Polls: Russia is not part of west
Michael Petukhov
"euroasian" type of civilization and therefore the western way of
life and development does no go well for Russia.
13% believe that Russian is a part of west and 16% are undecided.
There are many more data on that subject at (in Russian):
http://www.wciom.ru/vciom/new/press/press121115_32.htm
A good (and short) description of what is Eurasian civilization, what is
the difference between that and european one and why they oppose
each other can be found here (also in Russian):
http://www.eurasia.com.ru/2000let.html
Michael
critter
news:a39cf3c3.02042...@posting.google.com...
Well, Michael, of course Russia is not a part of west. The eurasian or
orthodox civilization that 71% of voted to belong to is an ideology that
opposes extreme western capitalism, jews and in particular the american
culture (see ref.). I hope that this percentage stays high. The following
paragraph from http://www.amber.ucsf.edu/~ross/russia_/commu2.txt in English
give a good description of the ideology:
" The KPRF ideologists realized earlier than
others that the disintegration of the USSR and
Soviet identity is sharpening the search for a
Russian national identity bringing the national
problem to the forefront. The so-called "red-
brown bloc," with which Zyuganov has been
affiliated, redeveloped the pre-war Russian
Eurasian doctrine into a nationalist concept
that conflated proto-fascist ideas with
Slavophilism and statism. The popularity of
this new form of Eurasianism in Russian
politics is so high that its rhetoric is
occasionally used not only by Slavophiles, but
by such "Atlanticists" as former Russian
foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev who called for
reconstruction of the Berlin-Moscow axis. But
when it comes to ethnic politics, racism
prevents Eurasianists from giving ethnic
minorities equal rights with the Russian
nation. The main ideologist of Eurasianism and
Zyuganov's close associate A. Prokhanov
preaches "loyalty to national, ethnic and
racial traditions ...with a preference to the
imperial type of 'great nationalism' over
'little nationalism' with separatist
tendencies." That policy, in fact, means the
automatic subordination of minorities to the
Russian nation. In spite of his anti-Semitic
and anti-Western ideas, Zyuganov never talks
about the subordination of the ethnic
minorities populating provincial Russia to
Russian ethnicity. Unlike Eurasian ethnic
politicians, he constantly gives reminders
about equality and friendship of all nations
comprising the Russian Federation. He has
developed the idea of a supernational, national
state that is a replica of the former Soviet
Union. From this point of view it is a
communist concept. However, the multinational
fundamentalist state based on the Eurasian
model is a dangerous nationalistic idea
connected with traditional Russian xenophobic
and messianic Slavophilism."
--
critter
Michael Petukhov
I do not think that this description is accurate.
Eurasiasim is internationalistic ideology. Certainly
it has nothing to do with xenophobia or messianism.
What messianism they are talking about? I russian
history we never had any messias, while jews and
arabs do have.
In my view the core of Eurasiaism is clear vision
and understanting of our own interest in context of
world human civilization. Absolutely legitimate stuff.
If we are to survive and due to georaphy and historical
conditions that cannot be changed it is in our best interest
to restore (certainly based on new basis corresponding
to new world realities) a mutinational state within
approximately FSU borders that was known as Russian
Empire and later as USSR.
This certainly is not in west best interests. That's
why they would do whatever is within their abilities
to prevent this kind of development in Eurasia. And first
of all false propaganda declaring Eurasian ideas as
nationalistic, xenophobic and messianic.
Michael
Fossil Cloud
.....
> Eurasiasim is internationalistic ideology.
So was Marxism-Leninism
> Certainly
> it has nothing to do with xenophobia or messianism.
It may or it may not, remains to be seen.
> What messianism they are talking about? I russian
> history we never had any messias,
USSR distinctly and in many cases claimed to be the ideological
lighthouse for all the humankind
> while jews
Jewish Messiah comes to and for Jews only, not all humans.
> and
> arabs do have.
>
There is pan-Arabism, but no pan-Judaism
> In my view the core of Eurasiaism is clear vision
> and understanting of our own interest in context of
> world human civilization. Absolutely legitimate stuff.
In the given abstract form yes, however it does not automatically
legitimize whatever comes out of it.
> If we are to survive
Typically, empires do not survive, so this is a big "if"
> and due to georaphy and historical
> conditions that cannot be changed it is in our best interest
> to restore (certainly based on new basis corresponding
> to new world realities) a mutinational state within
> approximately FSU borders that was known as Russian
> Empire and later as USSR.
>
But is it in the best interests of the prospective members?
> This certainly is not in west best interests.
Certainly. All empires are oppressive and agressive, who would want
one?
> That's
> why they would do whatever is within their abilities
> to prevent this kind of development in Eurasia.
Yeah, we would like to see many independent democratic nations rather
than one heterogeneos empire kept together by force and deceit.
> And first
> of all false propaganda declaring Eurasian ideas as
> nationalistic, xenophobic and messianic.
>
Well, "nationalistic, xenophobic and messianic" is what we saw the
last time from there. It is only natural to expect more of the same.
> Michael
ValuedCustomer
miles of wall to build. Build it high. Build it strong. Maybe then you can
keep out the foreign influences that you despise. Just remember, Russia
never accomplished anything on its own. Russia only advanced by foreign
influences.
If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
right now.
"Michael Petukhov" <petu...@bpc.spbstu.ru> wrote in message
news:a39cf3c3.02042...@posting.google.com...
critter
"ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message
news:kcXy8.41666$sI3.9...@news02.optonline.net...
> So go ahead and start building your wall. You have probably about 10,000
> miles of wall to build. Build it high. Build it strong. Maybe then you can
> keep out the foreign influences that you despise. Just remember, Russia
> never accomplished anything on its own. Russia only advanced by foreign
> influences.
>
> If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
> right now.
>
If there was no west, russia would be ruling the world right now. As I am
sure it will in the not so far future.
--
critter
Stuart Wilkes
> miles of wall to build.
Who wants anything of the sort? Maintenance of culture is not
facilitated by a wall.
> Build it high. Build it strong. Maybe then you can
> keep out the foreign influences that you despise. Just remember, Russia
> never accomplished anything on its own. Russia only advanced by foreign
> influences.
And who can make a contrary claim? Can you point to a scientific or
cultural development beyond the tribal level created in isolation?
> If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
> right now.
No, Mark.
And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
Stuart Wilkes
Richard Harris
>"ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message news:<kcXy8.41666$sI3.9...@news02.optonline.net>...
>> So go ahead and start building your wall. You have probably about 10,000
>> miles of wall to build.
>
>Who wants anything of the sort? Maintenance of culture is not
>facilitated by a wall.
Russian culture survives and influences others quite well.
Why Tchaikovsky's 1812 - a piece to commemorate the
victory of Russia over Napoleon at the time when the ally of Russia
burned the White House and the Capitol - is played on July 4th?
Why not some American composer? This is a cultural conquest
of the first class! Who needs the walls?
>> If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
>> right now.
>
>No, Mark.
>
>And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
>Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
Good point.
Michael Petukhov
> miles of wall to build. Build it high. Build it strong. Maybe then you can
> keep out the foreign influences that you despise. Just remember, Russia
> never accomplished anything on its own. Russia only advanced by foreign
> influences.
Building that wall was maybe the worst crime of communistic regime
in USSR against the people of the USSR. Do not worry we learn pretty
quickly. This mistake will no be repeated. Instead we will try to
show the world that there is a better alternative to US styled
predator's capitalism.
Michael
>
> If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
> right now.
Useless hopes. West did already everything that it possibly could be done
have that kind of future for Russia but all this has failed already.
Pretty soon you are gonna to face rich, prosperous and very much powerful
russia.
Michael
ValuedCustomer
nations, not of USA adoption.
If you paid attention at the concert, I suspect you would have noticed other
composers such as Sousa or Copland.
But if you want to talk about the homosexual Tchaikovsky, it might interest
you to know he could read French and German at a very young age. He studied
at the very westernized St. Petersburg consevatory at a time when Russians
listened mostly to Italian music. Other nationalistic Russian composers,
like Balakirev, Glinka, Mousorgsky, Borodin wanted little to do with
whimpering Pete. St. Petesburg was architected by westerners. Peter the
Great preferred the company of westerners to Russians. The reason Russians
practice the Orthodox faith is because a Russian czar decided that his
mud-encrusted illiterate subjects needed a real religion, not just pagan
vodka worship. So he set out to "buy" a religion for his god-forsaken
people. Maybe this is where the phrase "get religion" originated? The bottom
line is that you wouldn't have your precious 1812 overture (you wouldn't
know anything about it if it didn't have cannons) if not for the western
influences upon Tchaikovsky.
As for Stuart, he only talks about what might have been. He lives in the
past. I don't see no 70 year Reich around here. The fact is Russia is
immersed in western culture in spite of what Zhrinovsky-type slavophiles
like Michael might wish for.
"Richard Harris" <rharris@nospam_please.com> wrote in message
news:3ccca6a7...@news-binaries.directvinternet.com...
Trident
> > So go ahead and start building your wall. You have probably about 10,000
> > miles of wall to build. Build it high. Build it strong. Maybe then you can
> > keep out the foreign influences that you despise. Just remember, Russia
> > never accomplished anything on its own. Russia only advanced by foreign
> > influences.
>
> Building that wall was maybe the worst crime of communistic regime
> in USSR against the people of the USSR. Do not worry we learn pretty
> quickly. This mistake will no be repeated. Instead we will try to
> show the world that there is a better alternative to US styled
> predator's capitalism.
>
Michael,
Russia cannot lead by example because autocratic rule combined with
institutionalized corruption does not inspire anyone - except perhaps
the leaders of other banana republics and oppressed nations.
Trident
Stuart Wilkes
> The conversation was about Russia adopting the cultural traits of other
> nations, not of USA adoption.
> If you paid attention at the concert, I suspect you would have noticed other
> composers such as Sousa or Copland.
>
> But if you want to talk about the homosexual Tchaikovsky, it might interest
> you to know he could read French and German at a very young age. He studied
> at the very westernized St. Petersburg consevatory at a time when Russians
> listened mostly to Italian music. Other nationalistic Russian composers,
> like Balakirev, Glinka, Mousorgsky, Borodin wanted little to do with
> whimpering Pete. St. Petesburg was architected by westerners. Peter the
> Great preferred the company of westerners to Russians. The reason Russians
> practice the Orthodox faith is because a Russian czar decided that his
> mud-encrusted illiterate subjects
Who constituted a power to be reconed with at the time, and had
political and trading relations throughout Europe and Asia. And part
of his decision was the wisdom of Olga, who had converted some time
before.
> needed a real religion, not just pagan vodka worship.
Vodka didn't exist at the time. The main alchoholic beverage in Kiev
at the time was mead.
> So he set out to "buy" a religion for his god-forsaken
> people. Maybe this is where the phrase "get religion" originated? The bottom
> line is that you wouldn't have your precious 1812 overture (you wouldn't
> know anything about it if it didn't have cannons) if not for the western
> influences upon Tchaikovsky.
>
> As for Stuart, he only talks about what might have been. He lives in the
> past.
A point that you try and fail to make whenever I demonstrate your
venomous ignorance, which is often. I do very well in the present.
> I don't see no 70 year Reich around here.
Sure. And I don't see you denying the vital role the Soviet
Union/Russian Empire played in keeping it to twelve.
Stuart Wilkes
Mikhail Medved
> The conversation was about Russia adopting the cultural traits of other
> nations, not of USA adoption.
> If you paid attention at the concert, I suspect you would have noticed other
> composers such as Sousa or Copland.
>
> But if you want to talk about the homosexual Tchaikovsky, it might interest
> you to know he could read French and German at a very young age. He studied
> at the very westernized St. Petersburg consevatory at a time when Russians
> listened mostly to Italian music. Other nationalistic Russian composers,
> like Balakirev, Glinka, Mousorgsky, Borodin wanted little to do with
> whimpering Pete. St. Petesburg was architected by westerners. Peter the
> Great preferred the company of westerners to Russians. The reason Russians
> practice the Orthodox faith is because a Russian czar decided that his
> mud-encrusted illiterate subjects needed a real religion, not just pagan
> vodka worship. So he set out to "buy" a religion for his god-forsaken
> people. Maybe this is where the phrase "get religion" originated? The bottom
> line is that you wouldn't have your precious 1812 overture (you wouldn't
> know anything about it if it didn't have cannons) if not for the western
> influences upon Tchaikovsky.
All above is pure bullshit, ignored.
> As for Stuart, he only talks about what might have been. He lives in the
> past. I don't see no 70 year Reich around here. The fact is Russia is
> immersed in western culture in spite of what Zhrinovsky-type slavophiles
> like Michael might wish for.
It's not clear what you meant by saying that "Russia is immersed in
Western culture".
Anyone familiar with Russian culture can see its differences if
compared to the Western one. The difference is clear-cut and
all-embracing: literature, music, architecture, paintings, pop-art,
films...
Is the West "immersed in Chinese culture" just because westerners use
china tableware, silk cloth and gun powder?
You are not the first one to deny existence of Russian culture,
Russian people, and so on. It's a hopeless task, drop it.
Medved.
Trident
Stuey,
Highly speculative (and the soviets would have choked if they did not
have a crucial influx of western supplies by the way), but even if
this did happen and the Reich survived - so what? As an American
pointed out in another post: "The US was never in actual danger of
conquest." As for the Europeans, many of them had to endure equal
misery under the bolshevics - so they would have been working for
another task-master - a slave is a slave.
Trident
glugg
> "euroasian" type of civilization and therefore the western way of
> life and development does no go well for Russia.
Russians will support whatever is most painful.
Richard Harris
>If you paid attention at the concert, I suspect you would have noticed other
>composers such as Sousa or Copland.
So, to ask again, why not Sousa or Copland on July 4th?
>But if you want to talk about the homosexual Tchaikovsky, it might interest
"Homosexuality" of Tchaikovsky is a hoax. Read:
http://www.fortfreedom.org/other/tchaik.htm
Still even if he were homosexual would it make him more Western or American?!
>you to know he could read French and German at a very young age. He studied
>at the very westernized St. Petersburg consevatory at a time when Russians
Yes, Russian culture did not need walls. It developed by taking and assimilating
the elements of all surrounding cultures - Byzantine, Mongol/Chinese, Catholic
Poland, Protestant Europe. Even the Marxism was imported from Germany.
But in each case Russia gave it a very distinct flavor and in the end she
harmonised it in a one beautiful whole.
>As for Stuart, he only talks about what might have been. He lives in the
>past. I don't see no 70 year Reich around here.
He, he.
>The fact is Russia is
>immersed in western culture in spite of what Zhrinovsky-type slavophiles
>like Michael might wish for.
It is where I disagree. Russia in not passively "immersed in western culture"
but rather she is open, selective and creative like a living organism
"immersed" in a stimulating environment.
Stuart Wilkes
> swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote in message news:<d842ea3e.02042...@posting.google.com>...
> > "ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message news:<kcXy8.41666$sI3.9...@news02.optonline.net>...
> > > So go ahead and start building your wall. You have probably about 10,000
> > > miles of wall to build.
> >
> > Who wants anything of the sort? Maintenance of culture is not
> > facilitated by a wall.
> >
> > > Build it high. Build it strong. Maybe then you can
> > > keep out the foreign influences that you despise. Just remember, Russia
> > > never accomplished anything on its own. Russia only advanced by foreign
> > > influences.
> >
> > And who can make a contrary claim? Can you point to a scientific or
> > cultural development beyond the tribal level created in isolation?
> >
> > > If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
> > > right now.
> >
> > No, Mark.
> >
> > And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
> > Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
> >
> > Stuart Wilkes
>
> Stuey,
>
> Highly speculative (and the soviets would have choked if they did not
> have a crucial influx of western supplies by the way),
The overwhelming majority of which arrived in 1944, and most of which
were paid for by Reverse Lend-Lease and payments in gold.
> but even if
> this did happen and the Reich survived - so what? As an American
> pointed out in another post: "The US was never in actual danger of
> conquest."
Never said they were, although Hitler clearly meant to form a reich
capable of taking on the US on equal terms.
> As for the Europeans, many of them had to endure equal
> misery under the bolshevics - so they would have been working for
> another task-master - a slave is a slave.
The population of Poland declined about 20% under the tender care of
the Nazis.
Under the Soviets, it rose to about 38 million.
Stuart Wilkes
Richard Harris
Hmm. Maybe this explains the high quality of
Russian art? Great art requires a lot of suffering.
Fossil Cloud
>
> in USSR against the people of the USSR.
Regarding the USSR one just gets lost trying to choose the worst
crime.
> Do not worry we learn pretty
> quickly.
In only 70 years
> This mistake will no be repeated.
A new mistake every time
> Instead we will try to
> show the world that there is a better alternative to US styled
> predator's capitalism.
"Instead"?? Wasn't it exactly what Russia/USSR has been trying to show
for all its history? Hasn't the West always been "decadent" and
"immoral" for ruskis?
Hasn't Russia/USSR been saving the West from all kinds of evils?
> Michael
>
> >
> > If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
> > right now.
>
> Useless hopes. West did already everything that it possibly could be done
> have that kind of future for Russia but all this has failed already.
Because ruskis learn so quickly
> Pretty soon you are gonna to face rich, prosperous and very much powerful
> russia.
So, Russia is going to become rich etc suddenly and secretly, because
for today there are no signs of a miraculous revival coming. On the
contrary, the infrastructure is getting more decrepit, population
dwindles, crime grows, the gap between Russia and the West widens.
> Michael
GRycar
Tchaikovsky was not Russian but a very confused and perverted Ukrainian who
wrote some great music for the Russians.
Comparing US acoomplishments to Russian, is well, no contect in Americas favor.
