Soviet War Crimes

**cegorach** · June 13, 2008, 03:13 AM

4th Reggiment vbmenu_register("postmenu_3179379", true);

Yesterday, 01:02 PM / Re: Soviet War Crimes #92 Journeyman

Posts: 155

At first I have tried to ignore this tread in hope moderators will close it, but I can not believe this is still going on. I guess any tread of revisionist history like - there was no holocaust or Jews were "guilty" for what happened to them will be deleted at once. Comparing Soviet (and allays in general) war crimes to the Nazi ones is unspeakable. I will not alow myself to get into discussion about this, it is simply out of any good taste if nothing.
This policy of moderators is in line with significant anti Russian sentiments I have noticed in last year in this forum
PS. As clandestine compatriot, I am 100% behind his worlds, you will not see us spitting anti German poison around ( Poles and Balts are spiting anti Russian crap on daily basis at this forum) no matter our small nation lost 3 millions during German occupations in world wars

Obviously you are making too general and wrong assumptions.

If telling the truth is the revisionism so I guess the Holocauset deniers are reliable historians.

If dealing with the aggressions in 1939-40 is spitting anti-Russian poison people were killed for doing that and that was right.

AN INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT in most recent days.

Since the last visit of out PM Donald Tusk in Russia a historian comitee was established to deal with difficult subjects in Russo-Polish relationship.

It was supposed to deal witr the hardest historical obstacles from recent 100 years.

Both sides brought their difficult subjects to the table.
The Polish side wanted to discuss Katyn, M-R Pact and Soviet involvement during the Communist times in Poland to end with the problems finally.

The Russians brought their hard topics too and...

Our historians couldn't believe their eyes...

The Russian side decided it is not Katyn, the Pact or anything else which is a difficult subject, but 14 points with :

- Polish involvement in alliances in 1920s and 1930s which... brought war to Europe,
- alleged Polish actions which helped starting the 2nd WW,
- refuted and proven false many times allegiations of Polish commited massacres of Soviet POWs in 1920-22,
- Polish government... derailing the alliance with Stalin which... of course prevented a quicker victory over Hitler,

All in all clearly they are trying to shut down the commision. There is no other explanation for sure.
Noone can be so incompetent, so blind or stupid, it must be intentional because most of that stuff is present only in pamphlets prepared by Russian most radical extremists.
I actually haven't heard about half of those since reading Stalinist publications prepared in 1950s.

Maybe they took that from Soviet-Empire.com ?

**StarDreamer** · June 13, 2008, 03:29 AM

Why is it so hard for some Russians to accept that some of their great heroes committed war crimes. You are trying to tell me that soldiers airdropped behind enemy lines with the orders to kill women and children in villages is not a war crime? If you can't accept that the Soviet Union intentionally committed war crimes, I might as well spit on all your puny heroes.

**~~Exarch~~** · June 13, 2008, 03:32 AM

bastards
they should be paraded out and hung by piano wire!

**Luger** · June 13, 2008, 03:33 AM

Originally Posted by bushbush

then sucks for them, should ve won the war. Never heard of anyone getting prosecuted for Bombing of Dresden either.

Never heard of anyone getting prosecuted fot bombing in WW2 either. Though I heard something about prosecutions for genocide.
Bombing cities can't be justified, but please don't make a fool out of yourself and compare it to the soviet war crimes.

**Enemy of the State** · June 13, 2008, 03:37 AM

- Polish involvement in alliances in 1920s and 1930s which... brought war to Europe,
- alleged Polish actions which helped starting the 2nd WW,
- refuted and proven false many times allegiations of Polish commited massacres of Soviet POWs in 1920-22,
- Polish government... derailing the alliance with Stalin which... of course prevented a quicker victory over Hitler,

It's the Russian mentality. They constantly believe their neighbors are a threat to them and always have been, that we are all conspiring against them. At the same time they completely ignore their crimes or deny they ever happened.

I remember some Russian historian accusing Estonia of a "Genocide against the Russian people" in 1919-1920. He said we should apologize for the Treaty of Tartu and for destroying the Russian army

**bushbush** · June 13, 2008, 03:40 AM

Originally Posted by Luger

Bombing cities can't be justified, but please don't make a fool out of yourself and compare it to the soviet war crimes.

the city had no military value. It was full of civilians escaping from other cities who had military targets LOL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing...n_World_War_II

**Luger** · June 13, 2008, 04:03 AM

Originally Posted by bushbush

the city had no military value. It was full of civilians escaping from other cities who had military targets LOL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing...n_World_War_II

Start a thread about it, don't compare a bombing raid with soviet war crimes

**cegorach** · June 13, 2008, 04:12 AM

Originally Posted by Estlander

It's the Russian mentality. They constantly believe their neighbors are a threat to them and always have been, that we are all conspiring against them. At the same time they completely ignore their crimes or deny they ever happened.

