The Russian Bear Has Awoken
Those of us that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s have an image of a dangerous Russian bear imprinted upon our brains. In 1989, the bear was declawed and our leaders promised us a peace dividend. A peace dividend made perfect sense to a public that was sick of fighting the Cold War. Being able to spend less on our military would allow us freedom to save or spend on other needs. Our businesses would be able to take advantage of new trading partners. All was right with the world.
The rise of Vladimir Putin has changed all of that. Putin recognized where the West was weak and Russia strong. He invested a lot of time and money to take control of the Russian energy industry, even throwing the original owner of the largest Russian oil company into the gulag. Putin has used an iron fist to get control over Russia. The bear is reborn. President Bush ignored the rise of Putin and it has cost us.
The recent invasion of Georgia solidifies the strategy that dissidents, like Garry Kasparov, have been writing about for the past number of years. Putin aims to put back the confederation of Russian states as it existed pre-1989. In a perfect world, he would have an iron curtain. Poland, an independent nation, wants to put missile defenses within its own borders. Putin doesn’t want it and threatens to invade if they antagonize him.
Recently a Putin acolyte, Alexi Gordeyev, said that the Russians were mulling an embargo on American poultry and pork. It is interesting timing for such a statement. First, a few weeks ago, there was a terrific rally in pork prices. Rumors on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floor pointed to heavy Russian buying. Then they invaded Georgia. Obviously, they were stocking their freezers to feed their troops in case the U.S. stopped them from buying. These things are not coincidental.
From time to time since Putin has gained control, he has instituted various embargoes on American poultry and pork. Senator Joe Biden’s press release after the last dust-up six years ago said the “Delaware farmers were not going to be forgotten” when Bush made his next visit to Russia. Putin is trying to outmaneuver us militarily, but he is cunning in his economic warfare as well.
Awaken. (No, I’m not sorry to have pointen this out.)
[Thanks for pointing this out, but "awoken" as past participle of "awake" is correct -- Ed.]
You are correct. I should have looken in a place like this
http://www.verb2verbe.com/conjugation/english-verb/awaken.aspx
in lieu of trusting my ear. Never mind.
This topic has been discussed at length at The Belmont Club on PJM.
Bob Barr, hands down.
What candidate? NONE. May be Sarah could be but she does not understand 40000 nukes at kremlin disposal and hundreds thousands tons of biological weapons there IN UNION with several dozens of millions of chinese soldiers that could be delivered to USA coasts on enormous number of russian merchant vessels
———————–
Change Agents; by J. R. Nyquist; 09.05.2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy has caused something of a sensation on the political right. Try and find a figure that compares with Palin and the only one that comes to mind is British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – hard and combative leadership in a feminine package. Today the packaging, unfortunately, is paramount.
The leftwing intelligentsia would like to dismiss Palin as a female version of Dan Quayle (mocked as an intellectual lightweight after joining the Republican ticket in 1988). Palin, however, is no Dan Quayle. Instead of being rattled by criticism she reveals the same killer instinct that earned her the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.” It looks bad to hit a girl, and sometimes the girl knows it – and doesn’t hesitate to start a fight on her own. “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a Pit Bull?” asked Palin. “Lipstick.”
Pit Bull Palin could become the first woman president of the United States. Of course, personalities come unraveled in national politics. The true test is the test of durability. Could any politician be as durable as Thatcher? Palin is quite different from Thatcher, and the casual political analyst should hesitate before ascribing durability to an untested candidate. There is a touch of greatness in durability, and greatness is rare. How does the public judge these matters? The electorate is bombarded with sound bites and digital images.
The current election promises something new. Old stereotypes are being challenged. Obama presents the ideas of the left in words that a conservative might swallow, while McCain presents the ideas of the right in terms of serving the people. After fifty years of social change, the country seems hungry for political change. Everything fixed has been questioned: the role of husband and wife, the primacy of patriarchy, the divine command to “be fruitful and multiply.” The country has no compass, and nobody knows where we are headed. The Democratic Party subtly offers a passage to global citizenship. The Republican Party seems more flexible and open.