George R
Michael Petukhov
> petu...@bpc.spbstu.ru (Michael Petukhov) wrote in message news:<a39cf3c3.02042...@posting.google.com>...
> >
> > Building that wall was maybe the worst crime of communistic regime
> > in USSR against the people of the USSR.
>
> Regarding the USSR one just gets lost trying to choose the worst
> crime.
The worst is here:
http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/
>
> > Do not worry we learn pretty
> > quickly.
>
> In only 70 years
>
> > This mistake will no be repeated.
>
> A new mistake every time
>
> > Instead we will try to
> > show the world that there is a better alternative to US styled
> > predator's capitalism.
>
> "Instead"?? Wasn't it exactly what Russia/USSR has been trying to show
> for all its history? Hasn't the West always been "decadent" and
> "immoral" for ruskis?
> Hasn't Russia/USSR been saving the West from all kinds of evils?
>
> > Michael
> >
> > >
> > > If it wasn't for the west, you'd be living in a mud hut and eating grass
> > > right now.
> >
> > Useless hopes. West did already everything that it possibly could be done
> > have that kind of future for Russia but all this has failed already.
>
> Because ruskis learn so quickly
>
> > Pretty soon you are gonna to face rich, prosperous and very much powerful
> > russia.
>
> So, Russia is going to become rich etc suddenly and secretly, because
> for today there are no signs of a miraculous revival coming.
False.
> On the
> contrary, the infrastructure is getting more decrepit, population
> dwindles, crime grows, the gap between Russia and the West widens.
And this one is false as well. Slowly and not yet everythere but the gap
reduces. According to CIA
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
per capita GDP was around $7700 in 2000 and perhaps $8500 now (1/4 of
that in US $37000 and 1/3 of that in western europe and japan $25000).
the economy grow rate was 8%, 6% in 2000 and 2001 respectively.
The population is still reducing but birth rate has increased already
first time since 91. Given still reducing population the real GDP increase
rate is about 9% and 7% respectively. But it will take some time
until demogpaphy will return to normal. Accoding to all sources
(IMF, WB, UN etc) russian and other FSU states economies are among a
few most dynamic during last few years. Certainly this is what you
and alike russophobes will no like to see. But you will have to
face it. And pretty soon.
Michael
>
> > Michael
ValuedCustomer
Other than Repin, there are very few Russian artists widely known outside of
Russia.
Maybe it's because the Soviet artists produced such ghastly, ugly works?
"Richard Harris" <rharris@nospam_please.com> wrote in message
news:3ccda44f...@news-binaries.directvinternet.com...
ValuedCustomer
> On Mon, 29 Apr 2002 10:44:48 GMT, "ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com>
wrote:
>
> >If you paid attention at the concert, I suspect you would have noticed
other
> >composers such as Sousa or Copland.
>
> So, to ask again, why not Sousa or Copland on July 4th?
>
Listen and you shall hear.
> >But if you want to talk about the homosexual Tchaikovsky, it might
interest
>
> "Homosexuality" of Tchaikovsky is a hoax. Read:
> http://www.fortfreedom.org/other/tchaik.htm
>
Not a hoax by all accounts that matter.
> Still even if he were homosexual would it make him more Western or
American?!
>
> >you to know he could read French and German at a very young age. He
studied
> >at the very westernized St. Petersburg consevatory at a time when
Russians
>
> Yes, Russian culture did not need walls. It developed by taking and
assimilating
> the elements of all surrounding cultures - Byzantine, Mongol/Chinese,
Catholic
> Poland, Protestant Europe. Even the Marxism was imported from Germany.
> But in each case Russia gave it a very distinct flavor and in the end she
> harmonised it in a one beautiful whole.
>
So now you agree with my initial observation...that Russia does not go
anywhere unless it gets outside help.
Marxism was harmonized? Yeah, it was responsible for the deaths of millions
and it collapsed in on itself after about 70 years and sent Russia into a
further state of disrepair.
Tchaikovsky's music would not exist if not for western influence.
> >As for Stuart, he only talks about what might have been. He lives in the
> >past. I don't see no 70 year Reich around here.
>
> He, he.
>
> >The fact is Russia is
> >immersed in western culture in spite of what Zhrinovsky-type slavophiles
> >like Michael might wish for.
>
Again what you fail to understand is that there are Petukhov clones
throughout Russia with a medeviel mindset. They want to close off and
protect Russia from outside influences.
They want to do to Russia what the Taliban did to Afghanistan.
> It is where I disagree. Russia in not passively "immersed in western
culture"
> but rather she is open, selective and creative like a living organism
> "immersed" in a stimulating environment.
>
Who said passively? I didn't. Western culture is all pervasive in Russia. It
got there in spite of the Russophiles that wanted nothing to do with it.
Richard Harris
>> "Homosexuality" of Tchaikovsky is a hoax. Read:
>> http://www.fortfreedom.org/other/tchaik.htm
>>
>
>Not a hoax by all accounts that matter.
"Matter"? Read this analysis (the link above)
and tell how those "all accounts that matter"
prove this allegation? By the endless repetition
on homosexual and politicallt correct sites?
Read this short and well reasoned text and respond, please.
Richard Harris
>What art?
>
>Other than Repin, there are very few Russian artists widely known outside of
>Russia.
>Maybe it's because the Soviet artists produced such ghastly, ugly works?
Look, I am not Russian and I love Russian art (music, literature, poetry,
painting, architecture etc ...) from XIX, XX and earlier.
Maybe I have a bad taste. What is your favored art?
Richard Harris
>> >But if you want to talk about the homosexual Tchaikovsky, it might
>interest
>>
>> "Homosexuality" of Tchaikovsky is a hoax. Read:
>> http://www.fortfreedom.org/other/tchaik.htm
>>
>
>Not a hoax by all accounts that matter.
Use your grey "matter" and read this:
(http://www.fortfreedom.org/other/tchaik.htm)
===============================================
This is the chapter entitled "How Homosexual Was Tchaikovsky?" from Musical Musings, by
Petr Beckmann, 1989. ISBN
0-911762-40-X. Golem Press, Box 1342 Boulder, Colorado 80306.
How Homosexual Was Tchaikovsky?
I can't say that I care very much whether Tchaikovsky was homosexual or not; but I do care
whether I am being used and
made a fool of. As in any other case where the truth is not directly available, a theory
must be checked against the known facts;
if it fits the facts it must be checked whether it is the only theory that fits; if it
isn't the most plausible theory must be compared
against its rivals; and if there is no overwhelming winner, we must withhold judgment,
doing no more than giving reasons why
some theories are viable, and why others are untenable.
But has that not been done a thousand times by people who are incomparably better
qualified than I am?
Yes, it has; but not without bias, for too often it was done by tone setters who had a
stake in the outcome.
I realized this as I was listening to a broadcast lecture on Tchaikovsky's life. The
speaker was devoting a lot of time to the
composer's alleged homosexuality, and suddenly I realized that the lecturer, who may well
have been homosexual himself, was
not really talking about Tchaikovsky: he was expounding and endorsing "this kind of love."
And yet this was but a small example of what is happening in America's musical
establishment. It is well known that
homosexuals are present in a higher proportion in the arts, including music, than in other
professions or the general population. It
is also persistently reported that they form a fraternity that is not formally organized,
but highly influential in determining who shall
make a career as a performing artist, what music shall he played and so forth.
This tendency, even if I have not characterized it accurately, has clearly increased since
homosexuality graduated from a
sickness that deserved sympathy and understanding, to a "life style" that now often
involves special privileges.[1]
The stake this fraternity has in presenting Tchaikovsky as a homosexual is to develop yet
another respectable peg on which to
hang the hat of their aberration.
I am not a musicologist, and I have not read all of Tchaikovsky's correspondence (though I
have read most of his diaries), and I
do not presume to arrive at judgement that has any weight. But I can recognize a biased
judgement when I see one, and the
following is meant to be no more than an exhortation to put things right - an exhortation
to those who are better qualified than I
am.
Let's start with the available facts.
Musicologist E. Yoffe assures us - and does not seem to be contradicted on this point -
that there is nothing in Tchaikovsky's
voluminous correspondence (5,000 letters) or in his eleven diaries (1873, 1884, 1886-1891)
that refers directly to his alleged
homosexuality. The nearest case, and the one that the accusation is usually based on, is a
letter to his younger brother Modest
on 10 October 1876. Here Tchaikovsky initially tells (again) of his intention "to marry,
or by some well known liaison with a
woman shut the mouths of all despicable gossips."
The following portion of the letter is not usually given or commented on:
"Is it not a bitter thing to be pitied and forgiven when, truly, I am in no way
guilty? So it has been a hundred times
and will be a hundred times more."
Instead, the accusation is based on this allegedly damning portion:
"I am so confirmed in my habits and tastes that to throw them away as one would an
old glove is impossible. And
then I have far from an iron will. Since my recent letter to you, I have already
succumbed to my natural inclinations
three times."
But there are two things wrong with interpreting these inclinations as homosexuality.
First, we have just heard that Tchaikovsky
suffered from the accusations of homosexuality (what else could it be in the first
portion?), wanted to put a stop to them, and
assured his brother that he was not guilty of these suspicions. Even if this had not been
a letter to Modest, from whom he had no
secrets (and whom the allegers have alleged to be a homosexual himself), what earthly
reason could there be for Tchaikovsky to
contradict himself, within the same paragraph of the same letter, by suddenly saying that
he succumbed to inclinations of which
he just said he was not guilty? Since the first portion and his intended marriage refers
to unfounded suspicions of homosexuality,
clearly the second must refer to something else.
Second, it is incongruous that Tchaikovsky, a devout member of the Russian Orthodox
Church, which regarded homosexuality
as a despicable sin, would refer to this aberration as a natural inclination; he would
more likely have said "my unnatural
inclinations." This seems all the more plausible in connection with his tendency for
constant self-effacement and self-doubts
apparent from his diaries. To call homosexuality a natural inclination would imply a
degree of self-assurance that this ever
tormented self-doubter did not have.
There are other points. Would he refer to homosexuality as ingrained "habits and tastes"?
Would he, in a span of three weeks
("since my last letter") have found three partners in Tsarist Russia where homosexuality
was a grave criminal offense? And if he
had a constant lover, would he have succumbed only three times? Would such a lover have
remained secret?
To what inclinations, then, did he succumb?
Drink, quite possibly. He would work and attend social functions during the day, then
brood and drink at home in the evening.
His diaries which often contain brief, even one-word statements ("A walk. Newspapers.
Whist. Supper at home.") very
frequently contain statements like "I drank a good deal." "Drunkenness." "Felt bad from
drunkenness." "Drunkenness at the
[railroad] station" Drunkenness during intermission [at the opera]."
One of the more revealing entries on that subject is that of 11 July 1886: "It is said
that to abuse oneself with alcoholic drink is
harmful. I readily agree with that. But nevertheless, I, a sick person, full of neuroses
[Tchaikovsky's emphasis], absolutely
cannot do without the poison against which Mr. Miklukho-Maklai protests. A person with
such a strange name is extremely
happy that he does not know the delights of vodka and other alcoholic drinks. But how
unjust it is to judge others by yourself
and to prohibit to others that which you yourself do nor like. Now I, for example. am
drunk every night, and cannot do without
it. What should I do then..."
But there is also the possibility of drugs. Morphine and opium (toward the end of the
century also cocaine) were used in the
Russia of Tchaikovsky's day by many well-to-do people in spite of the heavy penalties
enforced by the Tsarist government. On
23 April 1884 his entry includes "Supper. Vyera Vasilevna and the Stals. The Butakov
oppression during whist. Whist twice.
There was much Z. Oh, what a monster of a person I am!"
Since z- and za- are prefixes that can be used with any amount of Russian verbs (and the
nouns derived from them), there is no
point in guessing what it stands for here; but it is unlikely to mean homosexuality (as W.
Lakond, the translator of the diaries
claims), since at least two women were present. Drugs, however, are a possibility.
My case for drugs and alcohol is not a strong one; but surely it is not weaker than the
one for homosexuatity.
What else is there?
Tchaikovsky's marriage that ended in his nervous breakdown after a few weeks. But his wife
was emotionally unbalanced and
eventually ended in a mental home; no homosexuality was needed to break up her marriage to
a high-strung and emotionally
maladjusted man like Tchaikovsky.
Is there any more?
Plenty. Once you have made up your mind (or simply accepted the conventional wisdom) that
he was a homosexual, there is
any amount of little things that will "confirm" it: search and ye shall find. The copy of
his diaries from the University of Colorado
Libraries that I borrowed is frequently underlined in pencil, presumably by a student who
had to write a term paper on the
subject. In New York, Tchaikovsky met a Russian couple who had emigrated to America 30
years earlier. And the student
underlined a really damning confession: "The husband is more to my liking than the wife."
In the meeting with Carnegie in New
York (10 May 1891) at a dinner party, Tchaikovsky's entry is underlined like this:
"He grasped my hands, declaring that I am the uncrowned but true king of music;
embraced me (without kissing -
here men never kiss)..."
But this naive student is not alone. The translator (W. Lakond) has added annotations,
such as claiming that "Z." (explained
above) was the secret symbol employed by Tchaikovsky for homosexuality, or claiming that
"There is reason to believe that in
his later years the attachment [to his nephew Vladimir Davidov] was more than platonic."
What reason?
He uses the "There is reason to believe" approach again for other males without the
slightest hint what this reason might he.
To this one should add that Tchaikovsky was a man who was extremely highstrung, wore his
heart on his sleeve, yearned for
solitude only to weep over his loneliness, was overflowing with enthusiasm for one thing
and strongly irritated by another in short
time spans, wept openly and frequently on what others would consider unimportant
occasions, and moved constantly between
bliss and despondency. His diary therefore, is a treasury for anybody who, by selective
searching, wishes to confirm any
preconceived notion of almost any kind.[2]
Sketch accompanying an article "Tchaikovsky is Here" in the New York Herald,
27 April 1891.
To convey the flavor of both the diary and Tchaikovsky's emotional maladjustment, let me
quote but a single case, of which
there is one every few pages. On May 8, 1891, his thirteenth day in America, and already
racked with homesickness, he was
visited by two Russian ladies, one of them a correspondent of Russian-American journals.
But "[j]ust when I had my first
occasion to have a heart-to-heart talk with a Russian woman - a painful thing happened.
Suddenly tears came, my voice began
to tremble, and I could not restrain my sobs. I ran out into the other room [of the hotel
suite] and for a long time didn't come
out, Am burning with shame at this unexpected thing."
Such an emotionally high-strung man does, of course, show his emotions in an exaggerated
way - for example, adding "(the
darling!!)" after "Bob," the nickname of his sister's son. He never had any children of
his own and was extremely fond of his
nephew, as uncles, childless or not, often are. Tchaikovsky was afraid of heights (among
many other things), but writes that he
overcame this fear when Bob climbed on the roof of his house and wanted to play. On
another occasion, he writes "Bob has
arrived!!" with two exclamation marks.
It all seems perfectly natural to me, especially when Tchaikovsky's ever turbulent
emotions are taken into account. But that is
not the conclusion of the alleging allegers. They use these little pieces to shout
"Homosexuality! Incest!" in the best traditions of
the ghouls wading through Hollywood's sewers.
My own conclusion, and I realize it cannot carry much weight, is this: I know only of two
places in Tchaikovsky's diaries and
correspondence where be expresses disgust at himself for some behavior or habit whose
nature he does not indicate.
Homosexuality is a distinct possibility, though I have given reasons why that appears
unlikely, or at least no more likely than his
(documented) addiction to alcohol or an (entirely speculative) addiction to drugs. Should
homosexuality prove nevertheless
correct, it would be but an additional symptom in a high-strung over-sensitive man who was
emotionally severely maladjusted,
or even disturbed.
It is time for unbiased researchers more qualified than I am to investigate and give their
verdict.
But until then, it is also time for the influential parts of the musical establishment to
stop pretending that Tchaikovsky's alleged
homosexuality is established, accepted and uncontroversial, to realize that the burden of
proof is on those who claim the
unusual, and to desist from their self-serving smears of a great musician.
____
1. At the time of writing these special privileges include 1) partial protection from
losing their jobs, since given the choice,
employers will often prefer to fire the employee who cannot fight back with a suit
charging discrimination; 2) the enormous sums
spent on AIDS, which presents a much larger risk to the small community of homosexuals, at
the expense of research in heart
disease, cancer and other ailments that threaten everybody.
2. Once again I am reminded of the Viennese gadfly Karl Kraus mentioned an p. 56. To
characterize Viennese gossip, he wrote
"If I cross the street with a woman, I am an adulterer; if I cross it with a man, I am a
homosexual; if I cross it by myself am
addicted to masturbation."
Trident
Stuart,
Why you insist on using birth rates and population as some sort of
ultimate barometer for a society is beyond me.
"The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
Malcolm Muggeridge
"The source of Lenin's revolutionary passion was thus not sympathy for
the poor; indeed when famine struck the Volga region in 1891-92, he
alone among the local intelligentsia opposed humanitarian assistance
to the starving peasants, on the grounds that the famine was
progressive because it destroyed the old peasant economy and paved the
way for socialism. Nor was his revolutionary ardor inspired by a
vision of a more just future. It was grounded in anger and driven by
a craving for revenge. Struve, who collaborated with him in the
1980s, wrote many years later that the principle feature of Lenin's
personality was hatred. And this predisposition of a provincial
Russian youth would exert immense influence on twentieth-century
politics, the main impulse of which would derive from resentment and
animosity towards outsiders, whether of a different social class or
ethnic and racial group." - Richard Pipes
The soviet system, created and imaged after Lenin, forged in steel and
blood by Stalin, was an evil abomination - equal in every respect to
the Nazis in terms of constituting an affront to humanity. Please
stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary glory and
birth rates.
