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Ukraine

You were talking about 'Soviet atrocities' at first (re bombing and shelling of civilians). You've been moving the goal posts the last few. I haven't got a clue what you want now, tbh.

I have not moved the goalposts at all. I am unsure what difference it makes if you are shelling civilians from the ground or air except some sort of perverse 'efficiency' angle.

There is 1,000,000 displaced, thousands dead and the conflict is not over. That seems pretty brutal, and pretty standard for a fairly inhumane military operation like those conducted by the Soviets/Russians/Americans/British/etc. For posters to argue that Russian imperialist atrocities are unforgivable is fine. Where is the outrage when 'poor little' Ukraine does the same thing (with a population the size of Spain and the biggest landmass (behind Russia) in Europe)?
 

Yes, by Soviet bombers. Kandahar was also flattened.

At first you were talking about Ukrainian actions as being up there with Soviet atrocities, but unclear about when, where and and what kind of atrocities were carried out. Then it becomes after WWII, and then you demand the most copper-bottomed comparisons be made while not being so good yourself.
 
Yes, by Soviet bombers. Kandahar was also flattened.

At first you were talking about Ukrainian actions as being up there with Soviet atrocities, but unclear about when, where and and what kind of atrocities were carried out. Then it becomes after WWII, and then you demand the most copper-bottomed comparisons be made while not being so good yourself.

What do you mean? So its not hypocritical in the slightest that Ukraine complains about Russian imperialism and atrocities, while they themselves are flattening any area which has refused to owe fealty to the authorities in Kyiv?
 
Yes, by Soviet bombers. Kandahar was also flattened.

At first you were talking about Ukrainian actions as being up there with Soviet atrocities, but unclear about when, where and and what kind of atrocities were carried out. Then it becomes after WWII, and then you demand the most copper-bottomed comparisons be made while not being so good yourself.

I suppose you could look at comparative military operations before WWII, keeping in mind context.
 
What do you mean? So its not hypocritical in the slightest that Ukraine complains about Russian imperialism and atrocities, while they themselves are flattening any area which has refused to owe fealty to the authorities in Kyiv?

Looking for an argument that no-one else is having, hanging positions on others that they themselves don't hold? How popular is the rebel's (some of them imported fighters) cause? How many in the east are simply people scared for their lives while two imperialisms battle it out in their neighbourhoods and drop bombs on their homes?

And what is this talk about Chechnya, the two wars occurring after the Soviet Union ceased to exist? I thought we were talking about the USSR.
 
While the Ukrainians ( or their leaders) may be dodgy, Russian has displayed an imperialist savagery with all its colonies who dared oppose them.

That's where this all began, I felt that was unfair. I realise from an historical perspective there is subtle differences between Soviet and Russian expansionism (particularly for Ukrainian people). Violent Panda asked me to quantify similar atrocities involving Russia. I could have just as easily used any example of any imperial power. Soviet and Russian examples seemed more apt since we were discussing Russian "imperialist savagery".

In the end, I generally think Ukraine is primarily at fault here. They could have done a deal with rebels early enough, losing a bit face, but finishing with a Ukrainian flag-waving circle jerk. I doubt that is possible now.
 
Donetsk-Luhansk Uprising: 2,119 Ukrainians killed according to the United Nations (not including Crimea and Odessa) 188,216-730,000 Ukrainians fled to Russia, 155,800 people displaced within the country
(Ukrainian Russian estimates of casualties will be higher)

Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia: 108 civilians killed, over 500 wounded.
(Probably Czech estimates)

Guerrilla War in the Baltic States

Estonia: 561 killed, 4285 injured,
Latvia: 1,458 killed, 5052 injured,
Lithuania: 20,093 (does not specify injured/deaths)
(Probably Baltic states estimates)

First Battle of Grozny:
No figures, Russian estimates 4,000 Chechen estimates 40,000 (Second battle will be something similar)

Uprising of Herat (actually undertaken by Democratic Republic of Afghanistan): 3,000–25,000 dead

You said "What Ukraine is doing in the east ranks up there with the worst of Soviet atrocities.". The above is quite selective. No figures fr forced population shifts, for example.
Basically you're attempting (badly) to propagandise Russia's "civilised behaviour" measured against the perfidious Ukrainian fascists. Try harder.
 
