Were Stalin's crimes really less wicked than Hitler's?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...-than-hitlers/
But what about Jonathan’s main argument, namely that deportation is not as bad as murder? Well, the guide who showed me round the Riga museum – and who was very obviously a man of the Left – told me something that astonished me: the survival rate in Soviet gulags during the Second World War was lower than in Nazi concentration camps. While the stated intention of the gulags might not have been murder, that was their practical effect, as everyone understood. Around 1.6 million people perished in the camps before Stalin’s death in 1953. Of those who returned, few recovered their physical or mental health.
Latvia’s Jews suffered disproportionately at the hands of both sets of occupiers. Around five per cent of the Latvian population in 1939 was Jewish, but Jews accounted for ten per cent of the Red Army’s victims. Why? Because Latvian Jews were generally better educated and wealthier than their gentile neighbours, making them prime targets for the Chekas, who sought to eliminate capitalists, intellectuals and other potential anti-Soviet elements.
Even now, Russia refuses to accept that its annexation of the Baltics was an “invasion”. Forty-seven per cent of Russians have a positive view of Stalin (just imagine how we would react if 47 per cent of Germans had a positive view of Hitler). And while the merest and most desultory advances by fascist mini-parties are front-page news, Communist parties that unapologetically took the Soviet line during the Cold War are an accepted part of many legislatures. To deny the magnitude of the Nazi genocide is, in several countries, a criminal offence; but to signal, with your idiotic Che tee-shirt, that you are all for breaking a few eggs to make an omelette, is radical chic. That, surely, is the truly alarming asymmetry.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...-than-hitlers/
But what about Jonathan’s main argument, namely that deportation is not as bad as murder? Well, the guide who showed me round the Riga museum – and who was very obviously a man of the Left – told me something that astonished me: the survival rate in Soviet gulags during the Second World War was lower than in Nazi concentration camps. While the stated intention of the gulags might not have been murder, that was their practical effect, as everyone understood. Around 1.6 million people perished in the camps before Stalin’s death in 1953. Of those who returned, few recovered their physical or mental health.
Latvia’s Jews suffered disproportionately at the hands of both sets of occupiers. Around five per cent of the Latvian population in 1939 was Jewish, but Jews accounted for ten per cent of the Red Army’s victims. Why? Because Latvian Jews were generally better educated and wealthier than their gentile neighbours, making them prime targets for the Chekas, who sought to eliminate capitalists, intellectuals and other potential anti-Soviet elements.
Even now, Russia refuses to accept that its annexation of the Baltics was an “invasion”. Forty-seven per cent of Russians have a positive view of Stalin (just imagine how we would react if 47 per cent of Germans had a positive view of Hitler). And while the merest and most desultory advances by fascist mini-parties are front-page news, Communist parties that unapologetically took the Soviet line during the Cold War are an accepted part of many legislatures. To deny the magnitude of the Nazi genocide is, in several countries, a criminal offence; but to signal, with your idiotic Che tee-shirt, that you are all for breaking a few eggs to make an omelette, is radical chic. That, surely, is the truly alarming asymmetry.
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