU, an AMERICAN, have the balls to criticize Stalin for that?   I could say he was only trying to be like you, but there are better answers than that.

<<Locking away engineers and decimateing his armys officer corps.>>

Again, necessary precautions for a regime beset by internal enemies on its right and left flanks and getting ready for the inevitable war with Nazi Germany.
   
<<And then of course there is making common cause with the Natzis . . . >>

Oh yeah, right - - after three failed years of attempting to negotiate a mutual defence pact with Britain and France only to find out that they had never been serious about it anyway.

<< seeming stupid and vunerable enough to attract invasion>>

Well I guess in that case he must have been no worse than the leaders of France, Belgium, HOlland, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Poland and all the rest of occupied Europe except for those satellite countries like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia etc. which willingly joined the Axis Powers.  That statement of yours is one of the most outrageously ridiculous examples of "Blame the Victim" that it is possible to find.

 <ordering his soldiers to fight unarmed and unfed . . . >>

If you don't understand the crisis that they were facing, I guess you don't understand how utterly stupid that last accusation is.  "Comrades, to the front!  The Socialist Motherland is in deadly peril!  But first, comrades, a good hot meal, three courses, with wine!"  Sure plane, they shoulda done it YOUR way.

<< forbidding retreat as their regiments were encircled and destroyed over and over.>>

The "Die but do not retreat!" order was issued when the Nazis were at the suburbs of Moscow.  They blocked the Nazi thrust on the city and bought time for new armies to be raised, armies which would eventually raise the Red Flag over the Reichstag and kill two-thirds of all the German soldiers killed in the war.

    << Stalin just was not perfect and some of us are a bit picky.>>

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, plane.  You mix Nazi collaborator propaganda, anti-Soviet propaganda and MSM bullshit into a miasmic mix of fact, half-truth, lies and slanted perceptions, and think you have the goods on the USSR and Joe Stalin.  You know little and understand less.  But to everything you think you believe to the detriment of Uncle Joe and the USSR, there is an answer.  You just need to read a little bit more, and from less polluted sources.

[BSB]

"Uncle Joe" (to those who bought into his personality cult)

Cold War propaganda? Sadly it is not. 

Great Purge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

Case Study: Stalin's Purges

http://www.gendercide.org/case_stalin.html

[BSB]

How someone can dismiss as propaganda the tens of millions who were killed in Stalin's labor camps is beyond my comprehension. Is it because they weren't Jewish that some dismiss this horror? Can anyone be so selfish as to dismiss the suffering of millions more than were killed in the Nazi Death Camps because they were of a different race or religion? Is that how we are to understand history? Is it because some fear it would undercut the horror of Nazi Germany? Or is it perhaps the old "enemy of my enemy is my friend" no matter what else they've done?  Jesus, what a desperately weak set of paths to chose from. 


 
BSB

[BSB]

Remember the excuse Michael Tee gave for the purge in Stalin's Russia? 

Michael Tee: "They were the enemy of the people. "


Joesph Goebbels, 16 November 1941: "Each Jew is a sworn enemy of the German people."


http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/goeb1.html


BSB

[BSB]

Did Stalin only interfere with science that was connected to genetics? Not at all. Stalin, Lysenko, and others tried to undermine whole research directions.

Interestingly Stalin's interference stopped during WWII because of the allied effort to defeat Hitler. Part of that effort brought western scientists together with their Russian colleagues. Stalin had to back off at that point.


BSB

[Michael Tee]

If you go into the "Discussion" link at the head of the Wikipedia article on the Great Purges of Stalinist Russia, there you will find, buried in the footnotes, historians' rebuttals of the ludicrous numbers thrown around as the "death tolls" of "Stalinist repression."  Naturally, the MSM and even US academia, for very obvious reasons, choose to use the most exaggerated numbers as the "true" casualty figures, 99% of the time not even mentioning the threats to the Revolution from both right-wing and Trotskyite elements or the looming war with Nazi Germany in which those threats would be optimized.  They also choose to bury the countervailing information, some of which is available in the Wikipedia "Discussion" section.  Naturally if your intent is brainwashing, it is counterproductive to show the countervailing facts or arguments.

Were mistakes made in the identification and liquidation of the enemies of the people?  Of course there were, those whose job it was to defend the Soviet Motherland were only human and thus capable of error.   In the circumstances, where every day counted and nobody knew exactly when the war would finally break out, the pressure to act, and act fast, was enormous.  The capacity for error was built into the operation.   The bottom line was, this was a job that had to be done, with or without mistakes.  The consequences of doing nothing are demonstrated in the horrors and unspeakable brutality of the Nazi invasion and occupation, something that those who denounce the Red Army, the greatest killer of fascists in the history of mankind, never bother to mention.  No surprises there, either.

[BSB]

Nothing but talk, Michael, and talk is cheap. You haven't brought forth one thing to help make your case. The only thing you've done is run around in here blaming it on cold war propaganda. That doesn't cut it.

