By Andrew L. Jaffee
Every time I bring up the Holocaust, the same thing happens. Some of the people want Hitler’s genocide to be the archetype of a people’s suffering, denying others their right to bring similar atrocities to light. Some want to deny it (like current Iranian President Ahmadinejad). Some want to straddle the line or apologize: “There would have been no Hitler if not for the reparation payments put upon Germany after World War I.” What are we to do, create a chart ranking peoples’ suffering: “mine was worse than yours?” These were all horrors. Calling one a genocide while not allowing another to call it a holocaust is sophistry. Denial is just historic ignorance — or caused by some ulterior motive, like racism.
By far, the biggest “controversies” arise when I compare Hitler’s genocide to the various communist atrocities of the same century. The extreme leftists always get upset because it challenges their beliefs about “socialism.” They tend to subscribe to the Leninist adage, “The ends justify the means.” Some get defensive, or perhaps feel a tad bit guilty, because, after all, Stalin helped us defeat Hitler, never mind the fact that he murdered millions of innocents himself. And some say that communist atrocities were secular — not motivated by ethnic divisions. (Yes, I know: Stalin was from Georgia).
Take the Russian communist atrocities. These were in fact racially/ethnically motivated. During the reign of the Soviets, which was basically a Russian-dominated endeavor, with help from plenty of indigenous collaborators, the motivation was precisely ethnic cleansing (Ukraine, Estonia, etc.).
Why do I emphasize Russian complicity in Soviet atrocities? Simple: Some have tried to paint the Soviet Union as some kind of distinctly “communist” phenomena. That’s like saying Germans had nothing to do with the Nazi Party during WWII. Sorry to disappoint the historical revisionists, but let’s give credit where credit is due. According to the U.S. Library of Congress:
The ethnic composition of the [Soviet communist] party reflected further disproportions between the party and the population as a whole (see table 26, Appendix A). In 1922 the share of Russian members in the party exceeded their proportion of the population by 19 percent. Since that time, the gap between Russians and other nationalities has narrowed. In 1979 Russians constituted 52 percent of the Soviet population; however, they constituted 60 percent of the party in 1981. Moreover, the percentage of Russians in the party apparatus was probably even greater than their percentage in the party as a whole.
After the mass slaughters, intensive Russification was carried out in the Soviet “republics.” Selective murders were carried out by the KGB and NKVD for 50 years to quell indigenous cultural expression. For example, the Latvian and Estonian nations were pushed to the brink of extinction through policies of forced language learning, outlawing of cultural/religious practices, and by encouraging huge numbers of Russians to emigrate to the “republics.” Estonia ended up with a 42% Russian population while Latvia ended with a 30% Russian population. If not for these peoples’ tenacity, and a little help from Reagan, ex-pats, etc., the attempted genocide would have been completed.
All the occupied republics had resources which Russians either needed or wanted. As Orwell said, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The commissars got personal dachas, pocketed local tax revenues, and exercised unlimited power. It was good being at the top.
Before the Soviets, the czars ruled most of the later-labeled “republics.” The “greater Russia” concept, that Russians were a master race that deserved to rule the inferior satellites, was simply carried on by Soviet czars.
Go to Lithuania. Go to Turkmenistan. Ask the locals about how the Russians ruled them, czar or commissar alike. Ask the people there how they viewed Russian domination. The Russian neo-imperialists are still talking of a “greater Russia.”
The Russian rulers mistreated the satellites for power and greed. Their master plan was to fill nations like Estonia up with Russians until there was nothing left but Russians. The satellites were inferiors (and were resented for their economic successes), just as the Nazis considered the Jews. Remember that Hitler had the same plan for countries like Lithuania. He planned to work the populaces to death, and then fill the nations with German settlers.
It was racist, plain and simple.
Stalin systematically eliminated Crimea’s Tartars. Hitler killed the Jews, gays, and gypsies. Saddam gassed the Kurds. The Teutonic Knights exterminated every last living Prussian (the Baltic people; before Germans ever lived there). American settlers fed diseased cattle to Native Americans. Five years after Cortez’ arrival in Mexico, 70% of the indigenous peoples were dead.
Is one tragedy more equal than the others? Does it matter as long as we remember the mantra, “Never forget; never again?”
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