Moscow celebrates Victory Day 2013

Russia's paid propaganda destabilizes contries? How exactly?

I will just say that every country that has the power to do HAS ALWAYS and WILL ALWAYS try to extend its reach and gain benefit from it. It is obviously the most common and popular thing to do these days - spit at the Soviet Union. But politics have always been like that. Be it Germany with WW2, or the US with Iraq/Panama/Grenada, or the Brits stealing from and oppressing Indians, or European colonies in Africa, or Poles invading Russia long before the USSR existed or mongols conquering most of Asia, or Italians gassing Abyssynian tribesmen. Before you start the usual "omg soviet empire of evil" rant - be FAIR, and try to remember someone NOT extending their influence when they HAVE THE MEANS to do it.

And obviously, as far as the actual holiday goes - it is meant for those who gave their lives defending their homeland and has nothing to do with political bullshit being spread through it by this or that politician.

Russia's paid propaganda destabilizes contries? How exactly?

I will just say that every country that has the power to do HAS ALWAYS and WILL ALWAYS try to extend its reach and gain benefit from it. It is obviously the most common and popular thing to do these days - spit at the Soviet Union. But politics have always been like that. Be it Germany with WW2, or the US with Iraq/Panama/Grenada, or the Brits stealing from and oppressing Indians, or European colonies in Africa, or Poles invading Russia long before the USSR existed or mongols conquering most of Asia, or Italians gassing Abyssynian tribesmen. Before you start the usual "omg soviet empire of evil" rant - be FAIR, and try to remember someone NOT extending their influence when they HAVE THE MEANS to do it.

And obviously, as far as the actual holiday goes - it is meant for those who gave their lives defending their homeland and has nothing to do with political bullshit being spread through it by this or that politician.

Well said.

Russia's paid propaganda destabilizes contries? How exactly?

I will just say that every country that has the power to do HAS ALWAYS and WILL ALWAYS try to extend its reach and gain benefit from it. It is obviously the most common and popular thing to do these days - spit at the Soviet Union. But politics have always been like that. Be it Germany with WW2, or the US with Iraq/Panama/Grenada, or the Brits stealing from and oppressing Indians, or European colonies in Africa, or Poles invading Russia long before the USSR existed or mongols conquering most of Asia, or Italians gassing Abyssynian tribesmen. Before you start the usual "omg soviet empire of evil" rant - be FAIR, and try to remember someone NOT extending their influence when they HAVE THE MEANS to do it.

And obviously, as far as the actual holiday goes - it is meant for those who gave their lives defending their homeland and has nothing to do with political bullshit being spread through it by this or that politician.

While you are right in pointing out that pretty much all nations abuse their power to commit crimes, the critical difference between the west and Russia is that British children learn about the crimes of the British empire, German children learn about Nazism and American children learn about what happened to their native fellow citizens.
Whereas Russian children are taught - "while the Soviet Union was not a democracy, it was a shining example of fairness and equality the world over" (that was an excerpt from a Russian school history textbook)

The reason why there is so much hatred towards Russia is because your people have ignored or denied the criminality of your past (the hatred is not because there IS criminality in Russian history), or even worse justified these crimes as somehow necessary in the fight against Nazism.

Your nations sacrifice in WW2 does not absolve the murder of 20-30 million Ukrainians, the ethnic cleansing of Germans and Poles from their homes at the end of WW2, the oppression of Europe for 50 years during the cold war or the slaughter of the Afghans in the 80's among other crimes.

I also personally find it offensive how your people denigrate the sacrifice of the other allies in WW2. Yes the sacrifice of the Americans, the British, the French and the other allies was smaller in magnitude than that of the Russian nation, but they are no less dead, their families suffer their loss no less and their contribution to the defeat of Nazism is no less heroic. You Russians are not the only ones to fight Nazism, and for your people to pretend otherwise is appalling.

In closing, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an American who denies the CIA's involvement in Latin America, or even who says it was justified/necessary in the context of the Cold War, or an Englishman or a Scot who condones the British treatment of the Indians let alone a German who celebrates Nazism.

Could we say the same about the Russian attitude to the crimes of the Soviet union?

While the above is certainly true, I don't know how much credit we should give the western nations for admitting to the crimes of the past when the crimes of the present are still as under wraps as possible.

I also personally find it offensive how your people denigrate the sacrifice of the other allies in WW2. Yes the sacrifice of the Americans, the British, the French and the other allies was smaller in magnitude than that of the Russian nation, but they are no less dead, their families suffer their loss no less and their contribution to the defeat of Nazism is no less heroic. You Russians are not the only ones to fight Nazism, and for your people to pretend otherwise is appalling.

This is a really obnoxious way to write. Using phrase like "your people do (fill in the blank)" is inflammatory and not conducive to the exchange of ideas; wait for someone to do the thing before you accuse them of it. Just because someone is Russian doesn't mean they do the things you think all Russians do.


