Georgia blew up a Soviet-era World War II monument in its second city of Kutaisi on last Saturday to make way for a new parliament building. Once again, in a crazed and incomprehensible diatribe, the Russian government indicated it felt that Georgia, a sovereign nation, had no right to destroy the monument — the same position Russia had taken earlier in Estonia. Yet just let any foreign country try to tell Russia what it can and can not do on its own territory (say, Chechnya for example), and all hell breaks loose. This is Russian hypocrisy at its most insane. Tragically, a mother and child who were watching the implosion were killed by stray debris from the blast.
After the jump, photos of the implosion.
La Russophobe 
Bad sign for this country. Yes, and people died.
By the way: Compared to Estonia is absolutely not correct. In Estonia, a monument to Soviet soldiers, and in Georgia, Georgians soldiers who fell in the Second World War.
What’s that supposed to mean? That Georgian soldiers were free and not Soviets during World War II? Perhaps you’re not correct.
Good comment LR.
Many foolish and DISRESPECTED LR! I invite you to come up with a proposal to destroy the monuments of American and British soldiers who fought with Nazi Germany, because they were allies of the USSR damn you!
What about the memorials of the Soviet soldiers who were allies of Nazi Germany (1939-41)?
Interestingle enough, the Finns themselves made this:
Each of the stones here represents one of est. 20,000 Soviet (Russian, Ukrainian and other soldiers) who died in the epic Finnish counterattack against the invading Soviet column at this road.
Forgot that LR need to explain everything as young child. In Estonia, there was a monument to Soviet soldiers liberators. Some Estonians call them”occupants”. That is, there is division in society. And now, LR, attention … question: the Georgians, who died in World War II, in Georgia these Georgians someone occupied?
These “Soviet soldiers liberators” first occupied Estonia (and the other two Baltic countries) in June 1940. Many mass murders and deportations to GULAG death camps followed.
Then Germans came and threw the Russians out. Then Russians returned and re-occupied the three Baltic countries in 1944. Again many mass murders and deportations to GULAG death camps followed. The three countries disappeared from the world map for 50 years! Communist dictatorships were installed. Their economies were ruined. Their cultures were distorted. Their people were dissolved by huge flux of Communist indoctrinated settlers from USSR.
You call THIS a “liberation”???!!!
Do you have any shame left?
P.S.
You say: “Some Estonians call them”occupants”. That is, there is division in society.”
I will add: Not “some”, but “all” Estonians. And the division in society is mostly between the Estonians and the after-WWII Soviet brainwashed newcomers from USSR and their offspring. Who themselves often were the ones who once crushed the independence of the countries they now live in and complain about “lack of respect”. Throughout the most of history they would have found themselves dangling at the lamp posts, nowdays the Baltic countries not only let them stay there, but even let them become naturalized citizens. And still that is not good enough for those ideological followers of Gengis Khan. Disgusting!
I absolutely agree with you.
So You are saying that Georgia had the right to remove a memorial that most people I know considered and eyesore?
Yes, two people died (mother and child) when a pieve of concrete from the memorial struck their house.
However, unlike what happens in Russia, the regional govenor of Kutaisi district (who was in charge of the project) has ALREADY been fired and a criminal invstigation is underway.
In Russia those responsible for criminal negligence are untoucheable, in Georgia they are punished.
BTW, in WW2 Georgia lost over 300,000 men from 700,000 who went to the front, out of a population of around 4,000,000.
However “new-sky”, they have the right to commemorate these men as they see fit.
The memorial was a typical piece of ugly soviet era junk. Georgia’s dead heroes deserve a new (and traditionally Georgian) monument anyway.
They should grind it into little pebbles, and use the pebbles on dirt roads and potholes in the small villages. This way the people can honor the soviet monuments, in all of the territories that were occupied and enslaved by the kremlin, on a daily basis, by walking on them.
Meanwhile, any metal used in soviet statues should be melted down, and given (for free) to the manufactures of toilet tanks and bowls to use for any metal parts in their production. This way, the people of the nations that were occupied and enslaved by the kremlin can honor the secular uncivilized barbarians in the kremlin every day, when they go to the bathroom.
Better idea: take the pebbles and use them to construct a different monument to the suffering endured by the nation under Soviet rule.
And as for the metal, melt it down and cast them as bullets.
LES – oh, great minds think alike, just thought of that myself ;-)
Saakashvili should be strung up for this sacrilege (not to mention attempted genocide and war crimes).
While I am not exactly keen on the demoing myself, perhaps we can arrange it (with Saaks’ approval, of course) provided that Putin and his cabal go first?
Moscow regrets lack of U.S., ex-Soviet states support to anti-racism resolution
Moscow, December 21 (Interfax) – The decision of certain former Soviet republics to abstain from voting on the UN resolution on the impermissibility of racism and xenophobia is disrespectful to those who died in WW2, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Dec. 21.
“Notably, the delegations of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova,
“We are puzzled and upset by the fact that the resolution, which gained support of the overwhelming majority of UN member countries, was turned down by the United States and certain states, including all members of the European Union,” the ministry said.
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/russia/detail/55594/
The relevant part begins at about one third through the document, look for document A/C.3/64/L.53. The draft at least sought to vilify shows of disrespect to old Soviet monuments.
Sure.
Because everyone involved knows very well, that the only real motivation for Russia here is to create a legal base for expanding its political influence resting on the old Soviet heritage.
Russia does not give a hack against racism, as the multitude of racially motivated murders and hate crimes in Moscow alone is proving. Even to the point that few years ago ambassadors of African countries felt forced to make an official announcement. The are afraid to walk the streets of the “peace loving” Russian capital, you see. Afraid for their lives.
Annoying hypocritical old Soviet style demagogy, that is all that there is to it.
Here’s some outside opinion on Estonian stand on WWII:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418670280&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Georgia now does its share in removing unwelcome “how Russia saved our a..” parts from their history (yes I know about Georgian contribution – what would it mean if it wasn’t part of Soviet army?). It’s good there are no monuments from Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian wars left to destroy!
Typical Russian racism “yes I know about Georgian contribution – what would it mean if it wasn’t part of Soviet army”
The monument was to GEORGIAN soldiers who died in WW2, around 300,000 of them, whose contribution would have been significant regardless of wether they served in a separate national army or as part of a larger force.
It was not “Russia that saved our asses” per se.
One, Russia was on the side of Nazi Germany to begin with, and was responsible for starting the war by its joint Russian-German invasion of Poland.
The war was won by a joint effort of the US, British Commonwealth & Empire, and the USSR.
Remove any one of the allies and it would have spelled doom for the others.
Besides, the Russian army would have been useless without all the C-Rations, GMC trucks, Jeeps, Aircraft, Tanks etc (and the fact that the majority of the Luftwaffe was tied down defending Germany from the RAF & USAAF).