It’s long been known that the electorate favors Washington “outsiders” in presidential politics. While McCain is a veteran senator, he is nonetheless caught up in the great whirligig. He talks of change because after 500 years of progress and scientific advances, change signifies something good. So it’s change, change, change. We have lost the instinct of finding security in the familiar.
An old Roman senator would decry today’s slogans of change. The ancient idea of sticking with tried and true principles, of adhering to tradition, was the very ground of Roman political understanding. That is why Julius Caesar appeared as a scandal and a horror. The Roman Senate had to get rid of him, because he was a change agent. What we learn from the late Roman Republic goes something like this: change signals crisis, and crisis results in emergency powers given to one man or one party. And emergency powers lead to tyranny – to a permanent state of unnatural, unstable relations between the people and their government.
In terms of national candidates, McCain and Palin, together with Obama, seem to represent something new in American politics. It is wise to be skeptical, however, and to doubt they will bring significant changes. Rather, I think they are the result, the end product, of inner transformations accomplished long ago. They will not bring change because they represent changes that have already occurred. You see, television has become so huge in our post-literate culture, and ideas have become so fluid that heretofore unthinkable political combinations and personalities are now possible. Knowledge of great politics, carried forward by traditional thinking, has given way to something more chaotic. People without experience in national politics can put themselves forward as candidates for the highest office, and the electorate will accept them because they look good in front of a camera.
The intellectual content of our political ideas has been reduced to snippy and superficial slogans. If the Devil is in the details, the details are completely avoided under this new political dispensation. Any idea might win favor, depending on the personality or image-building machine behind it. Any person might become a political superstar overnight. While it is possible to produce a good leader in this way, a more disastrous outcome is more likely. For in the course of time the advantage accrues to the clever and likable demagogue. Image is not reality, and television makes a mockery of getting to the heart of things.
McCain and Obama seem to be nice fellows. The problem is with the country as a whole, and the crisis that is approaching. The process we are witnessing, despite the best intentions of both candidates, is one of national polarization. This has not been fully understood. What we have is two sets of images, two notions of reality, and two ideological camps in one nation. It is a stopgap measure to paper over this ideological divide with mere words; for the crisis intrudes, even now.
While the Republican National Convention was ongoing, the economy was groaning. The financial floodgates are creaking. The international order is coming apart. Something is in the air. Something is about to snap. Change is coming, and it’s not a good change. What the candidates are talking about in this election may be completely irrelevant.
As a Russian diplomat explained last July, America is about to enter “a crisis of its existence.”
kabud:
As a Russian diplomat explained last July, America is about to enter “a crisis of its existence.”
Sep 9, 2008 – 8:47 am
Did that rusky diplomat think they would win before they abort and drink themselves out of existance?
Obama, despite all the warning signs, would feed the bear. Of that, I have no doubt.
TomJW:
kremlin secretly works against us in many ways
and our economy is targeted
There have been two
inexplicable meltdowns
in recent weeks.
First one involving an
airline, and the second
one involving the British
stock exchange.
Putin promises to get the
US back for early response
to his aggression.
Any chance Russian hackers
are practicing for a well timed
kick?
The timing of the invasion of
Georgia was exquisite.
What is Vlad planning, and how
will he time it in relation to the
coming election?
F&F collapse must be their work too
For those who think the events in Georgia came up all of a sudden, this paper from 1998 will dissabuse you of such an attitude:href What we have now is a Berlin stylestandoff
in the Southern Caucasus; with Tblisi as West Berlin, Gori as the East. Russian desires to recapture those lands that Lermontov and Tolstoy
once trod upon; led to the dozen years of quagmire of Chechnya. The likes of Gen. Shamanov
who presided over atrocities in Chechnya while with the 58th Army, which ignited Wahhabist fury
which manifested itself on among other times and places; 9/11 (Al Midhar, AlHamzi,Moussaoui.)
