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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
No one here claims that the population of the Soviet Union wasn’t antisemitic or that things didn’t get much worse there for the Jews after the war.
However,
1) antisemitism is endemic and eternal and it’s not something that gets fixed simply by changing the form of government or adopting a different ideology;
2) historically, it is the West that plans and perpetrates Jewish genocide but its Jews live in denial and think that the population of the West is less antisemitic than that of the “accursed Russia”.
3) after the war the only countries whose Jewish population exceeded 1 million were the US and the USSR;
4) the only reason for (3) was that the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany because if it didn’t, the US and Germany would sign a separate peace treaty, divide Europe and the USSR among themselves, Great Britain and, possibly, France and the Holocaust would continue unabated;
5) if the Soviet army didn’t enter the territories of the poor, innocent, suffering Eastern European countries which were either allies of Nazi Germany or its suppliers (and collaborators in the murder of Jews), even more people would be murdered in the death camps which were located there.
BTW, I don’t know any “Russian” Jews who ever witnessed Jews (or their small children) in the Soviet Union being beaten and/or insulted in the streets for being Jews.
This seems to be the prerogative of the civilized Western countries such as the US, Great Britain and France where they have “freedom of expression”.
Not one former Soviet, Russian or Ukrainian Jew I ever spoke to had anything but contempt for the Jew hatred they experienced in any of the prior three countries.
That is why they fled or left.
@Adam Dalgliesh
Don’t make me laugh.
I am not arguing about Stalin and his crimes.
I can agree that he messed up the whole country but he wasn’t trying to genocide Ukrainians.
You are relying on biased secondary sources which quote selectively whatever documents suit their thesis.
In the meantime, read up on a few “civilized Aryan” atrocities documented by the trusted Western historians (if you can find any), maybe it will help you calm down about the fate of the poor, innocent Eastern Europe suffering under the Soviet rule and dreaming of the dear, kind Nazi’s who dealt so justly with the “Jews and komissars”.
@Reader. It is pointless for us to continue this debate. But I would remind other Israpundit readers that I have read at least eight histories that forcused either on Soviet Russian history as a whole or particular Russian leaders. The one by Richard Pipes is anti-Soviet and anticommunist. The other seven, however, were written either by citizens of Russia or left-leaning Western scholars. Four of the authors are professors at respected Western universities. All eight are fluent in Russian and make extensive use of Russian-language sources. All eight flatly contradict your version of events.
The most credible of these sources from my point of view are the biographies of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin by a retired Soviet general who was director of the Russian archives for many years after his retirement from active military service. His biographies quote extensively from documents in Soviet archives, which he quotes frequently. All aspects of “my” version of Soviet history are identical with what he has written.
Although they are not included in my eight sources,there is also much confirmation of “my” version in the books written by Svetlana Alleluyevana, Stalin’s daughter, and Leon Trotsky. Trotsky is of course not an objective source, but his biographers believe that he had had genuine although secret sources for much of his expose of Stalin’s tyranny from Soviet citizens who were sympathetic to him. Svetlana Alleluyevna was pampered by Stalin, who loved her, and lived in the same houses and apartments (he had more than thirty of them) for many years, and was privy to almost all of Stalin’s decisions. Her father’s generally supportive and helpful attitude towards her meant that she did not have strong personal reasons for exposing his crimes. They quarelled from time to time, as fathers and daughters always do, but their relationship remained close throughout Stalin’s lifetime.
As a result of all this, “my” version of Stalin’s crimes, whether against Ukrainian peasants, Kazakhi herdsman or his fellow communists, (hundreds of thousands of whom he either killed or sentenced to long imprisonment in concentration camps) have been proven true beyond reasonable doubt.
@SEBASTIEN-
No problem. I get criticized by our publisher on occasion for the words I use, but unfortunately it is second nature by now. My sense of humour gets the better of me. And one must call a spade a spade, where made of iron or more fibrous material..
