No Stalin, no Hitler?

[Elisabeth]

IMHO, it's quite obvious from the historical record that Stalin was an anti-Semite, and a particularly vicious one at that.

This is an oversimplification. Zhores Medvedev concludes that Stalin was not anti-Semitic as much as he was hostile to Zionism, which were seen as a threat to the country. The Soviet Government was opposed to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism and Stalin made many public statements to that effect. Stalin was surrounded by Jewish officials.

Yes, let us by all means take the word of an outsider like Zhores Medvedev over that of Stalin's own daughter, Svetlana. Towards the end of World War II, her Jewish lover, the journalist and war correspondent Aleksei Kapler, was arrested by Stalin's secret police for being, as Stalin told her personally, a "British spy." But let Svetlana relate her confrontation with her father in her own words:

"'Writer!' he [Stalin] muttered. 'He can't write decent Russian! She couldn't even find herself a Russian!' Apparently the fact that Kapler was a Jew was what bothered him most of all" (Twenty Letters to a Friend, p. 181).

It's also a patent falsehood that the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was "Zionist," as you put it. Their sin in Stalin's eyes was not only that they were Jewish, but that they persisted in maintaining contacts with foreign Jews even after the war had ended.

Solomon Mikhoels, the great and internationally renowned director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater, was brutally murdered by Stalin's thugs in 1948. His body was run over by a car so that it would look as if his death had been an accident. Mikhoels was not by any stretch of the imagination a "Zionist." Nor were most if not all of the other illustrious members of the wartime Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee who were subsequently put on trial and murdered by Stalin in cold blood.

You know, you and Robert really have a double standard where Hitler and Stalin are concerned. You hold Hitler to much higher standards than you do Stalin. Stalin could murder millions, and yet, Zvezda, you argue that it was somehow rational and for the greater good. I, on the other hand, would argue that Stalin's fear of so-called Zionists was every bit as irrational and paranoid (and delusional and anti-Semitic) as Hitler's fear of the so-called international Jewish conspiracy.

But then we're forgetting all those Soviet prisoners of war released from German concentration camps, those thousands of soldiers who had somehow managed to survive the mass starvation in Nazi POW camps that killed hundreds of thousands of their comrades in the first years of the war (by the by, did you happen to know, the first batch of prisoners gassed at Auschwitz - the Nazis were testing the effectiveness of Zyklon B - were four hundred Soviet POWs?)... Anyway, most of these men, these survivors of Nazi camps, including death camps, the minute they set foot on the soil of their homeland, were arrested as traitors, collaborators, and/or foreign spies, and dispatched to Soviet (!) slave labor camps. Solzhenitsyn dedicates more than a few pages to their fate in his magnum opus,  Gulag Archipelago.

Was this a "rational" strategy on Stalin's part? If I follow your and Robert's arguments to their logical conclusion, then I have to say yes - not only the kulaks and the right deviationists and the left deviationists and the Jews and the Trotskyites but also the former POWs were all out to get comrade Stalin... Ever heard of a self-defeating proposition? That is, if you regard virtually everyone on earth as your enemy, then they will eventually become your enemy? Hence Stalin's miserable death, left to stew in his own bodily wastes for some 48 to 72 hours without any kind of medical assistance. And according to some contemporary rumors, he collapsed not because of a stroke but because he was actually poisoned. By Beria. Now wouldn't that have been true poetic justice? The ultimate mass murderer... executed by his own chief henchman.

Frankly, it is ridiculous and offensive to deride collective farmers as slaves. A farm boy like Gorbachev could not grow up to be President of his country under a slave-holding system. My uncle and his family lived on a collective farm and they were happy with their lives.

Zvezda, I believe I was very specifically addressing the Stalin era when I said that peasants on collective farms were treated little better than slaves. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin lost close relatives to the brutalities of collectivization. Yeltsin's family in particular can hardly be said to have prospered under Stalin's regime. His recollections of the Stalin era are horrendous.