This current ill thought out intervention, which does nothing to solve the previous problem
of a Wahhabi wave in the Northern Caucasus will run its course; unless Russia can be encouraged
not to go empire building again.
kremlin intelligence WAS the one who created and supported wahabism since 1940s
it is a long story of radical muslim tendencies united with nazism and manipulated by kgb
yo may research “Muslim Brotherhood” for the subject
A peace dividend made perfect sense to a public that was sick of fighting the Cold War. Being able to spend less on our military would allow us freedom to save or spend on other needs. Our businesses would be able to take advantage of new trading partners. All was right with the world.
That was not Putin who broke the expected idyll.
That was the USA, who declared itself the only remaining world superpower, destined to rule the world and to ignore the international law. By bombing Yugoslavia, invading Iraq, moving NATO to the Russian borders, abandoning ABM treaty, proclaiming the former USSR territories the zone of the USA interests, and the efforts to push out Russia from that zone, accepting the military doctrine allowing “preventive wars” -that was what awoke the bear. We Russians do not want the USA to pick and install puppet presidents for us, or teach us how to live.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted last December – “The weak are not loved and not heard, they are insulted, and when we have parity they will talk to us in a different way.”
Russia has learned from their failures and short-comings of the 1990s and early 2000s. They were militarily impotent and culturally irrelevant for the past 15 years. They were neither loved, feared, nor heard. They will not go down that path again. As much as I support Bush I agree with the author of this article that he has largely ignored the rise of Putin and his totalitarian tendencies. But a Russian population that is declining at an annual rate of 0.5-1.0% begs the question “Can Russia compete against the US and China over the coming years/decades despite its demographic crisis?”
As a Russian diplomat explained last July, America is about to enter “a crisis of its existence.”
Anybody know where I can get more information on this? I think the guy is dead on. Wish be wasn’t….
chuck,:
yeah, i will help but later.
try to find Medvedev speech in front of moscow ambassadors that he gathered on 15 of July
russian diplomat quote was published on 25 of july in pravda.ru, it may have english version
also i think i published it in my blog- click on my name, google-search my blog domain
Let the Russians dominate Europe;let the moribund die;let the Russians pay for the burial,and the concomitant expense of defeating Euroislam.The US needs to stay armed and alert,but also stop saving the useless , the effete,and the ungrateful.Enough is enough!
The author jumps from the end of the USSR to the rise of Putin. If you ignore what happened in the 1990′s then you can’t understand why Russia made the turn in 1990′s from the West to strategic alliance with China. In the early 1990′s Russia was promised that NATO would not expand east. While Russia was at its weakest NATO violated that promise and expanded east.
Russia has been convinced since the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia that the strategy of the US is to bring about the breakup of the Russian Federation. Note that the US supported the Chechen Islamic jihad against Russia with arms, uniforms, etc, through Georgia. In the 1990′s the US government even hosted and protected Chechen terrorists with outstanding arrest warrants.
In the recent war Georgia attacked first with what appears to be a plan very similar to Croatia’s US backed ‘Storm’ ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs from the Krajina. The US has been arming and training on the ground in Georgia and must have known about the attack. Russia was aware that the attack was coming and was ready, and thank God, stopped it. For that we blame Russia?
At least we in the West are starting to wake up to the Islamic threat but keep falling back into old habits like Russophobia. The Islamic jihad is depending on the West being split against itself and will use one side against the other. They can’t believe their luck that the West has driven Russia away from the Western alliance and further into anti-West alliances.
The West must realize that without Russia the battle to defeat the Islamic jihad is already lost. You can’t win the fight against the Islamic jihad with your right hand while stabbing yourself in the back with your left hand.
If a lucky penny were to grant me one wish, it would be that America and Russia stop quarreling and stand shoulder to shoulder against their common enemies. If anybody has a chance when McCain/Palin are pumping hands, tell them to wise up about bashing Russia.
there is one common enemy of The World:
communists
they are enemies oof American people, Russian people, Chinese people
they killed:
Communist Body Count: 149,469,610 (lowest partial estimation from 2006)
Communist Body Count
http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/communistbodycount.php
Scott Manning
December 4, 2006
The following estimates represent citizens killed or starved to death by their own Communist governments since 1918. These numbers do not include war dead. The governments are sorted by body count (highest to lowest).
