Book 1 Number Written Calculations: Fill & Download for Free

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.No, it's probably the largest certified fake news in human history.By communism I allow myself to understand Marxism Leninism.Marxism-Leninism is the practical application of Marxism to the modern world. It’s the adaptation of Marxism by the writings and theories of Vladimir Lenin. It’s a universally applicable ideology and is by far the most widespread and historically significant version of Marxism. It involves:VanguardismOne-party stateCritique of ImperialismDemocratic CentralismAbolition of private propertyDictatorship of the proletariatBut where does this meaningless number come from?From the black book of communism, which attributes these deaths to communism:65 million” in the People's Republic of China“20 million” in the Soviet Union“2 million” in Cambodia“2 million” in North Korea“1.7 million” in Ethiopia“1.5 million” in Afghanistan“1 million” in the Eastern Bloc“1 million” in Vietnam“150,000” in Latin America“10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power"What's the problem?The problem is that the book, in addition to contradicting itself, also considers deaths in the war.The author had this huge obsession with reaching 100 million, so after shooting completely random numbers, he added 5 million deaths to reach 100 million.Moreover, the Black Book of Communism is considered by many historical propaganda.Whereas chapters of the book, where it describes the events in separate Communist states, were highly praised, some generalizations made by Courtois in the introduction to the book became a subject of criticism both on scholarly and political grounds. Moreover, two of the book's main contributors—Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin—as well as Karel Bartosek publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Werth and Margolin felt Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship"and faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries. They also argued that based on the results of their studies, one can tentatively estimate the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million. In particular, Margolin, who authored the Black Book's chapter on Vietnam, clarified "that he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam.” Historians Jean-Jacques Becker and J. Arch Getty have criticized Courtois for failing to draw a distinction between victims of neglect and famine and victims of "intentional murder". Economic historian Michael Ellman has argued that the book's estimate of "at least 500,000" deaths during the Soviet famine of 1946–1947 "is formulated in an extremely conservative way, since the actual number of victims was much larger", with 1,000,000–1,500,000 excess deaths. Regarding these questions, historian Alexander Dallin has argued that moral, legal, or political judgments hardly depend on the number of victims. Many observers have rejected Courtois's numerical and moral comparison of Communism to Nazism in the introduction. According to Werth, there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism, saying: "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union". He further told Le Monde: "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious". In a critical review, historian Amir Weiner wrote: "When Stalin's successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution". Historian Ronald Suny remarked that Courtois' comparison of 100 million victims of Communism to 25 million victims of Nazism "[leaves out] out most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible". A report by the Wiesel Commission criticized the comparison of Gulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims as an attempt to trivialize the Holocaust. Historian Peter Kenez criticized the chapter written by Nicolas Werth: "Werth can also be an extremely careless historian. He gives the number of Bolsheviks in October 1917 as 2,000, which is a ridiculous underestimate. He quotes from a letter of Lenin to Alexander Shliapnikov and gives the date as 17 October 1917; the letter could hardly have originated at that time, since in it Lenin talks about the need to defeat the Tsarist government, and turn the war into a civil conflict. He gives credit to the Austro-Hungarian rather than the German army for the conquest of Poland in 1915. He describes the Provisional Government as 'elected'. He incorrectly writes that the peasant rebels during the civil war did more harm to the Reds than to the Whites, and so on". Historian Mark Tauger challenged the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was largely artificial and genocidal. According to journalist Gilles Perrault, the books ignores the effect of international factors, including military interventions, on the communist experience. Social critic Noam Chomsky has criticized the book and its reception as one-sided by outlining economist Amartya Sen's research on hunger. While India's democratic institutions prevented famines, its excess of mortality over China—potentially attributable to the latter's more equal distribution of medical and other resources—was nonetheless close to 4 million per year for non-famine years. Chomsky argued that "supposing we now apply the methodology of the Black Book" to India, "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of [...] Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone". Le Siècle des Communismes, a collective work of twenty academics, was a response to both François Furet's Le passé d'une Illusion and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism. It broke Communism down into series of discrete movements, with mixed positive and negative results. The Black Book of Communism prompted the publication of several other "black books" which argued that similar chronicles of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of colonialism and capitalismDebunking: “Communism killed more people than naziism!”USSRStalin was hit hard by anti-communist propaganda, especially by Robert Conquest, a British "historian" who was paid by the British Information Research Department (IRD) to create false propaganda.Robert Conquest dies – but his lies live on!But how many people really killed Stalin?About 1 million.death toll 2.pdfIt seems like a lot if we don't consider the fact that most of these people weren't innocent.HolodomorThe Holodomor was not caused by Stalin, that is a lie created by Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich propaganda minister.“It is a matter of some significance that Cardinal Innitzer’s allegations of famine-genocide were widely promoted throughout the 1930s, not only by Hitler’s chief propagandist Goebbels, but also by American Fascists as well.It will be recalled that Hearst kicked off his famine campaign with a radio broadcast based mainly on material from Cardinal Innitzer’s “aid committee.” In Organized Anti-Semitism in America, the 1941 book exposing Nazi groups and activities in the pre-war United States, Donald Strong notes that American fascist leader Father Coughlin used Nazi propaganda material extensively. This included Nazi charges of “atrocities by Jew Communists” and verbatim portions of a Goebbels speech referring to Innitzer’s “appeal of July 1934, that millions of people were dying of hunger throughout the Soviet Union.”-Tottle, Douglas -Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books,1987, p. 49-51Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on HolodomorHolodomor was caused by the Kulakis, the climate, the Golden Blockade (western economic block) and various diseases.“During the 1932 harvest season Soviet agriculture experienced a crisis. Natural disasters, especially plant diseases spread and intensified by wet weather in mid-1932, drastically reduced crop yields. OGPU reports, anecdotal as they are, indicate widespread peasant opposition to the kolkhoz system.These documents contain numerous reports of kolkhozniki, faced with starvation, mismanagement and abuse by kolkhoz officials and others, and desperate conditions: dying horses, idle tractors, infested crops, and incitement by itinerant people. Peasants’ responses varied: some applied to withdraw from their farms, some left for paid work outside, some worked sloppily, intentionally leaving grain on the fields while harvesting to glean later for themselves.”-Tauger, Mark. “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 81.Stalin needed to industrialize the USSR as fast as possible to be ready for a potential war, but had to import the necessary materials from the west. (WWII) The west imposed a "golden blockade" on the USSR, whereby the Western powers refused to accept gold as payment for industrial equipment they delivered to Russia. They demanded that the Soviet government pay for the equipment in timber, oil and grain. These sanctions were not removed the following years, and was a major reason as to the extremity of the Famine. The leadership of the USSR was forced to play by the wests rules.In April 17, 1933, the British government declared an embargo on up to 80% of USSR’s exports.During this time, the Great Depression began. In the US ,in response to the overproduction of grain, in particular, the government destroyed grain in large quantities, and immediately took grain from the USSR in payment for its machines instead of gold, oil and other much more necessary raw materials. Roosevelt, continued the policy of destroying agricultural products and reducing crop areas in order to raise prices to lower the severity of the depression:“Probably most deaths in 1933 were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Waterborne diseases were frequent in Makeyevka; I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever. “- Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 153“Their (kulak) opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000.Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941. […] Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.”- Russia Since 1917, Four Decades Of Soviet Politics by Frederick L. SchumanHere you can see Russian peasants who find wheat stolen from kulaki.But who were the Kulakis?The Kulaki were a peasant class born in 1906 due to the agrarian reform of Petr Stolypin.A horrendous reform, which did nothing but increase the gap between rich and poor.The Kulaks rebelled against collectivization with violence, the same collectivization that brought Russia out of thisto this.AMERICAN AND SOVIET CITIZENS EAT ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT OF FOOD EACH DAY BUTFor more information, I recommend reading the books of Mark B Tauger, a historian specializing in famine.https://newcoldwar.org/wp-conten...https://www.newcoldwar.org/wp-co...The Great Famine-Genocide in Soviet Ukraine (Holodomor)I would also recommend Dougles Tottle's book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism which also exposes the origins of the famine-genocide myth that is now propogated by many Nazis.Stalin, due to the Western economic blockade, had to remove Ukraine from large amounts to help the worst affected territories.Agricultural Adjustment Act - WikipediaHowever Stalin helped Ukraine.№ 144. Decree of Politburo of the CC VCP(b) [Central Committee of the All‐Russian Communist Party] concerning foodstuff aid to the Ukrainian S.S.R. of June 16, 1932:a) To release to the Ukraine 2,000 tons of oats for food needs from the unused seed reserves;b) to release to the Ukraine ∼3,600,000 ℔ of corn for food of that released for sowing for the Odessa oblast' but not used for that purpose;c) to release ∼2,520,000 ℔ of grain for collective farms in the sugar‐beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;d) to release ∼8,280,000 ℔ of grain for collective farms in the sugar‐beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;e) to require comrade Chubar' to personally verify the fulfilling of the released grain for the sugar‐beet Soviet and collective farms, that it be used strictly for this purpose;f) to release ∼900,000 ℔ of grain for the sugar‐beet Soviet farms of the Central Black Earth Region for food needs in connection with the gathering of the harvest, first requiring comrade Vareikis to personally verify that the grain released is used for the assigned purpose;g) by the present decision to consider the question of food aid to sugar‐beet producing Soviet and collective farms closed.-Голод в СССР: 1929-июль 1932Голод в СССР: 1929-июль 1932“The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.”-Joseph Stalin - From the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.