There was a bit of a turnaround, though, wasn't there, in the state's attitude toward the peasantry and other "dangerous" social classes after Stalin's death in 1953 and Khrushchev's famous speech against the cult of personality in 1956? Some liberalization occurred, yes? Most (not all) political prisoners were freed and peasants on collective farms were given small plots of land (gardens) on which to raise produce for personal use. Life improved a little bit... for those particular "segments" of the population you are otherwise so willing to overlook.

[Robert_Hall]

Elisabeth, Hitler  and Stalin were  two different men with different agendas, so yes, I suppose you could say I have a double standard. How many times have I said Stalin was paranoid?  I do not think anyone could deny his murderous attitudes, but his methods were far different from those of Hitler, were they not?  A few of my Russian friends come from  a collective background, not one of them have said anything negative to me about  their experience.  I know I am a foreigner to them, and they are intensely proud of being Russian, which can have it's good points and bad. Just like anywhere else.
 I am not well read enough to go into an academe treatise, but I do go by the experience the people I know have related to me. And, for some of the older ones, they miss the well ordered society that  Stalin built. The younger ones[well, under 50]  are saddened and dissapointed in the collapse of their society.

[Elisabeth]

Elisabeth, Hitler  and Stalin were  two different men with different agendas, so yes, I suppose you could say I have a double standard. How many times have I said Stalin was paranoid?  I do not think anyone could deny his murderous attitudes, but his methods were far different from those of Hitler, were they not?  A few of my Russian friends come from  a collective background, not one of them have said anything negative to me about  their experience.  I know I am a foreigner to them, and they are intensely proud of being Russian, which can have it's good points and bad. Just like anywhere else.
 I am not well read enough to go into an academe treatise, but I do go by the experience the people I know have related to me. And, for some of the older ones, they miss the well ordered society that  Stalin built. The younger ones[well, under 50]  are saddened and dissapointed in the collapse of their society.

I think murder is murder, plain and simple, and both Hitler and Stalin had the same clear-cut agenda: power, power, power, and then more power. They were narcissistic, selfish personalities to the core, psychopaths or sociopaths or both, whatever you want to call them. They were also extremely gifted and even perhaps geniuses in certain fields. Hitler was a stellar orator and manipulator of men; Stalin seems to have been a very able adminstrator and also, like Hitler, a genius at manipulating the emotions and personalities of the people around him.

As for Russians... My experience has been completely different from yours, but maybe that's because I am of a slightly younger generation. All the young Russians my age (and younger) I met as a student in the old Soviet Union in 1991 were incredibly impatient with the old communist system. They hated it, to the very depths of their being, primarily because it interfered with their talents and their prospects. I remember quite clearly one young woman, an architect, complaining to me about how inefficiently and even stupidly her office was run. She was particularly outraged that a bunch of old fuddy-duddies, who should have been fired for their incompetence long ago, were instead safely ensconced in superior positions. Granted, maybe some of her outrage was the natural product of youthful enthusiasm and impatience with older people. Nevertheless, I found an overall disgust with communism to be the pervasive attitude among the young Petersburg and Muscovite professionals I met during my stay.

And from what I can gather, a similar attitude holds sway among the educated Russian elite even in 2009. Communism is absolutely dead, as far as the intelligentsia, middle class, upper class, and the political leadership is concerned. Any residual nostalgia for Stalin or the old communist order seems to be strictly confined to the working class, and it's largely the product of the new state ideology of Russian nationalism, which vaunts the power of the Russian state as an international political player. According to this new ideology, Lenin was bad but Stalin was good. Try passing that idea off on to any educated Russian person and in my experience all you get is a cynical laugh.

[Robert_Hall]

I would not argue that communism is not a viable economic system. As I have said before, it works only on a very small scale. Even then, it is rather shaky.
 I do, however disagree that Hitler & Stalin were cut of the same cloth. If one wishes to be  very technical about it, Hitler's methods were legal- UNDER THE LAWS OF GERMANY AT THE TIME. Admittedly, those laws were arbitrary and  prejudiced in the most extreme, but, the were promulgated legally, nonethe less. Even if it was a rubber stamp Bundestag, it remained legal and it took the end of the war to abrogate them. { I realise I am treading on very thin ice here].
 Whereas Stalin rarely used the legal aspect and acted on his whims. Tragically, of course.
My own connections to the [former] Soviet Union  go back to student days in the late 60's. Culminating with  several visits in this century.  So, I think I have a fair, if minority, cross section of opinion.  I never visited  Russia under the Soviet regime, but I knew not a few that lived under it. Of course there were complaints- where is there not?

