“Hi, I am a Nazi, how are you?”
It would be impossible to say this in polite (or even un-polite) society, and rightly so. Still, it is okay to say one is a communist. How is this even possible?
After all, Communism killed far more people than the Nazis1.
Stalin was dictator of communist Russia until 1953. Many millions were killed during his reign. He liked to compare himself to Ivan the Terrible, the first Tsar of Russia, and for good reason.
Hitler was the worst dictator of them all, but Stalin was better.
He was the best at dictating. It helped he was a workaholic while Hitler was a lazy bastard who liked to sleep in.
Was Russia under Stalin a worse place to live than Nazi Germany?
Imagine a place where you can be arrested at any time. If so, you will be tortured until you confess to a crime you never committed and executed or sent to a concentration camp on the Arctic circle, with little chance of survival. You are never safe even if you follow all the rules. Every night a squad of the Secret Police might come knocking on your door, even if you are a high-ranking Party member. Such was life under Stalin.
During the second half of the Thirties, during the period called the Great Terror, people in high places kept a suitcase next to their front door in case they were arrested. When they heard heavy footsteps on the staircase of their apartment building in the middle of the night, they froze in fear. When the fatal knocks landed on the door of one of their neighbors, they felt immense relief.
Molotov2 was Stalin's second in command and, from 1939 on, this minister of foreign affairs. In 1948 his wife was sent to a labor camp, and he couldn't do anything about it.
When the Secret police arrested you, the truth didn’t matter. The most outrageous accusations could be made against you. The Secret police had one goal only: to make you confess. Victims could be tortured for weeks, sometimes months until they confessed. I don’t know why confessions were so important. Maybe to prove to future generations the righteousness of the regime and the just nature of the punishments.
Sometimes the Secret police had to fulfill a quota, meaning they had to arrest or kill a certain number of people within a certain time. That’
s a planned economy for you.
In Nazi Germany, on the other hand, if you minded your own business, most of the time, you were fine (unless you were Jewish, of course, but I will come to that later). Many socialists and communists were arrested and put in concentration camps, but at least they were true enemies of the regime. In Russia, you could be a devout communist and still be tortured and executed or dragged away to the Gulag at any moment.
In Germany, when arrested by the Secret police, the Gestapo, you had a big chance of being released if you were innocent. This even might happen when you made a joke about Hitler3. When you made a joke about Stalin, and the authorities found out, it was off to Siberia or worse.
In Germany, you could refuse an order (to shoot civilians, for example). Most of the time, you were not put in a concentration camp or shot, merely demoted. In Russia, again, this meant: execution or off to Siberia.
Hitler personally almost never ordered anyone to be executed4. On the other hand, many notes in Stalin's handwriting were found with lists of people. A red checkmark before their name meant they should be arrested or executed. Stalin seems to have enjoyed the mortal fear he caused in the people around him. Sometimes, people were given diapers before meeting Stalin because they might soil themselves in his presence.
You could say:” And what about the genocide of the Jews? Certainly, Hitler was worse in that respect?”
To that, I say: not really. Hitler killed 6 million Jews. Stalin killed around 6 million Ukrainians5 during the Holomodor, the famine in Ukraine between 1930 and 1932.
Also, hundreds of thousands6 of so-called Kulaks were killed or sent away to the Gulag in the de-Kulakization campaign of the Thirties. They were 'rich' farmers, meaning they possessed a little more than others, sometimes just a cow or a few goats.
And on and on.
Most people know little about communism and Stalin. If they knew, they would agree with me: Stalin was worse than Hitler.
Next time you want to insult your favorite political opponent, shout: “(…insert name…) is worse than Stalin!”
His name lives on in the Molotov cocktail, a simple homemade bomb consisting of a bottle filled with petrol and a piece of cotton as a wick.
Source: Frank McDonough, The Gestapo: The Myth and Reality of Hitler's Secret Police.
The only time I can think of is the Night of the Long Knives.
According to the UN: between 5 and 7 million.
interreant is voor mij de sympathie voor communistische regimes.
zover ik kan zien was vrij vroeg duidelijk genoeg wat de stand van zaken was in USSR en China.
blijkbaar was de 'correcte' ideologie voor velen relevanter als de 'dead count'.
reden om 'ideologie' argwanend te beschouwen.