Trident
Stuart Wilkes
What did I say about birth rates in that post? You maintained that
the misery of many Europeans under the Bolshes was the same as it was
under the Nazis. I noted that the policy of the Nazis in Poland (and
Ukraine btw) was to <exterminate them>, whereas the postwar policy of
the Soviets in Poland (and Ukraine btw) resulted in significant
population growth.
Which of course means that the point of yours that that I replied to
is entirely false. But nothin' new about that.
> "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> Malcolm Muggeridge
What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
The terrorization and enslavement, say, of the slaves of the
Egyptians, was far worse. "Let us take the children of our Hebrew
slaves and kill them, for they grow too numerous" and "They must go
into the fields and gather their own straw. And the tally of bricks
must not diminish.".
Here's a clue, Trident. There was no possibility of a vacation on the
Black Sea coast for the above. And it went on for centuries.
> "The source of Lenin's revolutionary passion was thus not sympathy for
> the poor; indeed when famine struck the Volga region in 1891-92, he
> alone among the local intelligentsia opposed humanitarian assistance
> to the starving peasants, on the grounds that the famine was
> progressive because it destroyed the old peasant economy and paved the
> way for socialism. Nor was his revolutionary ardor inspired by a
> vision of a more just future. It was grounded in anger and driven by
> a craving for revenge. Struve, who collaborated with him in the
> 1980s, wrote many years later
When, like in 1995? Didn't know either of 'em lasted so long. ;-)
> that the principle feature of Lenin's
> personality was hatred. And this predisposition of a provincial
> Russian youth would exert immense influence on twentieth-century
> politics, the main impulse of which would derive from resentment and
> animosity towards outsiders, whether of a different social class or
> ethnic and racial group." - Richard Pipes
Oh, yeah. The guy who has the Red Army of 1920 threatening to wade
the English Channel if the Poles hadn't stopped them. And he has no
criticism of the Polish offensive that provoked Tukhachevsky's
counteroffensive. What a loon.
> The soviet system, created and imaged after Lenin, forged in steel and
> blood by Stalin, was an evil abomination - equal in every respect to
> the Nazis in terms of constituting an affront to humanity.
Quite entertaining. You know of course, that most Western
conservatives at the time had a distinct preference for the Nazis over
the Bolshies. That is, Hitler decided to go after <them>.
So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
as equal.
> Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary glory
> and birth rates.
Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
I make.
Stuart Wilkes
Tim Hall
Never forget that Russia lost 14 million people in WW2 while America's
losses were only 2 million.
Babai
> What art?
>
> Other than Repin, there are very few Russian artists widely known outside of
> Russia.
Er....Malevich? Kandinsky? Are you that ignorant? But what can one
expect from someone from a nation whose aesthetics come from
Wal-Mart...
Babai
ValuedCustomer
"Tim Hall" <trhm...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:c62fd73.02043...@posting.google.com...
ValuedCustomer
won't find no Kandinsky...because it's ugly...all of it.
"Babai" <bab...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:86dd2bf2.02043...@posting.google.com...
GRycar
Just goes to show you about respect for life and competence both of which were
in short supply in Russia.
In actuality, the Americans lost substantively less lives in WW2 than one
million and not two million.
Of the 14 million lives lost by the Soviet Union, a substantive number was the
result of the terror and murder perpetuated by the Russianns upon the citizens
of the Soviet Union. Another substantive amount of losses was due to
incompetence, stupidity, using soldiers as mine sweepers and sending unarmed
men against the well armed and well trained Germans.
Americans lost less because they fought better, were better led, trained,
supplierd and, yes, were more inteligent than their Russian allies.
George R
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
> Never forget that Russia lost 14 million people in WW2 while America's
> losses were only 2 million.
Only 14?
Are you including those killed on the orders of Stalin and the party?
Oh and never forget that Stalin had made a gentlemens agreement
in 1939 with Hitler to divy up eastern europe. A pact which Stalin
hoped Hitler would keep until he, Stalin, felt that the Reich was
enough weakened by fighting in the west for the USSR to attack.
Oh and don't forget about Stalins' purge of his officer core in the
early 1930s.
Oh and don't forget the Russian/Soviet tactics of human wave
attacks.
Tomcat
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urj...@bellsouth.net> пишет в
сообщении:3CCF64E0...@bellsouth.net...
: Tim Hall wrote:
:
: > Never forget that Russia lost 14 million people in WW2 while America's
:
: Only 14?
Direct military losses - 8,7 million.
: Are you including those killed on the orders of Stalin and the party?
1921 - 1954 about 3.7 millions.
: Oh and never forget that Stalin had made a gentlemens agreement
: in 1939 with Hitler to divy up eastern europe. A pact which Stalin
: hoped Hitler would keep until he, Stalin, felt that the Reich was
You "forget" to mention the Munich "gentlemens agreement".
So, Stalin should place all burden of anti-Nazy opposition on own country?
Why?
: enough weakened by fighting in the west for the USSR to attack.
: Oh and don't forget about Stalins' purge of his officer core in the
: early 1930s.
Incompetent war-criminals like Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich..
: Oh and don't forget the Russian/Soviet tactics of human wave
: attacks.
Soviet direct military losses - 8,7 million, german and allies direct
military losses on the East front - 8,6 million.
Read the German generals memoirs: they remembered Soviet heavy artillery,
tanks and qualification of command.
Or assaults of Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Kursk, Leningrad where Soviet army
had a heavy fortified positions, in two mentioned cases with stationary
artillery batteries..
F.e. Sevastopol, that cost Germans more than 300.000 killed. Germans flung
infantry and light tanks on the mass barrage of ferroconcrete pillboxes,
stationary batteries and battleship.
Mir Topolski
Richard Harris
>You could probably find a Rembrandt, Monet or Van Gogh in Wal Mart butcha
>won't find no Kandinsky...because it's ugly...all of it.
If you use Wal Mart as a standard of culture (I have nothing
against Wal Mart per se) then indeed Russia will look inferior.
Babai
> You could probably find a Rembrandt, Monet or Van Gogh in Wal Mart butcha
> won't find no Kandinsky...because it's ugly...all of it.
An American trying to make an aesthetic judgement is just too funny.
Unwittingly or not, you post is the height of sarcasm.
Babai
Trident
> > > > > No, Mark.
> > > > >
> > > > > And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
> > > > > Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
> > > > >
> > > > > Stuart Wilkes
> > > >
> > > > Stuey,
> > > >
> > > > Highly speculative (and the soviets would have choked if they did not
> > > > have a crucial influx of western supplies by the way),
> > >
> > > The overwhelming majority of which arrived in 1944, and most of which
> > > were paid for by Reverse Lend-Lease and payments in gold.
So be it - it arrived late. Since the USSR was largely responsible
for Germany's military build-up before the war thus at least partially
responsible for the cataclysmic events that followed, its agents
stirring up trouble in Spain, England and other European nations,
perhaps strategically Churchill and the American administration wanted
to delay the relief as long as possible. If I were a US or British
adviser that is exactly what I would have recommended ("Let Stalin
bleed").
As for re-payment, why do you throw this into the equation like it is
supposed to somehow mean something. Of course they should have payed
back the aid - especially considering they swollowed half of Europe
after 1945.
> > >
> > > > but even if
> > > > this did happen and the Reich survived - so what? As an American
> > > > pointed out in another post: "The US was never in actual danger of
> > > > conquest."
> > >
> > > Never said they were, although Hitler clearly meant to form a reich
> > > capable of taking on the US on equal terms.
> > >
> > > > As for the Europeans, many of them had to endure equal
> > > > misery under the bolshevics - so they would have been working for
> > > > another task-master - a slave is a slave.
> > >
> > > The population of Poland declined about 20% under the tender care of
> > > the Nazis.
> > >
> > > Under the Soviets, it rose to about 38 million.
> > >
> > > Stuart Wilkes
> >
> > Stuart,
> >
> > Why you insist on using birth rates and population as some sort of
> > ultimate barometer for a society is beyond me.
>
> What did I say about birth rates in that post?
No, but a scan of your posts on the topic of eastern europe during and
after the fall of the USSR will reveal that you have on more than one
occasion used birth rates in this fashion.
> You maintained that
> the misery of many Europeans under the Bolshes was the same as it was
> under the Nazis. I noted that the policy of the Nazis in Poland (and
> Ukraine btw) was to <exterminate them>, whereas the postwar policy of
> the Soviets in Poland (and Ukraine btw) resulted in significant
> population growth.
Qualification: exterminate the Jews, enslave the rest. This was the
policy of the Reich in Poland and Ukraine.
>
> Which of course means that the point of yours that that I replied to
> is entirely false. But nothin' new about that.
See above.
>
> > "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > Malcolm Muggeridge
>
> What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
> The terrorization and enslavement, say, of the slaves of the
> Egyptians, was far worse. "Let us take the children of our Hebrew
> slaves and kill them, for they grow too numerous" and "They must go
> into the fields and gather their own straw. And the tally of bricks
> must not diminish."
Did Egyptians practice thought control, encourage children to denounce
their parents to the secret police where they were tortured and made
to confess to imaginary crimes?
The explicit orders Lenin gave were, in fact, far more brutal and
arbitrary in my opinion:
"Comrades! The uprising (in reality probably a few peasants refusing
to give up their grain or cattle) of the five kulak districts should
be mercilessly suppressed. The interests of the entire revolution
require this because now the last decisive battle with the kulaks is
under way everywhere. One must give an example.
1) Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one
hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
2) Publish their names.
3) Take from them all the grain.
4) Designate hostages - as per yesterday's telegram. Do it in such a
way that for hundreds of versts (kilometers) around the people will
see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to
death the bloodsucker kulaks.
Telegraph receipt and implementation." - Yours, Lenin
Add to this, the hundreds of lists of persons to be executed which
Stalin personally signed and authorized(681,692 were shot over 37-38,
an average of 1,000 executions a day).
Add to this 2,350,000 inmates of the Gulag at the time - most of whom
would not survive (this figure represents live bodies of course, no
one knows the number that actually perished in the Gulag from the
1920s to the 1960s) - not producing "bricks" - but digging in salt
mines, digging channels through the frozen tundra - just as bad.
Add to this the psychological terror inflicted upon the entire
population - of being "watched" - falsely accused at any moment......
Don't tell me that Egyptian slavery was much worse. Each was a unique
form of social injustice.
>
> Here's a clue, Trident. There was no possibility of a vacation on the
> Black Sea coast for the above. And it went on for centuries.
Right. They had the Red Sea and the Medditeranian.
>
> > "The source of Lenin's revolutionary passion was thus not sympathy for
> > the poor; indeed when famine struck the Volga region in 1891-92, he
> > alone among the local intelligentsia opposed humanitarian assistance
> > to the starving peasants, on the grounds that the famine was
> > progressive because it destroyed the old peasant economy and paved the
> > way for socialism. Nor was his revolutionary ardor inspired by a
> > vision of a more just future. It was grounded in anger and driven by
> > a craving for revenge. Struve, who collaborated with him in the
> > 1980s, wrote many years later
>
> When, like in 1995? Didn't know either of 'em lasted so long. ;-)
You know that's a typo that should have read 1890s.
>
> > that the principle feature of Lenin's
> > personality was hatred. And this predisposition of a provincial
> > Russian youth would exert immense influence on twentieth-century
> > politics, the main impulse of which would derive from resentment and
> > animosity towards outsiders, whether of a different social class or
> > ethnic and racial group." - Richard Pipes
>
> Oh, yeah. The guy who has the Red Army of 1920 threatening to wade
> the English Channel if the Poles hadn't stopped them. And he has no
> criticism of the Polish offensive that provoked Tukhachevsky's
> counteroffensive. What a loon.
You know Stuey, a man can tell a lot about another man based on the
company he keeps, but even more importantly, by what he says and
thinks of other well known people. For example, if you had seriously
put forth a suggestion that Dan Quale was a giften American
politician, I (and most others I suspect) would say that you yourself
are "not playing with a full deck." Your comments about Muggeridge
and now Richard Pipes lead me to the same conclusion. Pipes
especially since he is a renound expert on Russian and Soviet history
- and you are not.
"In April of 1920 Poland, eager to forestall the reemergence of a
strong and imperialist Russia, had made a common cause with Ukrainian
nationalists and invaded the Soviet Ukraine with the aim of detaching
it from Russia. The invasion failed to ignite an uprising in Ukraine,
and the Polish armies soon found themselves in full retreat." Richard
Pipes, Communism, page 50.
You were saying?
>
> > The soviet system, created and imaged after Lenin, forged in steel and
> > blood by Stalin, was an evil abomination - equal in every respect to
> > the Nazis in terms of constituting an affront to humanity.
>
> Quite entertaining. You know of course, that most Western
> conservatives at the time had a distinct preference for the Nazis over
> the Bolshies. That is, Hitler decided to go after <them>.
Because the Bolshies constituted more of a threat to thier own
internal stability. After all, the Bolshies had activists planted in
all the Labour movements, academic institutions, and even government
offices. While the extent of the infiltration was unknown until
recently, the overt agitators were quite visible and vocal - and they
scarred people because they had the potential to stir-up public unrest
and challenge the establishment.
>
> So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
> as equal.
I give equal condemnation to both regimes - something you do not.
>
> > Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary glory
> > and birth rates.
>
> Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
> I make.
>
> Stuart Wilkes
Seems you only deem something "substance" if it agrees with your point
of view.
Trident
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
If Russia really comes off looking bad compared to CULTURE
as exemplified by Wal Mart, then Russia don't have no Culture
at all !! Because just how low can you go?
ValuedCustomer
tourists. OTOH...ya gotta love those new Hubble shots!
Looks like Wal-Mart culture has taken over the Russian space program. Oh
well. We'll just keep on advancing science in real ways over here.
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3CD03B7E...@bellsouth.net...
ValuedCustomer
buy Kandinsky because they don't like it.
An artist that paints abstracts is a weak artist. He can screw up all he
wants but nobody will know. To paint reality convincingly, you have to be a
real painter.
"Babai" <bab...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:86dd2bf2.0205...@posting.google.com...
Stuart Wilkes
> swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote in message news:<d842ea3e.02043...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > No, Mark.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
> > > > > > Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Stuart Wilkes
> > > > >
> > > > > Stuey,
> > > > >
> > > > > Highly speculative (and the soviets would have choked if they did not
> > > > > have a crucial influx of western supplies by the way),
> > > >
> > > > The overwhelming majority of which arrived in 1944, and most of which
> > > > were paid for by Reverse Lend-Lease and payments in gold.
>
> So be it - it arrived late. Since the USSR was largely responsible
> for Germany's military build-up before the war
Actually, a good third of Germany's battle tanks in the campaigns
against
Poland and France were of Czechoslovak manufacture - courtesy of
Neville Chamberlain. And who kept Germany above water in the 20s and
early 30s? Loans from the United States and Great Britain. Schacht
was a big buddy of Montague norman over at the Bank of England.
> thus at least partially responsible for the cataclysmic events that followed,
> its agents stirring up trouble in Spain,
Oh, yeah. Resisting Franco's rebellion against an elected Spanish
government caused <such> damage.
> England and other European nations,
> perhaps strategically Churchill and the American administration wanted
> to delay the relief as long as possible. If I were a US or British
> adviser that is exactly what I would have recommended ("Let Stalin
> bleed").
Pretty much what Secretary of State for Air Moore-Brabazon and Senator
Truman said in 1941.
> As for re-payment, why do you throw this into the equation like it is
> supposed to somehow mean something. Of course they should have payed
> back the aid
Then it really wasn't aid, was it.
> especially considering they swollowed half of Europe after 1945.
Payments began before Soviet forces crossed the prewar borders.
> > > > > but even if
> > > > > this did happen and the Reich survived - so what? As an American
> > > > > pointed out in another post: "The US was never in actual danger of
> > > > > conquest."
> > > >
> > > > Never said they were, although Hitler clearly meant to form a reich
> > > > capable of taking on the US on equal terms.
> > > >
> > > > > As for the Europeans, many of them had to endure equal
> > > > > misery under the bolshevics - so they would have been working for
> > > > > another task-master - a slave is a slave.
> > > >
> > > > The population of Poland declined about 20% under the tender care of
> > > > the Nazis.
> > > >
> > > > Under the Soviets, it rose to about 38 million.
> > > >
> > > > Stuart Wilkes
> > >
> > > Stuart,
> > >
> > > Why you insist on using birth rates and population as some sort of
> > > ultimate barometer for a society is beyond me.
> >
> > What did I say about birth rates in that post?
>
> No, but a scan of your posts on the topic of eastern europe during and
> after the fall of the USSR will reveal that you have on more than one
> occasion used birth rates in this fashion.
But not this one.
Again, I merely note that their postwar policies in Poland and Ukraine
were by no means equal.
> > You maintained that
> > the misery of many Europeans under the Bolshes was the same as it was
> > under the Nazis. I noted that the policy of the Nazis in Poland (and
> > Ukraine btw) was to <exterminate them>, whereas the postwar policy of
> > the Soviets in Poland (and Ukraine btw) resulted in significant
> > population growth.
>
> Qualification: exterminate the Jews, enslave the rest.
Oh, no. As was pointed out to you previously, it was concluded in the
Wansee Conference to <exterminate> most of the Slavs as well.
> This was the policy of the Reich in Poland and Ukraine.
> >
> > Which of course means that the point of yours that that I replied to
> > is entirely false. But nothin' new about that.
>
> See above.
> >
> > > "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > > If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > > the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > > Malcolm Muggeridge
> >
> > What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
>
> No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
Never met the guy.
