Blog about Soviet memorials

ejmaztec

Canvasser wrote: »

Stick to watching Top Gun and leave the history alone. Good man.

I was expecting some entertaining 1950s Soviet rhetoric as a response, or at least a bit of shoe-banging, and am sorely disappointed at the barrel-scraping to which you have resorted.

Snickers Man

Canvasser wrote: »

A few thousand fascist Polish military officers were executed. Yes it's wrong but in the grand scheme of WW2 it's nothing.

Of course not. Impertinent of me to have brought it up, really. What's a couple of tens of thousands of deaths in a systematic mass culling in its proper context? There are, of course, times when this sort of thing is totally justified. All right-thinking left-thinking people would agree.

And it wasn't just "fascist military officers" killed at Katyn either. Though bearing in mind that "fascist" in Jo Stalin's vocabulary meant "anyone who doesn't agree with me all the time on absolutely everything". Even Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky were condemned as fascists by Uncle Jo.

A good half of those liquidated at Katyn were either policemen or members of the middle class intelligentsia: industrialists, lawyers, university faculty, writers etc etc It was an attempt by Stalin to return Poland to a sort of "year zero" from which the remaining lumpen proletariat could be indoctrinated, or intimidated into a proper sense of themselves as citizens of the new Soviet heaven on earth.

Now remember that the original theme of this thread was commemoration of the actions of the Soviet Union and its armies in the Second World War. A sub context was the attitude to the Red Army of people in areas outside the Soviet Union or even outside of modern day Russia.

Some of us speculated on how people from Poland, to take just one example, might have cause to remember the actions of the Soviet Union in WWII with something less than warm and cuddly fondness.

You seem to regard their hesitance as the sulky resentment of selfish, unintelligent, ahistorical ingrates.

I look on it as heroic, representative of a realistic appraisal of history and something that we in this country, admittedly with a much less fraught WWII experience in comparison, could learn from.

Canvasser wrote:

You're about as educated as a Tea Party bigot who lives in a trailer park in Alabama.

Good solidarity with the poorest section of the American proletariat there, comrade.

Canvasser wrote: »

You may not like like my logic but at least I have logic. You only have anti-Soviet bigotry.

I don't think I'd like anything about you at all, to be honest.

Manic Moran

Canvasser wrote: »

Your knowledge of the Soviet Union is limited to purely Cold War propaganda. You're about as educated as a Tea Party bigot who lives in a trailer park in Alabama.

I happen to know a very well educated Tea Party bigot who lives in a trailer park in Alabama. You do seem to like that word.

I'm trying to sort out a general 'military forum' ban here, there seems to be some glitch with the system.

Manic Moran

OK, the good folks over at the moderators forum have helped me out. Canvasser's ban is now valid for the entire military forum for the remaining week of his vacation.

DaveyCakes

I just wanted people to look at my nice pictures

ejmaztec

DaveyCakes wrote: »

I just wanted people to look at my nice pictures

That'll teach you.:p

markas

DaveyCakes wrote: »

I just wanted people to look at my nice pictures

The WWII has not quite finished yet - the topic is still hot (vide: Katyn) and probably its to early to treat the monuments solely as a turist attraction. Better stick to WWI for now

ejmaztec

Canvasser wrote: »

Ridiculous. After the Warsaw Uprising you talk about the SS murdered about 100,000 civillians in revenge and demolished most of the city. But yeah that happened all the time in Warsaw in the 1970s too:rolleyes:

Never mind about the 70s, the dirty was being done long before then.

From 1945 to 1948, the Soviets deported to forced labor or concentration camps in the Soviet Union from 3,000,000 to 6,000,000 Poles, of which 585,000 may have died. Hundreds of thousands and possibly near 1,000,000 Poles were killed in Soviet terror and repression

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP7.ADDENDA.HTM


No doubt "Yankee imperialist anti-soviet propaganda":pac:, made up to hide the fact that Poland, under communist rule, was a veritable Utopia.

If Poland were some communist paradise, I'm pretty sure that the communists would have secured landslide victories in all of the elections that have taken place since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

jonniebgood1

ejmaztec wrote: »

If Poland were some communist paradise, I'm pretty sure that the communists would have secured landslide victories in all of the elections that have taken place since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It should be recognised that one of the main reasons for the installing of a Soviet controlled regime in Poland (and other eastern European countries) was to protect Russia against possible future attack. Having been attacked in 2 world wars inside 30 years and suffered more losses than any other country it is to my mind understandable (Note: not excusable) that this buffer zone be created. Regarding elections I don't know of 2 many countries where people vote in governments to provide paradise!

ejmaztec

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

It should be recognised that one of the main reasons for the installing of a Soviet controlled regime in Poland (and other eastern European countries) was to protect Russia against possible future attack. Having been attacked in 2 world wars inside 30 years and suffered more losses than any other country it is to my mind understandable (Note: not excusable) that this buffer zone be created. Regarding elections I don't know of 2 many countries where people vote in governments to provide paradise!

I've always felt that the "buffer-zone" was a feeble excuse to some way justify their taking over those countries, and that they simply took advantage of the situation to expand their area of influence. I think that they also had eyes on Austria and Greece?

I think we all know that paradise doesn't appear much, if at all, in election manifestos

jonniebgood1

ejmaztec wrote: »

I've always felt that the "buffer-zone" was a feeble excuse to some way justify their taking over those countries, and that they simply took advantage of the situation to expand their area of influence. I think that they also had eyes on Austria and Greece?
(

Maybe it was an excuse but it's hard to know given their disproportionate losses in wwii.
The fate of Greece was actually tied with that of Poland. Stalin agreed to not lay claim to Greece in an agreement with Churchill at one of the big three meetings, in return he got Poland. Blunt as that.