[Zvezda]

My family came from Armenia, a country that has been destroyed by capitalism. It has been 20 years since the restoration of capitalism in that country and the consequences have been disastrous: the GDP level today is still below that of the 1990 level. While Armenia under soviet power achieved a level of development that would normally take hundreds of years to achieve, the country has made no progress in 20 years. In a period of twenty years, the literacy rate increased from 5 to 90 percent. But nearly twenty years after 1990, the city of Leninakan remains in rubble. There has been a catastrophic war with Azerbaijan caused by the national enmity that is inevitable under capitalism. More than one million people or one-third of the popualtion has fled this terror. Imagine if 100 million Americans left their country to find a livelihood in distant lands. Capitalism in Russia has been especially catastrophic.

Hitler and Stalin had the same clear-cut agenda

Any comparison of Hitler to Stalin is to be rejected. This kind of over-the-top moral equivalence is characteristic of a negationist, revisionist, and extreme right-wing propaganda campaign waged in the West and in certain ultra-nationalist countries of east-central Europe. The demonizers of Stalin are more dangerous than his crazy cultists. Although terrible mistakes were made during Stalin's leadership of the Party, in no way can they negate the progress and enlightenment accomplished during socialist construction. It is ungrateful the way ultra right-wingers in the West have been so keen to demonize Stalin when his country proved to be the most steadfast ally of America and England during the war. Without Stalin, perhaps their countries would be under German rule. Stalin is also to be credited for being a dedicated revolutionary who struggled courageously against the tsarist-capitalist yoke, an outstanding internationalist who was a friend to the interntional labor movement, and one of Russia's finest patriots who extirpated her most vicious enemies. After the war, Stalin worked tirelessly to preserve peace. Stalin also rendered invaluable aid to national liberation movements around the world in countries like China and Vietnam.

[Robert_Hall]

Just a few of the major complaints I have listened  to recently, from Russians themsleves i  the the lack of medical care, which was, under the old system, provided for. OAPs are almost forgotten and education  is now quite costly. The military is in a shambles and  only the rich, and tourists can afford  "the good life".  Welcome to capitalism. Of course, we have seen our own system to be a facade as well.

[Elisabeth]

My family came from Armenia, a country that has been destroyed by capitalism. It has been 20 years since the restoration of capitalism in that country and the consequences have been disastrous: the GDP level today is still below that of the 1990 level. While Armenia under soviet power achieved a level of development that would normally take hundreds of years to achieve, the country has made no progress in 20 years. In a period of twenty years, the literacy rate increased from 5 to 90 percent. But nearly twenty years after 1990, the city of Leninakan remains in rubble. There has been a catastrophic war with Azerbaijan caused by the national enmity that is inevitable under capitalism. More than one million people or one-third of the popualtion has fled this terror. Imagine if 100 million Americans left their country to find a livelihood in distant lands. Capitalism in Russia has been especially catastrophic.

Zvezda, I am quite sorry for your and your family and country's tragedy. Of course, it is a tragedy. But it's not entirely or even mostly the fault of "capitalism," or the "West," or whatever other non-Soviet demon you want to blame it on. The fact is that the Soviet Union was completely unviable and unsalvageable by 1991 - economically, politically, and socially. I saw this with my own eyes when I visited the capital cities of the USSR, Moscow and St. Petersburg, as a privileged foreigner. I was, I admit, taken aback by the overall poverty and dilapidation I saw all around me... Don't get me wrong, every capital city in every country has homeless people and bad sections, but to find huge holes in the middle of Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg's main thoroughfare, and cracks in the foundation of the Winter Palace, not to mention scores of little old ladies begging for bread in the streets in the center of Moscow, while nice young college students prostituted themselves to foreigners in and around the Kremlin.... yeah, frankly I was horrified.

