And we patriotic Russians are behind Medvedev all the way on this one - "Nobody but us can preserve historical memory and pass it on to new generations." and we will do it, without silly western games. Are we big enough, yes, are we srong enough yes, are we principled enough, yes. Russia is changing for the better and I am proud to come back from the seas to live on my land. We can never save a corpse, and too many of those there have been, but we can save our souls, for that is us, and this we will do. Because the future is ours while we reflect and are guided by the past.

Is Stalin's Siberian enslavement of tens of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, and his outright murder of thousands more besides mostly at the hands of Russian operatives, also important for Russians to understand, acknowledge and respect? Should young people in Russia only "be capable of empathizing with one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Russia," or should they also be helped to come to have similar respect for the singular greatest tragedy in the history of Russia's neighbors, which was brought to them from Russia by the hands of Russians? If such understanding were to grow, Russians' endless and offensive Nazi slur against their Baltic neighbors will at last abate, to be replaced with genuine understanding that one did not have to be a Nazi to defend one's homeland against the madness of Stalin.

Only great nations can set their historical record straight on their own volition. So far, I don't see any other than the Russian people. Has the United States apologized for the unnecessary use of atomic bombs on the people of Hiroshima and Nagazaki? Has Turkey apologized for the genocide of the Armenians from 1915 through 1923, in which Armenians lost not only their land, but also their nationhood? What are generally termed Stalin's atrocities were committed also by many other people working with Stalin, for example, Beria. While it is extremely important not to reduce a complex historical record to simple platitudes, let us not forget that the Soviet Union was fighting for its life in the midst of class enemies and a rampant fifth column when those atrocities occurred. This is not to excuse the the extreme aberrations of its leaders. But to place the historical tragedy that Russia went through in its context. I have one question though that has always bothered me and I have not been able to find a credible answer to. I get expressions like tens of thousands, tens of millions, 60 million people killed by Stalin from many unreliable sources who seem to pursue a different agenda than recording historical truth. Can anybody tell me how many people were killed and how many exiled to Siberia during the dark years for political and criminal reasons? I would really like to know.

About 1980 or 1981 an individual who had been a guest in the Soviet Union's gulags "slave camps" in Siberia for decades finally got back to Michigan in the U. S. A. He held talks to tell of the horrors of his captivity and slave status under the Soviet Union. This individual was Victor Herman and he already knew that the Soviet Union was going to self implode do to the failure of their economic system and communist methods.This was probably about ten years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, so I was never surprised when the Soviet Union broke up. President Medvedev's appreciation of the value of human is enlightening and hopefully he and P. M. Putin can ensure that no human has to endure again what Victor Herman had to in the communist slave camps.. Herman finally wrote a book {COMING OUT OF THE ICE].

human life, Absolutely, Medvedev, Putin and Russia as a whole have developed and realised that the real strength in a country comes from strong individuals who will act together with common purpose. They are articulating the view that it is better to build a strong unit from a an association of strong individuals, sharing common values and beliefs, rather than try to eliminate dissent. The first route is positive, the second is debilitating, not only for the people who directly suffer and lose their lives, but also for the country as a whole. The history of Russia is always the same, an attempt by the western powers to destabilise us. We just need now move in a new honourable direction and ask the strong to stand with us, alowing them to face down the threat. Rather than letting fear grip us into finding the enemy within. armen08, You ask the best question of all! I could give you my estimates through research, but that's all they are, my numbers, no more worth than any of the others. Except that we know the ranges, and over time these ranges are becoming a little more sane. So imagine, people say they have all the facts, but can't even agree on the answer to your simple question - how many. But it is worth looking behind why people get different numbers, and of course some like them big. Basically Stalin's reign can be divided into two phases, the purging phase and the Stalin steady state phase. The purge stage as its name implied was to clear the ground of apponents and people who might not fit in with the new order....... This was the set up phase.The steady state phase was the maintenance of the system to prevent 'deviance'. Now the steady state phase is further complicaated in the fact that within it is not just direct political casualties, there are also 'normal' penal operations. So what should you count in or out in the numbers, because if you counted every imprisoned person in any jurisdiction, you would get huge numbers.

To Armen08, who asks how many people in total were illegally killed by the Soviet Union. The answer is, that there are simply too many to count, and no one knows or can know the precise figure. Mass killings happened over a 70 year period throughout a vastly dispersed geographical area, no outside observers were permitted and initially no even kept records. When the GULAG system was established, records of a sort were kept but these are highly unreliable because camp commanders had economic incentives from the central government to understate deaths, and figures were further fudged by having people who were about to die through illness or starvation released so that their deaths a day or two later were not part of camp statistics. Furthermore, the central records office in Moscow was not going to keep reliable statistics anyway of its own crimes against humanity. One is limited to counting villages and populations that disappeared, and extrapolate some known camp statistics to the number of camps known to exist Union-wide. In her 2004 Pulizer Prize winning book, “Gulag – A History” Anne Applebaum includes an appendix entitled “How Many?” It provides enlightening reading for any who are seriously interested in the subject, and explains the difficulties of arriving at firm numbers. There is no doubt, however, that the human toll of the Soviet regime is in the millions. Different researchers have set the figure between 25 million ( The Black Book of Communism) and up to 60 million. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Every spring thaw uncovers new remains of the Soviet murdered, and not infrequently building site excavations in Russian cities uncover fresh mass graves.