However, my logical wisdom, not to mention my modesty (sorry for the old
saw) make up for it.
(Which reminds me.. “Positively Mr.Gallagher .absolutely Mr. Sheen” (I have this on an old 1920a shellac 78, and although not positive, I think the music sounds like Paul Whiteman).
@Adam Dalgliesh
First of all, the famine was never about the Ukrainian peasants.
The fairy tale about Stalin trying to exterminate Ukrainians by starving them was created by the Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian Nazis, mostly from the Western Ukraine.
All the rural areas throughout the Soviet Union suffered equally and very badly because of the (understandable but stupid) sabotage by the peasants and the botched government policies (which may be classified as atrocities), and some other factors, and the cities suffered from hunger also throughout the country.
Second of all, there was more to it than the vicious Soviet government confiscating grain which I am not going to write a dissertation about here, other than to repeat that the peasants were destroying the grain and the cattle that they had in order not give them to the collective farms which made the situation worse.
The wealthier ones also refused to sell the grain to the government because the government paid less than the market price (I don’t know why it was done this way).
From what I heard, the government had to pay the US for the machinery, and the US would only accept grain as payment, not even gold.
The above is complete BS.
Some of it did happen, they used the “police” for special units which consisted of the criminals who were also drafted into the army.
If you thought with your brain instead of your emotions, you would realize that having this sort of set up for the whole army for nearly 5 years would be physically, mentally, and emotionally impossible.
Regarding the rapes – American (and other) soldiers were raping German women also but no one ever talks about it, and German soldiers were raping women and worse on the Soviet territory with impunity, and no one mentions this, either.
Maybe being raped by an Aryan is sweeter, I don’t know.
The number of the women who were presumably “raped by the Russian horde” was extrapolated for the whole country from the number of abortions done in Berlin which were assumed to be performed because of rapes.
Moreover, very shortly after the Soviet Army entered Germany, any soldier who committed this crime was to be court-martialed and that meant a death sentence without the right of appeal (unlike for the German occupiers in the USSR).
Whole villages in Germany committed suicide before the Soviet Army walked in because of the terrifying German propaganda posters depicting the “Russian horde” which was going to rape them, etc.
What you are writing are not facts but your emotional outpourings based on propaganda.
All your answers boil down to “Russia bad, America good!”, “Communism bad, capitalism good!”, “Russia is the worst country in the world, and all it does is commit atrocities!”, and all you know about political economy is that communism and Marxism are swear words.
BTW, I am not a communist or a Marxist, and just because I don’t hate Russia like poison doesn’t mean that anyone is entitled think that of me.
Finally, why don’t you research atrocities committed by your favorite civilized countries, such as the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and even France?
Just try not to go into shock.
@Edgar Thank you, Edgar. Farcical is what I meant, rather than comical. It’s a word I had forgotten and will duly resupply my vocabulary with.
@ADAM-
VERY well said indeed…!!
For me, it is concerning that Reader attempts to deny or minimize the terrible atrocities committed by the Soviet Union.
This is more troubling to me than the defense of Russia’s current behvior and public declarations, although I am concerned about these as well.
It is not true, for example, that the Ukrainian peasants committed mass suicide, as Reader claims. Actually, the Soviet government confiscated all their grain and gave them no compensation whatsoever for it. And it refused to send in relief supplies from othe rparts of the Soviet Union, although adequate supplies did exist elsewhere in Soviet territory that could have been sent to Ukraine to prevent mass starvation.
Stalin’s main motive for doing this was to purchase machinery in the West with which to industrialize the Soviet Union. This was more important to him than the lives of his subjects.
The Soviet regime did in fact station police units behind every unit of the armed forces that was ordered to advance on German forces. This practice was begun by Trotsky when he was commissar for war during the civil war, and was continued by Staliin during World War II. It is also tue that Soviet soldiers raped millions of German women when they conquered eastern Germany at the end of the war.
No serious historian denies these facts.
