Russian Government to Fund Patriotic Video Games

[Sibator]

Considering he has only got worse with time I wouldn't say there is too much of a bright future for Putin.

Got worse in some aspects, got better in others. Like most leaders. At least he's better than the rest of the clowns we've had for almost the past two centuries. And if Russia/USSR can survive Stalin, we can certainly improve under Putin

Considering Russia was introduced to democracy for the first time in 1991, some mistakes are to be expected. Especially when the first-go had some pretty bad results.

[Shofercia]

Got worse in some aspects, got better in others. Like most leaders. At least he's better than the rest of the clowns we've had for almost the past two centuries. And if Russia/USSR can survive Stalin, we can certainly improve under Putin

Considering Russia was introduced to democracy for the first time in 1991, some mistakes are to be expected. Especially when the first-go had some pretty bad results.

Some mistakes? Ok, I'm sorry, but when the fucking drunkard president Yeltsin uses tanks to destroy Congress, while denying Social Rights to millions, and letting ethnic violence go unchecked... no, not going to risk anything even remotely close to that. Forgive, maybe/yes. Forget? Nope, gotta learn from past mistakes. Slow and steady wins the race. When Putin strays from Democracy, certainly, call him out on it. But we're not rushing into a new system of government anytime soon. There will be change, but it will be slow and steady.

[Sibator]

Considering Russia was introduced to democracy for the first time in 1991, some mistakes are to be expected. Especially when the first-go had some pretty bad results.

Some mistakes? Ok, I'm sorry, but when the fucking drunkard president Yeltsin uses tanks to destroy Congress, while denying Social Rights to millions, and letting ethnic violence go unchecked... no, not going to risk anything even remotely close to that. Forgive, maybe/yes. Forget? Nope, gotta learn from past mistakes.

Well, you clearly aren't supposed to just forget them. But then you also shouldn't expect democracy to go off without mistakes. Obviously, you learn from them.

[Shofercia]

Some mistakes? Ok, I'm sorry, but when the fucking drunkard president Yeltsin uses tanks to destroy Congress, while denying Social Rights to millions, and letting ethnic violence go unchecked... no, not going to risk anything even remotely close to that. Forgive, maybe/yes. Forget? Nope, gotta learn from past mistakes.

Well, you clearly aren't supposed to just forget them. But then you also shouldn't expect democracy to go off without mistakes. Obviously, you learn from them.

Yeah, and the first lesson of democracy would be to set up a great education system, before introducing democracy.

[Sibator]

Well, you clearly aren't supposed to just forget them. But then you also shouldn't expect democracy to go off without mistakes. Obviously, you learn from them.

Yeah, and the first lesson of democracy would be to set up a great education system, before introducing democracy.

Yes, an educated electorate is usually a good thing.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

As a matter of fact, I fully support this. I fully support video game developers and all media to be 100% accurate and truthful in the depiction of:

-Pogroms
-Holodomor
-War crimes
-Russian imperialsim (think Chechnya, Georgia, Transnistria, Afghanistan and so on)
-The persecution, torture and killing of political enemies
-Human rights abuses
-The fact that "Stalin was the Liberator of Europe" was the biggest piece of bullshit ever spewed:

Stalin&Co. were by far the biggest killers of WW2, well above Hitler
Soviet influence raped and degraded half of Europe for half a century, causing "socialist" (in reality state capitalist) states to pop up (complete with the same assortment of human rights abuses, persecution, torture and killing of political enemies, and so on), states which have not recovered even to this day, and are still sub-par in pretty much all aspects when compared to their Western neighbors

-The fact that up until June 1941 Hitler and Stalin (and, respectively, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany) were practically BFFs.

Obviously, what will happen now, you will come up with your own list. Come up with as many as you like. When crunching up the numbers you will still come to the conclusion that the West can never hope to match the East in terms of the sheer number of atrocities. And that the East can never hope to match the West in terms of development.

