Comments on Holocaust Controversies: And now for something not completely different...

You do not have to post in your native language on...

2009-06-07T21:59:04.439+01:00

You do not have to post in your native language on the internet. Just because he is Russian does not mean Sergey does not know English.

Even if he does not, he is posting on an English blog and HTML text programs allow for said text to be translated.

Still he could be a non_Russian user masquerading as one but I do not see the logic in that.

Typical example of Sergey wasting talented people'...

2007-11-21T13:47:00.000Z

Typical example of Sergey wasting talented people's time.

BTW, this is the same Sergey Romanov (a Russian name) who claims to live in Moscow yet, somehow, mysteriously, he doesn't speak or write Russian?

Said in a handful of words; Sergey Romanov is a delusional liar.

I have published a long summary of Mukhin's Katyn...

2007-04-17T02:55:00.000+01:00

I have published a long summary of Mukhin's Katyn Detective on my site seek-the-truth-serve-the-people.blogspot.com as well as a criticism of Sergei Romanov and his slanders against Muhkin - truth is a struggle - Haisanlu

Goebbels Diary entry 8th May 1943 " unfortunately ...

2007-04-04T01:17:00.000+01:00

Goebbels Diary entry 8th May 1943 " unfortunately German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn .. it is essential that that this incident remains top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affiar would be dropped "

We still like under the shadow of Goebbels in the 21st century - read communism with the mask off about the Ukraine famine - same story - same author same lies !

Now we have a Romanov - mavbe even
a Royal Romanov carrying forward Goebbels work into the 21st century !

Concerning Fraudulent Documents there is a histor...

2007-04-03T14:42:00.000+01:00

Concerning Fraudulent Documents there is a history of those in the USSR , particularly about Beria coupled with the fact that even in very recent history Iraqi documents were falsified after the fall of Baghdad .

You can see them on the internet how they inserted George Galloways name - that's also passing by the Niger yellowcake forgery of recent times - why should we not be suspicious of the Katyn Yeltsin documents ?

Mr Romanov would like us to believe in the veracity of the Yeltsin documents - Yeltsin has a seeker after truth ! a pargaon of virtue !

One thing in this world I can be sure off - the dishonesty of Yeltsin and Bush - and those who serve them !

Mr Romanov may seek to serve power but do not abuse the word truth in the process.

Just Read all the exchanges - Question why did Goe...

2007-04-03T14:05:00.000+01:00

Just Read all the exchanges - Question why did Goebbels consider calling off the Nazi Katyn publicity show after Russian bodies were found ?

I don't know who are Mr Romanov but a seeker after truth you are not

The alternative "theory" for these burials is that...

2007-03-23T09:56:00.000Z

The alternative "theory" for these burials is that they were falsified by (then) "treacherous" KGB at the end of 1980s. Sorry if I don't buy it ...,

I don't buy it either. I believe that claims involving forgery or the planting of evidence are sufficiently "extraordinary" to require "extraordinary" evidence.

There are documents about those excluded from the ...

2007-03-22T15:03:00.000Z

There are documents about those excluded from the transports for camps (about 395 or so Poles sent to Gryazovets), and about those who were transported to the locales in question were but taken away at the last moment (Swianewicz, Romm).

For one person in the Ukrainian list who wasn't executed but rather sentenced to 5 years of labor (in 1941, I think) there is a marginal note on the list itself.

Concerning the number of bodies: the Russian exhumations weren't complete in any way. They didn't just dig up the whole burial site, they used probes and made digs only in some places. It seems that the purpose was the establishing of the existence of the graves and their content (documents and items were found which identified the graves as belonging to the Poles and established time of the burial; my friend A. Pamyatnykh took part in these excavations; here's his photo of a surprisingly fresh-looking newspaper found with one of the corpses:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/416287388_1dc15a247a_o.jpg

The reason it is in such a good state probably relates to adipocere formation and soil conditions.)

They found the remains of no less than 167 Poles in Kharkov, no less than 243 Poles near Kalinin/Tver, and no less than 13 in Katyn. (No less - because the remains are usually counted by one feature, such as right tibial bone, etc.). Sum this with Burdenko's 1380, and you'll get 1,803.

As far as I am aware, during later (again, non-complete) exhumations in Mednoe near Kalinin the remains of no less than ~2000 Poles were found by Kola's team. Which only goes to show that one cannot simply rely on the number of remains that "have been found" when the investigations are not complete.

The alternative "theory" for these burials is that they were falsified by (then) "treacherous" KGB at the end of 1980s. Sorry if I don't buy it ...

And I can assume that these documents for transfer...

2007-03-22T12:35:00.000Z

And I can assume that these documents for transferring do indeed show them being transferred to the place of execution, without any reasonable possibility that some may have been excluded for whatever reason? Because there does seem to be a large difference in the number of bodies found vs. number of people transported there. Of course, as with the Holocaust, if a large number of people were transported to the area and disappeared without any possible explanation, it's pretty safe to assume they died there.

If that's the case I am certainly not going to question it, and I have yet to see any compelling evidence that the Germans did this.

People like Furr bark up the wrong tree, because no matter how much of Stalin's record you actually refute(e.g. the "man-made" famine), the only useful lesson of Stalin is that under extreme circumstances you cannot take conciliatory or opportunistic positions.

Other than that, what practical information can we use from the Stalin era in modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus? Collectivization is out- beyond a few changes here and there, there is no need to make massive reforms in agriculture, and there is no rapid industrialization to necessitate increased food production.

