The Soviet Union was one of the most murderous, criminal regimes to ever exist on this planet. Despite falling apart in the early nineties, it is greatly responsible for most of the conflicts we see to this day. It is important to understand the contribution of the Soviet Union to global conflict as Russia today continues to create instability in the world. In addition, it is good to note and remember what the Soviet Union did during it's existence on Earth. Especially considering the following:
Russian president Vladimir Putin considers the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century. His attitude is shared by many other Russians who came of age during the twilight of the Soviet Union. These people are running the country now, and they are not afraid to express nostalgia for the lost glories of the Soviet era. But the kids who came of age after 1991, are less impressed with the Soviet era, and not automatically ant-American. But for another generation, a Cold War mentality will live on among the Russian ruling class.
A recent survey found that 68 percent of Russians believed the breakup of the Soviet Union was a mistake, and 51 percent would vote to restore the Soviet Union. Similar surveys found that in some former parts of the Soviet Union, lots of people were in favor of re-joining the Soviet Union (45 percent in Ukraine, 36 percent in Belarus.) -
Strategy Page
Thankfully, the Soviet Union is gone, but some of the goals surely remain. They were not able to crush the US on their own, but I wonder if they are supporting regimes in Iran, Venezuela and North Korea in the hope that they can destabilize the US in ways that they were never able to. Or is it just that their decision-making is simply related to money? Money was the main reason for Russia selling out Sanctions against Iraq. So enjoy this 'short' list of Russian/Soviet atrocities. (Feel free to start you own list on the US and then lets compare body counts.)
Let's just call this version one. There are many items not listed here, so feel free to add more in the comments.
Note: this is now Version II, published on 27 February 2007.So now for the trip down memory lane:
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Interference in the Chinese Civil War- Initially aided BOTH Sides
- Invaded and occupied Manchuria at end of WWII
- Theft of all of Manchuria's industrial Infrastructure
In the last month of the World War II in East Asia, Soviet forces launched the mammoth Operation August Storm in Manchuria. This operation destroyed the fighting capability of the Kwantung Army and left the USSR in occupation of all of Manchuria at the end of the war. Consequently, they took the surrender of the 700,000 Japanese troops still stationed in the region. They seized the arms of these surrendering Japanese and handed them over to the Communist Party of China, providing them with the initial military means to face the Nationalists in open warfare. Later in the year Chiang Kai-shek came to the painful realization that he lacked the resources to prevent a CPC takeover of Manchuria following the scheduled Soviet departure, he therefore made a deal with the Russians to delay their withdrawal until he had moved enough of his best-trained men and modern material into the region. Nationalist troops were then airlifted by the United States to occupy key cities in North China, while the countryside was already dominated by the Chinese Communists. The Soviets spent the extra time systematically dismantling the entire Manchurian industrial plant (worth up to 2 billion dollars) and shipping it back to their war-ravaged Motherland. - Wikipedia
(artificial famine of 1932-33, which caused upwards of 7 million deaths in Ukraine)
In an open letter to Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1987, the veteran dissident Vyachaslav Chornovil wrote, "The biggest and most infamous blank spot in the Soviet history of Ukraine is the hollow silence for over 50 years about the genocide of the Ukrainian nation organized by Stalin and his henchmen ... The Great Famine of 1932-33, which took millions of human lives. In one year - 1933 - my people lost more than throughout all of World War II, which ravaged our land." - Soviet Crimes Remain Unpunished
and:
The famine resulted from Stalin's collectivisation programme and ruthless grain requisitions, but experts are divided on whether it was intentional.
Some allege Stalin used mass starvation as a weapon to eradicate the Ukrainian peasantry, while simultaneously arresting or executing the Ukrainian intelligentsia.
Others say the claim cannot be proved. [note: Well taken in context with their other-proven behavior, I think we can pretty well place this in the column of Intentional. This it the work of socialists to deny these crimes despite clear evidence that Stalin had the borders to the Ukraine closed to prevent people from leaving and food from getting in. And what was the reason for keeping it a secret?]
Millions died during the 1932-1933 famine - a quarter of Ukraine's population at the time, according to some estimates. -
BBC
The Soviets kept the famine secret. (All the time, exporting food products.)
