> Anybody who cares to examine the facts knows that Stalin's "Great > Patriotic War" was not waged with internationalist principles and the > official policy of the USSR unleashed a war against German civilians. > The terror was imposed with the institutionally sanctioned mass rape > of German females of all ages.
With all due respect, I think your characterization of the unsavory quality of the Soviet struggle against Nazi aggression is greatly exaggerated. While it may indeed have resembled the "approach of the Western allies" as it quite openly was, I think your assertion that there was mass rape of German citizens as a matter of Soviet government policy is flawed. I'd like to see some evidence for that assertion. True there were atrocities committed in East Prussia by soviet troops committed in the spirit of retaliation and a pathetic flood of refugees that a French SS collaborator in "The Sorrow and the Pity" said made June 1940 look like a picnic. While idealized fairy tales of historical events should certainly be debunked, polemics that create, or appear to create, a moral equivalency between the Allies and the Axis or between the Soviets and the Nazis are misguided and simply wrong. Like the U.S. Civil War in the previous century, WW2 was a fundamental struggle between the forces of progress and reaction. Does that mean the "better" side that it was absolutely necessary prevail was perfect? Obviously not as the real world is never perfect. Does that mean there was no difference between them, as so many liberal and social democratic pharisees carp on was the case in Spain? No. Hey, 25 MILLION soviet people died in World War 2 which in fact was and is viewed-rightly-by a whole section of the masses there as a just "Great Patriotic War" of which they are rightly proud which by no means was "Stalin's" alone, in fact in the summer of 1941 he fully expected to ousted but the rest of the leadership felt they needed to retain him as a national symbol. Moreover, while I'm not an enthusiast of Trotsky and his epigones, the attitude reflected by these comments-at least as to the USSR-was not one that he shared. _________________________________________________________________ Express your personality in color! Preview and select themes for Hotmail®. http://www.windowslive-hotmail.com/LearnMore/personalize.aspx?ocid=PID23391::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HYGN_express:082009 ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