All numbers are mid-estimates.
While this list is as complete as I have been able to determine, it is evolving. Some numbers are incomplete and there are still five Communist countries that have the potential to kill more of their citizens. Over the next year, each government will be profiled in detail on this website.
A detailed bibliography is listed at the end of this page. Feedback is more than welcome.
Communist Body Count: 149,469,610
and they will kill more.
BECAUSE THEY HAVE 40000 nukes and 100s thousands of tonns of biological weaponry
they may very much likely kill you Chuck and very soon
Arius,
I would agree with you that it is a continuous game. It builds on itself.
However, I don’t think that you can view countries as pawns that the Russians and the US move.
It is clear to me, regardless of the past, that Putin looks at the US as an adversary, not a partner. He also plays the game far differently than his predecessors. He plays militarily, but he is also playing economically. Last summer, when he said he would only accept rubles or euros for oil because dollars were worthless, he was playing an economic card that Russia never had before.
Russia has a large store of natural resources. They have created much wealth for them since the break up of CCCP. Putin seeks to leverage this to recreate Russia as a world power, militarily, and economically. In the old days, they didn’t understand markets, and they couldn’t keep pace economically.
It’s a new day.
John McCain is hands down the most qualified to take control of the United States and its allies. A Navy Academy grad, POW, war hero, senator, educated in foreign affairs has been to Iraq numerous times, supports the military and all who have served, cares for OUR economy, healthcare, education for the children who are the future leaders of this country. Just to name a few qualifications. Who better to have as our Commander and Chief. Experience speaks for itself.
Obama cannot say he has any of these qualifications. He is back stroking on what is being thrown at him because the TRUTH is out. Why would anyone want to hand over the United States to someone who has done Nothing to earn this position. The only card he has been playing is the race card. This is his ticket. Unfortunately for him the commited Republicans have the trump card and its being played.
McCain and Palin, “they get it”, “they have it”.
If Russia were trying to create a series of bases and arming forces around the U.S., from Nicaragua to Grenada (which they were doing as the USSR in the 1980s) would we view them as friendly or hostile, regardless of their rhetoric? I think you know the answer to that.
This persistent failure to put the shoe on the other foot, and to look at the world even for one second from Moscow’s point of view (even if one thinks that POV is skewed or paranoid) is the most baffling aspect of Washington’s behavior towards Russia in the last ten years (more or less since the Kosovo War, although the desire to separate former Soviet Central Asian resources from Kremlin control was publically stated earlier). I mean, we don’t seem to be making so many efforts to poke the Chinese in the eye, in spite of their much greater military buildup and repression of human rights. Could it be that Russia makes for a safer adversary, given corporate America and the Treasury’s ties to Beijing?
here’s what some of you are referring to:
The Kremlin strategists believe that the United States is on the brink of a crippling dislocation. According to a July 29 Pravda article, an anonymous Russian diplomat revealed that the “Russian administration believes the United States may soon suffer from a serious political crisis.” The sequence begins with a financial crash, advances to political unrest and finally to the dissolution of American military power. As the Russian diplomat warned, “America is standing on the verge of a large-scale crisis of its own existence.”
With Putin’s ouster of the oligarchs, the chance for certain interests to gain control of Russian resources and treasure evaporated like a dream. Hungover and angry the neocons awoke to that reality. Now Russia is the “enemy” once again. I agree with Putin. He is only looking after his country.
” May be Sarah could be but she does not understand 40000 nukes at kremlin disposal and hundreds thousands tons of biological weapons there IN UNION with several dozens of millions of chinese soldiers that could be delivered to USA coasts on enormous number of russian merchant vessels”
Thanks for the laugh.
That is about 18,000 Nukes, NOT 40 thousand;
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab10.asp
Of those, 5,199 were deliverable in 2002.
Not that the actual number matters. America is a democracy. The citizens rule, through their representatives. Russia is a dictatorship. Putin rules.