> > The terrorization and enslavement, say, of the slaves of the
> > Egyptians, was far worse. "Let us take the children of our Hebrew
> > slaves and kill them, for they grow too numerous" and "They must go
> > into the fields and gather their own straw. And the tally of bricks
> > must not diminish."
>
> Did Egyptians practice thought control, encourage children to denounce
> their parents to the secret police where they were tortured and made
> to confess to imaginary crimes?
Not that we have record of. Genesis is kinda limited in that way.
But I wouldn't rule it out.
And no vacations for the slaves.
> > > "The source of Lenin's revolutionary passion was thus not sympathy for
> > > the poor; indeed when famine struck the Volga region in 1891-92, he
> > > alone among the local intelligentsia opposed humanitarian assistance
> > > to the starving peasants, on the grounds that the famine was
> > > progressive because it destroyed the old peasant economy and paved the
> > > way for socialism. Nor was his revolutionary ardor inspired by a
> > > vision of a more just future. It was grounded in anger and driven by
> > > a craving for revenge. Struve, who collaborated with him in the
> > > 1980s, wrote many years later
> >
> > When, like in 1995? Didn't know either of 'em lasted so long. ;-)
>
> You know that's a typo that should have read 1890s.
Hence the smiley. ;-)
> > > that the principle feature of Lenin's
> > > personality was hatred. And this predisposition of a provincial
> > > Russian youth would exert immense influence on twentieth-century
> > > politics, the main impulse of which would derive from resentment and
> > > animosity towards outsiders, whether of a different social class or
> > > ethnic and racial group." - Richard Pipes
> >
> > Oh, yeah. The guy who has the Red Army of 1920 threatening to wade
> > the English Channel if the Poles hadn't stopped them. And he has no
> > criticism of the Polish offensive that provoked Tukhachevsky's
> > counteroffensive. What a loon.
>
> You know Stuey, a man can tell a lot about another man based on the
> company he keeps, but even more importantly, by what he says and
> thinks of other well known people. For example, if you had seriously
> put forth a suggestion that Dan Quale was a giften American
> politician, I (and most others I suspect) would say that you yourself
> are "not playing with a full deck." Your comments about Muggeridge
> and now Richard Pipes lead me to the same conclusion. Pipes
> especially since he is a renound expert on Russian and Soviet history
> - and you are not.
>
> "In April of 1920 Poland, eager to forestall the reemergence of a
> strong and imperialist Russia, had made a common cause with Ukrainian
> nationalists
Meaning, a loser who had been kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites.
I believe the technical term is "puppet".
> and invaded the Soviet Ukraine with the aim of detaching
> it from Russia. The invasion failed to ignite an uprising in Ukraine,
> and the Polish armies soon found themselves in full retreat." Richard
> Pipes, Communism, page 50.
>
> You were saying?
And nowhere does Pipes criticize the Polish goverment for this action.
Normally, he is supportive of efforts to "....forestall the
reemergence of a strong and imperialist Russia." He merely notes that
it failed.
> > > The soviet system, created and imaged after Lenin, forged in steel and
> > > blood by Stalin, was an evil abomination - equal in every respect to
> > > the Nazis in terms of constituting an affront to humanity.
> >
> > Quite entertaining. You know of course, that most Western
> > conservatives at the time had a distinct preference for the Nazis over
> > the Bolshies. That is, Hitler decided to go after <them>.
>
> Because the Bolshies constituted more of a threat to thier own
> internal stability.
Oh, I don't know. Ten Panzer Divisions did a much better job on
France's internal stability than the Commies ever did.
> After all, the Bolshies had activists planted in
> all the Labour movements, academic institutions, and even government
> offices. While the extent of the infiltration was unknown until
> recently, the overt agitators were quite visible and vocal - and they
> scarred people because they had the potential to stir-up public unrest
> and challenge the establishment.
> >
> > So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
> > as equal.
>
> I give equal condemnation to both regimes - something you do not.
That's because the one played a major role in ending the more
dangerous one.
> > > Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary glory
> > > and birth rates.
> >
> > Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
> > I make.
>
> Seems you only deem something "substance" if it agrees with your point
> of view.
No. I deem something "substance" when it is well-argued and
well-supported with evidence.
Stuart Wilkes
mall...@yahoo.com
>
> If art doesn't strike a chord in the viewer, what good is it? People don't
> buy Kandinsky because they don't like it.
>
> An artist that paints abstracts is a weak artist. He can screw up all he
> wants but nobody will know. To paint reality convincingly, you have to be a
> real painter.
Mark is an adept of the Social Realism? Say it ain't so! :)
mall...@yahoo.com
> Because just how low can you go?
You're an expert in this area, Rostyk? Do tell!
ValuedCustomer
Kandinsky-like abstract works of art in your trailer park is Tampa social
realism.
<mall...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:3CD081F0...@yahoo.com...
splonk
>
> Other than Repin, there are very few Russian artists widely known outside of
> Russia.
> Maybe it's because the Soviet artists produced such ghastly, ugly works?
>
>
>
Repin was Ukrainian, not Russian. Add to that list Oleksandr
Archipenko, who moved to the US. Among sought-after Ukr/Rus artists
not mentioned here you could also add Aizovsky and Rodchenko and,
frankly, too many others.
Considering that you think that Russia has made no contribution to
Art, you might want to ask yourself how it is that Sotheby's in London
is staging not one but two sales this month of Russian Art, something
it does every six months. Just because you, personally, are ignorant
of Russian artists does not mean that they do not exist.
Babai
> If art doesn't strike a chord in the viewer, what good is it? People don't
> buy Kandinsky because they don't like it.
>
> An artist that paints abstracts is a weak artist. He can screw up all he
> wants but nobody will know. To paint reality convincingly, you have to be a
> real painter.
I was once at a socialist realist exhibit, and this is exactly what
they said: art should be understood by the masses.
By the way, does the velvet Elvis in your living room strike a chord
with you?
ValuedCustomer
I don't own any Elvis's but if somebody likes them, they are free to buy
them.
So how many Kandinskys do you have hanging in your living room? ...assuming
you even have a living room.
"Babai" <bab...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:86dd2bf2.02050...@posting.google.com...
ValuedCustomer
I never said Russian artists don't exist, they just aren't popular outside
of Russia.
Go to any Borders, B. Daltons etc and look in the art books. You can find
hundreds of books on specific painters but you won't find any on Russian
painters. You might find a book on the Hermitage but that's about it. The
simple fact is that there is no widespread clamor for the works of Russian
artists. You are probably the only reader of this NG that knows the three
artists you mentioned.
The people that buy art at Sothebys buy art as an investment, not so much
because they like the art on its own.
"splonk" <cruss...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b320bd05.02050...@posting.google.com...
Trident
> > > > > > > No, Mark.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
> > > > > > > Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Stuart Wilkes
> > > > > > Highly speculative (and the soviets would have choked if they did not
> > > > > > have a crucial influx of western supplies by the way),
> > > > >
> > > > > The overwhelming majority of which arrived in 1944, and most of which
> > > > > were paid for by Reverse Lend-Lease and payments in gold.
> >
> > So be it - it arrived late. Since the USSR was largely responsible
> > for Germany's military build-up before the war
>
> Actually, a good third of Germany's battle tanks in the campaigns
> against
> Poland and France were of Czechoslovak manufacture - courtesy of
> Neville Chamberlain. And who kept Germany above water in the 20s and
> early 30s? Loans from the United States and Great Britain. Schacht
> was a big buddy of Montague norman over at the Bank of England.
Be that as it may, but because the Bolshevics firmly believed that the
best hopes to further a world-wide revolution were to have a instigate
war in the west, from the early 1920s to 1933 the USSR secretly
collaborated with the German military to enable it to circumvent the
provisions of the Versailles Treaty. Moscow allowed the Germans to
produce and test tanks, aircraft, submarines and poison gas on their
territory. Add this to the commonly accepted conclusion that had
Stalin not so effectively split the left vote by forbiding the German
Communists from collaborating with the Social Democrats, Hitler would
not have come to power in 33 - and you get a disproportionate amount
of the blame for Hitler falling on the USSR's shoulders.
>
> > thus at least partially responsible for the cataclysmic events that followed,
> > its agents stirring up trouble in Spain,
>
> Oh, yeah. Resisting Franco's rebellion against an elected Spanish
> government caused <such> damage.
True - but the "fear" factor cannot be underscored enough. It too
caused a lot of Germans to vote for Hitler for he managed to convince
everyone that the Red Menace was just around the corner.
>
> > England and other European nations,
> > perhaps strategically Churchill and the American administration wanted
> > to delay the relief as long as possible. If I were a US or British
> > adviser that is exactly what I would have recommended ("Let Stalin
> > bleed").
>
> Pretty much what Secretary of State for Air Moore-Brabazon and Senator
> Truman said in 1941.
>
> > As for re-payment, why do you throw this into the equation like it is
> > supposed to somehow mean something. Of course they should have payed
> > back the aid
>
> Then it really wasn't aid, was it.
Call it: a play on words.
>
> > especially considering they swollowed half of Europe after 1945.
>
> Payments began before Soviet forces crossed the prewar borders.
???????
>
> > > > > > but even if
> > > > > > this did happen and the Reich survived - so what? As an American
> > > > > > pointed out in another post: "The US was never in actual danger of
> > > > > > conquest."
> > > > >
> > > > > Never said they were, although Hitler clearly meant to form a reich
> > > > > capable of taking on the US on equal terms.
> > > > >
> > > > > > As for the Europeans, many of them had to endure equal
> > > > > > misery under the bolshevics - so they would have been working for
> > > > > > another task-master - a slave is a slave.
> > > > >
> > > > > The population of Poland declined about 20% under the tender care of
> > > > > the Nazis.
> > > > >
> > > > > Under the Soviets, it rose to about 38 million.
> > > > >
> > > > > Stuart Wilkes
> > > >
> > > > Stuart,
> > > >
> > > > Why you insist on using birth rates and population as some sort of
> > > > ultimate barometer for a society is beyond me.
> > >
> > > What did I say about birth rates in that post?
> >
> > No, but a scan of your posts on the topic of eastern europe during and
> > after the fall of the USSR will reveal that you have on more than one
> > occasion used birth rates in this fashion.
>
> But not this one.
>
> Again, I merely note that their postwar policies in Poland and Ukraine
> were by no means equal.
>
Yes but by extension and for the same reasons as you critisize Pipes,
you do not say anything more about life in the gay old USSR.
> > > You maintained that
> > > the misery of many Europeans under the Bolshes was the same as it was
> > > under the Nazis. I noted that the policy of the Nazis in Poland (and
> > > Ukraine btw) was to <exterminate them>, whereas the postwar policy of
> > > the Soviets in Poland (and Ukraine btw) resulted in significant
> > > population growth.
> >
> > Qualification: exterminate the Jews, enslave the rest.
>
> Oh, no. As was pointed out to you previously, it was concluded in the
> Wansee Conference to <exterminate> most of the Slavs as well.
I must have missed that post.
>
> > This was the policy of the Reich in Poland and Ukraine.
> > >
> > > Which of course means that the point of yours that that I replied to
> > > is entirely false. But nothin' new about that.
> >
> > See above.
> > >
> > > > "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > > > If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > > > the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > > > Malcolm Muggeridge
> > >
> > > What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
> >
> > No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
>
> Never met the guy.
Pulitzer prize writer for the New York Times who after visiting the
USSR in 1933 wrote that "all talk of a Ukrainian famine was nonsense."
He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
And how can you rule that out?
>
> > > > "The source of Lenin's revolutionary passion was thus not sympathy for
> > > > the poor; indeed when famine struck the Volga region in 1891-92, he
> > > > alone among the local intelligentsia opposed humanitarian assistance
> > > > to the starving peasants, on the grounds that the famine was
> > > > progressive because it destroyed the old peasant economy and paved the
> > > > way for socialism. Nor was his revolutionary ardor inspired by a
> > > > vision of a more just future. It was grounded in anger and driven by
> > > > a craving for revenge. Struve, who collaborated with him in the
> > > > 1890s, wrote many years later
> > > > that the principle feature of Lenin's
> > > > personality was hatred. And this predisposition of a provincial
> > > > Russian youth would exert immense influence on twentieth-century
> > > > politics, the main impulse of which would derive from resentment and
> > > > animosity towards outsiders, whether of a different social class or
> > > > ethnic and racial group." - Richard Pipes
> > >
> > > Oh, yeah. The guy who has the Red Army of 1920 threatening to wade
> > > the English Channel if the Poles hadn't stopped them. And he has no
> > > criticism of the Polish offensive that provoked Tukhachevsky's
> > > counteroffensive. What a loon.
> >
> > You know Stuey, a man can tell a lot about another man based on the
> > company he keeps, but even more importantly, by what he says and
> > thinks of other well known people. For example, if you had seriously
> > put forth a suggestion that Dan Quale was a giften American
> > politician, I (and most others I suspect) would say that you yourself
> > are "not playing with a full deck." Your comments about Muggeridge
> > and now Richard Pipes lead me to the same conclusion. Pipes
> > especially since he is a renound expert on Russian and Soviet history
> > - and you are not.
> >
> > "In April of 1920 Poland, eager to forestall the reemergence of a
> > strong and imperialist Russia, had made a common cause with Ukrainian
> > nationalists
>
> Meaning, a loser who had been kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites.
> I believe the technical term is "puppet".
Who are you refering to here?
>
> > and invaded the Soviet Ukraine with the aim of detaching
> > it from Russia. The invasion failed to ignite an uprising in Ukraine,
> > and the Polish armies soon found themselves in full retreat." Richard
> > Pipes, Communism, page 50.
> >
> > You were saying?
>
> And nowhere does Pipes criticize the Polish goverment for this action.
> Normally, he is supportive of efforts to "....forestall the
> reemergence of a strong and imperialist Russia." He merely notes that
> it failed.
This could be explained in two ways:
1) His inherent bias: he is a Polish Jew.
2) He writes about Russian and Soviet History. While this has to
involve touching on the history of other neighbouring countries,
namely Poland and Germany, he focuses his criticism on subject nation.
>
> > > > The soviet system, created and imaged after Lenin, forged in steel and
> > > > blood by Stalin, was an evil abomination - equal in every respect to
> > > > the Nazis in terms of constituting an affront to humanity.
> > >
> > > Quite entertaining. You know of course, that most Western
> > > conservatives at the time had a distinct preference for the Nazis over
> > > the Bolshies. That is, Hitler decided to go after <them>.
> >
> > Because the Bolshies constituted more of a threat to thier own
> > internal stability.
>
> Oh, I don't know. Ten Panzer Divisions did a much better job on
> France's internal stability than the Commies ever did.
Here is what Pipe's has to say on the matter:
"The principle difference between totalitarian regimes of the
Communist and "Fascist" varieties lies in the fact that the former
thought globally while the latter focused on the nation: "Fascist"
regimes, too, accepted the notion of class conflict but saw it as one
between "have" and "have-not" nations. This was articulated by
Mussolini in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies in 1921, a year
before he seized power. Addressing the Communist deputies, he said:
"Between us there are no political affinities but there are
intellectual ones. Like you, we consider necessary a centralized and
unitary state which imposes iron discipline on all persons, whith this
difference, that you reach this conclusion by way of the concept of
class, and we by the way of concept of nation."" - Communism, 2001.
>
> > After all, the Bolshies had activists planted in
> > all the Labour movements, academic institutions, and even government
> > offices. While the extent of the infiltration was unknown until
> > recently, the overt agitators were quite visible and vocal - and they
> > scarred people because they had the potential to stir-up public unrest
> > and challenge the establishment.
> > >
> > > So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
> > > as equal.
> >
> > I give equal condemnation to both regimes - something you do not.
>
> That's because the one played a major role in ending the more
> dangerous one.
Stalin was just as dangerous - he was just more subversive and sly.
With Hitler, basically what you saw is what you got.
>
> > > > Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary glory
> > > > and birth rates.
> > >
> > > Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
> > > I make.
> >
> > Seems you only deem something "substance" if it agrees with your point
> > of view.
>
> No. I deem something "substance" when it is well-argued and
> well-supported with evidence.
>
> Stuart Wilkes
Well then start changing your tune because the evidence on the USSR is
in.
Trident
Michael Petukhov
> Dear clueless,
>
> I never said Russian artists don't exist, they just aren't popular outside
> of Russia.
>
> Go to any Borders, B. Daltons etc and look in the art books. You can find
> hundreds of books on specific painters but you won't find any on Russian
> painters. You might find a book on the Hermitage but that's about it. The
> simple fact is that there is no widespread clamor for the works of Russian
> artists. You are probably the only reader of this NG that knows the three
> artists you mentioned.
That's a correct observation. Yes indeed I many times noticed that
russian painters normaly are not present in western art books,
encyclopaedias etc., at least not on those ordinary people can
buy in an ordinary book shop.
This fact, in my view, does not say anything about quality, real value or
contribution into human culture by russian painters that worked
at the same time as those who are discussed a lot on those art
books. To say the true I have no idea why?. It cannot be a political
issue which always divides us since many painters died a few 100s
years ago.
I was traveling a lot and did visit, I think, almost all the important
musems in the West both in europe ans States. So I can compare quality
of collections say in Luvre with that of Hermitage or local painting in
Orsey and Trekiakov's gallery in Moscow or Russian museum in St. Peterburg.
And in may taste this comparison is not in favor of Luvre or Orsey.
Certainly both of sides have true masterpieces but % of that in Russian
musems is clearly higher.
For instance there is nothing in West culture that can be compared to
ancient russian orthodox icons. The guys were trying make image of the God,
and not a human being!
I do not know why it is not in art books. why for instance French
wine producers (I have asked some of them) never even heard (???) about
Georgian, Crimean or Moldovian wines many of which are not worser
than famous French names? I remmeber how my French friends were
suprised by quality of Crimea champagne and just could not believe its
real price I paid here. Fortunately nowdays one can buy it in almost
any big wine shop in Europe. And the same with my friends who was visting
Trekiakov's gallery in Moscow or Russian museum in St. Peterburg.
