|
What was the last great Russian leader since 1917? (pg. 2)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Dopey |
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
the number is 40mil not less maybe a little more |
source or stfu
| quote: | Originally posted by metalgearsolid
Death is the only cure for like 20 percent of the population. That is why I said stalin |
so you want to kill 20% of the population of Russia? |
|
|
| ogvh5150 |
There's no sense in my voting for someone Russian/Soviet.
What also doesn't make sense is people voting for Stalin even though they were -50 years too young to know him. |
|
|
| shaolin_Z |
No offense, but should the title be more like "Which Russian leader was the Greatest tool since 1917?"
Note: That applies to virtually every country, and virtually every leader, if not all. |
|
|
| Lilith |
| I think Gorbachev did an admirable job during the lead up and transition of communist/democracy, but he really wasnt around long enough to do much past that. |
|
|
| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dopey
source or stfu
|
Of course I also watched this on the history channgel:declassified
| quote: | | Stalin murdered about 43,000,000 citizens and foreigners |
http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/2005/04/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder.html
| quote: |
so you want to kill 20% of the population of Russia? |
sure. |
|
|
| metalgearsolid |
| quote: | Originally posted by shaolin_Z
No offense, but should the title be more like "Which Russian leader was the Greatest tool since 1917?"
Note: That applies to virtually every country, and virtually every leader, if not all. |
What do you mean by tool? Please explan. |
|
|
| Capitalizt |
Lavrenty Beria was the greatest Russian, because he poisoned Stalin to death.
:stongue: |
|
|
| Krypton |
| Gorbachev was the progressive soviet premier who the west could deal with. |
|
|
| Krypton |
| There are 50% more communists than I really thought were here...:p |
|
|
| Magnetonium |
Yeah, sure, Stalin was a great leader :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Courtesy of Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
| quote: | Between 1936 and 1938, three Moscow Trials of former senior Communist Party leaders were held. The defendants were accused of conspiring with the western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism.
The first trial was of 16 members of the so-called "Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre," held in August 1936, at which the chief defendants were Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, two of the most prominent former party leaders. All were sentenced to death and executed.
The second trial in January 1937 involved 17 lesser figures including Karl Radek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov. Thirteen of the defendants were eventually shot. The rest received sentences in labor camps where they soon died.
The third trial, in March 1938, included 21 defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites", led by Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Communist International, former Prime Minister Genrikh Ganhofra, Christian Rakovsky, Nikolai Krestinsky and Genrikh Yagoda. All the leading defendants were executed.
There was also a secret trial before a military tribunal of a group of Red Army generals, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky, in June 1937.
|
| quote: |
PURGE OF THE ARMY
The purge of the army removed three of five marshals (then equivalent to 6-star generals), 13 of 15 army commanders (then equivalent to 4- and 5-star generals), eight of nine admirals (the purge fell heavily on the Navy, who were suspected of exploiting their opportunities for foreign contacts), 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars. |
| quote: |
THE WIDER PURGE
Eventually almost all of the Bolsheviks who had played prominent roles during the Russian Revolution of 1917, or in Lenin's Soviet government afterwards, were executed. Out of six members of the original Politburo during the 1917 October Revolution who lived until the Great Purge, Stalin himself was the only one who survived. Four of the other five were executed. The fifth, Leon Trotsky, went into exile in Mexico after being expelled from the Party but was murdered by a Soviet agent in 1940. Of the seven members elected to the Politburo between the October Revolution and Lenin's death in 1924, four were executed, one (Tomsky) committed suicide and two (Molotov and Kalinin) lived. Of 1,966 delegates to the 17th Communist Party congress in 1934 (the last congress before the trials), 1,108 were arrested and nearly all died. |
| quote: |
REHABILITATION
The Great Purges were denounced by Nikita Khrushchev, who became the leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin's death. In his secret speech to the 20th CPSU congress in February 1956 (which was made public a month later), Khrushchev referred to the purges as an "abuse of power" by Stalin which resulted in enormous harm to the country. In the same speech, he recognized that many of the victims were innocent and were convicted on the basis of false confessions extracted by torture. To take that position was politically useful to Khrushchev, as he was at that time engaged in a power struggle with rivals who had been associated with the Purge, the so-called Anti-Party Group. The new line on the Great Purges undermined their power, and helped propel him to the Chairmanship of the Council of Ministers.
