How Has Lenin Affected You Or Your Families Life ?

[James1941]

The Soviet Union was not the only nation to use "relocation" to solve a complex political and economic problem. We in the United States used 'relocation' also as a means to adjust messy situtations. We called our relocation centers "Indian Reservations." And, the results of such relocations were just as deadly and tragic for the people involved. If you doubt it read about the Cherokee's Trail of Tears.
The British also used 'relocation' as a military and political means. Under that great imperial policeman Kitchner of Khartoum thousands of Boer women and children were 'relocated' to detention camps, called concentration camps, as a means of depriving the Boer guerillas the means of getting food and supplies. And in these camps the death toll was horrendous. Hitler remarked that his camps were in immitation of the British camps in South Africa. But of course the British won that war and this atrocity was soon forgotten.
And, have we forgotten the Russian monarchy's forceable attempts at "Russification", particularly in Finland. The Finns had an dependent system with their own language, and they were loyal Russians. That is until Alexander III came along. Just read what he did in Finland. Maybe the Soviets just read the history of their own country when it came to forcing nationalities to give up their native tongues.
There are plenty of other examples of governments using relocation of recalcitrant populations and the results were just a horrible for the victims. This doesn't justify the Soviet actions but it doesn't make them unique in history.
And, we musn't forget the Belgian atrocities in the Congo. And Belgium is one of the nicest countries in the world. Every society has skeletons hidden in its closet.

[lexi4]

The Soviet Union was not the only nation to use "relocation" to solve a complex political and economic problem. We in the United States used 'relocation' also as a means to adjust messy situtations. We called our relocation centers "Indian Reservations." And, the results of such relocations were just as deadly and tragic for the people involved. If you doubt it read about the Cherokee's Trail of Tears.
The British also used 'relocation' as a military and political means. Under that great imperial policeman Kitchner of Khartoum thousands of Boer women and children were 'relocated' to detention camps, called concentration camps, as a means of depriving the Boer guerillas the means of getting food and supplies. And in these camps the death toll was horrendous. Hitler remarked that his camps were in immitation of the British camps in South Africa. But of course the British won that war and this atrocity was soon forgotten.
And, have we forgotten the Russian monarchy's forceable attempts at "Russification", particularly in Finland. The Finns had an dependent system with their own language, and they were loyal Russians. That is until Alexander III came along. Just read what he did in Finland. Maybe the Soviets just read the history of their own country when it came to forcing nationalities to give up their native tongues.
There are plenty of other examples of governments using relocation of recalcitrant populations and the results were just a horrible for the victims. This doesn't justify the Soviet actions but it doesn't make them unique in history.
And, we musn't forget the Belgian atrocities in the Congo. And Belgium is one of the nicest countries in the world. Every society has skeletons hidden in its closet.

James,
Don't forget the centers set up in the U.S. for the Japanese during WW II. I appreciate your mention of the Trail of Tears, my great grandmother was part of that relocation.
Lexi

[AGRBear]

 Zvezda,

When I first joined this forum there was a group of pro-communists spouting their  age old facts which Stalin and his  comrads wanted the Russians and the rest of the world to believe.   It little mattered what I wrote and used as sources,   they just refused to believe them,  and, now, I can make a sure bet that you will, also.  But here goes another attempt to disclosed the truth.

One of the topics we went into was that of the  two famines ( the first   in the early 1920 and  the second starvation early 1930s.  I gave the estimated  number of people  who died between 1920 and 1935.  Your fellow conrades gave their numbers,  which were very low,  and what Stalin wanted us to believe.  However, slowly but surly the facts have been collected.  For example,  just in one area Tirraspol and one Catholic diocese which had 352,000 souls some 100,000 starved to death.  And with each area and each group, be it religious or ethnic,  the numbers grew  and grew and grew....   5 million then to 10 million then to 25 million....  ?? million....

Stalin and his comrades blamed the "drought".   A  drought  did occured in 1921.  But was this drought different than other droughts?  If just speaking of the weather, then the answer is: "  No."  It was not different.  Then what was different and what created the famine? 

