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Stalin's purge 1937 remembered in Russia
AP ^ | Jul. 25, 2007 | BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA

Posted on 07/25/2007 12:08:59 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe

Now in their 70s and 80s, children of the victims of Josef Stalin's political repressions remembered one of the darkest pages of Russia's history at a ceremony Wednesday in central Moscow.

Several hundred people laid flowers and lit candles to honor the victims of the Great Purge of 1937, when millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps.

The 70th anniversary comes as the Kremlin, focused on restoring Russians' pride in their Soviet-era history, has been trying to soften public perception of Stalin's rule and hushing up the full horror of his crimes.

"Those who call for that are those who have never experienced themselves the hunger, cold and humiliation that we had to go through," said Irina Kalina, 79, who was among those gathered on a square outside what was once KGB headquarters and is now the headquarters of its successor agency, the FSB.

She held several red carnations and a framed photograph of her father, Ignaty Kalina, who was serving as foreign minister of the Belarus Soviet republic when he was arrested in 1938 and accused of being a spy. He died in jail several months later. Kalina was sent to a labor camp in Kazakhstan for five years.

President Vladimir Putin said last month that although the 1937 purge was one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era, no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about it because "in other countries even worse things happened."

Putin, who was speaking to a gathering of history teachers, suggested the United States' use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II was worse.

The government in recent years has tried to control how history is taught, publishing Kremlin-approved textbooks and getting rid of those that deviate from the new official line. In 2003, authorities banned a history text that was critical of Stalin's tyrannical rule and included an assignment to ask students to discuss whether Putin could be considered an autocrat.

"Our authorities in many respects are going back to the norms of Soviet times," said historian Nikita Sokolov. "For them history ... is a tool for bringing up a patriotic citizen, someone who is ready to love this government at any price."

He said there are various history textbooks currently in use, including some that give a frank assessment of Stalin's rule, but "everything depends on how teachers interpret them."

"They are getting new signals these days: Stalin is now being excused and elevated, and they will not go against the official line," said Sokolov, who co-authored a book about various ways to interpret the past.

Political arrests on dubious charges were common throughout Stalin's rule, resulting in the execution of hundreds of thousands of Russians. Millions more became inmates of the gulag, the system of thousands of slave labor camps.

Large-scale arrests of Communist Party members began in 1934 and seemed to reach a crescendo in 1936-37, when a series of show trials was held in Moscow featuring dramatic courtroom confessions.

Russia has never sought to bring to justice KGB officials implicated in human rights abuses committed during the Communist era. Putin, a proud alumnus of the KGB, headed the FSB in the late 1990s.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: 1937; anniversary; communism; communismkills; evilempire; gulags; kgb; millionsdead; politicalwitchhunt; russia; stalin; ussrii; workersparadise; worldhistory
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Russian President Vladimir Putin defends the evil KGB's role in the mass murder of millions of his fellow Russians. Putin misses the Soviet Union, because he was not one of the oppressed, but one of the oppressors.
1 posted on 07/25/2007 12:09:04 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe

“President Vladimir Putin said last month that although the 1937 purge was one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era, no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about it because “in other countries even worse things happened.””

I didn’t know Pooty Pute was a history teacher.


2 posted on 07/25/2007 12:12:58 PM PDT by caver (Yes, I did crawl out of a hole in the ground.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Maybe Putin should just take the Kerry approach: It didn’t happen.


3 posted on 07/25/2007 12:13:41 PM PDT by rhombus
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To: Tailgunner Joe

They weren’t his fellow Russians any more than the rest of the barnyard animals had anything in common with the “superior” pigs in Animal Farm.


4 posted on 07/25/2007 12:15:15 PM PDT by weegee (NO THIRD TERM. America does not need another unconstitutional Clinton co-presidency.)
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To: caver
He teaches the same history he learned in the KGB.

Putin: Vietnam worse than Stalin purges - "We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population, ...We have not sprayed thousands of kilometers with chemicals, dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic War."

5 posted on 07/25/2007 12:17:15 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe

How could anyone say anything bad about Uncle Joe? Our greatest president ever said thought he was a good man, so that’s good enough for me!