Starting from 1954, some of the convictions were overturned. Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other generals convicted in the Trial of Red Army Generals were declared innocent ("rehabilitated") in 1957. The former Politburo members Yan Rudzutak and Stanislav Kosior and many lower-level victims were also declared innocent in the 1950s. Nikolai Bukharin and others convicted in the Moscow Trials were not rehabilitated until as late as 1988, and Leon Trotsky himself was never rehabilitated. |
| quote: |
According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,366 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day.[1] Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet Repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million - i.e. about a million – which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. He also states that this is the estimate which should be used by historians and teachers of Russian history. [3]
Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable. [4] [5] [2][3] For example, Sovietologist Robert Conquest suggests that the probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but some two and a half times as high. He assumes that the KGB was covering its tracks by falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims. |
| quote: |
At least two Soviet commissions investigated the show-trials after Stalin's death. The first was headed by Molotov and included Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Suslov, Furtseva, Shvernik, Aristov, Pospelov and Rudenko. They were given the task to investigate the materials concerning Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky and others. The commission worked in 1956–1957. Because it included people like Molotov and Kaganovich, it could not have been objective, and, while stating that the accusations against Tukhachevsky et al. should be abandoned, they failed to fully rehabilitate the victims of the three Moscow trials, although the final report does contain an admission that the accusations have not been proven during the trials and "evidence" had been produced by lies, blackmail, and "use of physical influence". Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, and others were still seen as political opponents, and though the charges against them were obviously false, they could not have been rehabilitated because "for many years they headed the anti-Soviet struggle against the building of socialism in USSR".
The second commission largely worked from 1961 to 1963 and was headed by Shvernik ("Shvernik Commission"). It inclued Shelepin, Serdyuk, Mironov, Rudenko, and Semichastny. The result of the hard work consisted of two massive reports, which detailed the mechanism of falsification of the show-trials against Bukharin, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky, and many others. The commission based its findings in large part on eyewitness testimonies of former NKVD workers and victims of repressions, and on many documents. The commission recommended to rehabilitate every accused with exception of Radek and Yagoda, because Radek's materials required some further checking, and Yagoda was a criminal and one of the falsifiers of the trials (though most of the charges against him had to be dropped too, he was not a "spy", etc.). The commission stated:
Stalin committed a very grave crime against the Communist party, the socialist state, Soviet people and worldwide revolutionary movement... Together with Stalin, the responsibility for the abuse of law, mass unwarranted repressions and death of many thousands of wholly innocent people also lies on Molotov, Kaganovich, Malenkov....
However, soon Khrushchev was deposed and the "Thaw" ended, so most victims of the three show-trials were not rehabilitated until Gorbachev's time.
|
And above are just the political executions.
Here's still many supporters of Stalin:
Thousands pay respects to Stalin
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2822029.stm
| quote: |
The lists - naming about 40,000 people - were posted on the group's website, after Memorial consulted the official presidential archives.
Memorial said the documents of the 1937-38 purges were original, and that Stalin's signature clearly appeared on all the lists of people that were ordered to be killed.
Stalin died on 5 March 1953, but it was not until his famous denunciation by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 that the process of rehabilitation of his victims slowly began.
Archive material deflating the cult of Stalin began trickling out when the then Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, launched his programme of greater openness, glasnost, in the late 1980s.
Historians estimate that up to 20 million people perished in Stalin's purges which began with the Soviet peasantry and continued to include intellectuals and military leaders.
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGPU
| quote: |
Perhaps the most spectacular success of the GPU/OGPU was the Trust Operation, 1924-1925. GPU agents contacted emigrés in western Europe and pretended to be representatives of a large group working for the overthrow of the communist regime, known as the "Trust". Exiled Russians gave the Trust large sums of money and supplies, as did foreign intelligence agencies. The Trust finally succeeded in luring one of the leading anti-Communist operators, Sidney Reilly, into Russia to meet with the Trust. Once he was in Russia, he was captured and killed. The Trust was dissolved, and it became a large propaganda success. |
So many innocent people died in Gulag concentration camps ... more than Hitler's camps. There were camps all over Soviet Union. You guys should read Solzhenitsin's books.
In addition to that, Stalin was a moron for ignoring intelligence warnings that Hitler ordered Operation Barbarossa.
"From the Soviet point of view Britain was a poor and unreliable partner, certainly not worth the risk of war with Germany. So when the British government sent warnings of a Nazi military build-up in the spring of 1941 - something Soviet intelligence knew early on anyway - Stalin, ever suspicious, thought it a ruse to drag the Soviet Union into war. And Nazi disinformation was designed to increase Stalin's suspicions."