It wasn't the evil Western capitalists who did this to the Soviet Union. This is a fact hard for Russians to accept, I realize. But it was Russians themselves who did this to themselves, and to the host of subject peoples who made up the former Soviet Union (including the Armenians - Zvezda, are you actually ethnically Armenian or are you an ethnic Russian born in Armenia?).

Any comparison of Hitler to Stalin is to be rejected. This kind of over-the-top moral equivalence is characteristic of a negationist, revisionist, and extreme right-wing propaganda campaign waged in the West and in certain ultra-nationalist countries of east-central Europe. The demonizers of Stalin are more dangerous than his crazy cultists. Although terrible mistakes were made during Stalin's leadership of the Party, in no way can they negate the progress and enlightenment accomplished during socialist construction. It is ungrateful the way ultra right-wingers in the West have been so keen to demonize Stalin when his country proved to be the most steadfast ally of America and England during the war. Without Stalin, perhaps their countries would be under German rule. Stalin is also to be credited for being a dedicated revolutionary who struggled courageously against the tsarist-capitalist yoke, an outstanding internationalist who was a friend to the interntional labor movement, and one of Russia's finest patriots who extirpated her most vicious enemies. After the war, Stalin worked tirelessly to preserve peace. Stalin also rendered invaluable aid to national liberation movements around the world in countries like China and Vietnam.

Zvezda, I think it's rich that you would identify me as part of a "negationist, revisionist, and extreme right-wing propaganda campaign" to "demonize Stalin." I wasn't aware that it was even necessary to "demonize" Stalin (in case you haven't noticed, you're one of the few people on this earth who doesn't regard him as a mass murderer and the very epitome of evil). I was also unaware that I was an "ultra right-winger" when I've always identified myself as a moderate liberal. I know, we stinking humanists, what have we brought the world to... demonizing that poor persecuted, much abused and misunderstood man Stalin, leader of his people, defender of nations, blah blah blah. Tell me, where do you come from, Zvezda? Since you're so free with the insults, I'd venture to say that you're some poor ethnic Russian stuck in a former Soviet republic who is either out of her mind with nostalgia for the former glory days of the Soviet Union, or else out of her mind on ultra-nationalist, right-wing Russian propaganda. Because that's all you're spouting, the hard right ultra Russian nationalist line, and it's frankly an embarrassment to me and no doubt to most everybody else here.

[Robert_Hall]

Gee, Elisabeth, I hope you do not think me as accusing you you of "tight wing  revisionism".  I think you are fairly liberal and open to opposing thought. By the same token, I also feel  Zvezda is not "spouting" anything but her own opinions. Much the same as I do.
 Just because we may have a different view of Stalin does not mean we  do not listen to others.
 The infrastructure problems you mention, are endemic of the problems  with the collapse of the Soviet system. The people who would take care of potholes on Nevski and cracks in the Winter Palace  are, for the most part- gone. No longer state supported enterprises now must find their own funding. It is happening here as well, is it not?  The same with those "little old ladies" begging on the streets. I was in  Russia when  the OAPs went on a major protest over loosing their subsidies- that was a mess, but Putin gave in. A lot of them are a scam, just like here.
 BTW, have any of  our readers been to the exposition park in Moscow ?  This is really a beautiful place that have showcase pavilions of each of the SSRs. With other exhibitions on science, space  achievements, etc.  Sadly, it is falling into disrepair and is sort of tacky, but still shows some signs of the former USSR's glory. I know full well it was a propaganda piece, but it is still lovely to stroll through. 
However, as this  thread is really supposed to be about Hitler/Stalin,  I understand Hitler had a similar plan in mind for Nuremburg and Linz, long before the Moscow park. His ideas and plans for a grand rebuilding of Berlin were more of a testament to his own ego than Stalin ever came up with. I would say that Stalin's lasting memorial would be the subways, which are indeed a work of art and, well, work!

[Zvezda]

Zvezda, I think it's rich that you would identify me as part of a "negationist, revisionist, and extreme right-wing propaganda campaign" to "demonize Stalin."

