Stalin as the worst monster of all

[Guest Space Thing]

Stalin Becoming Recognized As 'Most

Criminal Monster Of All'

From Ingrid A. Rimland

4-1-1

Hitler Bad - But Far From Worst

Ask any Westerner to name the most evil figure of the past century. Almost always, the same answer comes up: Hitler. Sustained brainwashing has done its job...Der Fuhrer still towers above all rivals as modern history's greatest demon. But increasingly, research proves that we have been persuaded to fixate on the wrong dictator. History's airbrush has worked overtime on the most criminal monster of them all: Josef Stalin.

Stalin's murderous ruthlessness was, by any standard, far more horrible than Hitler's. A psychopath who modelled himself on Ivan the Terrible, Stalin instituted a reign of terror without parallel, exterminating opponents or perceived opponents by the multi-million. How many died in his murderous stranglehold?

Only in recent years have the Russians themselves learnt just how hideous their history is. Their first glimpse of the reality came in February, 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin's mass terror and unmasked the prison Gulag system. That was met with widespread disbelief in the West. There can now be no doubt that Stalin, as a matter of policy, killed and killed and killed.

* In 1989, the KGB itself set the death toll in Stalin's 26-year reign of terror (1927-53) at 36 MILLION. But that figure included ONLY the victims of Stalin's liquidations of individuals and groups. Serious research began stepping up with Gorbachev's policy of 'Glasnost.'

* Norman Davis, in his celebrated History of Europe suggested a figure of 54 MILLION.

* The University of Moscow, in association with the University of Madrid, put the figure at 57 MILLION.

Those figures are ten to 15 times higher than the numbers allegedly killed by the Fuhrer and makes him look like an amateur. Such imposed slaughter on countless millions simply freezes belief. It represents the most appalling terror ever inflicted on human kind, rivalled only by Mao's China. Only under a regime which deliberately allowed the extermination of millions of its own citizens could such unimaginable figures be achieved.

On one day alone, December 8, 1938, Stalin signed 30 death lists, containing thousands of names. He then went to the Kremlin cinema to watch a comedy called 'Happy Guys.' It is this viper's ghost that should worry us rather than Hitler's. Yet no Nuremberg trials have ever been conducted into Soviet atrocities. There have never been any Soviet war crimes trials.

As for Stalin's victims, who is interested? They are so much dust blowing in the Siberian winds. No Spielberg conjures them to life. There are many reasons why Stalin's Great Terror remains the most underreported event of the 20th Century.

First, Hitler lost, Stalin - ally of the West - won. Stalin believed (correctly) that he could get away with mass murder. As he told Mao Tse-tung when the Red Chinese leader, visited Moscow in 1949: "Victors are not judged." Perhaps the whole of modern history is summed up in those four words.

Many anti-Stalinists knew, and published, the truth: men such as Malcolm Muggeridge, George Orwell, and Arthur Koestler. But their reports were overwhelmed from the start by the pro-Stalinists. Way back in the mid 1930s, the father of all fellow travellers, George Bernard Shaw, dismissed reports of a Moscow-engineered famine killing millions as "pure invention." Shaw knew better, of course. Stalin had given him the details.

As he did to New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, a prince of liars, who gained the Pulitzer Prize for his fictional accounts of Stalin's "new civilisation" and of "the great Soviet miracle." Duranty played a key role in perpetrating one of the greatest cover-ups in history.

Western illusions did not stop there. Bizarre as it now seems, many at the highest level, up to and including US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, revered Stalin and were consciously partisan in their support of this butcher.

Further, in an astounding example of mankind's infinite capacity for self-deception, millions of Western intellectuals, academics, communists, socialists, liberals, fellow travellers, trade unionists, journalists and clergy forcefully rejected reports of mass atrocities in the old USSR and in China, just as they did later of events in Cuba and Cambodia.

The truth is that vast numbers in the West worshipped Stalin as almost a demigod, and nursed an almost religious faith that the USSR represented the great new hope of all mankind. Stalin fondly referred to such useful idiots as his "maggots."

Above all, until quite recently, we have had little real access to communist archives. Even today the most sensitive are still closed. So we still do not know the full answers: Was it one tenth or one-twentieth of the entire adult Soviet population who served time in Stalin's prison camps? Did 3 million die in the Gulag, or was the figure closer to ten? We may never know but the effort to break through the Great Amnesia is picking up speed.

