Concentration camps

Well, Smeg, I daresay that the large Soviet armies in Poland at the end of the war helped the Poles turn that blind eye to Katyn Forest and other such incidents.

 

There was an attempt to make a memorial or something like that in Britain during the cold war but the British government intervened saying "They do not want to further strain the relations with the Soviet Union".

Stalin purposely starved the Ukrainians into submission. The Ukrainians did not want to be a part of the Soviet Union so Stalin starved them to death by ruthless suppression, deportations and executions of families, putting unrealistic quotas on them which they could not meet taking their produce and giving very little back.

The Poles did not want to be a communist state. Just look at the Warsaw uprising, the Poles were left with a choice of wether to attack the Germans or not. If they did not attack the the Germans the Home Army would look like they were with the Germans, if they attacked it would show they were not against the Germans but it would be taken as they wanted communism. They chose to fight, and Russia did little to help.

Just like when the Soviet Union promised Poland arms if they resisted Germany, which they had to intention of doing. :roll: Sound familiar?

 

No. That is now western Ukraine, Byelorussia and part of Lithuania.
The biggest massacers of Poles happened during the war itself in Vohilniya when UPA (Ukranian nationalists) started clearing Poles out (i.e. massacring them). Poles (Armiya Krayowa) returned the "favor" to the Ukranians. It was a very nasty and bitter war within the war.

Basicly with number of RKKA trops in poland it was difficoult to do much. Anti Soviet partisans (AK) were very active up to early 50's. Later it was also US screw-up. Here one has to mention specificaly one speach by JFK in Berlin. Which bacisly had also one small sentence in which he stated that new German eastern border (with Poland) was unfair. That simple sentance tied Poles to the Soviets (which took half of their state and replaced it with German).

 

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Smeghead , the gosudask laggers or Gu Lag were running the full gamut of the human condition from harsh work camp to frozen exterminating hell
the benign one's like in the vologda prefecture were hard forest labor , then the vorkuta coal mines ,located on the arctic circle them the gold mines of the kolima were the turn-over was 50% per month for twenty years
I saw the chief guard being interviewed by a Russian journalist , he claimed the hight death rate was due to typhus :-? , but , in spite of the labor difficulties, he always managed to make his production norms
What about the white sea canal , honored by a cigarette brand , where the kulaks died in their hundred of thousands ,
The census of 1936 had to be rewritten, due to the massive gaps in the male population

every russian of note had either been there , come close or had denounced someone , sometime just to be safe themselves or to get ahead

I love the russians and their history but 2 millions dead for Stalin GuLag is barely scratching the surface

As for the politics of western Ukraine , anyone looking in it get a headache
very quickly ,
during 44 there were pro Germans , anti soviets , anti germans , pro soviets , poles nationalists and Ukrainian nationalists , nobody was too sure who was whom least of all half of the partisans themselves , they were splitting and turning their coat in a dizzying manner , the red army security branch SMERSH hunted them all to death , the one who found refuge in australia, canada and the united states were usually the pro nazis one , some of witch had been extermination camp guards.

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Jeaguer please forgive my somewhat cold analysis...
It depends upon how you construe deaths suffered in the gulag, for the Soviet staticticians themselves it was a matter of intepretation...

Deaths within the walls themselves were not so high as deaths suffered on the trips to and from the gulag... like I said, 1 million is a high estimate... I would not be suprised if the Soviet estimate of 621,000 was spot on, given the general accuracy of Soviet statistics and the lack of any real need for the State to cover up such a number (A combination of total State Power, no political motivation to preserve the lives of prisoners, and the fact that the public would never see such information). Whereas there are plenty of references to suggest that a prisoner was in fact more likely to die on the trip to Siberia than in the camps themselves. Using the Poles as an example, IIRC 1.5 million Poles were deported to Siberia after the 1939 invasion. Only half ever made it there, most froze/starved to death on the way, or were executed... Thats what I referred to as 'exposure' and than can convieniently be omitted from the 'official' gulag toll

 

I think it may be at best splitting hairs somewhat to argue that.

I find regarding the execution of prisoners as "Exposure" somewhat of an uncomfortable euphemism BTW. The exposure of ones brains after a bullet has passed through the skull is not howI usually interpret "Exposure".

Partly though the death figure depends on how you chose to interpret things. I would argue that whilst the Gulags themselves as in the individual camps may not be responsible for all those deaths the Gulag system (In which I'd include the transport of prisoners in custody) was.

