Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site

[Sergei Witte]

Communists wanted to wipe out other social classes 'in favour' of the proletariat.

This is not true. The policy of the Communist Party had always been to strengthen the alliance between the workers, peasants, and progressive sections of the intelligentsia. When the working-class fights against the ruling class, it seeks an alliance with many small and middle capitalist proprietors.

First: you are confusing the people of Russia with the Soviet government. In another thread you were confusing Russian culture with Soviet culture. I think this is the REAL slander to the people of Russia.

There's no such thing as Soviet culture or Soviet nationality. In the Soviet Union there were 15 countries and dozens of nationalities, each of which was profoundly influenced by cultural developments during soviet power. The Soviet era, the golden age of Russia, cannot possibly be isolated from the nation's history and culture.

Communism was all about ideology. Marx concentrated purely on the revolution of the proletariat, as one of the social classes. He especially mentions that all the power goes to the proletariat. This means: total destruction of all other social classes. Which is exactly what was being done during Lenin and Stalin. Total destruction of the classes and survival only for those who wanted to adept. Death or labor camps for those who didn't want to adept in the eyes of the communist government.

They made no alliances with other classes. The only time they made alliances was the temporary arrangements they made with other political parties in the Soviet before oktober 1917. But this was only by convenience.

Question for you: When the workingclass fights against the ruling class...etc. Is this a  hypothetical question by you??.. When did the working class actually fight the ruling class. There was no such thing in Russia. During the oktoberrevolution everything was organized by the communists. Furthermore the masses were being misled by the communists with their slogan peace, bread and land.

The second point:
In the Soviet Union artists were not free to perform their art as they wanted to. This was prohibited by the government. Art was to follow the Soviet guidelines in the kind of manner as it was in Nazi Germany. It had to radiate the party ideology.
You call the Soviet era the golden age of Russia. I disagree on this very much. The highlight of Russian art was the periode before 1917. After the revolution many artists fled from Russia. Late 19th and early 20th century were the richest period in Russian cultural history. Only think of the internationally best known writers. By the way, I am not interested in Pravda writers.

Does this add up to the Communist crimes we are describing here in this thread?: Yes because, when you kill anyone's creative powers you kill that person in a way

[Elisabeth]

the Nazis and Soviets were interchangeable in moral terms during this historical era.

That amounts to really offensive revisionism which slanders the people of Russia. Nothing equivalent to Auschwitz, Babi Yar, or the siege of Leningrad was perpetrated by Russia.

if there were a Holocaust revisionist here who was citing David Irving to the effect that 6 million Jews did not perish under Hitler

I have said nothing equivalent to the lies of how six million Jews were not systematically exterminated. For you to claim the contrary is outrageous.

Zvezda, I find it very interesting that you didn't dispute my main points: 1) that you are a "dyed-in-the wool Stalinist and Russian nationalist" and 2) an ethnic Russian living in a former Soviet republic and hankering after the so-called glorious days of the Soviet empire. Which would certainly explain why you regard the Soviet period as a "golden age" when most knowledgeable people in this world recognize it was a historical digression, a mistake, indeed, a new Dark Ages, completely unnecessary, which put Russia and its subject peoples back a good century or more in terms of progress. Why does Russia to this day have no manufacturing base to speak of? Why does she lag so far behind other major powers in the production of such basic items as computers, televisions, or electrical appliances? In fact, why is it so unusual to see a label that says "Made in Russia" and why is it unheard of for anyone to buy that product when it does have such a label? Face it, your country produces almost nothing but oil and natural gas, natural resources that are a pure given, not something you have actually achieved by dint of technological prowess or entrepreneurial talent. Why do you think that is? Perhaps because by the 1970s the Soviet Union had already fallen so far behind the West in terms of technological and industrial development that its successor state Russia still, for a variety of reasons, cannot catch up?

Moreover, it is hardly a slander to say that Soviet crimes were the equivalent of Nazi crimes. I should think the very crime I mentioned, the brutal Soviet massacre of Polish officers and others at Katyn, suffices to refute your argument. And that's just one crime out of tens of thousands of similar crimes. We all know the Soviet secret police butchered their political prisoners held in Ukraine and the Baltic States as the German armies advanced. We all know about the mass graves unearthed all over central Russia and Siberia in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the result of Stalin's reign of terror. There are myriad books published every year about the crimes against humanity committed under the regimes of Lenin and Stalin. You are singing to deaf ears. The Communist movement is dead. Particularly in Russia, by the way. As I recall, in their political maneuverings Yeltsin and Putin between them managed pretty much to destroy it.