Your point is? Georgia was a tiny speck of land that was saved by joint effort of many large forces, foremost of which, de to Georgia being closer to Eastern front and part of USSR, being Soviet army, with relatively insignificant (compared to Soviet/UK/etc ) Georgian forces; these Georgian forces still fought in the army of the USSR.
That’s well documented history, and Germany would have started the war on Eastern front eventually, USSR or not.
Now, Georgia wants to erase part of this history and the whole allied-with/protected-by Russia thing. Hence my point about previous wars.
LR mentioned “same position as Estonia” –
(un?)fortunately, Saakashvili doesn’t have his own genocidal nazi barbarians to glorify like Estonians that are pointed out in an article by Israeli author that I posted – otherwise he’d obviously follow their example; still, while not as barbaric his action are of the same type – rewriting history full speed.
A. Again, this hinges upon the assumption that the Georgians were slated for genocide (granted, this is the 3rd Reich, so it hardly is unjustified, but to the very best of my knowledge the Germans never really made a plan for it or even got a firm consensus that they would do it).
B. Again, the question of what role Georgia played in the USSR. It was hardly an ally, or at least an ally in any conventional sense, given its forced entrance and its dominance by Moscow (again, with the terror of the 20’s). At best, it could be claimed to be a satellite state of some sorts. At worst, it was simply another conquered province with only superficial sovereignty. In any event, Georgians have a genuine bone to pick over hosting the memorial of the force that occupied them (it must be remembered that that memorialization includes losses from the 1919-20’s “guerrilla war” against Georgian nationalists), even considering the Georgian losses (again, most of whom were pressed into service against their will in the occupying army) it also commemorates.
C. Finally, the Estonians don’t have their “genocidal nazi barbarians” to glorify EITHER. Yes, they raised an SS unit during the war. However, after the war, when we were combing through the records and checking out who deserved a hanging within the Third Reich’s ensemble, the Estonian (and indeed, the entire Baltic) SS units were acquitted, because it was judged that they had behaved according to the rules of war, and thus were not tainted with the same sins that the normal SS units were. And Moscow raised absolutely no objections to this. Hell, the Estonian members of the SS unit were even at Nuremburg. As GUARDS. And ALL parties involved AGREED to this. THAT should tell you something.
“Hell, the Estonian members of the SS unit were even at Nuremburg. As GUARDS. And ALL parties involved AGREED to this. THAT should tell you something.”
It is interesting that you mention it. Actually you can read about it here: http://www.lettia.lv/en_a_legionari-nirnberga.html.
It is about both the Estonian and Latvian former Waffen SS men who served with the Allies as guards at Nuremberg.
It is striking to see photos of the men today called by Russian propaganda “murderous Nazi SS war criminals” wearing USA and British uniforms and guarding former Nazi bosses at Nuremberg prison together with Americans, and guarding US Army headquarters in Stutgart too.
They even guarded the Berlin Airlift! I guess they were happy to do so.
Funny that the real Soviets actually never called all of the Baltic Waffen-SS soldiers “Nazi criminals”. All that started after Russia contracted that “resurgency” hydrophobia under Putin.
Ugly.
“rewriting history full speed”
Oh, yes!
“Rewriting” the history so painstakingly fabricated by KGB specialists in special “historical research institutes” over the Soviet years is a serious crime indeed!
Especially in Putin’s Russia.
…those were my points. Which of them does your comment disprove?
Yes, all that “Saving of Georgia”.
Funny how after only two years of Russian occupation (1810-1812) the people of west Georgia (Kindom of Imereti) were so fed up they asked the Turks for assistance.
Russia and its empire were and are a cancer, of exactly the same stripe as Nazi Germany.
As for destroying monuments, Russia had a habit of doing that too. How many cultural monuments, and memorials to the dead did you scum destroy in places like Georgia, Ukraine, eastern europe?
A recent example is the destruction of Georgian Churches and gravestones in Abkhazia many of which date from the 5th century AD.
Besides, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, whats the difference?
Hint, the Germans killed less people than the Russians.
In all due fairness to the USSR, Germany did it faster and in a more industrialized fashion, which opens the question of how the death tolls would have looked like had Nazi Germany been able to organize the infrastructure in the East like it had in Poland.
Other than that, I agree.
Actually Turtler, that is a bit of a myth.
The Gulags were highly industrialised death camps, just that the Russians preferred to work their political foes to death in order to stretch out the misery, although they did a lot of mass executions too.
The Soviets are estimated to have killed up to 62 million (mid range estimate based on access to KGB archives which have now been shut again).
Sounds pretty industrial to me.
During WW2 the Russians killed more of their own soviet citizens than died in Germanys death camps.
Andrew, for the entire U.S. food aid and military equipment, Russia said a huge thank you from the heart, with plenty of pure gold.
Andrew, do not learn from history illiterate journalists. Read the primary sources, and your opinion at the beginning of the Second World War, the work at least, become more multifaceted and balanced. First, suggest you read: Churchill W.S. The Second World War. — London-Toronto, Cassell and Co Ltd., 1950.
Opinion Churchill, for some reason very different from yours!
Being paid for by gold does not mean the help was ineffective. Applying “Red herring” demagogy tactics, friend?
Part of the reason is because even if we assume that the USSR saved Georgia from ethnic cleansing by the Germans in WWII (a supposition I am not entirely at odds with), it was done more/or/less as a matter of course rather than as a real objective, and certainly is checked when you consider the Red terror that swept Georgia in the interbellum.
No, the Germans did not consider Georgians to be “untermenschen”.
The only ethnic cleansing done in Georgia was by the Russians, in the 19th, 20th, and now 21st centuries.
@No, the Germans did not consider Georgians to be “untermenschen”.
Btw, an intertesting thing:
http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/1/96
During their occupation of the North Caucasus in late 1942 the German forces found themselves in control of several thousand members of a little-known ethnic group called the Mountain Jews. The Nazi authorities were uncertain, however, whether these were actually “racially” Jews, and let themselves become involved in a drawn-out discussion of the question. Prior to their retreat in 1943 the Germans killed hundreds of the Mountain Jews, but the majority of those who had come under occupation survived thanks to the Germans’ hesitation.
Comparing this to Estonia isn’t entirely correct. Estonians merely moved the monument to what they considered a more appropriate place. That doesn’t even come close to blowing it up.
Also, to say USSR somehow “saved” Georgia or Estonia is retarded and classic Russian chauvinism and imperialist thinking. In exactly what way was Soviet Russia better than Nazi Germany? After Russia had “saved” these countries, they were forced into half a century of Russian imperialist rule and their russification policies. The soviets killed/deported more native populations than Germans had ever even considered possible. So much for the “saving” part.
