[jmacusa]

Most of what Russians have suffered throughout their history has been self-inflicted. As to their stoicism in enduring it I think Pasternak put it quite well in "Dr. Zhivago when he wrote ''We endure because of our cursed capacity to endure..''.

[ETL]

Most of what Russians have suffered throughout their history has been self-inflicted.

"'The Black Book of Communism,'; a scholarly accounting of communism's crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low."

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg
______________________________________

"The demise of the Soviet Union was the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century'," Putin said in 2005.

"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor"