xtisme, in another thread cited a figure cited by Cecil, which refers to the “historian” Rummell, the effect that Vladimir Lenin killed 4 million people. I thought that deserved a thread all its own. For once I would like to see somebody back up one of these outrageous claims.
Sandino, the cite above shows that Rummel calculates 3.2 million killed in the period 1917-22 as a result of the Russian civil war. Clearly, Rummel is no fan of communism, but what is your specific objection to the number cited? Also, would you mind explaining why you feel R. J. Rummel is a “historian” rather than a historian, and perhaps cite a number of dead that you feel is correct?
Why, there were no dead, El Kabong! The utter rightness and logical correctness of Communism preceded Lenin’s presence and converted the whole of Mother Russia without anyone needing to flex a trigger finger!
My god, it’s a thread where I agree whole-heartedly with Brutus…the world has about 24 hours to live, I swear…
I gather that the OP is referring strictly to ethnic and political executions such as what went on in Nazi death camps. A person killed in a civil war is equally dead, but I can’t think of that in the same light as an execution. After all, we don’t attribute all the deaths of the American Civil War to Abraham Lincoln.
Though I don’t doubt that many such atrocities were committed by the Lenin government. Wasn’t there ship whose entire complement was executed for some sort of insubordination?
Don’t just blame the Reds, boys, or you might just miss our own body count.
Nobody has clean hands.
Nobody.
The best single symbol of Mankind is not the Apollo astronaut planting the flag on the Moon, it’s a caveman bludgeoning his neighbor to death, raping his wife, & then snatching up their infant by the ankles & dashing out his brains on the rocks.
We are all howling savages. We are apes that have learned to wear hats. We are the Goblin, the Werewolf, the Klingon, the Boogeyman under all of our own beds.
And don’t you ever forget it. 
Basda:
Ch’ak ti gatht, Neplath! That’s not real Klingon, I just made it up, but it means “take your meds and settle down.”
I hear that away too much around here.
Not at all true. We’re much, much worse.
We don’t kill because we’re burte animals (well, usually). We don’t kill because we’re psychotic warriors or boogeymen. We kill because want something and someone gets in our way, or because we just want to kill somebody for kicks. An animal kills because it’s hungry, or scared. Humans choose to kill, because we want to. We like it. We’re no animals - we’re demons.
Of course, we’re also angels as well, so I suppose it all comes down to this question: which would you rather be? Darth Vader or Sauron, or Luke Skywalker or Gandalf?
When it comes down it, we’re not demons and we never pretended to be angels. We don’t want to try and rule the world, or we could have, and we know we’re not holy. But we are as good as they come, and we actually regret our mistakes, without being drowned in them. I think thats an important distinction.
We conquered the Phillipines and Cuba, then realized that we didn’t have a damned clue why we’d done it and let them both go. We were at Versailles (well, technically Versailles 2), but we tried to make things easy on Germany. We burned Germany and Japan to the ground and them put it all back up. Why? Because we though it was the decent thing to do. And, strangely enough, it seemed like doing it was going to help us out. That’s just the way we are. Doing well by doing right. It works for us, and a lot of other places can honestly say they never even tried it.
Yeah, we’re not perfect, but we tried and still try. Everybody has blood on their hands. But we can live with ours, because, well, because we couldn’t live with ours if it was fresh. Its probably not possible for us to not be killers, but at least we try to make the world better to pay it back for the oceans of blood we spilled.
We sent troops to fight the Reds in Russia, because, hell, the Czar’d been pretty friendly to us and the Reds were bastards, anyway.
But there is one thing you don’t want to see. America is one of the nicest places on earth. And we think we’re pretty nice folks, too. But don’t forget we have the demon down here, as well. And our demon isn’t a flaming angry beast, burning everything in its path. Its a creature of shadow and implacable, relentless hatred. It starts around the edges, and it swallows up everything in its path. Once it gets out, there is nothing and no one that can stop it. Its swallows and annihilates every scrap of civilization of that it hunts. The shadow passes over you, and for a just a moment you can’t even begin to understand the Hell you just unleashed, but its there and its hungry and its wants your soul. And then we crush you.