That's where this all began, I felt that was unfair. I realise from an historical perspective there is subtle differences between Soviet and Russian expansionism (particularly for Ukrainian people). Violent Panda asked me to quantify similar atrocities involving Russia. I could have just as easily used any example of any imperial power. Soviet and Russian examples seemed more apt since we were discussing Russian "imperialist savagery".

In the end, I generally think Ukraine is primarily at fault here. They could have done a deal with rebels early enough, losing a bit face, but finishing with a Ukrainian flag-waving circle jerk. I doubt that is possible now.

No, I asked you to quantify what you meant by "What Ukraine is doing in the east ranks up there with the worst of Soviet atrocities.", not to do an exercise in comparable atrocities.
 
Ukraine is a proxy of the West.

Nope. Elements of the government of part of Ukraine are playing proxies to western interests.
I know you dislike nuance - it's troublesome when propagandising - but do at least acknowledge that it exists, at least once in a while.

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan undertook the aerial bombing of Herat.

And who were the DRA, and who pulled their strings, paid for war materiel, and trained their personnel, up to and including flying some of their planes for them?
 
You said "What Ukraine is doing in the east ranks up there with the worst of Soviet atrocities.". The above is quite selective. No figures fr forced population shifts, for example.
Basically you're attempting (badly) to propagandise Russia's "civilised behaviour" measured against the perfidious Ukrainian fascists. Try harder.

She had to be careful and make it post-war as well, otherwise the Stalinists would win.
 
They had some new toys to play with in Afghanistan, didn't they? Like the Derg's conflict with Somalia and helping the Vietnamese kick Pol Pot's forces out of Cambodia (supplying helicopter gunships).

IIRC correctly for the Ogaden war with Somalia the Dergue used mainly American kit (tanks and fighters) left over from Haile Selassie's time.
 
No, I asked you to quantify what you meant by "What Ukraine is doing in the east ranks up there with the worst of Soviet atrocities.", not to do an exercise in comparable atrocities.

She had to be careful and make it post-war as well, otherwise the Stalinists would win.

They're up there with the worst. I suppose the series of purges in the 1930s. Katyn maybe (22,000 dead). We're talking about a million people being forced from their homes in a couple months, god knows how many arrests, and how many executions. We don't even have the final casualty figures yet. Looks like it will be a lot higher than those currently reported.

Not sure it can get much worse than the destruction of towns.
 
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Nope. Elements of the government of part of Ukraine are playing proxies to western interests.
I know you dislike nuance - it's troublesome when propagandising - but do at least acknowledge that it exists, at least once in a while.

And who were the DRA, and who pulled their strings, paid for war materiel, and trained their personnel, up to and including flying some of their planes for them?

The point about DRA is fucking ridiculous in light of the previous sentences. I made that point because it is fucking stupid to say DRA were acting without Soviet approval and connivance. Just like it is fucking stupid to say Ukraine is acting without American approval and connivance. Its not nuance, its semantics... Elements of the government of part of Afghanistan are playing proxies to Soviet interests. -- See how easy that is?

I'll leave you to describe which 'elements' (of an otherwise blameless ruling class?) are corrupting 'part of' Ukrainian politics.
 
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thing is, I actually think they might as well make transnistria independent, if were going to look in terms of independence claims having validity, I don't agree with nation states etc etc but its got about the same "right" to independence as does Kosovo, (and negotiations around its status during the last 15 years involve transnistrian representatives as well) I just don't think that we should have any illusions in the putin govt etc

The Transnistrian government ( !) is well up for it, the russians have expressed theoretical support for the creation of another Kalingrad like oblast, but are not committing to actually doing anything about it - though Transnistrians have recently been enrolled in the Russian pension system and Moscow is producing new plastic money ( like coins) for them. Moldova has issues apart from the never ending tension with the 'nistrians - the currently autonomous Gagauzia ( ethnic turkish ) is looking likely to opt for full statehood very soon cos of Moldovas formal cosying up to the EU of late.sorta polar opposites of the Kosovo story, but an interesting indication of the forces at work in the 'hood.

It doesnt help that their only real product is wine n shit, all of which will be verboten in the CIS should Moldova side with the EU.
 
They're up there with the worst. I suppose the series of purges in the 1930s. Katyn maybe (22,000 dead). We're talking about a million people being forced from their homes in a couple months, god knows how many arrests, and how many executions. We don't even have the final casualty figures yet. Looks like it will be a lot higher than those currently reported.

Not sure it can get much worse than the destruction of towns.

