Danish PM calls for Russia to apologize to Baltics

[Bereta_Eder]

then of course the attempts to escape were larger from east berlin to west berlin maybe. there was a museum about this in west berlin.
but it was a tragedy all around you know, cause families were cut in half when they separated the city.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Dunno. I've only seen footnotes, nothing detailed.

Yup the Morgenthau plan, which was to deindustrialize Germany. Since Germany couldnt support itself by agriculture it would have lad to mass hunger. No one took the Morg. Plan seriously, IIUC.

[Lancer]

"it was calm. in west berlin it was madness. punks, drugs whatever problems of the western world magnified to the extreme."

Yes, communism was great at imposing social dicipline. I regret what some people do with their freedom.

[Bereta_Eder]

freedom is relative.
does a poor man have freedom?
or is a man who has a house over his head a slave?
things are relative sometimes

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ned


Well, then they are trying to match the Chinese, who also claim 30 million.

I suspect both numbers are "exaggerated." For example, Stalin is said to have killed 20-30 million of his own people before the war. Add to that another 30 million, and we should have a fairly significant population decline from the 1920s to 1945.

Did that actually happen?

Heres some discussion by Robert Conquest of the deaths attributed to Stalin and Soviet demographics:

"We need only apply to the population given in the Soviet census of 1926, the natural growth rate of the years which followed, and compare the result we obtain with that of an actual post-1933 census.

There are a few rather minor reservations. The 1926 census, like all censuses even in far more efficient conditions, cannot be totally accurate, and Soviet and Western estimates agree that it is too low by 1.2-1.5 million,1 (about 800,000 of it attributed to the Ukraine). This would mean an increase of almost half a million in the death roll estimates. But the convenience of an official established base figure, that of the census, is such that we shall (conservatively) ignore this in our calculations. Then again, 'natural growth rate' is variously estimated, though within a fairly narrow range. More of an obstacle, at first sight, is the fact that the next census, taken in January 1937, is unfortunately not available. The preliminary results seem to have been before the authorities on about 10 February 1937. The census was then suppressed. The Head of the Census Board, O.A. Kvitkin, was arrested on 25 March.2 It turned out that 'the glorious Soviet intelligence headed by the Stalinist Peoples' Commissar N.I. Yezhov' had 'crushed the serpent's nest of traitors in the apparatus of Soviet statistics'.3 The traitors had 'set themselves the task of distorting the actual numbers of the population', or (as Pravda put it later) 'had exerted themselves to diminish the numbers of the population of the USSR',4 a rather unfair taunt, since it was, of course, not they who had done the diminishing.

The motive for suppressing the census and the census-takers is reasonably clear. A figure of about 170 million had featured in official speeches and estimates for several years, a symbolic representation of Molotov's boast in January 1935 that 'the gigantic growth of population shows the living forces of Soviet construction'.5

Another census was taken in January 1939, the only one in the period whose results were published, but in the circumstances it has always failed to carry much conviction. All the same, it is worth noting that even if the official 1939 figures are accepted, they show a huge population deficit, if not as large as the reality.

But on the matter of the total of unnatural deaths between 1926 and 1937, the 1937 census totals are decisive, and these (though no other details of that census) have been referred to a few times in post-Stalin Soviet demographic publications. The most specific gives a population for the USSR of 163,772,000,6 others, a round 164 million.7

The total, in the lower projections made over previous years by Soviet statisticians, and on the estimates of modern demographers, should have been about 177,300,000.

