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but the amount of Russian deaths under Stalin was 20 Million.
Not "Russian", but SOVIET (!!!!!). As strange as it may sound, the Soviet Union was a home to over 150 ethnicities.
Yep, "20 million". Around 20 million of Soviet CIVILIANS were murdered by Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians and Finns during their invasion in 1940-s; and around 7-9 million Soviet military were killed during that period. Is that what you meant?
Not "Russian", but SOVIET (!!!!!). As strange as it may sound, the Soviet Union was a home to over 150 ethnicities.
Yep, "20 million". Around 20 million of Soviet CIVILIANS were murdered by Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians and Finns during their invasion in 1940-s; and around 7-9 million Soviet military were killed during that period. Is that what you meant?
So Stalin wasn't responsible for any deaths against his own people. He was just a nice guy and a Patriot. I think it's generally accepted in most of the world that he was no different than any other Dictator: Mao, Hitler, Sadam, Pol Pot and others.
So Stalin wasn't responsible for any deaths against his own people. .
What do you mean by that?!
Were there LAWS under Stalin that required death sentence for certain crimes? Of course, there were! Correct me if I am wrong, but the US still has a death penalty!
I suggest we clean out the prisons here....and make those slugs do some work. Maybe Stalin did not do it right....but he did not waste a lot of money on building fancy prisons....just send them to Siberia....and work them to death. No loss here if we could do that with all those folks who are in prison for life here....
This has been bothering me since you posted - my grandparents weren't criminals and their children weren't criminals - but they were sent to Siberia in cattle cars ... someone was looking out for them as only one of my aunts (she was only 2) died and buried in a pit with all the others. Lucky for me my mother told me the stories so that at least a few of us will remember .... and I've told it to my son.
As far as deaths attributed to Stalin, these are the leading figures:
Holodomor: 2.4-7.5 million depending on source, most claim around 5 million.
It can be debated whether it was a forced genocide or a result of collectivization policies. However, most historians believe that it was a forced genocide that used an actual famine to achieve its ends. The famine began and the Ukrainian collectives could not meet their quotas. As a result the Soviet state took vengeance on the Ukrainian peasants and forced them to surrender all they had to the state to meet their quotas.
It is important to note, that exploitation of grain was a cornerstone of the Soviet economy. They set prices on both ends and the difference provided the funding for most programs. In order to buy the foreign machninery necessary for industrialization the Soviets needed to preserve foreign capital. When Stalin took power, the Soviet Union was still a net importer of grain, but the individual wealthy farmers (aka kulaks) were in many cases selling their grain at export on the foreign markets and the smaller peasant farmers fed themselves first and only sold on the open markets what they felt they could spare. When collectivization hit, the farmers had to meet their quota's first before they could keep any production. On top of that, the state set the price of grain paying around $15 for a bushel to the farmers and then selling that same grain on the internal or foreign markets for $250-$300+ per bushel (I used the "$" sign, but the figures are in Soviet currency). This difference was essentially a "tax" that was used to fund the programs.
In a socialist system as was implemented in the USSR, the base form of economic output is still the labor unit. In a capitalist society, one sells their labor in exchange for payment. The government then taxes a portion of that for itself. It basically works the same in a socialist system, but as people are not "taxed" the "taxes" are accomplished through the manipulation of the markets. In that system, someone has to be the loser and in the case of the Soviet Union, it was the farmers who basically were in the position of giving away their labor to support the industrialization.
So, the Holodomor was not about just ensuring the flow of grain, it was also a critical part of the ability of the Soviet state to finance its activities. They forced the quotas to be made so that they could pay for their plans. It also had the nice effect of getting rid of a lot of Ukrainians who had rising nationalist sentiments. Whether it was done to get rid of political resistance or just to keep money/grain flowing, it was purposefully done.
Gulags: 1.75-2.75 million dead depending on how you count. The 1.75 million is just the actual prisoner camps, the 2.75 million includes the "colonies".
Even with the manipulation and control of the markets, the Soviets did not have enough money/resources to achieve the rapid industrialization and development. In exchange they needed cheap/free labor. The people in gulags did not cost the state much at all compared to their economic output. The people who ended up in gulags were not all criminals. Certainly some were, but many were just political prisoners convicted of "counter-revolutionary activity". Many kulaks, members of the intelligentsia, minor military officers, disgruntled farmers and workers and petty criminals ended up being sentenced to the gulags.
They provided a critical supply of cheap labor to undertake various development initiatives. They also were the means by which people were re-settled around the country in various "colonies" to attmept to develop resources.
Purges: Roughly 700k people were outright executed. While over 2 million people were impacted, the remaining deaths are in the Gulag numbers since many of the people in the Gulags ended up there for political reasons.
The purges were about far more then just military officers. Stalin was very keen on getting rid of his political opponents as well and this included various members of the intelligentsia as well as kulaks and others who resisted his policies. The 700k number was just for people outright executed during the purges. Millions were sent to the gulags and their deaths are included in those numbers.
So, overall around 8.5 million Soviets were killed by Stalins decisions. The vast majority were killed by famine in the Ukraine with the remainder dieing in Gulags or as part of the purges.