To
Sergey Shelukhin // December 22, 2009 at 7:19 am | Reply
“Here’s some outside opinion on Estonian stand on WWII:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418670280&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull”
Please do not post this Zuroff bullhsit. He just repeating russian propaganda about Baltic nazism and Waffen SS divisions. These were combat divisions and not involved in war crimes. Latvian Waffen SS soldiers after WWII guarded German war criminals at trial.
to Andrew
About Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia mass murders and other war crimes there are double-dealing from Jews (I`m not against Jews) that only victims of WWII were Jews. That only Nazi Germany committed war crimes. And when someone try to say that Jews were not only victims of WWII then he is labeled “Nazi” and everyone goes mad. It`s like they got monopolized “victim” role.
Mass killing is mass killing. And everyone deserves remembering.
I did not notice many Georgians trying to save this ugly looking carbuncle. which leads me to believe that the Georgian government has the approval of its people. That being the case Georgia as a sovereign nation can do what it likes with these hideous eyesores. As for offending Russian sensibilities my message to them is …“suck it up”.
“BTW, in WW2 Georgia lost over 300,000 men from 700,000 who went to the front, out of a population of around 4,000,000.” – Good comment to LR
Dear? Andrew!
“However, unlike what happens in Russia, the regional govenor of Kutaisi district (who was in charge of the project) has ALREADY been fired and a criminal invstigation is underway.” – You struck me! The president dismissed the regional governor. I think there is democracy, there is a vertical power?
“In Russia those responsible for criminal negligence are untoucheable, in Georgia they are punished.” – First, it is not about Russia, and secondly you possess situation? In Perm know how many officials subject to criminal liability for criminal negligence. In Barnaul, investigations are now global. Do you know how many high-ranking officials immediately with the arrival of the investigative committee with a heart attack in hospital borne?
“The memorial was a typical piece of ugly soviet era junk. Georgia’s dead heroes deserve a new (and traditionally Georgian) monument anyway.” – Author Victory Memorial – Georgian sculptor Merab Berdzenishvili.
After high-profile opposition rallies in the capital of the Georgian authorities decided to move the parliament from Tbilisi to Kutaisi. In Tbilisi, will be held only to meetings of committees and the plenary was planned to hold in Kutaisi. The opposition has openly called it an act of vandalism.
And Merab Berdzenishvili was a favourite of the Soviet government.
His workmis in the typical Soviet style and contains little to nothing that is traditionally Georgian.
I live in a part of Tbilisi that mostly supports the opposition, and all my nieghbors are glad the eyesore is gone.
Most Georgians want ALL memory of the Russian occupation of their country GONE NOW!!
As for your retarded comments about the Perm incident. Yeah yeah yeah, heard it all before.
It’s always the same ir Russia, when it comes to criminal negligence and corruption, you are all talk and no action.
Proof that those actually at fault, like the city or regional govenor, are being held accountable, rather than fairy tales about heart attacks please child.
The Regional govenor was fired from his job in Kutaisi, those responsible for carrying out the demolition have been arrested for safety violations.
“The Russian government needs to work out a strategy. It needs to attack,” Kadyrov said. “Georgia, South Ossetia, Ukraine, all this will go on and on. It’s Russia’s private affliction. Why should we always suffer if we can eradicate this for good? We are a great power. We have everything — an army, technology. We need to attack.”
“To get to heaven, you have to work very hard,” he said. “I want to go to heaven so I will try to pray more.”
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mobile/article/kadyrov-says-west-backs-rebels/396586.html
I wonder if he’s worried he’s going to hell.
He know he is. pro-Russian butcher of his own people!
Putin has promised to build a copy of this carbuncle in Moscow; he hopes that both the Russian population and Georgian Diaspora will fund its construction, so those of you who are sad about its demise can always put your hand in your pocket and help pay for this new Moscow carbuncle. Mean while Georgia can move on and turn the city of Kutaisi into a modern 21st century metropolis free from its soviet past.
Sorry, but not going to happen. While I am forced to feel sorry about the demolition (because, after all, many soldiers of the USSR were motivated not by Stalin’s imperialistic and tyrannical motives but by the abject fear of Hitler’s racial policies in the East, and I think a good argument could be made that the Red army did- at least to an extent- save Eastern Europe from slow Germanization and extermination), I feel antipathy towards Putin’s regime even more.
That, and the fact that the fund will be looted like hell by any two-bit bureaucrat who can get away with it.
I feel there is no contradiction between sympathizing with the plights faced by the average Soviet soldier in WWII and opposing both the USSR’s and now Russia’s imperial ambitions.
Turtler (and everybody else),
If you want to fund someone in Russia re: WWII war dead, check out the link I posted below.
Quote:
“In the 64 years since World War II, search squads have recovered over 250,000 soldiers heaped in mass graves and still haunting Russia’s vast battlefields, according to Yuri Smirnov head of the Russian Search Squads, a non-governmental group. He estimates that between 40,000 and 60,000 people across the country volunteer for search teams, who work nearly exclusively from private donations. (…) While Moscow marks its victory in the war with great fanfare and a military parade across Red Square, searchers say they know a better way to honor the nation’s defenders.”
Georgia lost about 50% of their adult male population defending the secular uncivilized barbarians in the kremlin! What was the % of russins?
Well, Russians were pretty efficient killing off their own people. What are the conservative estimates: 20 mln. Russians killed in WW2, and 20 mln. killed by their own government? Their marshall Zhukov expressed typical Soviet attitude toward their own people’s value:”Voisk ne zhalet, babi esche narozhayut”. By the way comrade Zhukov that Russians are so proud of stole millions worth of property in Germany for his own personal profit.
Georgia lost more than 300,000 thousand Georgians in WWII out of a nation of only 4 million defending RUssian! As nazi’s were not a threat to Georgia at the time (yes nazis had to be defeated) but Georgia never got a thank you from Russia for sacrificing 300,000 of our man defending the RUssians!!! But this monument was the monument dedicaited to all Georgians who fell fighting against the Nazis as I understand? Why was it demolished?? It makes no sense to me? Do this soldier not deserve credit for fighting against the Nazis?!
Well, the national memorial in Tbilisi (Victory park in Vake) is being slowy renovated.
That is the main national memorial to Georgian soldiers as I understand. And much more tasteful too.
Andrew!
Your text: “Most Georgians want ALL memory of the Russian occupation of their country GONE NOW!!” – Probably for this reason that the Georgians do not destroy and repair the monuments to Stalin!?
“And much more tasteful too.” – You mean monuments to Stalin?
“new-sky”, I’ve got a question:
So, what do you think about Stalin? Personally.
Like most Russian think Stalin bloody dictator. Today Russia is a very sober look at the activities of Stalin. In its activities, he used a well-known principle of the Jesuit Order: The end justifies the means. This tool has the blood of the peoples of the USSR. Today in Russia there are fans of Stalin, they were always. But they are perceived as marginal. In 90 years, this issue is largely debated in Russia’s society. Today, it is not relevant. The Western press this issue was created artificially.