“In view of the importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched Russian archives for evidence of Soviet planned and actual grain stocks in the early 1930s. Our main sources were the Politburo protocols, including the (“special files,” the highest secrecy level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag, of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Komzag at that time.We have not obtained access to the Politburo working papers in the Presidential Archive, to the files of the committee on reserves or to the relevant files in military archives. But we have found enough information to be confident that this very a high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that Stalin did not have under his control huge amounts of grain, which could easily have been used to eliminate the famine.”-Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933 by R. W. Davies, M. B. Tauger, S.G. Wheatcroft.Slavic Review, Volume 54, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 642-657.Soviet archives also show that Holodomor was natural.“Recent evidence has indicated that part of the cause of the famine was an exceptionally low harvest in 1932, much lower than incorrect Soviet methods of calculation had suggested. The documents included here or published elsewhere do not yet support the claim that the famine was deliberately produced by confiscating the harvest, or that it was directed especially against the peasants of the Ukraine.-Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 401Here is a quote from the preface of R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft's collaborative work The Years of Hunger Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933"In our own work we, like V. P. Kozlov, have found no evidence that the Soviet authorities undertook a programme of genocide against Ukraine.It is also certain that the statements by Ukrainian politicians and publicists about the deaths from famine in Ukraine aregreatly exaggerated. A prominent Ukrainian historian, Stanislas Kul’chitskii, estimated deaths from famine in Ukraine at 3–3.5 million and Ukrainian demographers estimate that excess deaths in Ukraine in the whole period 1926–39 (most of them during the famine) amounted to 3 1⁄2million."Thesis also confirmed by the journalist Anna Louise Strong, who worked in Russia and China.Q: “Is it true that during 1932-33 several million people were allowed to starve to death in the Ukraine and North Caucasus because they were politically hostile to the Soviets?”A: “Not true. I visited several places in those regions during that period. There was a serious grain shortage in the 1932 harvest due chiefly to inefficiencies of the organizational period of the new large-scale mechanized farming among peasants unaccustomed to machines. To this was added sabotage by dispossessed kulaks, the leaving of the farms by 11 million workers who went to new industries, the cumulative effect of the world crisis in depressing the value of Soviet farm exports, and a drought in five basic grain regions in 1931.The harvest of 1932 was better than that of 1931 but was not all gathered; on account of overoptimistic promises from rural districts, Moscow discovered the actual situation only in December when a considerable amount of grain was under snow.”-Anna Louise Strong - Searching Out the Soviets. New Republic: August 7, 1935, p. 356Anna about the harvest of 1933.“The conquest of bread was achieved that summer, a victory snatched from a great disaster. The 1933 harvest surpassed that of 1930, which till then had held the record. This time, the new record was made not by a burst of half-organized enthusiasm, but by growing efficiency and permanent organization … This nationwide cooperation beat the 1934 drought, securing a total crop for the USSR equal to the all-time high of 1933.”-Anna Louise Strong- The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 44-45That's why the victims of Holodomor should not be counted.And the Soviets managed to put things right a year later, this to give you an idea of the strength of the USSR.This newspaper was published by Hearst as part of his deal with Goebbels to promote the Nazis. Hearst was also a Nazi supporter. The photos were found to be from other famines, one of them 10 years earlier. The “reporting” was fabrication. Other reporters that actually looked into it report that while there was a famine it was not intentional.“The CIA believed that Ukrainian nationalism could be used as an efficient cold war weapon.While the Ukrainian nationalists provided Washington with valuable information about its Cold War rivals, the CIA in return was placing the nationalist veterans into positions of influence and authority, helping them to create semi-academic institutions or academic positions in existing universities.By using these formal and informal academic networks, the Ukrainian nationalists had been disseminating anti-Russian propaganda, creating myths and re-writing history at the same time whitewashing the wartime crimes of OUN-UPA.“In 1987 the film “Harvest of Despair” was made. It was the beginning of the ‘Holodomor’ movement. The film was entirely funded by Ukrainian nationalists, mainly in Canada. A Canadian scholar, Douglas Tottle, exposed the fact that the film took photographs from the 1921-22 ‘Volga famine’ and used them to illustrate the 1932-33 famine. Tottle later wrote a book, ‘Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard,‘ about the phony ‘Holodomor’ issue,”Professor Furr elaborated. “https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/khrushchev-lied.pdf“In the last 15 years or so an enormous amount of new material on Stalin … has become available from Russian archives. I should make clear that as a historian I have a strong orientation to telling the truth about the past, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable the conclusions may be. … I don’t think there is a dilemma: you just tell the truth as you see it.(“Stalin’s Wars”, FPM February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35... )The Soviets managed to put things right a year later, this to give you an idea of the strength of the USSR.Maybe many of you want to attack me by saying that other historians say otherwise, well they are wrong.Apart from the fact that many of those who say that the Holodomor was a famine are not even historians but professors of economics, so I wouldn't trust that much.Many others, however, were bribed, one of them being Robert Conquest, who was paid by the British Informatio Research Department (IRD) to create anti-communist propaganda.Many others, however, are contradictory, like Stephen Koktin, who said that the famine was caused by Stalin but the deaths were not intentional.As anyone can understand this sentence it doesn't make much sense.He then says he has the documents confirming Stalin's involvement in the famine, which is absolutely false as I have already shown.The only thing Stalin did was to remove some wheat from Ukraine, that's true, I don't deny it, there are many people who say they saw the men of the NKVD take away some wheat.Too bad they didn't do it to eliminate 7 million people, but to save Russia from the Golden Blockade.As I have already explained, the USSR suffered a huge economic blockade, and if it had not paid a much greater famine would have erupted.And as I have already shown Stalin ordered to help Ukraine, those are his words, not those of a historian.When there are the archives themselves that confirm the theses there is no more to discuss, period.GulagStalin did not create the Gulag, they also existed during the Russian Empire under the name of Katorga.Katorga - WikipediaThey were created by Tsar Alessio.I'll tell you one thing right away, don't take Gulag Archipelago seriously, that book is simply propaganda.The Gulag Archipelago shouldn’t be taken seriouslyAccording to Solzhenitsyn's wife, the book was simple folklore.“In her 1974 memoir, Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”…, she wrote that she was ”perplexed” that the West had accepted ”The Gulag Archipelago” as ”the solemn, ultimate truth,” saying its significance had been ”overestimated and wrongly appraised.”Pointing out that the book’s subtitle is ”An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” she said that her husband did not regard the work as ”historical research, or scientific research.”She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ”camp folklore,” containing ”raw material” which her husband was planning to use in his future productions.”Natalya Reshetovskaya, 84, Is Dead; Solzhenitsyn's Wife Questioned 'Gulag'The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIAAccording to historians J. Arch Getty, Gabor T Rittersporn and Viktor Zemskov the victims of the gulags were around 1,053,829.http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY...number of gulag.pdfHowever, this number also takes into account the sentences not carried out and, according to the historian Austin Murphy, the victims were about 160,000.“Like the myths of millions of executions, the fairy tales that Stalin had tens of millions of people arrested and permanently thrown into prison or labor camps to die in the 1930-1953 interval (Conquest, 1990) appear to be untrue.In particular, the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year, (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1990s (Catalinotto, 1998a) and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population.It should also be noted that the annual death rate for the Soviet interned population was about 4%, which incorporates the effect of prisoner executions. Excluding the desperate World War II years, the death rate in the Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps was only 2.5%, which is even below that of the average "free" citizen in capitalist Russia under the czar in peacetime in 1913 (Wheatcroft, 1993).This finding is not very surprising, given that about 1/3 of the confined people were not even required to work (Bacon, 1994), and given that the maximum work week was 84 hours in even the harshest Soviet labor camps during the most desperate wartime years (Rummel, 1990). The latter maximum (and unusual) work week actually compares favorably to the 100-hour work weeks that existed even for "free" 6-year old children during peacetime in the capitalist industrial revolution (Marx and Engels, 1988b), although it may seem high compared to the 7-hour day worked by the typical Soviet citizen under Stalin (Davies, 1997).In addition, it should also be mentioned that most of the arrests under Stalin were motivated by an attempt to stamp out civil crimes such as banditry, theft, misuse of public office for personal gain, smuggling, and swindles, with less than 10% of the arrests during Stalin's rule being for political reasons or secret police matters (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). The Soviet archives reveal a great deal more political dissent permitted in Stalin's Soviet Union (including a widespread amount of criticism of individual government policies and local leaders) than is normally perceived in the West (Davies, 1997). Given that the regular police, the political or secret police, prison guards, some national guard troops, and firefighters (who were in the same ministry as the police) comprised scarcely 0.2% of the Soviet population under Stalin (Thurston, 1996), severe repression would have been impossible even if the Soviet Union had wanted to exercise it. In comparison, the USA today has many times more police as a percentage of the population (about 1%, not to mention prison guards, national guard troops, and firefighters included in the numbers used to compute the far smaller 0.2% ratio for the Soviet Union)."