Till the late 1980s, hardly anyone but local villagers knew where the bones were buried. For the past 13 years the Russians have been slowly recovering their past, with new mass graves being uncovered at regular intervals. And, as soon as the existence of the first Stalinist mass graves were made known, people began to come forward with revelations of the death camps. In one, Kolyma, the huge prison complex in the Russian Arctic, so many bones lay around that in the summer children used the skulls to gather blueberries. Now memorials are being built.

The misery came early. In Russia, uniquely, there exists hardly any memory of the 1914-18 War, such a watershed for the rest of Europe. There exist no Soviet national monuments to WWI. The reason is simple. In the civil wars which followed the revolution of 1917 and brought the Bolsheviks to power, between nine and 14 million Russians died: starving, cold, racked with disease, or tortured and killed in bitter fighting.

Next came the Ukraine. Robert Conquest in his 'Harvest of Sorrow' suggests that when, on Stalin's direct orders, the entire grain crop of the Ukraine was seized for export, the number of resulting deaths was probably about 1.5 million, equalling the total dead of WWl.

We will now turn to a brilliant but deeply disturbing new book by a young British historian, 'Night of Stone: Death & Memory in Russia' by Catherine Merridale, published by Granta. Dr. Merridale is one of a growing army of scientists dedicated to uncovering the truth about Soviet-era crimes, the legacy of Josef Stalin and the society he created.

She spent two years in Russia and the Ukraine, researching documents from the Stalinist era only now coming to light: and talking to ordinary Russians about what it is like to live in a country haunted by the all-pervasive presence of death. Her book, an excellent work of scholarship, attempts to explain how the Russian people lived through some of the greatest horrors of a singularly bloody 20th century: and how, at long last, they are coming to terms with their shocking past and themselves.

Merridale does not attempt to put a precise figure on how many Russians lives were lost to violence between 1914 and Stalin's death in 1953, but suggests a total well in excess of 50 MILLION. All of it planned.

Epidemics of flu and cholera, and the 1921-22 famines in grain-producing areas of southern Russia, killed many millions. People ate earth, grass, carrion and human flesh. In some districts, in the winter of 1921, local officials had to ban the sale of processed meat to stop the trade in human flesh.

Stalin's own signature is on thousands of death warrants. Millions more were denounced as enemies of the state for no other reason than they wished to think for themsetves.

Crematoria, with which the state had been experimenting since Lenin's time, were now running more efficiently. The bodies arrived in batches, accompanied by stamped forms in triplicate.

"They were such handsome men," one crematorium worker told Dr Merridale. "Some of them were still warm. Some of them were not even dead when we threw them into the furnace....."

The death rate in the gulags peaked in 1942-3. Without doubt, the brutalisation of millions of Russians over the previous quarter century contributed to the grim reputation of the Red Army in WW2. Soldiers were treated like livestock. At Stalingrad, there was no one left to dig the graves.

At last came victory in the Great Patriotic War, as it was known, the only occasion for real celebrations that many of those Merridale interviewed, had known in all their lives. After Stalin's death in 1953, the repression gradually eased. "A human being survives only by his ability to forget," wrote a survivor of the Kolyma Camp. In recent years, many of the anonymous Gulag death camps have quietly disappeared.

Stalin himself spelt it out. His Short Course Into The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union contains references to the liquidation of his political opponents. He wrote: "The Soviet Government had only to raise its little finger for them to vanish without trace." How true.

For an intelligent person today to be ignorant of the manner of Soviet rule can only be seen as an act of wilful political bias. The whole record of the terrible era is one of naked human power and inhuman cruelty. It is a sad fact that many in South Africa's present ruling ANC/SACP glory in their self-designation as "Stalinists"...

There is little danger of the world ever running out of imbeciles. _____

Thought for the Day:

"A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths are a statistic."

-Joseph Stalin

[Guest Captitalistdoginchina]

Did you type all that? Wheew, must have taken ages - interesting read though, and you are correct - Stalin was a Monster.

CDIC

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"Death solves all problems - no man no problem"

J.V.Stalin, 1918

[Freak]

Great and interesting post. I am now curious and interested in the soviet - stalin power era. I knew this man was bad but...

[T34Rules]

Well written commentary on Mr. Stalin, thanks for your thoughts.

[tss]

I agree that Stalin was a paranoid psychopat who caused millions of deaths. However, there was one particular point in the text that caught my attention:

Those figures are ten to 15 times higher than the numbers allegedly killed by the Fuhrer and makes him look like an amateur.