My great-grandfather served in the rank of colonel at the White Army of Admiral Kolchak. In 1938 he was shot. In 1938, he was a famous doctor in the city of Omsk. I read his criminal case. One of the charges was deliberate creation of queues at the hospital. I even gave me the names of those who questioned him – in the case can be seen – the testimony of his knocked. Later in my research in the archives I found a document of the meeting of the District Criminal Investigation Department. This document stated: Within 3 months of work the department had identified 10 supporters of Trotsky, 25 kulaks, 16 German intelligence agents and much more. Resolution: arrest the head of the department for 15 days for poor performance in work. If low levels in the work will be in the next reporting period – to bring to justice – and this shot. Then I threw the list of names of interrogators great-grandfather. Great grandfather through my grandmother in 1938 was shot. My grandmother, after the death of Kirov said, “One was killed – the other will be put.. But imprisoned her. She was then 18 years – broke all her life.
P.S. After Khrushchev’s speech repressed all my ancestors received rehabilitation. And at this time in Georgia began massive protests against the report, Khrushchev, all support Stalin.
Actually retard, the last monument to Stalin in ALL of Georgia, the one in Gori is also being demolished.
Meanwhile Russian scum such as yourself rehabilitate Stalin in the Moscow metro, in the new “Stalin Defender Of Russia” museum in Stalingrad/Volgograd on the old Tartar burial mound that was the scene of visicious fighting in 1942, in Yalta, and in dozens of cities all across RuSSia, you also rehabilitate him in your school history books.
Stalin is reviled in Georgia these days, particularly amongst the youth of the country, who are taught of his crimes in great detail to avoid an possibility of his restoration.
The protests in Georgia in 1956 were due to the fact that Kruschev (an ethnic Russian who was Stalins most willing, and one of his most feared, executioners) was blaming all Georgians for Stalin, when in fact the Georgians were the most repressed of all soviet republics due to Stalins deep seated “Russian chauvanism”, a bit like Hitler (an Austrian) trying too hard to be a German, Stalin tried too hard to be a Russian.
So, nice try RETARD. Russia loves Stalin. 54% of your youth think he was great.
Georgians loathe him.
@the most repressed of all soviet republics
The most repressed of all Soviet republics were those which were liquidated (such as Volga German ASSR and the Chechen-Ingush ASSR).
Anyway, the young people rioting in 1956 were brainwashed by the Moscow system, already born into the Soviet Union after the Russian Bolshevik armed conquest of Georgia. Then Soviet soldiers arrived and opened fire.
@Gori monument
Send it to Russia.
Ok, most repressed of the Soviet Republics that were not liquidated.
Stalin was considering deporting all 4,000,000 Georgians to Siberia in the early 50’s because the majority of the population were still “despite” (but more likely because of) the repressions anti soviet and anti Russian.
His death, and the fact that it would have been the largest single deprotation operation at one time, along with the logistical problems (they did not have enough trains to do it in one go, and were worried about the potential for armede resistance) caused the plan to be cancelled.
With regards to the students, yes brainwasged under the soviet system indeed. However even at the time, many (possibly a majority) outside the cities were not enamoured of the mustachiod beast at all.
” Sergei Arutiunov of the Russian Academy of Sciences relates:
The shift of loyalty demanded of them at that moment was too enormous to execute easily. For people with a Transcaucasian background, Khrushchev’s speech was by no means a revelation. But many Georgians reacted in a rather peculiar way. Consider the peasants in Kardenakhi, the native village of my grandfather, and in many other villages from whom I had learnt the truth about the GULAGs already in the early 1940s. These people never referred to Stalin in other terms than as the “moustached one”, or more explicitly, “that moustached beast” (es ulvashiani mkhetsi) even in a circle of trusted people. Now, they promptly displayed portraits of Stalin on the windshields of their tractors and lorries… This was a surprising diametrical shift. However, while among Russians, it was a shift from one sort of conformity to another conformity, in Georgia the shift was from one non-conformist behavior to another kind of non-conformist behavior.””
@Stalin was considering deporting all 4,000,000 Georgians to Siberia in the early 50’s (…)
Never heard about this and I don’t think it’s plausible at all.
Anyway, the new great deportation was planned for the Jews. Prologue to this was the so-called “Doctors’ Plot” and The Night of Murdered Poets. Even the camps for the Jewish elite were already ready. They were saved when Stalin pissed himself and died on the floor.
(Prelude and not prologue.)
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/english/62.html
From November 1948 onward, the Soviet authorities start a deliberate campaign to liquidate what is left of Jewish culture. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is dissolved, its members arrested. Jewish literature is removed from bookshops and libraries, and the last two Jewish schools are closed. Jewish theaters, choirs and drama groups, amateur as well as professional, are dissolved. Hundreds of Jewish authors, artists, actors and journalists are arrested. During the same period, Jews are systematically dismissed from leading positions in many sectors of society, from the administration, the army, the press, the universities and the legal system. Twenty-five of the leading Jewish writers arrested in 1948 are secretly executed in Lubianka prison in August 1952.
The anti-Jewish campaign culminates in the arrest, announced on January 13, 1953, of a group of “Saboteurs-Doctors” accused of being paid agents of Jewish-Zionists organizations” and of planning to poison Soviet leaders. Fears spread in the Jewish community that these arrests and the show trial that is bound to follow will serve as a pretext for the deportation of Jews to Siberia. But on March 5, 1953, Stalin unexpectedly dies. The “Doctor’s Plot ” is exposed as a fraud, the accused are released, and deportation plans, already discussed in the Politburo, are dropped.
Just because you have not heard of it does not mean it was not planned Robert.
But as I stated, it was decided it was not possible to deport so many people.
There was deportation of Georgians, but the means were not there to do it in a “timely”manner, so the whole thing was dropped.
“38. The Party’s Central Committee alone signed the first decree on the new agricultural programme as a whole. But this has been followed by three decrees on specific parts of the programme, all three signed by the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee. It may be that the Malenkov forces and the Khrushchev forces have reached something like a deadlock or a truce. But the alliance may not be an easy one. The technocrats to whom Malenkov had begun to grant autonomy must not like the current tightening, while those who are effecting this tightening must not be happy with the liberal policy they have inherited. The Army may be backing both horses at the same time. Rumours have it that it is “samostoyatelnaya” (independent). In such circumstances, the possibility of bonapartism is not to be discounted, especially since the new MVD chief is not very high in the hierarchy and at any rate not very conspicuous on formal occasions. The situation among the national minorities remains very uncertain. There are rumours that at the same time as the Party and the military commander of the Trans-Caucasian Military District have taken over control in Georgia, that there is a deportation of Georgians under way with Russians being sent in their place. The reaction of the peasants to a new agricultural programme which Malenkov has announced under its rosier “incentives and better pay” aspects but which Khrushchev has turned into a well controlled policy, also poses a serious question. On the whole, the situation seems to be pregnant with possibilities.”