I remember some Russian historian accusing Estonia of a "Genocide against the Russian people" in 1919-1920. He said we should apologize for the Treaty of Tartu and for destroying the Russian army

More like KREMLIN mentality - many Russians are far more open to any discussion, though from this forum only one-two - we are pretty unlucky in the TWC.
Kremlin 'experts' believe in most ridiculous nonsense. Earlier I thought they are just saying the rubbish for some more elaborate purpose, but since it is happening all too often and very often in situations there is nothing to gain by repeating the nonsense I am certain they are convinced they are telling the truth and that their points are reasonable...

Sad as it is the government and their 'court' historians are representing the part of the society which is nevr going to deal with the past.
Like our former Foreign Minister Meller lectured in Paris about a year ago (sadly in French with Polish transaltions so I won't provide the links to the video unless someone asks) ' with Germans we know how to talk, we know what to talk about and we see what to do, but with the Russians (Kremlin) we don't even have a language to discuss.
Just take .Czar for example (certainly the most extreme example here) - it is like contacting an alien, extraterrestial civilisation, except that he would counter basic mathematics if 2 +2 = 4 was 'anti-Russian'.

**4th Regiment** · June 13, 2008, 04:56 AM

Cegorach, no sane person is denying Soviet or allays war crimes but putting that in the same line with Nazi is unspeakable and that is what most of the people advertise here. For example war was never fought at Anglo Saxon land, and general involment in the war was about 10% of the total weight of German army but they caused much more than 10% of deaths of war crimes on non axis side. In my country, for example, in brutal bombing of Belgrade at orthodox Easter 1944, 3 TIMES more people were killed than in Nazi bombing in 1941. No military reason, civilian parts of the city were bombed time after time. But putting that in the same line with Nazi, where state project was total annihilation of whole races and nations is matter of good taste if nothing.

About your issues with Russia. Want my humble opinion because as a Slav I do not want to take sides and do not have any issues towards Poland. Best interests of your country is to make as much better relations with both Russia and Germany and to ecomicaly exploit to the maximum strategic position u have. But problem is that u were used time after time as Vatican canon folder against orthodox and protestant neighbors. And most prominent force who helps denationalization of Slavs is Vatican – germanisation of Poles, Slovenes and Czech, hungarisation of Slovaks, Croats and italisation of Croats in Dalmatia and general wiping out of Serbs.
Katyn is bigg war crime and I think Russian side apologized for that but stop crying about aggression of 1939 and R-M pact. Poland used grim situation of Russian civil war and occupied large chunks of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and even waged war against small Lithuania occupying its capital Vilnius. No to manion treatment of the Jews in pre WWII Poland was just slightly better than in Germany before holocaust started. And R-M pact…well, I would do the same, perfect diplomatic action of Stalin to save country from world war. He done the same with Japan in 1940 and Japanese keep their word. Hitler was evil? So, u think Russia should sacrifice itself to help greedy Brittan and France? Just like they sacrificed themselfs in 1990' by "helping" Russia by taking billions of dollars away to the west form the hungry nation what Russia was in those years for example. U should turn ur anger and blame Brittan and France who promise but did not helped, waiting while just few German divisions were standing on the Rhine. Remember Czechoslovakia 1938?And who was pushing for Warshaw uprising 1944 knowing what will happend? Even worse thing happened to my country. Diplomatically we got good deal from Hitler 1941 because he did not want to bother with Balkans but British MI5 organized pouch promising help to generals. When general Simovic realised that Hitler is pissed of and will attack in matter of days British said…ohh, sorry we can not send u a single soldier or gun (but u will make Germans busy killing u, while saving English ass) What happened to our nation than is history, and situation we have now (wars of 1990') and problem in Kosovo is direct result of 1941. So, calm down, try to eradicate Vatican influence as much as possible and make ur country prosperous because of great position u have. Imagine how many billions of dollars u will have from gas pipe line only, going through Poland instead under Baltic sea…but u had those anti Russian Vatican puppets twins nuts on power…

**rusina** · June 13, 2008, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by StarDreamer

Revenge in 1939-1940? It was just pure war crimes. The soviet union doesn't deserve any defending, it was a horrible country.

You're absolutely right.

**cegorach** · June 13, 2008, 05:31 AM

Originally Posted by 4th Reggiment

About your issues with Russia. Want my humble opinion because as a Slav I do not want to take sides and do not have any issues towards Poland. Best interests of your country is to make as much better relations with both Russia and Germany and to ecomicaly exploit to the maximum strategic position u have. But problem is that u were used time after time as Vatican canon folder against orthodox and protestant neighbors.

And most prominent force who helps denationalization of Slavs is Vatican – germanisation of Poles, Slovenes and Czech, hungarisation of Slovaks, Croats and italisation of Croats in Dalmatia and general wiping out of Serbs.

Ridiculous piece of pan-slavic garbage.