Allegedly? Ten to 15 times higher? (The highest figure in the text was 57 million and 57/15 = 3.8, much smaller figure than what is usually attributed to Hitler).

This one sentence alone causes me to seriously doubt the figures and whole scholarly value of the text.

- Tommi

[John Hough]

Originally posted by Space Thing:

* The University of Moscow, in association with the University of Madrid, put the figure at 57 MILLION.

Those figures are ten to 15 times higher than the numbers allegedly killed by the Fuhrer and makes him look like an amateur.

Um. Those numbers aren't quite right. The Holocaust killed 6 million Jews, a number beyond dispute, and a few million others, communists, gypsies, homosexuals, and such. (I'm sorry I don't have better figures for those) So even the highest figure there is only (only! eep.) 10 times the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Anyway, I see little profit in comparing the horrible things these two men (yes, men, like you and I, not monsters) did, and got others to do, to argue who was the worst. Men are not logs, that you can stack up the bodies next to each other to grant the title of Worst Tyrant to the man with the highest pile. 60 million murdered is a horrible atrocity. So is 10 million. Or 6 million, or 6 hundred, or six. Or one.

Really, I wasn't aware there was an issue here. Does anyone seriously think that Stalin doesn't have the blood of many millions on his hands? Even the high school history classes I took, a few years back, weren't so bad as to try to claim Stalin wasn't responsible for horrible atrocities. Just who is it that Rimland is arguing against?

[tailz]

Hey Bruno... you still got the lawn mower for sale?

[Phillies Phan]

No. This is just wrong. I see the emotion behind the text but cannot agree with the argument that one "monster" is worse than another. This is so damn subjective and political that I normally shy away from discussing such things.

I wandered over to my library and checked out a Time-Life book of WWII last week. The pictures of the German concentration camps are still fresh in my mind.

I have not been designated the judge over what is "more evil"; to decimate one's own population or to decimate other's because of their religious beliefs. I simply cannot judge and refuse to do so. What I can do is type a couple of words and state in simple terms that I'd like my history to be unbiased, thank you.

Perhaps the topic was meant to be inflammatory and we have fallen for the ruse. Or maybe we were to supposed to nod our collective head and say, "yes, you have a point there, we have been misjudging". I simply don't agree, Space Thing.

------------------

"Sturm, Swung, Wucht"

- Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel

http://www.derkessel.com/

[Freak]

"Hey Bruno... you still got the lawn mower for sale?"

Too good for this coversation I see?

And yes this will probably get locked up becouse it is OT for this forum but your comments really do not add anything constructive to the conversation here. So I advise you to refrain from this kind of posting. It is pointless and it is infuriating to the people who are involved in this thread.

[argie]

... and slavery is supposed to have killed 200 millions of Africans, and the "Europezation" of America (all, North, Center and South) could have take maybe another 60 million, and so on...

All were horrible massacres made by men... All were planned... There is not a worst monster... If we think that way, then some killer (Hitler and the Nazi system) have a best chance of being forgiven, because he only killed 13 million people in concentration camps. The bad is better than the worst.

That is not a good way of thinking... May could be a good propaganda stuff, but can't be sustained from any ethical stand point.

Ariel

[Freak]

I think what space thing is saying that Stalin's atrocities are not as popular as Hitlers. The Nazi's were on the losing side of the war and therefor we look at his with more disdain and wickedness then Stalin

[This message has been edited by Freak (edited 04-01-2001).]

[argie]

Originally posted by Freak:

I think what space thing is saying that Stalin's atrocities are not as popular as Hitlers. The Nazi's were on the losing side of the war and therefor we look at his with more disdain and wickedness then Stalin

I think you are making a very naive reading of the Space Thing post. Seems like some subtle propaganda pamphlet to me... Like: "Hey! Is better Fascism than Communism! They killed less people and they defend Private Property after all!".

This is an exageration to the sole purpose of illustrate my point, I'm not assuming that it is the Space Thing way of thinking. Is just my opinion in that only post.

Ariel

[Freak]

Well hold on argie, earopeanazation of north america, "american indians" destroyed for the sake of "america" I dont recall anything being learned in HS that teaches us this, though maybe that has changed. We still celabrate Columbus and ignore what atrocities which we were responsible for.

Propagation goes both ways and that is is the issue. I am not saying that those numbers are correct. I am not disputing that. But I think that its not the numbers or atrocities that we are talking about here its the way we see them.

[Freak]

And might I add, still resopnsible for...as in, well...look at what we have done with the american Indians....suppresion.

And then we look the other way.

[This message has been edited by Freak (edited 04-01-2001).]

[Guest Space Thing]

Originally posted by Freak:

I think what space thing is saying...

B]

...is that bad is bad period. I don't care if it is the church and their Inquisition or Pol Pot and his hatred for whatever, or Stalin & Hitler with their craziness.

I've seen reports lately that prove war crimes in WW II were committed by catholic Poles against jewish Poles and vice-a-versa.

What I'm really saying is:

We have to live together, whether it is in Jerusalem, Belfast, Beijing, Serbia, Washington DC, or where-ever.

This hatred crap is old hat. We (as humanity) have done the same old thing (seemingly) over and over and over. It is time for something new. (I don't know exactly what that might be, but it has be something different.) I know that it might mean less subject matter for us wargamers , but we already have enough. Don't we?

I meant to encourage discussion that is all and I see that it has had some positive effect. My intentions were honorable.

[Freak]

I think you are making a very naive reading of the Space Thing post. Seems like some subtle propaganda pamphlet to me... Like: "Hey! Is better Fascism than Communism! They killed less people and they defend Private Property after all!".

This is an exageration to the sole purpose of illustrate my point, I'm not assuming that it is the Space Thing way of thinking. Is just my opinion in that only post.

No that is not how I read the post (with naivness). yes I see some propganda in the post but I decided to take what his true meaning of the post is, whether he is concious of it or not and that is: how we look at things like war, death and atrocities. I am not supporting the "this atrocity is better then that one" or "this atroctiy is worse then that one" argument. I see that that, but have decided to see what is more important in the post and in that he makes some good insights or points at looking at atrocities on the whole.

[Freak]

Thank you space thing, great follow up post. Was needed.

[tss]

argie wrote:

Seems like some subtle propaganda pamphlet to me... Like: "Hey! Is better Fascism than Communism! They killed less people and they defend Private Property after all!".

I got the same feeling. So I just typed "Ingrid Rimland" to Google search and found the following link: http://www.adl.org/holocaust/rimland.html .

In short: the author of original text is a holocaust denier. I wouldn't trust her if she told me the time.

- Tommi

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Freak:

And might I add, still resopnsible for...as in, well...look at what we have done with the american Indians....suppresion.

And then we look the other way.

We? Last time I checked, most of us weren't around a few hundred years ago when the "Europeanization" of the Americas took place. For that matter, my ancestors didn't arrive until after the continent was settled. I agree that what happened to the natives was horrible, but you should realize that generalizations like this don't add anything to this discussion. Otherwise, great points.

------------------

Andreas himself will attest that my massive ego and foolhardy belief in my own greatness would never allow for me to be anyone's worshipper - Hamsters

[This message has been edited by Mannheim Tanker (edited 04-01-2001).]

[argie]

Originally posted by tss:

argie wrote:

Seems like some subtle propaganda pamphlet to me... Like: "Hey! Is better Fascism than Communism! They killed less people and they defend Private Property after all!".

I got the same feeling. So I just typed "Ingrid Rimland" to Google search and found the following link: http://www.adl.org/holocaust/rimland.html .

In short: the author of original text is a holocaust denier. I wouldn't trust her if she told me the time.

- Tommi

Well, seems like I don't lost my semiotic instinct

Thanks for the clarification on the author.

Anyway, Stalin was a genocide, and nobody denies that.

Ariel

[mrspkr2]

Originally posted by Freak:

We still celabrate Columbus and ignore what atrocities which we were responsible for.

{{RANT ALERT}} {{RANT ALERT}}

**WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE OVERLY SENSITIVE, HAVE A CARDIAL HEMORRHAGE, OR BELIEVE THE SUCCESSFUL SHOULD BE PUNISHED -- YOU WILL BE OFFENDED. THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR SENSITIVITY OR EMOTIONAL STATE.**

[steps up on soap box)

We are responsible for? Are you about 450 years old? Did you go out and massacre Indians in your spare time? I sure didn't.

I also didn't own any slaves (nor did my family, at least in recorded history). However, since my skin is pale, I get that albatross hung around my neck too.

I'm really sick of people trying to throw guilt trips on others because of things that happened to people dead for over a hundred years by people dead for over a hundred years.

