Stalin's murders and the West

[Dave Monroe]

No doubt.  And, of course, many Nazis were actually tried for warcrimes, thus
necessitating documentation.  In the Soviet Union one simply did not have the
opportunity, and Stalin, who not only was not held accountable for his abuses,
also had no small control over the documentation thereof.  Although given
anticommunism in the postwar US--and I imagine that most who have actively
pursued the study and memorialization of the Holocaust are/were no fans of
Stalin, the USSR, communism, either--it's surprising that more wasn't done, if
only for propaganda purposes, to document the atrocities of Stalin's regime.
Point of coldwar diplomacy?  The problem of the US's own skeletons in the
closet?  At any rate, there seems to be no end of documentation ongoing these
days, for example, not that I've done much more than flip through it, Stephane
Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism ...

davemarc wrote:

> From: <kevin at limits.org>
>
> > One or two people have recently brought up the way the West (as in
> > countries west of the old "Iron Curtain") tends to ignore the fact that
> > Stalin killed 20 million Soviet citizens, at least it just doesn't get
> > talked about as much as Hitler's comparable atrocities.  Stalin built
> > gulags; Hitler built concentration camps, so what's the difference that
> > makes the West build a museum in Washington, DC about one and not the
> > other?
> >
> > The reasons are, of course, complicated, but I think the British comedian
> > Eddie Izzard really cuts to the chase:  his explanation is that, in the
> > perception of the West, Stalin killed his own people, whereas Hitler
> > killed his neighbors.
> >
> Here's another reason for the difference:  The survivors of Nazi genocide
> have made an unprecedented effort to keep the atrocities in the public
> conscience and bring perpetrators to justice.  Many survivors also happen to
> be politically active and dispersed around the world.  Furthermore, the many
> nations directly affected by the Holocaust and World War II were also home
> to most of the media of the Twentieth Century.  On top of that, there has
> been a major effort in the West (not only by historians and bureaucrats but
> by politicians and "the people") to document and otherwise "come to terms"
> with the Holocaust.
>
> d.