More here.Stalin's Intervention to ensure Hitler's Election in Germany:During the critical 1932 German elections, he forbid the German Communists from collaborating with the Social Democrats. These parties together gained more votes than Hitler and could have prevented him from becoming Chancellor. - Wikipedia
Stalin purged his diplomatic apparatus of Jews in preparation for signing his “non-aggression” pact with Hitler. - National Review
The Soviet Union had Hitler's back at the start of World War II by agreeing to split Europe amongst themselves drawing a line right through Poland. (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact)
It is common knowledge that Nazi Germany attacked Poland (on 1 September 1939) but not so common knowledge that the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the East. (On 17 September 1939)
Support of Nazi GermanyFrom the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, 1939 through almost the end of the first half of 1941, Stalin and the USSR fed and equipped Hitler and Germany as Germany invaded Western Europe and then attacked Great Britain by air. - Wikipedia
According to the Historian Richard Pipes, the Communist states share some responsibility for World War II. Both Hitler and Mussolini used the Soviet Union as a model for their own totalitarian states and Hitler privately expressed that Stalin was a "genius". In turn, Stalin expressed desire for another great war that would leave his enemies weakened and allow Soviet expansion. He allowed the testing and production of German weapons that were forbidden by the Versailles Treaty to occur on Soviet territory. - Wikipedia
The Soviet Union attacked Finland to take land that the Finns declined to cede to the Soviets voluntarily.
Creation of Soviet 'puppet' States after WWII:- East Germany
- Poland
- Hungary
- Bulgaria
- Czechoslovakia
- Romania
Forced the deportation to the Soviet Union of thousands:
The terms of the peace agreement required that Finland had to return to the Soviet Union some 56,000 Ingrian, 44,000 Soviet and over 2,500 German prisoners of war. If these terms were not met, the Soviet government would refuse to return the many Finnish prisoners of war to their own country.
The return of the Ingrians was not spoken about in postwar Finland. One Finnish commentator has remarked: "During the whole time the Soviet Union existed, people didn't speak about those Ingrians that had been sent back. This return of the ethnic Finns after the war didn't exist. Not until the end of the 80s did the matter attract attention when books and memoirs were published. " -
- A Step at a Time
More 'abuse' of Ingrians:
The family of Anna Ruotsi boarded a train in Oulu. Once over the border, the doors were shut, and nobody was allowed to leave. "People started crying. Where are they taking us?" Ruotsi remembers.
They did not go to their home village. The family got off the freight train in the district of Yaroslav and ended up on a collective farm. "We worked, but we were not paid anything. There was great hunger there. To make ends meet, the family sold their watches, bicycles, and other belongings.
After two years on the collective farm, the family moved to Estonia. While waiting for a train in Leningrad, the father went to see the home village 35 kilometres away. "Everything had been burned." All that was left of the old house was the well.
In Estonia, Anna Ruotsi’s life went on. She even found an Ingrian husband, who had been in the Finnish army during the war. His return to the Soviet Union had meant imprisonment for ten years. Ruotsi and her wife followed their adult children to Finland in 1990. - Helsingin Sanomat
Continued occupation of Iran after WWIIDivision of Germany and creation of East Germany (German Democratic Republic)
The Soviet Union accomplished what Hitler wanted to; Occupation of a good portion of Europe.
Brutal occupation of Germany and other territories:Once a year, aging Red Army veterans who fought in the battle for Berlin gather in that city’s suburb of Treptower Park, where some 5,000 of their comrades are buried. But as Jason Cowley of the Guardian reported, one local refers to it as “the site of the unknown rapist.” No doubt there are others who share this sentiment: During that first year of Soviet occupation in 1945, more than 100,000 women in Berlin were raped. Combined with the German women caught in Pomerania, Silesia, and East Prussia during the mass exodus, the number of rape victims soars to roughly 2 million. Many of them subsequently committed suicide. - a Contest of Brutality
Soviet Union Blockades West Berlin's road and rail connections, cutting off supply lines forcing allies to supply the city form the air in the great Berlin Airlift that went on for over a year.
June 1953 uprising Massacre in East BerlinOccupation of:- Latvia (Including mass deportations/"Population Transfer")
- Lithuania (Including mass deportations/"Population Transfer")
- Estonia (Including mass deportations/"Population Transfer") - "
Destruction of the Estonian State"
Soviet invasion of Korea- Creation of North Korea
- Prevented UN elections in North Korea which were held as part of the UN plan to reunify Korea, originally agreed to by the Soviet Union.
- Soviet-backed North Korea attacked South Korea in 1950.
Creation of the puppet state of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in Northern Iran.
Vietnam:1949 — Chinese communists reach the northern border of Indochina. The Viet Minh drive the French from the border region and begin to receive large amounts of weapons from the Soviet Union and China. The weapons transform the Viet Minh from an irregular small-scale insurgency into a conventional army.
The Soviet Union, along with China, supplied North Vietnam with weaponry and other material throughout the war. Soviet pilots acted as training cadre and may even have flown combat missions as "volunteers". Other USSR operatives tested their SVD rifle in combat conditions prior to official American entry as well as operating surface-to-air missile batteries in North Vietnam. -
Wikipedia
More Vietnam:The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. Over the four years of Nixon's first term, I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself.
