First of all, to answer plane, "Why bring up Viet Nam," etc., I am sure that one of America's biggest crimes of the 20th century is something he would like to keep buried forever, or if that should turn out to be impossible, then whitewashed by the usual U.S. bullshit about the benevolence of such atrocities as Operation Phoenix, which targeted the VC infrastructure (teachers, tax collectors, Scout leaders, village women's organizations, etc.) for torture and murder, usually in such horrific circumstances that no one would ever again want to make the same "mistake" as participating in the Viet Cong. In the end, some 60,000 extremely brave and extremely unfortunate human beings were tortured to death under this program. True enough, it was not, strictly speaking, an Army or Marine program, it was the CIA's baby. But IMHO, they all work for the same boss and they all represent but one nation.
When the issue of U.S. servicemen's misconduct was raised, plane IMMEDIATELY turned to the African Union in Africa, the UN in Africa, Canada in Africa and BT IMMEDIATELY turned (but of course!!) to Stalin. However, there are some limits, apparently. plane is completely at a loss to understand why I would turn to the U.S. in Viet Nam.
Stalin's purges were unfortunate necessities and in hindsight perhaps might have been accomplished with the spilling of some innocent blood, how much we will never know. The Revolution was in danger and had Stalin done nothing to counteract the danger, it is certain that a combination of Trotskyite and Western subversion would have rendered it incapable of resisting Hitler's attack. As it was, the Revolution and the Red Army survived to destroy fascism in Europe forever (with the sole exception of the non-belligerent fascists of the Iberian Peninsula, who basically earned their way out of the catastophe, Spain by not joining in when beseeched by Hitler, Portugal by permitting first British, then U.S. operation of radar in the Azores to protect the North Atlantic convoys through part of their route.) Instead of routinely slandering Stalin, we should all recognize him as the leader whose forces killed more Germans than any other Allied power and who was the main engine in the destruction of Nazi Germany. Were mistakes made in the purges? Sure. Was every mistake avoidable? Get real. What would have happened had the purges not been undertaken? You wouldn't even want to think about it. Start with the triumph of Nazi Germany allied with fascist Russia, and take it from there.
As far as the numbers allegedly killed in the purges (and the Ukrainian famine, which in fact resulted from hoarding by selfish kulaks) these seem to grow exponentially every time I read about them. I fully expect that in another twenty years, some "scholar" will "prove" that the death toll exceeded the actual population by a factor of some 20%. I don't trust any one of the numbers I've seen and I've never seen any that didn't depend on sources that were founded in anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic agitation.
