Current Affairs Ukraine

[Spadge Vernacular]

 

[Tennessee Blue Mike]

History will be the judge. An entire generation has been decimated not in the thousands, not in the tens of thousands but on such a scale that is beyond comprehension.

 

[tsubaki]

It’s not really that wide of the mark. He’s started wars which have resulted in hundreds of thousand of deaths. He’s repeatedly killed people that oppose him, both at home and on foreign soil. And that’s just the stuff we know about. God knows what goes on in the prisons in Siberia and the rest.

I urge you to go and read "The Court of the Red Tsar", then.

Stalin was far, far worse than Putin. Just in the purges he was responsible for the deaths of twice as many of his own people, by executions alone, than even the most optimistic Ukrainian estimates say Russian troops have died in all of this war. Many more died or had their lives ruined in the gulag system because of starvation and neglect. The vast majority of these deaths were of men and women who were entirely loyal to the state that executed them, and the state usually knew this when they were sentencing them. He knew personally most of the most prominent of them; some of them had considered him a friend of long experience. He drove his wife to suicide; when his eldest son was captured he had his daughter in law imprisoned.

Then you have what he did to the Ukrainians specifically, and the agrarian classes generally, during collectivization - millions more starved to death.

Yes, Putin is a horror but saying that Stalin is equivalent to him is daft.

 

[Rita_Poon]

Zedong never served on Bismarck or Hood, but 'the great leap forward' takes some matching.

 

[stipe]

Damn, watching some videos and seeing messages from Ukrainian soldiers on Telegram, its real hell on Earth in Avdiievka. Russians pounding with artillery and glide bombs non stop while Ukrainians barely got much ammunition to respond.

Its even worse than Bakhmut because Russian aviation heavily bombing the city (apparently 60-70 glide bombs per day) and Ukrainians seem not to have much of air defense over there.
They really should pulled them back from there (maybe that was source of Zelensky-Zaluzhny rift).

 

[AndyC]

Kissing an ass beats @#£%ing a pig though.

As has been posted in other comments, just because we choose not to moderate this particular section of the forum, it does NOT mean transgressing the rules on bad language will go unnoticed or not commented on.
@GrandOldTeam

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

I wonder how Putin would be if Russia was closed off to foreigners and there was absolutely no scrutiny from the outside world.

Most likely going to get one of Putins biggest supporters outside of UK right wing back on the political stage, George Galloway in Rochdale, the way he he fawns about Putin is on par with Lord Haw Haw...

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

 

[PhilM]

I urge you to go and read "The Court of the Red Tsar", then.

Stalin was far, far worse than Putin. Just in the purges he was responsible for the deaths of twice as many of his own people, by executions alone, than even the most optimistic Ukrainian estimates say Russian troops have died in all of this war. Many more died or had their lives ruined in the gulag system because of starvation and neglect. The vast majority of these deaths were of men and women who were entirely loyal to the state that executed them, and the state usually knew this when they were sentencing them. He knew personally most of the most prominent of them; some of them had considered him a friend of long experience. He drove his wife to suicide; when his eldest son was captured he had his daughter in law imprisoned.

Then you have what he did to the Ukrainians specifically, and the agrarian classes generally, during collectivization - millions more starved to death.

Yes, Putin is a horror but saying that Stalin is equivalent to him is daft.

Stalin is upper there with some of the most macabre and ruthless rulers ever, so the comparisons of equivalence with him and Putin are daft, like you mentioned.

It'd be a more sensible discussion to question who was worse - him or Hitler.

 

[tsubaki]

Stalin is upper there with some of the most macabre and ruthless rulers ever, so the comparisons of equivalence with him and Putin are daft, like you mentioned.

It'd be a more sensible discussion to question who was worse - him or Hitler.

I think Hitler, for all Stalin’s personal evil and the millions of dead he left the majority of Soviet citizens uncorrupted in a moral sense. They were the biggest victims of him.

Hitler on the other hand stained the German national consciousness in a way that will probably never go away. I can’t think of that many wars that could ever be said to be a case of good vs evil but WW2 clearly was one of them.

 

[Tipp blue]

I think Hitler, for all Stalin’s personal evil and the millions of dead he left the majority of Soviet citizens uncorrupted in a moral sense. They were the biggest victims of him.

Hitler on the other hand stained the German national consciousness in a way that will probably never go away. I can’t think of that many wars that could ever be said to be a case of good vs evil but WW2 clearly was one of them.

There's potential flashpoints all over the world at the moment, North/South Korea, China/Taiwan, Iran... if these kick off we'll likley see WW3 and future historians (if there will be future historians) will be of the opinion that the Russian invasion of Ukraine began it.. and Putin will then be uttered in the same breath as the mentioned.

 

[Drico]

I wouldn't draw much distinction between Stalin and Hitler. Hitler was simply more, er, efficient. The extreme right and the extreme left eventually meet in a circle of totalitarian dystopia. Both were delighted to carve up Poland between them. But if we're talking dead bodies, Stalin puts Hitler in the shade. Putin is small beer by comparison.

 

[Tennessee Blue Mike]

Small beer that still exists and could conceivably hit the red button at anytime. So jury is still out.

 

[Wizard]

I wouldn't draw much distinction between Stalin and Hitler. Hitler was simply more, er, efficient. The extreme right and the extreme left eventually meet in a circle of totalitarian dystopia. Both were delighted to carve up Poland between them. But if we're talking dead bodies, Stalin puts Hitler in the shade. Putin is small beer by comparison.

Would be interesting (/terrifying and horrendous) to see what Putin would have done if he was in power at the time of Stalin and Hitler. I have little doubt that he would gladly purge many more if he thought he could get away it.