Also: Everything is not so black and white like some people like to think. It's really easy to be critical of Soviet policy, but how many of you have ANY IDEA what is was like to be Russian leader in the 1900s? There is a long, long history of foreign invasion. Stalin was obsessed with securing the borders because there is a pervasive fear within Russian leadership of foreign attack -- a fear that is well founded in history. Do I agree with his tactics? No. But people need to do more reading before they run off at the keyboard.

Also: Everything is not so black and white like some people like to think. It's really easy to be critical of Soviet policy, but how many of you have ANY IDEA what is was like to be Russian leader in the 1900s? There is a long, long history of foreign invasion. Stalin was obsessed with securing the borders because there is a pervasive fear within Russian leadership of foreign attack -- a fear that is well founded in history. Do I agree with his tactics? No. But people need to do more reading before they run off at the keyboard.

I'm not a professional Historian, but I don't need to be to be able to tell you that nations get invaded all the time and that Russia is no exception. Saying that Soviet policy was legitimately motivated by a fear of foreign invasion is like saying a British occupation of France would be justified because of the Norman invasion of England in 1066 proves Britain is under the constant threat of invasion.

While the above is certainly true, I don't know how much credit we should give the western nations for admitting to the crimes of the past when the crimes of the present are still as under wraps as possible.

And I explicitly said in my post more than once that crimes against humanity are not uniquely a Russian vice, merely that we in the west are much more truthful in our treatment of the past than the Russians are which is a critical moral difference.
And i'm not going to condone the actions of western governments today either, but i'm sure when we look back at the things the CIA and MI6 have done now for instance, we'll see the SVR and GRU wrestling around in the same pigsty.

If it were true that this celebration was about the sacrifice of the various Soviet peoples (mainly the Russians however) in the fight against Nazism, than I would respect that totally. But that isn't entirely the case. Yes it partially is rememberance for the Russian and Soviet dead, but it is also a celebration of Soviet Russian imperialism, criminality and a denial of basic historical fact.
And that is what people here are so angry about.

The reason why there is so much hatred towards Russia is because your people have ignored or denied the criminality of your past (the hatred is not because there IS criminality in Russian history), or even worse justified these crimes as somehow necessary in the fight against Nazism.

Your nations sacrifice in WW2 does not absolve the murder of 20-30 million Ukrainians, the ethnic cleansing of Germans and Poles from their homes at the end of WW2, the oppression of Europe for 50 years during the cold war or the slaughter of the Afghans in the 80's among other crimes.

I also personally find it offensive how your people denigrate the sacrifice of the other allies in WW2. Yes the sacrifice of the Americans, the British, the French and the other allies was smaller in magnitude than that of the Russian nation, but they are no less dead, their families suffer their loss no less and their contribution to the defeat of Nazism is no less heroic. You Russians are not the only ones to fight Nazism, and for your people to pretend otherwise is appalling.

In closing, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an American who denies the CIA's involvement in Latin America, or even who says it was justified/necessary in the context of the Cold War, or an Englishman or a Scot who condones the British treatment of the Indians let alone a German who celebrates Nazism.

Watch this:



In this video Putin explicitly says that the way Russians achieved victory is not acceptable; that the oppression and the crimes committed by Stalin against his own people are unforgivable. 'Nough said.

About the murder of 20 to 30 millions Ukrainians... Could you provide your sources? I'm not saying I'm a historian or anything, but as far as I know total Soviet casualties were as high as around 27 million, and among those 27 million there were around 7 million Ukrainians. I'm not denying that the Soviet Union committed all those crimes you're talking about, but giving inflated figures like that defeats your own argument of how the Russians are the only people who lie about their past.

Also, I know from experience that 1 out of 2 history teachers in France tell their students that the USA won the war; that the Russian efforts didn't make any difference.

In closing, you shouldn't pretend to know what people in all those countries think, because you've obviously never lived in those countries and don't know what you're talking about.


Guys, please stop sullying the memory of people who gave their lives during WW2. I'm Belorussian, all my grandparents were Ukrainian, fought in the war and got robbed by Stalin; and this is the day we celebrate their sacrifices, not what the crimes the Union committed. Even if you're upset about how Ukrainians got murdered, this is their day too as they were part of the Soviet Union. Peace.

I was talking about the Holodomor. We will never know for sure how many died in this genocide, 20-30 million Ukrainians murdered is the high end of the spectrum of estimates, but i've seen sources that have been calculated at as high as 12 million, so given the lack of clear evidence on precise numbers and the nature of this genocide, the former estimates are entirely likely, let alone possible.

Like I said more than once, i'm not trying to denigrate the sacrifice of anyone in this war, i'm only protesting this Russian denial/belligerence about the past on what should be a day of rememberance.

I also never pretended to know what's in the minds of every Russian, but I know what the school history textbooks in Russia say and I know the attitudes/commentary of the Russian government in regards to the war so I don't have to have lived in Russia to make the observations that I make, just as you don't need to live in America to know that most Americans are technically obese.

