# Would Russia have failed in Afghanistan anyway ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2015, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128 "2015-10-19T12:47:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/81 "2015-10-20T19:03:50Z")
> [@XT](#): > > And your cite for this would be…? [Here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag) Every death is a tragedy – not a statistic. Suffering of GULAG prisoners was a tragedy. Suffering of SuperMax prisoners in 2015 is a tragedy. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/82 "2015-10-20T19:07:30Z")
> [@CCitizen](#): > > [Here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag) > > Every death is a tragedy – not a statistic. Here what? Your cite is only talking about the Gulag (as opposed to the REGIME, which is what my cite was actually talking about had you clicked on the link), and even your cite says: > [@](#): > > According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934–53 (there is no archival data for the period 1919–1934).[7] However, taking into account the likelihood of unreliable record keeping, and the fact that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death,[16][17] non-state estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher. Some independent estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953,[18] while other estimates go beyond 10 million.[19] So, JUST from the gulags we are talking between 1.6 million and over 10 million ALONE. > [@](#): > > Suffering of GULAG prisoners was a tragedy. Suffering of SuperMax prisoners in 2015 is a tragedy. How many millions of people die in SuperMax prisons each year in the US? Is it 1 or 2? Do you have a cite? ETA: And it would be nice if you are going to try and answer with a cite if you did more than a drive by link and quoted at least some of the relevant information you think demonstrates whatever point you are trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/83 "2015-10-20T19:08:31Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Happened in 1964…the US was involved in Vietnam prior to that. That was an excuse for us to become MORE involved, but we were still involved, and the conflict pre-dated US involvement in any case, going back to the 50’s with the French. But, ok…we’ll say the US was the aggressor in that one. Still sort of leaves Korea out, which was my original point. Fair enough. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/84 "2015-10-20T19:10:26Z")
> [@XT](#): > > So, JUST from the gulags we are talking between 1.6 million and over 10 million ALONE. The 1.6 million deaths is a tragedy. The higher figures are not substantiated. > [@XT](#): > > How many millions of people die in SuperMax prisons each year in the US? Is it 1 or 2? Do you have a cite? All SuperMax prisoners wish not to live – the suffering of long term solitary confinement is indescribable. ---
**Author:** ![MrQwertyasd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@MrQwertyasd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrQwertyasd)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/85 "2015-10-20T19:14:48Z")
Papillon’s time in solitary confinement was bad but bearable, according to his autobiography which I read. Some people, like Buddhist monks, live solitary lives by choice. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/86 "2015-10-20T19:18:44Z")
[QUOTE=CCitizen] The 1.6 million deaths is a tragedy. The higher figures are not substantiated. [/QUOTE] Considering how bad the record keeping was and how secretive the regime was this is a totally bullshit statement. You don’t have a cite so you are merely asserting this, again, with nothing to back you up. > [@](#): > > All SuperMax prisoners wish not to live – the suffering of long term solitary confinement is indescribable. The big difference being that those in the Supermax prisons are mostly EXTREMELY dangerous criminals, especially those in solitary confinement. People like the Unibomber or the Boston Bomber. The people in the Soviet era gulags were mainly just people who pissed off the communist party and/or leadership. The other difference being that there aren’t millions of people dying in Supermax prisons over time. So, it’s really an apples to orangutans comparison. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/87 "2015-10-20T19:23:06Z")
Call me crazy, but I think the death of someone at hard labor for thought crimes who had no recourse to a legal system is slightly more outrageous than the inhumane treatment of someone convicted of a serious crime for which they had an opportunity to plead their case. That doesn’t mean that being locked up 23.75 hours per day is not inhumane, of course. But someone being starved to death because they made a rude comment about Stalin is an indignity of a much higher level, IMO. **CCitizen** , are you inclined to believe that all infringements of civil liberties are equally outrageous? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/88 "2015-10-20T19:27:04Z")
> [@CCitizen](#): > > The 1.6 million deaths is a tragedy. The higher figures are not substantiated. > > All SuperMax prisoners wish not to live – the suffering of long term solitary confinement is indescribable. [Cited here](http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/gulag-understanding-the-magnitude-of-what-happened): > [@](#): > > Thanks to archives, we now know that there were at least **476 camp systems, each one made up of hundreds, even thousands of individual camps** or lagpunkts, sometimes spread out over thousands of square miles of otherwise empty tundra. We know that the vast majority of prisoners in them were peasants and workers, not the intellectuals who later wrote memoirs and books. We know that, with a few exceptions, the camps were not constructed in order to kill people– **Stalin preferred to use firing squads to conduct mass executions**. > Nevertheless they were, at times, very lethal: **Nearly one-quarter of the Gulag’s prisoners died during the war years**. They were also very fluid: Prisoners left because they died, because they escaped, because they had short sentences, because they were being released into the Red Army, or because they had been promoted from prisoner to guard. There were also frequent amnesties for the old, the ill, pregnant women, and anyone else no longer useful to the forced labor system. These releases were invariably followed by new waves of arrests. > As a result, between 1929, when they first became a mass phenomenon, and 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, some 18 million people passed through them. In addition, a further 6 or 7 million people were deported, not to camps but to exile villages. **In total, that means the number of people with some experience of imprisonment in Stalin’s Soviet Union could have run as high as 25 million, about 15 percent of the population.** ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/89 "2015-10-20T19:36:30Z")
> [@XT](#): > > The people in the Soviet era gulags were mainly just people who pissed off the communist party and/or leadership. The sad fact is that most people in GULAG were for theft. Any one of us would have stolen given the economic situation – yet theft during emergency years was punished severely. These were very hard times – industrialization in preparation to WWII, then WWII itself, then new industrialization and building a nuclear potential in order to avoid US aggression. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/90 "2015-10-20T19:37:56Z")