-Austin Murphy: ‘The Triumph of Evil. Chapter 1, pg 78–79In the gulags most of the criminals were not political opponents, but very normal criminals.Source: CIA “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps”Here you can read American propaganda about gulags.http://gulaghistory.org/nps/down...Among other things, the Gulag were not extermination camps, but prison camps.The penal system administered by the NKVD (Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs) in the 1930s had several components: prisons, labor camps, and labor colonies, as well as "special settlements" and various types of non-custodial supervision. Generally speaking, the first stop for an arrested person was a prison, where an investigation and interrogation led to conviction or, more rarely, release. After sentencing, most victims were sent to: one of the labor camps or colonies to serve their terms. In December 1940, the jails of the USSR had a theoretical prescribed capacity of 234,000, although they then held twice that number. Considering this-and comparing the levels of prison populations given in the Appendixes for the 1930s and 1940s one can assume that the size of the prison system was probably not much different in the 1930s.Second, we find a system of labor camps. These were the terrible “hard regime” camps populated by dangerous common criminals, those important politicals the regime consigned to severe punishment, and, as a rule, by other people sentenced to more than three years of detention. On March 1, 1940, at the end of the Great Purges, there were 53 corrective labor camps (ispravitel’no-trudovye lageri: ITL) of the GULAG system holding some 1.3 million inmates. Most of the data cited in this article bear on the GULAG camps, some of which had a multitude of subdivisions spreading over vast territories and holding large numbers of people. BAMLAG, the largest camp in the period under review, held more than 260,000 inmates at the beginning of 1939, and SEVVOSTLAG (the notorious Kolyma complex) some 138,000.Third came a network of 425 “corrective labor colonies” of varying types. These colonies were meant to confine prisoners serving short sentences, but this rule varied with time. The majority of these colonies were organized to produce for the economy and housed some 315,000 persons in 1940. They were nevertheless under the control of the NKVD and were managed-like the rest of the colony network-by its regional administrations. Additionally, there were 90 children’s homes under the auspices of the NKVD.Fourth, there was the network of “special resettlements.” In the 1930s, these areas were populated largely by peasant families deported from the central districts as “kulaks” (well-to-do peasants) during the forced collectivization of the early 1930s. Few victims of the Great Purges of 1936-1939 were so exiled or put under other forms of non-custodial supervision: in 1937-1938, only 2.1 percent of all those sentenced on charges investigated by the political police fell into this category. This is why we will not treat exile extensively below.Finally, there was a system of non-custodial “corrective work” (ispravitel’no-trudovye raboty), which included various penalties and fines. These were quite common throughout the 1930s-they constituted 48 percent of all court sentences in 1935-and the numbers of such convictions grew under the several laws on labor discipline passed on the eve of the war. Typically, such offenders were condemned to up to one year at “corrective labor,” the penalty consisting of work at the usual place of one’s employment, with up to 25 percent reduction of wage and loss of credit for this work toward the length of service that gave the right to social benefits (specific allocations, vacation, pension). More than 1.7 million persons received such a sentence in the course of 1940 and almost all of them worked in their usual jobs without deprivation of freedom. As with resettlements, this correctional system largely falls outside the scope of the Great Terror.Taken from this article which everyone should read if they want to know more about the Soviet Penal system.Great PurgesThe purges were not made to eliminate dissidents, but to save Russia from sexists, tsarists, Nazis etc.The workers themselves voted to condemn people, not the government.Stalin was a person with pure ideals, he was in fact against anti-Semitism and racism.“National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism.Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.”-Joseph Stalin“Still others think that war should be organised by a "superior race," say, the German "race," against an "inferior race," primarily against the Slavs; that only such a war can provide a way out of the situation, for it is the mission of the "superior race" to render the "inferior race" fruitful and to rule over it. Let us assume that this queer theory, which is as far removed from science as the sky from the earth, let us assume that this queer theory is put into practice. What may be the result of that? It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races.It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today. (Thunderous applause.) But what was the upshot of this? The upshot was that the non-Romans, i.e., all the "barbarians," united against the common enemy and brought Rome down with a crash.The question arises: What guarantee is there that the claims of the representatives of the "superior race" of today will not lead to the same lamentable results? What guarantee is there that the fascist literary politicians in Berlin will be more fortunate than the old and experienced conquerors in Rome? Would it not be more correct to assume that the opposite will be the case?”-Joseph StalinStalin was not a dictator, he was simply the secretary general of the CPSU and could be removed from the party.Nicolò Piva's answer to Was Joseph Stalin above the law?ChinaMao did not kill 65 million people.Monthly Review | Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?Reassessing the Great Leap ForwardApart from the fact that the Great Leap Forward was a natural famine (which did not kill 65 million people but 15 million, as the Chinese government of Deng Xiaoping and historian Leslie Holmes testify).This is nonsense invented by Dikotter which was highly criticized."Dikötter looks at China under Communist rule in a narrow vacuum, thus dispensing with the inconvenient fact that famine in this part of the world has been a recurring phenomenon, which Mao did not invent or even magnify."-Aaron LeonardPeople ignore the fact that China suffered terrible catastrophes at that time, about 100 million acres became unusable and in 1961 many typhoons hit southern China.China has a great history of famines, and it was Mao who ended this bad story.1810181118461849-of which 45 million died.1850–1873 - 20–30 million1876–1879 - 9.5–13 million1907, 1911 - 25 million1920–1921 - 500,001928–1930 - 3 million1936–1937 - 5 million1942–1943 - 2–3 millionMao increased life expectancy and decreased annual deaths.If you want to know more about Mao's reforms, I recommend Comrade Alexander Finnegan's answer.Alexander Finnegan's answer to What were some of Mao's best ideas?Godfree Roberts Archive - The Unz ReviewNicolò Piva's answer to What did the Great Leap Forward accomplish?CambodiaPol Pot, he was not a communist, he was just a madman.Pol Pot, unlike other leaders like Mao Zedong, was not a patriot, but a nationalist, and nationalism is incumbent on communism.Nicolò Piva's answer to What does nationalism mean?Patriotism is the love of one's homeland, nationalism is the holding of one's superior homeland.And since communism wants a society without a state, the two values are incompatible.Marx in his writings speaks of what is called proto-communism, that is, the period in which countries and money did not exist, in practice the Paleolithic period.What did that Pol Pot genius do?He attempted to deindustrialize the nation, so as to return to proto-communism lol.As to be able to see clearly this was not good.By the way the Khmer Rouge was founded by the USA.FRONTLINE/WORLD . Cambodia - Pol Pot's Shadow . Chronicle of Survival . 1980-1991: Back to square oneNorth KoreaThe deaths attributed to North Korea come from the Korean War, so the concept itself is wrong.Then it is wrong to say that those deaths were caused by North Korea as it was the US that gave Syngman Rhee a leading role.EthiopiaIt was practically a fascist dictatorship.VietnamSame speech as in North Korea.Those are the deaths from the war, caused inter alia by the USA.I will not speak of Latin America because I admit that I am totally ignorant of the matter.ConclusionCommunism did not kill 100 million people, but around 8/9 million.

Unquestionably. And there were some Japanese at the time who said so, albeit mostly in private. (See the conclusion in George Feifer, Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb.)In the runup to Operation OLYMPIC—the first of two planned conventional amphibious assaults against the Home Islands—Japan was literally mobilizing its entire population to serve as suicide infantry troops: men, women, and children.Japanese Schoolgirls Conducting Home Defense Drills in 1945. The Japanese Officer is Instructing Them in The Use of Bamboo Spears, Which They Were Expected to Use Against US and Allied Soldiers and TanksThe epochal slaughter that would have ensued had the Allied landings gone off as planned on 1 November 1945 can only be imagined. Japanese preparations for what they called “Ketsu Go” (Operation Decision) were thorough and, as always, fanatical. Nor did the Japanese lack the stomach for such a clash, as demonstrated repeatedly by their own wartime atrocities that by some estimates killed twice as many people as the Nazis.The Asian Holocaust Killed Twice As Many People As The Nazis Did | Dosehttps://fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/chap4.htmhttps://fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/Operation OLYMPIC Video by Military History Visualized, Courtesy of YouTubeThe entire Japanese endgame strategy was predicated on forcing the Allies, but particularly the United States, into close quarters combat on a massive scale. From there it was hoped to bleed the enemy white, and the number of Japanese (and Americans and their Allies) who would certainly die was of no importance as long as the hoped-for political and strategic goals could be achieved. These goals included:An exit from the war on terms more favorable to Japan than the unconditional surrender demanded by the United StatesNo postwar occupation of the Home IslandsRetention of the Emperor in his traditional role as demi-god of JapanNo war crimes trials of any kind—or if there were any, that they be conducted entirely by the Japanese themselvesThe following excerpt from my self-published work, ENDGAME: America, Japan, The Bomb, and the Close of the Pacific War, gives some of the details of both US-Allied and Japanese preparations for the clash of titans in the coming landings. Copyright 2002, 2003, all rights reserved.“Another casualty estimate came from Admiral Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff. Leahy used the loss rates from the Okinawa invasion to extrapolate figures for the OLYMPIC force. Of the total force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Army Air Forces involved at Okinawa, 12,520 soldiers, sailors, and Marines were killed. 36,631 were wounded, which meant according to American reckoning that they were hurt badly enough to be out of combat for more than a week. These 49,151 casualties were about 35 percent of the total force involved at the start of the operation.[1] Assuming the same rate on Kyushu, Leahy’s estimate came to more than 250,000, with 65,000 KIA (Killed In Action). [2] [3] This put him somewhat at odds with MacArthur and his claim that Kyushu’s much larger setting would allow greater maneuver and thus avoid some of the head on attacks of the Okinawa campaign, though of course MacArthur’s figures still predicted horrific casualties. On the other hand, it would be hard to imagine that Japanese defenders would fight less hard or skillfully or fanatically on their home soil than they had at Okinawa, even if the preinvasion bombardment would be orders of magnitude greater. It must be remembered, too, that the Japanese 32nd Army on Okinawa was actually missing about half of its stockpiled ammunition---destroyed in an accidental explosion at a supply dump[4]---as well as its best unit, the 9th Infantry Division. This force was to have been positioned at the very heart of Japanese defenses on Okinawa, while other units charged the beaches as the Americans were trying to offload their men and equipment. Imperial General Headquarters miscalculated American intentions and in December 1944 sent the 9th Division to Formosa, from where it was to go to the Philippines. As it turned out, this crack 25,000-man unit would spend the rest of the war rotting away on Formosa because the high command feared submarine attack on the 9th’s transport ships if they tried to complete their journey. As hard as it is to fathom, Japanese resistance on Okinawa would have been even more formidable if the 32nd Army had not been deprived of these experienced soldiers. [5] Applying the absence of the 9th Division on Okinawa to Leahy’s estimates of the casualties on Kyushu, then, means that the awful figures presented to Truman on June 18 were, if anything, probably much too low.Americans would not be the only ones to die in the orgy of destruction. Japanese losses would be enormous. To continue with the Okinawa comparison, the force defending the 875 square miles of that island, the 32nd Army, was completely destroyed. Over 72,000 soldiers were killed, along with more than 30,000 Okinawans who had either been drafted into the Army or were serving as auxiliaries in one role or another. Only a few hundred were captured alive, many of them months or even years later as they wandered in from the countryside more dead than anything else. The kill ratio, then, was about ten to one. This would mean a minimum of 250,000 dead Japanese on Kyushu, and probably many more than that, given the Japanese buildup, the incredible firepower that America, Britain, and Australia were assembling for OLYMPIC, and the certainty that many Japanese civilians and paramilitaries would have charged into the fray to die “honorably”. [6] In fact, Japan was planning to expend all of its remaining military assets against OLYMPIC, except for the defenses of Tokyo itself. Preparations for Ketsu Go (Operation Decision) were well underway. According to American intelligence, American attackers would be faced by 350,000 Japanese troops, not counting huge numbers of paramilitary volksturm-style units whose effectiveness would have varied but who would certainly have caused additional losses. This was the accepted figure on June 18. It was much too low. More and more men and equipment were pouring into Kyushu all the time, even in the face of American air supremacy (which of course destroyed some of these along with their transportation). Japanese forces on Kyushu actually built up to almost 600,000 troops by late July.