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A very naive view targeted at equally naive Western audiences. Repression in USSR after WW2 was negligible compared to 1930s.
by osipov 12y ago
A very naive view targeted at equally naive Western audiences. Repression in USSR after WW2 was negligible compared to 1930s.
- asgard1024 12y agoIt wasn't negligible in my country (Czechoslovakia), where the USSR was the model. I think almost everybody felt relief when Stalin (and Gottwald) died. Maybe Stalin didn't oppress people much after the war, but he still got the _right_ to do so, and the Durov's sentence is 100% correct.
- osipov 12y agoAll governments oppress people. The real issue is to what extent they do so and what fraction of the people consider themselves oppressed. Unfortunately the frontlines after WW2 where redrawn and Czechoslovakia was in the unenviable position of having to defend the Warsaw Pact while its population wasn't fully supportive of this position. Those who opposed (anti-Stalinists) were oppressed. As a mirror image, consider Greece where pro-Stalinist communists were oppressed in 50s and 60s.
- stefantalpalaru 12y agoEducate yourself, comrade: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_Soviet_Union#Genocide.2C_ethnic_cleansing.2C_and_population_transfers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_Sov...
- jpatokal 12y agoTrue enough, but that doesn't invalidate the quote, since it was still Stalin at the helm. There were still an estimated 1.7 million people in the camps after WW2, many of them Soviet POWs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#mediaviewer/File:Gulag_Prisoner_Stats_1934-1953.PNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#mediaviewer/File:Gulag_Pr...
- V-2 12y agoNegligible? Gulag population was on the rise. It surpassed 1939 levels by 1950.
- trhway 12y agoyou probably forgot about "10 years of prison without right for communication" sentence frequently given before the War. That sentence really meant execution.
- mb_72 12y agoMy Estonian relatives say otherwise, and were glad to see the backs of your unwanted 'comrades' in the early 90s. Amusingly some Russians still hold to the 'we were liberating Estonia from the hands of the Nazis, you should be grateful' story.