 

Perhaps, I just assumed that the 'official' number referred to the numbers who died in the camps themselves, as I read that (concerning German camps) prisoners were registered upon their arrival in the camp... Not at the time that they were deported

 

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It was customary not to feed prisoners while in transit ,the trip could take any amount of time , several days was the best one could expect
I've read reports of survivors telling of being dumped in a snow field , left to sleep in it and starting to build the camp from scratch in the morning with hardly any tools .

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...man the 1940s in eastern europe and balkans was a hellish place which ever way one looked ..occupation of france and norway was potemkin village by comparison..

 

That's the reason why our blood pressure rises when someone starts justifying agressive war with "preemption" or liberation ( democratic or otherwise) rationale. And is also reason why we have a bit different perspective toward insurgents/terrorists/partisans/freedom figters/.....

 

TISO, not all insurgents are "freedom fighters"; the ones in Iraq definitely aren't. Or do you honestly believe that any kind of government they would set up there would be free, by any rational definition?

 

if sadam had not been so cute with weapons inspectors and no fly zones he would still be free to torture ,gas and murder to his hearts content ..his playing blind mans bluff on wmds schell game was a bad gamble for him ...once we were unable to find wmds we decided to create the worlds first arab democracy..we did it in japan and germany ..it seemed possible ..perhaps it is not ...one thing is for sure , the only freedom fighters iraq has ever seen (OR LIKELY EVER WILL) has been the US /ANGLO forces which will depart soon enough...a victory for any faction or militia active today is not going to produce anything remotely like freedom or equal rights for the winners or anyone else ..the koran is not compatible with what we consider freedom ..the word islam means submit , it does not condone anything like free will...not in iraq and not anywhere else...

 

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The baa th movement was secular ,vaguely social and pan Arab , very harsh against millenarian sects or populist islamic parties
women had some right and the repression was on a par with other states good friends of the west ( Morocco Egypt or the gulf states spring to mind )

what give and why did the destruction of Saddam was such a necessity , I wonder
The west in general and the U.S. governments have down the years associated with worst tyrans , even now Qaddafi is embraced as the long lost friend ,
no kidding !!?!!

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Just found this on the BBC site , they mention the kolima

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/6255475.stm


Sergei Korolyov's anniversary is being celebrated in Russia and his native Ukraine with ceremonies, commemorative medals and coins,
while a Progress spacecraft being sent to the International Space Station next week will be specially decorated in his honour.
On Moscow's Red Square, wreaths are being laid at his grave in the Kremlin wall, the last resting-place of the USSR's officially recognised heroes.
Inside the Kremlin itself, a function will be devoted to the memory of the man who designed the world's first satellite, Sputnik,
and put the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space.

Korolyov's name was only revealed by the Soviet state on the day of his death at the age of 59 in 1966.

But just a few decades earlier, he had faced the prospect of disappearing into complete oblivion as a victim of Stalin's repressions.

Arrested in 1938 during a purge of the scientific research institute where he worked, the brilliant young scientist was sentenced to 10 years' prison
on a trumped-up charge of planning anti-Soviet sabotage.
His jaw broken by his interrogators, he was sent as Convict N1442 to the gold mines of one of the most feared parts of the Gulag labour camps,
the Kolyma region of eastern Siberia.
An ordeal of 12-hour days of back-breaking work, poor diet, the cold and abuse at the hands of guards and the genuine criminals
among the convicts wore him down.
By the time, a couple of years later, he was transferred to work in a special prisoners' design bureau in Kazan -
the move which marked the rebirth of his career - he had lost all his teeth to scurvy and was suffering from other ailments.
Set free in 1946, he spent his first night at home telling the adult members of the family about his ordeal, Natalya Korolyova said.
He finished with the words "Never ask me about it again - I want to forget it all like a horrible dream."
His daughter adds that her father had developed a loathing for gold and would frequently say he hated it.

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again ,sadam was a felon parolee .as a such we were able to search his house on demand for drugs and weapons ..he didnt abide by his parlol dictates and he got pinched .the oil for palaces thing was a cruel joke which lined the pockets of french ,russian and other european elites
sadam in the past had owned and used wmds and we couldnt be sure he wasnt hideing any at his apartment
...we yankees have become a little pariniod about arabs with wmds (even if they are sort of fair to their women , ect ) ,sadam was one of the usual suspects . we had ample reason to slap him arround in front of the "other" suspects ...we got a warrent ,kicked down his door and unfortunatly the place was clean .alas sadam and his sons died in a gun battle with the swat team ... in hindsight i kinda wish sadam were still in power and busily gassing and smashing up his cousins and in-laws and we had never served the warrent ..now we have to police the old mafia boss,s neighborhood and we suk at it ...lessons learned..