In the fall of 1918 the Bolsheviks'  oganization called the Soviet Food Commissarian who granted the "worker columns"  the right to  collect food from the peasants whenever they wished,  and there was no limit as to how much they could take....  To the peasants this "was the largest wholesale looting operations in history"   wrote Joseph S. Height in his book Paradisse on the Steppe p. 322.  Exactly how much did they loot?  Half a million tons in 1918.  Two million tons in 1919.  1920 almost six million tons.  And,  when this occured they not only took a huge amount they didn't leave the farmer anything in his  storage which would have been used for  farther bad harvests or what we called "those rainy days".   Added to this,  it wasn't just the grain,  the looters took the seeds.... the horese,  the cows,  the sheep, even the chickens....

When there was nothing left to loot,  the Bolsheviks took the village men, lined them up and with machine guns killed them in hopes to scare other farmers into revealing their hiding places because they couldn't seem to understand there was nothing left.....

If you do not believe me,  then you do not believe the truth of what occured.

If you claim there was terrible injustices by everyone,  the starving people really can't put up much of a fight  ....

This is how it worked before the insanity and greed of the Bolsheviks:

p. 329:

In the days of the Czar there used to exst in all the German colonies a wonderful institution-- the communal wheat storage granary.  In periodical years of poor harvest there occured a scarity of food,  epsecially bread, fr the poor people.  But no one ever died of starvation, because in the years of plenty every farmer had to deliver a certain part of his wheat crop into the communal granary.  When there was a poor year, these reserves were divided among the needy.  But no such reserves were avaiable under the Bolshevikst regime of reckless exportation.

I haven't even mentioned  Stalin's "Five Year Plan" or his deportation of the peasantry into forced labor camps.  Stalin took the farmer who knew how to be productive and sent them off to Siberian labor camps....   Left were the peasants who had little knowledge of the land and how to grow crops and if they did they weren't given seeds because there wasn't any.... and,  they needed horses or oxen to till the soil and there were few of them around....

In order to protect the loot from the starving peasants,  Stalin hired "agents of justice".  I believe the number is estimated to have been about 700,000  men.    This resulted in Stalin being able to export seven hundred and ninteen thousand tones of wheat in 1931, which is called a "famine year",  while Russians  were hungry and dying... And in 1933 which is called a "famine year",  Stalin sent an addtional one million, eight hundred thousdand tons abroad to pay for te import of industrial equipment.

We have no idea how many Russians starved to death in 1931 to 1933.

As you can see,  the drought s  of 1921  and 1931 were  not the real reason that about 50 million people died in Russia of starvation from 1920 to the 1930s.

AGRBear

[Belochka]

Zvezda,

When I first joined this forum there was a group of pro-communists spouting their  age old facts which Stalin and his  comrads wanted the Russians and the rest of the world to believe.   It little mattered what I wrote and used as sources,   they just refused to believe them,  and, now, I can make a sure bet that you will, also.  But here goes another attempt to disclosed the truth.

One of the topics we went into was that of the  two famines ( the first   in the early 1920 and  the second starvation early 1930s. 
When there was nothing left to loot,  the Bolsheviks took the village men, lined them up and with machine guns killed them in hopes to scare other farmers into revealing their hiding places because they couldn't seem to understand there was nothing left.....

If you do not believe me,  then you do not believe the truth of what occured.

If you claim there was terrible injustices by everyone,  the starving people really can't put up much of a fight  ....

AGRBear

Bear I must thank you for presenting this tragic image as to how the soviet masters acted against its own citizens.

This one example of social engineering was a controlled political exercise that lead to deprivation to sustain human life with death as its final outcome.

It was a calculated act of genocide.

Margarita

[Elisabeth]

  As you can see,  the drought s  of 1921  and 1931 were  not the real reason that about 50 million people died in Russia of starvation from 1920 to the 1930s.

AGRBear

I agree entirely with all your reasoning, Bear, but the numbers you give are far too high. I don't think there's any need to exaggerate what were by any definition catastrophic human tragedies.

Orlando Figes gives the number of people who starved to death during the 1921-22 famine as approximately 5 million.

We will probably never have a completely accurate number of the deaths from starvation during the Terror Famine of 1931-32. But back in the 1960s, in a report submitted to the Politburo by the KGB on Khrushchev's orders, the number of victims of the Terror Famine was given as 7 million. This appears to have been the (un)official number.

