Posted on 06/27/2012 7:23:10 AM PDT by kronos77
President Vladimir Putin has put the blame for Russia’s defeat in the First World War on Bolsheviks’ policy that he called ‘national treason’.
Speaking in the Upper House of the Russian Parliament Putin said the Bolsheviks, especially the ruling elite of the party, betrayed Russia’s national interests and allowed Germany to win the war with Russia even though eventually Germany was defeated. The President added that Bolsheviks had been so reluctant to admit their mistakes that in the Soviet period the First World War was called “the Imperialist War” and the authorities deliberately ignored the heroism of Russian soldiers in art and propaganda. Putin added that in reality the First World War was not an imperialist one.
The topic was raised when the upper house discussed the possibility of funding the maintenance of the Russian necropolis in Serbia – the burial place of at least 3,000 Russians, including 124 generals of the Tsarist Army. Putin stressed he supported the idea to fund the monument.
President Putin traditionally opposes the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – the heirs to the CPSU, but at the same time he has called the breakup of the Soviet Union ‘the biggest geopolitical disaster of the century.” Recently Russia is taking steps against what it sees as the ‘revisionism of history’ – manipulations that question the universally accepted opinion on most questionable issues of the past.
Betcha wouldn’t have said that 30 years ago...
Putin like every non-Christian skirts correct issues but never can put their ideas all together is a correct life path.
Isn’t that what is supposed to be done...question those things that are questionable?
Bolshevik--Waring's Pennsylvanians
Putin is not ideological, it’s about power with him...if the Czar were still in power, he would have served the Czar.
The Russians wasted millions of lives on that war. The war is the reason the monarchy and the short lived republic that followed both failed. Taking Russia out of the war is the one good thing Lenin did. Putin, once again, has demonstrated his complete lack of intelligence. Russia never had a chance in hell of beating the Germans.
The man is deeply confused.
BS! Lenin and the Bolsheviks knew exactly what they were doing in pushing the Russian army to give up and revolt. They wanted the focus to be on the revolution and on the evil ruling class that had sent Russian peasants to their deaths in an “unjust” war. He knows that.
Russia at least shares a culture with us, sort of.
China shares nothing.
Yet we continue to ignore, their policies which continue to GROW policies which lead to war.
No non-Chinese immigration.
None.
Lenin thought the west would take care of the Germans, and that Russia would then be able to take advantage afterwards, like when they tried to sweep west and retake Poland in 1920, thank God Marshall Pilsudski and Company stopped them.
As soon as modern Russia is officially anti-communist they have a popular theory which says Lenin was an agent of German military intelligence placed to destabilize Russia via communism and knock out as a player in WWI.
As soon as modern Russia is officially anti-communist they have a popular theory which says Lenin was an agent of German military intelligence placed to destabilize Russia via communism and knock out as a player in WWI.
Ummmm....
IIRC, the only reason that there were “Bolsheviks” is that the Germans put Lenin on the infamous “Sealed Train” and ran him in to Russia. So the the Bolshies were on the German side period.
The Bolsheviks plan was to get all of the Western nations to fight against each other and exhaust their armies, which would allow the Soviets to swoop in from the East and take the continent.
Stalin tried to do the same thing in 1939 when he signed the Non-Aggression pact with Hitler, the idea was to get Britain, France and Germany to fight a long protracted war in the West, and weaken each to the point where the Soviets would swoop in and clean up the mess. Stalin didn’t count on one thing, France falling in six weeks.
It is great to see Putin's Christianity reflected in his sober analysis of the evils that overcame his country from the atheistic regime.
Uh, to my knowledge, Putin is a practicing member of the Eastern Orthodox church.
Excuse me. Putin may not be a good Christian (but than all of us Christians are still sinners — even monks describe their mode of life as “we fall down [sin] and get up [repent], we fall down and get up”) but he is a Christian. No Orthodox priest, bishop or monk he has met, and that includes monks on Mount Athos where he has no political leverage, has ever doubted Putin’s piety.
In the last days of the Soviet Union, there was an internal debate in the KGB as to whether state atheism had not been a hideous mistake. Putin was on the ‘it was a mistake’ side. He became very pious after almost losing his family in a fire at their dacha. On the practical side, Putin is the only Russian head of state or government ever to make a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, and his government has restored the place of the Orthodox Church as the moral voice of Russia, and reinstituted Christian religious education in schools.
We Orthodox have saints in our calendar who were penitent persecutors of the Church (remember the Apostle Paul?) and others were fairly ruthless politicians with less than exemplary personal lives, whose sanctity is shown mostly in the benefits they brought to the Church — St. Justinian comes to mind. We sing a confession of faith he wrote as a hymn at every liturgy, but he ran wars of (re)conquest and, see Procopius’s “Secret History”, wasn’t a “good Christian” in his personal life, either. I’m not suggesting Putin will manage to be found worthy of being commemorated as a saint, but I see no reason to call into question his commitment to the Christian faith, simply because he was KGB back in the day, and like all of us is still a sinner.
Wrong, Russia should have held out longer—Germany would have fallen faster had they kept fighting in the east. Russia was plagued by poor leadership and outdated tactics and weapons. Still, they could have won a place at the peace table had wiser heads prevailed. Just another year-—but the Reds wanted power and this was their means to get it. The Civil War that followed killed how many?
“Russia never had a chance in hell of beating the Germans.”
Really?
There is a thing about Russian soldiers, they can sufferer hardships which would make western soldiers collapse in a fetal position whining like whipped pups.
Russian Soldiers in a war of attrition, if only moderately properly led, can suffer defeat, after defeat, after defeat, battle after battle, persevere, and win out in the end.
In WW2 it was the Russian soldier’s blood and determination which won the war against the Nazis, not soldiers of the west. Russian lost 10 million combat dead, America lost 292,000 combat dead. On the eastern front, Russia killed 5.2 million Germans and Axis allies in combat, In the west, 0.8 million Germans and Axis allies were killed in combat.
After Operation Barbarossa, the Nazis never committed over 23% of their military might against the western allies.
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