Leaving aside imprisonment and forced labour, In 1937-38 alone (during the NKVD's mass operations) nearly 700,000 people were arrested and executed. Also, it is worthwhile to remember that the purging of the Soviet government and military structures was only one part of it, most were ordinary people considered to be social marginals, anti-Soviet or backward elements who, as the residue of ex-appropriated classes considered hostile to the revolution, were still seen as a threat to the establishment of socialism.

We haven't gone into the forced population transfers before and during the war involving the deportation of entire 'enemy' peoples from their homes to other parts of the USSR.

The point about DRA is fucking ridiculous in light of the previous sentences. I made that point because it is fucking stupid to say DRA were acting without Soviet approval and connivance. Just like it is fucking stupid to say Ukraine is acting without American approval and connivance. Its not nuance, its semantics... Elements of the government of part of Afghanistan are playing proxies to Soviet interests. -- See how easy that is?

I'll leave you to describe which 'elements' (of an otherwise blameless ruling class?) are corrupting 'part of' Ukrainian politics.

We were talking about the indiscriminate attacks on urban areas in Ukraine and them being 'up there with the worst of Soviet atrocities.'

In matters of context and scale, and while also acknowledging the historical specificities, the pounding of Herat (notice you missed out 1983) by Soviet aircraft flown by Soviet pilots dropping Soviet explosives which killed and maimed thousands of Afghan civilians, would be more appropriate than the Yezhovshchina? I'm giving you a helping hand here.
 
Leaving aside imprisonment and forced labour, In 1937-38 alone (during the NKVD's mass operations) nearly 700,000 people were arrested and executed. Also, it is worthwhile to remember that the purging of the Soviet government and military structures was only one part of it, most were ordinary people considered to be social marginals, anti-Soviet or backward elements who, as the residue of ex-appropriated classes considered hostile to the revolution, were still seen as a threat to the establishment of socialism.

We haven't gone into the forced population transfers before and during the war involving the deportation of entire 'enemy' peoples from their homes to other parts of the USSR.

We were talking about the indiscriminate attacks on urban areas in Ukraine and them being 'up there with the worst of Soviet atrocities.'

In matters of context and scale, and while also acknowledging the historical specificities, the pounding of Herat (notice you missed out 1983) by Soviet aircraft flown by Soviet pilots dropping Soviet explosives which killed and maimed thousands of Afghan civilians, would be more appropriate than the Yezhovshchina? I'm giving you a helping hand here.

Well, you and ViolentPanda wanted to use other (non-comparative) examples (namely the Stalinist purges). I am saying that with 1,000,000 people being forced from their homes, it is fair to say things don't get much worse than this. Sure, Stalin could executed people he did not like.

The figures I showed you suggest that it might include both the attacks on Herat by DRA and the Soviet Union (it is difficult to determine who died when).
 
At first you were vague as to the context and manner of Soviet era atrocities, then later you talked about only post-WWII.

What is happening in eastern Ukraine right now is 'up there' with the 'worst' of Stalinism?

As for Herat you at first only mentioned the 1979 response to a mutiny in the city.

This is getting very tedious now.
 
I see. I was talking about the gunships specifically, though. Is that right?

Yes, it turns out you're right. Also, when the Ogaden was finally retaken, it was with aid from the USSR:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070107093450/http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_188.shtml

As for the relevance of African examples to the present crisis in Ukraine, well, here's one I made earlier:

1. Many of the problems of the European project at the moment have been highlighted by the crisis of Ukraine. As some note, there is a provable and demonstrable presence of far-right and neo-Nazi groups at the Maidan protest site where the present crisis in Ukraine began. This was signaled by, for example, the use of the Celtic cross by some protestors at the Maidan. That cross may have been an old Celtic symbol, but it has been adopted by the far-right in Europe in recent decades. Are we to suppose that there was a hitherto unknown Irish community in Kiev which decided to join the Maidan demonstrations? Or is it more likely that those demonstrations were contaminated by the presence of fascist elements? Even if this latter question is answered in the affirmative, however, it does not mean that the present crisis in the Ukraine can be reduced simply to a matter of a fascist surge: equally reactionary and chauvinistic far-right elements can be identified on the pro-Russian side also. A more detailed consideration of the present Ukraine crisis would reveal that we cannot assume that this is just a repeat performance of earlier decades in European history (in any case, reasoning via historical analogy is only helpful up to a certain point, and beyond that point becomes actively unhelpful and even misleading).