What about russyfication of Poles, Ukrainians, Belorussians and Lithuanians - was that Vatican too ?

Germanisation of Poles directed by Vatican - that should be in the hall of fame of the greatest nonsenses I have ever read.

Do you at least realise what was the Kulturkampf about ? It was against catholicism in 'German' Poland for the frak sake.

Katyn is bigg war crime and I think Russian side apologized for that but stop crying about aggression of 1939 and R-M pact.

Poland used grim situation of Russian civil war and occupied large chunks of Ukraine, Byelorussia, and even waged war against small Lithuania occupying its capital Vilnius.

You have no idea about the situation in the region, ethnic structure, history and apparently even common sense and facts.

Do you know when the war was started at least ?
Have you heard about the three day defence of Wilno/Vilnius against the Red Army in 1919 (3-5th January) ?

No to manion treatment of the Jews in pre WWII Poland was just slightly better than in Germany before holocaust started.

Another nonsense, utterly disgusting.

And R-M pact…well, I would do the same, perfect diplomatic action of Stalin to save country from world war. He done the same with Japan in 1940 and Japanese keep their word.

Good - let's make it clear, you would help Germany to start the war ? Is that correct ?

Hitler was evil? So, u think Russia should sacrifice itself to help greedy Brittan and France?

Soviet Union, not Russia. Russia didn't exist at that time.

Besides it is another sentence where you prove your hatered towards anything in the west.

Just like they sacrificed themselfs in 1990' by "helping" Russia by taking billions of dollars away to the west form the hungry nation what Russia was in those years for example.

U should turn ur anger and blame Brittan and France who promise but did not helped, waiting while just few German divisions were standing on the Rhine. Remember Czechoslovakia 1938?And who was pushing for Warshaw uprising 1944 knowing what will happend?

So, calm down, try to eradicate Vatican influence as much as possible and make ur country prosperous because of great position u have.

I will spare the community the words I could use right now.

Imagine how many billions of dollars u will have from gas pipe line only, going through Poland instead under Baltic sea…

Yes, yes rivers of gold, milk and honey.

but u had those anti Russian Vatican puppets twins nuts on power…

Where ?

IN normal circumstances I would take effort to reach a reasonable agreement or to convince you are wrong, but the stance you took seems mature in its immaturity - so nearl fanatical.

Nothing to be reasoned with, but something to destroy, if necessary piece by piece, but for that I would need... something first.

So either PROVIDE facts to support your claims or consider yourself in a small company of people who will be banned sooner or later.
That insulting and fanatical attitude will bring you there eventually - you are not the first and certainly not the last.

**Spartacus the Irish** · June 13, 2008, 06:20 AM

Soviet War crimes were not prosecuted because she was an ally. She was an ally obviously through circumstance, but also, because she was the lesser of two evils (compared to Nazi Germany). It would be rather 'bad form' for the Americans and British to try Russian units and commanders at Nuremburg as well as the Germans.

It's not my personal opinion, of course, but that is the reason why Russian war crimes, of which there were an abundance, have been 'swept under the rug', so to speak - especially compared with Nazi Germany. Gulags and PoW camps could be said to be comparable (on some levels) to the concentration camps of Germany.

And the Allies always have the excuse of retaliation - Germany started the war. Germany began the terror bombing of civilians. Germany began the genocide of Slavs, Jews, and mass murder of civilians in Europe. The 'ye shall reap what ye shall sow' is a simple, yet terribly convincing argument, as is the argument that all of the atrocities and crimes that the Allies committed - rounding-up Japanese-Americans following Pearl Harbour, imprisoning German families in England - were for 'the greater good' of defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Double Standards are everywhere, especially in the Second World War - but the fact remains that this was, and is as close, perhaps, to Total War, as humanity will ever acheive. Civilians were actively targetted during this war. Entire economies and industries mobilised towards the destruction of other nations, and even entire races. Liberal Democracies, even Dictatorships, were forced (in my opinion), into breaking 'the rules of war' in order to acheive victory against such forces.

As for Soviet War crimes, I can't particularly comment on much, if any detail; but the West seems to believe that, if not completely ignored, such crimes can, and have been, overlooked, in order to defeat the 'greater evil' of Nazi Germany.

**StarDreamer** · June 13, 2008, 07:37 AM

Originally Posted by Spartacus the Irish

Soviet War crimes were not prosecuted because she was an ally. She was an ally obviously through circumstance, but also, because she was the lesser of two evils (compared to Nazi Germany). It would be rather 'bad form' for the Americans and British to try Russian units and commanders at Nuremburg as well as the Germans.

It's not my personal opinion, of course, but that is the reason why Russian war crimes, of which there were an abundance, have been 'swept under the rug', so to speak - especially compared with Nazi Germany. Gulags and PoW camps could be said to be comparable (on some levels) to the concentration camps of Germany.