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/department/history-histoire/dcer/details-en.asp?intRefid=2636
Andrew, again you read too many ignorant journalists.
“you also rehabilitate him in your school history books” – You read these books? Bring a quotation please! Quote of the successful manager is no good. Criticism in Russia has caused only one textbook from the set. The textbook was not required to study, but only recommended. But the phrase “successful manager” is not there. She came up with a journalist, and then reprinted by other and began to believe it. This incident was discussed on the radio “Echo of Moscow”.
“Actually retard, the last monument to Stalin in ALL of Georgia, the one in Gori is also being demolished.” – Quay and his bust of Stalin in Tiflis (Tbilisi), via its behalf in Kutaisi plus Beria, busts in most small towns and streets named after him … Moreover, this Stalin in Gori shot with Kalashnikov Russia’s soldiers. And immediately the Georgian authorities did not deal in order to put everything in order, and began to repair the monument. Shooting down plates with an area of his name restored. Remarkable, is not it? A monument in Poti who threw, democratic Georgians?? And only then State Minister of Georgia on European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze proposed to remove the monument to Joseph Stalin from the center of the city of Gori, but not destroy. Answer me this question – why in the USSR after Khrushchev’s speech tore down all the monuments to Stalin, and in Georgia have left.
“Russia loves Stalin” – I’m RUSSIAN, I live in RUSSIA, my ancestors were destroyed by Stalin. Neither I nor my family nor my friends and colleagues do not like Stalin. Among the people whom I know – not people who love Stalin. I have not seen on TV any artistic or documentary that Stalin was good – they all reflect his bloody nature. And you start telling me how much I like Stalin? Are you normal?
“in fact the Georgians were the most repressed of all”- You yourself understand what you said? That means my ancestors were simply repressed, while others are completely repressed.
Now “New-Sky” maybe you should take your own advice, though I suspect you are a bit too simple, or maybe autistic, to have any rational thoughts on any matter of importance.
The Stalin memorial in Gori shot by Russian soldiers with Kalashnikovs? What BS. They came to Gori to worship Stalin, and were caught on film doing so. They were very upset that they could not worship the Great Russian leader Stalin at the Gori musuem.
As for your retarded and infantile comments about monuments to Stalin in Tbilisi, Poti et al, well you little retarded piece of kremlinoid filth, I live in Tbilisi, I have not seen nor heard of a single “Bust” or town or street named after him that has not been removed or renamed in the last5 years. However there are many monuments to him in North Ossetia, and now in the Russian occupied Tshkinvali region where the locals (only Ossetians and Russians since the Russians planned and implemented ethnic cleansing of Georgians) still call towns by his name.
The ONLY REMAINING STATUE of Stalin in Georgia is being removed/demolished, meanwhile you Russian animals continue to put up new statues to the “Mustachioed Monster” (as the Georgians call him), and venerate him in the Moscow metro, and state he “acted rationally” in murdering millions of people.
Come and have a look for yourself you infantile mental pygmy. Go on, rather than being brainwashed by your KGB controlled media, come and have a look, see if you can find anyone in Tbilisi under 70 that thinks Stalin is anything but a national tradgedy for Georgia, after all, without Stalin they would have had 90 years of freedom, democracy, and rule of law.
Grow up you repulsive little piece of neo-imperialist russian crud.
It’s no wonder Russians are hated and reviled throughout the former soviet republics.
Some examples
http://www.rferl.org/content/Stalins_Back_In_The_Moscow_Metro_/1809626.html
And
Russian textbooks attempt to rewrite history
A new Russian history book for schools, approved by the Putin Government, glosses over Stalin’s Terror and other truths
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6937923.ece
Yes, and sorry to say “new-sky” but you were MUCH better off in the USSR of Stalins (and any other period) being a RuSSian than being a Latvian, Georgian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Ukrainian, Chechen, Ingush, Daghesh, Azeri, Tartar, or pretty much any other ethnic minority. They were all repressed far more heavily than you Russians. The USSR was simply a continuation of the Tsarist empire, run primarily for the benifit of scum such as yourself.
You Polish?
No, but you are an idiot.
I do not know what most older generation Georgians thought about Stalin at the time, but I know that in my days (born 1968 in Batumi), majority of our generation considered Stalin an alien force in Georgia. Yes, he was born in Georgia, but then, he became a dictator that helped to impose Russian communist regime on Georgia, and perpetuated a terror campaign against his own people. Ethnically, he might had been Georgian, but he was not pro-Georgian, he was a Russian oppressive dictator, because USSR was controlled by Russia. Stalin was a traitor to his own people. I remember, in the early 1990s when Georgia finally obtained independence, monuments to soviet leaders like Stalin, Lenin, Ordzhonikidze etc. were demolished. I know we do not have streets named after Stalin or Lenin in Batumi anymore.
Oh, and I wonder:
Is there a single memorial to the “traitors” who died in the German camps during WWII? More than 3 million of them. Once the “traitors” (their crime: being captured by the enemy), now completely forgotten.
Just like the massive numbers of soldiers who died in action but are still “missing” (tens of thousands still even just outside Moscow, only local history enthusiasts digging up for them):
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/18-russia-still-searching-for-wwii-dead-six-decades-on-sa-02
And did I mention there are still hundreds of Russian soldiers officially missing in Chechnya? And that the civilians who died in this war (Russian and Chechen and others, often just thrown literally in heaps into mass graves by soldiers, and thousands of them “forcibly disappeared”) were not even counted/estimated by the Moscow government at all?
So, shut up you “patriotic Russians” and just take a look at yourselves for once.
Oh yeah, can you show me a single government monument to the tens/hundreds of thousands of civilians who died in Chechnya? I know there are monuments to soldiers (who killed them).
And the Grozny Treblinka-style (gravestones) monument to the tens/hundreds of thousands of civilians who were killed by the Soviets in 1944 was recently (this year) removed too:
http://en.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/40/02.html
Also the story behind these gravestones: during the genocide, the Soviets sought to physically erase any trace of the Chechens in Chechnya (who were ALL deported and killed) – just like what the Nazis were doing with the traces of Jewish culture and history after the Jews themselves were “removed”. So all mentions of Chechens and fomer Chechnya were removed from the new history books (Orwell’s “memory hole”), the Chechen books were collected and burned by the Soviet barbarians in the squares of Grozny (in the villages, many Chechens were burned alive too), etc. And the cemeteries were destroyed too, and those gravestones were used as a building material:
http://www.watchdog.cz/index.php?show=000000-000015-000006-000030&lang=1
After the independence, they were collected and brought there for the genocide memorial. In the war it was shelled (like eveything in the city), but survived. Now, they were removed again.