[Sibator]

As a matter of fact, I fully support this. I fully support video game developers and all media to be 100% accurate and truthful in the depiction of:

-Pogroms
-Holodomor
-War crimes
-The persecution, torture and killing of political enemies
-Human rights abuses
-The fact that "Stalin was the Liberator of Europe" was the biggest piece of bullshit ever spewed:

Stalin&Co. were by far the biggest killers of WW2, well above Hitler
Soviet influence raped and degraded half of Europe for half a century, causing "socialist" (in reality state capitalist) states to pop up (complete with the same assortment of human rights abuses, persecution, torture and killing of political enemies, and so on), states which have not recovered even to this day, and are still sub-par in pretty much all aspects when compared to their Western neighbors

-The fact that up until June 1941 Hitler and Stalin (and, respectively, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany) were practically BFFs.

Obviously, what will happen now, you will come up with your own list. Come up with as many as you like. When crunching up the numbers you will still come to the conclusion that the West can never hope to match the East in terms of the sheer number of atrocities. And that the East can never hope to match the West in terms of development.

I am actually supportive of more attempts to display Holdomor and other Soviet atrocities, since I feel the massive awareness of the Holocaust makes people completely forget about what happened under Stalin.

Last part of your post though, and Stalin having a higher kill count, isn't really true. Remember Hitler doesn't just get all the deaths attributed to the Holocaust, but also everyone who died from WW2.

[The Grey Wolf]

Considering he has only got worse with time I wouldn't say there is too much of a bright future for Putin.

Got worse in some aspects, got better in others. Like most leaders. At least he's better than the rest of the clowns we've had for almost the past two centuries. And if Russia/USSR can survive Stalin, we can certainly improve under Putin

If a race of people can survive the Nazis, Bolsheviks, and vodka, they can survive Putin.

[Tyriece]

Putting history and education in video games? How is this a bad thing? Its only brainwashing if you are so stupid to let your brainwashed.

[Lemanrussland]

We must stop these Western capitalist pig dogs from souring the glorious motherland's good name in such games as "Call of Duty" and "Company of Heroes".

[Ayreonia]

Last part of your post though, and Stalin having a higher kill count, isn't really true. Remember Hitler doesn't just get all the deaths attributed to the Holocaust, but also everyone who died from WW2.

Bullshit.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Obviously, what will happen now, you will come up with your own list. Come up with as many as you like. When crunching up the numbers you will still come to the conclusion that the West can never hope to match the East in terms of the sheer number of atrocities. And that the East can never hope to match the West in terms of development.

Colonial Africa begs to differ. The Congo "Free State" claimed between 5 and 10 million all by its lonesome. In fact, all things considered, the Russian Empire was fairly tame compared to the glorious western nations in the colonial era. People just tend to get uppity because they were oppressing white people instead of darkies, as was considered polite and proper in that era. Now lets quietly ignore Ireland.

As to numbers in WWII numbers, I've got some:
Between 12 and 20 million Soviet civilians died between 1939 and 1945.

Germany's total casualties (including military deaths) were 5.5-7 million.

Lets throw in all the other Soviet atrocities as well:
Holodomor (assuming you consider incompetence and gross mismanagement as being the same as intentional genocide): 7.5 million
Polish political repression: ~150,000
Katyn Massacre: 22,000
Deaths as a result of internal politics and the GULAG system: 1,187,000

These all being high estimates.

Stalin's total: ~16,000,000

So, assuming we lowball Hitler's count and assign Stalin personal responsibility for every single German civilian killed in the war, the total number of people killed by Stalin is still pretty much in the same neighborhood as the number of Soviet civilians who died during the war with Germany.

But this seems a bit unfair to me. After all, that's just the Soviet civilians we're talking about. We've got a whole Holocaust which we haven't touched yet!

Here's some numbers:
12.5 million Slavs (We'll leave those out, though, since they're probably mostly covered in the Soviet civilian casualties.)
5.9 million Jews
2 million Soviet POWs
2 million Poles
220,000 Romani
200,000 disabled people
80,000 Freemasons
20,000 Slovenes
5,000 Homosexuals
2,500 Jehova's Witnesses

These are the lowball estimates, mind.

That adds...lets see, 10,427,507 people to Hitler's count. Adding that to the lowball total for Soviet civilian deaths, and we get 22 million for Hitler. But wait, we're not done yet!

We've got 350,000 dead French civilians, 300,000 dead Greeks, 280,000 dead Dutch, and 67,000 dead British people to add to Hitler's toll. That's about another million there.