To destroy America, you need to kill all of us, otherwise we will just rebuild AFTER we destroy Russia. To destroy Russia, we just need to kill Putin.
Then somebody rational will take over in Russia, somebody that realizes throwing nukes at each other is stupid.
A VERY LARGE ocean liner can carry about 15,000 Soldiers.
So you would need about 66 such ships to carry 1 million soldiers. Those soldiers will want dinner and lunch as well as breakfast. So there are some more ships. Plus it would help if they had guns, bullets, boots etc. Even more ships.
Let be conservative and say 100 ships to get your 1 million men here. You want to bring 12 million, right? So that is 12 x 100 or 1200 ships. BIG ships. Not so big that one torpedo cannot sink it. IIRC, one SSN carries 24 such torpedos. Not sure if that is right, but it makes it easy to figure that 50 SSN’s could send all 12 million soldiers to the bottom of the sea. Not that it would be necessary.
Mexico sends more then 12 million Mexicans to America EVERY year. 12 million Chinamen would just be another drop in the ol’ melting pot. We would find them jobs and they would import wives ( Russian brides are on the upswing again, since Georgia was raped. Russian women are smart as well as hot, so they know that the USA is a much better place to live a good life then Putin’s Russia.)) and in a decade or so they would just be another American. Then we would need some more.
So as they say in my neck o the woods; “Bring it on”.
Russia is a Fluzzard. A fluzzard has the wings of a flea and the ass of a buzzard. Fluzzard. They are noted for making a furious buzzing sound but not getting off the ground.
Russia LOST the cold war. Russians are clueless about why they lost. If you start another war, you will lose that one too. Hot or Cold, it doesn’t matter. Russia needs to ditch Putin before he gets a bunch of folks killed repeating old mistakes Then figure out why you lost the last war before you start the next one.
“Win with ability, not with numbers”
- Field Marshal Prince Aleksandr V. Suvorov
“While the Republican National Convention was ongoing, the economy was groaning. The financial floodgates are creaking. The international order is coming apart. Something is in the air.”
Propaganda! The US economy is #1. That is all that is important. How it compares to some utopian economy doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t lie, liars do. Anyone with a computer and a spreadsheet can graph the economic data and see for themselves that the Economy was fine until the Democrats took over Congress. It is still in good shape. Are some citizens hurting? Yes, but so what? There will ALWAYS be someone at the bottom of the heap, even in a Socialist utopia. The Russian Stock Martket lost 10% Thursday. The Euro is falling. The US economy is number 1 and will stay that way for the next generation at least.
If push comes to shove America is sitting on the worlds largest non-liquid OIL reserves. Only America now has the technology to exploit those non-liquid reserves. I’m sure other nations will develop the tech, since the USA has shown it can be done, but right now it’s our ball and we will make the rules.
What is in the air is the smell of bullsh1t! It is blowing in from the Urals. The closer you get to America, the more it smells like money.
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
Aristotle
Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC – 322 BC)
Obama for various reasons would never pass the FBI test to become an FBI agent and for sure would never make it to a secret service agent, like one of those currently protecting him! Reasons: e.g. e.g. the Annenberg Files, his association with Ayers , that 20 year church, his indonesian citizenship..
So if he would be in the White House, basically those that have to guard top secret information have to show it to someone who cannot pass the clearance.
Would you trust this person this information and the keys to the nukes?
kabud
There are a lot of speculations about how many people died in the USSR. The link you gave is a total BS.
On the eve of the WWI in 1914, the population of Russian Empire was 168 000 000. It included about 12 000 000 of the population of Finland and the part of Poland which broke from Russia in 1918 and were not regained since then. The Russian Civil war casualties according Scott Manning you are referring to, were 6,210,000. The USSR lost 26 600 000 in WWII-a well known figure. Lets add all this human losses to the number of supposed Soviet communists victims you referring to: 87 100 000. Take it out of the 167 000 000 in 1914, take out 12 000 000 Poles and Finns who separated and you get 50 millions in remainder. Then you of course believe than a half of the USSR population was imprisoned in GULAG. And now an interesting fact:
There 293,047,571 population in the USSR in 1991.
