"FORWARD" is hot again this year.
Posted on 09/01/2012 9:08:51 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Russia needs a "leap forward" to rejuvenate its sprawling defence industry, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, harkening back to the ambitious industrialisation carried out by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the runup to World War Two.
"We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernisation of the defence industry as the one carried out in the 1930s," Putin told his Security Council, without mentioning Stalin by name.
Stalin, who ruled the Soviet empire with an iron fist for 27 years, is blamed for the death of about six million people but also is praised by many Russians for winning the war and industrialising the country.
Putin made renewed industrialisation a priority during his third term in the Kremlin which started in May amid the largest protests of his 12-year rule. He conceded that the defence industry, once the heart of the Soviet economy, was in tatters.
"Unfortunately, many of our enterprises are technologically stuck in the previous century," Putin said, complaining about poor discipline at plants working on state defence orders.
In the 1930s Soviet leaders transformed a rural country devastated by civil war into an industrial superpower, using terror and executions to impose strict discipline at new plants built across the vast country.
Putin's top defence industry official Dmitry Rogozin posted on his Facebook page a copy of a 1940 letter from Stalin to gun factory managers and accompanied it with a sarcastic warning: "Such methods of improving discipline also exist".
Stalin's letter to the managers said: "I give you two or three days to launch mass production of machinegun cartridges... If production does not start on time, the government will take over control of the plant and shoot all the rascals there."
(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...
Putin can rant and posture all he wants. The reality is that between 1914 and 1960, Russia lost its best people to two catastrophic wars with Germany, civil war, famine, widespread abortion and of course the barbarity of Lenin and Stalin who murdered millions of their own people. Russia will never replace those genetic losses. It will never realize the potential it once had. If it were not for its abundant natural resources and arable land, it would be little more than a historic afterthought.
To Allendale, No. 22. Still, Putin is an super-egotistic totalitarian (he’s still KGB in his heart and head). He’s got nukes, the killing FSB/KGB, Spetnaz, and territorial ambitions. He’s always plotting, killing, invading on a small scale, and aiding our enemies in Iran, Venezuela and other parts of Latin America.
A little man is more dangerous than a big man because he wants it (his dreams) more and is willing to do anything to get it.
Obama’s bud.
Georgia’s not all Russia wants back. Putin and the generals are just counting the days until the Eurozone collapses. Who will notice the Baltics and Ukraine getting snaffled amid the chaos? Belarus will annex itself onto Russia. They have no national identity and live under a dictatorship anyway. All of this is an attempt by Putin to restore Russia’s pride. He doesn’t want to get left behind when China makes a move on all those juicy South East Asian territories. Oblamo’s good friend, Vladimir is determined to make the history books as his predecessors did. He’s a tyrant, in love with his own power. It won;t be long before Putin becomes “President For Life” for the good of the Motherland. He and his friends will chow down on caviar while the “rascals” toil on the war machine, eating peas. In fact, Putin and Michelle have a lot in common.
"FORWARD" is hot again this year.
Government Motors is also using that line. It's the closing word in a Cadillac commercial, with the same meaning as when communists like Putin and Obama use it.
You beat me to it, but great point. Stalin alone was responsible for 35 to 43 million dead Soviets, and over 60 million dead, as you mention.
I don’t know where the article gets only 6 million.
In fact Belarus has a national identity. Ruthenians (a major ethnicity of Belarus) are extremely xenophobic towards foreigners. It was the hottest place for nazy during WWII, they had to kill about a quarter of Belarus population and people had still fought back attacking Germans in the most brutal way at every opportunity.
I don’t think they are dreaming to get back into Russia. It is mostly an aspiration of their dictator who is dreaming foolishly) to be a dictator of united nation of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
I'll never forget the movie "Idi I Smotri" (Come and See), which depicted one Nazi liquidation of a Belarussian village, and then you learn that the Nazis did the same thing in over 600 such villages throughout Belarus.
And yet to this day, even Russians who hated Stalin, acknowledge that he turned the Soviet Union into a modern industrialized state.
It is true, he has started with oxes and carts and finished with nuke submarines and space program.
IMO it wasn’t worth millions lives.
His role in WWII is overestimated. Soviet officers won it despite him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