I've seen estimates for Stalin's total reign which reached 20 million, disregarding the absurdly inflated ones which claim Stalin killed 60 million people (more than a quarter of the total Soviet population.) So even then, Stalin's still 2 million short of the total Hitler managed to kill in a mere 6 years.

---

Now, are we going to carry on with the racist 'evil Russian mongoloid easterners!' schtick? Sadly, I don't have access to my university database accounts anymore, so I can't quote exact figures on US vs. USSR industrial production, but I seem to recall that 'developmentally' speaking, the USSR had a rather higher industrial output than the US, but with a much lower focus on consumer goods.

[Shofercia]

As a matter of fact, I fully support this. I fully support video game developers and all media to be 100% accurate and truthful in the depiction of:

-Pogroms
-Holodomor
-War crimes
-The persecution, torture and killing of political enemies
-Human rights abuses
-The fact that "Stalin was the Liberator of Europe" was the biggest piece of bullshit ever spewed:

Stalin&Co. were by far the biggest killers of WW2, well above Hitler
Soviet influence raped and degraded half of Europe for half a century, causing "socialist" (in reality state capitalist) states to pop up (complete with the same assortment of human rights abuses, persecution, torture and killing of political enemies, and so on), states which have not recovered even to this day, and are still sub-par in pretty much all aspects when compared to their Western neighbors

-The fact that up until June 1941 Hitler and Stalin (and, respectively, Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany) were practically BFFs.

Obviously, what will happen now, you will come up with your own list. Come up with as many as you like. When crunching up the numbers you will still come to the conclusion that the West can never hope to match the East in terms of the sheer number of atrocities. And that the East can never hope to match the West in terms of development.

I am actually supportive of more attempts to display Holdomor and other Soviet atrocities, since I feel the massive awareness of the Holocaust makes people completely forget about what happened under Stalin.

Last part of your post though, and Stalin having a higher kill count, isn't really true. Remember Hitler doesn't just get all the deaths attributed to the Holocaust, but also everyone who died from WW2.

My issue with Holodomor is that it demeans those who died due to Collectivization, but were not in Ukraine. Holodomor is part of Collectivization, and must be studied as such. Ukraine places Stalin's Holodomor total at 3.9 million. But what about the other 3+ million that died due to Collectivization? Are their deaths less meaningful? Were their lives less meaningful?

Furthermore, we must know how to stop it, and future generations must have that knowledge too! And you cannot stop Holodomor, without knowing how to stop Collectivization. By framing Holodomor outside of the greater crime of Collectivization, you're not only bullshitting about history; you're demeaning those who died during Collctivization, but not in Ukraine/Donbass, and you're making it more likely to happen again, however slightly, by ignoring the root cause of it. That is unacceptable.

[Occupied Deutschland]

I am actually supportive of more attempts to display Holdomor and other Soviet atrocities, since I feel the massive awareness of the Holocaust makes people completely forget about what happened under Stalin.

Last part of your post though, and Stalin having a higher kill count, isn't really true. Remember Hitler doesn't just get all the deaths attributed to the Holocaust, but also everyone who died from WW2.

My issue with Holodomor is that it demeans those who died due to Collectivization, but were not in Ukraine. Holodomor is part of Collectivization, and must be studied as such. Ukraine places Stalin's Holodomor total at 3.9 million. But what about the other 3+ million that died due to Collectivization? Are their deaths less meaningful? Were their lives less meaningful? (1)

Furthermore, we must know how to stop it, and future generations must have that knowledge too! And you cannot stop Holodomor, without knowing how to stop Collectivization. By framing Holodomor outside of the greater crime of Collectivization, you're not only bullshitting about history; you're demeaning those who died during Collctivization, but not in Ukraine/Donbass, and you're making it more likely to happen again, however slightly, by ignoring the root cause of it. That is unacceptable. (2)

1) I think it has more to do with the extreme and targeted effects collectivization had in the Ukraine. I mean, running with your figures 3.9 million of the 6.9 million that died due to collectivization came in the Ukraine. That's a pretty large group in proportion to the effects across the rest of the USSR (which I assume the 3+ million others came from, correct?).

