Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder.

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
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Roland
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Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder.

#1

Post by Roland » 21 Aug 2002, 14:46

I have noticed a dengerous deniel of communist crimes from some members on this forum. I hope this site will answer many unansvered questions:

http://vip.latnet.lv/lpra/KOMUNISMS.html

Best regards!

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Phil V
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#2

Post by Phil V » 21 Aug 2002, 15:05

This is going to start another lengthy thread full of arguments and insults I would imagine.


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Marcus
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#3

Post by Marcus » 21 Aug 2002, 15:19

Max,

I hope that your prediction in regard to insults will prove incorrect.

/Marcus

Roland
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#4

Post by Roland » 21 Aug 2002, 15:35

I did not post this site for insults. I just like to know that the other (forgotten) side of history is being researched and understood properly. I thought that Holocaust denial is not allowed on this forum. So I realy hope that this is including communist crimes too...

Best regards, Roland.

atkif
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#5

Post by atkif » 21 Aug 2002, 16:37

Unfortunetly it is indeed the very bloody page in history ( And right, not
only Russian history).The most frightening fact that no criminals who
participated in this slaughter were held responsible.Many , many former
CHEKA,NKVD ,OGPU ,KGB people directly involved in mass shootings,arrests,abusing human rights of the concentration camps prisoners are still alive ,enjoing impunity .
Sad but Germany really tried to persecute the war criminals as opposite to Russia where almost no attempts were made..

Quote :"How can we understand all this killing by communists? It is the marriage of an absolutist ideology with the absolute power. Communists believed that they knew the truth, absolutely. They believed that they knew through Marxism what would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness. And they believed that power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be used to tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and rebuild society and culture to realize this utopia. Nothing must stand in the way of its achievement. Government--the Communist Party--was thus above any law. All institutions, cultural norms, traditions, and sentiments were expendable. And the people were as though lumber and bricks, to be used in building the new world.

Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths. The irony of this is that communism in practice, even after decades of total control, did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made their living conditions worse than before the revolution. It is not by chance that the greatest famines have occurred within the Soviet Union (about 5,000,000 dead during 1921-23 and 7,000,000 from 1932-3) and communist China (about 27,000,000 dead from 1959-61). In total almost 55,000,000 people died in various communist famines and associated diseases, a little over 10,000,000 of them from democidal famine. This is as though the total population of Turkey, Iran, or Thailand had been completely wiped out. And that something like 35,000,000 people fled communist countries as refugees, as though the countries of Argentina or Columbia had been totally emptied of all their people, was an unparalleled vote against the utopian pretensions of Marxism-Leninism.

But communists could not be wrong. After all, their knowledge was scientific, based on historical materialism, an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature. Marx has shown empirically where society has been and why, and he and his interpreters proved that it was destined for a communist end. No one could prevent this, but only stand in the way and delay it at the cost of more human misery. Those who disagreed with this world view and even with some of the proper interpretations of Marx and Lenin were, without a scintilla of doubt, wrong. After all, did not Marx or Lenin or Stalin or Mao say that. . . . In other words, communism was like a fanatical religion. It had its revealed text and chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers. It had a heaven, and the proper behavior to reach it. It had its appeal to faith. And it had its crusade against nonbelievers.

What made this secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state's instrument of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and, of course, the family.

But communism does not stand alone in such mass murder. We do have the example of Nazi Germany, which may have itself murdered some 20,000,000 Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Yugoslaves, Frenchmen, and other nationalities. Then there is the Nationalist government of China under Chiang Kai-shek, which murdered near 10,000,000 Chinese from 1928 to 1949, and the Japanese militarists who murdered almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Indochinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and others during world War II. And then we have the 1,000,000 or more Bengalis and Hindus killed in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971 by the Pakistan military. Nor should we forget the mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and German citizens from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, particularly by the Polish government as it seized the German Eastern Territories, killing perhaps over 1,000,000 of them. Nor should we ignore the 1,000,000 plus deaths in Mexico from 1900 to 1920, many of these poor Indians and peasants being killed by forced labor on barbaric haciendas. And one could go on and on to detail various kinds of noncommunist democide.