My colleague and friend Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated a viable agreement between North and South Vietnam, which was signed in January 1973. It allowed for the United States to withdraw completely its few remaining troops and for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue funding their respective allies in the war at a specified level. Each superpower was permitted to pay for replacement arms and equipment. Documents released from North Vietnamese historical files in recent years have proved that the Soviets violated the treaty from the moment the ink was dry, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi.
The United States barely stuck to the allowed amount of military aid for two years, and that was a mere fraction of the Soviet contribution.Yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973. -
Gateway Pundit
Invasion of:- Soviets invade Czechoslavakia (1968) "
Prague Spring"
- Soviets invade Afghanistan (1979)
Heavy handed-ness:- Put down of uprising in
Hungary (1956)
- Put down of riots in Georgia(1989)
- Harsh Prison sentences for those caught attempting to escape the Soviet Union:
From a book published in Finland it can be concluded that between 1945-1981 Finnish authorities were sending back a majority of political refugees from the USSR, who were trying to flee to the West through Finland, this was done by the authorities of their own free will, and was not forced on them.
However, there weren't many of those kind of of cases. Juha Pohjonen, author of recently published book "Ei armoa Suomen selkänahasta" ("No Mercy At Finland's Expense ") dug through the archives and counted 117 persons who were sent back to the USSR. Pohjonen told Gazeta that a majority of them got harsh sentences of 10-15 years of prison or gulag. In one instance a death sentence was executed, some people who were sent back committed suicide.
"It's not the scale of this behaviour that's important - what matters is acquiring a moral perspective on the Finnish politics of those days," Pohjonen asserts. -
A Step at a Time
A somewhat different, yet still critical view on the deportations here.)Ogaden War (Somalia and Ethiopia)- Initially armed BOTH Sides
The U.S.S.R., finding itself supplying both sides of a war, attempted to mediate a ceasefire. When their efforts failed, the Soviets abandoned Somalia. All aid to Siad Barre's regime was halted, while arms shipments to Ethiopia were increased. Soviet military aid, only second in magnitude to the October 1973 gigantic resupplying of Syrian forces during the Yom Kippur war, plus Soviet advisors flooded into the country along with around 15,000 Cuban combat troops. Other Communist countries offered assistance: the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen offered military assistance and North Korea helped train a "People's Militia". As the scale of Communist assistance became clear in November 1977, Somalia broke diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. and expelled all Soviet citizens from the country. - Wikipedia
There was so much Political Repression in the Soviet Union that it needs it's own index page in Wikipedia. Soviet Nuclear Activities:Greatest Manmade Explosion in Human History -
Tsar Bomba - Wilipedia
-
Bellona"Soviets Secretly Tried to Blame U.S. for AIDS--CIA" Reuters (09/30/93)
Langley, Va.--For more than five years, the former Soviet Union attempted to blame the AIDS virus on a plot by U.S. military scientists, according to newly declassified CIA documents. The papers reported that the Soviets launched a campaign in 1983 aiming to tie the emergence of AIDS to American biological weapons research. The disinformation was circulated in 25 different languages in over 200 publications, as well as in posters, leaflets, and radio broadcasts, in more than 80 countries before the campaign was finally abandoned by the Soviets, according to a study cited by the CIA in the documents. The Soviets dropped the campaign in 1988 when the United States refused to cooperate with them on a research program on AIDS, which was by then spreading in the U.S.S.R., said the CIA article. The Soviet campaign was apparently retaliation for the Reagan administration's claims of Soviet-produced "yellow rain," or yellow traces found on vegetation due to a Soviet biological weapon.
Reproduction of the above excerpt is encouraged; however, copies may not be sold, and the CDC Clearinghouse should be cited as the source of this information. Copyright 1993, Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD
Militarization of Third World Countries:Arming and instigation of Islamic radicals (in the '70s.)Theft and reuse of tombstones (Removed from graves in Finnish Karelia, resurfaced, sent to Estonia.) (More on Finnish cemetery desecration here.) Human Rights in the Soviet Union:The Soviet authorities orchestrated the death and deportation of millions of their own citizens, to eliminate domestic opposition to the Soviet Union. It includes the persecution of members of nations incorporated into the USSR which since the fall of the USSR live in states independent of the Russian Federation.
