R. Lee Ermey's SOUND OFF Forum

[Steel On Target]

A commie scientist gave Manhattan Project information to the Soviets. Apparently he felt that the U.S. and some of her western allies should not have been the only ones to have the atomic bomb.

Of course, if the Russians did not have the atomic bomb, they would have been defenseless against us.

[Vulcan]

Of course, if the Russians did not have the atomic bomb, they would have been defenseless against us.

And that would have been a problem If we had expansionist visions. But we didn't. The Soviets where paranoid, as they judged all other by thier own standards.

We did have the bomb alone for some time after WW2. The Soviets didn't test thier bomb until 1949.

The last thing the 1950's US wanted was an atomic, or any other kind, of war.

Of course they got one in Korea.

V

[NGAG12]

if the soveits got the bomb in WWII, u know stalin would do something like blast berlin or wipe out japan. perhaps he might nuke his own people, he was a pysco. they would probably even nuke west berlin

[2fat4u]

I'm just glad we had it first. I'm afraid that if the Soviet Union had had it, and we hadn't, they'd have gone right ahead and used it.

[Toubrouk]

2fat4u @ 16/3/2007, 02:36 wrote:

I'm just glad we had it first. I'm afraid that if the Soviet Union had had it, and we hadn't, they'd have gone right ahead and used it.

I can't agree more. With Stalin in power during WWII, I wouldn't expect better of him.

[LockedAndLoaded]

crap, he spent as much time killing his own people... he may just have nulled the cold war by eliminating our adversary!

[Toubrouk]

LockedAndLoaded @ 16/3/2007, 11:56 wrote:

crap, he spent as much time killing his own people... he may just have nulled the cold war by eliminating our adversary!

You got it so right. During the time Stalinn was in power, 50 Millions persons died from government incompetency and tyranical police control (gulag). This is FIVE TIMES the number of deaths in WWI or AS MUCH as WWII!

And some persons thought that Hitler was the personification of the Antechrist...

[taccoms]

"No. It was our technology..."

Manhattan project was a joint program which included full Canadian and British efforts, so if it's in the contexts of Anglo-American alliance then yes, it could be called "our technology", but at that time at least on paper the alliance included the USSR, and considering that Soviet forces accounted for the destruction of 80% of TOTAL German forces, all the while being left with a completely devastated infrastructure and less the 60% remaining housing, then the atomic question in not just a matter of political muscle flexing.

Soviet paranoia focused specifically on the industrial/economic might of America in comparison to a completely devastated ruins of USSR.

If US was the only power to have atomic weapons after WWII then Soviet Union would have collapsed shortly after the war since American pressure with all the available resources would have simply overpowered the barely breathing Soviet economy. Now it that was the goal of American foreign policy, to topple Soviet regime and colonize Soviet territories/resources just as Hitler planned, then yes, American monopoly on atomic weapons would have been a deciding factor, but that would not be very democratic.

"During the time Stalinn was in power, 50 Millions persons died from government incompetency and tyranical police control (gulag)."

I'm curios where do these numbers come from? Some years ago I was reading up on Soviet repressions and the numbers i was getting varied greatly, but never reached as high as 50 million, logistics simply did not allow it. Not enough trains/truck/roads to transport so many people and the logistics for such migrations are "difficult" at best.

[WillyVictor32]

Someone may have tried counting people with estimates of deaths over the eight decades (four score years) of Communist rule over several countries of the Soviet Union.

The Manhattan Project, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists were full of Communist partizans and supporters, suggests a writer for a right wing publication. Eric Holder, BHO's legal expert, helped edit the mag in the mid-1980s, the writer said.

I've misplaced the document now.

[Steel On Target]

Damn good question. Numbers thrown around as "historical fact" should always be questioned as to their original source and validity...but, consider the following along these lines:

1. The fifty million number (I don't believe) is meant to be solely as the direct result of executions-though that certainly is the implication, but also includes the results of Siberian resettlement/Gulag, forced collectivization/starvation and Trofim Lysenko's disastrous wheat production program based upon anachronistic genetics theories.

2. Soviet general Viktor Suvurov (if I remember correctly) lamented the needless loss of some tens of millions of his fellow Russians under the Communist regime.

3. Consider that Germany itself lost some 7 million total citizens (military and civilian) between 1939 and 1945 and that Russia herself claims that Germany and her allies were responsible for 20 million between 1941 and 1945 in all-out warfare. In the six years of the Russian Civil War some 13 million are thought to have died. Just some perspective here.

So, if indeed Stalin had carried out a Nineteen Eighty-Four---ish type perpetual war against his "own" people (he himself was Georgian I believe) then given the decades he was in power a number approaching fifty million may not be too outrageous.

The only way to know for sure would be to have a pre-Civil War, authoritative source on Russia's population and compare it to a post-Stalinist census and take into account the actual losses of the Great Patriotic War (World War II), average birth and death rates and I suppose other demographic factors.

Also, territorial expansion has to be taken into account when looking at the total numbers including the redrawing of post-war borders in Eastern Europe which would have cause a + in population of some millions including those directly deported from Poland to the Soviet Union during World War II.

Here's what seems to be a thorough article on the results of collectivization upon the Ukrainian SSR. Do we include these millions lost in the aforementioned Ukrainian genocide (as many maintain it was) in with the fifty million total? Since they were directly under Moscow's rule, I would say so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

A look at this here...in annoying red background (http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/revision.html) says in part:

Quote:

Collectivization (1929-1933)

The proof came with the 1937 census, which came up with a population (163-164 million) 14 million less than what the government had projected (a 3 million [2%] per year increase from the 1926 figure of 147 million; modern readers should be aware that such high growth rates were normal in the decades before cheap and universally available birth control). 3 of the missing 14 million might simply be births that didn't take place in a time of trauma, but the other 11 million have a bloodier provenance. The 1937 census was suppressed, and its directors arrested as saboteurs.

Quote:

The Great Purge (1936-1938)

The evidence is less clear, however, about the toll from the Great Purge (1936-38). [Robert] Conquest (author of The Great Purge) suggested 7 millions were arrested, of whom 1 million were shot, 2 million died of malnutrition and exposure in camps, an additional 3 million were sent to camps of whom a mere 10% would ever return, and 1 million remained in prison.

Seems that 20 to 30 million deaths (non-war) are not beyond the realm of probability and given the nature of a closed society, may in fact be conservative.

[taccoms]

Found a whole bunch of studies docs from the 90s when the documents became available.

Numbers still vary, but some supporting documents are there, breaking everything down into categories, arrests, executions (NKVD - 1 million), famine, deaths in prison/gulags etc. Stalinist repressions period begins roughly in the late 20s and continues until the end of the war.

Here's a link, a ton of studies there, all in PDF formatl

http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/

+/- 50 million figure COULD very well be correct, but only if it's a summary of total regime related fatalities beginning from the Bolshevik revolution in 1918 and until 1945.