Michael
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
> Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urj...@bellsouth.net> пишет в
> сообщении:3CCF64E0...@bellsouth.net...
> : Tim Hall wrote:
> :
> : > Never forget that Russia lost 14 million people in WW2 while America's
> : > losses were only 2 .
> :
> : Only 14?
>
> Direct military losses - 8,7 million.
>
> : Are you including those killed on the orders of Stalin and the party?
>
> 1921 - 1954 about 3.7 millions.
>
> : Oh and never forget that Stalin had made a gentlemens agreement
> : in 1939 with Hitler to divy up eastern europe. A pact which Stalin
> : hoped Hitler would keep until he, Stalin, felt that the Reich was
>
> You "forget" to mention the Munich "gentlemens agreement".
No! I didn't "forget". It's just that it's irrelevant in the context of this
thread about Russian losses. My point being that Stalin was preparing
for a later offensive against the 3rd Reich. So his disposition and balance
of forces was not set up for defence. The moral and political implications
of the Molotov - Ribbentrop pact and its intentions are a seperate topic
> So, Stalin should place all burden of anti-Nazy opposition on own country?
> Why?
>
> : enough weakened by fighting in the west for the USSR to attack.
> : Oh and don't forget about Stalins' purge of his officer core in the
> : early 1930s.
>
> Incompetent war-criminals like Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich..
>
> : Oh and don't forget the Russian/Soviet tactics of human wave
> : attacks.
>
> Soviet direct military losses - 8,7 million, german and allies direct
> military losses on the East front - 8,6 million.
40% of the German military was deployed vs the US & UK as well as the bulk
of the Luftwaffe. Of course German casualties were higher on the Eastren
Front it was the largest front in history.
Below is data on German, irreversible losses from June 22 1941 - 1945:
Total German ground forces irreversible losses all fronts in ( )'s:
1942 - 519,000 (538,000)
1943 - 668,000 (793,000)
1944 - 1,129,000 (1,629,000)
1945 - 550,000 (1,250,000)*
*As of 01.04.45
Soviet Military irreversible losses:
1941 - 5.5 million
1942 - 7.153 million
1943 - 6.965 million
1944 - 6.547 million
1945 - 2.534 million
*See: Sokolov B.V. The Cost of War: Human Losses for the USSR and Germany,
1939 - 1945 : Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol 9, No. 1 March 1996.
What is the source of your numbers? Kara-Murza?
>
> Read the German generals memoirs: they remembered Soviet heavy artillery,
> tanks and qualification of command.
>
> Or assaults of Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Kursk, Leningrad where Soviet army
> had a heavy fortified positions, in two mentioned cases with stationary
> artillery batteries..
>
> F.e. Sevastopol, that cost Germans more than 300.000 killed. Germans flung
> infantry and light tanks on the mass barrage of ferroconcrete pillboxes,
> stationary batteries and battleship.
I am sceptical of the other numbers that you quote as well :)
Mikhail Medved
> Dear clueless,
>
> I never said Russian artists don't exist, they just aren't popular outside
> of Russia.
>
> Go to any Borders, B. Daltons etc and look in the art books. You can find
> hundreds of books on specific painters but you won't find any on Russian
> painters. You might find a book on the Hermitage but that's about it. The
> simple fact is that there is no widespread clamor for the works of Russian
> artists. You are probably the only reader of this NG that knows the three
> artists you mentioned.
Nonsense as usual. "Go to any McDonald's and you'll find tons of
badly-fried cutlets but you won't find any oysters, rack of lamb, or
anything like that. The simple fact is that there's no clamor about
anything but junk food."
There's certainly enough books on famous Russian painters: Serov,
Levitan, Repin, Vrubel, etc. I could provide you with links to Amazon
if I had even a slightest suspicion that you're intersted in culture.
The fact that a certain general bookstore doesn't carry them doesn't
prove anything.
Medved.
Stuart Wilkes
> > > > > > > > No, Mark.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > And if it weren't for Russia, we Americans would still be faced with a
> > > > > > > > Thousand-Year Reich approaching its seventieth year.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Stuart Wilkes
>
> > > > > > > Highly speculative (and the soviets would have choked if they did not
> > > > > > > have a crucial influx of western supplies by the way),
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The overwhelming majority of which arrived in 1944, and most of
> > > > > > which were paid for by Reverse Lend-Lease and payments in gold.
> > >
> > > So be it - it arrived late. Since the USSR was largely responsible
> > > for Germany's military build-up before the war
> >
> > Actually, a good third of Germany's battle tanks in the campaigns
> > against
> > Poland and France were of Czechoslovak manufacture - courtesy of
> > Neville Chamberlain. And who kept Germany above water in the 20s and
> > early 30s? Loans from the United States and Great Britain. Schacht
>
> Be that as it may, but because the Bolshevics firmly believed that the
> best hopes to further a world-wide revolution were to have a instigate
> war in the west, from the early 1920s to 1933 the USSR secretly
> collaborated with the German military to enable it to circumvent the
> provisions of the Versailles Treaty.
Which treaty the Soviet Union never signed, and to which the Soviet
Union had no obligation.
> Moscow allowed the Germans to
> produce and test tanks, aircraft, submarines and poison gas on their
> territory. Add this to the commonly accepted conclusion that had
> Stalin not so effectively split the left vote by forbiding the German
> Communists from collaborating with the Social Democrats,
Which vote, if combined, did not constitute a majority during the last
years of Hitler's climb to power. Just because a "conclusion" is
"commonly accepted" does not mean it follows from the evidence or is
correct.
> Hitler would not have come to power in 33 -
Lets do a little electoral math here.
On March 18, 1933, Hitler recieved his grant of dictatorial power from
the Enabling Act, which passed 431-94 (as I recall).
The 94 voting against were the Social Democrats. The hundred or so
Communist delegates were not there, because the Communist Party had
been banned. But if they had been present, and if they had all voted
against the Enabling Act, it still would have had a 2/3 majority - 431
votes in favor, and about 200 votes against.
So. Even if the Communists and Social Democrats had combined in 1933,
Hitler still would have been appointed Chancellor, since the Nazi
Party got the most votes (almost 44%) and had the support of other
parties (Hugenberg's Nationalists and the Center Party) sufficient to
constitute a strong majority, and the Enabling Act would have passed
anyway.
Again, just because a "conclusion" is "commonly accepted" does not
mean it is correct.
> and you get a disproportionate amount
> of the blame for Hitler falling on the USSR's shoulders.
Which conclusion you draw based upon an erroneous understanding of
German politics in the early 1930s.
> > > thus at least partially responsible for the cataclysmic events that
> > > followed, its agents stirring up trouble in Spain,
> >
> > Oh, yeah. Resisting Franco's rebellion against an elected Spanish
> > government caused <such> damage.
>
> True - but the "fear" factor cannot be underscored enough. It too
> caused a lot of Germans to vote for Hitler for he managed to convince
> everyone that the Red Menace was just around the corner.
> >
> > > England and other European nations,
> > > perhaps strategically Churchill and the American administration wanted
> > > to delay the relief as long as possible. If I were a US or British
> > > adviser that is exactly what I would have recommended ("Let Stalin
> > > bleed").
> >
> > Pretty much what Secretary of State for Air Moore-Brabazon and Senator
> > Truman said in 1941.
> >
> > > As for re-payment, why do you throw this into the equation like it is
> > > supposed to somehow mean something. Of course they should have payed
> > > back the aid
> >
> > Then it really wasn't aid, was it.
>
> Call it: a play on words.
How about calling it: A distortion.
> > > especially considering they swollowed half of Europe after 1945.
> >
> > Payments began before Soviet forces crossed the prewar borders.
>
> ???????
"Reverse Lend-Lease" shipments of chromium and tungsten, as well as
payments in gold for Lend Lease, began before Soviet forces reached
the pre-June 22, 1941 borders, or the 1938 border for that matter.
Therefore, your "they should have paid it back because they swallowed
half of Europe" point is shown to be irrelavent. They were paying it
back because the Lend-Lease agreement specified that it would be paid
back, whether or not they "swallowed half of Europe".
You made the claim that many European suffered equally under the Nazis
and the Bolshies. I pointed out one country, Poland, which suffered a
great deal less under the Bolshies than under the Nazis. To
demonstrate the erroneousness of your implication that the Bolshies
were as bad as the Nazis, I needed only one example.
> > > > You maintained that
> > > > the misery of many Europeans under the Bolshes was the same as it was
> > > > under the Nazis. I noted that the policy of the Nazis in Poland (and
> > > > Ukraine btw) was to <exterminate them>, whereas the postwar policy of
> > > > the Soviets in Poland (and Ukraine btw) resulted in significant
> > > > population growth.
> > >
> > > Qualification: exterminate the Jews, enslave the rest.
> >
> > Oh, no. As was pointed out to you previously, it was concluded in the
> > Wansee Conference to <exterminate> most of the Slavs as well.
>
> I must have missed that post.
My apologies. I confused you with another poster.
"It is not our task to Germanize the East in the traditional sense -
that is, to teach the people there the German language and German laws
- but to ensure
that only people with truly German, Teutonic blood live in the East."
(The Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler)
Slavs were to be exterminated, or forced to migrate to Siberia, where
further tens of millions were to die of starvation and exposure. A
few hundred thousand were to be retained as slave laborers.
So, the Slavic population of the lands the Germans intended to take as
"living space" was to be reduced by various measures to a few hundred
thousand slave laborers. As the Germanic population of the East grew,
these few Slavs would be superfluous, and would be done away with.
Interferes with making bricks.
Petalura
> > > and invaded the Soviet Ukraine with the aim of detaching
> > > it from Russia. The invasion failed to ignite an uprising in Ukraine,
> > > and the Polish armies soon found themselves in full retreat." Richard
> > > Pipes, Communism, page 50.
> > >
> > > You were saying?
> >
> > And nowhere does Pipes criticize the Polish goverment for this action.
> > Normally, he is supportive of efforts to "....forestall the
> > reemergence of a strong and imperialist Russia." He merely notes that
> > it failed.
>
> This could be explained in two ways:
> 1) His inherent bias: he is a Polish Jew.
> 2) He writes about Russian and Soviet History. While this has to
> involve touching on the history of other neighbouring countries,
> namely Poland and Germany, he focuses his criticism on subject nation.
All of which means that my point stands about Pipes having no
critisism of the Polish invasion that resulted in Tukhachevsky's
counteroffensive.
> > > > > The soviet system, created and imaged after Lenin, forged in steel and
> > > > > blood by Stalin, was an evil abomination - equal in every respect to
> > > > > the Nazis in terms of constituting an affront to humanity.
> > > >
> > > > Quite entertaining. You know of course, that most Western
> > > > conservatives at the time had a distinct preference for the Nazis over
> > > > the Bolshies. That is, Hitler decided to go after <them>.
> > >
> > > Because the Bolshies constituted more of a threat to thier own
> > > internal stability.
> >
> > Oh, I don't know. Ten Panzer Divisions did a much better job on
> > France's internal stability than the Commies ever did.
>
> Here is what Pipe's has to say on the matter:
>
> "The principle difference between totalitarian regimes of the
> Communist and "Fascist" varieties lies in the fact that the former
> thought globally while the latter focused on the nation: "Fascist"
> regimes, too, accepted the notion of class conflict but saw it as one
> between "have" and "have-not" nations. This was articulated by
> Mussolini in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies in 1921, a year
> before he seized power. Addressing the Communist deputies, he said:
> "Between us there are no political affinities but there are
> intellectual ones. Like you, we consider necessary a centralized and
> unitary state which imposes iron discipline on all persons, whith this
> difference, that you reach this conclusion by way of the concept of
> class, and we by the way of concept of nation."" - Communism, 2001.
Guess what. Mussolini wasn't a Nazi. He was a Fascist, and there are
distinctions. I referred to Nazis. And if Pipes (and you) want to
use that intellectual wanderer Mussolini as an example of a
theoretician to prove your points, you deserve what you get. That guy
was all over the map, and even experienced a "deathbed (re)conversion"
to Socialism before being hung by his heels.
And still no reply to my point that 10 German Panzer Divisions
disrupting France's internal stability a good bit more than the
Commies ever did.
> > > After all, the Bolshies had activists planted in
> > > all the Labour movements, academic institutions, and even government
> > > offices. While the extent of the infiltration was unknown until
> > > recently, the overt agitators were quite visible and vocal - and they
> > > scarred people because they had the potential to stir-up public unrest
> > > and challenge the establishment.
> > > >
> > > > So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
> > > > as equal.
> > >
> > > I give equal condemnation to both regimes - something you do not.
> >
> > That's because the one played a major role in ending the more
> > dangerous one.
>
> Stalin was just as dangerous - he was just more subversive and sly.
And did not cause the most horrific war in history.
> With Hitler, basically what you saw is what you got.
To wit: the most horrific war in history.
> > > > > Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary
> > > > > glory and birth rates.
> > > >
> > > > Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
> > > > I make.
> > >
> > > Seems you only deem something "substance" if it agrees with your point
> > > of view.
> >
> > No. I deem something "substance" when it is well-argued and
> > well-supported with evidence.
> >
> > Stuart Wilkes
>
> Well then start changing your tune because the evidence on the USSR is
> in.
Like you've shown anything of the sort.
Stuart Wilkes
mall...@yahoo.com
> *As of 01.04.45
>
> Soviet Military irreversible losses:
>
> 1941 - 5.5 million
> 1942 - 7.153 million
> 1943 - 6.965 million
> 1944 - 6.547 million
> 1945 - 2.534 million
>
> *See: Sokolov B.V. The Cost of War: Human Losses for the USSR and Germany,
> 1939 - 1945 : Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol 9, No. 1 March 1996.
Sounds like a bullshit data, Rostyk. Better try this one:
Soviet Military irrecoverable losses (KIA, MIA, deaths from wounds or
disease, POW, deaths from accidents):
1941 - 3,137.673
1942 - 3,258,216
1943 - 2,312,429
1944 - 1,763,891
1945 - 800,817
Campaign in the Far East - 12,031
You do see the noticeable difference, dontcha?
Data is from the Red Army Central Archives in the fair city of Zagorsk.
Hence, no nice round numbers like yours :)
But you don't have to travel that far. It's all been already in print.
Get yourself a copy of:
Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, by
Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev. London: Greenhill/ Mechanicsburg,
Pa.: Stackpole, 1997. ISBN: 1-85367-280-7.
Seems to me that Mr. Sokolov counted not just dead, but sick and wounded
as well. But those do not fall under "irreversible" losses. For your and
Mr. Sokolov's benefit:
Soviet Military sick and wounded (wounded, concussion, burns and
frostbite, sick, etc):
1941 - 1,336,147
1942 - 4,111,062
1943 - 5,545,074
1944 - 5,114,750
1945 - 2,212,690
Campain in the Far East - 24,425
Archives are a wonderful thing. Numbers in the book even broken farther
down on officers, sergeants and enlisted. I don't think we need that
level of detail here, though.
mall...@yahoo.com
>
> How the wind arranges the cigarette butts and Mc Donalds wrappers into
> Kandinsky-like abstract works of art in your trailer park is Tampa social
> realism.
Trailer park is all you could throw back at good ole me, Mark? I do
believe, you are loosing your touch. Why, a year ago or so, you would've
at least also mentioned your fat stock options. Methinks, it's a sure
sign of you turning into an old, toothless and decrepit, has-been Usenet
troll. My condolences, Mark. :)
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
Yes, I do see that the numbers are different, smaller.
However they still differ quite a bit from those posted by Tomcat, whose
numbers are smaller still for Russians, and greater for the Germans.
Tomcat of course gives no source for his numbers.
It would be interesting, if we could get Mr. Sokolov to comment of the
discrepancy. Is it just a matter of what was counted or some other
explanataion. Also the same question could/should be put to
Krivosheev. Of course no one will try to resolve the matter by asking
the authors.
mall...@yahoo.com
> Yes, I do see that the numbers are different, smaller.
> However they still differ quite a bit from those posted by Tomcat, whose
> numbers are smaller still for Russians, and greater for the Germans.
> Tomcat of course gives no source for his numbers.
>
> It would be interesting, if we could get Mr. Sokolov to comment of the
> discrepancy. Is it just a matter of what was counted or some other
> explanataion. Also the same question could/should be put to
> Krivosheev. Of course no one will try to resolve the matter by asking
> the authors.
John Erickson was the translator of the Krivosheev's book. If it was
good enough for him, it is good enough for me. And in case you are
wandering about his credentials:
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/humanities/story/0,9850,648967,00.html
Tomcat
<mall...@yahoo.com> пишет в сообщении:3CD214D2...@yahoo.com...
: 1941 - 3,137.673
: 1942 - 3,258,216
: 1943 - 2,312,429
: 1944 - 1,763,891
: 1945 - 800,817
: Campaign in the Far East - 12,031
I am acquainted with these data.
But there is a double counting here. In 1941-42 Soviet units often were
encircled (including large-scale units) or were taken prisoner, but broke
through the encirclement and become a part of Army again. Although they were
reckoned as irreversible losses.
Elimination of the double counting gives us as a result 8.7 million.
splonk
> Dear clueless,
Dear less-than-clueless
>
> I never said Russian artists don't exist, they just aren't popular outside
> of Russia.
Do you even read the posts you respond to? If Sotheby's et al can
hold Russian-specific sales outside of Russia, then your first
supposition is immediately false. Commonsense would have and should
have held you back from posting that in a public forum.
