That Other Holocaust, Revisited

War to Mobilize Democracy, LLC ^ | February 2, 2006 | Andrew L. Jaffee

[forty_years]

Every time I bring up the Holocaust, the same thing happens. Some of the people want Hitler's genocide to be the archetype of a people's suffering, denying others their right to bring similar atrocities to light. Some want to deny it (like current Iranian President Ahmadinejad). Some want to straddle the line or apologize: "There would have been no Hitler if not for the reparation payments put upon Germany after World War I." What are we to do, create a chart ranking peoples' suffering: "mine was worse than yours?" These were all horrors. Calling one a genocide while not allowing another to call it a holocaust is sophistry. Denial is just historic ignorance -- or caused by some ulterior motive, like racism.

By far, the biggest "controversies" arise when I compare Hitler's genocide to the various communist atrocities of the same century. The extreme leftists always get upset because it challenges their beliefs about "socialism." They tend to subscribe to the Leninist adage, "The ends justify the means." Some get defensive, or perhaps feel a tab bit guilty, because, after all, Stalin helped us defeat Hitler, never mind the fact that he murdered millions of innocents himself. And some say that communist atrocities were secular -- not motivated by ethnic divisions.

Take the Russian communist atrocities. These were in fact racially/ethnically motivated. During the reign of the Soviets, which was basically a Russian-dominated endeavor, with help from plenty of indigenous collaborators, the motivation was precisely ethnic cleansing (Ukraine, Estonia, etc.).

Why do I emphasize Russian complicity in Soviet atrocities? Simple: Some have tried to paint the Soviet Union as some kind of distinctly “communist” phenomena. That’s like saying Germans had nothing to do with the Nazi Party during WWII. Sorry to disappoint the historical revisionists, but let’s give credit where credit is due. According to the U.S. Library of Congress:

The ethnic composition of the [Soviet communist] party reflected further disproportions between the party and the population as a whole (see table 26, Appendix A). In 1922 the share of Russian members in the party exceeded their proportion of the population by 19 percent. Since that time, the gap between Russians and other nationalities has narrowed. In 1979 Russians constituted 52 percent of the Soviet population; however, they constituted 60 percent of the party in 1981. Moreover, the percentage of Russians in the party apparatus was probably even greater than their percentage in the party as a whole.

After the mass slaughters, intensive Russification was carried out in the Soviet “republics.” Selective murders were carried out by the KGB and NKVD for 50 years to quell indigenous cultural expression. For example, the Latvian and Estonian nations were pushed to the brink of extinction through policies of forced language learning, outlawing of cultural/religious practices, and by encouraging huge numbers of Russians to emigrate to the “republics.” Estonia ended up with a 42% Russian population while Latvia ended with a 30% Russian population. If not for these peoples’ tenacity, and a little help from Reagan, ex-pats, etc., the attempted genocide would have been completed.

All the occupied republics had resources which Russians either needed or wanted. As Orwell said, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." The commissars got personal dachas, pocketed local tax revenues, and exercised unlimited power. It was good being at the top.

Before the Soviets, the czars ruled most of the later-labeled "republics." The "greater Russia" concept, that Russians were a master race that deserved to rule the inferior satellites, was simply carried on by Soviet czars.

Go to Lithuania. Go to Turkmenistan. Ask the locals about how the Russians ruled them, czar or commissar alike. Ask the people there how they viewed Russian domination. The Russian neo-imperialists are still talking of a "greater Russia."

The Russian rulers mistreated the satellites for power and greed. Their master plan was to fill nations like Estonia up with Russians until there was nothing left but Russians. The satellites were inferiors (and were resented for their economic successes), just as the Nazis considered the Jews. Remember that Hitler had the same plan for countries like Lithuania. He planned to work the populaces to death, and then fill the nations with German settlers.

It was racist, plain and simple.

Stalin systematically eliminated Crimea's Tartars. Hitler killed the Jews, gays, and gypsies. Saddam gassed the Kurds. The Teutonic Knights exterminated every last living Prussian (the Baltic people; before Germans ever lived there). American settlers fed diseased cattle to Native Americans. Five years after Cortez’ arrival in Mexico, 70% of the indigenous peoples were dead…

Is one tragedy more equal than the others? Does it matter as long as we remember the mantra, "Never forget; never again?"

http://netwmd.com/blog/2006/02/02/336

[veracious]

Interesting, and yes the worst tyrannant of all time was Stalin. There are plenty of socialists in this country who are confused about this (and other things)...

[dfwgator]

Interesting, and yes the worst tyrannant of all time was Stalin

Actually, it's Mao Tse Tung.

[veracious]

I'm was using tyranny to mean body counts. Stalin's regime was good for >30 million. Where's commrade Mao on this?

[forty_years]

Here's historian Matthew White's body count:

Major mass killings of the Twentieth Century

Rank	Deaths	Event	Time Frame
1	50 000 000	World War II	1937-1945
2	40 000 000	China: Mao Zedong's regime	1949-1976
3	20 000 000	USSR: Stalin's regime	1924-1953
4	15 000 000	World War I	1914-1918
5	8 800 000	Russian Civil War	1918-1921
6	4 000 000	China: Warlord & Nationalist Era	1917-1937
7	3 000 000	Congo Free State	1900-1908
8	2 800 000	Korean War	1950-1953
9	2 700 000	2nd Indochina War (incl. Laos & Cambodia)	1960-1975
10	2 500 000	Chinese Civil War	1945-1949
11	2 100 000	Expulsion of Germans after World War II	1945-1947
12	1 900 000	Second Sudanese Civil War	1983-1999
13	1 700 000	Congolese Civil War	1998-1999
13	1 500 000	Turkish Genocide against Armenia	1915-1923
14	1 000 000	Cambodia: Khmer Rouge regime	1975-1979
15	1 400 000	Afghanistan Civil War	1980-1999
15	1 400 000	Ethiopian Civil Wars	1962-1992
17	1 250 000	Mexican Revolution	1910-1920
18	1 250 000	East Pakistan massacres	1971
19	1 000 000	Iran-Iraq War	1980-1988
19	1 000 000	Nigeria: Biafra	1967-1970
21	800 000	Mozambique Civil War	1976-1992
21	800 000	Rwanda	1994
23	675 000	French-Algerian War	1954-1962
24	600 000	First Indochina War	1945-1954
24	600 000	Angolan Civil War	1975-1994
26	500 000	Indonesia: Massacre of Communists	1965-1967
26	500 000	India-Pakistan Partition	1947
26	500 000	First Sudanese Civil War	1955-1972
26	500 000	Amazonian Indian decline	1900-1999
30	365 000	Spanish Civil War	1936-1939
??	>350 000	Somalia	1991-1999
??	>400 000	North Korean Communist regime	1948-1999

[sauropod]

good article.

[hang 'em]

Five years after Cortez’ arrival in Mexico, 70% of the indigenous peoples were dead…

That was due to the lack of immunity to small pox on the part of the indigenous people. Not that Cortez was a saint or anything.

Interesting that the indians gave the Europeans tobacco in return. How many people have died from that over the years?