As for heavy industry, it's already here. Light industry also exists now as well. Stalin's policies were aimed at industrialization and defense, and since at least the first condition has long since been accomplished, there is little we can gain from the Stalin experience on that matter.

Then there is the matter of democracy, which Furr writes about at length. Stalin was not able to accomplish the democratic reforms of the 1936 constitution, but should that matter? W.P. Cockschott, co-author of the New Socialism, sees the problem not with pluralities or secret ballots but with the republic itself, favoring a form of direct democracy that is only possible within a socialist context.

So unless a revolutionary Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus should find itself in dire conditions due to foreign intrigue, there is little from the Stalin experience which can be practically applied.

As for the Stalin-worshippers like the National Bolsheviks, they are simply idealistic idiots who deserve no regard.

I am sorry for the digression but I must make it clear that I won't support any kind of Katyn revisionism unless they can somehow come up with sufficient proof to refute what is already out there.

There are far more important issues, such as Yuschenko and elements like him who want to criminalize "denial" of the "Ukrainian genocide". They are trying to sneak it by via associating it with the Holocaust, which is simply ludicrous.

All figures are from original Soviet documents. 15...

2007-03-22T10:58:00.000Z

All figures are from original Soviet documents. 15,131 Poles from three camps, and at least 7,305 Poles from prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia were transported in a single mass action (see below) in the spring of 1940 to the places of execution in Kharkov, Smolensk, Kalinin and elsewhere.

The last number is in fact only a minimum, as it is actually the number of files on the prisoners, which were available in KGB archives in 1959. There may have been more originally, as the number of files on the Poles from the three camps was already incomplete in 1959 by several hundreds.

But even if the "real" number exceeds 7,305, that's not by much. This stems from the fact in the existing Ukrainian list of transported prisoners there are more than 3,000 names. I.e. about half of executed prisoners were from Ukraine, and another half from Belorussia, which fact more or less meshes with the numbers of transfer lists (see more about the Ukrainian list here).

I.e. it is safe to use the minimum round number 22,000.

So if we add the number that the GVP admits, plus ...

2007-03-22T09:40:00.000Z

So if we add the number that the GVP admits, plus the number the Germans dug up, we still don't get anything approaching numbers like 15,000 or 22,000. Where are they coming up with figures like that? Or did the third excavation turn up the difference?

Jasha, if BBC article actually said that, they mis...

2007-03-21T21:08:00.000Z

Jasha, if BBC article actually said that, they misunderstood.
1803 is a sum of quantities of corpses exhumed by the Soviet and Russian authorities in Katyn, Mednoje and Pyatikhatki.

This number includes 1380 bodies dug up by Burdenko's commission and blamed on Germans. (I can give you the exact breakdown, if you wish. Also note that 1380 is the total number of the bodies, exhumed by Burdenko's group, but sometimes you can see the number 925 - that's because the work continued for a couple more days after the report had been drafted).

Note that GVP (the Chief Miltary Prosecutors' Office) did not take the German findings into account, but at the same time it did ascribe the bodies dug up by Burdenko to the Soviet executioners. This alone sets the question - the number "1,803" is a mere technicality, but qualitatively the question is settled by the GVP.

I should note that GVP also did not take into account Prof. Andrzej Kola's excavations, which unearthed thousands of remains.

GVP chose to "minimize" the numbers by using technicalities (and here I should stress that they never claimed that 1,803 is the complete number!), but that should not stop historians to make their own conclusions, especially as documents are available to make more complete conclusions. That's where "justice" and history part ways, it seems.

All this said, I should repeat that GVP's conclusions automatically put the blame for the whole massacres (not just the shooting of 1,803 Poles) on NKVD, because even if we didn't have the shooting order, etc., GVP's conclusions would still establish the burials of (at least) hundreds of Poles executed by NKVD in Mednoje, Katyn and Pyatikhatki, those same Poles that had been transferred near Kalinin, Smolensk and Kharkov in spring of 1940, and at least 1380 of which the Soviet side claimed the Germans had killed.

While Furr has discovered some interesting facts a...

2007-03-21T15:39:00.000Z

While Furr has discovered some interesting facts about other aspects of the Stalin era, I do not like his methodology or writing style. He seems to throw up a lot of paper tigers. I think the main question of Katyn is how many people were actually killed there.

A recent BBC article I saved said that the number of dead at Katyn was actually around 1800. Granted, there may still be some secret documents out there, but unless there is some more complete list, 1800 or so is all that can be proven. If someone has references to actual documents stating otherwise, I am open to seeing it.

Given the politics of Poland at the time, I think the numbers make a difference because it is worth finding out exactly who these officers were and why they were executed.

Other than that, the next time Poland bitches at Russia about something that happened in 1940, we should ask them if they have any accurate figures on civilian deaths in Iraq, since they must bear some amount of responsibility for that debacle.

As for Furr, I am not a big fan of the PLP, and organization he seems friendly toward, assuming he isn't a member. Marxists are supposed to be critical thinkers, and should abstain from resorting to the tactics used by Bourgeois media pundits. I believe that the key issue in the record of Stalin isn't trying to deny every accusation against the Stalin government, but rather in analyzing the unique conditions of that era, that time, and also the actual power and influence of Stalin in these events.

The slander against Stalin and existing socialism proceeds primarily from the tactic of divorcing real(though sometimes exagerrated) events from their historical context, so that the reader cannot make parallels between the era of the early Soviet Union and other capitalist states.