2) That's the thing, it's by and large NOT framed outside of collectivization (at least in my experience with it in the West. Perhaps in the Ukraine it becomes more of a national tragedy that weakens the linkage between the two things in Ukrainian minds). It's framed as a natural result of it. It's shown as the human cost of the Soviets/Stalin's collectivization program. A natural result which had an undue and easily identifiable impact on one group in particular (Ukrainians) along with all the others it led to the death of.

Edit: Also, as per the thread, state 'approval' of historical/expression mediums is a bad thing, too easily open to abuse, too untrustworthy to approach in a nonbiased manner.

[Shofercia]

Obviously, what will happen now, you will come up with your own list. Come up with as many as you like. When crunching up the numbers you will still come to the conclusion that the West can never hope to match the East in terms of the sheer number of atrocities. And that the East can never hope to match the West in terms of development.

Colonial Africa begs to differ. The Congo "Free State" claimed between 5 and 10 million all by its lonesome. In fact, all things considered, the Russian Empire was fairly tame compared to the glorious western nations in the colonial era. People just tend to get uppity because they were oppressing white people instead of darkies, as was considered polite and proper in that era. Now lets quietly ignore Ireland.

As to numbers in WWII numbers, I've got some:
Between 12 and 20 million Soviet civilians died between 1939 and 1945.

Germany's total casualties (including military deaths) were 5.5-7 million.

Lets throw in all the other Soviet atrocities as well:
Holodomor (assuming you consider incompetence and gross mismanagement as being the same as intentional genocide): 7.5 million
Polish political repression: ~150,000
Katyn Massacre: 22,000
Deaths as a result of internal politics and the GULAG system: 1,187,000

These all being high estimates.

Stalin's total: ~16,000,000

So, assuming we lowball Hitler's count and assign Stalin personal responsibility for every single German civilian killed in the war, the total number of people killed by Stalin is still pretty much in the same neighborhood as the number of Soviet civilians who died during the war with Germany.

But this seems a bit unfair to me. After all, that's just the Soviet civilians we're talking about. We've got a whole Holocaust which we haven't touched yet!

Here's some numbers:
12.5 million Slavs (We'll leave those out, though, since they're probably mostly covered in the Soviet civilian casualties.)
5.9 million Jews
2 million Soviet POWs
2 million Poles
220,000 Romani
200,000 disabled people
80,000 Freemasons
20,000 Slovenes
5,000 Homosexuals
2,500 Jehova's Witnesses

These are the lowball estimates, mind.

That adds...lets see, 10,427,507 people to Hitler's count. Adding that to the lowball total for Soviet civilian deaths, and we get 22 million for Hitler. But wait, we're not done yet!

We've got 350,000 dead French civilians, 300,000 dead Greeks, 280,000 dead Dutch, and 67,000 dead British people to add to Hitler's toll. That's about another million there.

I've seen estimates for Stalin's total reign which reached 20 million, disregarding the absurdly inflated ones which claim Stalin killed 60 million people (more than a quarter of the total Soviet population.) So even then, Stalin's still 2 million short of the total Hitler managed to kill in a mere 6 years.

---

Now, are we going to carry on with the racist 'evil Russian mongoloid easterners!' schtick? Sadly, I don't have access to my university database accounts anymore, so I can't quote exact figures on US vs. USSR industrial production, but I seem to recall that 'developmentally' speaking, the USSR had a rather higher industrial output than the US, but with a much lower focus on consumer goods.

I love you, but you already know that

(Just one minor thing. It's 3 million Soviet POWs, not 2 million.)

[Sibator]

Holodomor (assuming you consider incompetence and gross mismanagement as being the same as intentional genocide): 7.5 million

It was, actually, because eventually very well knew what was happening, but still continued collectivization, and blamed the Ukrainian peasants for "hiding the grain." Of course, they weren't, but Stalin decided to raise quotas just to stick it to them.

And those were all low estimates for Stalin's kill count.

[Sibator]

I am actually supportive of more attempts to display Holdomor and other Soviet atrocities, since I feel the massive awareness of the Holocaust makes people completely forget about what happened under Stalin.

