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Issue No. 174 | 11 April 2003 |
Might Does Not Mean Right
Interview: Picking Up The Peaces Unions: The Royal Con National Focus: Around the Grounds Economics: The Secret War on Trade International: United Front History: Confessions of a Badge Collector Politics: Stalin�s Legacy Review: Such Was Not Ned�s Life Poetry: Osama's Top Recruiter Satire: Woolworths CEO Denied Bonus After Company Posts Profit
Judge Puts �Predator� Before Workers Mexican Chain Gangs Win NSW Work STOP PRESS - Brewery Goes Flat Cameron: Feds More Interested in Iraq Working Hours Benefit Millions Journos Urge War Crimes Prosecutions Unions Support Displaced in Iraq
The Soapbox The Locker Room Culture Postcard
Unfair Dismissals More Angry Trots Tom's Tirade
Labor Council of NSW |
Letters to the Editor Taking Stalin's Crimes Seriously
I read Leonie Bronstein's fascinating article "Stalin's Legacy" with great interest. We do not take Stalin's crimes seriously in this country. While Le Monde publishes a pull-out supplement and the anniversary features on the front pages of most Eastern European papers, here there is a distracted silence save for a SBS documentary. While some readers may find a comparison with Hitler offensive, Stalin actually killed more than 8 times as many people as Hitler's concentration camps. Alexander Yakovlev, an expert on Stalin's crimes, estimates that his victims totalled more than 130 million. To give some idea of the scale of this: Stalin's body count is the equivalent 35,000 11 Septembers. Yes, Stalin played a very minor role in defeating Nazism, but so would any Russian leader who had been attacked by the Reich. One anecdote will have to suffice to give some sense of Stalin's contempt for human life. His wife Nadezhda began in the early 1930s to teach courses in textile production in an attempt to escape the misery of life in the Kremlin. She and her students carried out assignments in the Russian countryside, where she witnessed the degeneration of the peasantry because of Stalin's policy of forced seizures. According to the revered Marxist and Trotskyite historian Robert Conquest, 35 million people starved to death, and cannibalism became rife. Nadezhda's students were so shocked that they insisted on reporting back to the great leader Stalin. They did, and Stalin had them all arrested and executed for "sedition". Stalin had his wife murdered not long afterwards. I don't raise this only in order to provide a diverting history lesson. I raise it because Stalinism lives. Nazism is now a movement confined to the outer fringes of politics, yet Stalinists still control several countries and rule over a greater population than George Bush. Even after 50 years, the malign ideology of "Uncle Joe" has yet to join him in the grave. Peter Hartnell
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