The Oil Drum: Europe

99 comments on More thoughts about Gazprom

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petersburger on October 23, 2006 - 8:07pm

In the Cold War, the US was on the Good Guys side. The USSR had no good redeeming features at all. Evil Empire was an apt and accurate description.

I don't think there were good guys on either side of the Cold War. The United States gave us Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the war in Indochina (over 3 million civilians killed - for what?), and supported some of the most brutal dictatorships (Chile, Indonesia, Iraq, etc.). The USSR gave us the suppression of uprisings in Eastern Europe (Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, among others), invasion of Afghanistan, and supported a bunch of communist dictatorships.

But, to say that the country that almost single-handedly defeated the Nazis in Europe, put the first man in space, pioneered women and minority rights well before the US, and created some of the best literature and art of the last century has no redeeming features? Sounds a bit ignorant.

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AlanfromBigEasy on October 23, 2006 - 8:54pm

Soviet Realism never appealed to my artistic senses. Any literature worth reading was not approved of and often surpressed.

Almost single handily defeated the Nazis in Europe overstates the case. Even Krushchev in is autobiography admits the value of American aid and the value of a two front war. Great Britain stood alone in 1940 and refused to negotiate. The Western front captured 350,000 in 1943. The value of the Allied aerial bombardment can be debated (it certain reduced German war production, kept 1 million soldiers at home, and much of the Luftwaffe and artillery occupied. How decisive was this to the German war effort ?). And the Soviet Union would never have entered Germany were it not for the Western Fronts.

One should also remember the war of aggression against Finland, which convinced Hitler that the Red Army was not a viable army since the Finns fought them to a standstill. And against China as well in the 1930s.

Meanwhile the US supplied the Chinese with enough aid to keep them in the war, and fought an ocean and island war over incrediable distances against the Japanese with their best troops.

Given the tens of millions that died in the Gulag, any talk of "equal rights" is meaningless, as in all had no rights what so ever, so all were equal.

And yes, the Soviets were first into space.