So I have a childish question: “Where all these babies came from?”
The dynamics of the USSR population growth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
does confirm massive losses of population after the Russian Civil War and WWII? but there is no evidence of any significant losses in between due to “communist repressions”. Myth, BS.
Russian Bear:
you are an enemy and work for KGB
Just in 29 years communism killed in ONLY ONE country:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin
# Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924-53): 20 000 000 [make link]
* There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin’s hands. There’s the “Why doesn’t anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?” school, and there’s the “Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air” school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
* Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
o Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
+ Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
+ Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million “unnatural deaths” for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
+ Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
o Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
o Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
+ 1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
+ 1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
+ 1939-45: 18,157,000
+ 1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
+ TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
o William Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe: 50M+
o Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
+ Cited by Wallechinsky:
# Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
# Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
o MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
* And from the Lower Numbers school:
o Nove, Alec (“Victims of Stalinism: How Many?” in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 “surplus deaths” during the 1930s.
o Cited in Nove:
+ Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
+ Tsaplin, V.V. (“Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody” 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
+ Dugin, A. (“Stalinizm: legendy i fakty” 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
+ Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
o Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
o Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
o MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
* As you can see, there’s no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument — whether it’s fifteen or fifty million, it’s still a huge number of killings — but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
* [Letter]
* Although it’s too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
o In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum — and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
o Britannica, “Stalinism”: 20M died in camps, of famine, executions, etc., citing Medvedev
o Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
o Daniel Chirot:
+ “Lowest credible” estimate: 20M
+ “Highest”: 40M
+ Citing:
# Conquest: 20M
# Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
# Medvedev: 40M
o Courtois, Stephane, Black Book of Communism (Le Livre Noir du Communism): 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
+ Essay by Nicolas Werth: 15M
+ [Ironic observation: The Black Book of Communism seems to vote for Hitler as the answer to the question of who's worse, Hitler (25M) or Stalin (20M).]
o John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.
+ Kulaks: 7M
+ Gulag: 12M
+ Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)
o Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
o Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
o Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
* AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million.
* Individual Gulags etc.
o Kolyma
o Kuropaty
o Vorkuta
o Bykivnia
* Famine, 1926-38
o Richard Overy, Russia’s War (1997): 4.2M in Ukraine + 1.7M in Kazakhstan
o Green, Barbara (“Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine” in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
+ Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
+ Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
+ Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
+ Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
+ Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
+ Conquest:
# Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
# 1932-33: 7M
# Ukraine: 5M
Lets look on the bright side. In about 15 years “those of us that grew up in the 1960s and 1970s with an image of a dangerous Russian bear imprinted upon our brains” will be shitting diapers in a retirement community outside of Chicago, cause the imported Hispanic nurse doesn’t give a damn about the Gringo, and kids haven’t visited for months, too busy throwing away family fortunes to immigrants who are willing to work. That will be the real “biggest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind”. This transfer of wealth will be closely accompanied by one of the biggest demographic shifts in modern world history, as people of color wrestle away power and wealth from the weak, badly educated, drugged out and femenized descendants of the 60′s generation. Just look at any suburban high school in US. Look at support of Obama. May be he will not win this election. But another Obama will win the next one. All depends on how fast the baby boomers begin to die out and people of color reproduce. This is just the beginning of the end.
So do you think that those who grew up in the 80′s and 90′s (or those who came here during the last two decades) have the same image of a Russian bear imprinted in their brain? I highly doubt it. They might have seen “The Russians are coming!”, some of the brightest might have heard a little about USSR in History class. But they don’t share the same fear and distrust as their parents. They didn’t have to hide under desks. They haven’t been psychologically pre-conditioned by the government-media complex. The neocons and “powers that be” know it. They know they’ve missed out on a few generations over the past 17 years. This can be seen in the pathetic attempts by mass media to demonize Russia over the past months. Could prove a little too much for the gullible, Prozac chewing consumer though. Radical islam, gas prices, mortgage crisis, broken government and now this!!! System overload!!!