Posted on 07/18/2006 2:32:50 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Explaining the monumental failure of the Soviet system and empire, Gen. Dmitri Volkogonov, a former official Soviet military historian, stressed that "the roots of the catastrophe lay in the ideology itself, in Leninism."
All told, the "catastrophe" of attempting to impose a Marxist-Leninist utopia in the Soviet Union resulted in the deaths of as many as 25 million people, according to recently released and hitherto inaccessible Soviet archives -- a death toll that was the direct consequence of centrally planned massacres, mass deportations, labor camps, torture and famine. ...
Within months of his rise to power, Lenin provided the definition of "revolutionary justice" to a workers' assembly: "If the masses do not rise up spontaneously, none of this will lead to anything. For as long as we fail to treat speculators the way they deserve --- with a bullet in the head --- we will not get anywhere."
The targets of this "justice" included shopkeepers, landlords, non-Bolshevik newspapers, non-Bolshevik political parties, the clergy, "counter-revolutionary" civil servants, intellectuals, "aristocrats," industrial strikers and malingering "pseudoworkers," entrepreneurs, gun owners, craftsmen, "bourgeois specialists," landowners, and, most especially, "money grubbing" kulaks, i.e., better-off peasants.
Simply stated, Lenin's "bullet in the head" form of "justice" was the officially prescribed punishment for any person "belonging to a hostile social class."
On Aug. 10, 1918, for instance, Lenin telegrammed instructions for dealing with kulaks who were expressing opposition to having their harvests confiscated by the government: "You must make an example of these people: (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. P.S. Find tougher people."
By the time it was over, the Soviet Union's "tougher" enforcers had killed millions...
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
The Soviets really got the ball rolling as far as democide was concerned. Stalin ended up making Hitler look like a rank amateur.
L
If only Kerensky would have had the courage to have the Provisional Government execute Vladimir Ulyanov, 100 million people may have not perished to bolshevik misgovernance.
Thanks a lot Imperial Germany.
Yet, this type of regimes still exist in Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea. The majority of the lefts still think it's better for these country to live under communists!!!
Well if that never bothered the New York Times, why should I be bothered by it? < / sarcasm >
they killed the best parts of the society. No wonder the country is so screwed up
It's still an effective policy..where would the Democrats be without it!
Heck under Stalin if you weren't starving you were considered rich.
I frequent a site that has forums for a Swedish computer game about WW II. The unabashed love expressed there for Communism can be quite sickening at times.
I wonder how many "Democrat" and RINO congresscritters would actually like to try the fullblown communist experiment in Amerika? A number seem hell bent on trying it. I'll attribute their desire to complete selfishness, rather than stupidity -- they wouldn't care how many people die in their socialist utopia. Damn them all.
Lenin ultimately failed because he was too up front about his method. Gramsci left behind a blue print that they are following to great success.
There were dozens - literally - of points where everything could have been different. Lenin could have been stopped any number of times by any number of people, who came just "this" close to ending the slide into horror.
I recommend Orlando Figes "A Peoples Tragedy"
Events just seemed to have happened such that the worst possible outcome came about. It makes one appreciate the value of the concept of Satan.
Thank you for this article, Tailgunner. People need to know what communism is all about.
Ping.
Duranty confided years later that he knew of the famine & other atrocities when he wrote glowingly about the success of communism. There was a movement several years ago to revoke his Pulitzer but nothing came of it
If people in this country would just learn, there's plenty of academic sources (George Mason University has a great library of communist genocide in the last century). One notable is the Museum of Communism FAQ, by Bryan Caplan. Some info below shows some of the most cruel act against human kind, communists seem to lead the pack!!!
In particular, using almost any scholarly tabulations (and even official Communist pronouncements), the government of the USSR murdered more non-combatants than any other in the 20th-century. Communist China comes in second. Out of the top ten most murderous regimes in this century, five were Communist, according to the ranking provided by R.J. Rummel in his Death By Government (Communist regimes indicated in bold):
He robbed them **6 TIMES**. In Georgia.
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