Order 270 U.S.S.R. - Family of Red Army Captives Killed

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by STEED

The documentary series based on Laurence Rees book...World War Two Behind Closed Doors - Stalin, The Nazis And The West had a scene with Stalin and his two top Generals showing plans of a attack on the Germans and Stalin got angry at them and came close to saying one of his Generals would have been shot for that idea.

How serious the plans were are not very clear and Stalin had no intentions what so ever.

Plans, generally speaking, are very frail evidence for or against anything. Let me give you a ridiculous example: Finland planned attacking Soviet Union before the Winter war, so actually the Soviet aggression in 1939 was justified.

Preposterous? Such argument has been made. And the proof was indeed found: the Finnish military did have an offensive plan directed into the Soviet territory.

Point being? The same that was made when countering this argument in historical discourse: that a military that doesn't make plans is a completely useless military. I bet even today, somewhere deep in the archives of our army, there is a strategic plan to invade Estonia, Sweden, Russia and heck, the Vatican for all I care. And also a defensive plan in case any of those happen to utilize their offensive plans against us (which, I'm sure, they too have). It's what militaries do.

[STEED]

We came up with a real gem for July 1945

Operation Unthinkable
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk...nthinkable.htm

Man that was nuts..

I think that the evidence indicates that there were no immediate intentions of the Soviet Union to invade Germany. Certainly the Red Army deployment on the eve of Barbarossa was consistent with a defensive stance according to Soviet military doctrine at that time.

Comparing Stalin to Hitler has always strikes as some sort of grotesque game show where the 'worst' dictator gets the chrome-plated steak knives or something equally silly. In short, an utter waist of time; something like debating how far is up. That said there is still much to be learned about both provided discussion does not descend into dogma and hyperbole.

I would suggest that they were more like syblings who are so much alike that they loathe each other and are indeed both loathesome to outsiders. Conventional wisdom places Hitler on the far right of the political spectrum and Stalin to the extreme left but is this really valid? The principle difference between National Socialism and Stalinism (as opposed to theoretical Marxist-Leninism) was that Hitler had successfully co-opted large segments of the German private industrial sector to buy into his version of the state controlled economy. Nazi control over the economy was every bit as real as in the Soviet Union, the principle difference is that Hitler let selected members of the business classes act as middle men and grow rich in the process. Stalin eliminated the middle men (often literally) and so the state had direct control over industry.

Rather than any definite Left-Right differences, both were entirely totalitarian and virtually identical in that they institutionalized the killing of their own citizens as a political tool. They were far more alike than different.

Stalin may have killed more people than Hitler but he had far longer to do so. Also the millions who slaved away and died in the Gulag frequently directly benefitted the Soviet state as many died building much needed infrastructure before the Great Patriotic War and to repair the ravages of that war after 1945. This excuses nothing of course but the fact that Stalin was more motivated to spend the lives of those perceived as enemies of the state in the service of the state stands in sharp relief to stated purpose behind Hitler's death camps. Also, as alluded to above, many of Stalin's excesses had definite political aims as opposed to Hitler's largely purely racial murders. The Soviet Union was a far more equal-opportunity tyranny than was Nazi Germany.

[Krauter]

A few points I want to address...

I will give credit to Stalin on one point, he never raised his voice or flew off the handle in a rage like Hitler would often do.

He didn't fly off the handle.. but he threatened their families and almost always followed through on the threat or remembered the situation to be paid for at a later date...

as bad as Stalin was, he generally speaking wasn't genocidal

I think that this point can, as you say, be debated. During the collectivization, Stalin envisioned starving off the entire Ukrainian population to provide Living room to the people of Russian stock (ironically similar to Hitlers aspirations of Lebensraum...)

itler never wanted war with the west. Infact he respected the British (early on, certainly).

If you read quotes from Hitler following the Vienna Treaty with Chamberlain he considered the Brits to be bumbling idiots who were weak willed and easily manipulated...

@ Hottentauts point, I forget where I read it, one of my history books I'd presume..., but whereas Lenin openly advertised overthrowing other governments in favour of communism, Stalins theories were more based on stabilizing the Soviet Union itself before any help could be sent to other revolutionaries.

Thus as you said, Stalin was more scared of outside invasions and internal rebellion then of invading other countries..

Anyways, just my three cents

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Krauter

I think that this point can, as you say, be debated. During the collectivization, Stalin envisioned starving off the entire Ukrainian population to provide Living room to the people of Russian stock (ironically similar to Hitlers aspirations of Lebensraum...)