What comes out of that is never what went in. Yeah, in a way we are worse than every conquerer in history. Many fo them slaughtered whole peoples, enslaved civilzations, and called themselves great for it. We know its evil on some level, and we’ll do it anyway. And when we get done, we’ll have ripped out your soul and consumed your strength. And then we’ll leave, and go back to our jobs and our families and act like nothing ever happened.
Because there is no wrath like the wrath of the just.
Thanks for the informative, fact-filled post, Bosda.
In fairness, ascribing the 3.2 million dead to Vladimir Lenin is sort of like ascribing all 50 million killed in WWII to Winston Churchill. Even if you apply a lot of blame to Lenin for “starting” the civil war, we’re talking about casualties in a war that was enthusiastically fought by both sides. I am certain Lenin would have been as happy as anyone if the Whites had rolled over and the battles never fought.
Rummell’s own estimates figure the war itself as being the cause of most of the deaths in the 1917-1922 period; the number of persons murdered by the Communist regime in that period is only part of the 2-4 million dead. Not that they didn’t murder a lot of people, but let’s get the numbers straight in comparisons. All Rummell’s numbers include war deaths; I mean, I know Communists killed a lot of innocent people, but let’s bear in mind that the Nazis had a lot to do with the death rate in the USSR from 1941 to 1945.
ummm …
when I said that I would like some justification for this figure, throwing doubt onto Rummell’s credibility, I was hoping for something more than a link to Rummell’s website.
I understand that Rummell claims 4 million killed by Lenin. I was hoping that somebody could present some evidence to back up this claim . . . apart from simply linking to Rummell.
Well, Rummell is a lying ass. Claiming that the leader of a revolution is responsible for those killed during a civil war is quite insane, especially when Lenin did not exactly chose to have a civil war. This claim of Rummell’s is quite grotesque, actually. The revolution itself was almost bloodless, with a total of ten people killed on all sides in Petrograd.
It was the bloodthirsty imperialists who have the blame for the millions killed in the civil war, NOT THOSE DEFENDING THEMSELVES!
smiling bandit, can I use your post in my history class? That summation of the American psyche is the most colorful and succinct I have read. I am sure my students will get some meaning out of it that will help them understand US History a little better.
Seemed a little self indulgent to me.
If I hadn’t hit close to the bullseye, RickJay, you wouldn’t have jumped quite so high.
There was a great Marxist named Lenin
who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in,
but where he did one in,
that grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.
(Does anyone know where this is from? It’s my favorite limerick, and while it’s only tangential to the thread, I figured others might enjoy it too.)
Daniel
That’s not what Rummell is saying, though. In fact, he comes right out and says that he’s not counting the deaths in the civil war as democide. Here’s his chart, with his sources, and how he comes up with his numbers.
Welp, here are Rummell’s sources. Have fun reading and debunking them - there are a hell of a lot of them.
IOW, Rummell didn’t make the number up.
Problem - Rummell didn’t make this claim. Kindly recheck the title of his book - Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Rummell does not assert that Lenin picked up a pistol and shot 3.2 million people, nor even that Lenin bore primary responsibility. Instead, he is reporting on what the Soviets did, that is, the CPSU. To quote from his preface:
And, of course, Rummell makes a clear distinction between deaths caused by war and deaths caused by democide - to wit, organized murder.
It is improper to call someone a “lying ass” when one doesn’t even know what the person said is, umm, foolhardy.
Sua
Now this is gonna be fun to chew on. If I’d only kept my LoC card current…
Your card should still be current. I’ve had mine for 6 years and it’s still good. I don’t think they expire.
If you please. Just credit it to Patrick Bryant if you print it out.
And yes, it was self-indulgent.