[7] On July 29, MacArthur’s own intelligence organization, known as G-2, said, “The rate and probable continuity of Japanese reinforcements into the Kyushu area are changing that tactical and strategical situation sharply. At least six (6) additional major units have been picked up in June/July; it is obvious that they are coming in from adjacent areas over lines of communication that have apparently not been seriously affected by air strikes. There is a strong likelihood that additional major units will enter the area before the target date; we are engaged in a race against time by which the ratio of attack effort vis-à-vis defense capacity is perilously balanced. Unless the use of these routes is restricted by air and/or naval action…enemy forces in Southern Kyushu may be still further augmented until our planned local superiority is overcome, and the Japanese will enjoy complete freedom of action in organizing the area and in completing their preparations for defense.” [8] Marshall was so worried by this buildup that he suggested MacArthur consider other landing sites; alternatives proposed in this “eyes only” message included the city of Sendai, 180 miles north of Tokyo, the town of Ominato, located on Mutsu Bay on the northern tip of Honshu, and Tokyo itself. [9] MacArthur rejected this notion because he felt that American air power would prove decisive against even a large Japanese buildup and in any case felt that taking the southernmost home island was critical because only then could local, land based air power be used in the final assault on Tokyo to the north. It is doubtful MacArthur really had a good grasp of just how many enemy personnel his forces would face. Japan was “systematically mobilizing a vast manpower pool---in addition to its military force---of 13.3 million males aged 15 to 59….Special Guard Forces, made up mostly of men who had some previous military training…were attached to major units primarily for such non-combat duties as fortification building, transport, and “casualty clearing” on the battlefield.”[10] But of course all of these would be expected to fight; every man, woman, and child would be infantry in the end. In fact, Japanese plans were even more explicit than this. On April 20, Imperial Army General Headquarters issued its “Decree of the Homeland Decisive Battle”, [11] which said in its opening statement, “We shall throw everything conceivable, material and spiritual, into the battle and annihilate the enemy landing force by fierce and bold offensive attacks.” “Everything conceivable” would include the last remnants of the Imperial Navy, that is, about 20 destroyers and 40 to 60 fleet submarines, none of them with any more fuel than for a one way ride to glory; 540 five man midget submarines and at least 360 two man midgets; and hundreds of suiciders that were nothing more than warheads mounted on speedboats (though of course, all of the seagoing units were really suicide units.) There were even hundreds of suicide divers—part of the Tokkotai Special Attack Units and known as fukuryu—whose task was to swim out from their underwater warrens and fling their explosives-laden bodies directly underneath oncoming landing craft.1946 Drawing by an Unknown US Navy Serviceman of a Japanese Fukuryu (“Crouching Dragon”) Suicide Diver. Hundreds of These Underwater Kamikazes Were Ready for Use Against Operation OLYMPIC.From the skies would come as many as 10,500 kamikazes who would expend all of their strength over the first ten days of battle.[12] [13] That Japan was husbanding its last ergs of strength for the OLYMPIC assault is evidenced by the fact that during the combined air and battleship bombardments of July and August, 1945, the Japanese rarely even tried to mount any effective naval or air opposition, not even kamikazes.[14]The entire strategy from top to bottom was, in fact, suicide by Western standards, but according to Major General Masakazu Amano, chief of the Army operations section at Imperial General Headquarters, “…we were absolutely sure of victory. It was the first and only battle in which the main strength of the air, land, and sea forces were to be joined. The geographical advantages of the homeland were to be utilized to the highest degree, the enemy was to be crushed, and we were confident that the battle would prove to be the turning point in political maneuvering.”[15] A July 1945 IGHQ memo reflected this thinking, stating hopefully that Japan’s last throw of the dice would produce at least a million US casualties---even if it cost an equal or greater number of Japanese. The hoped for result would be “public opinion in America (becoming) inclined towards peace…with comparatively advantageous conditions.”[16]In other words, the Japanese plan was to force a favorable negotiated peace on Japanese terms, and any amount of bloodshed was simply the necessary price. A further measure of the extremes to which Tokyo was willing to go in defense of the homeland is found in the statement of an officer in Osaka: “Due to the nationwide food shortage and the imminent invasion of the home islands, it will be necessary to kill all the infirm old people, the very young, and the sick. We cannot allow Japan to perish because of them.”[17] One historian writes that this sort of fanaticism had deep roots in Japan’s cultural history. “Thousands of years on their cramped home islands had made the almost racially homogenous Japanese members of one large family in certain ways…To be different was to court instant notice and fearful isolation. ‘If a nail sticks out,’ went one of the most repeated sayings about upbringing, ‘hammer it in’…to understand Japan’s morality one must imagine ‘a situation in which good behavior is constantly determined by individuals’ views of how others expect them to behave; in which they can never think ‘To hell with them’; and in which conformity to social expectations is not an unfortunate compromise but the only possible way to live.’…Most Japanese were therefore snug in their own society, extremely uncertain and uncomfortable with outsiders…This was the soil in which bushido grew.” Past observers also noted the Japanese appetite for violence and conquest. One world traveler remarked, “(They are) naturally addicted to wars, wherein they take more delight than any other people we know.”[18][1] For clarification, the figure of 35% does not, for example, differentiate between service personnel who were actually present during the initial landings on Okinawa versus those who came later to replace battle losses. Rather, it compares the total personnel killed and wounded with the total personnel involved at the start of the operation. Thus, the total number of US and Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen who actually participated in the Okinawa operation was somewhat higher than is nominally quoted here. But the 35% figure does illustrate the extremely high casualty rate at Okinawa and was to Leahy’s mind a reasonable barometer for predicting likely losses during OLYMPIC.[2] Ferrell, Robert H., ed., Truman and the Bomb, A Documentary History, Introduction, (Independence, MO: Project Whistle Stop), 5.[3] Allen and Polmar, Code Name Downfall, 211.[4] Allen and Polmar, 97.[5] Feifer, 106-7.[6] The figure of 250,000 is based on the low end Joint Chiefs estimate of 25,000 American combat deaths, times ten, again using the approximate Okinawa kill ratio of ten to one extrapolated onto the Kyushu landing. However, the following factors must be kept in mind when calculating likely OLYMPIC-Ketsu Go casualties. First, the JCS figure was based on the assumption that opposing Japanese forces would number 350,000, when in reality they would have been nearly twice that size, not counting air and sea kamikaze, quasi-military, and nominally civilian assets. Second, very few Japanese, especially regular Army and especially on their home ground, would ever have surrendered or been captured alive. Third, American and Allied supporting firepower (especially naval and air) would have been the very greatest possible within the framework of existing technology and logistics. There were also contingency plans to employ poison gas, especially if IGHQ had resorted to such weapons. (See Allen and Polmar, 172-191.) All in all, the real figures would certainly have amounted to better than 500,000 Japanese killed in action, and American casualties would also have been much worse than the JCS predicted.[7] Allen and Polmar, 223.[8] G-2, General Headquarters, US Army Forces Pacific, “Amendment No. 1 to G-2 Estimate of the Enemy Situation with Respect to Kyushu,” 29 July 1945, here quoted in Allen and Polmar, 223.[9] Urgent, Marshall to MacArthur (Eyes Only), 7 August 1945, WD 1104 (MacArthur Archives), here quoted in Allen and Polmar, 223.[10] Allen and Polmar, 224-5.[11] Unnamed Japanese sources here quoted in Allen and Polmar, 218.[12] Feifer, 574.[13] Allen and Polmar, 226-7.[14] Millis, 676-8.[15] “Statements of Japanese Officials on World War II” (English Translation), Office of the Chief of Military History. Statement by Amano, Masakazu, 2-4 (Center of Military History), Japan, here quoted in Allen and Polmar, 170.[16] Arens, Major Mark P., USMCR, V Marine Amphibious Corps Planning for Operation Olympic and the Role of Intelligence in Support of Planning, 55, (Written in fulfillment of a requirement for the Marine Corps Command and Staff College). Ahrens cites the IGHQ memo as quoted in Weintraub, Stanley, The Last Great Victory, The End of WWII July/August 1945 (New York: Truman Talley Books/Dutton, 1995), 127.[17] Inega, Saboru, The Pacific War, 182, here quoted in Allen and Polmar, 220.[18] Unfortunately, Feifer does not directly cite the source for this fascinating quote, but by inference it comes from early Portuguese explorers. See footnote in Feifer, 123.Nor were the other options besides amphibious invasion any more palatable. The ongoing US and Royal Navy blockade of Japan, coupled with “conventional” bombing raids that would have increased exponentially in firepower and fury in support of OLYMPIC and CORONET (the second landing planned for Spring 1946), would have killed millions upon millions of Japanese.Battleship USS Indiana Bombarding Kamaishi, Japan, Summer 1945Allied naval bombardments of Japan during World War II - WikipediaDon’t think so? Consider the fact that the entire B-29 strategic conventional bombing campaign against mainland Japan was enormously destructive. Far more Japanese were killed by plain old incendiary bombing than by both of the atomic missions combined.American B-29 Superfortress Bombers Flying Past Mount Fuji, JapanThe Tokyo Fire Raids, 1945Had the final gotterdamerung included Red Army soldiers crossing over into Hokkaido from the Soviet Far East, the devastation—both during the war and afterward, in a ruined Japan divided between Soviet and US/UK zones—would have been even greater.William Pellas's answer to Why didnt the Soviet Union invade Japan during World War 2?