And the Allies always have the excuse of retaliation - Germany started the war. Germany began the terror bombing of civilians. Germany began the genocide of Slavs, Jews, and mass murder of civilians in Europe. The 'ye shall reap what ye shall sow' is a simple, yet terribly convincing argument, as is the argument that all of the atrocities and crimes that the Allies committed - rounding-up Japanese-Americans following Pearl Harbour, imprisoning German families in England - were for 'the greater good' of defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Double Standards are everywhere, especially in the Second World War - but the fact remains that this was, and is as close, perhaps, to Total War, as humanity will ever acheive. Civilians were actively targetted during this war. Entire economies and industries mobilised towards the destruction of other nations, and even entire races. Liberal Democracies, even Dictatorships, were forced (in my opinion), into breaking 'the rules of war' in order to acheive victory against such forces.

As for Soviet War crimes, I can't particularly comment on much, if any detail; but the West seems to believe that, if not completely ignored, such crimes can, and have been, overlooked, in order to defeat the 'greater evil' of Nazi Germany.

The problem with this view is that, if everyone thinks like this then international laws about war crimes are worth

. No one starts a war unless they think they can win it. Why would anyone care about the international laws if the winner can just ignore them? The idea behind behind the laws is to protect civilians and POWs. Blatantly ignoring them on for the victor and enforcing them on the loser makes these laws look like a damn joke.

And unfortunately for the Soviet Union committing the war crimes in question started way before they could ever claim to be fighting a greater evil. That some members of this forum completely ignore the Soviet war crimes is in my opinion sickening and utterly disgusting.

**~~Exarch~~** · June 13, 2008, 07:55 AM

It would be rather 'bad form' for the Americans and British to try Russian units and commanders at Nuremburg as well as the Germans.

i find it incredibly bad form that this double standard sends the message to ppl who wish to commit aggressive wars, that they better win it, or else they'll end up on the end of a piano hook

.
the soviet perps should've been tried; heck the fact that russia honours these criminals offends the noble russians who died fighting for liberation.

**hæressiarch** · June 13, 2008, 10:30 AM

@Shurup

2. I think 2 millions RAPED (even if it were true, which it is not) by Soviets do not even remotely compare to 16 millions KILLED by Nazis. So,
compared to what Germans did, Soviets did nothing.

first i hear war crimes should not be compared... now i hear soviet's did nothing? are you lost your mind? are you responsible for what are you saying?

Don't even start talking about Siberia since over 50% of the Soviet POW were KILLED by Nazis while the majority of German POW RETURNED after 3-5 years of rebuilding the USSR

who taught you this bunch of lies?

here you go. you've accused me for not telling the truth. try to deny me once more, but first read the facts, not only look at the photo's and don't avoid your explanations about what is written this time.

ah. and i am suprised, that you congratulate me to find ANY photo of soviet soldier killing people in the old NKWD fassion... i supose you tell me where from is it? what's the execution? and why? what do you try to say with that. that you'll set your opinions on the photo materials? russia when it was totalitarian REMOVED or CLASIFIED all photographs that could be harmfull for it's history. russians were taught that they are great, supreme, amongst others. and others are just a crap under great soviet shoe... just like nazi-germans. when other countries forced to be the part of USSR claimed their freedom (after many efforts silenced with guns and tanks) russians were taught that all other countries conspire against them... sad.

(btw:

Propaganda. By the way, initially those were "polish children killed by OUN-UPA (Ukrainian Liberation Army) in 1943. Two years later this picture was called "children killed by German SS Division "Halicia".
The truth is, the picture is from 1923! Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita has digged out the truth.

try to tell me (and deny with any sources) that OUN-UPA actions weren't inspired by soviets? try to deny thatsoviets described this photo like this :"children killed by German SS Division "Halicia"? i'll remind you that after world war I, poland regained its independence (see: partitions of poland). the polish government of józef piłsudski had initially strongly supported the idea of an independent ukraine (ukrainian people's republic). together as allies they fought against the bolshevik red army...

(another reason for USSR to have a little cruel vengeance when both with nazi-germans they supported both fighting sides...)

in september 1939, following the outbreak of world war II and pursuant to the molotov-ribbentrop pact, poland was occupied in the west by nazi germany and the eastern provinces were annexed by the soviet union. volyn became an oblast of the ukrainian SSR.

upon annexation the soviets immediately started to eliminate the middle and upper "bourgeoisie" classes, who were primarily polish. entire families were killed. about 200,000 poles were sent to siberia and tens of thousands left the soviet union for nazi-occupied poland. these deportations deprived the poles of their community leaders. polish officers from soviet occupied poland were murdered by NKVD in the katyn, kharkov massacres and others.

two years later, in June 1941, nazi germany invaded the soviet union. during operation barbarossa volyn was occupied by the nazis. each successive change of authorities resulted in major political upheavals and arrests.

to protect their interests, the ukrainians began to form themselves into resistance groups that grew into a guerrilla army which in volyn became known as the polissian sich.