Blaming Soviet crimes on Stalin (as Putin does in that clip) is exactly what i'm talking about, the Soviet system was criminal before and after Stalin (for instance Solzhenitsyn's key argument against the Soviet system was that Stalin merely amplified a system already established by Lenin and Dzherzinsky) so using Stalin's legacy as a scapegoat to offload blame for Soviet Russian crimes is bullshit.

Would anyone accept a German saying 'That shit with the Jews wasn't our fault - it was just Hitler'?

Would Stalin been able to have done what he did without his Russian lieutenants and footsoldiers?

The reason why there is so much hatred towards Russia is because your people have ignored or denied the criminality of your past (the hatred is not because there IS criminality in Russian history), or even worse justified these crimes as somehow necessary in the fight against Nazism.

[...]

I also never pretended to know what's in the minds of every Russian, but I know what the school history textbooks in Russia say and I know the attitudes/commentary of the Russian government in regards to the war so I don't have to have lived in Russia to make the observations that I make, just as you don't need to live in America to know that most Americans are technically obese.

Then you're just contradicting yourself and aren't making any point at all.

Blaming Soviet crimes on Stalin (as Putin does in that clip) is exactly what i'm talking about, the Soviet system was criminal before and after Stalin (for instance Solzhenitsyn's key argument against the Soviet system was that Stalin merely amplified a system already established by Lenin and Dzherzinsky) so using Stalin's legacy as a scapegoat to offload blame for Soviet Russian crimes is bullshit.

Once again you're putting words in people's mouths for your argument. In that clip he explicitly says, "we didn't encounter just a cult of personality, but mass crimes against the people". And of course the Soviet system was criminal, but in the end people could commit such crimes because some people at the head of the state allowed that, and anyone who protested was sent to gulag (your neighbor could tell the authorities that you said something bad against Stalin and the next day they would deport you).

i'm only protesting this Russian denial/belligerence about the past on what should be a day of rememberance.

It is just a day of remembrance for the Russian people (and other peoples); you just believe it isn't.

I also never pretended to know what's in the minds of every Russian, but I know what the school history textbooks in Russia say and I know the attitudes/commentary of the Russian government in regards to the war so I don't have to have lived in Russia to make the observations that I make, just as you don't need to live in America to know that most Americans are technically obese.


Would Stalin been able to have done what he did without his Russian lieutenants and footsoldiers?

I suppose you also feel comfortable claiming that all french love baugettes and cigarettes and making ze sweet love, all british drink tea thrice daily and worship the queen, and all Americans, besides just being obese, also watch reality TV all day and think that the new-age imperialism the U.S. military is engaging in in the Middle East is really a great idea (for the record I actually do). Your example of Americans being obese is an easily researched numerical piece of data, a far cry from the gauging of the general opinion of an entire nation -- not to mention a nation that is probably still afraid of speaking their mind about certain things.

Ask yourself this question: if you saw everyone who dared to speak out against the regime dragged away to Siberia, would you be brave enough to resist when they told you to go off to war?

I'm not a professional Historian, but I don't need to be to be able to tell you that nations get invaded all the time and that Russia is no exception. Saying that Soviet policy was legitimately motivated by a fear of foreign invasion is like saying a British occupation of France would be justified because of the Norman invasion of England in 1066 proves Britain is under the constant threat of invasion.

I didn't justify it, I asked for some attempt at understanding for the causes of it.

And I explicitly said in my post more than once that crimes against humanity are not uniquely a Russian vice, merely that we in the west are much more truthful in our treatment of the past than the Russians are which is a critical moral difference...

If I am open and honest about how I beat the crap out of all of my friends when I get drunk, you'll drink with me because I'm truthful about it? After all, I'm being much more moral by admitting it.

I'm actually not contradicting myself Twister. I don't need to know how every single Russian person feels about their past in order to make a judgement on evidence that presents itself.
Evidence for instance such as what Russian school history textbooks say. (that quote I mentioned earlier I read about in a Newspaper here in NZ)
And how the Russian government recently passed a law against the 'rehabilitation of Nazi War Criminals' - a law designed to stop any academic studying or writing an alternative perspective on this history that deviates from the Soviet communist and now Russian government position.
Then of course there's how the Russian ambassador to the UK publicly slandered Antony Beevor - an eminent historian - for writing about Russian war crimes, specifically the mass rapes committed in Germany. That ambassador actually accused Beevor of lying and spreading Nazi propaganda despite the latter explicitly denying any German could be a victim of this war.

Imagine that, a diplomat telling an historian how to write history and calling his research bullshit. MVGame

Now you and DanielD can pretend that this is just an innocent celebration of sacrifice, but the commentary of it explicitly talks about the fight for the independence and freedom of the Soviet Union when no Soviet people were ever free or independent and how glorious the 'liberation' of Europe was when in reality all that happened was the Gestapo was replaced by the KGB.
What is being said by Putin is propaganda and a whitewashing of historical fact. Thus, this celebration is no longer apolitical rememberance and is instead a tragic and awful example of many if not all Russians dancing on the graves of millions of slaughtered Europeans.

One can celebrate Christmas without believing Santa or buying crap from the store. Most people forgot it's about Jesus' birthday anyway.