Another, rougher approach is to take the estimated population of 1 January 1930 (157,600,000)8 and add to it Stalin's statement in 1935 that 'the annual increase in population is about three million'.9 This too gives a figure of 178,600,000, very near our other projection. The Second Five Year Plan had also provided for a population of 180.7 million for the beginning of 1938,10 which also implies between 177 and 178 in 1937. Oddly enough, the Head of the Central Statistical Administration in Khrushchev's time, V.N. Starovsky, attributes Gosplan's 180.7 million to 1937, comparing it with the census figure of 164 million 'even after adjustment'11 -- a phrase which implies significant upward inflation: an 'adjustment' of 5% would mean as a base figure the 156 million given to the Soviet scholar Anton Antonov-Ovseenko by a more junior official.12 But, in accord with our practice elsewhere, we will conservatively ignore the 'adjustment'. Without it Starovsky implies a deficiency of 16.7 million. The explanation may be that the Gosplan figure, like most Gosplan figures, is for the beginning of October 1937 -- in which case the deficiency would be about 14.3 million. But in this book's first edition I took a conservative interpretation (and ignored, too, even higher projections by Soviet demographers of the period) and accepted a deficiency of no more than 13.5 million.

However, in a source not then available to me, today's leading Soviet scholar of the collectivization states the population deficit in January 1937 as 15-16 million (V.P. Danilov in Arkheograficheski Ezhegodnik za 1968 god, Moscow, 1970, p 249). My lower estimate at least shows that my approach was indeed 'conservative', and is testimony to a sober and unsensational approach to the facts.

This 15-16 million is not entirely death. We have to subtract those unborn because of the deaths or separation of their parents and so on. Further study of this and similar periods of population catastrophe shows that it might be as high as 26-30 percent of the total deficit. This could give c. 4.5 million, leaving us withe. 11 million actual dead in the dekulakization and the famine.

(Another approach is to note that in 1938 there were c. 19,900,000 peasant households. In 1929 it had been c. 25,900,000. At an average of 4.2 persons per peasant family, this means c. 108,700,000 peasants in 1929 and c. 83,600,000 in 1938. With 24.3 million moved to towns, this should have been c. 105 million, a deficit of c. 21 million. Allowing for date and the unborn, this gives over 13 million dead.)

Taking it as 11 million odd we must add those peasants already sentenced, but dying in labour camp after January 1937 -- that is, those arrested as a result of the assault on the peasantry of 1930-33 and not surviving their sentences (but not including the many peasants arrested in the more general terror of 1937-8). This gives, (as we shall estimate later), not less than another 3.5 million, which would make the total peasant dead as a result of the dekulakization and famine about 14.5 million."

[BeBMan]

Of course, when you get shot if you try to go to West Berlin things become pretty clear....

[Lancer]

piaktis, not having it must be a great lesson on what it is. Ask the Greeks on Cyprus...?

[Bereta_Eder]

the greeks in cyprus are free. after many struggles and errours. half of their (and others) land is not. that's a matter of occupation. totally different.

Bebro, yeah that indeed clears *some* things up

[Lancer]

paiktis, how is the Turkish occupation of Cyprus and the Sov occupation of East Germany "totally different"?

[Bereta_Eder]

if you interpet east germany as being "occupied" by the soviet union instead of it having a different social system than west germany then it isnt so much different.

[Lancer]

"if you interpet east germany as being "occupied" by the soviet union instead of it having a different social system than west germany then it isnt so much different."

Well, 20 divisions. 10 tank and 10 motorized, the cream of the Sov army. That's occupied imo.

The Germans were pretty much aware what happens when you get uppidy after the Sovs did the Czechs and Hungarians, yes?

[Bereta_Eder]

weren't there many western arms (none german) in west berlin too?
hey YOU were in west berlin!

also bare in mind that many east germans thought of themselves as "better socialists" than the "lazy russians"

[Lancer]

Yes, certainly there were. Can you realisticly compare the two?

[Bereta_Eder]

it depends on your point of view. if you were an east german with a belief in the socialist model you'd say that west berlin is occupied/unfree. that's what i'm saying.

[BeBMan]

Well, I think Germany is a special case, since both parts had not full sovereignty until the reunification. That's the consequence of WWII. However, for most of the eastern block this excuse doesn't work.....these were nothing more than satellite states.