I did not identify you as negationist or revisionist. Rather, I was referring to those who spout rubbish such as "Stalin was worse than Hitler." Any comparison of Russia's actions to the Nazis amounts to negationist and revisionist propaganda. Nothing can possibly compare to the Nazis' premeditated, industrialized slaughter of entire nationalities and the imposing of unprecedented destruction on the European continent. To suggest that Stalin can be compared to Hitler effectively amounts to Holocaust denial.

Since you're so free with the insults, I'd venture to say that you're some poor ethnic Russian stuck in a former Soviet republic who is either out of her mind with nostalgia for the former glory days of the Soviet Union, or else out of her mind on ultra-nationalist, right-wing Russian propaganda.

I was not insulting you personally, but was attacking the point of view propagated by ultra-right negationists in the West that Stalin was either equal to or worse than Hitler. I am not a Russian nationalist, but I am of Armenian nationality.

[Terence]

There has been a catastrophic war with Azerbaijan caused by the national enmity that is inevitable under capitalism. More than one million people or one-third of the popualtion has fled this terror. Imagine if 100 million Americans left their country to find a livelihood in distant lands. Capitalism in Russia has been especially catastrophic.

That's ceratinly a different view of history.  Some might blame your hero Stalin as the source of the conflict.
92109: Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict
A clash between the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination is occurring in the Caucasus, creating the longest interethnic dispute in the former Soviet Union. Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, part of Azerbaijan since 1923, seek independence. Armenians comprise the majority in Karabakh and have a different culture, religion, and language than Azeris. Azerbaijan seeks to preserve its national integrity. Sharp differences over history, goals, events, casualties, cease-fires, and the roles of outsiders between Armenians and Azeris hinder mediation. The dispute has been characterized by violence, mutual expulsion of rival nationals, charges and countercharges. Armenian and Azerbaijan government control over combatants, at times, was loose. After the December 1991 demise of the Soviet Union and subsequent dispersal of sophisticated Soviet weaponry, the conflict worsened. Thousands of deaths and 1.4 million refugees have resulted...
A territory approximating today's Karabakh became part of a province of the kingdom of Caucasian Albania in the first century A.D. Armenians remained in the region after their last kingdom in the 11th century. The Persian and Ottoman Empires vied for control in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1805, Russia captured the territory, and, in 1828, the Tsar created an Armenian province that did not include Karabakh. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 provoked ethnic violence. Armenia and Azerbaijan both claimed Karabakh when they became independent in 1918. Soviet dominion over the two republics was established in 1920; each then expelled many rival nationals. Karabakh was ceded briefly to Armenia and, in July 1921, the Transcaucasia politburo voted to join Karabakh to Armenia. Stalin reversed the decision, he said, to further peace among Armenians and Muslims and acknowledge Karabakh's economic tie to Azerbaijan, and reportedly to please Turkey. In July 1923, the region became the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, part of Azerbaijan with a degree of self-rule. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 continued the designation.
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/92-109.htm

T
PS I'll vouch for Elisabeth's liberal credentials also.  If she's an "ultra right-winger" someone gave her the wrong playbook. LOL

[Elisabeth]

I did not identify you as negationist or revisionist. Rather, I was referring to those who spout rubbish such as "Stalin was worse than Hitler." Any comparison of Russia's actions to the Nazis amounts to negationist and revisionist propaganda. Nothing can possibly compare to the Nazis' premeditated, industrialized slaughter of entire nationalities and the imposing of unprecedented destruction on the European continent. To suggest that Stalin can be compared to Hitler effectively amounts to Holocaust denial.

I fear you are spouting the usual obfuscatory nonsense, Zvezda. In case it escaped your attention, in this forum I have repeatedly compared Stalin to Hitler, I am still comparing Stalin to Hitler; furthermore, I plan to continue to compare Stalin to Hitler for as long as I live, because both were brutal dictators who engaged in unprecedented levels of mass murder of their own citizens. Okay? So by your definition that does make me an "ultra-right negationist" and a "revisionist," not to mention someone prey to "Holocaust denial." And by the same token I will continue to call you an ultra-reactionary Russian nationalist who would put Stalin, the mass murderer of millions, on a moral pedestal rather than admit that his and Lenin's empire turned out to be not only a huge mistake but also definitively evil. Indeed, the Bolsheviks destroyed so much, and created so very little, that Russians and their former subjects are still paying for it, whether you realize it or not (for God's sake, look at the demographics, if nothing else).  

