Moscow defends Soviet occupation

BBC ^ | 4 May, 2005

[Tailgunner Joe]

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov has suggested the defeat of Hitler far outweighed the USSR's long occupation of eastern Europe after World War II. "When they discuss if we occupied this country or that, it makes you wonder what would have happened to them had we not broken fascism's back?" he said.

Heads of two of the three Baltic states, Estonia and Lithuania, are boycotting VE Day events in Moscow.

Latvia has justified its own decision to attend the 60th anniversary events.

President Vaira Vike-Freiberga told the BBC her people appreciated that she was attending as the leader of a free country, which would act as a reminder that the Soviet occupation had failed.

The Moscow ceremonies next Monday will be attended by world leaders including US President George W Bush who will first visit the Baltic states in what analysts say is his recognition that Victory in Europe Day was not a day of freedom for them.

Problems over citizenship and language rights for the Baltic states' post-Soviet ethnic Russian communities continue to strain their governments' relations with Moscow.

Suffering on both sides

Ms Vike-Freiberga said she did not expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to apologise for his country's annexation of the Baltic states.

Interviewed by Moscow newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta, Mr Ivanov said the world had never known a war like that against the Nazis.

"They can say what they want, but there had never been such a war in history," he said. "That war was won, of course, at the price of uncountable numbers of victims."

Estonian President Arnold Ruutel has told the BBC his decision to stay away from Moscow does not mean Estonia did not welcome Hitler's defeat.

"The Soviet Army had great merits but nor can we forget the suffering and losses of the Estonian people," he told BBC World Service.

[Wiz]

ping!

[xJones]

"When they discuss if we occupied this country or that, it makes you wonder what would have happened to them had we not broken fascism's back?" he said.

Interesting question. Hitler considered Slavs to be only a little better than Jews, and his plans for the Russian people were horrific. He didn't rate the Eastern Europeans that low, and many fought in the Wehrmacht during the war.

Germans would have been the dominant privileged class and Eastern Europe would have been drained of resources to support Germany, but that's pretty much what the Soviet Russians did to Eastern Europe after they won instead.

[lizol]

Eastern European ping list

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[j23]

It reminds me of a discussion: what is better, cholera or a plague. Sure, the Germans wanted to turn the peoples of Eastern Europe (and Slavic peoples in the first place) into slave nations, and eventually to ged rid of them completely (i.e. to do the same with them as with Jews). When Russians came into Eastern Europe they "only" wanted slaves, they didn't want to exterminate us. Should we be grateful to them that they didn't want to kill us off with cyclon B, but only to turn us into slave labourers?

[TFine80]

We would have developed the nuke and won the war. And they would have still been free.

[j23]

You're damn right. The biggest mistake of Truman administration was that they didn't nuke Russia soon enough - i.e. before the Russians could counterattack. This is not a joke - I'm dead serious.

[GarySpFc]

Ping

[GarySpFc]

You're damn right. The biggest mistake of Truman administration was that they didn't nuke Russia soon enough - i.e. before the Russians could counterattack. This is not a joke - I'm dead serious.

Sure that would have taken out a part of communism. However, when you consider Russia never attacked America, and the result would have been millions of murdered innocent Russians your statement is depraved.

[j23]

I do not mean attacking cities. I mean attacking concentrations of armies. This is exactly what general McArthur proposed to do to the Chinese during Korean War. Reduce civilian casualties to minimum, but overpower the enemy.

[Mad Mammoth]

Sure that would have taken out a part of communism. However, when you consider Russia never attacked America, and the result would have been millions of murdered innocent Russians your statement is depraved.

I presume you don't consider the deaths of millions at the hands of many not-so-innocent Communist Russians to be equally depraved? If you perchance are on active duty, I consider YOUR pro-Communistic statement to be depraved.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

[Mad Mammoth]

I do not mean attacking cities.

Why not? It was good enough for Dresden (to name one clobbered German city) and it was certainly good enough for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If the United States and the former Soviet Union had ever gone to war, you can bet the rent that there would not be ONE major city which would not have been on one target list or another, and most of them would have ended up as radioactive craters.

That is the nature of war - to destroy your enemy. Unfortunately that includes civilian populations because most (if not all) governments do not avoid placing military targets near large population centers. That is why there will be a great hue and cry when we are ultimately forced to nuke Pyongyang when Kim Jong Ill's luck finally runs out and he pushes us too far.

In the above mentioned hypothetical nuclear war, would the population of America have accepted some altruistic clap-trap strategy of sparing Soviet cities when New York, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, LA, etc., were wiped from the face of the earth by Soviet warheads?

I don't think so. As General Sherman said, "war is Hell" (and he made sure it was).

[namsman]

Couldn't agree more. Truman must be roasting in hell for his moral cowardice. We had the perfect instrument in the perfect place to have imposed Pax Americana over the whole world. He wavered.

How much treasure and blood was wasted in the ensuing 50 years "containing" communism? His inaction kept 30 million of my Polish cousins in chains.

Namsman sends.

[j23]

"In the above mentioned hypothetical nuclear war, would the population of America have accepted some altruistic clap-trap strategy of sparing Soviet cities when New York, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, LA, etc., were wiped from the face of the earth by Soviet warheads?"

Dont't be so mad, Mammoth, please. I didn't have in mind a full-scale nuclear war. I thought about a pre-emptive strike in strategically important places when the enemy cannot respond in the same way. In this situation you can afford to take enemy casualties into account.