And the other side of (lack of) the Chechen War remberance – regarding the Ossetian victims of the war (more Ossetian civilians died on 1 day in a “Russian anti-terrorist operation” in 2004 than in the entire so-called “Georgian genocide” in 2008), telling a LOT about the people of Moscow (and especially at the Kremlin):
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2007/09/06/russia-beslan-anniversary/
@Like most Russian think Stalin bloody dictator. Today Russia is a very sober look at the activities of Stalin.
Really? TIME just told me something else:
What may be more surreal, however, is the resurgent popularity that Stalin is enjoying at the moment in Russia. Just in time for the 130th anniversary of his birth on Dec. 21, the state-run polling agency VTsIOM released a survey showing that despite the millions of Soviet citizens who fell victim to purges, starvation and summary executions under Stalin’s regime, 54% of Russians now have a high opinion of his leadership qualities. And when asked about his personal attributes, 50% of respondents said they viewed them as average or above average — up from 45% when the same survey was conducted in 2000.
Rehabilitating Joseph Stalin
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1949500,00.html
So, “most Russian think Stalin bloody dictator” and the same time, in a “very sober” way, “most Russian” approve his “leadership qualities”. Correct?
Btw, I heard this Admiral Kolchak of yours was recently declined to be “rehabilitated” by a Russian military court. As in: he is still a rightfully condemned criminal (“traitor”, “bandit”, whatever).
In other words: if you are sincere and you actually don’t like Stalin much, you’re among a minority of Russians. (According to the most recent survey by the government polling agency.)
I wonder if you really didn’t tknow?
MOSCOW – The Russian Communist Party asked the nation Monday for a daylong moratorium on criticizing Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as they celebrate his 130th birthday.
Despite overseeing political purges and widespread famine that killed millions of Soviet citizens, Stalin is still embraced by many Russians nostalgic for Soviet times.
His popularity has even risen in recent years amid a Kremlin-backed campaign to burnish his image as the man who led the nation to victory in World War II.
Hundreds of Communists on Monday laid flowers at his grave on Moscow’s Red Square, and about 3,000 people attended an evening concert in his honor. In his home town in the southern nation of Georgia, a few hundred admirers including his grandson marched to a towering statue of the dictator in the main square.
“We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin’s personality as a creator, a thinker and a patriot,” Communist deputy parliament speaker Ivan Melnikov said in comments on the party’s Web site. The Communists represent the country’s second most powerful political party after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia, and at times have defeated Putin’s party in regional elections.
Putin, like the Communists, has made efforts to rehabilitate Stalin’s image by pushing for his accomplishments to be recognized at home and abroad. Some have criticized Putin’s drive as an effort to whitewash history and paint Stalin in a positive light in order to justify the Kremlin’s own growing power and retreat from democracy.
On Dec. 3, Putin lauded Stalin’s drive to industrialize the Soviet Union and his victory over the Nazis as deserving of respect despite the human cost.
“In my view, you cannot make one gross assessment,” Putin said during his annual live radio and TV call-in show. “Any historical events need to be analyzed in their entirety.”
President Dmitry Medvedev, on the other hand, has taken a more critical stand against Stalinism – a sign that the issue is still debated both among Russia’s political elite as well as its populace.
“It is impossible to imagine the scale of the terror inflicted on the people of our country,” Medvedev said in his video blog on Oct. 30, the day commemorating the victims of Stalinist repression. “I am convinced that no national development, no success, no ambitions can be achieved at the price of human suffering and death.”
The remarks represent perhaps the Kremlin’s strongest condemnation of Soviet repression since Putin, Medvedev’s predecessor, became president almost a decade ago
The leader of the opposition Yabloko party, Sergei Mitrokhin, warned against reading too much into Medvedev’s more liberal rhetoric. “This statement had appeal on the day of remembrance, but he has never followed with any actions or a united program of de-Stalinization in the government,” Mitrokhin said Monday.
A majority of Russians – 54 percent – have a high opinion of Stalin’s leadership qualities, according to a survey released Friday by state-run polling agency VTsIOM, while only 23 percent rate his personal character traits as below average. The survey questioned 1,600 people nationwide Dec. 5-6 and gave a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
Stalin’s legacy of repression and persecution only became fully known in Russia after the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, lifted the taboo against criticizing Stalin as part of the 1980s perestroika campaign of political and economic reforms that precipitated the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. Since then, the Russian public has been exposed to dozens of documentaries, books, memoirs and biographies detailing the atrocities committed by Stalin’s regime.
A core of followers, mainly elderly people educated before perestroika, nevertheless uphold the view that Stalin was a valiant leader whose repressive grip on the nation was needed to ensure security and industrial growth.
“In Stalin’s name, our grandfathers and grandmothers went into battle, they died with his name on their lips. They built our country’s industry, so for them Stalin means a lot,” said Yevgeny Teterev, a member of the Young Communist Organization laying flowers at Stalin’s grave.
“What does he mean for me? First of all he is a great personality of global dimensions,” Teterev said.
Stalin was born as Josef Dzhugashvili on Dec. 21, 1879, in the Georgian town of Gori. At the time, Georgia was part of the Russian Empire and was later absorbed into the Soviet Union.
Stalin was among the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution, and maneuvered to discredit his rivals and consolidate control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after the 1924 death of its first leader, Vladimir Lenin. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist until his own death in 1953, having unleashed brutal purges which killed millions. Million more died in a famine triggered by his brutal collectivization of agriculture and confiscation of grain to fund the frenetic industrialization drive.
On Monday about 300 mainly elderly people carrying Soviet flags and copies of Stalin’s portrait gathered in his home town of Gori to praise Stalin for transforming the country from an agrarian society into an industrial superpower.
http://www.dailymail.com/News/NationandWorld/200912210486?page=2&build=cache
And “New Sky”, here is your dear president, oops I mean PM Vladimir Putin praising Stalin once again.
“December 4, 2009
Vladimir Putin praises Stalin for creating a superpower and winning the war
Joseph Stalin sent millions to their deaths during his reign of terror, and his name was taboo for decades, but the dictator is a step closer to rehabilitation after Vladimir Putin openly praised his achievements.
The Prime Minister and former KGB agent used an appearance on national television to give credit to Stalin for making the Soviet Union an industrial superpower, and for defeating Hitler in the Second World War.
In a verdict that will be obediently absorbed by a state bureaucracy long used to taking its cue from above, Mr Putin declared that it was “impossible to make a judgment in general” about the man who presided over the Gulag slave camps. His view contrasted sharply with that of President Medvedev, Russia’s nominal leader, who has said that there is no excuse for the terror unleashed by Stalin.
Mr Putin said that he had deliberately included the issue of Stalin’s legacy in a marathon annual question-and-answer programme on live television, because it was being “actively discussed” by Russians.
The final part of the four-hour broadcast focused on questions selected by Mr Putin from among two million submitted by Russians. He told viewers: “I left this question in, because I understand what a fiery issue it is. And the problem is: you say something positive and someone will be unhappy; you say something negative and someone else will be.
