Posted by
rob on Thursday, March 29, 2007 8:32:29 PM
Still to this day Stalin remains a mystery to many, from the way he ruled with an iron fist to the question of how so many intelligent people were in favor of his brutal actions.
Shortly before his death in 1953 he was planning a second purge of the red military; many country men feared that they would perish like so many before them in Moscow trials of 1937.
There is speculation that his own comrades poisoned him in fear that they would be killed out of shear paranoia.
During the Moscow trials more than 80 members of council were killed or disappeared along with thousands of military officials and more than 30,000 military personnel of all ranks in the red army and navy.
Military personnel were not the only victims of the purge in addition to military and government officials authors, theater directors, actors, and even census takers were massacred.
Even before the purge trials Stalin was also responsible for more than 7 million deaths as a result of the organized famine against Ukrainian peasants in 1932.
The shocking and mysterious issue surrounding Stalin's actions is how he managed to gain so many prominent supporters from around the globe. How did so many intelligent people of character share these anti-Semitic genocidist views with Josef Stalin?
Arnold Beichman a political scientist and writer gives light to this topic in his article ‘Death of the Butcher’ http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/3058571.html
A fact check of the article revealed the following:
* U.S. ambassador Joseph Davies personally attended the Moscow Trials of 1937-38 and tried to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to accept his pro Stalin views.
* British playwright George Bernard Shaw explained to his audiences "Even in the opinion of the bitterest enemies of the Soviet Union and her government, the (purge) trials have clearly demonstrated the existence of active conspiracies against the regime….I am convinced that this is the truth, and I am convinced that it will carry the ring of truth even in western Europe, even for hostile readers."
* In 1938 during the Moscow trials 80 members of council were given the death penalty.
* In 1938 there more than 30,000 victims of the purge trials that were either a member of the red army or Navy.
* Nikita Khrushchev stated in 1956 that "5,000 of Russia’s best officers were murdered following the secret treason trial of marshal Tukhachevsky."
* The organized famine of 1932 claimed the lives of 7 million Ukrainian peasants.
*Nobel Laureate and world class economist Paul Samuelson wrote in his textbooks “It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable.”
* New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize winning Moscow correspondent
Walter Duranty at the height of the famine wrote: “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is wide spread mortality from disease due to malnutrition…. Any report of famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda.”
* Professor Seweryn of Columbia University wrote in 1983: “The Soviet Union is not now nor will it be during the next decade in the throes of systemic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused resources of political and social stability to endure the deepest difficulties.”
It is not surprising to me that so many people followed Stalin in to this madness. What is however surprising is the fact that otherwise intelligent people cannot understand the motivation behind this regime.
If one takes in consideration that some of the most influential people of that time period such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill among countless others able to influence the masses, it should not be so shocking.
The mystery should be however, how much death and destruction is people like FDR and W. Churchill responsible for? What is the difference between making a deal with one evil dictator (Stalin) or the other (Hitler)? What would be the difference in outcome had we taken the side of Hitler?
Some Interesting Findings: http://allamericancommunists.blogspot.com/