Re: Communist = Nazist
There are people commenting here to say Communism isn't as bad as Nazism. To those people, all I can say is that you are wrong, whether you believe this on grounds of morality, philosophy, ideology or anything else. I don't mean to be condescending, but you are ignorant of the truth.
The regimes were morally and ethically equivalent, and both were repugnant. They had no regard for humanity or decency or truth, they had one aim: glorification of the state and the people above all else. The regimes imposed untold cruelty, barbarity, horror, despair, fear, uncertainty, indifference to suffering and unending terror on their populations, and those they were able to subjugate.
Many people have a vague knowledge of the Gulag, of arbitrary imprisonment, punishment, shootings or torture in the Lubyanka, but few understand their true scope and horror. Stalin kept a whole population in abject fear for three decades, he kept the whole country in a state of unending anxiety by jailing and / or shooting anyone, often on a whim. If the first red scare wasn't bad enough, in the second during 1937 he had over 600,000 innocent people murdered after being snatched from the families during the night. At the end of WW2 he effectively sanctioned the rape of millions of German, Austrian, Hungarian, Yugoslav, Hungarian, Latvian, Chek, Albanian, Romanian and Polish women, justifying it with:"what is so wrong with a man who wants a little fun with a woman after fighting the war?" As a result, the suicide rates of young women in those areas went through the roof.
He murdered - starved to death - several millions of Ukranian children and adults for reasons of ideology, expediency and racism. During the purges he would sign off death warrants for tens of thousand at a time - not for an legal or other reason, but because he didn't enough people from each region had yet been shot. He killed all his wife's family, imprisoned jewish doctors who tried to help him.
A Russian soldier in WW2 had no more rights or autonomy (likely less) than a Jew under the Nazis. The unthinking brutality with which he and his generals viewed the soldiers was beyond terrible. The reason they eventually toppled the Nazis was simple - they had more soldiers and viewed the life of each with indifference and contempt. Around the time of Stalingrad Stalin issued order number 227 - it compelled soldiers to move forward when told or they wouldn be summarily shot, their whole families imprisoned in the Gulag and children in orphanages. Of the Russian soldiers who started the war when Germany invaded in 1941, only 3% survived trhe war.
You should read about the Katyn massacre - 22,000 Polish officers killed on Stalin's orders in case ONE OR TWO might be spies. He even built a concrete shed with a sloped floor and sluice gate for hosing down the fluids. His executioner wore a butchers cap, rubber boots and apron while he shot several hundred innocent, terrified and decent men every night.
The horror of the Gulag is indescribable in a few sentences. Truly as bad as the Nazi camps, but they lasted 30 years not just 3 or 4 and tens of millions suffered privations there that you or I cannot imagine. I'll give one tale from tens of millions:
A family of Kulaks (peasants) from Ukraine were sent to a work camp in 1930s just for their identity. They were packed on trains for 30 days, standing room only like cattle, it was freezing cold, they were fed once every few days, water every few days (one mug) - their child fell ill, needed water, got sicker and sicker. Eventually he died for no reason other than the cruelty and indifference of the guards to 'enemies of the people' like them. When the train next stopped the boy's body was ripped from the screaming and distraught parents' arms in darkness and thrown or buried somewhere close to the train. The doors closed and the train pulled away - all they knew is that his body was left somewhere near lake Baikal in Siberia. This happened time and time again, it's inhumanity and suffering on a titanic and terrible scale.
During and after the war, Stalin invaded and controlled tens of millions in east europe, deporting and killing millions on a whim. He condemed those populations to decades of fear, control, terror etc.
I agree that the Nazis were the worst regime in human history. What they did was unspeakably cruel and horrific. But the Soviets were the worst regime ever too, they were just as heinous and cruel ( you could choose Mao, Pol Pot and others - who were just as bad as Stalin). When you got so extreme and horrific the minor differences between ideologies and cruelties don't really matter, they are all evil. These regimes were identical in two fundamental areas: they were totalitarian ideologies and they refused to recognise the reality and value of human dignity. That should be a lesson for our future.
Seriously, if you don't think the communist regimes of the 20th century were as bad as the fascict regimes, you should educate yourself. To start with, try: Gulag (by Anne Applebaum) and The Whisperers (by Orlando Figes). I say this not to be a smart arse, but because I believe it is vital that people understand all the horrors of the 1900's, not just the Nazis.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
