“but the Russians, under Stalin, also killed tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions (re Poland) of Allied soldiers and civilians”
Stalin killed roughly 29 million, deliberately starved to death, including 5 million in the Ukraine alone, executed, Guglags. Most of the 29 million were actually civilians, specifically his OWN citizens.
So it wasn’t “tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions”
It WAS millions, 29 million of them.
Gulags even. Doh.
This part of my comment dealt only with WW2 (1939-1945) and actions of Soviet troops in the countries they were “liberating” or occupying. Most casualties occurred in Poland, during the initial 1939 invasion and few battles, and then the abandonment of the Polish Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising when Stalin refused to come to their aid, though only 20 miles away and fully prepared for combat.
THe Ukrainian genocide occurred in the 1920’s and 30’s.
The Gulags killed unknown numbers from the 1930’s through the 60’s (I had a friend, a Red Army Major/KGB-contact Soviet attorney re war materials contracts, who spent time in the 50’s and 60’s, first in Lubyanka prison, and then in the Trans-Siberian Railroad gulag complex from Potma to Lake Baikal (Avraham Shifrin).
His first hand stories can be found in a 3 volume set of hearings on “Slave Labor in the USSR”, 1972, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, Sen. Judiciary Committee.
I was the only Jewish newspaper journalist to publish his story in the US before he testified, and then later helped him rewrite his fascinating testimony before the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1973, on the hidden Soviet military budget in civilian industry published budgets.
Avram saw many people who died from the harshness of Soviet slave labor camps, or who were murdered in them, as well as having survived being wounded three times in combat during WW2 in a Jewish penal battalion whose casualty rates were so high as to virtually decimate them (which was Stalin’s goal).
I have also met other survivors from the Soviet gulags, including one from the Vorkuta/Archangel complex (John Noble, who was also interned in Germany during WW2, then seized by the Red Army and sent to the gulags along the North Sea).
There is reportedly a newer version of the Black Book on Communism but published by a different group, which has updated casualty figures from communism.
When the final tally is posted, it will be beyond imagination, and something we must shove up the intellectual ass of the Left.