“It’s obvious that, from 1924 to 1953, the country that Stalin ruled changed from an agrarian to an industrial society. We remember perfectly well the problems, particularly at the end, with agriculture, the queues for food and such like … but industrialisation certainly did take place.
“We won the Great Patriotic War [the Russian name for the Second World War]. Whatever anyone may say, victory was achieved. Even when we consider the losses, nobody can now throw stones at those who planned and led this victory, because if we’d lost the war, the consequences for our country would have been much more catastrophic.”
Mr Putin said that positive aspects of Stalin’s rule “undoubtedly existed”, but had been achieved at too high a price. He went on: “There was repression. This is a fact. Millions of our citizens suffered from this. And this way of running a state, to achieve a result, is not acceptable. It is impossible.
“Certainly, in this period we encountered not only a cult of personality, but a massive crime against our own people. This is also a fact. And we must not forget this.”
Mr Putin’s willingness to praise Stalin put him at odds with Mr Medvedev, who issued a forceful condemnation of the dictator’s regime on October 30 — the day that Russia commemorates victims of political repression in the Soviet Union.
“Millions of people died as a result of terror and false accusations … But we are still hearing that these enormous sacrifices could be justified by certain ultimate interests of the state,” Mr Medvedev said. “I am convinced that neither the goals of the development of the country, nor its successes or ambitions, should be achieved through human suffering and losses. It is important to prevent any attempts to vindicate, under the pretext of restoring historical justice, those who destroyed their own people.”
Mr Putin answered 80 questions in a broadcast that demonstrated his continuing dominance of politics. Most focused on the economic crisis, and questioners in different parts of the country repeatedly asked Mr Putin to intervene to save their factories from closure. He told one that he had “plenty of time” to decide whether to return to the Kremlin as President at the next election in 2012. When another asked whether he was planning to leave politics, Mr Putin replied: “Don’t hold your breath.”
He said that he and Mr Medvedev could “work together effectively” because they shared the same university background, and values, as graduates of Leningrad State University. Mr Putin had said in September that the two men would “come to an agreement” about which of them would stand in 2012. While Mr Putin was holding court Tsar-like with the nation, Mr Medvedev was in Italy to meet the Pope and re-establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Asked if he would stand for a second term, Mr Medvedev replied: “If Putin doesn’t rule out running, neither do I rule myself out.”
During the television programme, Mr Putin demonstrated his populist instincts by lashing out at Russia’s billionaire class for their vulgar displays of wealth. His comments came after a scandal in Geneva, when an elderly man was critically injured in an accident after an alleged road race involving the children of wealthy Russians in a Lamborghini and three other sports cars.
“The nouveaux riches all of a sudden got rich very quickly, but they cannot manage their wealth without showing it off all the time. Yes, this is our problem,” Mr Putin said. “In Soviet times, some of our rich showed off their wealth by having gold teeth. The Lamborghinis and other pricey knicknacks — they are today’s gold teeth.””
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6943477.ece
So New-Sky, given the 54% approval rating Stalin has in Russia, and Putins ongoing rehabilitation of the many, either you are a liar or a fool, or both.
And as Robert already pointed out:
“Polling Well
A recent poll indicates that most Russians already view Stalin’s regime favorably. The survey, by the VTsIOM center for public opinion shows that 54 percent of Russians view Stalin’s leadership qualities favorably. Only 8 percent, by contrast, gave a low assessment.
Last year, Stalin placed third in a television poll to identify the greatest Russian ever, behind 13th-century warrior Alexander Nevsky and early 20th-century reformer Pyotr Stolypin.
The political resurrection of Stalin’s legacy has coincided with the rise of Vladimir Putin during the past decade. Many critics say the Kremlin has purposely burnished Stalin’s legacy to feed public enthusiasm for a new generation of strong leaders.”
http://www.rferl.org/content/Mixed_Feelings_As_Russia_Marks_130_Years_Since_Stalins_Birth/1909726.html
The sooner ALL of the soviet statues are demolished in ALL of the nations that were occupied or enslaved by the secular uncivilized barbarians in the kremlin, the sooner they can finally live peacefully in peace and harmony.
The music of the Ukrainian Georgian band Gorgisheli is caused not so much by the creative striving for originality, although this search is a perpetual process for every musician, as by life itself. Sisters Tamara and Eteri Gorgisheli are ethnic Georgians who were born in Lviv – hence their refined Ukrainian.
Tamara Gorgisheli took part in a program on the TRK Ukraina channel featuring Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Her questions proved that she belongs to that part of artistic youth that cares about what kind of Ukraine it is living in. This event became an opportunity for The Day to have an interview with Tamara.
When President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia was answering the questions asked by the audience in the Ready to Answer talk show, your remark drew the greatest attention of the people present, including Saakashvili. After the show you and Eteri received a personal invitation from the president to visit Georgia.
“This was a noteworthy event not only in my life, but in the life of our whole family. After my mother, who was on a visit to Signakhi at the time, learned that I would take part in the show, she and my grandmother competed to be the first to greet me. When the Georgian television broadcast a report based on this TV show, my relatives and friends in Tbilisi, Batumi, and Signakhi started calling me. Our trip to Georgia on the invitation from Saakashvili has left fabulous impressions and warm memories in my heart. The president is a strong personality; he is hospitable and delicate and has a nice sense of humor. I feel that the trip will inspire us to compose new songs.”
You and Eteri are bearing a double civic “burden” on your shoulders – Georgian and Ukrainian. Although for the most part you live in Ukraine, you frequently go on trips to Georgia. What can you say about the recent changes in these two countries?
“Georgia is a small country. Its population is nearly four million. Ukraine is much bigger, both in terms of its area and population. Georgia has undergone great changes recently. I go to Tbilisi every year, but I do not always recognize the city. Because the country is compact, changes can be observed everywhere simultaneously. Ukraine has a different scope. Maybe another reason why the changes are not so observable here is because we are living here and do not have a ‘fresh’ eye. Like all Ukrainians, we want to have more noticeable and striking changes. In what concerns music, Ukraine is far ahead. This is a painful topic for me. I know only one Georgian rock music band, Vakisparki, and several variety performers.”
http://day.kiev.ua/289749/
A recent opinion poll on Russian television stated that 66% of the population regretted the demise of the Soviet Union. I find it inconceivable that two thirds of Russians still hanker after a system that coursed so much pain and suffering especially on nations that were brutally occupied and almost had their national identity and culture eradicated.
When you realise the mind set of these barbarians you understand why organisations like NATO are vital for our collective security. We must also redouble our efforts to bring vulnerable nations like Georgia under our protective wing as soon as possible.
Dear R John,
Actually, it is quite logical. They miss the people that they enslaved, because their slave labor built most of their infrastructure, towns and cities.
