Canada Ping!
Posted on 02/26/2015 2:34:26 PM PST by rickmichaels
The federal government has approved a design for Canada’s monument to the victims of communism. That monument has sparked controversy from the very start, and as it moves from concept to plan, the controversy has intensified. Here’s why the critics are wrong.
Monuments matter to a capital city. Monuments give that city its meaning. Monuments express shared experiences and declare high national values. Millions of Canadians either fled communism, or are descended from someone who did. Their sufferings, their losses, their memories are as central to the Canadian story as the hardships of the first settlers of New France, the arrival of the Loyalists, and the battles of 1812. When their story is honoured in Canada, that same honour also recommits all of Canada to the principles of liberty and dignity that opposed communist oppression.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalpost.com ...
I for one appreciate a monument to the peeps of Barack’s America.
Leftists cannot accept that their ideology necessarily results in the mass murder of millions.
Leftism presumes their all knowing and beneficent Government should replace flawed individuals poorer decision making.
But people reject governments that controlling. So mass conflict and murder must ensue for leftist projects to succeed.
To recognize and memorialize the 100,000,000 murdered by communism puts the lie to every current leftist project.
They can’t stand that and must fight an existential battle against a memorial to the 100,000,000 murdered.
In essence, leftism APPROVES of the historic murders undertaken for their project.
Canada Ping!
This must be repeated from now on, we can not let the memory of all of those poor souls who died from this failed experiment that never seems to end fade away. Communism is death. Pray for guidance.
Imo, an appropriate memorial to the victims of communism would be a pile of a 100 million or so skulls.
Put the base cost of that filtholophy into visual perspective.
Is that it?
It is indeed objectionable — from an aesthetic standpoint.
Those who oppose this monument are communists.
A memorial to the victims of communism is great, if that is it... tear it down and build a new one.
I have reluctantly recently decided that the higher estimates of Soviet Communist murders must of necessity be exaggerated.
Take the base population in 1917, deduct all those (supposedly) killed and the children they didn’t have because they were dead and those who died in WWII. The problem for the high estimates is that there are just way too many Soviets around in the 50s, when they were crawling out from under Stalinism.
If conditions throughout USSR were as horrible and the number killed were as many as some claim, population would have fallen, a LOT, during this period, not risen from c. 140M to 180M.
That’s similar to the US population increase over the same period, with the US having zero genocide and not very many killed in war.
Yup. Some historians believe that a scale of 1930s Red Terror was inflated at least ten-fold by Khruschev under his de-Stalinization campaign. An idea of 30 million Soviet casualties in WWII appeared about that time too, and believed to be twice the actual number as well.
I am not sure are they right or wrong, but mentioned myself the same thing you did regarding population figures.
It also needs to be taken into account that planned parenthood types were active in Soviet Union since 1920s and up to a Gorby’s presidency until mid 1980s large families were rare.
It is hard to imagine how it was possible to compensate the loss if the alleged death rate was true.
Thanks. A 40M increase in population in c. 35 years at minimum means conditions were not all that bad for most.
The actual numbers will probably never be determined, if only because it appears the commies either didn’t keep books as thoroughly as the nazzies or because they destroyed their records.
What’s really interesting is to look back at the supposedly horrific oppression under the tsars. If I remember correctly only a couple thousand executions took place over the entire century from 1815 to 1914. The commies beat that total daily even during their first few months in power.
AS far as birth control goes, I don’t buy that entirely either. Soviet population rose from 180M in 1951 to 293M in 1991. I believe that’s almost the identical percentage increase as in the US over the same period, 63% to 64%. And it’s not like USSR had many illegal (or legal) immigrants!
To be sure, a LOT of this population growth was probably among Muslim and other minority groups. Not Russians, Balts, Ukrainians, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
In fact records are kept pretty carefully and indicating well under ‘tens of millions’ victims.
This policy culminated since 1937 following infamous Operational Order # 00447, which declared Party’s estimates for ‘enemies of the people’ per region of USSR and called local authorities to identify and punish people based on these estimates.
This order was practically a road map to the so-called Great Purge.
‘Enemies of the people’ were divided into two groups: extremely dangerous (Cat I) condemned for execution and less hostile (Cat II) to be punished with up to 10 years of hard labor.
To bring things into perspective Republic of Belarus was ordered to identify and prosecute 2500 people under Cat I and 10000 under Cat II between July and December 1937 (there were Supreme Soviet election on December, 12 and it is believed that the major idea behind the Purge was to scare Stalin’s opponents).
For Udmurtia and Ossetia quotes for Cat I were 63 and 169 individuals respectively.
A few regions have actually met these quotas.
South East Ukraine was demanded to prosecute some 6600 people under Cat I but only managed under 5000, and it was quite a result comparing to the rest.
Quite a vast Yakutia in Central Siberia refused to cooperate at all stating that they don’t have anti-communists and foreign spies at all, and Yakutian Party bosses got away with such a bold statement.
On the other hand ‘anti-Stalinist’ Khruschev identified and prosecuted over 40,000 ‘enemies’ in Moscow region, way over his quota.
Based on the archives of the operation it is probably close to 300,000 executed and 2,000,000 imprisoned as a result. Of course, many of the imprisoned might have finished dead too. On the other hand it was a socialist government operation and you can’t 100% exclude that local authorities have lied to Moscow and didn’t manage to kill as many.
tell that to the 30,000 Polish officers Stalin order to be shot in the head and buried in the Katyn forest...then blamed it on Hitler...if anything the actual number of victims is probably underestimated
Thanks for the numbers. I’m sure Lenin and Stalin managed to kill some millions of people, but not the up to 60M I’ve seen estimated. Which is kind of sad, because I like anything that makes commies look bad.
I suspect the Soviets managed to kill a total somewhere in the vicinity of the 12M the Nazis murdered. Keeping in mind that the Soviets had around 35 years to get their killing done in, with the Nazis on a rush schedule, with the great majority of their killing done in 3 or 4 years.
I quite agree Stalin killed 30,000 Polish officers. He killed a lot of people. But the claims of up to 60M just don’t fly. As stated, I suspect Lenin and Stalin between them killed somewhere around 10M to 15M.
I think your estimates are quite correct actually.
I object to it too. It’s traditional to wait until the war is won before you build memorials to those who died in it.
Don’t forget the 7 million Ukrainians he starved to death in the famine of 1932-33
That’s included in my non-too-expert demographic analysis.
I simply don’t see any way you can have 140M in 1920, to use round numbers, kill 60M of them plus those who died in WWII, and wind up with 180M in 1950, again in very round numbers.
Just doesn’t compute.
I’m all in favor of denouncing commies, but let’s denounce them for the crimes they actually committed, not imagined ones.
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