Personally I always considered this theory pretty ludicrous - although there certainly was some very shady things going on with Ukraine being 'punished' for being a hotbed for resistance to Bolsheviks, this was mostly before Stalin. Stalin was a) hardly of Russian stock, upbringing or culture himself; b) deeply suspicious of any manner of nationalism, but above all Russian. While he targeted a number of ethnic groups specifically to put down resistance, no other population or national identity took as much damage from him as the Russians. Arguably he completely destroyed Russian nationalism, something he did not succeed at in the Ukraine or in many other places. So I've always considered the "Ukrainian genocide" to be tragic and indeed to SOME extent targeted, but hardly something that was envisioned to benefit the Russians or something that could be blamed on anything but calculated political repression. If Stalin was afraid of anything most, it was probably Russian nationalism above all, so the idea of him feeding it is rather absurd.

[Krauter]

Well, I don't think killing off the Ukrainians was a measure to literally provide living space for the Russians in the sense of "Hey I just got more space for you people, be happy your Russian, Byelorussian, etc"

I think it was, as you say more of a political goal and another simple goal. Less mouths to feed means more leftovers and less strain on the economic system.

Also, as far as I can tell Stalin never really advocated his Georgian stock. Indeed he even abandoned his Paternal name of Dugashvili (sp) in favour of his revolutionary noms de guerre.

[kranz]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Personally I always considered this theory pretty ludicrous - although there certainly was some very shady things going on with Ukraine being 'punished' for being a hotbed for resistance to Bolsheviks,

well, people were really cooking their leather belts, bags, boots and grass in order to survive. And these are facts.

See Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine.

There is often a tendency when discussing horrific events, to wrap them up in a few simple aphorisms and apply a full stop to other interpretations. This is especially so when Westerners try to come to grips with a complex phenomenon like Stalin.

There may certainly have been a nationalist component to what happened in the Ukraine (as maintained by many of the Ukrainians who managed to flee the Soviet Union at the time) but there were also political, idealogical, economic and security considerations that played their parts in the Great Famine.

Stalin was nothing if not an entirely ruthless pragmatist. It's not unlikely that if he gave any thoughts to his victims at all, it would have been indifference rather than contempt.

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by Krauter

@ Hottentauts point, I forget where I read it, one of my history books I'd presume..., but whereas Lenin openly advertised overthrowing other governments in favour of communism, Stalins theories were more based on stabilizing the Soviet Union itself before any help could be sent to other revolutionaries.

The whole "Socialism in one country" slogan was all about that and it's roots were indeed in the fact, that Stalin thought the Soviet Union was too backwards to survive the attack by foreigners. Foreigners in plural, as he saw enemies being in league everywhere, but name me one independent nation from 1930s that Stalin considered his friend. Not saying there aren't any: just that they are difficult to find.

Stalin, as whole, was ideologically very different from Marx and Lenin (who was also very different from Marx in many cases). Of course similarities can be found, but the term "Stalinism" isn't there just for show. One of the main differences was that while Lenin was a cosmopolitan, Stalin was a nationalist, who went directly against Marx's thesis "the proletar doesn't have a fatherland". Whereas Lenin too envisioned that a cultural revolution would happen, but it would happen peacefully, Stalin forced it to happen. And whereas Lenin (probably) thought it was part of ideological progress (socialism and later communism, after all, were in Marxist theory the inevitable future of the mankind with no alternatives), for Stalin it was politics.

[Krauter]

name me one independent nation from 1930s that Stalin considered his friend. Not saying there aren't any: just that they are difficult to find.

I think when you're talking about dictators such as Adolf Hitler or Ioseph Stalin and their "friends", that the word "friend" has an entirely different meaning.

Though you had the league of International Communists (Comintern) countries, Stalin did not consider countries like Mongolia or Mao's Communist Chinese Party to be "friends" rather he was fiercely distrustful of everyone including friends and family...

I think when talking about people such as these there are no friends and allies, just assets and liabilities. Sure the Brits and the US did Stalin a favour by the Lend-Lease Act, but did Stalin consider them friends and that he had a dept to repay them (that the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the Axis onslaught I believe is irrevelant in this context)? No, he considered them an asset at the time and when it became obvious he would win the war they became liabilities and threats to his power.

Cheers!

Krauter

[Hottentot]

No objections. Just adding that the phenomenon you just described can also be seen in smaller scale in the purges of the party. As you probably know, there were few of them in addition to the well known "great purge". And in the latter ones the accused (Zinoviev and Bukharin, for example, if memory serves) were exactly those who had been actively accusing the suspects in the earlier purges. As you said: assets once, liabilities later.

[Krauter]

I remember doing some reading on Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria, the three NKVD chiefs who committed most of the purges.