Almost from the beginning the lies about the Soviet Union and Stalin were spread for propaganda purposes. Stalin is probably the most slandered figure in human history, with Mao being second.The HolomodorThe famine in the Ukraine in 1932–1933 was caused by drought, higher birth rates prior to it, the urbanization of the population, deliberate sabotage, and other factors.In this photograph Soviet workers found grain hidden by kulaks. Many hid the grain to speculate on the grain market or to hold out for higher requisition prices. Meanwhile people in the cities were starving.“The Famine of 1932–33 affected population of at least three Soviet republics, not just Ukraine, and in the areas predominantly populated by ethnic Russians:Southern RussiaNorth Kazakhstan (primarily populated by ethnic Russians)Central and Eastern Ukraine (primarily populated by ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking population).”Source: Serge MavrodisGoebbels blamed Stalin for the famine, which was untrue. In fact Stalin ordered grain to be sent to alleviate the famine:“It is a matter of some significance that Cardinal Innitzer’s allegations of famine-genocide were widely promoted throughout the 1930s, not only by Hitler’s chief propagandist Goebbels, but also by American Fascists as well.It will be recalled that Hearst kicked off his famine campaign with a radio broadcast based mainly on material from Cardinal Innitzer’s “aid committee.” In Organized Anti-Semitism in America, the 1941 book exposing Nazi groups and activities in the pre-war United States, Donald Strong notes that American fascist leader Father Coughlin used Nazi propaganda material extensively. This included Nazi charges of “atrocities by Jew Communists” and verbatim portions of a Goebbels speech referring to Innitzer’s “appeal of July 1934, that millions of people were dying of hunger throughout the Soviet Union.”Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books,1987, p. 49-51″Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on Holodomor“This is Stalin urging the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine to take appropriate measures to prevent a crop failure.The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALINFrom the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.”Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on Holodomor“This is the response of Anna Louise Strong, an American journalist famous for reporting on the Soviet Union, to a question about the supposed genocide.QUESTION: Is it true that during 1932-33 several million people were allowed to starve to death in the Ukraine and North Caucasus because they were politically hostile to the Soviets?ANSWER: Not true. I visited several places in those regions during that period. There was a serious grain shortage in the 1932 harvest due chiefly to inefficiencies of the organizational period of the new large-scale mechanized farming among peasants unaccustomed to machines. To this was added sabotage by dispossessed kulaks, the leaving of the farms by 11 million workers who went to new industries, the cumulative effect of the world crisis in depressing the value of Soviet farm exports, and a drought in five basic grain regions in 1931.The harvest of 1932 was better than that of 1931 but was not all gathered; on account of overoptimistic promises from rural districts, Moscow discovered the actual situation only in December when a considerable amount of grain was under snow.Strong, Anna Louise. Searching Out the Soviets. New Republic: August 7, 1935, p. 356Here is Strong again on the harvest of 1933.The conquest of bread was achieved that summer, a victory snatched from a great disaster. The 1933 harvest surpassed that of 1930, which till then had held the record. This time, the new record was made not by a burst of half-organized enthusiasm, but by growing efficiency and permanent organization … This nationwide cooperation beat the 1934 drought, securing a total crop for the USSR equal to the all-time high of 1933.Strong, Anna Louise. The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 44-45This is what a study of the Russian Archives led to.Recent evidence has indicated that part of the cause of the famine was an exceptionally low harvest in 1932, much lower than incorrect Soviet methods of calculation had suggested. The documents included here or published elsewhere do not yet support the claim that the famine was deliberately produced by confiscating the harvest, or that it was directed especially against the peasants of the Ukraine.Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 401Another confirmation after a search of the Russian archives.In view of the importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched Russian archives for evidence of Soviet planned and actual grain stocks in the early 1930s. Our main sources were the Politburo protocols, including the (“special files,” the highest secrecy level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag, of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Komzag at that time.We have not obtained access to the Politburo working papers in the Presidential Archive, to the files of the committee on reserves or to the relevant files in military archives. But we have found enough information to be confident that this very a high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that Stalin did not have under his control huge amounts of grain, which could easily have been used to eliminate the famine.Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933 by R. W. Davies, M. B. Tauger, S.G. Wheatcroft.Slavic Review, Volume 54, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 642-657.”Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on HolodomorThe Holodomor Hoax: Joseph Stalin’s Crime That Never Took PlaceThis newspaper was published by Hearst as part of his deal with Goebbels to promote the Nazis. Hearst was also a Nazi supporter. The photos were found to be from other famines, one of them 10 years earlier. The “reporting” was fabrication. Other reporters that actually looked into it report that while there was a famine it was not intentional.“The CIA believed that Ukrainian nationalism could be used as an efficient cold war weapon.While the Ukrainian nationalists provided Washington with valuable information about its Cold War rivals, the CIA in return was placing the nationalist veterans into positions of influence and authority, helping them to create semi-academic institutions or academic positions in existing universities.By using these formal and informal academic networks, the Ukrainian nationalists had been disseminating anti-Russian propaganda, creating myths and re-writing history at the same time whitewashing the wartime crimes of OUN-UPA.“In 1987 the film “Harvest of Despair” was made. It was the beginning of the ‘Holodomor’ movement. The film was entirely funded by Ukrainian nationalists, mainly in Canada. A Canadian scholar, Douglas Tottle(1), exposed the fact that the film took photographs from the 1921-22 ‘Volga famine’ and used them to illustrate the 1932-33 famine. Tottle later wrote a book, ‘Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard,‘ about the phony ‘Holodomor’ issue,” Professor Furr elaborated. “The Holodomor Hoax: Joseph Stalin’s Crime That Never Took Place“In the last 15 years or so an enormous amount of new material on Stalin … has become available from Russian archives. I should make clear that as a historian I have a strong orientation to telling the truth about the past, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable the conclusions may be. … I don’t think there is a dilemma: you just tell the truth as you see it.(“Stalin’s Wars”, FPM February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35... )The common or “mainstream” view of Stalin as a bloodthirsty tyrant is a product of two sources: Trotsky’s writings of the 1930s and Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” to the XX Party Congress in February, 1956. This canonical history of the Stalin period – the version we have all learned — is completely false. We can see this now thanks mainly to two sets of archival discoveries: the gradual publication of thousands of archival documents from formerly secret Soviet archives since the end of the USSR in 1991; and the opening of the Leon Trotsky Archive at Harvard in 1980 and, secondarily, of the Trotsky Archive at the Hoover Institution (from where I have just returned).Khrushchev LiedIn its impact on world history Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” is the most influential speech of the 20th century. In it Khrushchev painted Stalin as a bloodthirsty tyrant guilty of a reign of terror lasting more than two decades.After the 22nd Party Congress of 1961, where Khrushchev and his men attacked Stalin with even more venom, many Soviet historians elaborated Khrushchev’s lies. These falsehoods were repeated by Cold War anticommunists like Robert Conquest. They also entered “left” discourse through the works of Trotskyists and anarchists and of “pro-Moscow” communists.Khrushchev’s lies were amplified during Mikhail Gorbachev’s and Boris Eltsin’s time by professional Soviet, then Russian, historians. Gorbachev orchestrated an avalanche of anticommunist falsehoods that provided the ideological smokescreen for the return to exploitative practices within the USSR and ultimately for the abandonment of socialist reforms and a return to predatory capitalism.During 2005-2006 I researched and wrote the book Khrushchev Lied. In my book I identify 61 accusations that Khrushchev made against either Stalin or, in a few cases, Beria. I then studied each one of them in the light of evidence available from former Soviet archives. To my own surprise I found that 60 of the 61 accusations are provably, demonstrably false.The fact that Khrushchev could falsify everything and get away with it for over 50 years suggests that we should look carefully at other supposed “crimes” of Stalin and of the USSR during his time.Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’From 1980 till the early 1990s Pierre Broué, the foremost Trotskyist historian of his day, and Arch Getty, a prominent American expert in Soviet history, discovered that Trotsky had lied, repeatedly and about many issues, in his public statements and writings in the 1930s. In my book Trotsky’s ‘Amalgams’ (2015) I discussed the implications of these lies by Trotsky and of some additional lies of his that I discovered myself. They completely invalidate the “Dewey Commission,” to whom Trotsky lied shamelessly and repeatedly, as well as Trotsky’s denials in the Red Book and elsewhere of the charges leveled against him in the First and Second Moscow Trials.Challenging the “Anti-Stalin Paradigm”I have not reached these conclusions out of any desire to “apologize” for – let alone “celebrate” — the policies of Stalin or the Soviet government. I believe these to be the only objective conclusions possible based on the available evidence.The conclusions I have reached about the history of the Soviet Union during the Stalin period are unacceptable to people who, like Proyect, are motivated by prior ideological commitments rather than by a determination to discover the truth “and let the chips fall where they will.”The “anti-Stalin paradigm” is hegemonic in the field of Soviet history, where it is literally “taboo” to question, let alone disprove as I do, the Trotsky-Khrushchev-Cold War falsehoods about Stalin and the Stalin period. Those in this field who do not cut their research to fit the Procrustean bed of the “anti-Stalin paradigm” will find it hard if not impossible to publish in “mainstream” journals and by academic publishers. I am fortunate: I teach English literature and do not need to publish in these “authoritative” but ideologically compromised vehicles.Those who, like Proyect, are motivated not to discover the truth but to shore up their ideological prejudices think that everybody must be doing likewise. Therefore Proyect argues not from evidence, but by guilt by association, name-dropping, insult, and lies.A few examples:Guilt by association: Proyect claims that I am “like” Roland Boer, Roger Annis, and Sigizmund Mironin.Name-dropping: Davies and Wheatcroft are well-known and disagree with Tauger, so – somehow – they are “the most authoritative,” “right” while Tauger is “wrong.”Insult: Tauger is complicit in “turning a victim into a criminal.”Proyect: “…it seems reasonable that Stalin was forced to unleash a brutal repression in the early 30s to prevent Hitler from invading Russia—or something like that.” In reality neither I nor Tauger say anything of the kind.Lies: Proyect quotes a passage from Tauger’s research about the Irish potato famine and then accuses Tauger of wanting to exculpate the British:“The British government responsible? No, we can’t have that.”But the very next sentence in Tauger’s article reads:“Without denying that the British government mishandled the crisis…”Proyect is a prisoner of the historical paradigm that controls his view of Soviet history. A few examples:* Proyect persists in using the term “Holodomor.” He does not inform Cp readers that Davies and Wheatcroft, whose work he recommends, reject both the term “Holodomor” and the concept in the very book Proyect recommends!