Also, the sadistic secular barbarians miss the many slaves, from the many lands that the kremlin occupied and enslaved, that they tortured and killed, and now the kremlin has to resort to culling the russian intelligentsia, and the russian sheeple; as they cry and complain that less people are speaking the russian language.
Sincerely,
LES
PS The KGB has less people to torture and kill to fulfill their perverted sadistic fantasies.
I guess such public opinion, so heavily skewed towards the past, is not surprising. But my understanding as to why is different from that of LES. I don’t think the simple folk really missed that “slave labor.” Most of those 66% of Russians were themselves slave labor anyhow.
I think many of them had illusions that free markets will cure their Soviet ills. Instead, they brought about a wide spread poverty, more injustice than ever, and tremendous inequality. Nobody told them that one can’t build a new economic system overnight, and that capitalism has some unattractive features that took England and France, for example, centuries to remedy and not even completely so. I guess they neglected to read some writings of Mr. Dickens, or they would have known better.
So, by now they feel the new economic and political system was imposed on them against their will and with not much to show for it. They forgot that the population in the beginning of the Yeltsin era wanted immediate break with the past. They also forgot how miserable the Soviet past really was.
If you combine all these economic woes and insecurities with unbelievable corruption, never ending wars in Chechnya and elsewhere, and pessimistic view of the future, is there any wonder they long for the Soviet Union?
Dear RV,
Most of the russians may be enslaved sheeple, but the kremlin killed and used mostly non-russians as slave labor.
>> 1930’s [+ or -] Most Ukrainians have had relatives in the gulags! There were about 18,000,000++ people sent to the gulags, and some of the camps were 90% Ukrainian! You do the math. HOLODOMOR was not the only GENOCIDE orchestrated by the kremlin against the Ukrainians! In their continuing GENOCIDE of the Ukrainian people, culture and language, they called Ukrainians “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE”, rather than Ukrainians, to rationalize their GENOCIDE of the Ukrainian people. Or, the kremlin called Ukrainians “kulaks”, in order to exterminate {PRONOUNCED GENOCIDE} the Ukrainians.
My 90% figure comes from a book “ZA POLYRNYM KOLOM”, Lviv-Poltava, 2001.
The remaining 10% were all NOT russian!
(p169) – The White Sea – Baltic Canal … will always be associated with the destruction and sufferings of banished “enemies of the state” from Ukraine.
Excerpts from “Human Life in Russia” by Ewald Ammende (1935)
The transit death rate of Ukrainians in winter deportation to the gulags, in cattle cars, was reported as high as 50%.
The last prisoners sentenced according to the political paragraphs of the criminal code were quietly released in 1989. The exact number of Soviet citizens who went through the camp system will never be known, especially as key documentation was deliberately destroyed as the USSR was collapsing. Figures apparently compiled by the Gulag administration itself, and released by Soviet historians in 1989, show that a total of 10 million people were sent to the camps in the period from 1934 to 1947. The true figures remain unknown. Western estimates of the total number of deaths in the Gulag in the period from 1918 to 1956 range from 15 to 30 million.[5]
Gulag. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
There is no greater infamy than the war power on the children using the whole punitive power of the apparatus. Based on the instructions of the Politburo Central Committee, personally Lenin and Stalin, the Bolsheviks created a special system of “disgraced childhood”. This system had before it a children’s camps and colonies, mobile reception and distribution centers, special children’s homes and nurseries.
Children were supposed to forget who they are, where come from, who and where their parents.
This was a special – Children’s Gulag …
Alexander Yakovlev
Architect short spring in Russia.
PS Several of my family members were sent to the gulags. Most of them were Ukrainian teenage girls. None of them were able to give birth when they returned. If you can think, then you can figure out the reasons. [I would explain, but vulgar language is not allowed in this forum.] How many Ukrainian children missed the opportunity to be born in Ukraine?
>> 1937 The demise of the USSR and the opening of archives have shed light on this matter by revealing the results of the previously suppressed 1937 census. According to the 1937 census, the number of Ukrainians, within the USSR in 1937, decreased by 16%. Meanwhile, based on the 1939 census, the population of Russia increased by almost 30%.
The total population of the Russian Empire in 1897 was recorded to be 125,640,021 people (50.2 % female, 49.8 % male).
Great Russian (i.e., Russian): 55,667,469
Little Russian (i.e.,Ukrainian):22,380,551
White Russian (i.e., Belarusian): 5,885,547
As many other census in the era of nationalism, the results of this census are biased and skewed towards the nationality preferred by the authorities, in this case, Russian, in order to inflate the numbers of population of Russian ethnicity. {Also, we all know that the kremlin constantly lies and fabricates in their favor!}
Therefore, your 66% comes from – ? -.
Sincerely,
LES
Thanks Guys for the enjoyable and factual reading, well that is excusing the pro fascist sick RuSSputin lobby, and the pure trash they spew.
The cenotaph Whitehall is Britain and the commonwealth’s principle memorial to the tens of millions of men and women who served in both world wars and the millions who died. Each year on remembrance Sunday the Queen and leaders of all the commonwealth nations gather to honour the memory of these brave people.
But although it is our principle monument it is only one fifth the size of the Hugh great structure that was recently demolished in Kutaisi Georgia. To me this great gigantic stand alone structure was not there just to commemorate the brave Georgians who gave their lives fighting fascism. When you looked at this thing it sent out a message of soviet domination, placing an emphasis on soviet over bearing power.
I do not believe for one minute that the Georgian government would ever insult the memory of the fallen and I have no doubt they will erect dignified and beautiful monuments in keeping with Georgia’s own distinct culture. But who can blame them when they want to remove eyesores that are a direct link to soviet domination and now attempted domination from Putin’s neo soviet Russia.
I think the above reason is why Georgia has received no condemnation from other nations except for Russia off course, but they have their own agenda.
I am surprised the Georgians even had to use explosives to bring down the Soviet era monument. The first time I visited Russia in the late 70’s concrete seemed to be made of straw and potato peelings. The sidewalks crumbled in rain and most buildings looked like a T-square was never used.
Man has been erecting and tearing down monuments since the first skull shrine of the Hittites and Ashurnasirpal II. But the Russians now look upon any denial of their formal power as insulting and reacts hysterically to this vanished reminder of what they were not are.
The soviet statues of lenin, etc, were intertwined with steel bars and wires to prevent an easy “knock down”.
Meanwhile, the people that worked on the infastructure were not “paid” so they stole the cement and replaced it with sand and stones, and the concrete crumbles in a few years. The potamkin village called moscow, will not last long.
Pat,
You obviously know this famous enormous monument for the battle of Stalingrad? It’s going to collapse on its own.
The Motherland statue is leaning at such a precarious angle that many people are scared of going near it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8040471.stm
Yes, and the (all too usual for Russia) worst bit is that all the money in the stabilisation fund was nicked by corrupt tossers in the regional government.