during 1939-1941 1.450 million inhabitants were deported by the soviet regime, of whom 63.1% were poles, and 7.4% were jews. previously it was believed that about 1.0 million polish citizens died at the hands of the soviets, however recently polish historians, based mostly on queries in soviet archives, estimate the number of deaths at about 350,000 people deported in 1939-1945.

norman davies in "no simple victory" gives a short, but shocking description of the massacres. he writes: "The Jews of the region had already been killed by the Nazis. So in 1943-44 the wrath of the UPA fell on the helpless Poles (...) Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away. The perpetrators could not determine the province's future. But at least they could determine that it would be a future without Poles. They killed any number between 200,000 and half a million. Ironically, the USSR finished the UPA's work for them.The surviving Poles were 'repatriated', as they were from adjacent Byelorussia and Lithuania. They were largely replaced by Russians. In 1991 West Ukraine became part of the independent Republic of Ukraine".

but i was going to give you a list to "deny" facts:

Katyń massacre
War crimes (Murder of Polish POWs)
Lavrenty Beria, Joseph Stalin
An NKVD-committed massacre of tens of thousands of Polish officers and intelligentsia throughout the spring of 1940. Originally believed to have been committed by the Nazis in 1941 (after the invasion of eastern Poland and the USSR), it was finally admitted by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that it had been a Soviet operation.

Invasion of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia
Crimes against humanity (Deportation and murder of civilian population)
Vladimir Dekanozov, Andrey Vyshinsky, Andrei Zhdanov, Ivan Serov, Joseph Stalin
An NKVD-committed deportation of hundreds of thousands of Baltic intelligentsia, land holders and their families in June 1941 and again in January 1949.

Nemmersdorf, East Prussia
War crimes, Crimes against humanity (Pillaging, and rape and murder of civilians, in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land" Articles: 28,43,46,47,50)
No prosecutions
Nemmersdorf (today Mayakovskoye in Kaliningrad) was one of the first German settlements to fall to the advancing Red Army on October 22, 1944. It was recaptured by the Germans soon afterwards and the German authorities reported that the Red Army killed civilians there. Nazi propaganda widely disseminated the description of the event with horrible details, supposedly to boost the determination of German soldiers to resist the general Soviet advance. Because the incident was investigated by the Nazis and reports were disseminated as Nazi propaganda, discerning the facts from the fiction of the incident is difficult.

invasion of East Prussia
War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide--spec. ethnic cleansing; in contravention of Hague Conventions of 1907 "IV - The Laws and Customs of War on Land"
No prosecutions
War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46: at least 300.000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases.

Treuenbrietzen
Crimes against humanity (Murder of German civilians)
No prosecutions
Following the capture of the German city of Treuenbrietzen after fierce fighting. Over a period of several days at the end of April and beginning of May roughly 1000 inhabitants of the city, most of them men, were executed by Soviet troops.

Battle of Berlin
Crimes against humanity (Mass rape)
No prosecutions
soviet troops and their commanders celebrating victory...

Evacuation of Karafuto and Kuriles
Crimes against humanity (murder of civilians)
No prosecutions

Expulsion of Germans during World War II
War crimes, Crimes against humanity, Crime of genocide--spec. ethnic cleansing (mass murder, forced rape, others, during an illegal mass forcement of ethnic Germans from their homes in Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia)
No prosecutions
War crimes committed by Soviet troops in the areas of Germany occupied by the Red Army. Estimated number of civilian victims in the years 1944-46: at least 300.000 (but not all of them victims of war crimes, many died through starvation, the cold climate and diseases.

