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Google directed me to the following webpage: Ludwik, 1) You continue to spout utter falsehoods about Soviet history. You wrote: "Kulaks" were not "productive peasants." This is absurd, nonsense. Kulaks were _exploiters_ who dominated the villages, preventing any kind of democratic voice by poor peasants. If famine was to be ended -- as it was -- and more democratic norms to be established in the villages, the power of the rich over the poor had to be broken. This has never been a peaceful process in any country. 2) And forget the "slaves" B.S. Prisoners work in most countries, as in the US. And it is NOT true that prisoners were moved around in "cattle cars" or "box cars", as you have stated in the past. If you don't call prisoners in US prisons "slaves", then it is also false to call prisoners in the USSR "slaves." This is just more irrational hatred and lies. 3) Do you ever bother to read what you yourself write? It is nonsense to say "hate of all Germans" was promoted. By your own words, hatred was promoted only of German INVADERS (nemetskim zakhvatchikam). 4) I can't spend sufficient time to refute all the lies in all your emails. You yourself are filled with irrational hatred, which has robbed you of any concern for the truth. 5) And you think you honor your late father by doing this! For shame, Ludwik! 1) I hope those who are more familiar with Russian and Soviet history will comment on what the professor wrote about kulaks. 2) There is a big difference between how prisoners are used in the USA today, as far as I know, and how they were used in Gulag camps. Gulag was a big industry based on the labor of prisoners. That is why I think of them as “slaves.” Solzhenitsyn referred to them as “zeks.“ He wrote that “it is very easy to prove that the zeks of Archipelago constitute a class of society.” Millions of them share the same “relation to production.” I am quoting from a Chapter entitled “The Zeks as a Nation.” In a footnote (page 502) he does explain the difference between them and “outcasts in Western countries.” 3) I lived in the Soviet Union and I know that all Germans, and their families at home, were said to be mortal enemies. The day-to day slogan was “biej niemcow” (kill Germans). That is why wars and revolutions are so horrible. 4) What is described in my book, and in my email messages, does not consists of lies. Most often I am reporting what was described by survivors of Gulag, such as Evgenia Ginzburg. Was she a liar? Please read her book; it is in our library. Please recommend it to your students. 5) I believe that those who were killed by Stalin wanted the entire world to know about brutality and violence practiced by Stalinist regime. Speaking for them is a moral obligation for me. They, like survivors of the Holocaust, were not liars. Ludwik: It is amazing to that you write about matters you have never researched at all. No wonder what you write is false. When a person refuses to do any research on the subject he writes about, it's inevitable that what he writes is mainly false. It's fair to call these falsehoods "lies", since any responsible person -- particularly an academic, researcher, and scholar like yourself -- could have tried to verify his assertions but chose not to do so. One small example from your last email will suffice. You keep citing Evgeniia S.Ginzburg's memoir, over and over. . . . She has certainly been accused of lying in her book, and those accusations come from conservatives and ferocious anticommunists. Here is a passage by Lesniak, a fellow prisoner and one who knew her after their release: . . . (text in Russian). For those who do not know Russian, the gist of this is that Lesniak accuses Ginzburg of lying about the conditions of one of her places of imprisonment, which she describes as extremely bad, while HE describes it as extremely good, a very privileged place of imprisonment. Famed "dissident" Varlaam Shalamov wrote about Ginzburg: (also in Russian). (Shalamov, also a fellow prisoner with Ginzburg, says that she is lying about her life during her imprisonment.) These are serious criticisms, and calls into doubt the rest of her memoir. If the only parts of her memoir that can be verified are alleged to have been falsified, what does that suggest about the rest of it? There's been a partial edition of her investigative file. The editor and publisher, Alter Litvin, is a professor at Kazan' State University and a ferocious anticommunist (I have found him to be a very dishonest researcher as well). I've only read a bit about this edition, but enough to know that she lied about her name, for some reason. For a person like yourself who accepts Ginzburg's account uncritically this should be a wake-up call, Ludwik. There is simply no excuse for your refusal to do any research at all, and to publish stupid lies as you do. Another example of your stupid lies is your recent post to OpEd news about the assassination of Kirov. You "conclude" that Stalin had him killed. This question has been studied over and over again, by ferocious anticommunists who really wanted to find evidence that Stalin did it. They were unable to do so, and every scholar, even the worst of them, now concludes that Stalin had nothing to do with Kirov's assassination. But how would you know this? You never do any research! It's one thing to remain ignorant yourself. That's your business! It's quite another when you recommend that others read your ignorant and dishonest posts and your equally ignorant and dishonest book. 1) I do not think that my book is dishonest; it is about what I really know and think about Stalinism. Is it ignorant? It depends what this adjective stands for. I am not expert. But I did a lot of research; the 52 references, at the end of the book, did not fall from the sky. 2) Ginzburg was one of many Gulag survivors quoted in my book. Was Stanislaw K. a liar? Was Michael S. a liar? Was Varlam S. a liar? What they, and many others, wrote confirms that Gulag was a man-made Òhell on earth.Ó 3) Why should my reliance on selected references be called dishonest while your reliance on Lesniak or Litvin be called honest? 4) X3 wrote: ÒEVERY SCHOLAR, even the worst of them, now concludes that Stalin had nothing to do with Kirov's assassination.Ó Hmm,ÊI was not aware of that. And those who disagree are not scholars, by definition. Right?ÊWho does this remind me of? |