* Proyect: “…no matter that Lenin called for his [Stalin’s] removal from party leadership from his death-bed.”But, thanks to careful research by Valentin Sakharov of Moscow State University, even “mainstream” researchers know that this note, like “Lenin’s Testament,” is probably a forgery:There is no stenographic original of the “Ilich letter about the [general] secretary.” In the journal of Lenin’s activities kept by the secretarial staff there is no mention of any such “Ilich letter.” … not a single source corroborates the content of the January 4 dictation. Also curious is the fact that Zinoviev had not been made privy to the “Ilich letter about the [general] secretary” in late May, along with the evaluations of six regime personnel. The new typescript emerged only in June. (Stephen Kotkin, Stalin 505)* Proyect: “Largely because of his bureaucratic control and the rapid influx of self-seeking elements into the party, Stalin could crush the opposition…”However, in his 1973 work Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution Stephen Cohen wrote:But machine politics alone did not account for Stalin’s triumph. … within this select oligarchy, Stalin’s bureaucratic power was considerably less imposing…. By April 1929, these influentials had chosen Stalin and formed his essential majority in the high leadership. They did so, it seems clear, less because of his bureaucratic power than because they preferred his leadership and politics. (327)* Proyect: “Stalin’s forced march did not discriminate between rich and poor peasants.”But in 1983 James Mace, a champion of the Ukrainian Nationalist fascist collaborators, wrote about the role of “committees of poor peasants,” komitety nezamozhnykh selian, in supporting collectivization. There is much other evidence of peasant support for collectivization.What it meansCorrectly understood, history is the attempt to use well-known methods of primary-source research in an objective manner, in order to arrive at accurate – truthful — statements about the past. Very often the result is disillusioning to those who cling to false ideological constructs, even when those constructs constitute the “mainstream” of politicized historiography.No one who does not try to discover the truth and then tell it without fear or favor, is worthy to be called a historian, regardless of how famous, honored, or “authoritative” he or she may appear to be.Distortions and lies about Soviet history of the Stalin period predominate everywhere, including Ukraine, Russia, and in the West. These lies mainly consist in repeating Trotskyist and Khrushchevite lies, in defiance or in willful ignorance of the primary-source evidence now available.The newly-available evidence from archival sources necessitates a complete rewriting of Soviet history of the Stalin period and a complete revision of Stalin’s own role. This exciting yet demanding prospect is of great importance to all who wish to learn from the errors, as well as from the successes, of the Bolsheviks, the pioneers of the communist movement of the 20th century.”Source: The Ukrainian Famine: Only Evidence Can Disclose the TruthThe Chief Propagandist, Robert ConquestRobert Conquest at the heart of the mythsThis man, who is so widely quoted in the bourgeois press, this veritable oracle of the bourgeoisie, deserves some specific attention at this point. Robert Conquest is one of the two authors who has most written on the millions dying in the Soviet Union. He is in truth the creator of all the myths and lies concerning the Soviet Union that have been spread since the Second World War. Conquest is primarily known for his books The Great Terror (1969) and Harvest of Sorrow (1986). Conquest writes of millions dying of starvation in the Ukraine, in the gulag labour camps and during the Trials of 1936-38, using as his sources of information exiled Ukrainians living in the US and belonging to rightist parties, people who had collaborated with the Nazis in the Second World War. Many of Conquest’s heroes were known to have been war criminals who led and participated in the genocide of the Ukraine’s Jewish population in 1942. One of these people was Mykola Lebed, convicted as a war criminal after the Second World War. Lebed had been security chief in Lvov during the Nazi occupation and presided over the terrible persecutions of the Jews which took place in 1942. In 1949 the CIA took Lebed off to the United States where he worked as a source of disinformation.The style of Conquest’s books is one of violent and fanatical anti-communism. In his 1969 book, Conquest tells us that those who died of starvation in the Soviet Union between 1932-1933 amounted to between 5 million and 6 million people, half of them in the Ukraine. But in 1983, during Reagan’s anti-communist crusade, Conquest had extended the famine into 1937 and increased the number of victims to 14 million! Such assertions turned out to be well rewarded: in 1986 he was signed up by Reagan to write material for his presidential campaign aimed at preparing the American people for a Soviet invasion, The text in question was called ‘What to do when the Russians come – a survivaists’ handbook’! Strange words coming from a Professor of History!The fact is that there is nothing strange in it at all, coming as it does from a man who has spent his entire life living off lies and fabrications about the Soviet Union and Stalin – first as a secret service agent and then as a writer and professor at Stamford University in California. Conquest’s past was exposed by the Guardian of 27 January 1978 in an article which identified him as a former agent in the disinformation department of the British Secret Service, i.e., the Information Research Department (IRD). The IRD was a section set up in 1947 (originally called the Communist Information Bureau) whose main task it was to combat communist influence throughout the world by planting stories among politicians, journalists and others in a position to influence public opinion. The activities of the IRD were very wide-ranging, as much in Britain as abroad. When the IRD had to be formally disbanded in 1977, as a result of the exposure of its involvement with the far right, it was discovered that in Britain alone more than 100 of the best-known journalists had an IRD contact who regularly supplied them with material for articles. This was routine in several major British newspapers, such as the Financial Times, The Times, Economist, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Express, The Guardian and others. The facts exposed by the Guardian therefore give us an indication as to how the secret services were able to manipulate the news reaching the public at large.Robert Conquest worked for the IRD from when it was set up until 1956. Conquest’s ‘work’ there was to contribute to the so-called ‘black history’ of the Soviet Union fake stories put out as fact and distributed among journalists and others able to influence public opinion. After he had formally left the IRD, Conquest continued to write books suggested by the IRD, with secret service support. His book ‘The Great Terror’, a basic right-wing text on the subject of the power struggle that took place in the Soviet Union in 1937, was in fact a recompilation of text he had written when working for the secret services. The book was finished and published with the help of the IRD. A third of the publication run was bought by the Praeger press, normally associated with the publication of literature originating from CIA sources. Conquest’s book was intended for presentation to ‘useful fools’, such as university professors and people working in the press, radio and TV, to ensure that the lies of Conquest and the extreme right continued to be spread throughout large swathes of the population. Conquest to this day remains for right-wing historians one of the most important sources of material on the Soviet Union.Alexander SolzhenitsynAnother person who is always associated with books and articles on the supposed millions who lost their lives or liberty in the Soviet Union is the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn became famous throughout the capitalist world towards the end of 1960 with his book, The Gulag Archipelago. He himself had been sentenced in 1946 to 8 years in a labour camp for counter-revolutionary activity in the form of distribution of anti-Soviet propaganda. According to Solzhenitsyn, the fight against Nazi Germany in the Second World War could have been avoided if the Soviet government had reached a compromise with Hitler. Solzhenitsyn also accused the Soviet government and Stalin of being even worse than Hitler from the point of view, according to him, of the dreadful effects of the war on the people of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn did not hide his Nazi sympathies. He was condemned as a traitor.Solzhenitsyn began in 1962 to publish books in the Soviet Union with the consent and help of Nikita Khrushchev. The first book he published was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, concerning the life of a prisoner. Khrushchev used Solzhenitsyn’s texts to combat Stalin’s socialist heritage. In 1970 Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature with his book The Gulag Archipelago. His books then began to be published in large quantities in capitalist countries, their author having become one of the most valuable instruments of imperialism in combating the socialism of the Soviet Union. His texts on the labour camps were added to the propaganda on the millions who were supposed to have died in the Soviet Union and were presented by the capitalist mass media as though they were true. In 1974, Solzhenitsyn renounced his Soviet citizenship and emigrated to Switzerland and then the US. At that time he was considered by the capitalist press to be the greatest fighter for freedom and democracy. His Nazi sympathies were buried so as not to interfere with the propaganda war against socialism.In the US, Solzhenitsyn was frequently invited to speak at important meetings. He was, for example, the main speaker at the AFL-CIO union congress in 1975, and on 15 July 1975 he was invited to give a lecture on the world situation to the US Senate! His lectures amount to violent and provocative agitation, arguing and propagandising for the most reactionary positions. Among other things he agitated for Vietnam to be attacked again after its victory over the US. And more: after 40 years of fascism in Portugal, when left-wing army officers took power in the people’s revolution of 1974, Solzhenitsyn began to propagandise in favour of US military intervention in Portugal which, according to him, would join the Warsaw Pact if the US did not intervene! In his lectures, Solzhenitsyn always bemoaned the liberation of Portugal’s African colonies.But it is clear that the main thrust of Solzhenitsyn’s speeches was always the dirty war against socialism - from the alleged execution of several million people in the Soviet Union to the tens of thousands of Americans supposedly imprisoned and enslaved, according to Solzhenitsyn, in North Vietnam! This idea of Solzhenitsyn’s of Americans being used as slave labour in North Vietnam gave rise to the Rambo films on the Vietnam war. American journalists who dared write in favour of peace between the US and the Soviet Union were accused by Solzhenitsyn in his speeches of being potential traitors. Solzhenitsyn also propagandised in favour of increasing US military capacity against the Soviet Union, which he claimed was more powerful in ‘tanks and aeroplanes, by five to seven times, than the US’ as well as in atomic weapons which ‘in short’ he alleged were ‘two, three or even five times’ more powerful in the Soviet Union than those held by the US. Solzhenitsyn’s lectures on the Soviet Union represented the voice of the extreme right. But he himself went even further to the right in his public support of fascism.Source: Lies concerning the history of the Soviet UnionThe Great PurgesIt has been shown that the purges were more complicated than one might imagine. Russia had always been under great pressure from attack on all sides. Within a few years Russia had seen the Tsar overthrown, a bloody civil war sponsored by 18 imperialist nations, conspiracies within his own party as discovered earlier in an undercover sting called “Operation Trust.” 