Special treat for Boroda

[Angus]

LOL, where does that fit to this statement:
"Number of people executed in USSR was not much different from so-called "civilized" countries at the same time, may be even smaller because we didn't have death penalty for large periods of time, especially in Stalin's time."

Ahh, of course. Executions WITHOUT death penalty

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Angus
LOL, where does that fit to this statement:
"Number of people executed in USSR was not much different from so-called "civilized" countries at the same time, may be even smaller because we didn't have death penalty for large periods of time, especially in Stalin's time."

Ahh, of course. Executions WITHOUT death penalty

Please read my post carefully. I said that there was no death penalty in some periods of time. Not all the time.

[Angus]

So large went to some? As for the documentation, how many were the purge victims?

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Angus
So large went to some? As for the documentation, how many were the purge victims?

Several years (IIRC) - "large" or "some"? I have to check about death penalty, it was canceled after the War in late-40s, and for some period of time before the War...

"Purge" victims: less then 800,000 death penalty, about 2.6 million - prisons and labor camps from 1921 to 1953. Please notice that this statistics starts in 1921 when Civil War was still going on. Total number of people sentenced for "political" crimes was about 4 millions.

It's hardly Solzhenitsyn's "60 million dead", isn't it?

It was a horrible time, and there were millions of innocent people suffering. But to some extent we can say it was "executing hangmen themselves". Plus include collaborators and traitors in a War here.

[Angus]

"Just" 800.000 is a HUGE number, and I am afraid you will have a difficult time finding anything approaching that in a democratic country at the time.

BTW, I always thought that most of the dead were due to famine.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Angus
"Just" 800.000 is a HUGE number, and I am afraid you will have a difficult time finding anything approaching that in a democratic country at the time.

"Democratic" countries had a lot of fun genociding other nations, either natives or in colonies.

You asked for real numbers - I provided them. Just pointing that it contradicts popular Western propaganda legends. I am not going to deny the "repressions", my family members suffered at that times.

Originally posted by Angus
BTW, I always thought that most of the dead were due to famine.

Compared to "purges" famine was a real killer. But it's silly to blame bolsheviks for starvation. Mass starvations happened in Russian Empire every 3-5 years, and bolsheviks put an end to it.

[Chairboy]

The kokholzy didn't hit pre-revolution production levels until 1940, so...

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Chairboy
The kokholzy didn't hit pre-revolution production levels until 1940, so...

Pre-1913 level.

Look, in 1913 less then 2% of the population worked in industry, the rest were peasants. By 1940 this proportion changed drastically. Less people fed more.

How else could you "release" necessary work force for industry, when we needed to catch up the 50 years gap in 10 years? What happened in the 1930s here is a pure miracle. In a country where only one out of ten is literate, suddenly, out of nowhere, millions of workers and engineers appear, industrial production grows 1000 times in 10 years, and we come to another World War almost prepared.

[Yeager]

I remember reading that more Russians were enslaved and murdered by the Stalin regime than were killed in war by Hitlers armies.  Although I dont believe that....like Borada sugeets (I think), there would be nobody alive in russia today if that many people had been taken out of the reproductive loop.

You guys also need to understand that Russians are generally very complex and difficult people to relate to, historically....although there are definately some cute russian babes I could learn to relate to quite quickly.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Yeager
I remember reading that more Russians were enslaved and murdered by the Stalin regime than were killed in war by Hitlers armies.  Although I dont believe that....like Borada sugeets (I think), there would be nobody alive in russia today if that many people had been taken out of the reproductive loop.

Exactly what I meant! USSR lost over 10% of it's population in a War, it's over the margin where losses become catastrophic.

It was Solzhenitsyn who said about 60-80 million people murdered by Evil Communist Regime (tm). Later, when he returned to Russia (when his masters stopped feeding him), he had to admit that this numbers are figment of his imagination, he just "had to exaggerate" to show the Evilness of Communism. Anyway, how else could he win a Nobel prize?...

[john9001]

one death is a tragedy, one million deaths are a statistic.

Joe Stalin.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by john9001
one death is a tragedy, one million deaths are a statistic.

Joe Stalin.

Can you tell me exactly where, when, and on what subject did he say it?

I love this "everyone knows!" attitude. When I hear "everyone knows that" I understand that it's probably bull****.

[Vad]

Originally posted by john9001
one death is a tragedy, one million deaths are a statistic.

Joe Stalin.

Author is pointed incorrectly.

Erich Maria Remarque, novel "The Black Obelisk", 1957:
"Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik."

[Angus]

Originally posted by Boroda
"Democratic" countries had a lot of fun genociding other nations, either natives or in colonies.

You asked for real numbers - I provided them. Just pointing that it contradicts popular Western propaganda legends. I am not going to deny the "repressions", my family members suffered at that times.

 

Compared to "purges" famine was a real killer. But it's silly to blame bolsheviks for starvation. Mass starvations happened in Russian Empire every 3-5 years, and bolsheviks put an end to it.

I have some points for you Boroda.


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....

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)

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.

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 %.

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.

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.

[Angus]

BTW, I'd still like to be an emperor

Maybe,,,,