You seem to be absolutely clueless about what I stand for, as an individual and a human being. I don't think you've been reading my posts at all attentively.

I was not insulting you personally, but was attacking the point of view propagated by ultra-right negationists in the West that Stalin was either equal to or worse than Hitler. I am not a Russian nationalist, but I am of Armenian nationality.

So, whether you intended to or not, you were insulting me personally. And I don't for a millisecond believe that you're an ethnic Armenian. You might be of Armenian nationality, but that's a totally different thing, as you very well know.

[Elisabeth]

There has been a catastrophic war with Azerbaijan caused by the national enmity that is inevitable under capitalism. More than one million people or one-third of the popualtion has fled this terror. Imagine if 100 million Americans left their country to find a livelihood in distant lands. Capitalism in Russia has been especially catastrophic.

That's ceratinly a different view of history.  Some might blame your hero Stalin as the source of the conflict.
92109: Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict
A clash between the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination is occurring in the Caucasus, creating the longest interethnic dispute in the former Soviet Union. Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, part of Azerbaijan since 1923, seek independence. Armenians comprise the majority in Karabakh and have a different culture, religion, and language than Azeris. Azerbaijan seeks to preserve its national integrity. Sharp differences over history, goals, events, casualties, cease-fires, and the roles of outsiders between Armenians and Azeris hinder mediation. The dispute has been characterized by violence, mutual expulsion of rival nationals, charges and countercharges. Armenian and Azerbaijan government control over combatants, at times, was loose. After the December 1991 demise of the Soviet Union and subsequent dispersal of sophisticated Soviet weaponry, the conflict worsened. Thousands of deaths and 1.4 million refugees have resulted...
A territory approximating today's Karabakh became part of a province of the kingdom of Caucasian Albania in the first century A.D. Armenians remained in the region after their last kingdom in the 11th century. The Persian and Ottoman Empires vied for control in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1805, Russia captured the territory, and, in 1828, the Tsar created an Armenian province that did not include Karabakh. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 provoked ethnic violence. Armenia and Azerbaijan both claimed Karabakh when they became independent in 1918. Soviet dominion over the two republics was established in 1920; each then expelled many rival nationals. Karabakh was ceded briefly to Armenia and, in July 1921, the Transcaucasia politburo voted to join Karabakh to Armenia. Stalin reversed the decision, he said, to further peace among Armenians and Muslims and acknowledge Karabakh's economic tie to Azerbaijan, and reportedly to please Turkey. In July 1923, the region became the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, part of Azerbaijan with a degree of self-rule. The Soviet Constitution of 1936 continued the designation.
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/92-109.htm

T
PS I'll vouch for Elisabeth's liberal credentials also.  If she's an "ultra right-winger" someone gave her the wrong playbook. LOL

Dear Terence, thank you for vouching for me! And thanks for the post in general, which is indeed a prime example of Stalin's nationalities policy. I don't think it's widely known that Stalin presided over a whole host of simmering regional conflicts, more or less guaranteeing that they would endure or even become worse if the Soviet Union ever broke apart. An addition to your example is that Stalin divided Ossetia into North and South, giving the former to the Russian Republic of the USSR, and the latter to the Georgian Republic, thus pretty much ensuring that, if the Soviet Union ever collapsed, Russia and Georgia would come to blows in this region (as indeed they finally did last summer). Stalin was truly diabolical. I've never understood people (especially historians) who denigrate his intelligence and political acumen. He was genuinely brilliant in some ways. So brilliant that he's still causing major problems to this day... over 50 years after his death! As he no doubt intended.

[Zvezda]

your hero Stalin

Stalin is not my hero, for I condemn the excesses, errors, and distortions that arose from his leadership.

Some might blame your hero Stalin as the source of the conflict.