I find it upsetting that there are still die-hard communists who won’t admit that there was ever anything wrong or bad about the Soviet Union. These individuals are no better than the die-hard Nazis who continue to deny that Hitler committed any atrocities and claim that the Holocaust is a Zionist myth, invented to squeeze “reparation” money out of Germany. Both groups of mass-murder deniers are guilty either of deceit or willful blindness to proven facts.
People who deny the past are equally unable to unable to understand what is going on in the present, or to give useful advice on the subject.
@ SEBASTIEN-
I’ve just been reading the whole page, and Potash & Perlmutter comes to mind also .But they were hilariously funny, not pathetically one-sidedly comical.
Apropos nothing. Mark Twain’s quote, “never argue with stupid people, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”..
By the way, I heard that Lenin invented the “Movie” industry. But that was moving people out of their dilapidated Palaces into modern apartments-in downtown Siberia. I think Grrrrusk was the most popular resort.
@SEBASTIEN-
Yes, but comical isn’t strong enough. The word that comes to my mind, is more like farcical. And all provided by the same ivory filled komiker. Reminiscent of “Gallagher and Sheen” ….the song I mean, it tells all. Especially the “posolutely” and “absitively” verse.
And of course there is always the hamster in the balanced wheel..
BTW, if the big, bad Russia didn’t win at Stalingrad which was the decisive battle of WWII, we wouldn’t be discussing anything here.
You know why?
Because none of us would be born.
If Germany won that war, the North American Jews (brought there by the specially built railroad) would be biting the permafrost in Alaska.
@peloni
My question was rhetorical.
If a country is occupied and the occupier controls its government and its policies, how such a “free” people can ask the occupier to leave other than to try and kick the occupier out physically?
An what, pray tell, Germany has to be defended from?
From Russia who is dying for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to start working, and who has trouble dealing with the territory it already possesses?
The Muslims Europe has already let in all by itself.
@Ted Belman
Thanks.
In the US, especially, it seems to be almost a hobby among certain “historians” to say absolutely incredible things about the Soviet Union (I am not trying to whitewash what really happened) knowing that most Americans will believe it due to the unending storm of anti-Russian propaganda which started over 100 years ago
Many people actually think that every Soviet soldier in WWII had a gun pointed at his back to keep him going, and that’s how they got to Berlin where they “raped 2 million innocent German women”.
If there was a famine in the 20s, it was because of the Civil War (1918-1921) and the so-called “Intervention” (the Western armies, including the US attacking Russia) when Stalin was still a nobody, relatively speaking, compared to Lenin and Trotsky.
The famine induced by the “collectivization” happened in 1929-1932/33 due to the resistance of the peasantry (especially the richer kind – the “kulaks”) which buried the grain, slaughtered the cattle, and, as a result, had nothing to plant the next crop with plus the insanely heavy-handed government policies designed to create large collective farms.
While Stalin was definitely a major force behind the decisions made then, no one was trying to exterminate the “ethnic Ukrainians”, every rural area of the Soviet Union suffered the same regardless of the peasants’ ethnic origin, etc. There were even Jewish farms where people were starving.
The terms “ethnic Ukrainian”, “ethnic Russian”, or “ethnic Belorussian” are only a little less senseless than the term “ethnic American”.
BTW, there was a famine in 1929-1933 in the US that no one knows about – check out the excerpt below (when I checked the numbers several years ago, the difference between 1940 and 1930 was 5 million people, not 10 million) – basically, the US lost 6-7 million people to starvation.
A very interesting timing coincidence:
Take another look at the Russian population numbers that I posted.
Also, consider that to kill 30 million people (even assuming they just sit on the ground and show no resistance whatsoever) you need several million people to do the killing full time (in the absence of the factory-like killing setup).
Well, if someone tries hard enough, they might come up with an article “100 Years of Capitalism – and 200 million Dead” (including both world wars).
German security has depended on American NATO forces which are in Germany by invitation.
Death toll due to China’s The Great Leap Forward (Mau) go as high as 80 million.
