Originally posted by Angus
1. You were quick to provide the statements that death sentence was in a limited timeframe. Must have been very effective while at it then. 800.000 in a limited frame....
Over 700000 of that happened in 37-38 according to that source.
I have to check with Zemskov, sorry, just looked at a link from "approved source", now I think I exaggerated and mixed-up the numbers
Hard to imagine that my Great-Grand-Father was one of the 3000 sentenced to death in 39.
I'll probably have to post corrections, this time I just posted the biggest number I found (depends on how to count, you know, some historians exclude ordinary criminals sentenced for political crimes).
Originally posted by Angus
2. AFAIK the bolsheviks made new heights in the starvation books, and as well USSR agriculture NEVER made any hights, - while sitting on the finest agricultural fields in the world (as well as the biggest) had several times to cut into some field of rationing as well as imports or exploitations of the "buffer" countries. Heck, food for instance was always on the route inwards to the USSR, from "buffer" countries and all the way to the USA.
(Iceland even exported lots of food to the USSR of old and still does to Russia AFAIK. It was troublesome getting paid though)
"while sitting on the finest agricultural fields in the world" - a Quote of the week!
Russian climate is much worse then in Iceland. 65% of the land is permafrost. In Moscow we have only about 20 days a year with temperature above +20C. (I may be mistaken, may be about 40 days, but this exaggeration is nothing compared to what Solzhenitsyn did). Ukraine has extremely rich soils, but still never had harvest compared to Western Europe, it's below freezing in Winter there. In Kazakhstan it's much, much worse.
Read my post about building walls. Buffer countries like Lithuania were almost starving, and people fled to USSR before 1940 when they were allowed to join the Union. So they do now, even having all the industrial facilities built there on Russian expense - they still flee abroad for jobs.
Originally posted by Angus
3. Your "repressions" or rather purgings, occured within the USSR, or as you point out, at the hardest within Russia itself. It has no paralell with colonism at all, or conquest of very different (as well as more primitive in terms of technology) cultures. For that comparison you will have to venture into the SE states of the former USSR to have anything remotely close to i.e. the African colonies of France, or the UK. I am rather afraid the numbers in both cases are blurry to say the least, so I stick to what is manifested and within what was considered the "civilized" or "enlightened" world at the time, - that includes the USSR.
Too complicated for me to understand after the third Skrewdriver.
Look, in 1870s and 1880s when Russian Empire reached natural border with Afghanistan and Persia - Russians were met with flowers. They established law there, so slavery and murder became history there until 1991.
Originally posted by Angus
4. Sidenote, - I do not particularly favour how things were going in the old emperor's state of Russia. I think they sucked so bad, that it was bound to boil over. You can look at the French revolution as some kind of a comparison there, and none deny that the aftermath was a bit ugly. Only not for decades, and nowhere close to the numbers or their %.
The Romanovs had to go. And they went away in an act of pure treason, Emperor as a first deserter.
Look, I am not a bolshevik fan, but, unfortunately, bolsheviks were the only power who managed to keep the country together in 17-22. Until maybe 27 they followed quite a liberal policy, but later it became obvious that a new war is going to come, and we had to "cover 100 years in 10, or we'll be crushed" as JVS said. And what we achieved was a pure miracle, as I said above.
Originally posted by Angus
5. I challenge you to find any close numbers in any western country paralell to Stalin's timeframe that even approaches the number of executions and purgings. I am talking of a Democratic country though. I challenge your opinion of totalitarianism that you mentioned on these boards.
Totalitarism is more effective, it's a fact. No democratic country could withstand 1941 as USSR did. As for numbers - I leave it to You. For me it's pretty obvious that in XX century "democracies" killed much more then "totaitarian" Communist/Socialist states. A million people in Iraq only in 4 years, it's more then all "purges" here. Umpteen millions in Indochina, Indonesia and that whole region. Africa, India, etc ad nauseum.. Russians never turned to genocide as a solution.
Originally posted by Angus
6.I would like to open a discussion of the countries around the WW2 era that were occupied or militarily taken over by the USSR/NAZI/JAP vs the W-Allies, UK-USA. There you have totalitarianism vs Democracy on the job. Well, that is an issue for another thread. Feel free to establish one, - I might do so one day anyway.
Feel free to open it, but give me a break please. I just bought a new KBD and need to get used to it. At least until this thread is over.
I can only suggest the same comparison with the countries where Blue or Red side have won during the Cold war. Compare modern Vietnam to modern Afghanistan. That's obvious, isn't it?
Damn boiled an egg for tomorrow, got all the water gone while writing this