During the period from 1939 to 1949, the Soviets committed mass murders of many peoples. Among those holocausted were: Baltic, Slavic, Caucasian and Turkic people, eastern Germans, and Poles (...)
Thus, Stalin called by his propagandists a genial engineer of the people's dreams, ordered the murder of all potential Russian allies of Hitler's army three years before the Barbarossa invasion. Millions of potential reactionaries and fascists were shot in the back of the head before Hitler decided to invade Poland. How far-sighted and visionary was Uncle Joe, indeed! (...)
But in 1941, after three months of constant retreat of the mammoth Red Army, Stalin and his henchmen panicked and ordered the destruction of the files of the notorious Lubianka Prison. The German Panzer divisions reached the western boundaries of Moscow district. In the Baltic states and Ukraine, thousands of Slavs, Byelorussians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians flocked to welcome the German troopers. However, in the regions still occupied by the Red Army, thousands of suspected disloyal citizens were prophylactically shot or deported to the slave camps of Vorkuta and Karaganda (is anyone suprised then?)
The infamous Soviet inner state of Gulag (the acronym of Glavnoye Upravlenye Ispravitelno-Trudovikh Legerei, or the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps) established in 1934, had a special branch of the security policy called Smersh who murdered thousands of captives during the war of 1941-1945. The Soviet technology of mass execution was primitive, cheap but deadly efficient. In 1941, in the prison cells of the Soviet steamer Dzhurma, 12,000 captives had been frozen to death near Wrangel Island. A whole trainload of 1,650 Polish deportees died in the wintertime of 1940-1941 in unheated and overcrowded cattle cars. Of the estimated 2,000,000 Polish civilians deported to the Russian Arctic regions of Gulag in the terrible railway convoys of 1939-1940, at leaat one half were dead within a year of their detention. More than 15,000 interned Polish officers, intellectuals, teachers and doctors disappeared in the Okchotzk Sea. They were transferred in April 1940 from three large Soviet detention camps located in Ostashkov, Kozielsk and Starobielsk.
Three years later, German troops exhumed in the forest between Katyn and Gniezdov near Smolensk a horrible evidence of the Soviet war crime. Katyn was one of the Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutriennikh Del (National Committee of Interior Affairs, NKVD) killing fields since 1918. Polish POWs were transported to Katyn in the so-called Stolypin's trucks or chornyi woron (black crows). In the forest, other prisoners unearthed a huge pit. NKVD firing squads were waiting at the checkpoint. As the victims emerged one by one from the trucks, each was seized by the wardens who tied their hands behind their backs with wire, and they were brought to the edge of the pit. At a sign from the NKVD commissar, the executioners placed their pistol muzzles at the victims' necks. After the order agon! (in Russian: fire!), bullets smashed their way out of the foreheads of the Polish POWs. The lifeless bodies toppled softly into the ditch. Every day, 300 Polish interned officers were slaughtered in the same way. Those who resisted were quickly jammed into the mouth of those who tried to scream. A body which moved in the pit was professionally stabbed with a bayonet. Twenty-two years of experience lay behind the progressive state.
On May 11, NKVD men killed the last convoy of Polish prisoners and 4,000 corpses were covered by a thick layer of the Byelorussian sandy soil. A special NKVD forestry detachment shoveled the mass grave and planted rows of pine saplings over the mounds in the site called the Goat Hills by the local villages.
Six thousand Polish captives from Ostashkov and Starobielsk were transported to the Ukrainian town of Dergachi near Kharkov and executed in a similar way as in Katyn. Others were relocated to the coast of White Sea, placed on board two vessels and sunk in the icy waters.
The mass executions of the Polish captives were organized by Y. Raichman, a commissar of NKVD under direct commands of Lavrentyi Beria.
But the most savage death toll came later, in slave camps of Kolyma and Uzbekistan, where inmates, women, men and children never survived longer than two years. 7 In the Kolyma gold mines, the annual death rate of Polish slaves alone rose to more than 50 percent in 1940. After 8 hours of inhumanly hard work, they received a bowl of potato soup and a slice of frozen black bread. In the death and labor camps of Kolyma more than 3 million prisoners died between 1935 and 1955. Polish, German, Rumanian and Finnish war prisoners who worked in the gold fields were the third generation of Soviet slaves. Working bulldozers sometimes excavated a huge mass grave and scraped up these stiffened bodies, thousands of bodies, thousands of skeletal corpses, twisted fingers, putrefying toes, frozen stumps, the dry skin scored with blood, and hungry blazing eyes.
Prisoners and slaves of the Vorkuta and Pechora camps who worked in temperature below zero, coerced by the desperate instinct of survival ate their own vomit and even flesh of killed fellow prisoners. They were too weak to escape or to resist. One Polish survivor described the human phantoms of Kolyma camps: It was a procession not of human beings, but of corpses and trunks. The majority had neither noses, lips or ears. Female slaves in the Gulag were constantly raped by the camp guards.
The cheapest and the most efficient Soviet weapons of mass killing were frost, starvation and exhaustion by hard labor.
After the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Red Army committed several horrifying war crimes in the city of Lviv (Lwow, Lvov, Lemberg, Leopolis). But Rockwell Kent, an American tourist and humanist, who was in the eastern Poland (western Ukraine) during the Soviet attack, greeted the Red Army.