Now, where does the 20 million number come from? If you take the higher ends of estimates for the above, you can get to around 10 million people. The other 10 million comes from conversations Churchill had with Stalin and external estimates over the impact of collectivization. Not counting the people who died in the Holodomor there is evidence that an additional 10 million Soviets may have died during the process. This number is not completely official and many believe that it blends figures related to other reasons. Additionally, WW2 makes many figures hard to compare. What they do know is that in the Soviet census done before collectivization compared to the one done after, there were 21 million less people living on farms, but only an additional 12 million or so living in the cities. So, what happened to those 9 million or so people? No one knows for sure.
At the end of the day, it is very reasonable to attribute 8.5 million deaths to Stalin through his directives and policies. Many people would assign an additional 9-10 million deaths do to collectivization. However, even with only 8.5 million deaths, I think that is plenty of evidence for Stalin's brutality.
This has been bothering me since you posted - my grandparents weren't criminals and their children weren't criminals - but they were sent to Siberia in cattle cars ... someone was looking out for them as only one of my aunts (she was only 2) died and buried in a pit with all the others. Lucky for me my mother told me the stories so that at least a few of us will remember .... and I've told it to my son.
And now, please, tell us WHAT was the OFFICIAL reason to sent the family of your grandad to "Siberia"?
But if what you are saying is true, than that would make Americans the biggest disbelievers and people who are removed the most from god ( if I can put it this way,) because this is the culture that is basically built on material rewards.
Excellent point and that certainly isn't the case for the US. Among developed nations, the US has probably one of the largest populations (in terms of percent) that at least state a belief in a God. I think my general point was that if one needs to suffer, there are two reasons:
1. You are doing it for personal reward/gain.
2. You are doing it because you are being forced to.
In the second instance the people who are suffering are trying to find the greater purpose to their suffering. Whether it is looking for salvation in an afterlife or the promise of a future utopia; suffer today so that I, or others, may have a better existence tomorrow.
Quote:
People don't remember "fondly" Nicholas II for a different reason; he basically signed his own death warrant back in 1905, on Bloody Sunday.
Bloody Sunday (Russian: Крова́вое воскресе́нье; IPA: [krɐˈvavəjə vəskrʲɪˈsʲenʲjə]) was a massacre on Jan. 22 [O.S. January 9] 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia, where unarmed, peaceful demonstrators marching to present a petition to the TsarNicholas II were gunned down by the Imperial Guard while approaching the city center and the Winter Palace from several gathering points.
And of course these people were coming with petition to tzar out of sheer desperation, because their life was so destitute.
So when you are saying that Nicholas II couldn't "hold a candle" to Stalin - he probably could, actually...
I don't think he could hold a candle to him in terms of the amount of blood on his hands. Stalin killed millions to make his vision a reality.
As far as deaths attributed to Stalin, these are the leading figures:
Holodomor: 2.4-7.5 million depending on source, most claim around 5 million.
Congratulations: your "knowledge" of famine in the USSR comes straight from Dr Goebbels! No surprise, since the US and Canada gave safety to Nazis and employed them for purposes of Cold War.
"Hearst's relationship with the Nazis in 1934 is of critical importance in understanding a major element of American anti-Communist propaganda. In 1934 Hearst published a number of stories about the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine. Nazi Germany had been waging a major anti-Communist propaganda campaign as part of its agenda, fascism being the "sworn enemy" or communism.
As part of this larger propaganda campaign the German Ministry of Propaganda created a story about a Soviet program of genocide in Ukraine. This was all part of the larger German plans to not only put down Communist support in Germany, but justify later invasions to the east under the banner of "liberation."
The Germans manufactured stories about the famine in Ukraine and used false photographs to depict the famine conditions as worse than they really were, including pictures from a 1920-22 famine in Russia during the Russian Civil War and pictures of famine conditions during World War I of regions that were not even Russian.
The Germans wanted to expand this propaganda campaign against the USSR to potential rival states which it hoped to build support in, such as the United States and Britain. This is where Hearst came in.
Hearst's role for the Nazis was to try and build Nazi sympathy in America, which was to be achieved by both portraying Nazi Germany in a good light, as well as portraying Germany's primary target, the Soviet Union, and Communism in general, in an exaggeratedly negative light.
Hearst picked up the Ukraine famine story in 1934, about a year after the famine actually took place. In a press like the Hearst Press everything relied on "breaking news." Had Hearst had a real interest in covering the Ukraine famine it would have been covered in 1932 and 1933 when it was taking place, however it was not covered in Hearst presses until 1934, after he picked up the story for the Nazis.
Hearst's Ukraine famine stories have proven to have had a huge impact among Americans, and even today the majority of Americans believe that there actually was a "Ukraine Holocaust." Common figures are that 6 million people died in Ukraine under Stalin's rule in what was an intentional starving to death of these millions of people. This 6 million figure is in fact a pure fabrication of Nazi propaganda. The idea that Ukrainians were intentionally starved to death is likewise a product of Nazi propaganda, picked up by Hearst and spread to the United States, where it was accepted at truth, and for the most part still is today..."
Btw, how can you explain the famine of 1930-s in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, Poland and the USA? Was it Stalin who caused it?
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for me my mother told me the stories so that at least a few of us will remember .... and I've told it to my son.