A further million Soviet citizens starved to death in the great famine that followed World War II. This famine could have been alleviated and possibly even prevented if Stalin had only accepted the Marshall Plan - instead he refused it not only on behalf of the Soviet Union but also on behalf of all the other countries of the Soviet bloc.

[Zvezda]

In the fall of 1918 the Bolsheviks'  oganization called the Soviet Food Commissarian who granted the "worker columns"  the right to  collect food from the peasants whenever they wished,  and there was no limit as to how much they could take.... 

It should be taken into consideration that in 1918 and 1919, the Bolsheviks were not even able to collect necessary grains for the hungry northwest because the grain-producing regions of Ukraine, North Caucasus, Sibir, and much of the Volga were under the control of the Germans, Denikin, Kolchak, and the Cossacks. During the civil war, the Reds, Whites, and even Greens collected grain from the peasantry. The Bolshevik policy of grain collections was no different than the one of the Tsars during the 1914-16 period.

1914: 67.8 milllion tons produced; 5 million tons collected
1915: 74.3 million tons produced; 8.2 million tons collected
1916: 62.5 to 65.5 million tons produced; 8.9 million collected

There is incomplete production data for 1918 and 1919 because the Bolsheviks did not have control of the main grain producing regions. Nevertheless, collections by the Bolsheviks were a mere fraction of collections by the Tsarist regime. This refutes the claim that the Bolsheviks' procurements of grain contributed to famine. It was declining agricultural production alone caused by drought and breakdown of infrastructure that brought to famine.

1918: 1.8 million tons collected
1919: 3.5 million tons collected
1920: 44.5 million tons produced; 5.9 million tons collected
1921: 38 million tons produced; 3.8 million tons collected

Source: The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, ed. R.W Davies, Mark Harrison, and S.G Wheatcroft

We have no idea how many Russians starved to death in 1931 to 1933.

Of course we do. The declassified archival figures are available here:

Ukraine: 1.54 million
North Caucasus: 305 thousand
Volga: 275 thousand
Central Black Earth Region: 140 thousand
Total: 2.2 million excess deaths in 1932-33

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/deaths.xls

[Tania+]

Again it seems for you Zvezda, you love to quote numbers, but place no real sincere empathy, nor consideration to the vast horrifying numbers of human beings killed outright by the Soviets. Yes, you are a true communist, and probably an ex member of the politburo, able to gain access to records, and statistics as no other on this board. You may have had a captive nation for a while, but to date, you do not have nor hold here a captive audience, nor in membership to your views, etc. !

I see that you excel, and in all probability are overjoyed to show that you are able to share such shamefilled understandings.
By your successive postings, you are a reminder to all of the terrible representation that the Soviet Government posed to all countries, but more so to the people themselves of Russia.

But again, i must sincerly convey my sincere thanks to A.G. R. Bear, Elizabeth, Lexi and others for continuing to stand firm by continuing to offering proof of the realities, and truth which concerns the truth on these issues to date.

Tatiana+

[AGRBear]

  As you can see,  the drought s  of 1921  and 1931 were  not the real reason that about 50 million people died in Russia of starvation from 1920 to the 1930s.

AGRBear

I agree entirely with all your reasoning, Bear, but the numbers you give are far too high. I don't think there's any need to exaggerate what were by any definition catastrophic human tragedies.

Orlando Figes gives the number of people who starved to death during the 1921-22 famine as approximately 5 million.

We will probably never have a completely accurate number of the deaths from starvation during the Terror Famine of 1931-32. But back in the 1960s, in a report submitted to the Politburo by the KGB on Khrushchev's orders, the number of victims of the Terror Famine was given as 7 million. This appears to have been the (un)official number.

A further million Soviet citizens starved to death in the great famine that followed World War II. This famine could have been alleviated and possibly even prevented if Stalin had only accepted the Marshall Plan - instead he refused it not only on behalf of the Soviet Union but also on behalf of all the other countries of the Soviet bloc.