Last part of your post though, and Stalin having a higher kill count, isn't really true. Remember Hitler doesn't just get all the deaths attributed to the Holocaust, but also everyone who died from WW2.

My issue with Holodomor is that it demeans those who died due to Collectivization, but were not in Ukraine. Holodomor is part of Collectivization, and must be studied as such. Ukraine places Stalin's Holodomor total at 3.9 million. But what about the other 3+ million that died due to Collectivization? Are their deaths less meaningful? Were their lives less meaningful?

Furthermore, we must know how to stop it, and future generations must have that knowledge too! And you cannot stop Holodomor, without knowing how to stop Collectivization. By framing Holodomor outside of the greater crime of Collectivization, you're not only bullshitting about history; you're demeaning those who died during Collctivization, but not in Ukraine/Donbass, and you're making it more likely to happen again, however slightly, by ignoring the root cause of it. That is unacceptable.

I understand that many people died due to collectivization outside of the Ukraine, but you have to understand the Holodomor in the Ukraine was not simply a result of collectivization. Stalin saw the Ukrainian kulak population as a threat to his regime, and while the grain he got to buy industrial equipment was nice, for Stalin, it was doubly useful in making sure the Ukrainians never rose in revolt(which he was constantly terrified of, even though chancers were way too slim).

[Sibator]

This is actually a very good book on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlands ... and_Stalin

[OMGeverynameistaken]

Holodomor (assuming you consider incompetence and gross mismanagement as being the same as intentional genocide): 7.5 million

It was, actually, because eventually very well knew what was happening, but still continued collectivization, and blamed the Ukrainian peasants for "hiding the grain." Of course, they weren't, but Stalin decided to raise quotas just to stick it to them.

And those were all low estimates for Stalin's kill count.

7.5 million is a high-middle account. The highest I've seen is ten million, which is only claimed by what I would consider biased Ukrainian sources. Likewise the lowest is 1.8 million, similarly from Soviet sources most likely attempting to hide their gross mismanagement.

My difficulty in believing that Holodomor was an intentional genocide comes from the fact that there was mass starvation everywhere in the Soviet Union in the early 30's, chiefly stemming from the massively failed collectivization policies. It was stupid, stubborn, and horrible, but I don't see it as being the same as an intentional effort to wipe out a group of people.

[Sibator]

It was, actually, because eventually very well knew what was happening, but still continued collectivization, and blamed the Ukrainian peasants for "hiding the grain." Of course, they weren't, but Stalin decided to raise quotas just to stick it to them.

And those were all low estimates for Stalin's kill count.

7.5 million is a high-middle account. The highest I've seen is ten million, which is only claimed by what I would consider biased Ukrainian sources. Likewise the lowest is 1.8 million, similarly from Soviet sources most likely attempting to hide their gross mismanagement.

My difficulty in believing that Holodomor was an intentional genocide comes from the fact that there was mass starvation everywhere in the Soviet Union in the early 30's, chiefly stemming from the massively failed collectivization policies. It was stupid, stubborn, and horrible, but I don't see it as being the same as an intentional effort to wipe out a group of people.

Actually the highest estimate I have seen is 100 million, which is rather ludicrous, but you should also realize that him killing ~20-30 million his whole life wouldn't be too difficult to achieve since he didn't only control the USSR during WW2.

Holodomor was genocide because the famines were relatively forced. Farmers and kulaks who resisted collectivization were either shot or starved, and much of the starvation in the Ukraine was knowingly and deliberately enforced. There was starvation elsewhere, and in places like Belarus it was partly forced as well, but most of the starvations that resulted in massive amounts of deaths were targeted at specific ethnic groups in order to remove any chance of a revolt. Unfortunately, it actually worked.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

7.5 million is a high-middle account. The highest I've seen is ten million, which is only claimed by what I would consider biased Ukrainian sources. Likewise the lowest is 1.8 million, similarly from Soviet sources most likely attempting to hide their gross mismanagement.

My difficulty in believing that Holodomor was an intentional genocide comes from the fact that there was mass starvation everywhere in the Soviet Union in the early 30's, chiefly stemming from the massively failed collectivization policies. It was stupid, stubborn, and horrible, but I don't see it as being the same as an intentional effort to wipe out a group of people.

