Author Topic: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site  (Read 34933 times)

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Zecharia

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #60 on: August 09, 2009, 09:42:58 PM »
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My grandfather was a cobbler and was relatively wealthy compared to workers. But owning a car was not rare. In the 1980s, there were 70 cars per 1000 people, meaning that about one-third of all families owned a car.

What you could remember about sovet (communist era)?  Only what your parents told you. ::)
I was only 15 years old when Sovet occupated in 1968 my country and belive me I would never forgive them.  They ruined Czechoslovakia and never apologise for the demage >:( :(

Elisabeth

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #61 on: August 10, 2009, 05:05:58 AM »
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and the post-Soviet Russian Federation continues to produce nothing noteworthy (or for that matter valuable) but natural gas and oil.
Why do you keep on making these kind of sweeping generalizations about subjects you know little about? Soviet-era Russia produced products of excellent quality such as airplanes, ships, tractors, and motor vehicles. My experience with Soviet-era consumer goods such as a sewing machine have been generally positive. My mother's sewing machine is as old as I am and still works fine.

Zvezda, you know as well as I do that at the end of World War II the Soviet army, when it swept over and took over Eastern Europe and in particular eastern Germany, appropriated (i.e., stole) every piece of new technology it could get its hands on, and this included entire factories which were shipped back to the USSR and reassembled. The fact of the matter is, the USSR almost always lagged behind the West in terms of cutting-edge technology, despite geniuses like Korolev (and he, like a lot of outstanding Soviet scientists of the era, spent considerable time in the camps - Stalin was never one to appreciate real genius, or maybe he was just acutely envious and suspicious of it).

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After all, he put Germans back to work
Any positive aspect of the German economy in the 1930s came largely at the expense of the liquidation of the hard-won gains of the working people. Real wages in the 1930s, for example, declined considerably.

Zvezda, I was not defending Hitler. I was being sarcastic. In the same way that you are blind to Stalin's faults, plenty of Hitler apologists are blind to his.
« Last Edit: August 10, 2009, 05:12:55 AM by Elisabeth »

Offline Janet Ashton

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #62 on: August 10, 2009, 05:12:26 AM »

Those who suffered under these regimes tended to be the very best and the very brightest - the flower of their respective nations - so no wonder that Germany today has no arts or sciences scene worthy of its pre-1933 incarnation, and the post-Soviet Russian Federation continues to produce nothing noteworthy (or for that matter valuable) but natural gas and oil.

While I hesitate to wade into this thread, I do disagree with you on this final point. I've no dispute with what you say about the artists who suffered under these regimes, but I do have to observe that Soviet-era scientific research was considered of great importance in the west, and knowledge of German is thought to be almost indispensable in scientific research today, because of the quality and quantity of the material published in that language. THis may be a testimony to how well the country bounced back after 1945, rather than evidence that dictatorial regimes had encouraged it as well in self-interest, of course, but it is still true.
Post-Soviet Union, the quality of scientific publishing in the former Soviet area has certainly declined, though.
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many; they are few.

Elisabeth

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #63 on: August 10, 2009, 05:20:59 AM »

Those who suffered under these regimes tended to be the very best and the very brightest - the flower of their respective nations - so no wonder that Germany today has no arts or sciences scene worthy of its pre-1933 incarnation, and the post-Soviet Russian Federation continues to produce nothing noteworthy (or for that matter valuable) but natural gas and oil.

While I hesitate to wade into this thread, I do disagree with you on this final point. I've no dispute with what you say about the artists who suffered under these regimes, but I do have to observe that Soviet-era scientific research was considered of great importance in the west, and knowledge of German is thought to be almost indispensable in scientific research today, because of the quality and quantity of the material published in that language. THis may be a testimony to how well the country bounced back after 1945, rather than evidence that dictatorial regimes had encouraged it as well in self-interest, of course, but it is still true.
Post-Soviet Union, the quality of scientific publishing in the former Soviet area has certainly declined, though.

Well, you may very well be right about the sciences in Germany, Janet, I admit I'm not a sciences person. However, it seems to me the Germans no longer win as many Nobel Prizes as they used to in this field (having forced into exile most of their sterling geniuses, like Alfred Einstein, back in the 1930s). And as for the arts... well, Germany is not exactly stellar in this field. For example, I think most Americans would be hard-pressed to come up with more than a handful of German writers or artists who have made a name on the international scene in the last half-century or so. Certainly there is nothing comparable to the virtual renaissance of the arts - literature, painting, film, etc. - that took place under the Weimar government in the 1920s.