[avile]

Hitler's family was largely of Germanized Czech stock and many Prussians were in fact Germanized Poles. so much for their racial theories.

[struwwelpeter]

Lots of bad history from the occupation. Here's something I translated awhile ago from Noviy Vestnik (Karaganda, Kazakhstan)

Soviet tankers learned to drive on the bones of the dead

| June 2nd, 2004 | Serygey Tereshchenko


(SNIP) ...The memorial to the Lithuanias who died at the Spasskiy concentraton camp was a bit simpler. A place for a memorial stone had been decided upon long ago. While the marker was sculpted by an artist in Lithuania, Karaganda had only to help with the installation. For the memorial's opening ceremony an entire delegation from Lithuania arrived. Heading it was Lithuanian secretary of labor and social services, Violeta Muruskayte, and Lithuanian Ambassador Romualdas Visokavichus. During the ceremony, it was stated that it was Lithuania that had brought the entire Spasskiy memorial complex into existance.

"From 1953 to 1954, I did a term in the camps here," recalled former steppe camp prisoner Antanos Seykalis. "In those days Lithuania was actively resisting the Soviet occupation, and in practically every school there was an underground organization. Ours was discovered... and so I showed up in Kazakhstan. Even now I cannot forget the horrors of day to day life in the camps. The prison uprising in Kengira, near Zhezkazgan. How they brutally put it down with the help of tanks. So many died back then. In 1990, I - with the help of comrades from the public organization of former political prisoners - once again came to Karaganda. We wanted to see in what condition was the prison cemetary in Spasskiy. And in horror we discovered that there wasn't a cemetary! On it's place was a tank training ground. Soviet tankers learned to drive on the bones of the dead! Under the guise of tourists, we went into this field and placed the first Catholic cross. After a few years they told me that the Kazakhstani government had closed the tank training area and built in its place a memorial complex."

Alongside the Lithuanians' memorial stone in Spasskiy today are markers dedicated to Germans, French, Italians, Japanese, Finns, Poles, Rumanians, Ukrainians, and Armenians. Soon Russia will dedicate a marker, though the Russian memorial will not be in the collective row, but a bit to the side.

Europeans have such long memories, it will probably be centuries before they get over it.

[struwwelpeter]

Lots of bad history from the occupation. Here's something I translated awhile ago from Noviy Vestnik (Karaganda, Kazakhstan)

Soviet tankers learned to drive on the bones of the dead

| June 2nd, 2004 | Serygey Tereshchenko


(SNIP) ...The memorial to the Lithuanians who died at the Spasskiy concentraton camp was a bit simpler. A place for a memorial stone had been decided upon long ago. While the marker was sculpted by an artist in Lithuania, Karaganda had only to help with the installation. For the memorial's opening ceremony an entire delegation from Lithuania arrived. Heading it was Lithuanian secretary of labor and social services, Violeta Muruskayte, and Lithuanian Ambassador Romualdas Visokavichus. During the ceremony, it was stated that it was Lithuania that had brought the entire Spasskiy memorial complex into existance.

"From 1953 to 1954, I did a term in the camps here," recalled former steppe camp prisoner Antanos Seykalis. "In those days Lithuania was actively resisting the Soviet occupation, and in practically every school there was an underground organization. Ours was discovered... and so I showed up in Kazakhstan. Even now I cannot forget the horrors of day to day life in the camps. The prison uprising in Kengira, near Zhezkazgan. How they brutally put it down with the help of tanks. So many died back then. In 1990, I - with the help of comrades from the public organization of former political prisoners - once again came to Karaganda. We wanted to see in what condition was the prison cemetary in Spasskiy. And in horror we discovered that there wasn't a cemetary! On it's place was a tank training ground. Soviet tankers learned to drive on the bones of the dead! Under the guise of tourists, we went into this field and placed the first Catholic cross. After a few years they told me that the Kazakhstani government had closed the tank training area and built in its place a memorial complex."

Alongside the Lithuanians' memorial stone in Spasskiy today are markers dedicated to Germans, French, Italians, Japanese, Finns, Poles, Rumanians, Ukrainians, and Armenians. Soon Russia will dedicate a marker, though the Russian memorial will not be in the collective row, but a bit to the side.

Europeans have long memories. It will probably be centuries before they get over it.

[struwwelpeter]

Now how'd that happen? Fooey.

[Peter Libra]

I like what I have read regarding this matter- generally speaking of course. Neville Chamberlain (my Prime Minister),(wow, sounds good) -er' I was seven years old, intoned to the British Public thus: Well, roughly anyway.

"We have given Germany 24 hours to withdraw their troops from Poland. This has not been done- We are now at war with Germany".

I never did hear any questions about the Soviet occupation of those gallant and persecuted people- the Polish people. I often wondered. Any child asking too much, would easily get a clout over the head in my days.

People right on the money here. Stalin, who gave Hitler the go ahead, with his signing the non-aggression pact of August 1939, was also pretty near as big a swine as Hitler. That bomb and it's threat would have scuppered him.

The traitors within,(USA and UK, saw to it that Stalin got the bomb later. Genealogy my hobby. Yes, accurate description of Hitler's racial background.

[xJones]

Hitler's family was largely of Germanized Czech stock and many Prussians were in fact Germanized Poles. so much for their racial theories.

And Hitler couldn't fill out a basic Nazi racial form listing all 4 of his grandparents. Something about that missing maternal grandfather....