Before the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, there was no ethnic enmity between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. They were like brothers who worked at the same jobs, went to the same schools, and lived in the same apartments. All that changed with the economic catastrophe of 1989-91. To attribute the conflict to the soviets' administrative policies is ridiculous because it is impossible to have territorial divisions in the Caucasus free of problems. The Caucasus has perhaps the most complex demographics in the world. Dagestan alone, for example, is a province with dozens of nationalities. Without the dissolution of the USSR by Yeltsin and his corrupt cronies, my country would have been much better off.

Indeed, the Bolsheviks destroyed so much, and created so very little, that Russians and their former subjects are still paying for it, whether you realize it or not (for God's sake, look at the demographics, if nothing else). 

In 1920, my parents' hometown of Yerevan was little more than a mud village. The Communists turned it into what had been a sophisticated and prosperous city. Concerning demographics, it has solely been a consequence of capitalism. In 1946-47, Armenia with a population of 1.2 million received 150,000 immigrants from Syria, Iran, and the countries of the Balkans. But no one would move to that bananna republic today because everyone is desperate to get out.

[Terence]

Before the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, there was no ethnic enmity between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. They were like brothers who worked at the same jobs, went to the same schools, and lived in the same apartments. All that changed with the economic catastrophe of 1989-91. To attribute the conflict to the soviets' administrative policies is ridiculous because it is impossible to have territorial divisions in the Caucasus free of problems. The Caucasus has perhaps the most complex demographics in the world. Dagestan alone, for example, is a province with dozens of nationalities. Without the dissolution of the USSR by Yeltsin and his corrupt cronies, my country would have been much better off.

You are either woefully ignorant of your own homeland's history or just spouting anti-capitalism propaganda.  While the long-standing ethnic hatred was suppressed under Soviet rule (troublemakers were shot or exiled of course), it was obviously still there.  Since the the Nagorno-Karabakh War started in Feb. 1988 it's nonsense to blame it on economic problems from 1989-91.

The USSR self-destructed, perhaps w/ a little help from the military spending forced upon it by Reagan's strong stand against Soviet tyranny.  If it wasn't Yetsin someone else would have come along.

It's understandable long-suppressed people may have trouble handling freedom at first, but to make capitalism the scapegoat is way off the mark.  Freedom isn't free, it requires hard work and responsibility.

T

[Elisabeth]

Gee, Elisabeth, I hope you do not think me as accusing you you of "tight wing  revisionism".  I think you are fairly liberal and open to opposing thought. By the same token, I also feel  Zvezda is not "spouting" anything but her own opinions. Much the same as I do.
 Just because we may have a different view of Stalin does not mean we  do not listen to others.
 The infrastructure problems you mention, are endemic of the problems  with the collapse of the Soviet system. The people who would take care of potholes on Nevski and cracks in the Winter Palace  are, for the most part- gone. No longer state supported enterprises now must find their own funding. It is happening here as well, is it not?  The same with those "little old ladies" begging on the streets. I was in  Russia when  the OAPs went on a major protest over loosing their subsidies- that was a mess, but Putin gave in. A lot of them are a scam, just like here.

Robert, I guess I was not clear enough, I was in Moscow and St. Petersburg for six weeks in the summer of 1991 - when Gorbachev and the Communist party still reigned, and the Soviet Union was still intact - well, barely. It was obviously rapidly disintegrating, in fact. No thanks to capitalists or what have you, the overall poverty and dilapidation were merely superficial signs of a much deeper, underlying decay, I would even go so far as to say that they were indicative of the rot that had by now overtaken the entire system. And this wasn't just my own impression. Back in the 1980s a virtual task force of Russian scholars in Akademgorodok (Novosibirsk) was recruited by the Soviet government to research the country's economic, social, and demographic prospects. As I recall, the report they came up with was very dire indeed, emphasizing serious, endemic problems. I believe this report only went to the highest officials in the Soviet government (it was understandably top secret as far as the public was concerned), and to my recollection it was one reason why, when Gorbachev came to power, he was so urgent to reform the system as quickly as possible. He and everybody else who mattered in the Soviet leadership probably knew or at the very least feared that the entire edifice they'd built their lives on was on the verge of total collapse.