According to The New York Times, Medvedev said "that 90 percent of young people could not name victims of the purges. " This is even more true in the US, where most people know very little about Soviet history. One year ago I published a short and easy-to-read book for such people. It is dedicated to my father, who died in Kolyma. I would be happy to give permission to translate my book http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/excerpts.html http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/revcom.html The more that people know about abuses under the banners of the ideology of proletarian dictatorship, the less likely it is that they will become victims of another Stalin. Do you agree? You might also be interested in my OpEd articles, especially in the item devoted to the heroic Red Army. http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/my_opeds.html Yes, 'niesokrushymaja i liegendarnaja,' yes a major player in WWII KowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu

Ludwik, Absolutely correct, but to reach your aims, you need to write a series of books, like the genocide of the Native american, like the British empire attrocities, like European attrocities in Africa and the far east, like the British Gulags in Kenya,like the Bush idealogical purges in Iraq and Afghanistan, the list goes on and on, when you write all these, then you might come close to your aim! Its a huge task, are you up for it!

November 01, 2009, 10:50, Count Cash wrote > Ludwik, > Absolutely correct, but to reach your aims, you need to write a series of books, like the genocide of the Native american, like the British empire attrocities, like European attrocities in Africa and the far east, like the British Gulags in Kenya,like the Bush idealogical purges in Iraq and Afghanistan, the list goes on and on, when you write all these, then you might come close to your aim! Its a huge task, are you up for it! I agree, such historical events should be known to all who study history. Stalin was neither the first nor the last to initiate mass killings. a) Can such deplorable episodes be eliminated? b) What can be done to make them less likely to occur? http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/excerpts.html KowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu

Lunwik, I really like it when yet another person appears on this site with sense, you ask some more great questions: a) Can such deplorable episodes be eliminated? b) What can be done to make them less likely to occur? Well I think the answer to this is in the previous discussion. At present nations are using mass killings as political tools, they use them both ways, they either attack, by saying you did this, so you are bad, or they carry them out saying well we are no worse. So the mass killings is used for political collateral. While that goes on and on, then there are only sadly negative answers to your questions. But I am positive and I believe that someone has to take a lead in this world, and the only one that can do that is one big enough to ride the political punches. Russia is big enough, we need get the facts on the table about Stalin, with the correct numbers, and all the correct facts surrounding them. This puts our house in order, but then we need go further and start turning over the stones in the rest of the world, to show how mass killings have gone on else where. Someone has to take the lead to break this circle of political use. Russia is starting on this journey. There is no sustainable model for any country that carries out mass killings, their day of judgment will always come. I want a sustainable prosperous Russia, and I want the world to benefit from that as well. To do this means never exploiting our people and further it means let them support from the bottom, not be whipped from the top. There is nothing to justify mass killings other than defensive war, where by definition we are back to our basic instincts. There is no political justification for killing, which sadly today many nations still practice, backed by a history of widespread killings by many nations. Only when the rights of humans sit above political gain, will we be able to put process and procedure in place to answer your questions in the positive.

What a great man. Russia, you have great leaders and so you show that you are a noble people. My heartfelt congratulations to you for this speech by your President. The future belongs to Russia, I am sure of it.

I also think that the people of Russia would be wise to ask about the actual ethnicity of the leaders of the Bolshevick Revolution. It seems to mt that there were only a very few actual Russians among them. Stalin was a Gergian Jew. Kaganovich, the monster who designed and ran the Gulag was not a Russian - he was a Jew. I could not be more supportive of Russia than I am. I am enthusiastic about Russia as the only place it might be possible for people to live in freedom in the future - certainly it is no longer possible in the US or Europe. How strange it it - though perhaps not so strange. Since the Wall came down the West has been flooded by the criminal element who ruled Russia for seventy years, or so I have been hearing, and it certainly looks as though this is so.

The question as to whether Kaganovich and Stalin were actually Russians is a very good question. If they were , in fact, not ethnic Russian this should be explained to the world. No need for ethnic Russians to take the rap for the crimes against humanity if this is true.

This is what some critics of Kremlin`s stance on history would call an "important step" in reconciling and finally making peace with history, to getting rid of false bias and post-soviet ideological legacy. I for once think this is a diversion, for several reasons: Growing historical awareness of the Russian people makes them less and less sympathetic to USSR as a whole, which means slow but certain deviation from fanatical (almost cult-like) appraisal of WW2 and other communistic achievements. This again leads to ideological "diversions", the like the ones that happened in late 80`s in different movements - like "Pamyat" for example. For a long, TOO LONG time has Kremlin stood either silent or passive in relation to fully acknowledging the extent of the communistic crimes against humanity during its entire existence. This statement by Medvedev is in my opinion yet another pseudo-patriotic move to show that "oh, we too care so much about those people", but in fact this mainstream vs. popular opinion clash is just the tip of the iceberg. When Russia made illegal the revision of WW2 and "smearing" of USSR, the Russian analogy to the Holocaust revisionism ban "holy cow" was created. The reason is strangely enough exactly the same: since both represent their tragedy or achievment as absolute proof of them being "the good". Long story short: as long as Kremlin and the Russian people do not openly admit that WW2 was a POLITICAL battle rather than an ethnic one (or whatever other ridiculous reason they may present), there will be no reconciliation. It is only logical to assume that there can be no greater evil than one that systematically killed its own people on religious or political grounds - and could not possibly be "on the good side" in any conflict. And since Kremlin is living proof of communists in sheep`s clothes (read: "siloviki"), nothing is likely to chance. FREEDOM OF SPEECH IS EITHER ABSOLUTE, OR IT IS NOT FREE.