37 volumes of conspiracies and treachery were discovered. The intelligence services would arrest people and then torture them until they admitted they knew something, believing that something had to be happening given the threats from outside the country, particularly the Nazis and Japan. People would say anything to make the torture stop. This led to more arrests and tortures. Members of the party, the factory workers, and everyone in the society believed there were conspiracies afoot. Stalin was terrified of the revolution being toppled. He also knew that Germany planned on invading for certain by 1939 and the country was not ready. Production shortfalls led to the belief by members of the party that there was intentional sabotage. This led to the estimation that based on intelligence (faulty) that it was “for certain” there were a certain number of traitors. This led to quotas. The individual members of the party at the lower levels began to increase their numbers to give the impression of loyalty so they wouldn’t be blamed. The entire thing became its own system of feedback loops. As documents have not been released it is not known how many conspiracies there were, or how they could know. This is not the first time this has happened in history.During the Red Scare in America a sense of great fear and paranoia overcame the American public. Each accusation led to more, and the paroxysm of fear overcame the bourgeoisie in America. It reached critical mass, ruining the lives of many before people took a step back and stopped it. This also happened with the ramp up to the Iraq war after 911. America was terrified after the attack. It felt powerless. It was reported that Dick Cheney almost had a nervous breakdown. The response was to pressure the intelligence services to find out who caused 911 and to root out the terrorists. This led to expectations. The intelligence services began to see conspiracies where they did not exist. Anything that could remotely be seen as negative was. There became a genuine belief that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. This led to a mass hysteria in the U.S. It was rumored that Saddam was developing biological weapons that would be released to terrorists. The U.S. invaded Iraq. It would be found there were no WMDs. The U.S. also started the “War on Terror,” which saw conspiracies where they did not exist. Torture began to be used to get information, but this information was unreliable. It led to false accusations which led to more arrests. Then drone attacks, indefinite detention, and black op cites. The large scale surveillance program began. Likewise, the Salem Witch Trials took on a similar tenor. Mass accusations, paranoia, murders, and more repression. Feedback loops of torture, accusations, more torture followed. But somehow they never seemed able to get to the root of the problem. Enemies were everywhere and nowhere. People were tortured with the expectation that they would say something incriminating. Protestations of innocence were regarded as lies. But then the torture led to them getting whatever they wanted to hear because torture is an unreliable way to get information as people will say anything to make the torture stop.Released documents show no disparities in Stalin’s agreement to the repressions and his own personal thoughts. They confirmed he believed they were real. There was no indication that they repressions were done for cynical, self serving purposes. Stalin knew that purging the military would make the country more weak, but he feared conspiracies more. The conventional wisdom was that people were working with Trotsky, who was collaborating with Germany and Japan to overthrow the Soviet Union. After the civil war there were a number of Tsarists, fascists, and others who had indeed has some conspiracies. But the extent of this is unknown. And it wasn’t just Stalin that expressed these fears. The fears went all the way down to the factory worker level.Source: The Great Fear: Stalin’s Terror of the 1930s, by James HarrisThe Role of Historical InterpretationThe issue of Stalin’s legacy and the Soviet Union is an interesting study in how we know what we know1. Historians are influenced by the cultural norms and bourgeois influences of society. History is also written by the victors.2. Propaganda has a cognitive framing effect. It creates associations between images and narratives that are false. But we see propaganda based narratives so much, and they are repeated by so many, they become the prevailing cognitive “frame” used when thinking about an issue.3. Goebbels talked about this in reference to propaganda. Edward Bernays was one of the leading advertising experts in the U.S. He used Freudian psychoanalysis to tap into the deepest and most basic subconscious desires and urges in people. Prior to this advertisers relied upon rationality to sell a product. When selling cars they would talk about the practicality of the car, the build quality, etc. After Bernays you would see a car commercial with someone driving fast, a beautiful woman in the car, and images related to status. You might see the person driving the BMW going to a cocktail party in a swanky part of the city while a valet drives the car away. Beautiful people await. All of these are appeals to subconscious desires, such as status, sex appeal, money and power. Bernays used these techniques to convince America to stop being isolationist and enter the WWI. Goebbels directed an enormous amount of energy creating propaganda against the Soviet Union and communism. After WWII the U.S. government hired former Nazis to work on “fighting communism” and creating propaganda against the Soviet Union. The U.S. even waived prosecution against them for war crimes in exchange for these services. The U.S. government also used its resources to demonize Stalin and communism. Operation Mockingbird was a CIA operation that brought in mainstream journalists to demonize the Soviet Union. This was only one of many anti-communist operations.4. The primary purpose of schooling is socialization. This means teaching students to value the things required to work in a modern industrial and office environment. The bells are like a work bell. Listening to the teacher and following directions is like following a line foreman. Being on time means arriving to work on time. Even lunch break is similar. Socialization also requires conformity. This means accepting the narrative espoused by the teacher in history.5. There were many primary source documents about actions done by Stalin and the USSR only just released within the last few decades. And many are still not released. The primary narrative about Stalin was written by Robert Conquest. Conquest was a rabid anti-communist. Due to a lack of historical records and the influence of Nazi propaganda from the Hearst publishing machine and others, there was significant “gap filling” used in writing his narrative. This was the “frame” for other historians to consider, including Applebaum. This narrative became so ingrained in the minds of people that others started repeating it, such as journalists and other writers. This narrative also happened to go along well with demonizing the Cold War enemy. The military industrial complex depended on the evils of communism to justify massive defense budgets. Presidents also wanted to use the Cold War and Soviet “aggression” to justify wars in Korea and Vietnam. Now that the Soviet Union is gone Russia was quickly replaced as the “bad guy” to justify the bloated military budget of the U.S. The real reason for the bloated military budget was economic—many representatives in Congress have military bases, production of armaments, or have constituents that join the military for jobs—thus the military industrial complex has become an essential part of the U.S. economy.6. The “Evil Empire” narrative of the Soviet Union and Stalin have become so ingrained that academics that look at new information and attempt to correct the historical record are labeled “Stalin apologists,” which they equate to being a Holocaust denier. Thus there is great peer pressure and risk of becoming a pariah due to scorn from others that don’t want to be associated with someone like that. Many scholars would rather just not bother with it.7. In the Soviet Union the oligarchs and elites benefit from the demonization of Stalin and the USSR because it is against their interest to have the Soviet Union resurrected. Marx taught that the social classes of different nations have more similarites in interests than do different nations. Proof of this is how the artistocracy in Europe would sometimes not even know the language of the nation they were governing, such as Catherine the Great, who had to learn Russian.8. In many respects Hitler and the Nazis did more to harm communism than anyone. By effectively using propaganda against communism it created the false “mainstream narrative” in the West that communism “Doesn’t work,” “killed 100 million people,” “starved and imprisoned millions,” and “always leads to mass death.” Attempts by historians to attack these lies using newly released primary sources is met with eye rolls, claims of being “The same as the Holocaust deniers.” It even becomes a form of moral judgment against the person stating the truth, “What kind of person denies such atrocities? Do you support mass murder?” Thus members of the left distance themselves from Lenin, Stalin, and the Soviet Union. And by cutting themselves off from the rich writings of Lenin and Stalin one loses an important source of real historical examples of the achievements of Marxism Leninism. A similar example would be if the Apostles were labeled as sex offenders and mass murderers. The de-Stalinization by Khruschev in his “Secret Speech” had a devastating effect on the faith in the Soviet Union. In fact it was so devastating it was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. In fact during the Gorbachev period dissidents played a litany of anti-Stalin and anti-USSR propaganda on TV. It was this and the showing of the lives of rich American movie stars that led the people to lose their faith in the Soviet Union and socialism. Sadly, they would find out all too brutally what capitalism really meant—austerity, starvation, homelessness, massive inflation, and poverty. To this day Russia has not recovered. A recent poll showed that 60% of those living in the former Soviet Union said they miss it. Stalin has a 55% approval rating. Many now say that had they known what would happen they would have fought hard for the Soviet Union.IS THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO BY ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN AN ACCURATE DEPICTION OF WHAT THE SOVIET UNION WAS LIKE?No.His wife told the truth very clearly:A 2003 article regarding the death of Solzhenitsyn’s wife put it like this:“In her 1974 memoir, Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”…, she wrote that she was ”perplexed” that the West had accepted ”The Gulag Archipelago” as ”the solemn, ultimate truth,” saying its significance had been ”overestimated and wrongly appraised.”Pointing out that the book’s subtitle is ”An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” she said that her husband did not regard the work as ”historical research, or scientific research.”She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ”camp folklore,” containing ”raw material” which her husband was planning to use in his future productions.”The Gulag Archipelago shouldn’t be taken seriouslyFurther, Solzehenitsyn was a right wing radical and extremist.“But there's something else that makes him more complex than just a victim of tyranny and a crusader against it. Once in America and feted by Western leaders, he urged the US to continue bombing Vietnam. He condemned Amnesty International as too liberal, opposed democracy in Russia, and supported General Franco.”Mark Steel: A reactionary called SolzhenitsynThe other accounts of the gulags from letters written by prisoners depicts a whole different reality.“Well-known accounts of Stalin-era labor camps like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” and Gustaw Herling’s “A World Apart” imply, in their very titles, that detention sites were almost entirely cut off from the rest of Soviet society – islands divided from the country’s “mainland,” or underworlds into which prisoners disappeared, never to be heard from again.In fact, most Stalin-era labor camp inmates theoretically enjoyed at least some letter-writing privileges. Although rules varied depending on where and when a prisoner was held, often inmates could receive an unlimited amount of correspondence through the official camp mail system (though this was heavily censored).The amount they could send depended on the crime, with harsher limits for political offenders. In the 1940s, inmates sentenced for political crimes were often limited to sending only two to three letters home per year. But some political prisoners, like Formakov, managed to get around these constraints and send steady streams of letters through a mixture of official and illicit channels.”