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2890
| quote: |
As Nazi forces prepared for an assault, Stalin took specific steps to make his forces vulnerable to them. On one occasion, he countermanded a military commander's orders partially to black out naval bases and airfields, and on another he refused to prepare antiaircraft guns to shoot down German reconnaissance planes overflying Soviet territory. Indeed, when some of those planes had to land, they were repaired and given a full tank of gas for their return journey; in one case, when a border unit downed a German spy plane, killing two, the Soviets apologized to Berlin for the incident and punished the soldiers involved. |
| quote: |
Only at noon did the Soviet foreign minister declare war. Soviet forces, the German chief of staff recorded in his diary, were "tactically surprised along the entire front."[13] Their unreadiness permitted the Germans to win an immense initial advantage, one that cost the Soviet Union uncounted millions of lives over the next four years. |
| quote: |
The warnings began in January 1941, with a U.S. government alert based on information from Berlin; this was confirmed by further American admonitions, letters from Winston Churchill, and a wide range of Soviet sources (including embassy sources in Berlin, the brilliant Richard Sorge reporting from Tokyo, and others). By late March, Moscow was steeped in rumors of approaching disaster. In perhaps a unique act of diplomacy, the German ambassador to Moscow on 19 May revealed the date of his government's invasion plan. One defector from the Nazi forces who told of an imminent invasion was ignored; another was summarily executed for spreading disinformation. In all, the Kremlin received one hundred or more separate warnings of a Nazi assault.
Beyond these diverse and authoritative sources, Soviet commanders at the front could see for themselves the massive German preparations. The Nazi assault forces, prepared over a ten-month period, ranged along an 1,800-mile front from the Baltic coast to the Black Sea; the Ostheer included 3.2 million men (out of a total German force of 3.8 million), 600,000 trucks and 600,000 horses, 7,000 artillery pieces, 3,350 tanks, and over 2,000 airplanes. In all, "Few nations have been better warned of impending invasion than the Soviet Union in June 1941."[4]
Yet Stalin chose to ignore, in both public and private, all this information.[5] To every alarmed piece of news he had roughly the same reply sent down: "Don't panic. Take it easy. ‘The boss' knows all about it." On Saturday evening, 21 June, Soviet military leaders spent a "quite ordinary" evening going to the theater or engaged in other amusements; security offices were nearly empty. Stalin dismissed reports of imminent attack as "panicking to no purpose"[6] and himself may have watched a movie.
Over the years Stalin had taken many steps to win the Nazis' confidence. As the German ambassador in Moscow correctly reported back, "Stalin has set himself the goal of preserving the Soviet Union from a conflict with Germany."[7] Already in 1938, during the Czechoslovak crisis, he seemed eager to show the Nazi leadership that no Soviet forces were moving toward Czechoslovakia. He went out of his way punctiliously to fulfill every commitment made in the non-aggression pact. In 1940, as Nazi forces rolled west, he adopted an anti-French and anti-British line. Soviet intelligence agents in Germany had to work under a uniquely restrictive set of instructions, while Stalin passed on some of the warnings he received (including at least one from Churchill) to the Germans. So complete was Stalin's goodwill that full trains loaded with Soviet goods were entering Nazi-held territory even as the German assault began (and despite the Germans' having stopped making deliveries months before).
|
Plus there are many sources to confirm that Stalin knew of Hitler's preparations to attack Soviet Union, but dismissed them as propaganda and lies, and sent some of the agents to their deaths:
http://www.politicalreviewnet.com/p...6_011_19319.asp
| quote: |
Soviet military intelligence first thought it had detected German preparations for an attack a whole year before it happened, before indeed Hitler had initially declared it to his own military. Throughout the following twelve months, however, Moscow received precise information about the German buildup and the dispositions. There was never any mystery as to the military preparations. The difficulty arose in deciphering the intentions. Here Gorodetsky punctures a cherished myth about ignored Western warnings: “the Soviet intelligence community preceded its Western counterparts in providing precise and accurate information on German intentions” (p. 130). Eleven days, indeed, after Hitler had ordered Operation Barbarossa, Stalin had a fairly good account of it. By mid-March, he even knew the concrete German war plans. Alas, he also had conflicting information that for various reasons made more sense. Troop dispositions, for example, could be interpreted in terms of Hitler’s thrust southward through the Balkans to the straits and Turkey, in other words as a move against the British. In any case, to attack the Soviet Union before Britain had been defeated made no sense. Berlin reinforced this mistaken notion with disguising moves such as the resumption of the air raids against London and disinformation that rumors of an eastward attack were British disinformation. Furthermore, the massive buildup that began in December did not accelerate until March and was not absolutely undeniable until the latter part of April. And at that stage, another appealing scenario came forcefully into play: the idea of a split within the German ruling order, Hitler himself still being undecided. Consequently, there had to be room for political maneuver and bargaining. Meanwhile, extreme caution in every military matter was imperative. The radar screen was also put on even higher alert for any British attempts to induce the Soviet Union to enter into conflict.