>
> Go to any Borders, B. Daltons etc and look in the art books. You can find
> hundreds of books on specific painters but you won't find any on Russian
> painters. You might find a book on the Hermitage but that's about it.
I don't believe that you have ever set foot in any of those shops.
Rodchenko: (1 of several titles in stock)
Malevich: (1 of several etc)
General Russian Art
It took seconds to find these on Borders' website. There are thousands
more. I have picked up Russian Art books from their shops for others
on occasions. Not difficult to find at all.
The
> simple fact is that there is no widespread clamor for the works of Russian
> artists. You are probably the only reader of this NG that knows the three
> artists you mentioned.
Following that criterion I doubt if the average person who does not
care about Art at all can name any famous painter apart from Da Vinci,
Picasso or Van Gogh. So what does that prove about the intrinsic value
of the artists that cannot easily be named?
>
> The people that buy art at Sothebys buy art as an investment, not so much
> because they like the art on its own.
Not true; people buy for all sorts of reasons. Anyhow, Art only
becomes an investment because it appreciates in value. It can only
appreciate in value because there is a constant and increasing demand
for it. Do you follow the logic? Or do you still hold that a Malevich
sold for $17 million at Phillips in 2000 (more than Bruegels,
Rembrandts and recent Van Goghs have sold for ) because "there is no
widespread clamour for the works of Russian artists...."
Stuart Wilkes
> Tomcat wrote:
>
> > Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urj...@bellsouth.net> пишет в
> > сообщении:3CCF64E0...@bellsouth.net...
> > : Tim Hall wrote:
> > :
> > : > Never forget that Russia lost 14 million people in WW2 while America's
> > : > losses were only 2 .
> > :
> > : Only 14?
> >
> > Direct military losses - 8,7 million.
> >
> > : Are you including those killed on the orders of Stalin and the party?
> >
> > 1921 - 1954 about 3.7 millions.
> >
> > : Oh and never forget that Stalin had made a gentlemens agreement
> > : in 1939 with Hitler to divy up eastern europe. A pact which Stalin
> > : hoped Hitler would keep until he, Stalin, felt that the Reich was
> >
> > You "forget" to mention the Munich "gentlemens agreement".
>
> No! I didn't "forget". It's just that it's irrelevant in the context of this
> thread about Russian losses. My point being that Stalin was preparing
> for a later offensive against the 3rd Reich.
No, he was not.
> So his disposition and balance of forces was not set up for defence.
Yes, they were. Their defense included significant work on
fortifications, and included preparing forces and positions to
considerable depth.
> The moral and political implications
> of the Molotov - Ribbentrop pact and its intentions are a seperate topic
>
> > So, Stalin should place all burden of anti-Nazy opposition on own country?
> > Why?
> >
> > : enough weakened by fighting in the west for the USSR to attack.
> > : Oh and don't forget about Stalins' purge of his officer core in the
> > : early 1930s.
> >
> > Incompetent war-criminals like Yakir, Tukhachevsky, Uborevich..
> >
> > : Oh and don't forget the Russian/Soviet tactics of human wave
> > : attacks.
> >
> > Soviet direct military losses - 8,7 million, german and allies direct
> > military losses on the East front - 8,6 million.
>
>
> 40% of the German military was deployed vs the US & UK as well as the bulk
> of the Luftwaffe.
Not during Barbarossa. The Bulk of the Luftwaffe was in the East
during Barbarossa.
> Of course German casualties were higher on the Eastren
> Front it was the largest front in history.
>
> Below is data on German, irreversible losses from June 22 1941 - 1945:
>
>
> Total German ground forces irreversible losses all fronts in ( )'s:
>
> 1942 - 519,000 (538,000)
> 1943 - 668,000 (793,000)
> 1944 - 1,129,000 (1,629,000)
> 1945 - 550,000 (1,250,000)*
>
> *As of 01.04.45
And you left out several Field Armies of Romanians, Finns, Hungarians,
Italians, as well as smaller forces from other countries. These
inflicted losses on the Soviet Army, and suffered large losses as
well.
> Soviet Military irreversible losses:
>
> 1941 - 5.5 million
> 1942 - 7.153 million
> 1943 - 6.965 million
> 1944 - 6.547 million
> 1945 - 2.534 million
>
> *See: Sokolov B.V. The Cost of War: Human Losses for the USSR and Germany,
> 1939 - 1945 : Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol 9, No. 1 March 1996.
I have Sokolov's article, and his methodology is highly speculative,
with few references to actual data.
Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
Good one, Malleusus. A little exposure to Erickson generally reduces
the tendency towards unsupported mythologizing and speculation.
Stuart Wilkes
Trident
> > best hopes to further a world-wide revolution were to have a instigate
> > war in the west, from the early 1920s to 1933 the USSR secretly
> > collaborated with the German military to enable it to circumvent the
> > provisions of the Versailles Treaty.
>
> Which treaty the Soviet Union never signed, and to which the Soviet
> Union had no obligation.
Well if you insist on using that line of logic - Hitler did not sign
Versailles either.
In this case it is correct because it rests on the the balance of
probablities and the political climate at the time. If there was no
support coming from Moscow (financial and otherwise) to facilitate and
prop-up the German Communist movement in the 20s and 30s - it would
not have grown to the size that it did (imagine El Quita (sp?) without
Saudi money), it would not have constituted the treat to power that it
did, thus not giving Hitler a chance to spook the majority of voters
and centralist politicians into supporting him. Electoral numbers, if
you insist on using them, should include all the non-Nazi members in
which case Hitler would have lost the majority and the coalition he
consolodated. You must account for the political synergy of the times
- which for Hitler and the central block was "Stop the Reds at all
costs!!!"
To use a contemporary example, the size of militant Islam in the
Middle East has a lot to with a US foreign policy which overwhelmingly
and catagorically favors Israel. To suggest that there is no
relationship here or to suggest that all the blame should be placed on
the Arabs and naively believe that it is some blind hatred of western
society which is behind the movement is delusional!
>
> > and you get a disproportionate amount
> > of the blame for Hitler falling on the USSR's shoulders.
>
> Which conclusion you draw based upon an erroneous understanding of
> German politics in the early 1930s.
>
> > > > thus at least partially responsible for the cataclysmic events that
> > > > followed, its agents stirring up trouble in Spain,
> > >
> > > Oh, yeah. Resisting Franco's rebellion against an elected Spanish
> > > government caused <such> damage.
> >
> > True - but the "fear" factor cannot be underscored enough. It too
> > caused a lot of Germans to vote for Hitler for he managed to convince
> > everyone that the Red Menace was just around the corner.
> > >
> > > > England and other European nations,
> > > > perhaps strategically Churchill and the American administration wanted
> > > > to delay the relief as long as possible. If I were a US or British
> > > > adviser that is exactly what I would have recommended ("Let Stalin
> > > > bleed").
> > >
> > > Pretty much what Secretary of State for Air Moore-Brabazon and Senator
> > > Truman said in 1941.
> > >
> > > > As for re-payment, why do you throw this into the equation like it is
> > > > supposed to somehow mean something. Of course they should have payed
> > > > back the aid
> > >
> > > Then it really wasn't aid, was it.
> >
> > Call it: a play on words.
>
> How about calling it: A distortion.
Whatever.
>
> > > > especially considering they swollowed half of Europe after 1945.
> > >
> > > Payments began before Soviet forces crossed the prewar borders.
> >
> > ???????
>
> "Reverse Lend-Lease" shipments of chromium and tungsten, as well as
> payments in gold for Lend Lease, began before Soviet forces reached
> the pre-June 22, 1941 borders, or the 1938 border for that matter.
>
> Therefore, your "they should have paid it back because they swallowed
> half of Europe" point is shown to be irrelavent. They were paying it
> back because the Lend-Lease agreement specified that it would be paid
> back, whether or not they "swallowed half of Europe".
>
The fact that they swallowed half of Europe should erase any guilt for
making them pay it back and for raising it in the first place.
Again, your example is shallow and superficial because it DOES NOT
reflect pain, suffering and widespread human rights abuses which span
decades.
>
> > > > > You maintained that
> > > > > the misery of many Europeans under the Bolshes was the same as it was
> > > > > under the Nazis. I noted that the policy of the Nazis in Poland (and
> > > > > Ukraine btw) was to <exterminate them>, whereas the postwar policy of
> > > > > the Soviets in Poland (and Ukraine btw) resulted in significant
> > > > > population growth.
> > > >
> > > > Qualification: exterminate the Jews, enslave the rest.
> > >
> > > Oh, no. As was pointed out to you previously, it was concluded in the
> > > Wansee Conference to <exterminate> most of the Slavs as well.
> >
> > I must have missed that post.
>
> My apologies. I confused you with another poster.
>
> "It is not our task to Germanize the East in the traditional sense -
> that is, to teach the people there the German language and German laws
> - but to ensure
> that only people with truly German, Teutonic blood live in the East."
> (The Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler)
>
> Slavs were to be exterminated, or forced to migrate to Siberia, where
> further tens of millions were to die of starvation and exposure. A
> few hundred thousand were to be retained as slave laborers.
>
> So, the Slavic population of the lands the Germans intended to take as
> "living space" was to be reduced by various measures to a few hundred
> thousand slave laborers. As the Germanic population of the East grew,
> these few Slavs would be superfluous, and would be done away with.
Koch and Himmler were the extreme of the extremists. There were other
less fanatical voices in the Reich.
>
> > > > This was the policy of the Reich in Poland and Ukraine.
> > > > >
> > > > > Which of course means that the point of yours that that I replied to
> > > > > is entirely false. But nothin' new about that.
> > > >
> > > > See above.
> > > > >
> > > > > > "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > > > > > If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > > > > > the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > > > > > Malcolm Muggeridge
> > > > >
> > > > > What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
> > > >
> > > > No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
> > >
> > > Never met the guy.
> >
> > Pulitzer prize writer for the New York Times who after visiting the
> > USSR in 1933 wrote that "all talk of a Ukrainian famine was nonsense."
> > He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> > brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> > In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
So do vacations on the Black Sea for people digging channels through
the frozen tundra.
Oh - the freedom fighter who is a hero to many Ukrainians around the
world, served as the principle inspiration for the Ukrainian
Insurgence Army in WWII? Not my definition of a loser.
>
> > > > and invaded the Soviet Ukraine with the aim of detaching
> > > > it from Russia. The invasion failed to ignite an uprising in Ukraine,
> > > > and the Polish armies soon found themselves in full retreat." Richard
> > > > Pipes, Communism, page 50.
> > > >
> > > > You were saying?
> > >
> > > And nowhere does Pipes criticize the Polish goverment for this action.
> > > Normally, he is supportive of efforts to "....forestall the
> > > reemergence of a strong and imperialist Russia." He merely notes that
> > > it failed.
> >
> > This could be explained in two ways:
> > 1) His inherent bias: he is a Polish Jew.
> > 2) He writes about Russian and Soviet History. While this has to
> > involve touching on the history of other neighbouring countries,
> > namely Poland and Germany, he focuses his criticism on subject nation.
>
> All of which means that my point stands about Pipes having no
> critisism of the Polish invasion that resulted in Tukhachevsky's
> counteroffensive.
Your point is also insignificant. Perhaps you can ask him to spend
some more time critiquing the Poles in his next volume. See what he
says.
It was presented as a quote to illustrate more the similarities of the
two movements than anything else. I can expand and provide a lot more
for you to consider if you like.
>
> And still no reply to my point that 10 German Panzer Divisions
> disrupting France's internal stability a good bit more than the
> Commies ever did.
What sort of reply were you expecting? Obviously military assault and
seizure of power is in a class of its own - so for a more appropriate
communist comparison please look to Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Afghanistan (and Cambodia if you like).
>
> > > > After all, the Bolshies had activists planted in
> > > > all the Labour movements, academic institutions, and even government
> > > > offices. While the extent of the infiltration was unknown until
> > > > recently, the overt agitators were quite visible and vocal - and they
> > > > scarred people because they had the potential to stir-up public unrest
> > > > and challenge the establishment.
> > > > >
> > > > > So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
> > > > > as equal.
> > > >
> > > > I give equal condemnation to both regimes - something you do not.
> > >
> > > That's because the one played a major role in ending the more
> > > dangerous one.
> >
> > Stalin was just as dangerous - he was just more subversive and sly.
>
> And did not cause the most horrific war in history.
Stalin was Hitler's ally in 1939 - so it is not quite as black and
white as you like to portray it.
>
> > With Hitler, basically what you saw is what you got.
>
> To wit: the most horrific war in history.
>
> > > > > > Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary
> > > > > > glory and birth rates.
> > > > >
> > > > > Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
> > > > > I make.
> > > >
> > > > Seems you only deem something "substance" if it agrees with your point
> > > > of view.
> > >
> > > No. I deem something "substance" when it is well-argued and
> > > well-supported with evidence.
> > >
> > > Stuart Wilkes
> >
> > Well then start changing your tune because the evidence on the USSR is
> > in.
>
> Like you've shown anything of the sort.
I have blind man.
Trident
>
> Stuart Wilkes
ValuedCustomer
Maybe if they gave 50% off they wouldn't have so many of these piled up in
inventory collecting dust?
Lenin would have sold this stuff for pennies on the dollar just to get rid
of it.
People buy this kind of art simply because they have more money than they
know what to do with. Why a person would pay 17M for a piece of canvas is
because he has 17M sitting around. He probably didn't put it on his credit
card and is now paying 20% interest. For some people, 17M is mere pocket
change.
So stock is only an investment if it increases in value? It's an investment
regardless of whether it earns a profit or loss.
"splonk" <cruss...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b320bd05.02050...@posting.google.com...
> "ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
A translator translates. I have no arguements with the translator.
Nor do I question the translators' credentials. Anyways he's dead now.
So for you the translator is the authority :) Well to each his own :)
Are Krivosheev and Sokolov still around? They're the ones to ask.
mall...@yahoo.com
> A translator translates. I have no arguements with the translator.
> Nor do I question the translators' credentials. Anyways he's dead now.
> So for you the translator is the authority :) Well to each his own :)
He is if he is a renowned in academia as an unrivaled expert in Soviet
Union military history.
Erickson's translation of the Krivosheev's book is a tacit endorsement
of the data inside it.
Why do I get a feeling that you're just trying to play dumb in order to
confuse the issue?
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
> Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urj...@bellsouth.net> пишет в
> сообщении:3CD21DD8...@bellsouth.net...
>
> Rostyslaw,
>
> Soviet total mobilization resource was about 34 million.
According to ???. Or perhaps it was 17 million, or 68 million.
Which numbers suit your purpose at this moment??? :)
> Sokolov wants to say, that SU Army had an IRREVERSIBLE losses near 27
> million.
So he is just supporting the often heard cry of the USSR apologists.
"Look at the great losses that we suffered in WWII. That is why we haven't
been able to do anything in the last 70 years ....."
I those figures don't suit you use the figures from Krivosheev.
Or invent your own :)
> So, I would like to know:
>
> 1) Who worked in the home front,
The rest of the population :)
> 2) How could wage war the Army that irreversibly losed 80% of own staff (it
> is impossibly in theory),
Change the theory to suit you :)
> 3) How could it be adjusted with the SU Army strengths during first-rate
> military operations,
What does that mean. Translation please
> 4) Who were wounded or captured,
Soldiers. Who were then executed or sent to the gulag by uncle Stalin,
if/when they were repatriated.
>
> 5) And who served in that terrible Stalin's army after the war? :)
Those who did not manage to get demobilized. Plus new recruits. Boys
who had been about 12 years old in 1940 and later those that had been
even younger in 1940, and later those who weren't even born in 1940.
>
> Mr. Sokolov is unable to compute, it seems to me.
>
> But I have a lot questions to the German statistics. There are to many
> "juggles" there. For example the calculation of losses in the current FRG
> borders, problem of the cooperation between different military
> organizations, problem of 1945 and others.
>
> Don't forget that Hittler proclaimed the "total mobilization", not Stalin.
Relevance?
>
>
> [Image]
Yes. They are 'serdze uschipajushchi' heart-rendering propaganda
pictures.
Your archive seems to have a number of these Nazi propaganda pictures.
The previous one you sent was of a wholesome looking Hitler Jugend
teenaged girl. Are these pictures from a family album saved and hidden
away by one of your relatives. Someone who previously served the
Reich. Just as you faithfully serve(d) the Empire?
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
> "Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" wrote:
>
> > A translator translates. I have no arguements with the translator.
> > Nor do I question the translators' credentials. Anyways he's dead now.
> > So for you the translator is the authority :) Well to each his own :)
>
> He is if he is a renowned in academia as an unrivaled expert in Soviet
> Union military history.
> Erickson's translation of the Krivosheev's book is a tacit endorsement
> of the data inside it.
>
> Why do I get a feeling that you're just trying to play dumb in order to
> confuse the issue?
Because that is what you want to believe
splonk
> Maybe if they gave 50% off they wouldn't have so many of these piled up in
> inventory collecting dust?
> Lenin would have sold this stuff for pennies on the dollar just to get rid
> of it.
>
full of this sort of thing. So what? That was not your argument.
> People buy this kind of art simply because they have more money than they
> know what to do with. Why a person would pay 17M for a piece of canvas is
> because he has 17M sitting around. He probably didn't put it on his credit
> card and is now paying 20% interest. For some people, 17M is mere pocket
> change.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
>
> So stock is only an investment if it increases in value? It's an investment
> regardless of whether it earns a profit or loss.
If it loses value it's a loss. Nobody invests purposely to make a
loss. You do not sink money into any project with the expectation that
your money is going to disappear into a black hole. People invest in
art, jewellery, memorabilia, whatever with the expectation that the
value of the investment will rise. This is is gauged by the amount of
demand projected for the object of the investment. In simple terms,
nobody would invest in Russian Art (as opposed to simply buying it
because they liked it) if there was no "clamour" for it.