Actually the highest estimate I have seen is 100 million, which is rather ludicrous, but you should also realize that him killing ~20-30 million his whole life wouldn't be too difficult to achieve since he didn't only control the USSR during WW2.

Holodomor was genocide because the famines were relatively forced. Farmers and kulaks who resisted collectivization were either shot or starved, and much of the starvation in the Ukraine was knowingly and deliberately enforced. There was starvation elsewhere, and in places like Belarus it was partly forced as well, but most of the starvations that resulted in massive amounts of deaths were targeted at specific ethnic groups in order to remove any chance of a revolt. Unfortunately, it actually worked.

Stalin killing 100 million Ukrainians is not only ludicrous, but impossible, since the population of the Ukrainian SSR was 60 million-ish in the early 30's.

There was starvation in the entire Soviet Union, outside of areas where collectivization didn't reach like the remote parts of Central Asia. Stalin using the famine of the 30's to target one specific group is probably the least efficient genocide in the history of mankind. That would be like Hitler gassing Berlin to wipe out the Jews. Stalin was crazy and paranoid, but not stupid. And he was probably less crazy and paranoid in the early 30's than he later became.

I've had two American professors of Russian history speak on the subject. Neither of them had any good things to say about Stalin personally, but neither of them thought of Holodomor as an intentional genocide. Again, both put the cause down to mismanagement and incompetence, the continued enforcement of the failed policies of collectivization.

[Vulpae]

It's interesting to hear that you felt all that, because most other people I've heard (Haven't played it myself yet) felt that the game was a pretty craptastic experience, due to the annoying sidekick mechanics.

The cutscenes are pretty funny though. "CHRIIIIIIIS!!!"

But all in all, the Japanese aren't very good at detecting Western racial sensibilities, as the, um, sowewhat troublesome depiction of black people in some Animes can attest.

The Japanese are historically xenophobic, and have a right to be so, which is what I assume to be the reasoning behind their misunderstanding of such things.

The sidekick wasn't much. She didn't register much as a person, more like a pack mule with a glowing "NPC/fanservice" symbol over her head.
It was looking into the paperwork, and learning about the local area that fleshed out things.

Also how are the japanese "allowed" to be xenophobic and other cultures are berated? yes or no on that.

[Mussoliniopoli]

It was, actually, because eventually very well knew what was happening, but still continued collectivization, and blamed the Ukrainian peasants for "hiding the grain." Of course, they weren't, but Stalin decided to raise quotas just to stick it to them.

And those were all low estimates for Stalin's kill count.

7.5 million is a high-middle account. The highest I've seen is ten million, which is only claimed by what I would consider biased Ukrainian sources. Likewise the lowest is 1.8 million, similarly from Soviet sources most likely attempting to hide their gross mismanagement.

My difficulty in believing that Holodomor was an intentional genocide comes from the fact that there was mass starvation everywhere in the Soviet Union in the early 30's, chiefly stemming from the massively failed collectivization policies. It was stupid, stubborn, and horrible, but I don't see it as being the same as an intentional effort to wipe out a group of people.

You make me miss NSG.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Obviously, what will happen now, you will come up with your own list. Come up with as many as you like. When crunching up the numbers you will still come to the conclusion that the West can never hope to match the East in terms of the sheer number of atrocities. And that the East can never hope to match the West in terms of development.

Colonial Africa begs to differ. The Congo "Free State" claimed between 5 and 10 million all by its lonesome. In fact, all things considered, the Russian Empire was fairly tame compared to the glorious western nations in the colonial era. People just tend to get uppity because they were oppressing white people instead of darkies, as was considered polite and proper in that era. Now lets quietly ignore Ireland.

As to numbers in WWII numbers, I've got some:
Between 12 and 20 million Soviet civilians died between 1939 and 1945.

Germany's total casualties (including military deaths) were 5.5-7 million.

Lets throw in all the other Soviet atrocities as well:
Holodomor (assuming you consider incompetence and gross mismanagement as being the same as intentional genocide): 7.5 million
Polish political repression: ~150,000
Katyn Massacre: 22,000
Deaths as a result of internal politics and the GULAG system: 1,187,000

These all being high estimates.