BSB

[BSB]

You know, Michael, anti-semites say the same things about the holocaust that you're saying about what Stalin did. Oh, it's exzagerated, or it's all propaganda, etc. You sound just like a member of the KKK. It's uncanny to watch. The war was years away Michael when did a lot of this. It had nothing to do with preperation for the war. 

BSB

[Michael Tee]

<<Nothing but talk, Michael, and talk is cheap. You haven't brought forth one thing to help make your case. The only thing you've done is run around in here blaming it on cold war propaganda. That doesn't cut it. >>

OK, good, I think I'm starting to understand your argument.  When I point to historians who minimize the death toll of Stalin's "repression," it's "nothing but talk."  When YOU point to other historians who maximize the same numbers, it's fact. 

Got it.

Cold War propaganda cannot be considered as a factor in pushing the numbers higher and higher because . . .  well, just because.

Got it.

[Michael Tee]

<<You know, Michael, anti-semites say the same things about the holocaust that you're saying about what Stalin did. Oh, it's exzagerated, or it's all propaganda, etc.>>

Anti-semites say a lot of things, like the Holocaust didn't happen, or it DID happen but it didn't go far enough.  They need to get their act together to have any real credibility.  But who gives a shit what they say, there's no real debate possible with them, except the kind of debate that comes out of the barrel of a gun.  Stalin knew the answer to anti-semitism, he liquidated more of the bastards than anyone else on earth, before AND after the war. He liquidated Vlasov's Army AND the entire Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.  Stalin was one guy who did not fuck around when it came to anti-semites.  His wife was Jewish and his brother-in-law Lazar Kaganovitch, served on the Politburo from the pre-War days till well into the 1980s.

I don't have any problem with those who claim either that the Holocaust was exaggerated or that it's been exploited for propaganda.  Those who argue that the lives lost in the Holocaust amount to "only" four million rather than six million may be technically correct (or not,) but morally irrelevant.  Four million wouldn't turn the Germans suddenly into humanitarians.  It's still the morally most outrageous act in the history of mankind, not just the attempt to wipe out an entire people, but in the brutality and sadism that were employed in the effort.  If anyone wants to argue that the Zionists have milked the thing to the limits for their own propaganda advantage, I'd be the first to agree, but to claim that it's "all" propaganda is pure bullshit.  And of course one of the main reasons advanced for the Holocaust, and still used by European nationalists as we speak to justify it, is that it was payback to the Jews for inventing and spreading communism and socialism.  Anti-communism is the twin of anti-semitism.

<<You sound just like a member of the KKK. It's uncanny to watch.>>

Well, see, no disrespect intended, BSB, but this is one of the reasons why I am thinking that there is no point debating these matters with you.  The statement is so ridiculous and absurd that it just isn't worth the time and effort required to list the differences between me and the KKK.  It's like arguing with me about whether water flows downhill or uphill.  The kind of argument that Buddha said was not productive of edification.  The kind of argument I should just walk away from.

<<The war was years away Michael when did a lot of this. It had nothing to do with preperation for the war.  >>

The Great Purges were in 1937 and 1938.  War between Germany and Britain and France broke out in 1939, with the USSR being attacked summer 1941.  It had a lot to do with preparation for war.

[BSB]

I'm sorry Michael but I couldn't find what you were referring to at wiki. I have a limited browser so it's probably on my end. Maybe you could post a quote or site or direct reference to something that supports your point on this? Something I can check perhaps? Not that you're not an honorable man. We're all honorable men here.


BSB

[BSB]

The Buddha never said anything about not being honest, Michael, and you do sound like the KKK and other holocaust deniers. Further, I quoted you and one of the most notorious Nazies of all time. The quotes looked a lot alike. But I'm sure you could straighten that out for us could you?

BSB

[Amianthus]

I'm sorry Michael but I couldn't find what you were referring to at wiki.

He's talking about a few posts on the discussion page that largely echo his viewpoint - that it was propaganda. However, he overlooks a number of points on that same discussion page such as:

"In The Gulag Archipelago by: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he writes:

"When people today decry the buses of the cult, they keep getting hung up on those years which are stuck in our throats, '37 and '38. And memory begins to make it seem as though arrests were never made before or after, but only in those two years."

"(Chapter 2: The History of Our Sewage Disposal System)

"He goes on to say that the wave of '37 and '38 was not the only one, or even the largest but that others (for example 1929-30) are not widely known because 'peasants are a silent people, without a literary voice'. (Chapter 2)

"I think that it's important to acknowledge that persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin did not begin and end with the Great Purge."

Solzhenitsyn seems to imply that the death toll was even higher. There is other discussion there as well. To find the discussion page, look near the top of the article, there are tabs labeled "Article" and "Discussion", click on the "Discussion" one.

Something to remember, however. Posts on the discussion page are on that page instead of the main article because they are generally not sourced or poorly sourced and therefore not fit to include in the main article.