Dashkova

The number of 25 million was not my own.
On p. 385 of The White General by Richard Luckert

Also go to the following URL for more information in the encyclopedia than what follows the URL:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Russian%20Civil%20War
" At the end of the Civil War, Soviet Russia was exhasted and ruined. The droughts of 1920 and 1921 and the frightful famine during that last year added the final, gruesome chapter to the disaster. In the years following the originally "bloodless" October Revolution, epidemics, starvation, fighting, executions, and the general breakdown of the economy and society  had taken something like twenty million lives. Another million had left Russia -- with General Wrangel, through the Far East, or in numerous other ways - rather than accept Communist rule, the emigres included a high proportion of educated and skilled people. War Communism might have saved the Soviet government in the course of the Civil War, but it also helped greatly to wreck the nation's economy. With private industry and trade proscribed and the state unable to perform these functions on a sufficient scale, much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. It has been estimated that the total output of mines and factories fell in 1921 to 20 per cent if the pre-World War level, with many crucial items experiencing an even more drastic decline. Production of cotton, for example, fell to 5 per cent, iron to 2 per cent, of the prewar level. The peasants responded to requisitioning by refusing to till their land. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to some 62 per cent of the prewar area, and the harvest yield was only about 37 percent of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle from 58 to 37 million during the same span of time. The exchange rate of the US dollar, which had been two rubles in 1914, rose to 1,200 in 1920."

AGRBear

Had taken about 20 million lives up to the end of the Civil War which was what 1921 the year of the first drought.

AGRBear

[AGRBear]

On p. 385 of The White General by Richard Luckert is written:  "There are no casually lists for the time period known in most history books as the Russian Civil War 1918-1922.  More men and women died through the famine, disease, and reprisals than as a direct consequence of military action.  The toal number of deaths can only be approximately estimated:   twenty-five million is a possible figure.  Half a million died in the Siberian retreat, half a milion were killed by the Cheka...."  The number killed by the Whites is constantly debated because of Soviet propaganda.  The number killed by the White may have reached as high as 500 thousand....  There were, also, the "Greens" who killed a large number....  The Allies [USA, Great Britian, others] may have kept records but that number is, also, unknown.
AGRBear

[AGRBear]

Here are some of the numbers the pro-communist  poster had  given:

Ok, I still don't understand how you arrived at the 25 million figure (of course, it goes without saying that a single death is too many).  The quote from the other thread states there are no definite figures for the time period.

However, here are several scholars views based on their own research for the period (roughly) between 1917-1922:

Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9 000 000
Eckhardt: 500,000 civ. + 300,000 mil. = 800,000
Readers Companion to Military History, Cowley and Parker, eds. (1996) [http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/mil/html/mh_045400_russiancivil.htm]:
Combat deaths: 825,000
Ancillary deaths: 2,000,000
TOTAL: 2,825,000
Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998)
Civil War and Volga Famine (1918-22): 3,000,000 to 5,000,000
Brzezinski, Z:
6 to 8 million people died under Lenin from war, famine etc.
Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History by Norman Lowe (2002)
TOTAL: 7,000,000 to 10,000,000
Red Army
Battle: 632,000
Disease: 581,000
Whites: 1,290,000 battle + disease
White Terror: "tens of thousands"
Red Terror
Executed: 50-200,000
Died in prison or killed in revolts: 400,000
Typhoid + typhus
1919: 890,000
1920: >1M
Urlanis:
Military deaths: 800,000
Battle deaths, all sides: 300,000
Dead of wounds: 50,000
Disease: 450,000
Civilians: 8,000,000
TOTAL: 8,800,000
Dyadkin, I.G. (cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993)
9 million unnatural deaths from terror, famine and disease, 1918-23
Richard Pipes, A concise history of the Russian Revolution (1995): 9 million deaths, 1917-1922
Famine: 5M
Combat: 2M
Reds: 1M
Whites: 127,000
Epidemics: 2M
not incl.
Emigration: 2M
Birth deficit: 14M
Rummel:
Civil War (1917-22)
War: 1,410,000 (includes 500,000 civilian)
Famine: 5,000,000 (50% democidal)
Other democide: 784,000
Epidemics: 2,300,000
Total: 9,494,000
Lenin's Regime (1917-24)
Rummel blames Lenin for a lifetime total of 4,017,000 democides.
Figes, Orlando (A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, 1997)
10 million deaths from war, terror, famine and disease.
Including...
Famine (1921-22): 5 million
Killed in fighting, both military and civilian: 1M
Jews killed in pogroms: 150,000
Not including...
Demographic effects of a hugely reduced birth-rate: 10M
Emmigration: 2M
McEvedy, Colin (Atlas of World Population History, 1978)
War deaths: 2M
Other excess deaths: 14M
Reduced births: 10M
Emmigration: 2M
MEDIAN: Of these ten estimates that claim to be complete, the median is 8.8M-9.0M.
PARTIALS:
Small & Singer (battle deaths, 1917-21)
Russian Civil War (Dec.1917-Oct.1920)
Russians: 500,000
Allied Intervention:
Japan: 1,500
UK: 350
USA: 275
France: 50
Finland: 50
Russian Nationalities War (Dec.1917-Mar.1921)
USSR: 50,000
Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: a History of the Russian Civil War 1918-1921
Death sentences by the Cheka: ca. 100,000
Pogroms: as many as one in 13 Jews k. out of 1.5M in Ukraine [i.e. ca. 115,000] (citing Heifetz)
Nevins, citing Heifetz and the Red Cross: 120,000 Jews killed in 1919 pogroms [http://www.west.net/~jazz/felshtin/redcross.html]
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): Cheka responsible for maybe 250,000+ violent deaths.
Paul Johnson
50,000 death sentences imposed by the Cheka by 12/20
100,000 Jews killed in 1919
Green, Barbara (in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?)
4 to 5 million deaths in the famine of 1921-23