@Readar
I don’t know why I had the figure of 100 million in my head. Its wrong you are right.
I googled and 3.9 Ukrainians died of starvation due to the Stalin induced famine. of the twenties.
WSJ has aticle titled “100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead”
@Edgar Have you noticed that there is a comical upside to this debate? Israpundit may be the only place in the world today where pro-Soviet Marxists exist who support Israel! If only they would divide = or should I say, redivide – the left the way the left has divided the Jews.
@Reader
So it is “perfectly normal” to subject Eastern Europe to Soviet control? You object to US forces being present in Germany with German consent by a representative govt of the German people, but scorn the criticism of the the Soviets continued control over Eastern Europe, even describing their actions as
Such a statement can not be excused as anything but propaganda but I do see that you no longer care to explain this claim.
The Soviets did not maintain their tight control over Poland or Eastern Europe at the request of these conquered people who were to serve as human shields to the potential response of the West as the Soviets made further advances into Europe, again as demonstrated with their moves to conquer Berlin less than one year after the end of WWII – I did see you have not answered any questions I raised including this one.
Your inconsistent support of free people to choose their own destinies is quite disturbing. Perhaps it is because you yourself are unaware of what propaganda really is?
@Reader
Regarding your question
Given your pretext here, it would be a question for the American people, as a free people, they could ask the Germans to leave – and if the US controlled the German govt, the Germans would be paying their NATO dues – which they aren’t – and the Germans would be purchasing vital energy supplies from their claimed ally rather than their claimed mortal enemy – which they aren’t.
In the actual example of the American forces in Europe, I hear no call by the Europeans, any of them, to have the US withdraw their troops from their European bases. As I noted, it was not a popular move by Germany that caused the recent troop drawdown in Germany. It was also no puppet govt in Poland acting to celebrate the arrival of American troops and missiles. This is an act of a free people celebrating the arrival of support from an ally of their own choosing. It is a choosing of liberated nations to do such things.
The Germans were outraged and refused to pay their agreed to, but pathetic, 2% GDP to secure their own defense, not because they didn’t want the defensive forces and arms present, but because they wanted the US to provide their defense for free as has become the norm, while the Germans bought their energy supplies from the same enemy from which they see a need to have the US forces protecting them.
@peloni
I stated my argument very clearly.
Try reading it again until you actually understand it.
Your restatement of it shows that you didn’t get it the 1st time.
Possibly you need to study history of that period vs. the propaganda that you have apparently been consuming.
@Reader
So your current argument then is that the Soviets were forced to defend themselves from the West and hold the shattered nations that they “liberated” as a collective barrier to possible Western aggression? NATO was formed some three years after the first act of aggression in Europe following the end of WWII and it wasn’t an action taken by the US or the West, but by the Soviets in Berlin. From your current argument, I guess the moves to take over all of Berlin was just due to the Soviet’s sense of self-preservation and therefore needed to expand their control of Europe? So when would this ever expanding move to create an infinite barrier to Western aggression cease – perhaps after the Soviet flag was mounted over Paris, Whitehall, or New York? At what point might the Soviet paranoia actually become aggressive in your view?
And what of the free people of Europe that Hitler destroyed? Were they just the play things of the Soviets, no sovereign rights of their own to do more than play the role of human shields for the Soviet proletariat?
This current argument you pose is poorly supportable from many angles, actually any reasonable angle.
They kept these lands for the same reason the Normans kept their hold on England. Their troops were present to enforce their will upon these conquered, not “liberated” people, in the same way that Hitler did. They then forced their puppet regimes upon these conquered people as did Hitler and were ever ready to force their will upon these conquered people, regardless of any dissent by the “liberated” nations they held as their own, as did Hitler. Conquerors like to qualify their conquests as liberation in the modern world, but the test is to see the conquering nations actually vacate the lands they “liberate”, as the US did in France, Italy, Belgium…
Good luck with your next revised argument to explain why the liberated masses of Europe were actually never liberated by the Soviets.