You've been caught out waffling about something you knew nothing
about. Give up.
private
Stuart Wilkes wrote:
>
-snip-
>
> You made the claim that many European suffered equally under the Nazis
> and the Bolshies. I pointed out one country, Poland, which suffered a
> great deal less under the Bolshies than under the Nazis. To
> demonstrate the erroneousness of your implication that the Bolshies
> were as bad as the Nazis, I needed only one example.
>
>
> Stuart Wilkes
Even a carelessly worded internet search will literally yield endless
examples.
http://www.artukraine.com/commcrimes/rezolut02.htm
[..Telegram To President Dwight D. Eisenhower
United Ukrainian Women's Organizations Of America
February 26, 1956
500 Ukrainian Women Murdered In Soviet Camp
The Honorable Dwight D. Eisenhower
The White House - Washington, D.C. United Ukrainian Women's
Organizations Of America, Inc., at mass rally of protest held Sunday,
February 26, 1956 in New York, have resolved unanimously to call
your attention to an act of deliberate murder committeed by Soviet
authorities upon five hundred Ukrainian women in concentration
camp of Kingir Karaganda by ordering heavy tanks against these
defenseless women and crushing them to death. We earnestly request
that this matter be brought to the attention of the United Nations
for
proper investigation on motion of the United States delegate to
United
Nations. Respectfully submitted by United Ukrainian Women's
Organizations of American,
Inc. of New York
(Mrs) Stephania Halychyn
President of UUWO ...]
Tomcat
: Tomcat wrote:
:
: > Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj <urj...@bellsouth.net> пишет в
: > сообщении:3CD21DD8...@bellsouth.net...
: >
: > Rostyslaw,
: >
: > Soviet total mobilization resource was about 34 million.
:
: According to ???. Or perhaps it was 17 million, or 68 million.
: Which numbers suit your purpose at this moment??? :)
It's generally known figure. About 20% of total population, it is impossible
to mobilize more.
: > Sokolov wants to say, that SU Army had an IRREVERSIBLE losses near 27
: > million.
:
: So he is just supporting the often heard cry of the USSR apologists.
You confuse army losses with general losses. The last were a resalt of
German war crimes.
: "Look at the great losses that we suffered in WWII. That is why we haven't
: been able to do anything in the last 70 years ....."
: I those figures don't suit you use the figures from Krivosheev.
: Or invent your own :)
:
: > So, I would like to know:
: >
: > 1) Who worked in the home front,
:
: The rest of the population :)
Mention figure taking into account that Soviet industry were more mighty
than Germans despite the occupation of the part of the Europian USSR
territory.
So..?
: > 2) How could wage war the Army that irreversibly losed 80% of own staff
(it
: > is impossibly in theory),
:
: Change the theory to suit you :)
:
: > 3) How could it be adjusted with the SU Army strengths during first-rate
: > military operations,
:
: What does that mean. Translation please
:
: > 4) Who were wounded or captured,
:
: Soldiers. Who were then executed or sent to the gulag by uncle Stalin,
: if/when they were repatriated.
"gulag", "burlak" - if the 27 millions were killed, 6 - 7 millions in Army -
who were wounded or captured I ask you? Infants? Olds? Girls? Home front
workers?
I wager you had a huge problems with equations in school.
: > 5) And who served in that terrible Stalin's army after the war? :)
:
: Those who did not manage to get demobilized. Plus new recruits. Boys
: who had been about 12 years old in 1940 and later those that had been
: even younger in 1940, and later those who weren't even born in 1940.
Mobilization ages 18 - 50 years old men. In 1945 according to you they were
"loosed".
Soviet army had an only regular stuff plus the guys, that in 1946 were 18
y.o... So, Army were without reserves, in industry the only women worked.
It was the teerible Stalin's army? You had a huge problems with equations
in school..
: Reich. Just as you faithfully serve(d) the Empire?
My grandfathers fought in that war.
Apropos, I forget to comment yours allegation that:
"40% of the German military was deployed vs the US & UK as well as the bulk
of the Luftwaffe. Of course German casualties were higher on the Eastren
Front it was the largest front in history."
It seems to me you "confuse" Germans rested rear units with "deployed vs the
US & UK". :)
And forget that so-called "Second front" was opened only in 1944.
The quantity of German divisions on the East and others fronts:
East front others
1941 190 80 (Balkan)
12 (Africa, Crete)
1942 240 15 (Africa)
1943 257 26 (Italy)
1944 >200 50 (France, Italy)
So..
And it is quite obvious, that US/GB bombings were possible in such scale
just because main part on German air forces were on the East front. Or you
have another data? :)
Long John Smith
of the West or Western Nations...a few Examples, USA, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia are not in Europe but are considered Western
Nations.
Therefore Russia is PART of the West
petu...@bpc.spbstu.ru (Michael Petukhov) wrote in message news:<a39cf3c3.02042...@posting.google.com>...
> 71% of russians belives that Russia belongs to special so called
> "euroasian" type of civilization and therefore the western way of
> life and development does no go well for Russia.
>
> 13% believe that Russian is a part of west and 16% are undecided.
> There are many more data on that subject at (in Russian):
>
> http://www.wciom.ru/vciom/new/press/press121115_32.htm
>
> A good (and short) description of what is Eurasian civilization, what is
> the difference between that and european one and why they oppose
> each other can be found here (also in Russian):
>
> http://www.eurasia.com.ru/2000let.html
>
> Michael
Fossil Cloud
> Any land outside of Europe occupied by white people is consider part
> of the West or Western Nations...a few Examples, USA, Canada, New
> Zealand and Australia are not in Europe but are considered Western
> Nations.
>
> Therefore Russia is PART of the West
>
And similarly the Stalin's USSR was, wasn't it?
All your "few examples" were occupied by WESTERN europeans. That is
WHY they are democracies, and that is why they belong with the West.
Russians aren't as white as you think in the first place, and their
hearts are black. Byzanthium wasn't a part of the West, and Russia is
even worse.
TML
"Fossil Cloud" <sve...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:fb54de6a.02050...@posting.google.com...
> finge...@hotmail.com (Long John Smith) wrote in message
news:<800c906d.02050...@posting.google.com>...
> > Any land outside of Europe occupied by white people is consider part
> > of the West or Western Nations...a few Examples, USA, Canada, New
> > Zealand and Australia are not in Europe but are considered Western
> > Nations.
> >
> > Therefore Russia is PART of the West
> >
>
> And similarly the Stalin's USSR was, wasn't it?
>
> All your "few examples" were occupied by WESTERN europeans. That is
> WHY they are democracies,
So basically only countries inhabited by "WESTERN europeans" can be
democracies... Quite interesting, considering that democracy originates from
a country not widely considered as "WESTERN european".
> and that is why they belong with the West.
> Russians aren't as white as you think in the first place, and their
> hearts are black.
The West's hearts are green, specifically, the shade of US dollar.
> Byzanthium wasn't a part of the West, and Russia is
> even worse.
What exactly was wrong with Byzanthium?
Richard Harris
>There's certainly enough books on famous Russian painters: Serov,
>Levitan, Repin, Vrubel, etc. I could provide you with links to Amazon
>if I had even a slightest suspicion that you're intersted in culture.
>The fact that a certain general bookstore doesn't carry them doesn't
>prove anything.
Even if such a bookstore carries it, the valued customers will not notice.
ValuedCustomer
"Richard Harris" <rharris@nospam_please.com> wrote in message
news:3cd1d20a...@news-binaries.directvinternet.com...
captain crap
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urj...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:3CD2E76C...@bellsouth.net...
Babai
> Sorry babbleai,
>
> I don't own any Elvis's but if somebody likes them, they are free to buy
> them.
>
> So how many Kandinskys do you have hanging in your living room? ...assuming
> you even have a living room.
????? For a look at good red-blooded honest American living I suggest
the following website: www.mytrailerpark.com.
Babai
>
> "Babai" <bab...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:86dd2bf2.02050...@posting.google.com...
> > "ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message
> news:<qtZz8.85624$sI3.19...@news02.optonline.net>...
> > > If art doesn't strike a chord in the viewer, what good is it? People
> don't
> > > buy Kandinsky because they don't like it.
> > >
> > > An artist that paints abstracts is a weak artist. He can screw up all he
> > > wants but nobody will know. To paint reality convincingly, you have to
> be a
> > > real painter.
> >
> > I was once at a socialist realist exhibit, and this is exactly what
> > they said: art should be understood by the masses.
> >
> > By the way, does the velvet Elvis in your living room strike a chord
> > with you?
> >
> > Babai
> >
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > "Babai" <bab...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> > > news:86dd2bf2.0205...@posting.google.com...
> > > > "ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message
> news:<ktEz8.67591$sI3.16...@news02.optonline.net>...
> > > >
> > > > > You could probably find a Rembrandt, Monet or Van Gogh in Wal Mart
> butcha
> > > > > won't find no Kandinsky...because it's ugly...all of it.
> > > >
> > > > An American trying to make an aesthetic judgement is just too funny.
> > > > Unwittingly or not, you post is the height of sarcasm.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Babai
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > "Babai" <bab...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> > > > > news:86dd2bf2.02043...@posting.google.com...
> > > > > > "ValuedCustomer" <bitb...@devnull.com> wrote in message
> news:<DCuz8.63616$sI3.15...@news02.optonline.net>...
> > > > > > > What art?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Other than Repin, there are very few Russian artists widely
> known
> outside of
> > > > > > > Russia.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Er....Malevich? Kandinsky? Are you that ignorant? But what can
> one
> > > > > > expect from someone from a nation whose aesthetics come from
> > > > > > Wal-Mart...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Babai
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > Maybe it's because the Soviet artists produced such ghastly,
> ugly
> works?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > "Richard Harris" <rharris@nospam_please.com> wrote in message
> > > > > > > news:3ccda44f...@news-binaries.directvinternet.com...
> > > > > > > > On 29 Apr 2002 12:20:02 -0700, glug...@hotmail.com (glugg)
> wrote:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > >petu...@bpc.spbstu.ru (Michael Petukhov) wrote in message
> news:<a39cf3c3.02042...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > > > >> 71% of russians belives that Russia belongs to special so
> called
> > > > > > > > >> "euroasian" type of civilization and therefore the western
> way
> of
> > > > > > > > >> life and development does no go well for Russia.
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > >Russians will support whatever is most painful.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Hmm. Maybe this explains the high quality of
> > > > > > > > Russian art? Great art requires a lot of suffering.
MP del Norte
> People buy this kind of art simply because they have more money than they
> know what to do with. Why a person would pay 17M for a piece of canvas is
> because he has 17M sitting around. He probably didn't put it on his credit
> card and is now paying 20% interest. For some people, 17M is mere pocket
> change.
You got it wrong, as always.
A 17M piece of canvas is not an investment.
It's a post-19-Century substitute for heraldic display.
Instead of showing off your armorial insignia, horses, and hounds, you
show off your Kandinsky, Ferraris, and poodles.
...or photos of your kids, your Ford Explorer, and your golden
retriever, for that sake.
Good Luck (TM), of course.
MP
ValuedCustomer
"MP del Norte" <mpnas...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:de5cfbdb.02050...@posting.google.com...
Stuart Wilkes
> swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote in message > > Be that as it may, but because the Bolshevics firmly believed that the
> > > best hopes to further a world-wide revolution were to have a instigate
> > > war in the west, from the early 1920s to 1933 the USSR secretly
> > > collaborated with the German military to enable it to circumvent the
> > > provisions of the Versailles Treaty.
> >
> > Which treaty the Soviet Union never signed, and to which the Soviet
> > Union had no obligation.
>
> Well if you insist on using that line of logic - Hitler did not sign
> Versailles either.
An empowered representative of the legal German government did.
False.
> If there was no
> support coming from Moscow (financial and otherwise) to facilitate and
> prop-up the German Communist movement in the 20s and 30s - it would
> not have grown to the size that it did (imagine El Quita (sp?) without
> Saudi money), it would not have constituted the treat to power that it
> did, thus not giving Hitler a chance to spook the majority of voters
> and centralist politicians into supporting him.
And a combined SDP-KPD platform that you accuse Stalin of having
prevented would have magnified this "spooking" effect, to Hitler's
great advantage.
> Electoral numbers, if
> you insist on using them, should include all the non-Nazi members in
> which case Hitler would have lost the majority and the coalition he
> consolodated.
Like Hugenberg's Nationalists and the Catholic center Party would have
had anything to do with a combined SDP-KPD platform.
> You must account for the political synergy of the times
> - which for Hitler and the central block was "Stop the Reds at all
> costs!!!"
And a combined SDP-KPD platform would have magnified this effort.
Who mentioned guilt for making them pay it back?
And decades of the Nazis would have resulted in the extermination of
the Polish (and Ukrainian) populations.
And who had Hitler's ear?
> > > > > This was the policy of the Reich in Poland and Ukraine.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Which of course means that the point of yours that that I replied to
> > > > > > is entirely false. But nothin' new about that.
> > > > >
> > > > > See above.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > > > > > > If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > > > > > > the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > > > > > > Malcolm Muggeridge
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
> > > > >
> > > > > No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
> > > >
> > > > Never met the guy.
> > >
> > > Pulitzer prize writer for the New York Times who after visiting the
> > > USSR in 1933 wrote that "all talk of a Ukrainian famine was nonsense."
> > > He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> > > brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> > > In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
>
> Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
Oh, please.
Nevertheless, vacations were more prevalent for Soviets than for
Hebrews under the Egyptians.
Got his butt kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites, and then went
crawling to the Poles. Just like Bandera coming in the train of the
Wehrmacht to get something he was powerless to take himself.
> > > > > and invaded the Soviet Ukraine with the aim of detaching
> > > > > it from Russia. The invasion failed to ignite an uprising in Ukraine,
> > > > > and the Polish armies soon found themselves in full retreat." Richard
> > > > > Pipes, Communism, page 50.
> > > > >
> > > > > You were saying?
> > > >
> > > > And nowhere does Pipes criticize the Polish goverment for this action.
> > > > Normally, he is supportive of efforts to "....forestall the
> > > > reemergence of a strong and imperialist Russia." He merely notes that
> > > > it failed.
> > >
> > > This could be explained in two ways:
> > > 1) His inherent bias: he is a Polish Jew.
> > > 2) He writes about Russian and Soviet History. While this has to
> > > involve touching on the history of other neighbouring countries,
> > > namely Poland and Germany, he focuses his criticism on subject nation.
> >
> > All of which means that my point stands about Pipes having no
> > critisism of the Polish invasion that resulted in Tukhachevsky's
> > counteroffensive.
>
> Your point is also insignificant. Perhaps you can ask him to spend
> some more time critiquing the Poles in his next volume. See what he
> says.
Which means that you admit that your attempt to use that passage to
show Pipes criticizing the Polish aggression that started the 1920 war
has miserably failed.
And it's a limp failure. Mussolini's movement was about Mussolini
alone, and means nothing else. It crumbled to dust at the first
serious blow, justifying the name given him years before of the
"sawdust Caesar".
> I can expand and provide a lot more for you to consider if you like.
If you would.
> > And still no reply to my point that 10 German Panzer Divisions
> > disrupting France's internal stability a good bit more than the
> > Commies ever did.
>
> What sort of reply were you expecting? Obviously military assault and
> seizure of power is in a class of its own - so for a more appropriate
> communist comparison please look to Hungary,
That's what you get for sending a Field Army to the Volga, in search,
I guess, of the ancestral Hungarian homeland.
> Czechoslovakia,
Electoral politics played no small role here.
> Afghanistan (and Cambodia if you like).
And the Afgan Anti-Commies have been <such> an improvement.
> > > > > After all, the Bolshies had activists planted in
> > > > > all the Labour movements, academic institutions, and even government
> > > > > offices. While the extent of the infiltration was unknown until
> > > > > recently, the overt agitators were quite visible and vocal - and they
> > > > > scarred people because they had the potential to stir-up public unrest
> > > > > and challenge the establishment.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So it is actually a sign of considerable progress that you rate them
> > > > > > as equal.
> > > > >
> > > > > I give equal condemnation to both regimes - something you do not.
> > > >
> > > > That's because the one played a major role in ending the more
> > > > dangerous one.
> > >
> > > Stalin was just as dangerous - he was just more subversive and sly.
> >
> > And did not cause the most horrific war in history.
>
> Stalin was Hitler's ally in 1939
Wrong.
> - so it is not quite as black and white as you like to portray it.
My portrayals show more shades than yours.
> > > With Hitler, basically what you saw is what you got.
> >
> > To wit: the most horrific war in history.
> >
> > > > > > > Please stop glorifying it with your shallow posts about millitary
> > > > > > > glory and birth rates.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Which of course means that you have no substansive reply to the points
> > > > > > I make.
> > > > >
> > > > > Seems you only deem something "substance" if it agrees with your point
> > > > > of view.
> > > >
> > > > No. I deem something "substance" when it is well-argued and
> > > > well-supported with evidence.
> > > >
> > > > Stuart Wilkes
> > >
> > > Well then start changing your tune because the evidence on the USSR is
> > > in.
> >
> > Like you've shown anything of the sort.
>
> I have blind man.
No, just generally better-informed than you.
Stuart Wilkes
MP del Norte
> Is it Easter? Del Norte has risen from the grave!
Nor'Easter. Still in the grave, but typing.
G.L. (TM)
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
> wyn...@idirect.com (Trident) wrote
> > swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote
> ============
> wy>>>>>> "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> wy>>>>>> If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> wy>>>>>> the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> wy>>>>>> Malcolm Muggeridge
> ============
> sw>>>>> What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
> ===========
> wy>>>> No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
> =====
> sw>>> Never met the guy.