The Soviet invaders who now liberated Ukraine from the yoke of Polish landlords installed their own Bolshevist dictatorship in the formerly Polish - occupied ziemie. To protect the Red Ukraine against the Ukrainian and Polish reactionaries, the Soviet commissars converted the old Catholic convent of the St. Brigide Order into one of the worst prisons in the eastern Europe, where thousands of Ukrainian and Polish patriots were tortured to death by NKVD-men. When the German army entered Lviv in June 29, 1941, they found in every cell of Brigidki jail a layer of a viscous mass. Dead bodies were stacked four or five deep on the cell floors. The Soviet policemen murdered about 3,500 prisoners before their retreat.
A Polish woman who visited the prison on June 30 reported:
I saw a table in a room covered with many corpses that had been beaten to a pulp. One dead man was seated in a chair with a bayonet sticking out of his mouth. I saw the dead body of a small girl aged about eight years, hanging from the ceiling lamp.
Another Polish witness saw more savage examples of the Soviet purge:
Among other bodies, I saw a female corpse, one of whose breasts had been cut off, whilst the other was deeply lacerated. Another woman's abdomen had been cut open; she had been pregnant. From the open wound, the head of an unborn child stuck out. All the teeth had been broken from the mouth of a male corpse. A small girl was dressed on the upper part of her body, whilst the lower part was naked and smeared all over with blood, especially near her private parts.
Nikita S. Khrushchev, the chief of the Ukrainian Communist Party, had ordered mass murdering of all suspected Quislings, Petains and other potential opponents of the Soviet regime. At Vinnitza, the German army discovered other Soviet killing fields and the mass graves of executed enemies of scientific socialism. In 1943, a team of Wehrmacht investigators uncovered nearly 10,000 corpses of Ukrainian victims of the Great Terror. The Germans published a photocopy of the report with the terrifying photographs.
Commissar Rapaport, known as The Beast, a supervisor of the mass killing of Ukrainians in Vinnitza and the man known even among his cruel henchmen as a sadistic psychopath, personally shot several prisoners.
In 1944, Stalin told the Polish premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk that he had liquidated 20,000 Ukrainian nationalists and conscripted another 200,000 suspected Ukrainian enemies of the Soviet Union into the Red Army.
After the stunning victories of the Germans and massacres of the prisoners by Beria's executioners, in several Siberian labor camps the Soviet slaves rose up against their opressors. In 1942, the slave uprising broke out in Ust- Usalpechora and Vologda Gulag camps. Polish prisoners of Vorkuta were astonished by the fact that millions of Soviet slaves prayed for liberation by the armies of Hitler.
In June 16, 1940, a day after a Soviet ultimatum was handed to the Lithuanian government, 300,000 Russian troops invaded that tiny Baltic republic. Stalin and Molotov in their caveating note demanded free movement of their army in Lithuania, the installation of communist ministers and trial of two Lithuanian army officers who offended the Soviet Union. After the conquest of Lithuania, the Soviet army invaded next day a second small Baltic nation, Latvia. In June 17, the Soviet soldiers entered the Latvian capital of Riga.
On June 18, the Red Army occupied the third Baltic republic of Estonia.
One month later, the microscopic communist parties of the occupied Baltic republics won 92.8, 97.19 and 99.19 percent of votes in spontaneous elections, and established their regimes which immediately declared the Baltic republics as integral parts of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Dekanozov, Andrei Vishinsky and Andrei Zhdanov, the Soviet prosecutors, were appointed as the supreme commissars of the Socialist Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Within one year of Soviet occupation more than two percent of the Baltic population was executed. The inhumanity of the Soviet purges were comparable to Byelorussia and Ukraine, available when the German armies evicted the Soviet forces in June 1941. Juozas Viktoravicius, a Lithuanian survivor of the tortures in the Forest of Death at Petrosiunai, four miles outside Kaunas, describes his experiences:
I was beaten 45 hours without stopping, they bound my hands and feet and put me into cold water. Others had their testicles kicked to pulp, were seated on red-hot stoves (called in Russian: tiepelushka), had needles rammed under their fingernails, were scalped, had their jaws ripped down to their necks, and their eyes gouged and their tongues torn out. At Kretinga, victims were bound to trees with iron hoops before being burned alive. In order to avoid the sound of shot in Kaunas prison, the commandant of the jail had instructed his executioners to kill each victim by bashing in his temples with a hammer.
ight months before the Soviet invasion of the Baltic states, during the invasion of Poland in October 11, 1939, the commissar-general of NKVD, comrade Ivan A. Serov, signed top secret order No. 1223: the plan of Expulsion (Vivod) of the anti-Soviet elements from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. In this document which was found by the German soldiers in the NKVD office at Valka, in July 1941, Serov described in detail the method of the ethnic cleansing in the Baltic lands. Those arrested at dawn would be transported in trucks to family would be segregated; children, women and men would be loaded into the separate cars. Serov's order did not specify the places of banishment.