I found it so ironic that the way Yezhov executed and desecrated Yagoda before and after his execution, was very similar to what Beria did to him, as well as what Beria received during his downfall!

Madness, yet in a system like this it is impossible to draw the line between friend and foe.

But I apologize, this is a little bit off topic and, if I can say so myself, one of my main interests in history (The Soviet Union) so it's easy for me to get sidetracked.

Cheers!

Krauter

[joea]

Originally Posted by CCIP

6 million Jews. At the end of the day, the tens of millions dead in WWII are still "Hitler's" fault.

I think the other thing to consider is that as bad as Stalin was, he generally speaking wasn't genocidal (though in some instances it may be argued otherwise) but rather political in who he went after. Stalin's atrocities were also almost exclusively internal to the Soviet state system, and were carried out by millions of willing accomplices and informants within the society. They were not carried out (with some exceptions) by military invasion from the outside. Fundamentally, you can't separate what Stalin did with the politics and sociology of the Soviet system as a whole - terrible as it was, it was a civil affair (in the sense of being internal to civilian life in the USSR, not in the sense of being nice). Terrible as it is, I don't think it's appropriate to measure it by the same ruler as war crimes.

Good post, recall there were 5 million others killled in the extermination and concentration camps.

http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...shVictims.html

Recall Hitler wanted to go East (and secure the West-as Feuer Frei pointed out he had no real quarrel with the Brits and hoped they would come to their senses after France was beaten in 1940) to deal with the Bolsheviks but also because it was the East that needed the most "cleansing" from Jews, Slavs and others...so the "Aryans" could have more land.

The only thing I can say is that the Nazis were very consistent in their view towards Jews and Roma-they all had to go. Slavs were a bit different however, Croatia, Slovakia, and Bulgaria were all slavic allies (Bulgaria also protected "their" Jews at least) many Western Ukrainians and even Russians (with Vlasov's ROA) fought on the German side etc.

Stalin killed for politcal ends and stopped when no longer "necessary" not very nice but more conducive to a longer lasting poltical system.

One thing we forget in these discussions is how much "help" these leaders have in commiting their crimes-none of the millions were personally killed by these or other leaders (though I've read Idi Amin actually did some killing himself). Would be good to find out more.

[jumpy]

"Kill one man and it's a tragedy. Kill one million men and it's a statistic" paraphrased joseph stalin.

All you really need to know about the man imo.

Recent bbc program for us englanders. WW2: 1941 & the man of steel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode..._Man_of_Steel/

To be honest I see no real difference between racial ideological extermination by the nazis and political ideological extermination by the soviets. But if we're going by pure body-count alone, stalin makes hitler look like a rank amateur for what he did to his own people before, during and after the war.

I think we can argue that hitler was undoubtedly insane, where stalin seems a whole lot more calculating in his logic right from the start. Both are evil, but the evil of rabid insanity, though terrible, has little to compare it with the evil of cold deliberation and the rationale implicit in what I paraphrased above. Which for me sets the bar for assessing the products on nazism and communism and the men (if you can call them that) who rose to pre-eminence by and through these totalitarian ideologies.

Nazism brutalised germany in purges lasting a decade or so, and europe in a terrible war. Communism brutalised europe for almost fifty years, and it's own country as far back as 1918.

Not much of a credit to humanity, either of them. But history is littered with such men, to whom other men are as less than chaff.

[MH]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Personally I always considered this theory pretty ludicrous - although there certainly was some very shady things going on with Ukraine being 'punished' for being a hotbed for resistance to Bolsheviks, this was mostly before Stalin. Stalin was a) hardly of Russian stock, upbringing or culture himself; b) deeply suspicious of any manner of nationalism, but above all Russian. While he targeted a number of ethnic groups specifically to put down resistance, no other population or national identity took as much damage from him as the Russians. Arguably he completely destroyed Russian nationalism, something he did not succeed at in the Ukraine or in many other places. So I've always considered the "Ukrainian genocide" to be tragic and indeed to SOME extent targeted, but hardly something that was envisioned to benefit the Russians or something that could be blamed on anything but calculated political repression. If Stalin was afraid of anything most, it was probably Russian nationalism above all, so the idea of him feeding it is rather absurd.

This may be true.
Stalin was mostly indifferent to national flavors on racist base.
All he wanted is total submission to the soviet system.
Usually he eliminated anyone or anything that represented cultural individuality if it represented danger to the system.
Judging by the length of paranoia and number of victims its hard to call him 100% rational and calculating person though.

Its hard to blame west for stance toward Stalin since in many ways he was more Germans ally till Barbarossa than he was of western powers after German attack.