Thread: Pro or Anti Stalin

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Oh, don't start again.

Genocide is "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", and nothing of said above applies to "golodomor". Modern nationalistic Ukrainian politics prefer to label it genocide to strengthen the opinion, that "Russians" (or rather Stalin regime) deliberately tried to annihilate all Ukrainians.

Still, peasants starved to death not because Ukrainians were specifically targeted, but because peasantry in general faced unbearable demands of the state. The same starvation scenario happened to Russian peasants in Volga region in 1921-1922. Was it Russian genocide against Russians, then? Well, no. It was cruel economical policy, which hurt agricultural regions indiscriminately regardless of ethnic (or any other) groups living there. You can call it genocide against peasants, figuratively speaking... but that's it.

There's also a well-known fact that photographs which are used routinely to demonstrate the terrible consequences of Ukrainian "golodomor" to Western public in books and media (starving children, skeletal-looking corpses, etc.) are in fact photos of Russian peasants, starved to death near Volga. That does not make what happened to Ukrainians any better, but it gives a (deliberately?) wrong impression of what was going on during that period.

Ok, if it makes you feel better, you can call it "deliberate mass killings". And I would still insist that it was genocide, maybe not ethnic genocide but "class genocide" - the bolsheviks just wanted the people that were more successful than them to die, and of course, to rob their houses and grab what they had managed to produce so that the bolsheviks wouldn't have to make it on their own.

Уничтожение классов достигается не путём потухания классовой борьбы, а путём её усиления.
Иосиф Сталин

Stalin's public executions.
NKVD archives (18+!)

Originally Posted by diogen_

Stalin's public executions.
NKVD archives (18+!)

What you find bad in these executions? These are war-time public executions of pro-Nazi traitors, Nazi "polizei" staff, possibly SS-men and so on. That's why they were hanged, a very unusual practice in the USSR where normally people were shot not in public.

Originally Posted by Anixx

What you find bad in these executions? These are war-time public executions of pro-Nazi traitors, Nazi "polizei" staff, possibly SS-men and so on. That's why they were hanged, a very unusual practice in the USSR where normally people were shot not in public.

You're imagining things, aren't you? How do you know that the video is about pro-Nazi traitors?

If it were so do you really approve these medieval executions?

Anyway, I have a link with the same video and the opposite comment.

www.gulag.ipvnews.org/
(here in the top right corner everybody can also find the English interpretation of what the woman yells)

Закрытая, замазанная, зарытая тема. Публичные казни широко проводились в период коллективизации, гражданской войны и в 40-е годы. Среди крупных городов, жители которых были свидетелями этих актов средневекового мракобесия, следует назвать Ленинград. Казни проводились на площади Калинина, у кинотеатра “Гигант”. Через прилегающие улицы натягивались тросы, на каждый из которых крепились по две петли. Приговоренных подвозили на грузовых автомобилях с откинутыми бортами; по одному в каждой машине. После зачитывания приговоров, набрасывали петли и автомашины отъезжали...

Could you give any evidence that the above is fabricated?

Originally Posted by diogen_

You're imagining things, aren't you? How do you know that the video is about pro-Nazi traitors?

Because any other people were not publicly hanged. Hanging was used by the Czarist Russia and by the Whites. The Soviets generally abandoned this practice with only a small exception during WWII.

The soldiers wear the WWII uniform and one soldier on the video holds a PPSh submachine gun that would not be used in the peacetime. PPSh was exploited starting from 1941.

Originally Posted by diogen_

If it were so do you really approve these medieval executions?

Do you disapprove the "medieval execution" of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg?

Originally Posted by diogen_

Закрытая, замазанная, зарытая тема. Публичные казни широко проводились в период коллективизации, гражданской войны и в 40-е годы. Среди крупных городов, жители которых были свидетелями этих актов средневекового мракобесия, следует назвать Ленинград. Казни проводились на площади Калинина, у кинотеатра “Гигант”. Через прилегающие улицы натягивались тросы, на каждый из которых крепились по две петли. Приговоренных подвозили на грузовых автомобилях с откинутыми бортами; по одному в каждой машине. После зачитывания приговоров, набрасывали петли и автомашины отъезжали...
Could you give any evidence that the above is fabricated?

Public executions in Leningrad were only performed during WWII. Hanging was also used only during WWII.
The above comment makes impression that public executions by hanging were performed in Leningrad during collectivization and the Civil War, which is not true.
The video of hanging of pro-Nazi traitors is used to make impression that in the similar way the USSR was executing people in peace time.

While the Reds possibly used mass executions during the Civil war, they did never use hanging and unlikely performed so in Leningrad, which was far from the front line.

And of course, this topic was never "covered up", as the text claims. The public executions of pro-Nazi traitors during WWII were always well known.

And here you can read more detailed description of the site you linked to:
http://actualhistory.ru/melnikoff

It seems that the chief editor behind this site is a known falsifier photographer Leonid Melnikoff.