[Elisabeth]

Zvezda, here is what happened to Russia’s greatest writers during your so-called “golden age” of the Soviet empire:

Nikolai Gumilev, famous poet and husband of the even more famous poet Anna Akhmatova, shot by the Bolsheviks in 1921.

Anna Akhmatova, author of the epic poem “Requiem” (about the victims of Stalinism) and “Poem without a Hero,” persecuted by Soviet authorities throughout her life (her son, her only child, Lev, was also arrested and imprisoned under Stalin).

Osip Mandelshtam, perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century, Russian or otherwise, died of starvation or typhus or both in a Soviet concentration camp in December 1938 (this after enduring years of official persecution, arrests, and interrogations).

Marina Tsvetaeva, like Mandelshtam, Akhmatova, and Boris Pasternak, one of the leading Russian poets of the twentieth century, committed suicide in 1941, after returning from exile abroad and finding herself ostracized by the Soviet literary community, which was by now thoroughly terrorized by Stalin.

Evgeny Zamyatin, author of the dystopian science fiction novel We (an inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984), arrested numerous times under Lenin’s regime, finally permitted to leave the Soviet Union in 1931.

Nikolai Klyuev, well-known poet, shot by the Soviets in 1937.

Isaac Babel, probably the most famous author of Russian-Jewish extraction ever, who penned Red Cavalry, shot by the Soviets (on the direct order of Stalin) in 1940.

Boris Pasternak, famous poet and author of Doctor Zhivago, hounded by Soviet authorities after the publication of this novel in Italy in 1957 (he died in 1960).

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize wining author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Matryona’s Home, Cancer Ward, and numerous other works, was the victim of a failed assassination attempt by the KGB in 1971 (after Soviet authorities learned that he was working on an expose of the Leninist-Stalinist concentration camps, the work that later became known as The Gulag Archipelago). Deported forcibly from the Soviet Union in 1974. Spent the remainder of the Soviet regime in exile in the United States.

This is just a sample, dealing with the most famous. Plenty of less famous, less prominent writers also suffered under the Bolsheviks. I’m sure that other people coud provide other examples. But isn't this list horrible enough?

[Alixz]

This is not at all my area of expertise, but I do think that Bolsheviks and Communists are not the same or interchangeable.  All though both were political parties, I don't believe that they had exactly the same ideologies.  They may have grown from the same source, the teachings of Marx and Engels through the interpretation of Lenin and then Stalin.

However, in the west we were not taught too much about the Soviet Union which was in full control when I was in school and was reaching its apogee with the launch of Sputnik in the end of the 1950s.

The "Cold War" kept us from getting too much information and there were no 24 hour streaming news casts are there are today.

Am I wrong in my belief that the two terms are not interchangeable?  When did the Bolsheviks actually become the Communist Party?  Or did the Bolshevik Party just slowly lose members as the Communist Party became the stronger of the two?

[RomanovsFan4Ever]

There's no such thing as Soviet culture or Soviet nationality. In the Soviet Union there were 15 countries and dozens of nationalities, each of which was profoundly influenced by cultural developments during soviet power. The Soviet era, the golden age of Russia, cannot possibly be isolated from the nation's history and culture.

As already said by Sergei Witte and Elisabeth, I have to disagree with you...I don't know how you can call the Soviet era as the golden age of Russia, do you really think that the time of Stalin, gulags, KGB and so on was a golden age?...sincerely I don't see nothing of positive in all this.
I'm not saying that the Soviet Union wasn't a super power because it was indeed a super power, but I think that is not correct to call the Soviet era a the golden age.

[Sergei Witte]

This is not at all my area of expertise, but I do think that Bolsheviks and Communists are not the same or interchangeable.  All though both were political parties, I don't believe that they had exactly the same ideologies.  They may have grown from the same source, the teachings of Marx and Engels through the interpretation of Lenin and then Stalin.

However, in the west we were not taught too much about the Soviet Union which was in full control when I was in school and was reaching its apogee with the launch of Sputnik in the end of the 1950s.

The "Cold War" kept us from getting too much information and there were no 24 hour streaming news casts are there are today.

Am I wrong in my belief that the two terms are not interchangeable?  When did the Bolsheviks actually become the Communist Party?  Or did the Bolshevik Party just slowly lose members as the Communist Party became the stronger of the two?

They are interchangeable. It is simply that bolshevism was later called Communism. They share the same ideology that revolution was needed to change the conditions of the laborers. On the other side were the Social Democrats or Mensheviks, who wanted to change the system from within.

[Alixz]

Thank you for the information.