1. Q.Reynold, The Stars are Neutral, London 1942, p. 97.
2. E. Buca, Vorkuta, London 1976, pp. 142-144, L. Tolstoy, Stalin's Secret War, London: Cape, 1981, p. 242.
3. R. Conquest, :Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camp, London 1978, p. 34. J. Lukacs, The Last European War: September 1939 - December 1941, London 1976, p. 89. L. FitzGibbon, Katyn: A Crime Without Parallel, London 1971, pp. 30-51.

4. L. Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 183.
5. M. Graczyk, Upiorny las (Haunted Wood), Katyn, Wprost, June 4, 1995, pp. 26-28.
6. J. Czapski, The Inhuman Land, London 1951, p. 35.
7. A. Ekart, Vanished Without Trace: The Story of Seven Years in Soviet Russia London 1954, p.11.
8. L. Tolstoy, op.cit., p.16.
9. A. Priess, Verbannung nach Sibiren Manitoba 1972, pp.55.
10. D. Caute, The Fellow-Travellers: A Postscript to the Enlightement London 1973, p. 186.
11. L. Tolstoy, op. cit., p. 246. 12. Ibid., p. 247.
13. Ibid., p. 247.
14. Amtlisches Material zum Massenmord in Winnitza, Leipzig 1943, passim. Also: M. Seleshko, Vinnytzia - The Katyn of Ukraine. A Report by an Eyewitness, The Journal of Historical Review, 1980, no. 1, p. 344.

15. S. Mikolajczyk The Pattern of Soviet Domination, London 1948, p.111.
16. A. K. Herling The Soviet Slave Empire, New York 1951, p. 175.
17. W. Schellenberg, The Schellenberg Memoirs, London 1956, p.314.
18. Pelekis, Genocide: Lithuania's Threefold Tragedy Munich 1949, pp45-55.
19. These Names Accuse: Nominal List of Latvians Deported to Soviet Russsia in 1940-1941, Stockholm 1951, p. 15.

not satisfied yet? i am sure you want more photos of soviet heroes killing people?

if you have doubts, see even vikipedia
or here http://www.lietuvos.net/istorija/com...war_crimes.htm

try soviet photo propaganda here

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...551972,00.html (enlarge gallery and view em all. see how many swatches they can carry on both hands)

and here is your "blog" where from i had the photos. please don't be so damn stubborn in denying hell soviet regime brought to all states it's troops visited...
i am still far away to call those butchers a heroes...
and please, don't be such ignorant...

This is western-Ukrainian newspaper article from Lviv about that picture:
http://www.gazeta.lviv.ua/articles/2007/05/25/23673/
Ukrainian is like Polish so you should be able to read it to get the idea.
So, based on this incident, anyone can blame anyone for anything just by showing some horror pictures and bodycount. I could say that it is a picture of the Soviet children killed by Chinese in 1969! That is why I count only pictures with murder in process.

ukrainian is not like polish

i don't understand a word, especially that polish uses latin alphabet not cyrylica...

gulag photos: (soviet concentration camps of mass extermination)

http://okay.com/dunc/images/deportee1a.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/exile2a.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/dead1a.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/wheelbarrow.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/gate.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/fence1a.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/camp3a.jpg
http://okay.com/dunc/images/camp2a.jpg

**Spartacus the Irish** · June 13, 2008, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by StarDreamer

The problem with this view is that, if everyone thinks like this then international laws about war crimes are worth

. No one starts a war unless they think they can win it. Why would anyone care about the international laws if the winner can just ignore them? The idea behind behind the laws is to protect civilians and POWs. Blatantly ignoring them on for the victor and enforcing them on the loser makes these laws look like a damn joke.

And unfortunately for the Soviet Union committing the war crimes in question started way before they could ever claim to be fighting a greater evil. That some members of this forum completely ignore the Soviet war crimes is in my opinion sickening and utterly disgusting.

Therein lies the rub. Nuremburg is often seen as illegitimate for precisely this reason - the Allies too committed war crimes, of course the majority being committed by the Russians on the Eastern Front, and yet they held accountable for war crimes only Germans.

The fact of the matter is that different cultures have different 'standards' of war. It was perfectly acceptable for Japanese soldiers to kill those British soldiers in Singapore hospital, for pilots to shoot enemy pilots whilst on their parachute because it makes military sense - those soldiers in hospital are still enemy soldiers, regardless of their position or state of health, and those enemy pilots in parachutes will return to fight, and probably shoot down, friendly pilots. I am in no way saying I personally believe such actions are justified, let me make that clear - but in some cultures, such actions make sense.

Originally Posted by Exarch

i find it incredibly bad form that this double standard sends the message to ppl who wish to commit aggressive wars, that they better win it, or else they'll end up on the end of a piano hook

.
the soviet perps should've been tried; heck the fact that russia honours these criminals offends the noble russians who died fighting for liberation.

That has always been the case. To the victor go the spoils. As Churchil said, which can embody thhe Allies following the Second World War, "History shall be kind to me, for I intend to write it." All I can do as a historian is acknowledge that fact, and thus be able to see through such bias and propaganda, no matter how ingrained upon our culture it is as the truth.

But also is the question that, if Russia had not sunk so low in its conduct of the war, would she still have won? Because make no mistake, America and Britain could not have opened up a successful front in Europe against Germany without the Eastern Front, that is almost certain. For the entire war in the Western Front, the US and UK faced never more than a quarter of the German Army and Luftwaffe.

Thus is opened the intriguing question of whether it was such acts of barbarism and desparation by Russia that actually preserved democracy in Western Europe.

**4th Regiment** · June 13, 2008, 12:23 PM