@peloni
No, this is not my argument.
My argument is that what the Soviet Union did was perfectly normal for a country which defeated a vicious enemy at the cost of 27 million of Soviet people’s lives and pushed the enemy back into its lair where it came from.
As everyone can see now, the Eastern Bloc served as a buffer between the USSR and the West in case someone wanted to do another Blitzkrieg.
If the US opened the 2nd front a couple of years earlier (as the USSR was literally begging it to do) and liberated at least part of the Eastern Europe from the Nazis before the Soviets got there, the Soviets wouldn’t get to dominate all of the Eastern Europe and East Germany.
As far as the American troops being a boon to the German economy – would you still consider the US a free country if Germany had several hundred German military installations on American soil including thousands of German troops, and if Germany would virtually control the American government and its policies?
Would the boon to the American economy be worth it?
@Reader
So your argument is that the Soviet Union’s control of Eastern Europe was excused because the US did not leave Western Germany? I’ll just say that you are more clever than to believe this claptrap argument, scratching at bread crumbs for a sandwich.
Regarding the US troops in Germany today, it is a boon to the German Economy which Germany desires and was greatly upset over the recent US downgraded presence. Like I said, breadcrumb arguments…
Regarding your need to use ridicule as an argument means you have no argument to make. It is laughably naive to suggest that the current administration is trying to save the gas industry in the US when they are trying to destroy it.
@Ted Belman Apparently, there is a wide range of views among historians as to the actual death count. Anywhere from 3.2 to 15 million depending on what is counted as genocide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin
@SEBASTIEN-
We are writing in a void. Haven’t you noticed that the mouthy, lippy supporter(s) of Russian actions in Europe pay(s) no attention to the very important factual information we are dispensing.
Because it completely destroys the high hobby horses on which he (they) are prancing..
@Ted Belman
If this were true, Russia would cease to exist before the war.
1897 (Russian Empire): 125,640,000
1911 (Russian Empire): 167,003,000
1920 (Russian SFSR): 137,727,000*
1926 148,656,000[4]
1937 162,500,000[4]
1939 168,524,000[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
@peloni
WOW!
You finally noticed that the US strategy stays the same regardless of who happens to be at the helm!
Congratulations!
BTW, rounding up the market for its natural gas is likely not the only motivation for the drums of war
@peloni
Did the US leave that part of Germany which it liberated?
As far as I know, Germany is still occupied by the US (with ~200 American military installations).
Whose vassal is the EU?
What was the cause of BREXIT?
The FSU DID leave in the early 90s all the territory which they “occupied” since 1945 (of course, the innocent Eastern Bloc countries much preferred staying occupied by the good, brave Nazis who so successfully killed the Jews and the Soviets (“Jews and komissars”)).
This is why Russia is facing the situation right now when the countries it left in order to ensure peace have been occupied by Russia’s worst enemies who surrounded it with military installations with WMD including a few biological weapons labs which they located in the former Soviet republics.
I really hope the West will not pull the same scenario with Russia that was used to attack Poland in 1939.
@Edgar Alger Hiss was Stalin’s agent at Yalta advising FDR.
I urge people of Israel to read carefully the following article
By SUE SURKES 11 Mar 2021, 4:48 am
https://www.timesofisrael.com/is-israel-burying-its-head-in-sand-as-climate-change-makes-mideast-a-hot-mess/
There are many key points she makes
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, scientists predict that global temperatures may rise as much as 4 degrees Celsius, or even higher, on average. By 2100, the sea level is expected to rise between 0.2 meters in a best-case scenario to 2.5 meters in an extreme one, depending on efforts to curb emissions.
“It seems undeniable that severe environmental problems are likely to escalate the degree of global conflict,” Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall wrote in an oft-cited 2003 study for the Pentagon, laying out the possible national security implications of climate change. The paper envisioned a worst-case scenario where “famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to the abrupt climate change. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression in order to reclaim balance.”