Stalin's total: ~16,000,000

So, assuming we lowball Hitler's count and assign Stalin personal responsibility for every single German civilian killed in the war, the total number of people killed by Stalin is still pretty much in the same neighborhood as the number of Soviet civilians who died during the war with Germany.

But this seems a bit unfair to me. After all, that's just the Soviet civilians we're talking about. We've got a whole Holocaust which we haven't touched yet!

Here's some numbers:
12.5 million Slavs (We'll leave those out, though, since they're probably mostly covered in the Soviet civilian casualties.)
5.9 million Jews
2 million Soviet POWs
2 million Poles
220,000 Romani
200,000 disabled people
80,000 Freemasons
20,000 Slovenes
5,000 Homosexuals
2,500 Jehova's Witnesses

These are the lowball estimates, mind.

That adds...lets see, 10,427,507 people to Hitler's count. Adding that to the lowball total for Soviet civilian deaths, and we get 22 million for Hitler. But wait, we're not done yet!

We've got 350,000 dead French civilians, 300,000 dead Greeks, 280,000 dead Dutch, and 67,000 dead British people to add to Hitler's toll. That's about another million there.

I've seen estimates for Stalin's total reign which reached 20 million, disregarding the absurdly inflated ones which claim Stalin killed 60 million people (more than a quarter of the total Soviet population.) So even then, Stalin's still 2 million short of the total Hitler managed to kill in a mere 6 years.

---

Now, are we going to carry on with the racist 'evil Russian mongoloid easterners!' schtick? Sadly, I don't have access to my university database accounts anymore, so I can't quote exact figures on US vs. USSR industrial production, but I seem to recall that 'developmentally' speaking, the USSR had a rather higher industrial output than the US, but with a much lower focus on consumer goods.

Developmentally? Developmentally look at Eastern Europe vs Western Europe. Granted, political regimes might have not been the sole factor causing the huge discrepancy between the two in, well, everything from economy and corruption to social issues, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Western Europe's political identity and affiliations (and everything those entailed) helped it a whole lot.

I thought we were discussing WW2 and onward, but to comply, the Russians must have done something right, given how they occupy that huge ass blob of land spanning all the way from Europe to the Pacific.

I'm not trying to propagate the racist xenophobic (last time I checked, the striking majority of Russians was white, same with the USA) "evil Russian mongoloid easterners!" stereotype (I'm afraid most people don't have the slightest clue about mongoloids but probably the rest still holds).

What troubles me however, is how in the perception of very many people, Stalin & Co. are either the "Liberators of Europe" or, at most, to blame only for an insignificant amount of atrocities compared with Hitler/Nazi Germany. It's like saying "the means justify the ends" as an excuse for tens of millions of deaths and abuses.

As previously stated, the USSR and Nazi Germany were BFFs up until Hitler fucked Stalin over. Hell, Barbarossa would have been impossible without the Soviet aid.

What also troubles me are recent trends. Apparently hating the USA and the West in general and loving each and every one of their enemies (or former enemies) is a cool thing to do. I just love how in social issues, in the West, cultural and religious arguments are never worth 2 shits in supporting conservative ideals ( I am by no means supporting them, check my sig, I just like to spot irony ) but with US' enemies they are understood and to a certain degree the situation is accepted "as is" and people are somewhat contempt with it because *different cultures*. Apparently tolerance is taught even in the one case in which it should not, and that is tolerance to intolerance.

Pointing out any flaw with the aforementioned countries automatically makes the author of said arguments an American/Western propagandist incapable of understanding *different cultures*.

[Shofercia]

Colonial Africa begs to differ. The Congo "Free State" claimed between 5 and 10 million all by its lonesome. In fact, all things considered, the Russian Empire was fairly tame compared to the glorious western nations in the colonial era. People just tend to get uppity because they were oppressing white people instead of darkies, as was considered polite and proper in that era. Now lets quietly ignore Ireland.

As to numbers in WWII numbers, I've got some:
Between 12 and 20 million Soviet civilians died between 1939 and 1945.

Germany's total casualties (including military deaths) were 5.5-7 million.