What appears to me to be a major factor in this crisis is the failure of the post-Soviet oligarchy in Ukraine to become a cohesive and coherent ruling social bloc. Marx may have described the bourgeois class of his own time as a “band of warring brothers”, but it was a fact that the members of that class remained brothers allowed them to form stable states that could act as their collective “executive committees”. The failure of the post-Soviet Ukrainian elites to achieve this sort of coherence (and the fact that Russia has only been able to achieve via a revival of ‘Strongman’ rule) indicates that we are in this case (and possibly in others) in a new situation. During the interwar period, traditional ruling elites in many European states invited fascist movements into power in order to secure their own rule. While ultimately this led to catastrophic war, this manoeuvre was able to stabilize the political situation in at least some states, for at least some time (with well-known and disastrous costs to ethnic minorities and the working class).

What we see in the case of contemporary Ukraine is something closer to the ‘failed states’ in some parts of post-neoliberal Africa. There, disorder becomes a political tool which sections of the ruling group can draw upon in order to sustain their individual power, at the cost of the wider stability of the state, the economic development of their societies, and the well-being of the masses (Chabal and Daloz 1999: but see also Hungwe and Hungwe (2000) who criticize these authors for reproducing some stereotypical views of Africa and its crisis). The classic case would be Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) under the dictator Mobutu. During the 1970s, this autocratic ruler was regarded as a sort of African equivalent of the Iranian Shah - an autocrat, true, but one who was presiding over the rapid modernization of his country (Reno 2006: 44). In the 1980s, his policies led to IMF enforced austerity, popular suffering, and popular revolt. Mobutu secured his rule against the threat of this revolt by allowing not just a multi-party system, but one in which there were over two hundred separate political parties. This led to an opposition that was both divided and neutralized, and to an ongoing crisis of the post-Zairian Congolese state.

While it would be foolish to assume that this model is repeating itself in Eurasia, there does appear to me to be at least some sort of ‘family resemblance’ between them. My point here is that the crisis in Ukraine may be a harbinger not of greater Eurasian integration, nor even of a western Imperialist drive eastward, but rather of a greater disintegration of that space.
 
They had some new toys to play with in Afghanistan, didn't they? Like the Derg's conflict with Somalia and helping the Vietnamese kick Pol Pot's forces out of Cambodia (supplying helicopter gunships).

IIRC It was the first mass deployment of the Hind helicopter gunships, and they got to field test a lot of the munitions created for them, too. They also got to field test a fair bit of mobile artillery. :(
 
The point about DRA is fucking ridiculous in light of the previous sentences. I made that point because it is fucking stupid to say DRA were acting without Soviet approval and connivance. Just like it is fucking stupid to say Ukraine is acting without American approval and connivance. Its not nuance, its semantics... Elements of the government of part of Afghanistan are playing proxies to Soviet interests. -- See how easy that is?

I'll leave you to describe which 'elements' (of an otherwise blameless ruling class?) are corrupting 'part of' Ukrainian politics.

So nuance isn't nuance, it's semantics.
Except, of course, when it's you "doing" nuance.

:facepalm:
 
They're up there with the worst. I suppose the series of purges in the 1930s. Katyn maybe (22,000 dead). We're talking about a million people being forced from their homes in a couple months, god knows how many arrests, and how many executions. We don't even have the final casualty figures yet. Looks like it will be a lot higher than those currently reported.

How disingenuous can you get, comparing relatively-minor (in terms of numbers) atrocities like Katyn, and mass exodus. Apples and pears, chalk and cheese.

Not sure it can get much worse than the destruction of towns.

Then you're not too well-acquainted with post-Soviet historical scholarship, are you?

(Waits for DQ to dismiss the bulk of post-Soviet historical scholarship as "anti-Russian")
 
Well, preceding that I think she was ignorant of the scale of the NKVD mass repression, tbf. Mind you, union-wide such a thing as terror was background noise for a lot of people. That's not to diminish its awfulness, but those times were experienced differently depending on where, what and who you were.
 
@attackerman: "we are very concerned by the movement of a russian convoy across ukraine's border. we strongly condemn this action," says @PentagonPresSec

They were also talking about troop movement/buidlup near the border just now on the radio 6 news
 
Why do I get the impression that DairyQueen's intervention here has the potential knock-on effect of distracting us all from whatisface's disgraceful racist slur against frogwoman? Well, some of us have very long memories indeed, and if he shows his face here on this thread again, I for one will be reminding him of this, for sure.
 
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