UK is a land of peaceful tolerance. Only America is racist.

[giblets]

Stalin gave lots of people free homes in Siberia, and free jobs mining gold, but he was a little stingy with providing food.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

+

It's usually a pretty safe assumption that everyone prior to about 1950 was a complete ******* in some way. Then again its also pretty safe to assume that hasn't really changed much since.

Holodamor was also before 1950's, yet it is fondly remembered as a "lesson" in the west on how awful commies were, but the famines caused in India by the Brits - nothing, nada. After all we are in the Anglo-Saxon media sphere. Old transgressions are best buried in the past, if they are your own. Similarly, the most recent government induced famine, and the worst - was in China, many people still alive who went through it, and it is not mentioned much either.

[giblets]

I'm pretty sure anti-communists haven't forgotten about Mao.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Well there is always someone who remembers, could be millions, yet not to much effect. Pretty certain plenty of people in India remember the British rule and the effects, but who remembers outside? Historians specialising in Indian subcontinent.

They may be a bit reluctant to speak out about holodamor as Russian, or commie specific phenomenon, they are in minority though, and that is what counts.

[Ellestar]

Well there is always someone who remembers, could be millions, yet not to much effect. Pretty certain plenty of people in India remember the British rule and the effects, but who remembers outside? Historians specialising in Indian subcontinent.

They may be a bit reluctant to speak out about holodamor as Russian, or commie specific phenomenon, they are in minority though, and that is what counts.

Holodomor hype is just propaganda. Local Ukrainian bueraucrats were reporting better harvest than it really was to look better and get a raise, and then another local Ukrainian bueraucrats took that increased number of food from farmers by force. Given that these were the years of a low harvest, it become a famine.

Such things can't even be controlled from a capital - after all, capital relies on reports from locals, and in case local reports are fake, capital can't even make the right decisions. It has nothing to do with Moscow at all and it was obviously unintentional - look at how even Western propaganda fails to produce a decent reason why Holodomor may have been ordered.

Now, British Enclosure genocide was real and 100% intentional - they freed farmland for sheeps (sheeps gave more income than people), and then hanged now landless farmers. However, it isn't even marked as genocide in wikipedia.

[Ellestar]

You're going to struggle to whitewash Stalin's memory to be fair. There's something about passing policies that kill tens of millions of people, and regularly having your own government and military members murdered for no reason which make people think you're probably a bad guy.

Again, you're making a mistake in your judgement because you don't understand what USSR was at that moment.

It was a country after a major coup (revolution of 1917) and a civil war. Even if it become a superpower later, it doesn't mean that it wasn't close to what you see in Africa and Middle East now in many countries after coups and revolutions. New coups and coup attempts, different political groups with different interests, constant use of force, completely new governing class usually without any prior governing experience, and with a lack of education. Stalin has nothing to do with it at all, just like there is no Stalin in Africa and Middle East, but the same **** is happening there anyway. And an example of, once again, Lybia, Syria and Afghanistan shows what happens in a country in such a position without a decent dictator. Sorry, but i would have preferred Stalin instead of Daesh (hello, Trotsky and a world revolution).

[kentonio]

Stalin was a ****ing *******, who took massive pleasure in murdering anyone who dared oppose him in any way, or indeed anyone he fantasized might oppose him even if they were completely innocent. Russia didn't have to turn into the authoritarian dictatorship it did, he was personally responsible for that. The only good thing about the **** is that he got the death he deserved.

On a sidenote, as a Russian do you think there is any truth to the rumours about Beria poisoning him?

[Lorizael]

Hodor?