[Robert_Hall]

[edit] From Bolshevism to Communism
In 1952 at XIX Party Congress Stalin declared: "There are no more Mensheviks. Why should we call ourselves Bolsheviks? We are not the majority, but the whole party." According to his suggestion, the Communist party was renamed the Communist Party of Soviet Union. Since that time, the term Bolshevik has been regarded as obsolete, and relevant only to the pre-Revolutionary times and the Russian Civil War.
[from Wikipedia]
 A very simplistic explanation.
 There are many definiitions and layers of thought on the  subject.
 Technically, communisim is an ecconomic policy, whereas bolshevism is a political action. In theory, the former can function under any political structure, and does, on small scale, partuculary in religious communities.

[LisaDavidson]

[edit] From Bolshevism to Communism
In 1952 at XIX Party Congress Stalin declared: "There are no more Mensheviks. Why should we call ourselves Bolsheviks? We are not the majority, but the whole party." According to his suggestion, the Communist party was renamed the Communist Party of Soviet Union. Since that time, the term Bolshevik has been regarded as obsolete, and relevant only to the pre-Revolutionary times and the Russian Civil War.
[from Wikipedia]
 A very simplistic explanation.
 There are many definitions and layers of thought on the  subject.
 Technically, communisim is an ecconomic policy, whereas bolshevism is a political action. In theory, the former can function under any political structure, and does, on small scale, partuculary in religious communities.

I believe that for purposes of discussion of 20th century Russian history, especially that of 1917 and later - that Bolshevik and Communist should be considered interchangeable.

Prior to 1917, when there was such a thing as a Menshivik - which despite the meaning of the term - were really the majority of Russian Communists prior to the Revolution - the terms are not interchangeable.

And, the farther one moves in time from the Revolution, the term Bolshevik seems more and more anachronistic. Except, the kind of ham handed politics practiced by Bolsheviks in Russia is not necessarily how it was with Communists outside of Russia.

Just my two kopecks.

[Zvezda]

Zvezda, I find it very interesting that you didn't dispute my main points: 1) that you are a "dyed-in-the wool Stalinist and Russian nationalist" and 2) an ethnic Russian living in a former Soviet republic and hankering after the so-called glorious days of the Soviet empire.

I don't understand why you continue to make things up about my background. I have roots in the former USSR, but I am not of Russian nationality and I live in America.

Which would certainly explain why you regard the Soviet period as a "golden age" when most knowledgeable people in this world recognize it was a historical digression, a mistake, indeed, a new Dark Ages, completely unnecessary, which put Russia and its subject peoples back a good century or more in terms of progress.

I don't understand how a dogmatic western liberal is qualified to make observations about live in the Soviet period and its effect on Russia's development. Talk to any middle-aged person from Russia, and they'll tell you that life in the Soviet period was far superior to the catastrophe the country's endured since 1990. The Soviet period, particularly the period from Brezhnev to Andropov, was the best time in the country's history.

Why does Russia to this day have no manufacturing base to speak of?

Because Russia's economy was destroyed by capitalists in the 1990s, led by the IMF and World Bank. Just in 1992, the country's economy plunged by about 50 percent.

Face it, your country produces almost nothing but oil and natural gas, natural resources that are a pure given, not something you have actually achieved by dint of technological prowess or entrepreneurial talent.

I don't know much about economics, but you are exaggerating in your evaluation of Russia's economy. Russian arms and aviation, for example, are just as good if not superior to what is in the West. My father drove a Volga Gaz when he was a young man in the 1970s, and it was an excellent car.

the brutal Soviet massacre of Polish officers and others at Katyn, suffices to refute your argument.

Polish prisoners were not entirely innocent and it would have been justified to punish them in some form, but it was excessive to have executed them. The killing of the Polish prisoners was analagous, if not more humane, to the aggression Poland unleashed against Russia and Ukraine in 1920.

We all know the Soviet secret police butchered their political prisoners held in Ukraine and the Baltic States as the German armies advanced.

Again, the people held in prisons were not entirely innocent and it was in the interest of the country to get rid of future Nazi collaborators than to let them flee and join the enemy's side.

The Communist movement is dead. Particularly in Russia, by the way.

Actually, the Communists in Russia are the most viable opposition in Russia.

Soviet era as the golden age of Russia, do you really think that the time of Stalin, gulags, KGB and so on was a golden age?...sincerely I don't see nothing of positive in all this.