“In a separate series of letters, Formakov describes the stage shows he performed in as part of a camp cultural brigade. In a letter to his wife dated March 9, 1946, Formakov explained that the sunny attitudes the inmates who participated in these shows had to assume were often very much at odds with their reality:“We had a concert on the 8th in honor of International Women’s Day. I served as the emcee… You act as master of ceremonies, make some witty remarks, and then head backstage, release your soul, and you just want to wail… For this reason, I never let it go; my soul is always in a corset.”In addition to letters on standard lined notebook paper and mass-produced postcards, Formakov sent handmade birthday and Christmas cards. In one case, he carved a special anniversary greeting into birch bark for his wife. He wrote and illustrated short stories for his two children (Dima, five years old at the time of Formakov’s first arrest in July 1940, and Zhenia, born in December 1940). And he decorated the pages of some of the letters he sent with pressed wildflowers.”In letters from Stalin's labor camps, a window into Soviet political oppression“But his letters – both those sent through official channels and those smuggled out – capture many details that rarely figure in the memoirs of labor camp survivors. For instance, in a letter dated August 10, 1944, Formakov describes the surreal experience of going to the camp club to watch the 1941 American musical comedy “Sun Valley Serenade,” which had just been purchased by Soviet authorities and would have been a hot ticket in Moscow. Similarly, in a communication dated Oct. 27, 1947, he references rumors of an impending devaluation of the ruble, which suggests that – despite the Soviet state’s efforts to keep plans for a December 1947 currency reform secret – news had leaked, even to distant labor camps.Such passages support recent research by scholars Wilson Bell and Golfo Alexopolous, who have noted that labor camps were far more intertwined with the rest of Soviet society than previously thought.”Other accounts have also corroborated these facts.The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA““Humanitarian” lies serve to brainwash the population into supporting imperialist wars. Fed by far-right propaganda, and funded by the CIA, the mainstream “news” outlets describe the Soviet labour camps – also known as the “the Gulags” – as Stalin’s means to repress pro-democracy dissidents and to enslave the Soviet masses. However, the same CIA that, through Operation Mockingbird, gave the US military almost-total control over mainstream press in order to foster anti-Soviet disinformation (Tracy 2018), has recently released declassified documents that invalidate the slanders surrounding the Gulags.The CIA which conducted various anti-Soviet operations for almost five decades, and whose staff strived to obtain accurate intelligence about the USSR, cannot be said to have any bias in favor of the USSR. Therefore, the following declassified CIA files that surprisingly “confess” in favor of the Soviet Union are particularly valuable.”“The Conditions of the PrisonsA 1957 CIA document titled “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps” reveals the following information about the Soviet Gulag in pages two to six:1. Until 1952, the prisoners were given a guaranteed amount food, plus extra food for over-fulfillment of quotas2. From 1952 onward, the Gulag system operated upon “economic accountability” such that the more the prisoners worked, the more they were paid.3. For over-fulfilling the norms by 105%, one day of sentence was counted as two, thus reducing the time spent in the Gulag by one day.4. Furthermore, because of the socialist reconstruction post-war, the Soviet government had more funds and so they increased prisoners’ food supplies.5. Until 1954, the prisoners worked 10 hours per day, whereas the free workers worked 8 hours per day. From 1954 onward, both prisoners and free workers worked 8 hours per day.6. A CIA study of a sample camp showed that 95% of the prisoners were actual criminals.7. In 1953, amnesty was given to 70% of the “ordinary criminals” of a sample camp studied by the CIA. Within the next 3 months, most of them were re-arrested for committing new crimes.The following are excerpts of the CIA document, underlined and put together for the reader:“According to page four of another CIA (1989) document titled “The Soviet Labour System: An Update,” the number of Gulag prisoners “grew to about 2 million” during Stalin’s time.These figures match Soviet statistics as well, from declassified Soviet achieves. The following is a 1954 declassified Soviet archival document (Pyakhov), an excerpt of which is translated into English:“During the period from 1921 to the present time for counterrevolutionary crimes were convicted 3,777,380 people, including to capital punishment – 642,980 people to the conent in the camps and prisons for a period of 25 years old and under – 2,369,220 into exile and expulsion – 765,190 people.“Of the total number of convicts, approximately convicted: 2,900,000 people – College of OGPU, NKVD and triples Special meeting and 877,000 people – courts by military tribunals, and Spetskollegiev Military Collegium.“It should be noted… that established by Decree … on November 3, 1934 Special Meeting of the NKVD which lasted until September 1, 1953 – 442,531 people were convicted, including to capital punishment – 10,101 people to prison – 360,921 people to exile and expulsion (within the country) – 57,539 people and other punishments (offset time in detention, deportation abroad, compulsory treatment) – 3,970 people…Attorney General R. RudenkoInterior Minister S. KruglovJustice Minister K. Gorshenin”The Soviet archives remained declassified for decades, only to be released near or after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition, after Stalin died, the pro-Stalin head of the NKVD (Soviet interior ministry) Lavrenty Beria had already been executed by Khrushchev, a staunch anti-Stalinist (History in an hour 2010). These facts make it very unlikely that the Soviet intelligence would have a pro-Stalin bias.The Italian-American historian Michael Parenti (1997, pp. 79-80) further analyzes the data provided from the Soviet archives:“In 1993, for the first time, several historians gained access to previously secret Soviet police archives and were able to establish well-documented estimates of prison and labor camp populations. They found that the total population of the entire gulag as of January 1939, near the end of the Great Purges, was 2,022,976. At about that time, there began a purge of the purgers, including many intelligence and secret police (NKVD) officials and members of the judiciary and other investigative committees, who were suddenly held responsible for the excesses of the terror despite their protestations of fidelity to the regime.“Soviet labor camps were not death camps like those the Nazis built across Europe. There was no systematic extermination of inmates, no gas chambers or crematoria to dispose of millions of bodies…. [T]he great majority of gulag inmates survived and eventually returned to society when granted amnesty or when their terms were finished. In any given year, 20 to 40 percent of the inmates were released, according to archive records. Oblivious to these facts, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times (7/31/96) continues to describe the gulag as ‘the largest system of death camps in modern history’.“Almost a million gulag prisoners were released during World War II to serve in the military. The archives reveal that more than half of all gulag deaths for the 1934-53 period occurred during the war years (1941-45), mostly from malnutrition, when severe privation was the common lot of the entire Soviet population. (Some 22 million Soviet citizens perished in the war.) In 1944, for instance, the labor-camp death rate was 92 per 1000. By 1953, with the postwar recovery, camp deaths had declined to 3 per 1000.“Should all gulag inmates be considered innocent victims of Red repression? Contrary to what we have been led to believe, those arrested for political crimes (‘counterrevolutionary offenses’) numbered from 12 to 33 percent of the prison population, varying from year to year. The vast majority of inmates were charged with nonpolitical offenses: murder, assault, theft, banditry, smuggling, swindling, and other violations punishable in any society.”Thus, according to the CIA, approximately two million people were sent to the Gulag in the 1930s, whereas according to declassified Soviet archives, 2,369,220 up until 1954. When compared to the population of the USSR at the time, as well as the statistics of a country like the United States, the Gulag percent population in the USSR throughout its history was lower than that of the United States today or since the 1990s. In fact, based on Sousa’s (1998)research, there was a larger percentage of prisoners (relative to the whole population) in the US, than there ever was in the USSR:“In a rather small news item appearing in the newspapers of August 1997, the FLT-AP news agency reported that in the US there had never previously been so many people in the prison system as the 5.5 million held in 1996. This represents an increase of 200,000 people since 1995 and means that the number of criminals in the US equals 2.8% of the adult population. These data are available to all those who are part of the North American department of justice…. The number of convicts in the US today is 3 million higher than the maximum number ever held in the Soviet Union! In the Soviet Union, there was a maximum of 2.4% of the adult population in prison for their crimes – in the US the figure is 2.8% and rising! According to a press release put out by the US department of justice on 18 January 1998, the number of convicts in the US in 1997 rose by 96,100.”ConclusionSeeing the USSR as a major ideological challenge, the Western imperial bourgeoisie demonized Stalin and the Soviet Union. Yet after decades of propaganda, declassified archives from both the US and USSR together debunk these anti-Soviet slanders. Worth our attention is the fact that the CIA – a fiercely anti-Soviet source – has published declassified documents debunking the very anti-Soviet myths it promoted and continues to promote in the mainstream media. Together with declassified Soviet archives, the CIA files have demonstrated that the bourgeois press has lied about the Gulags.Notes13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery. (n.d.). Retrieved August 28, 2018, from 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of SlaveryCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA). (1989). THE SOVIET FORCED LABOR SYSTEM: AN UPDATE (GI-M 87-20081). Retrieved February 12, 2018, http://fromhttps://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000500615.pdfCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA). (2010, February 22). 1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955. Retrieved January 5, 2018, from https://www.cia.gov/library/read...Hillary and Bill used ‘slave labour’. (2017, June 08). Retrieved June 10, 2017, from Hillary and Bill used ‘slave labour’Игорь, П. (n.d.). Книга: За что сажали при Сталине. Невинны ли «жертвы репрессий»? Retrieved August 28, 2018, from Книга: За что сажали при Сталине. Невинны ли "жертвы репрессий"?Parenti, M. (1997). Blackshirts and reds: Rational fascism and the overthrow of communism. San Francisco, Calif: City Lights Books.Sousa, M. (1998, June 15). Lies concerning the history of the Soviet Union. Retrieved August 27, 2018, from Lies concerning the history of the Soviet UnionThe Death of Lavrenty Beria. (2015, December 23). Retrieved August 31, 2018, from http://www.historyinanhour.com/2...Tracy, J. F. (2018, January 30). The CIA and the Media: 50 Facts the World Needs to Know. Retrieved August 28, 2018, http://fromhttps://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cia-and-the-media-50-facts-the-world-needs-to-know/5471956 “Source: The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIAAlexander Finnegan's answer to How many people did Stalin really kill?The actual number is no more than 2.76 million.