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They forced peasants off their land, executed many without trial, and caused one of the most devastating famines of the 20th century. Google "Holodomor" for more information.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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The state didn't just stop supporting them. They confiscated church property,

According to the cnstiution,which you posted, the state had every right to confiscate that land since it was the state which had given it to the church to begin with?

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harassed believers, executed clergy or sent them to labor camps.

Do you have any validation for this opinion?

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Don't you think that seems rather extreme for a state which claims to support freedom of religion?

Supporting fredom of religion is not the same as supporting religion which is what the previous government had done. The previous government required all russins to belong to the state authorized church.

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Ironically, Stalin reopened a number of churches and encouraged religious worship during World War II, but he and his successor, Khrushchev, reversed that policy after the war and started persecuting religion again.

Any idea why any of that happened?

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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They forced peasants off their land, executed many without trial, and caused one of the most devastating famines of the 20th century. Google "Holodomor" for more information.

Peasants did not own land they were serfs which means slave for life. The bolshivick outlawed serfdom.

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How do you take land from someone who has no land?

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If you were to do a bit of research you would find that the famime was world wide (here we called it the dust bowl) It killed tens of millions world wide. How does an individual cause a world wide famine?

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That's a distortion of the facts. The people paid a heavy price for that industrialization, but the Bolsheviks only continued the process that had already been set in motion by the Tsarist government.

Perhps you should look up the comparative industrial production levels of the countries of the world in 1917 when the bolshiviks came to power and compare that to where the russians stood in 1938. Keeping in mind that there was a civil war inbetween 1917 and the first five year plan in 1928.

As for defeating the Germans, the Soviets also had a lot of help from the Western Allies.

The western allies contributd about 10% of the war material used by the russians in ww2 most of it comming in 1944 and 45 after the russians had killed a couple of million germans.

Besides, the Soviets could have defeated the Germans in 1939, if they hadn't signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler.


Do you have any idea why russia did that? To find the answer you might consult churchills book "ww2" Churchill describes how he engineered that treaty?

Further, they were caught with their pants down in 1941, even though their forces still outnumbered the Germans on the Eastern Front.


Not so. Tomishinko,zuchov and pavlove wargamed the polish frontier for stalin in january of 41 and zuchov showed how it was not possible to defend the polish sailent and convinced stalin to follow his plan to entice hitler towards moscow and spank his ass pink in the snow.
I believe the german dead ammounted to about 360,000 by the time they got to smolinsk...that was about two months into the war.

Unfortunately, Stalin purged most of his officer corps and either had them shot or sent to Siberia.

First you need to acquaint yourself with siberia and what is there. There is an interesting account of siberia by gen. gehlen Who went to japan via the trans-siberian rr before the war to conduct discussions concerning espionage. He was quite impressed with it's emense quantities of natural resources.
If you keep in mind that the officer corps of the russian army was left over from the tsar. Not many of them were all that enthused about loosing all of their privledges as officer and nobility. Consequently they were not the most reliable people...You cannot fight a war with untrustworthy generals can you...so he had the unreliable ones shot...the relable ones won the war for him.

Once the war started, many of the officers were officially "rehabilitated" by the State and were sent back to command their units on the front, just in time for the Winter Counteroffensive of 1941-42.



Pretty hard to send a dead man back to work.
The winter counter -offensive was led by zuchov and five whole armies with artic underware and extreme low temp grease for their weapons.

But by that time, the Germans had large sections of Russia under their control,

Please look at a map of russia. See the part that goes from the ural mountains to the pacific ocean. That is the part that the germans never never put their foot on. The part that is west of the urals is not a major part of russia or the soviet union.

not to mention the rich lands of the Ukraine, and millions of Soviet troops neutralized within the first six months.

The richness of the ukraine did not help the germans very much,although german blood did fertilize a lot of it.
The soviets had no shortage of manpower.

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Peasants did not own land they were serfs which means slave for life.

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So far you have only brought rhetoric to the table...facts would be a welcome change.

What table is that?
The tabl of discussion.

I'm not even sure why you're questioning me on this.

You have made statements that are at odds with historical facts...thus my questions.

Do you just not know the facts, or are these questions being put forth disingenuously?

I am quite aware of the facts and am making an effort to disabuse you of your ignorance by asking you to validate your opinions.

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Scalia believes . . .

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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Peasants did not own land they were serfs which means slave for life.

Maybe you should try googling "Kulak": there was quite a fuss about Stalin collectivising their land...

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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The state didn't just stop supporting them. They confiscated church property,

According to the cnstiution,which you posted, the state had every right to confiscate that land since it was the state which had given it to the church to begin with?

The church had it under the old regime. The Soviet state never gave the church anything. They only took.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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Peasants did not own land they were serfs which means slave for life.

Maybe you should try googling "Kulak": there was quite a fuss about Stalin collectivising their land...

A kulak was a land owner who owned serfs. Stalin,in accordance with the constitution took their land which had been given to them by the previous government of the tsar.

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Actually, it was Tsar Alexander II who outlawed serfdom, more than a half century before the Bolshevik Revolution.

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That's the point, sweetie: kulaks owned land, serfs did not. That's why you see the collectivisation of the kulaks in the history books while there's not a word about the collectivisation of the serfs.

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Ironically, Stalin reopened a number of churches and encouraged religious worship during World War II, but he and his successor, Khrushchev, reversed that policy after the war and started persecuting religion again.

Any idea why any of that happened?


Yes, because the Bolsheviks were hypocrites. They said one thing and did something different, which was my original point all along.

I think that should be pretty obvious.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx
You have made statements that are at odds with historical facts...thus my questions.

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I am quite aware of the facts and am making an effort to disabuse you of your ignorance by asking you to validate your opinions.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx
Actually it was not a different phenomenon.
You also might want to take a look at this.

http://rationalrevolution.net/special/library/famine.htm

He has the complete book on pdf if you would like to download it and read it.

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Douglas Tottle is mostly known for his controversial book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: the Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard, in which he asserts that claims the Holodomor was an intentional genocide are "fraudulent", and "a creation of Nazi propagandists".[7] He downplays the responsibility of what he calls "mistakes" by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and "amateurish Soviet planning," and suggests blame can be placed on Ukrainian saboteurs, resisting collectivization. Nonetheless, Tottle puts significant emphasis into denying the validity of photographs of the famine, suggesting a conspiracy.[8]

Only a portion of Tottle's book deals with the Holodomor, as most of it deals with claims of conspiracy and supposed fascist cover-ups. Tottle admits that he "does not attempt to study the famine in any detailed way" (p. 1) and that he is more interested in the "Nazi and fascist connections" and the "coverups of wartime collaboration" (p. 3). Critics argued that both of these topics, even if objectively treated, are not relevant to the study of the famine and can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the famine or define the nature of the tragedy. It has also been argued that Tottle's attacks on various segments of the Ukrainian diaspora constitute hate literature.[8]

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His book, published by the pro-Communist Progress Publishers in Toronto, appeared practically at the same time Ukrainian Communist party leader Volodymyr Shcherbytsky publicly acknowledged the Famine, in December 1987. As a result the book was subsequently withdrawn from circulation.[9] Nevertheless, the book is available on the internet, and continues to be cited as an "invaluable" and "important" book by groups such as the Stalin Society in Great Britain, author Jeff Coplon, and the Communist Party of Sweden.

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In general the book is regarded as blatant example of pro-Soviet propaganda and not credible.

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Why don't you start citing some facts instead of pro-Stalinist propaganda?