The country experienced unprecedented economic, social, and cultural progress. The soviet system functioned for the interests of the people, not for the owners of capital and international monopolies. People sought and lived meaningful, productive lives in the interest of strengthening the country's development and their own standard of living. There was genuine democracy in the soviet era, as one cannot get fired from a job under socialism for criticizing management. You wouldn't see homeless people on the streets of Moscow as you do today or sleazy, filthy products of the West such as discotheques, night clubs, and McDonalds.

, here is what happened to Russia’s greatest writers during your so-called “golden age” of the Soviet empire:

Few of those authors you named produced works of artistic quality and inspirational content. As for genuinely great Russian writers, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov, Tolstoy, Fadeyev, Ostrovsky, Fedin, Georgi Markov, Leonov, Bednyi, Serafimovich, just to name a few, achieved great critical success during the soviet era.

[RichC]

and in it it's written that about 200,000 people were executed

This book cites sources saying that the estimates of repressed people buried in Bykivnia ranges from 6,329 to 6,783. During the war, the German occupiers shot and buried at least 7000 in the region.

Zvezda, the book that you quote, above, The Voices of the Dead, actually says that researchers have already identified over 10,000 names of those executed despite official estimates of 6,329 - 6,783.  It also goes on to say in the next sentence, "Some suspect that as many as 50,000 - 150,000 are buried there."    The book you cite does not appear to offer a great deal of support for the lower numbers you favor...

I think it's creepy that you still use the word "repressed" in your posts as a euphemism for killing.

[Zvezda]

Zvezda, the book that you quote, above, The Voices of the Dead, actually says that researchers have already identified over 10,000 names of those executed despite official estimates of 6,329 - 6,783.  It also goes on to say in the next sentence, "Some suspect that as many as 50,000 - 150,000 are buried there."    The book you cite does not appear to offer a great deal of support for the lower numbers you favor...

I am not interested in the conclusions of the author or his interpretations of data. He doesn't make observations as to which estimate is correct, but cites various sources. There is no basis for these clearly inflated estimates of 200,000, but the figures are probably in the 6000 - 10,000 range.

[Elisabeth]

Zvezda, I find it very interesting that you didn't dispute my main points: 1) that you are a "dyed-in-the wool Stalinist and Russian nationalist" and 2) an ethnic Russian living in a former Soviet republic and hankering after the so-called glorious days of the Soviet empire.

I don't understand why you continue to make things up about my background. I have roots in the former USSR, but I am not of Russian nationality and I live in America.

Which would certainly explain why you regard the Soviet period as a "golden age" when most knowledgeable people in this world recognize it was a historical digression, a mistake, indeed, a new Dark Ages, completely unnecessary, which put Russia and its subject peoples back a good century or more in terms of progress.

I don't understand how a dogmatic western liberal is qualified to make observations about live in the Soviet period and its effect on Russia's development. Talk to any middle-aged person from Russia, and they'll tell you that life in the Soviet period was far superior to the catastrophe the country's endured since 1990. The Soviet period, particularly the period from Brezhnev to Andropov, was the best time in the country's history.

Why does Russia to this day have no manufacturing base to speak of?

Because Russia's economy was destroyed by capitalists in the 1990s, led by the IMF and World Bank. Just in 1992, the country's economy plunged by about 50 percent.

Face it, your country produces almost nothing but oil and natural gas, natural resources that are a pure given, not something you have actually achieved by dint of technological prowess or entrepreneurial talent.

I don't know much about economics, but you are exaggerating in your evaluation of Russia's economy. Russian arms and aviation, for example, are just as good if not superior to what is in the West. My father drove a Volga Gaz when he was a young man in the 1970s, and it was an excellent car.

the brutal Soviet massacre of Polish officers and others at Katyn, suffices to refute your argument.

Polish prisoners were not entirely innocent and it would have been justified to punish them in some form, but it was excessive to have executed them. The killing of the Polish prisoners was analagous, if not more humane, to the aggression Poland unleashed against Russia and Ukraine in 1920.

We all know the Soviet secret police butchered their political prisoners held in Ukraine and the Baltic States as the German armies advanced.

Again, the people held in prisons were not entirely innocent and it was in the interest of the country to get rid of future Nazi collaborators than to let them flee and join the enemy's side.

The Communist movement is dead. Particularly in Russia, by the way.

Actually, the Communists in Russia are the most viable opposition in Russia.

Soviet era as the golden age of Russia, do you really think that the time of Stalin, gulags, KGB and so on was a golden age?...sincerely I don't see nothing of positive in all this.