While it is indisputable that USSR Government brought death and suffering to millions of its population, the legal use of the term genocide as inappropriate because international law on genocide is based on the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and
the Soviet Union made sure that the drafting of the convention excluded genocides based on social class and class struggle ideology. Nevertheless the term genocide is used by many respected historians, especially with respect to the
Holodomor. This usage is often motivated by the fact that, e.g., ethnicity-targeted
population transfer in the Soviet Union, while arguably lacking genocidal purposes, led to millions of deaths due to inflicted hardships. -
Wiki
Third-World Standard for Quality of Life:In the Soviet Union in 1989 there was rationing of meat and sugar. The average intake of red meat for a Soviet citizen was half of what it had been for a subject of the Czar in 1913. Blacks in apartheid South Africa owned more cars per capita. The only area of consumption in which the Soviets excelled was the ingestion of hard liquor. Two-thirds of the households had no hot water, and a third had no running water at all. According to the government paper, Izvestia, a typical working class family of four was forced to live for 8 years in a single 8x8 foot room, before marginally better accommodation became available. The housing shortage was so acute that at all times 17% of Soviet families had to be physically separated for want of adequate space. A third of the hospitals had no running water and the bribery of doctors and nurses to get decent medical attention and even amenities like blankets in Soviet hospitals was not only common, but routine. Only 15 percent of Soviet youth were able to attend institutions of higher learning compared to 34 percent in the U.S. The average welfare mother in the United States received more income in a month, than the average Soviet worker could earn in a year. - Wikipedia
During my first trip, in 1984, I found the state of most structures shocking. One of my fellow travelers, an electrical contractor, pointed repeatedly to jury rigged exterior wiring not contained in conduit. This was in major public buildings in Moscow and Leningrad. Each successive visit has seen some of same buildings continue to deteriorate with little of no maintenance.
The causes of this are several fold. First, much of the physical plant in Western Russia was destroyed or damaged during the Great Patriotic War. Replacement of structures or repairs had to be accomplished in a compressed time frame and quality of both design and craftsmanship undoubtedly suffered. Second, the West rapidly recovered from the war while Russia did not. The US emerged economically strong and via the Marshal Plan rebuilt Western Europe. The USSR believed it had to chose between "Guns and Bricks" it chose guns. A Russian friend once joked that the lights in his stairwell hadn't worked for years because the Soviets felt the resources were better used for "a hundred Kalashnikov magazines or maybe some parts for a T-62 Tank in Afghanistan."
The end result of all this was a lot of poorly constructed, poorly maintained buildings. -
La Russophobe
Raping of the Environment:One example is the gradual disappearance of the Aral Sea and a similar diminishing of the Caspian Sea because of the diversion of the rivers that fed them. Another is the pollution of the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the unique freshwater environment of Lake Baikal. Many of the rivers were polluted; several, like the Vistula and Oder rivers in Poland, were virtually ecologically dead. Over 70% of the surface water in the Soviet Union was polluted. In 1988 only 30% of the sewage in the Soviet Union was treated properly. Established health standards for air pollution was exceeded by ten times or more in 103 cities in the Soviet Union in 1988. The air pollution problem was even more severe in Eastern Europe. It caused a rapid growth in lung cancer, forest die-back, and damage to buildings and cultural heritages. According to official sources, 58 percent of total agricultural land of the former Soviet Union was affected by salinization, erosion, acidity, or waterlogging. - Wikipedia
- Murder of the Czar and immediate family
- Restriction of movement within the Soviet Union (Internal Passports)
- Forced Labor Camps (Gulags)
- Stalin's purges
- Command Economy
- Collectivization
- Suppression of Religion
- Destruction of churches
- Damage to the environment
- Nuclear and other waste.
- Spread of small weapons
- Destruction of cultural heritage
- Constant revision of historical documents
-
Suppressed researchHere is a handy Desktop Wallpaper summarizing the 62 Million Deaths attributed to Soviet Rule:
You can find it here:
The New American MythOther Links:Soviet Child Care -
Born in the USSR - Opinion Journal
Back to the USSR - Helsingin Sanomat
Behind the Wheel in the Soviet Union - New York Times
NOTE: This post will be updated/edited on occasion.NOTE II: Some links are to Wikipedia, which is subject to constant editing both of content as well as links. Information was correct as of the initial posting and may no longer be available. Just consider it an extension of the Soviet tradition of rewriting history!
Many of the events above were either kept secret or the truth was distorted by the Soviet Union. Many facts are still not known today.
Just because The Soviet Union has fallen apart, does not mean that they are still not causing problems, including the following:
- Nuclear poisoning
- Acting like the Soviet Union at the UN Security Council.
- Assisting Iran with its nuclear program. (Even during the 18 years in secret?)
- Selling arms to Iran, knowing that they intend to use them if possible or pass them on to the likes of Hezbollah and others.
- Selling Venezuela military equipment immediately after the US halts all military sales to the country.