But what connects them all is this. As a government's power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all the corners of culture and society, and as it is less democratic, then the more likely it is to kill its own citizens. There is more than a correlation here. As totalitarian power increases, democide multiplies until it curves sharply upward when totalitarianism is near absolute. As a governing elite has the power to do whatever it wants, whether to satisfy its most personal desires, to pursue what it believes is right and true, it may do so whatever the cost in lives. In this case power is the necessary condition for mass murder. Once an elite have it, other causes and conditions can operated to bring about the immediate genocide, terrorism, massacres, or whatever killing an elite feels is warranted.

Finally, at the extreme of totalitarian power we have the greatest extreme of democide. Communist governments have almost without exception wielded the most absolute power and their greatest killing (such as during Stalin's reign or the height of Mao's power) has taken place when they have been in their own history most totalitarian. As most communist governments underwent increasing liberalization and a loosening of centralized power in the 1960s through the 1980s, the pace of killing dropped off sharply.

Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked. But there is a larger lesson to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology. That is that no one can be trusted with power. The more power the center has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite or impose the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives are to be sacrificed. This is but one reason, but perhaps the most important one, for fostering liberal democracy. "(By R.J. Rummel
' How many did communist regimes murder ?')
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/rummel/com.art.htm

Roland
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#6

Post by Roland » 22 Aug 2002, 05:43

Atkif,

Thank You! Great response!

Best regards!

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#7

Post by atkif » 22 Aug 2002, 14:19

My pleasure Roland.
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart."Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Dan
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#8

Post by Dan » 22 Aug 2002, 14:30

atkif wrote:My pleasure Roland.
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart."Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
Disappointingly mushy from a great man. By this line of thinking we would have to stop removing child rapists from society, because there is no moral difference between them and the rest of us.

atkif
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#9

Post by atkif » 22 Aug 2002, 14:49

I don't think so.
There is no appeal to be lenient to the criminals in this Solzhenitsyn' quote.
This is just recognition of the fact that pretty seldom there are people who are predominantly good or evil.Otherwise we would be angels or devils not humans.
Yes I agree that child rapists are predominantly evil people and must be severely punished.
I don't think that A.Solzhenitsyn would disagree with this either.

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Benoit Douville
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#10

Post by Benoit Douville » 23 Aug 2002, 00:59

Atkif,

You say that Nazi Germany killed about 20 millions Jews??? Last time i chech it was still 6 millions Jews... You also report that the Poles killed about 1 million Germans when they took German Eastern territories at the end of World War II. Do you have some sources to back this up?

Regards

atkif
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#11

Post by atkif » 23 Aug 2002, 01:51

????
8O Where did I say that ? 8O
I brought up the quotation where it is written :" We do have the example of Nazi Germany, which may have itself murdered some 20,000,000 Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Yugoslaves, Frenchmen, and other nationalities"
Notice not only Jews but also "Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Yugoslaves, Frenchmen" which make up 20 millions.
Then it was not me who said this .It was R.J. Rummel in his book
" How many did communist regimes murder "
Next time please read carefully before jumping to conclusions and critisizing.
Regards.
P.S.
If you disagree with the numbers concerning the number of the Germans killed by the Poles then you can bring up the facts which would upset this writer's statement .

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Benoit Douville
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#12

Post by Benoit Douville » 23 Aug 2002, 02:32

I apologize, you did included others nationality in the 20 millions that you mention that were murdered.

I still disagree with the numbers of this author concerning the killing of the Germans by the Poles.

Regards
Last edited by Benoit Douville on 29 Aug 2002, 05:18, edited 1 time in total.

atkif
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#13

Post by atkif » 23 Aug 2002, 02:39

Again it was not me who included other nationalities :)
Somehow I also doubt the writer's number concerning Poles.
However I don't know any other good sources to verify this information.
I would be interested to compare ..
Cheers

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Cantankerous
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Re:

#14

Post by Cantankerous » 22 Aug 2020, 04:02

Benoit Douville wrote:
23 Aug 2002, 02:32
I apologize, you did included others nationality in the 20 millions that you mention that were murdered.
Regards
Most of the 20 million killed died during the Holodomor in the Ukraine, northern Caucasus, and Kazakhstan.

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