As for post-Soviet science, everybody who was anybody got out of Russia when they could, mainly in the early 1990s. The same thing happened in other academic fields. This is why Russian universities are so poor in quality today that they no longer even rank in international lists of the top universities around the world. Yes, that's right, not a single Russian university makes the list nowadays. Precisely because the most eminent professors fled that country as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed and they were able to get out. As one of my Russian literature professors told me, "I didn't want to leave. I love my country. But I had to be practical and think of my child's welfare."
« Last Edit: August 10, 2009, 05:31:30 AM by Elisabeth »

Alixz

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #64 on: August 10, 2009, 11:10:52 AM »
Albert Einstein.

I have stayed out of this because it is not anywhere close to what my area of interest is and I know very little about life after Lenin in the Soviet Union.

As for Germany, many of the best scientific minds of the 20th century came out of Germany in the 1930s. 

And that is how the US managed to build the atomic bomb before the Soviets.  The Germans had done most of the work in heavy water experiments during the 1940s

Before the Japanese and other Asian countries took over in the area of autos, Germany had the best minds there as well.  The Autobahn is one of the best cambered roads in the world.

Who flooded the market in small cars?  Germany with the Volkswagen Bug in the 1970s, but that was invented in the 1930-40 during the post Wiemar days.


Elisabeth

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #65 on: August 11, 2009, 04:21:24 AM »
Albert Einstein.

I have stayed out of this because it is not anywhere close to what my area of interest is and I know very little about life after Lenin in the Soviet Union.

As for Germany, many of the best scientific minds of the 20th century came out of Germany in the 1930s.  

And that is how the US managed to build the atomic bomb before the Soviets.  The Germans had done most of the work in heavy water experiments during the 1940s

Before the Japanese and other Asian countries took over in the area of autos, Germany had the best minds there as well.  The Autobahn is one of the best cambered roads in the world.

Who flooded the market in small cars?  Germany with the Volkswagen Bug in the 1970s, but that was invented in the 1930-40 during the post Wiemar days.

Hey, Alixz, do you know who first drew up the basic design for the Volkswagen? It was Adolf Hitler himself (one must admit, as painful as it is to do so, that like his henchman Albert Speer, Hitler was a talented designer - now, if only he had gone into design and left politics alone!). I know Jewish Americans who refuse even to this day to consider buying Volkswagen Bugs for that very reason. And who can blame them? Because basically it's Hitler's car, his "gift" to the masses.

Mercedes Benz had an interesting television commercial a few years ago, a kind of historical retrospective of their company. Only one thing was wrong - they entirely left out the 1930s and 40s, when they had a very warm and close relationship with the Third Reich. Again, I know Jewish Americans who would never dream of buying a Mercedes.
« Last Edit: August 11, 2009, 04:28:02 AM by Elisabeth »

Alixz

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #66 on: August 11, 2009, 08:38:41 AM »
Yes, I did know that.  Volkswagen means "people's car".  Like Henry Ford, Hitler wanted a car in every garage.  He also insisted, like Eisenhower did in the US after the war, that Germany needed a good road system, hence, the Autobahn.

I left that out because I didn't want to begin a discussion of Hitler and his faults and his crimes.

I wanted to keep it to Germany and the Germans and their contributions.

« Last Edit: August 11, 2009, 08:42:19 AM by Alixz »

RomanovsFan4Ever

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #67 on: September 29, 2009, 12:04:25 PM »
I don't know if this is the right place for this...however, I'm curious to know if anyone have seen the movie Katyn, about the Katyn massacre ordered by the Soviets in 1940 in Poland, directed by Andrzej Wajda...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Katyn_movie_poster.jpg

I have seen it a few days ago, it's a good movie (although it's very impressive).
 
« Last Edit: September 29, 2009, 12:06:42 PM by RomanovsFan4Ever »

Zecharia

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #68 on: September 29, 2009, 09:35:13 PM »
Also an interesting book is Gulag Archipelago.         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

RomanovsFan4Ever

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Re: Communist crimes - Link to a Web Site
« Reply #69 on: September 30, 2009, 07:47:27 AM »
Also an interesting book is Gulag Archipelago.         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

It's definitely an excellent book in my opinion, I read that book, I had the fortune to find it in the library of my university (I think that I will buy it since I descovered that it's easily available here in Italy), it deserves to be in my personal library, indeed a precious historical document.