|
http://gozips.uakron.edu/~mcarley/Gorodetskyreview.html
| quote: |
he profoundly mistrusted Britain and suspected that the British
government was attempting to drag the Soviet Union into the war, allowing
the British to escape the main burdens of fighting. In the worst case
scenario, Britain might attempt to conclude a separate peace with Nazi
Germany. Stalin's suspicions were not lessened by Winston Churchill's
appointment as prime minister in May 1940, for whatever Churchill said
about fighting to the finish, there were advocates of appeasement still in
government who might displace him. And Stalin feared that Churchill would
be content to let the Soviet Union do most of the fighting, a suspicion
justified in large measure by subsequent actual events. While Britain did
seek to embroil the Soviet Union in the war, it could not offer the real
support which might have swayed the always calculating Stalin into
changing directions. For the British were barely able to avert defeat in the
summer and autumn of 1940, and the British army was repeatedly beaten by
the Wehrmacht in north Africa and the Balkans in 1941. From the Soviet
point of view Britain was a poor and unreliable partner, certainly not worth
the risk of war with Germany. So when the British government sent
warnings of a Nazi military build-up in the spring of 1941 -- something
Soviet intelligence knew early on anyway -- Stalin, ever suspicious, thought
it a ruse to drag the Soviet Union into war. And Nazi disinformation was
designed to increase Stalin's suspicions. |
There's so much information out there to implicate Stalin as one of the worst leaders ever. To those who think he was Russia's greatest leader since 1917, you might as well conclude that Hitler was Germany's greatest leader of that century as well (Hitler had concentration camps too, he was a terrible dictator, invaded other lands, etc.)
Stalin's alleged successes came at ultra-high costs. When someone points a gun to your head, YOU WILL build a factory in one month. Absenteesm was made punishable. Millions of people died of hunger, executions, camps, war mistakes, etc. Stalin was the worst leader of Russia ever. Any other leader seeing Hitler's buildup on his borders would have done something about it. |
|
|
| Capitalizt |
But he was a lefty so all is forgiven by many.
Viva la revolution!
As Stalin often said, "Workers of the world...DIE...err...UNITE!" |
|
|
| Aquadyne |
| quote: | So many innocent people died in Gulag concentration camps ... more than Hitler's camps. There were camps all over Soviet Union. You guys should read Solzhenitsin's books.
In addition to that, Stalin was a moron for ignoring intelligence warnings that Hitler ordered Operation Barbarossa.
"From the Soviet point of view Britain was a poor and unreliable partner, certainly not worth the risk of war with Germany. So when the British government sent warnings of a Nazi military build-up in the spring of 1941 - something Soviet intelligence knew early on anyway - Stalin, ever suspicious, thought it a ruse to drag the Soviet Union into war. And Nazi disinformation was designed to increase Stalin's suspicions." |
I wish you'd start verifying your facts. This is grossly incorrect. No more than 2 million perished in Stalin's camps in 25+ years while under Hitler over 5 million Jews (and not counting others) perished in less than 10 years.
| quote: | Plus there are many sources to confirm that Stalin knew of Hitler's preparations to attack Soviet Union, but dismissed them as propaganda and lies, and sent some of the agents to their deaths:
|
There are no such sources. There is no verifiable and confirmable proof that is true.
| quote: | There's so much information out there to implicate Stalin as one of the worst leaders ever. To those who think he was Russia's greatest leader since 1917, you might as well conclude that Hitler was Germany's greatest leader of that century as well (Hitler had concentration camps too, he was a terrible dictator, invaded other lands, etc.)
Stalin's alleged successes came at ultra-high costs. When someone points a gun to your head, YOU WILL build a factory in one month. Absenteesm was made punishable. Millions of people died of hunger, executions, camps, war mistakes, etc. Stalin was the worst leader of Russia ever. Any other leader seeing Hitler's buildup on his borders would have done something about it. |
Yeah, except that you're missing a key point:
Hitler lost.
Stalin won. |
|
|
|
|