The country experienced unprecedented economic, social, and cultural progress. The soviet system functioned for the interests of the people, not for the owners of capital and international monopolies. People sought and lived meaningful, productive lives in the interest of strengthening the country's development and their own standard of living. There was genuine democracy in the soviet era, as one cannot get fired from a job under socialism for criticizing management. You wouldn't see homeless people on the streets of Moscow as you do today or sleazy, filthy products of the West such as discotheques, night clubs, and McDonalds.

, here is what happened to Russia’s greatest writers during your so-called “golden age” of the Soviet empire:

Few of those authors you named produced works of artistic quality and inspirational content. As for genuinely great Russian writers, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Sholokhov, Tolstoy, Fadeyev, Ostrovsky, Fedin, Georgi Markov, Leonov, Bednyi, Serafimovich, just to name a few, achieved great critical success during the soviet era.

Fine, Zvezda, we'll just believe that you're a Russian living in the US, for the nonce, even though in the past you have inadvertently given away that you are of Russian extraction and at some point at least lived in the former Armenian republic.

You ask, how dare I speak of what the Soviet Union was like? For numerous reasons. First, I am an educated person and I have read the scholarly literature. Second, I am married to a person who grew up in the former Soviet Union and I am friends with numerous Russians who now live in the United States. Third, I actually visited the Soviet Union in July and August 1991, and let me tell you, it was the most dysfunctional society I have ever seen. You will blame this on Gorbachev, of course, but the ruination and general disarray of both Moscow and St. Petersburg had obviously taken much longer than a mere six years to come into existence. The USSR represented culture shock in a big way for American college students back in the 80s and early 90s. Just to give one example, the state-owned stores offered next to nothing in the way of variety, sometimes (as in the summer of 1991) the shelves were simply bare, and everyone knows that Soviet citizens had to queue for goods imported from the West that were all the more valuable because they were otherwise simply unattainable in the Soviet Union.

But I don't know why I bother with you, frankly, because you seem to live in a kind of dreamland, a never never land of nostalgia, all your hopes pinned on some resurrection of the Soviet empire - complete with enemies or potential enemies who deserve to be shot, I suppose? Well, Zvezda, please explain to me why, if you live in the United States and you evince the sort of anti-democratic, indeed anti-American sentiments that you do - tell me why the United States government shouldn't just arrest you and shoot you as a potential enemy? According to your logic, we'd be perfectly within our rights. After all, you are preaching Communism and Russian imperialism and both are detrimental to American interests.

But then, nothing you write makes any sense from a rational point of view, only from an ideological one. Speaking of which, Communism is dead in the former USSR, everyone knows it apparently except you. Limonov represents the last vestiges of that dead religion and has turned himself into a living caricature allied with the Reds. Because he knows as apparently everybody but you knows that the political wave of the future in Russia is fascism. I think you might actually find a home there, Zvezda. Demagogues like Aleksandr Dugin preach about the mightiness of the Soviet empire and the need for Russia to reassert itself against its external and internal enemies (foreigners, in other words, or ethnic minorities). Maybe you could become a Eurasianist neo-fascist like him?

[Zecharia]

Zvezda, the book that you quote, above, The Voices of the Dead, actually says that researchers have already identified over 10,000 names of those executed despite official estimates of 6,329 - 6,783.  It also goes on to say in the next sentence, "Some suspect that as many as 50,000 - 150,000 are buried there."    The book you cite does not appear to offer a great deal of support for the lower numbers you favor...

I am not interested in the conclusions of the author or his interpretations of data. He doesn't make observations as to which estimate is correct, but cites various sources. There is no basis for these clearly inflated estimates of 200,000, but the figures are probably in the 6000 - 10,000 range.

Can you tell me, how old you are?  If your father drove a car in 1970, your family must be rich. Why would they escape from great Soviet republic

[RomanovsFan4Ever]

The country experienced unprecedented economic, social, and cultural progress. The soviet system functioned for the interests of the people, not for the owners of capital and international monopolies. People sought and lived meaningful, productive lives in the interest of strengthening the country's development and their own standard of living. There was genuine democracy in the soviet era, as one cannot get fired from a job under socialism for criticizing management. You wouldn't see homeless people on the streets of Moscow as you do today or sleazy, filthy products of the West such as discotheques, night clubs, and McDonalds.

Ok, basically you're saying that the Soviet system was right and that the west was wrong, I received the message.  , I have no doubt that the western culture wasn't totally right, but you said that there was a genuine democracy in the Soviet era, and I'm sorry but this is wrong.
Also, are you sure that the number of homeless people of modern day Russia is higher than the number of homeless during the Soviet era?...hmmm, I have a doubt about this. 
The Soviet Union denied the existence of homeless within its territories, but I don't believe in this.