And here is the explanation of the video:

Для начала определим, что представляет собой запись. Смертная казнь через повешение была введена в СССР 19 апреля 1943 г. для изменников и военных преступников (т.о. относительно «коллективизации» — бред). В ролике имеет место монтаж из съемок двух разных экзекуций. В первом случае вешают полицаев, а там где на табличках видны фамилии осужденных — казнь убийц из зондеркоманды СС-10-А в Краснодаре в 1943 г.

So the video is glued from two pieces, the first is the execution of the "polizei", and in the second part is the execution of the Sonderkommando SS-10-A in Krasnodar. Capital punishment was introduced for traitors and war criminals in the USSR in 1943.

Sonderkommando SS-10-A is known for many atrocities including murdering 214 children in gas vans http://eysk.net/history/zonderkomanda.html

The events showed in the video were never covered up and the descriptions were published in the books. Regarding the claim about cross-street ropes, it is completely made up by Melnikoff.
Regarding "medieval practice" it is said that in France for example, all executions werre mandatory public until 1939. In the USSR this was only a war-time exception.

Public executions in Leningrad were only performed during WWII. Hanging was also used only during WWII.

I enjoy your assertiveness. Did we continue WWII in 1946?

The woman on the previous video yells, "Разоблачить! И еще больше можем разоблачить, которые остались! Никто не стесняйтесь, не бойтесь!" How can it be referred to the war criminals who had been already arrested and trialed? Sounds a little bit inconsistent with your interpretation of the video.

He DID do some very bad things and also achieved some good things.
Because he was a leader of a very large country, his good and bad sides affected millions of people and cost many lives.

Why not look at him according to the same principle that the Chinese look at Mao?
They say that Mao did 80% good things and 20% bad things.

Perhaps in the case of Stalin the balance is not 80/20, but

• How does it benefit Russia to drag his name in the mud? It's just sad with people who spit on their own country's history...
• And how can anybody be stupid enough to glorify a person who had such little respect for human life as Stalin? Obviously he was nothing like his propaganda made out.

Perhaps it is possible to celebrate Stalin's positive achievements, and distance yourselves and learn from his mistakes.

He was a human being, neither God, nor the devil...

There's also a well-known fact that photographs which are used routinely to demonstrate the terrible consequences of Ukrainian "golodomor" to Western public in books and media (starving children, skeletal-looking corpses, etc.) are in fact photos of Russian peasants, starved to death near Volga.

I think the word is supposed to be spelled "holodomor" (?) in English.
But I have to admit, I never actually heard about it until quite recently. Don't know why really.

When I think about Ukrainian peasants, all that would come to mind is "black earth" and a Soviet era miniseries from TV about some peasants in Ukraine, forgotten what it was called.

I would not presume to have any opinion or view about holodomor, since it seems to be controversial and no substantial proof about the underlying reason for the starvation. It does seem like a bit of a conspiracy theory to think that a country that claims to look out for the working class and peasants would set out to deliberately starve them to death... It is equally hard to imagine that a civilised person who was a convinced communist from an ideological perspective would support this. On the other hand, some people were indeed treated despiccably in the USSR, so to me this is hard to form a clear view about. And in light of what the Germans got up to at around the same time, perhaps it is not any harder to understand than the holocaust.


On the executions from the videoclip - yes, gruesome! But were they enemy sympathisers? If so, any country would have pretty much done the same thing back in those days. Remember the incredibly high death tolls of Soviet civilians as well as troops. These particular executions do not surprise me much. The main thing that Stalin did, that I find very repulsive, is allowing regular people to be labelled "enemies of the state" and similar based on hearsay, gossip among neighbours and reading private correspondence, then sending them to labour camps that were so harsh that many died. As I understand, this only happened to a very small percentage of the population but it is still awful. Anyone can have a bad day and slag off the state a bit. Even say things they later regret! Either way people must be allowed to have a personal opinion about things and be able to discuss it with their friends without fear, regardless whether they live in a state that is trying to build communism etc, etc.

I think the word is supposed to be spelled "holodomor" (?) in English.

Thank you, I should have checked it out instead of simply transliterating it. You might be right. It's spelled "голодомор" both in Ukrainian and in Russian, but Ukrainian "г" is usually transliterated as "h" in English.

Originally Posted by gRomoZeka

Thank you, I should have checked it out instead of simply transliterating it. You might be right. It's spelled "голодомор" both in Ukrainian and in Russian, but Ukrainian "г" is usually transliterated as "h" in English.

The spelling is quite similar to "holocaust"

the problem is not the security entities by themselves but the policy and ideology of the central government or the Party for that matter
the former only serve the agenda the latter dictates and the agenda was 'witch hunt'

Originally Posted by LXNDR

Why is it us who celebrates the Victory, but it's the Germans who are better off?

Хорошая у тебя подпись, сразу объясняет многое.

the movie (1992) is about the period of Red Terror (1918-23)