Maybe the French should hate the Italians for Caesar's campaigns in Gaul. Maybe Britain, Greece, Spain, Germany, Romania, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia should hat them for the same thing.

Maybe the Hungarians should be shunned by peoples around the world for the actions of Attila and his gang? Perhaps we should demand reparations from Mongolia for the suffering Genghis Khan inflicted on most of Europe.

Better still, lets all see if the blacks in Central Africa can get some reparations from the Muslims on the north and east coast, who played a large part in the slave trade (you don't really think the Anglo-Europeans went into the wilds of Africa to gather those slaves, did you?) Heck, that would be topical -- because in some areas of East Africa, slavery is still practiced today.

This topic thread was interesting to begin. I do agree that trying to determine who was more evil is pointless. However, to suggest that I or anyone else should feel bad or offer apologies or reparations for things that happened long before any of us were born. EVERY -- yes, EVERY -- group of peoples have been oppressed, enslaved, butchered, mistreated, malnourished, abused, and oppressed at some point in history. Its time we stopped worrying about the past and just GOT OVER IT.

As to the American Indians -- I am from Oklahoma. I have treaveled through New Mexico. I have seen the Indian reservations. I have seen the living conditions. They are rather poor - by American standards.

However, I have also noticed that the number one problem among American Indians is not alcolhol abuse, drug abuse or systematic political oppression (the Cherokee nation and Seminole Nation are POWERFUL tribal lobbying groups in Oklahoma and Florida, respectively). The number one problem is OBESITY. If the Indians in America are so darned oppressed, why do they appear to be eating so well? Why are they taking in more calories in two days than some people in Asia or Africa see in an entire month?

I have also seen Indians who were millionaires - who took chances, built businesses, worked hard, and achieved the American dream. If they can do it (and these guys did it in the 1930's and 1940's), anyone else can too.

Sorry, but I am sick and tired of the "oh those poor [insert ethnic group name here] crap." As long as we do that, we teach those people to be victims, we denigrate their value as human beings, and we sustain what, if any, oppression they may have suffered.

For any of you thinking - yeah, easy for a white guy to say - I would point out many of my ancestors are Irish. My great grandfather was treated to the wonderful sight of signs on stores saying "No dogs or Irish allowed." Do I think I should get something or have people feel sorry for me because of conditions he encountered 120 years ago? No.

(steps off soapbox).

MrSpkr

-----------------

"We're Americans. You know what that means? It means our ancestors were kicked out of every respectable country on earth."-- Bill Murray

[Freak]

The reaon I mention the American Indian atrocity is becouse it is still happening today. "We" weather you like the term or not applies to all of us as a nation, and still applies today. The USA still surpreses the American Indian people by not helping or even formaly acknowledging them as people at all. They are the poorest people in this nation and we just wound them up and told them "you will live this way wether you like it or not" we took away there way of life and surpressed them. Told thgem to believe in christianity and such, told them that jesus is the way.

This post belongs here becouse it is the essential point of the original post and weather you like it or not "we" (yes a generalization for America, the good ole USA) are just as bad as other countries in this respect. The reason I mention all of this is becouse it all comes down to how you percieve these atrocities; and that "we" were on the winning side in succesfully destroying the American Indians makes us look the other way. Like it or not and we still look the other way.

[tailz]

Originally posted by Freak:

"Hey Bruno... you still got the lawn mower for sale?"

Too good for this coversation I see?

And yes this will probably get locked up becouse it is OT for this forum but your comments really do not add anything constructive to the conversation here. So I advise you to refrain from this kind of posting. It is pointless and it is infuriating to the people who are involved in this thread.

What exactly is to be added to a conversation about evil? Until someone steps up to say "Stalin and Hitler were righteous dudes", the thread is circular back-patting.

You 'advise' me? And exactly what makes your advice so palpable that I should feel enjoined to accept and regard it as anything other than the typical high handed moralizing that goes on in these threads?

... aww, never mind,

<<sigh>> Yes, evil is bad.

[Freak]

"We" is a generalization for the United States of America, not we the individuals alive today. I thought that was obvious.

Dont kid yourself suppresion is still in exsistance within Indian reservations.

[Freak]

tailz:

I see so since its all evil we will just leave it at that. No need to have any further conversation on it.

There can still be a conversation about it even though its is all evil. I am not supporting the "Stalin was better then Hitler" mentality though that is what the title thread and post seems to be. However if you look more closely I think you will see there is a perception issue regarding atrocities in the world. That is what I am commenting about.