Lets throw in all the other Soviet atrocities as well:
Holodomor (assuming you consider incompetence and gross mismanagement as being the same as intentional genocide): 7.5 million
Polish political repression: ~150,000
Katyn Massacre: 22,000
Deaths as a result of internal politics and the GULAG system: 1,187,000

These all being high estimates.

Stalin's total: ~16,000,000

So, assuming we lowball Hitler's count and assign Stalin personal responsibility for every single German civilian killed in the war, the total number of people killed by Stalin is still pretty much in the same neighborhood as the number of Soviet civilians who died during the war with Germany.

But this seems a bit unfair to me. After all, that's just the Soviet civilians we're talking about. We've got a whole Holocaust which we haven't touched yet!

Here's some numbers:
12.5 million Slavs (We'll leave those out, though, since they're probably mostly covered in the Soviet civilian casualties.)
5.9 million Jews
2 million Soviet POWs
2 million Poles
220,000 Romani
200,000 disabled people
80,000 Freemasons
20,000 Slovenes
5,000 Homosexuals
2,500 Jehova's Witnesses

These are the lowball estimates, mind.

That adds...lets see, 10,427,507 people to Hitler's count. Adding that to the lowball total for Soviet civilian deaths, and we get 22 million for Hitler. But wait, we're not done yet!

We've got 350,000 dead French civilians, 300,000 dead Greeks, 280,000 dead Dutch, and 67,000 dead British people to add to Hitler's toll. That's about another million there.

I've seen estimates for Stalin's total reign which reached 20 million, disregarding the absurdly inflated ones which claim Stalin killed 60 million people (more than a quarter of the total Soviet population.) So even then, Stalin's still 2 million short of the total Hitler managed to kill in a mere 6 years.

---

Now, are we going to carry on with the racist 'evil Russian mongoloid easterners!' schtick? Sadly, I don't have access to my university database accounts anymore, so I can't quote exact figures on US vs. USSR industrial production, but I seem to recall that 'developmentally' speaking, the USSR had a rather higher industrial output than the US, but with a much lower focus on consumer goods.

Developmentally? Developmentally look at Eastern Europe vs Western Europe. Granted, political regimes might have not been the sole factor causing the huge discrepancy between the two in, well, everything from economy and corruption to social issues, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Western Europe's political identity and affiliations (and everything those entailed) helped it a whole lot.

I thought we were discussing WW2 and onward, but to comply, the Russians must have done something right, given how they occupy that huge ass blob of land spanning all the way from Europe to the Pacific.

I'm not trying to propagate the racist xenophobic (last time I checked, the striking majority of Russians was white, same with the USA) "evil Russian mongoloid easterners!" stereotype (I'm afraid most people don't have the slightest clue about mongoloids but probably the rest still holds).

What troubles me however, is how in the perception of very many people, Stalin & Co. are either the "Liberators of Europe" or, at most, to blame only for an insignificant amount of atrocities compared with Hitler/Nazi Germany. It's like saying "the means justify the ends" as an excuse for tens of millions of deaths and abuses.

As previously stated, the USSR and Nazi Germany were BFFs up until Hitler fucked Stalin over. Hell, Barbarossa would have been impossible without the Soviet aid.

What also troubles me are recent trends. Apparently hating the USA and the West in general and loving each and every one of their enemies (or former enemies) is a cool thing to do. I just love how in social issues, in the West, cultural and religious arguments are never worth 2 shits in supporting conservative ideals ( I am by no means supporting them, check my sig, I just like to spot irony ) but with US' enemies they are understood and to a certain degree the situation is accepted "as is" and people are somewhat contempt with it because *different cultures*. Apparently tolerance is taught even in the one case in which it should not, and that is tolerance to intolerance.

Pointing out any flaw with the aforementioned countries automatically makes the author of said arguments an American/Western propagandist incapable of understanding *different cultures*.

Stalin wanted to form a coalition to stop Hitler from taking Prague. It was Chamberlain who bailed Hitler out, and handed Prague to him on a silver platter. Not wanting another Open Season against the USSR, Stalin opted to ally with Hitler. Yes, it was a poor decision and backfired, but let's not pretend that Stalin and Hitler were BFFs prior to the latter part of 1938.

Not sure about the rest of your rant, but I doubt it's more credible than your Stalin-Hitler BBF claim.