[Justine]

Thanks for this AGRBear. But I learnt at school that in civil war died about 25 million people-as you wrote. I can't belive in those numbers given by comunists. When was comunist's governement(sp?) they often lie to people. And I don't like comunism-my Granny and Grandpa's family were killed by bolsheviks, and they never could give their reall names they were always afraid that someone could know who they were. Even today I don't know many things about my family, I don't even know my Granny's reall name. They still don't want to talk about the past. And that's all because of Lenin.

[Trevor]

They all affected my families life and history. My grandmother lived in Estonia and had to leave her home during the war as the most powerful man in Estonia at the time took it over and she moved into the prime ministers summer home in sweden and waited for my grandfather to meet her their. Well long story short he tried to make it for my aunt's birthday but she had to leave and he got there to late and was captured. Hitler affected my oma in many many ways and i remember the story's she used to tell, they were very sad. Also the russian revolution affected my great grandparents.

[Zvezda]

V.I. Lenin was a great proletarian revolutionary and thinker, continuer of the cause of Marx and Engels, and the leader and teacher of the working people of the entire world. Not since Marx had the proletarian struggle for emancipation given the world a thinker and leader of the working class of Lenin’s stature. He combined scientific genius, political wisdom, and perspicacity with great organizational ability, an iron will, courage, and daring. He had a boundless faith in the creative powers of the popular masses, was close to them, and enjoyed their total confidence, love, and support. All of Lenin’s activity embodied the organic unity between revolutionary theory and practice. As leader and man Lenin possessed a selfless devotion to communist ideals and to the cause of the party and of the working class and a supreme conviction of the righteousness and justice of that cause. He subordinated every fact of his life to the struggle for the emancipation of the toilers from social and national oppression. He loved both his homeland and was a consistent internationalist. Intransigent toward the class enemy, he had a touching concern for comrades. He was highly exacting toward himself and others and was morally pure, simple, and modest.

Concerning my personal life, my family moved from Beirut to the Armenian SSR in circa 1947. My father's side of the family was quite prosperous because my grandfather was a prominent black marketer. My mother's was not nearly as wealthy, but still lived rather comfortably. My father's family fled in trying to flee the authorities went back to Beirut in the early 1970s and then moved to the United States after the war broke out. My mother's side of the family went to the United States in 1980. Although my family sought and lived decent lives, they were dissatisfied at the degree of discrimination that the native-born population held towards the immigrants.

[AGRBear]

Lenin was a socialist turned communist and a "thud" who became a ruthless dictator,  NOT a hero,  as the communist tried so hard to create in their history books.



AGRBear

[ferngully]

thud?