In USA today 160,000 people are serving life imprisonment, and there are about 100,000 Supermax prisoners. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/91 "2015-10-20T19:45:03Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > \*If we’re going to discuss the notion of “fuckups,” then the Russians still have their nukes, and **there’s far more possibility of a “fuckup” now then under the Soviets**. > > Just simply untrue for a variety of reasons, but let’s just mention one. Detargeting. Launch a missile 20 years ago and it was headed for a pre-determined target without further intervention. Today, launch that same missile and it’s headed off somewhere harmless. Someone would have to make the decision to target the missile at the other side, meaning that an accidental launch would not likely start WWIII. > > - So, nobody has **eliminated** the threat of an accidental nuclear exchange. > > “Eliminated” is a bogus standard. The odds of accidental launch are much less for many reasons, among them that the active strategic nuclear stockpile of each country is about a tenth of what it was just before the end of the Cold War. > > - Absolutely nothing was gained and **the risk of a “fuckup” is much worse (not to mention the risk of loose nukes**, which is also significantly worse). > > Rediculous. A huge amount was gained, and the idea of “loose nukes” is one of those sexy ideas that is great for movies and such, but isn’t a major national security concern for either country. That’s because billions of U.S. dollars were spent on the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to buy up hundreds of tons of fissile material, remove weapons from several FSU states, increase security at existing nuclear facilities, finding employment for former Soviet nuclear workers, and many other tasks. > > - As for the risk of an intentional nuclear exchange, **I don’t see that it’s significantly better or worse than before**. > > I can only imagine that you were not aware of current events during the Cold War, including during the Reagan years. This statement is just so far out of touch, I’m not sure it’s worth commenting on much further – it’s like spending effort to try to dispel the notion that China’s economic growth over the last few decades has impacted its political realities. > > - It’s not like we’re buddy-buddy with the Rusians, and **we have foreign policy goals that conflict with the Russians, just like we did with the Soviets**. > > The main difference being that today we are arguing over Syria, in which neither country really wants to get all that involved but is kind of being sucked in anyway, and during the Cold War we were mortal fucking enemies, plotting for the complete destruction of the other by any variety of means. Bonkers! No, wait, double bonkers! Maybe even triple bonkers! As I said, I’m not playing this game with you. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/92 "2015-10-20T19:46:13Z")
> [@CCitizen](#): > > The sad fact is that most people in GULAG were for theft. Any one of us would have stolen given the economic situation – yet theft during emergency years was punished severely. These were very hard times – Many, but not most: [What were their crimes?](http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/crimes.php) > [@CCitizen](#): > > — industrialization in preparation to WWII, then WWII itself, then new industrialization and building a nuclear potential in order to avoid US aggression. Russia liberated and then immediately annexed the eastern half of Europe at the end of WWII. Which part of Western Europe was occupied and annexed by “US aggression”? ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/93 "2015-10-20T19:47:52Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Russia liberated and then immediately annexed the eastern half of Europe at the end of WWII. Which part of Western Europe was occupied and annexed by “US aggression”? Eastern Europe was not annexed. USA had plans for nuclear aggression – operation Dropshot. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/94 "2015-10-20T19:51:06Z")
Holy crap, guys, we’re debating with Gerald Ford! “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe!” ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/95 "2015-10-20T19:57:13Z")
Domination – not annexation. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/96 "2015-10-20T20:01:22Z")
> [@CCitizen](#): > > Eastern Europe was not annexed. You are absolutely right. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Baltics, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany… all had a choice whether to join the USSR. In fact, they could have left any time they wanted. :smack: > [@CCitizen](#): > > USA had plans for nuclear aggression – operation Dropshot. In 1949-1957. AFTER the Russian occupation of Eastern Europe was seen as irrevocable by the west. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/97 "2015-10-20T20:03:27Z")
> [@BrightNShiny](#): > > As I said, I’m not playing this game with you. That isn’t what you said. You were chaffed that I didn’t respond to your specific comments. So I took that as an invitation to pick them apart. If you don’t want to debate something anymore, here’s a pro tip: you don’t need to announce that you’re not debating something anymore. One can always just remain silent and let the other person have the last word. ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/98 "2015-10-20T20:04:06Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > You are absolutely right. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Baltics, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Germany… all had a choice whether to join the USSR. In fact, they could have left any time they wanted. They were never a part of USSR. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/99 "2015-10-20T20:05:53Z")
> [@CCitizen](#): > > The sad fact is that most people in GULAG were for theft. Any one of us would have stolen given the economic situation – yet theft during emergency years was punished severely. These were very hard times – industrialization in preparation to WWII, then WWII itself, then new industrialization and building a nuclear potential in order to avoid US aggression. _sigh_ And your cite for this is…? Please, you just keep making more and more assertions and you’ve yet to back up any of them with anything like a credible cite that says what you assert. And you are seriously a Soviet apologist who is really doing the whole double standard thingy to the max…the SUPERmax! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128/100 "2015-10-20T20:07:21Z")
> [@XT](#): > > And you are seriously a Soviet apologist who is really doing the whole double standard thingy to the max…the SUPERmax! I am neither Russian nor American – I am Jewish. Both USSR and USA have many dark pages in their history. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-russia-have-failed-in-afghanistan-anyway/735128.md?page=6)