> ====
> wy>> Pulitzer prize writer for the New York Times who after visiting the
> wy>> USSR in 1933 wrote that "all talk of a Ukrainian famine was nonsense."
> wy>> He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> wy>> brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> wy>> In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
> >
> > Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
>
> Oh, please.
The above is for readers to get a flavour of Mr. Wilkes attitde.
You state this with such authority :) Now having observed you method of
using facts, I just thought that I should ask for the basis of your statement.
1) Is it because the idea of vacations from work is a modern concept,
and therefore since vacations as such did not exist in ancient Egypt,
then even if vacations existed for some Soviets that means they were
more prevalent for Soviets than for Hebrews under the Egyptians?
2) Is it because there were more Soviets than there had been Hebrews
and therefore vacations for Soviets in absolute numbers were greater
than any vacations for Hebrews. Therefore they were in one meaning
of the words "more prevalent" ?
Please do define your terms and the basis for your conclusion :)
>
> wy> "The source of Lenin's revolutionary passion was thus not sympathy for
> wy> the poor; indeed when famine struck the Volga region in 1891-92, he
> wy> alone among the local intelligentsia opposed humanitarian assistance
> wy> to the starving peasants, on the grounds that the famine was
> wy> progressive because it destroyed the old peasant economy and paved the
> wy> way for socialism. Nor was his revolutionary ardor inspired by a
> wy> vision of a more just future. It was grounded in anger and driven by
> wy> a craving for revenge. Struve, who collaborated with him in the
> wy> 1890s, wrote many years later
> wy> that the principle feature of Lenin's
> wy> personality was hatred. And this predisposition of a provincial
> wy> Russian youth would exert immense influence on twentieth-century
> wy> politics, the main impulse of which would derive from resentment and
> wy> animosity towards outsiders, whether of a different social class or
> wy> ethnic and racial group." - Richard Pipes
A revealing glimpse of Lenins character. I like that quote.
What part is Struve?
>
> >>>>> "In April of 1920 Poland, eager to forestall the reemergence of a
> >>>>> strong and imperialist Russia, had made a common cause with Ukrainian
> >>>>> nationalists
> >>>>
> >>>> Meaning, a loser who had been kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites.
> >>>> I believe the technical term is "puppet".
> >>>
> >>> Who are you refering to here?
> >>
> >> Petalura
> >
> > Oh - the freedom fighter who is a hero to many Ukrainians around the
> > world, served as the principle inspiration for the Ukrainian
> > Insurgence Army in WWII? Not my definition of a loser.
>
> Got his butt kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites, and then went
> crawling to the Poles. Just like Bandera coming in the train of the
> Wehrmacht to get something he was powerless to take himself.
Shades of Lenin :) delivered to Russia in a special sealed train
by the Germans.
By the way, Is this the beginning and basis for the Soviet-German
love affair that lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross of Stalin?
ValuedCustomer
disturb the neighbors. Electricity could be a problem though. The pharoahs
would have anticipated such a need. Some of the tombs are wired with
electricity you know but I am not sure if the pharoahs had it installed.
Back in those days, if the building inspector complained about your
construction, you simply had him executed. Oh yes...those were much simpler
times.
mall...@yahoo.com
>
> Stuart Wilkes wrote:
>
> > wyn...@idirect.com (Trident) wrote
> > > swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote
> > ============
> > wy>>>>>> "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > wy>>>>>> If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > wy>>>>>> the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > wy>>>>>> Malcolm Muggeridge
> > ============
> > sw>>>>> What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
> > ===========
> > wy>>>> No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
> > =====
> > sw>>> Never met the guy.
> > ====
> > wy>> Pulitzer prize writer for the New York Times who after visiting the
> > wy>> USSR in 1933 wrote that "all talk of a Ukrainian famine was nonsense."
> > wy>> He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> > wy>> brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> > wy>> In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
> > >
> > > Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
> >
> > Oh, please.
>
> The above is for readers to get a flavour of Mr. Wilkes attitde.
I like his attitude, Rostyk.
Mr. Wilkes demonstrates that some so-called "arguments" should not be
even dignified with a reply.
Besides, what's with that silly "appeal to the masses"? You're a better
trained soviet citizen then you are willing to admit, LOL.
> > Got his butt kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites, and then went
> > crawling to the Poles. Just like Bandera coming in the train of the
> > Wehrmacht to get something he was powerless to take himself.
>
> Shades of Lenin :) delivered to Russia in a special sealed train
> by the Germans.
Bandera too? Amazing!
> By the way, Is this the beginning and basis for the Soviet-German
> love affair that lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross of Stalin?
Probably not. There was no Soviet Union per se yet. Although
Russian-German love affair goes back all the way to Mr. Bismark's
⌠Ruckversicherungsvertrag⌠. Of course, Baron von Holstein's incompetence
later forced Alexander III to begin flirting with Sadi Carnot. But I
digress.
Didn't Ukrainian-German love affair blossomed just around 1918? When
Pavel Skoropadsky managed to turn Ukraine into a "superpower"? For whole
15 minutes of it?
Stuart Wilkes
> Stuart Wilkes wrote:
>
> > wyn...@idirect.com (Trident) wrote
> > > swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote
> > ============
> > wy>>>>>> "The most encouraging thing about the Soviet regime was its failure.
> > wy>>>>>> If it had succeeded...I would have known that there were no limits to
> > wy>>>>>> the extent to which human beings could be terrorised and enslaved." -
> > wy>>>>>> Malcolm Muggeridge
> > ============
> > sw>>>>> What a load of blather. Truly a failure of historical imagination.
> > ===========
> > wy>>>> No doubt you would prefer the commentary of Walter Duranty.
> > =====
> > sw>>> Never met the guy.
> > ====
> > wy>> Pulitzer prize writer for the New York Times who after visiting the
> > wy>> USSR in 1933 wrote that "all talk of a Ukrainian famine was nonsense."
> > wy>> He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> > wy>> brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> > wy>> In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
> > >
> > > Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
> >
> > Oh, please.
>
> The above is for readers to get a flavour of Mr. Wilkes attitde.
Got something to refute my attutude Rostyk?
I thought not.
More a glimpse of Pipe's.
> > >>>>> "In April of 1920 Poland, eager to forestall the reemergence of a
> > >>>>> strong and imperialist Russia, had made a common cause with Ukrainian
> > >>>>> nationalists
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Meaning, a loser who had been kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites.
> > >>>> I believe the technical term is "puppet".
> > >>>
> > >>> Who are you refering to here?
> > >>
> > >> Petalura
> > >
> > > Oh - the freedom fighter who is a hero to many Ukrainians around the
> > > world, served as the principle inspiration for the Ukrainian
> > > Insurgence Army in WWII? Not my definition of a loser.
> >
> > Got his butt kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites, and then went
> > crawling to the Poles. Just like Bandera coming in the train of the
> > Wehrmacht to get something he was powerless to take himself.
>
> Shades of Lenin :) delivered to Russia in a special sealed train
> by the Germans.
And then fought off interventions by armed forces of several of the
Great Powers of the time.
Petalura and Bandera have nothing comparable.
> By the way, Is this the beginning and basis for the Soviet-German
> love affair that lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross of Stalin?
What Soviet-German love affair, Rostyk? The one begun by the Soviet
offer of alliance to Great Britain and France in April 1939? Or the
one started by the Soviets delivering 200 SB-2 bombers to
Czechoslovakia and mobilizing 60 Rifle Divisions and 10 Tank Divisions
in September 1938?
Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
Babai
> > > wy>> He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> > > wy>> brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> > > wy>> In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
> > > >
> > > > Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
> > >
> > > Oh, please.
> >
> > The above is for readers to get a flavour of Mr. Wilkes attitde.
>
> Got something to refute my attutude Rostyk?
>
> I thought not.
My grandfather was a journalist in Kharkov during the famine...he
remembers the starving peasants dying in the streets...
> > > Got his butt kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites, and then went
> > > crawling to the Poles. Just like Bandera coming in the train of the
> > > Wehrmacht to get something he was powerless to take himself.
> >
> > Shades of Lenin :) delivered to Russia in a special sealed train
> > by the Germans.
>
> And then fought off interventions by armed forces of several of the
> Great Powers of the time.
...with Russia's industrial heartland behind him, and vicious fighting
among his enemies. Pilsudski was supposed to have taken Moscow but
Denikin wouldn't recognize Polish independence. Not to mention
Ukraine....
> Petalura and Bandera have nothing comparable.
Er...it's Petliura. When Mussolini was still a leftist he called the
socialist Petliura one of the greatest of contemporary leaders.
Pilsudski claimed that Petliura, born in a different nation, could
have been a Napoleon.
The simple reason for Petliura's failure was total lack of unity among
his people, a plague that seems to be a national characteristic dating
to the fratricidal warfare of the Rus' kniazi. There were literally
hundreds of local warlords or "otamany". Petliura had at most only
40,000 troops, compared to several times that many fighting in
disorganized bands (the anarchist Makhno's men, not really a
disorganized band, numbered 30,000 or so). He enjoyed no foreign
support, had no industrial base, and was fighting on two fronts,
versus the whites and the reds. Nevertheless, his forces managed to
take and hold Kyiv several times (and I'm not including the Pilsudski
offensive).
It was btw a Ukrainian force under general P.- (forgot his name) who
stopped the Red offensive on the southern front against Poland, thus
making the famous "miracle on the Vistula" - the defeat of the USSR at
the hands of Poland - possible. Pity the ungrateful Poles betrayed
their saviors...
Babai
Babai
Stuart Wilkes
> swi...@my-deja.com (Stuart Wilkes) wrote in message news:<d842ea3e.02050...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > wy>> He, like many other academics (Shaw) and other ideologically
> > > > wy>> brainwashed puppets, was simply a mouthpiece for Moscow's propaganda.
> > > > wy>> In private he admitted that millions may have died of starvation.
> > > > >
> > > > > Note the deafening silence in rebuttal.
> > > >
> > > > Oh, please.
> > >
> > > The above is for readers to get a flavour of Mr. Wilkes attitde.
> >
> > Got something to refute my attutude Rostyk?
> >
> > I thought not.
>
> My grandfather was a journalist in Kharkov during the famine...he
> remembers the starving peasants dying in the streets...
>
> > > > Got his butt kicked out of Ukraine by the Whites, and then went
> > > > crawling to the Poles. Just like Bandera coming in the train of the
> > > > Wehrmacht to get something he was powerless to take himself.
> > >
> > > Shades of Lenin :) delivered to Russia in a special sealed train
> > > by the Germans.
> >
> > And then fought off interventions by armed forces of several of the
> > Great Powers of the time.
>
> ...with Russia's industrial heartland behind him, and vicious fighting
> among his enemies. Pilsudski was supposed to have taken Moscow but
> Denikin wouldn't recognize Polish independence.
And Tukhachevsky started kicking his butt.
> Not to mention Ukraine....
>
>
> > Petalura and Bandera have nothing comparable.
>
> Er...it's Petliura. When Mussolini was still a leftist
And Mussolini claimed he was was a Leftist at the very end too. And
he still wound up hanging by his heels. It seems that the partisan
leaders didn't believe what he was saying. With good reason.
> he called the
> socialist Petliura one of the greatest of contemporary leaders.
> Pilsudski claimed that Petliura, born in a different nation, could
> have been a Napoleon.
A Napoleon III? That's possible.
> The simple reason for Petliura's failure was total lack of unity among
> his people, a plague that seems to be a national characteristic dating
> to the fratricidal warfare of the Rus' kniazi. There were literally
> hundreds of local warlords or "otamany". Petliura had at most only
> 40,000 troops, compared to several times that many fighting in
> disorganized bands (the anarchist Makhno's men, not really a
> disorganized band, numbered 30,000 or so). He enjoyed no foreign
> support, had no industrial base, and was fighting on two fronts,
> versus the whites and the reds. Nevertheless, his forces managed to
> take and hold Kyiv several times (and I'm not including the Pilsudski
> offensive).
>
> It was btw a Ukrainian force under general P.- (forgot his name) who
> stopped the Red offensive on the southern front against Poland, thus
> making the famous "miracle on the Vistula" - the defeat of the USSR at
> the hands of Poland - possible. Pity the ungrateful Poles betrayed
> their saviors...
They do tell rather a different story.
Stuart Wilkes
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj
One does not refute an attitude , or as u write "attutude".
But as to facts about the famine and Durantys attitude, and yours, enough has
been written, so a rehash at least here is ftile.
To come in some armys train is intended to suggest being a camp
follower, or servant of those powers, which is the idea that Mr. Wilkes
wanted to imply.
Whereas Bandera as an opportunistic leader was hoping with German
help to get rid of the Russian occupants and create an independant
Ukraine. (The Nazis evil nature was not yet so evident, while that of
the Russians/soviets already had a long history)
Lenin was specifically a tool of the Germans. He was used to destroy
the existing Russian Czarist government. The communist aim was
to destroy and take power, not to throw off a foreign yoke.
And it just so happens that Lenin was delivered to Russia in a
special sealed train :)
> > By the way, Is this the beginning and basis for the Soviet-German
> > love affair that lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross of Stalin?
>
> What Soviet-German love affair, Rostyk? The one begun by the Soviet
> offer of alliance to Great Britain and France in April 1939? Or the
> one started by the Soviets delivering 200 SB-2 bombers to
> Czechoslovakia and mobilizing 60 Rifle Divisions and 10 Tank Divisions
> in September 1938?
The one that includes the aid from Russia to the clandestine re-militarization
of Germany after ww1, in contravention of the treaty of Versailles.
(Oh sure neither Stalin nor Hitler signed the treaty, and so were not bound
by it, according to you)
The Stalin-Hitler pact, which lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross
of Stalin.
>
>
> Stuart Wilkes
>
> Stuart Wilkes
Stuart Wilkes
What is entertaining about this bunch is that they thought they were
in charge of something when they arrived.
> Whereas Bandera as an opportunistic leader was hoping with German
> help to get rid of the Russian occupants and create an independant
> Ukraine. (The Nazis evil nature was not yet so evident, while that of
> the Russians/soviets already had a long history)
Is there something unclear about:
"And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the
foreign policy tendency of our pre-War period. We take up where we
broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement
to the south and west, and turn our gaze towards the land in the east.
At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the
pre-War period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we primarily have in mind only
Russia and her vassal border states."
> Lenin was specifically a tool of the Germans. He was used to destroy
> the existing Russian Czarist government.
Which was already doing the job quite effectively itself.
> The communist aim was
> to destroy and take power, not to throw off a foreign yoke.
>
> And it just so happens that Lenin was delivered to Russia in a
> special sealed train :)
>
>
> > > By the way, Is this the beginning and basis for the Soviet-German
> > > love affair that lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross of Stalin?
> >
> > What Soviet-German love affair, Rostyk? The one begun by the Soviet
> > offer of alliance to Great Britain and France in April 1939? Or the
> > one started by the Soviets delivering 200 SB-2 bombers to
> > Czechoslovakia and mobilizing 60 Rifle Divisions and 10 Tank Divisions
> > in September 1938?
>
> The one that includes the aid from Russia to the clandestine re-militarization
> of Germany after ww1, in contravention of the treaty of Versailles.
> (Oh sure neither Stalin nor Hitler signed the treaty, and so were not bound
> by it, according to you)
Learn to read and understand, Rostyk. The German government was bound
by Versailles, since it had been signed by an empowered representative
of the legal German government.
> The Stalin-Hitler pact,
Pre-empted the Chamberlain-Hitler pact.
> which lasted till Hitlers' pre-emptive double cross of Stalin.
As was claimed by Dr. Goebbels at the time, and maintained by his
intellectual heirs to this day.
But there was nothing "pre-emptive" about it.
Halder writes that the German General Staff had no indications of a
military threat from the Soviets during the planning and preparation
of Barbarossa.
Barbarossa was, and was intended by its planners to be, the
un-provoked beginning war of unprovoked aggression. And
extermination.
Stuart Wilkes
Babai
> >
> > ...with Russia's industrial heartland behind him, and vicious fighting
> > among his enemies. Pilsudski was supposed to have taken Moscow but
> > Denikin wouldn't recognize Polish independence.
>
> And Tukhachevsky started kicking his butt.
I recall that the two had a sort of grudging respect for each other.
Interestingly, if Stalin had not interfered with Tukhachevsky's
invasion plan of Poland by redirecting against T.'s wishes a lot of
soldiers towards the South (where they were defeated by Petliurist
forces), Poland would indeed have become another Soviet Socialist
Republic with Dzerzhinsky at its head.
> > Not to mention Ukraine....
> >
> >
> > > Petalura and Bandera have nothing comparable.
> >
> > Er...it's Petliura. When Mussolini was still a leftist
>
> And Mussolini claimed he was was a Leftist at the very end too. And
> he still wound up hanging by his heels. It seems that the partisan
> leaders didn't believe what he was saying. With good reason.
>
> > he called the
> > socialist Petliura one of the greatest of contemporary leaders.
> > Pilsudski claimed that Petliura, born in a different nation, could
> > have been a Napoleon.
>
> A Napoleon III? That's possible.
Ukrainian military performance during the those times was quite
respectable, given the circumstances. The army of the West Ukrainian
Republic held off the Poles for nine months despite being outnumbered
3:1; Petliura's foirces managed to take Kiev a couple times; and the
exploits of Makhno are truly legendary.
Speaking of Tukhachevsky, he was executed for alleged "Bonopartism",
was he not? The man had predicted in 1938 the exact timing of a
probable German invasion, as the number of German divisions involved,
etc. I suspect the war would have been resolved much sooner had T.
not been executed.
Babai
Sandar
> Interesting casualty figures...even though totally incorrect.
Please provide correct figures.