/sarc


6 posted on 07/25/2007 12:18:11 PM PDT by Future Snake Eater (Mosul, Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf, Sadr City...'round and 'round we go...)
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To: Future Snake Eater
How could anyone say anything bad about Uncle Joe? Our greatest president ever said thought he was a good man, so that’s good enough for me!

"At least he never put female panties on a person's head like we did at Abu Gharib."

Quotation from an unknown freeper.

7 posted on 07/25/2007 12:23:05 PM PDT by Stepan12 ( "We are all girlymen now." Conservative reaction to Ann Coulter's anti PC joke)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
President Vladimir Putin said last month that although the 1937 purge was one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalin era, no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about it because “in other countries even worse things happened".

He's right. As well as the USSR, there were democides in Cuba, greater Nazi Germany, Kampuchea/Cambodia, newly-conquered South Vietnam and of course China. What was the common thread between all these countries? Answer: Socialism. There were democides by the Turks as well, but Islam is a piker compared with the real killer of the 20th Century.

8 posted on 07/25/2007 12:23:43 PM PDT by agere_contra
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To: Tailgunner Joe
"millions were labeled "enemies of the state" and executed without trial or sent to labor camps."

Hey it was for the common good!

9 posted on 07/25/2007 12:27:29 PM PDT by rawcatslyentist
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Another thing you would never read about in the New York Times.


10 posted on 07/25/2007 12:28:02 PM PDT by pnh102
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To: rawcatslyentist
"executed without trial or sent to labor camps."

They say it like it's a bad thing!

11 posted on 07/25/2007 12:32:42 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Progressives like to keep doing the things that didn't work in the past.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Hitler admired Stalin’s mass murder of communists, saying, “Stalin has killed more communists than I ever could.”

BTW, Stalin wasn’t Russian, he was Georgian.


12 posted on 07/25/2007 12:44:08 PM PDT by ozzymandus
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To: Tailgunner Joe

‘trying to soften public perception of Stalin’s rule’

Talk about putting lipstick on a pig!


13 posted on 07/25/2007 12:45:57 PM PDT by Leg Olam
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To: Tailgunner Joe
"We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population, ...We have not sprayed thousands of kilometers with chemicals, dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic War."

So I guess Stalin was at war with his own people.

Basically that is what Putin is saying when he compares acts the US committed while at war against a hostile foe to Stalin’s atrocities against his own people.

Stalin must have been at war with the Soviet State of the Ukraine when he forcibly removed the grain harvest of the Ukraine which caused the slow painful mass starvation of uncounted millions of Ukrainians.

14 posted on 07/25/2007 12:58:50 PM PDT by Pontiac (Patriotism is the natural consequence of having a free mind in a free society.)
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To: Lee Heggy123

So Putin suggests that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is somehow on the same level as the purges and mass murders of the Stalin era?

Unbelievable. Putin wants to have a pissing contest among countries regarding who committed worse atrocities????


15 posted on 07/25/2007 12:59:07 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Pontiac
"We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population, ...We have not sprayed thousands of kilometers with chemicals, dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic War."

But they sure as hell raped a lot of German Frauleins on their march to Berlin.

16 posted on 07/25/2007 1:01:48 PM PDT by dfwgator (The University of Florida - Still Championship U)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

They remember in Russia, but it’s down the memory hole on U.S. campuses.


17 posted on 07/25/2007 1:11:06 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Genocide is the highest sacrament of socialism.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
suggested the United States' use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II was worse

If Stalin got the bomb first Germany would have been glass.

18 posted on 07/25/2007 1:14:33 PM PDT by AU72
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Putin is a chekist, not a democrat.
19 posted on 07/25/2007 1:18:16 PM PDT by GeorgefromGeorgia
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Putin: Vietnam worse than Stalin purges - "We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population, ...We have not sprayed thousands of kilometers with chemicals, dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic War."


Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, razed to the ground - 150.000 dead - 300.000 refugees.

20 posted on 07/25/2007 1:18:59 PM PDT by Bommer (Global Warming: The only warming phenomena that occurs in the Summer and ends in the Winter!)
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