“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century” --Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
“World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin’s State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.’
http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
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“’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://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=
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"Putin said Stalin deserves statues in his honor as much as the late British lord protector, a 'cunning fellow' who "played a very ambiguous role in Britain’s history."
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131219/185734707/Putin-Says-Stalin-No-Worse-Than-Cunning-Oliver-Cromwell.html
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From a 2007 article titled “Putin’s Russia”...
“KGB influence ‘soars under Putin,’ “ blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s largest news magazines: “Putin’s Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents.
In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel’s article, readers are informed that: “Four out of five members of Russia’s political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin.” ...”
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia
Thanks for the links. This number is indeed too low. The Soviet Union killed 20 million only at the minimum. Estimates range as high as 60 million for the Soviets alone, which I see as quite likely.