[CasX]

September 27 2002
By Ben Aris St
Petersburg

More than 60 years after the bloodiest purges of Stalin's rule, Russian human rights campaigners are digging into their country's past, uncovering evidence that may at last prove what local people have long believed - that a forest outside St Petersburg is an enormous mass grave.

A group called Memorial began the search six years ago after research suggested that a four-kilometre square of forest near the Rzhevsky artillery range was the likeliest site for a mass grave.

It is thought the NKVD, Stalin's secret police, could have killed as many as 30,000 people, including thousands of children, and buried them in pits near the town of Toksovo, 32 kilometres north of St Petersburg.

More than 50 shallow graves containing human remains have been uncovered so far. Twenty skulls have been dug up.

Irina Flige, the director of Memorial's historical research department, said nearly all the skulls had a bullet hole at the back that matched the .45 calibre of military issue pistols of Stalin's era.

Records show that more than 60,000 residents of St Petersburg, then named Leningrad, were shot during the Stalin years - 40,000 in the 1937-38 purges alone. But the site of their graves has remained a mystery.

Only one cemetery in St Petersburg is known to contain a few thousand victims who were shot in prison; the rest have never been accounted for.

Memorial has decided not to exhume the bodies. It wants the FSB - successor to the NKVD, which later became the KGB - to admit that the remains are Stalin's victims.

"The FSB have denied that mass executions were carried out here and denied that there is any information in their archives that could prove otherwise. The FSB still identify with the NKVD and still refer to themselves as Chekisti," Mrs Flige said in a reference to a Russian nickname for secret policemen.

The discovery of the mass grave find has awakened painful memories for victims' families.

Irina Bulat was two when her father, a university professor, was shot in 1937. Two years later her mother was sentenced to 10 years in a labour camp.

"They came one night and arrested my father. He was in prison for six months, then a commission of five men arrived one day from Moscow and, after a 20-minute hearing, sentenced him to death. He was shot the same day," Mrs Bulat said.

Her life was plunged into chaos. She was moved from her parents' home to an orphanage for the children of "enemies of the people". Her mother survived. They were reunited in 1955, when Stalin's victims were rehabilitated. They were given a one-room flat in Leningrad.

Mrs Bulat was told by the FSB that her father had been shot on June 30, 1937, as a "brigadier-general of a terrorist organisation" planning to assassinate Stalin but the place of execution was not known.

Memorial and Mrs Bulat are convinced that her father is one of the victims in the Rzhevsky mass grave.

She said that in her father's academic resident block, where she was born, every family on every floor ended up either being shot or sent to the gulags.

Memorial will use experts to confirm how the victims were killed and has asked the FSB to designate the land, which belongs to the Defence Ministry, a memorial site.

[Kov]

Comrade, thank you for posting such things. Keep doing it. I am.. well... from what I see Stalinists are the majorty on this site, and it is good to see the otehr side once in a long time.

It was all very interesting, maybe they will find a relative of mine or two? I can only hope... thanks again.

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

Ahh...the usual rubish...bodies are found in mass grave...STALIN DID IT!!!...

Off course...its not like a major war that killed 26 million people didn't happen...with the majority being burried in unmarked mass graves...

Why don't these smart people do an autopsy and date the bodies...

.45 calibre bullets you say???...thats a 9mm gun...Would these experts please tell us WHICH Soviet gun of pre-WW2 or WW2 design had a 9mm bullet???

Don't wait on these experts to tell you the answer...they have no answer. FACT is...the FIRST Soviet gun with a 9mm bullet...was th Makarov...build in 1951...

USSR had no guns with 9mm bullets...all were 7.62 or 7.65mm guns.

Germany on the other hand DID have 9mm guns....


So much for your post...next time don't be so gulible.....usually...mass graves are regularly found in Russia...ALL are civilians killed by Germans or partizans or various para-mlitary groups in WW2...

[Kov]

Oh great.... I wont bother, its a non winable battle, but yes there are many German mass graves, also keep in mind that he probably miss wrote something...

Lets not be niticulous, eh? Spetz, lets just go here and talk about hoxes and other paradox things that could never have happened under Stalin.

http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1326

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

Hehe...oh no...you don't get away that easy!!!

This author didn't miss write anything. He specifically says the bullets are .45 claibre...same type as those used by the NKVD.

Problem is...NKVD never used .45 calibre guns until 1951...


He didn't miss write anything...he missinterpreted on purpose. These graves being found...are mass graves of Soviet citvilians killed by the Germans...and burried in unmarked graves. That is why they have 9mm bullets...Germans used them.

The idiot "human rights watchers" in Russia...which are in reality a bunch of idiots payed by Yeltsin and Putin to fabricate things...twist things around.

But I think clearly they are not being payed enough...if they are stupid enough to tell us the calibre of the gun...a calibre the Soviets never had till 1951.

Idiots...

So much for that.

This is how things are solved Kov...not with hypothizations and what ifs. They are solved with physical evidence..with FACTS Kov...FACTS!! I won't go in any other thread to discuss endlessly with you on pointless discussions...you simply have no evidence or facts to point to a killer...and the only evidences that do exist...point to it being the Germans or some para-military group in WW2 (UPA for example...which BTW continued its killing spree in the Ukraine and Poland until 1950 and even latter!!!)

So why do these idiots say Stalin did it??? Do they have any proof??? Even I...was able to throw down their entire theses...Stalin DID NOT do it...it was the Germans...bullets prove it.

Case closed.

[Khenlein]

"Russia: Stalin-Era Mass Grave Found Near St. Petersburg
By Valentinas Mite

The Russian human rights group Memorial says it has discovered what it believes to be a secret burial site near St. Petersburg. Memorial says the Soviet-era secret police, or NKVD, may have used the site to bury as many as 30,000 victims of Stalin's Great Terror before World War II.

Prague, 26 September 2002 (RFE/RL) -- In a forest outside the small town of Toksovo, some 30 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg, human rights workers have detected a Stalin-era mass grave that might hold the remains of thousands of people killed in the purges of the 1930s.

The Russian human rights group Memorial says the discovery is the culmination of a five-year search for the grave. The group has so far uncovered 20 sets of bones but says it has reason to believe the 500-acre plot may contain the remains of as many as 30,000 people.

Memorial says the grave is believed to be the work of the NKVD, the Soviet-era secret police that preceded the KGB. The NKVD was responsible for the executions of thousands branded "enemies of the people" during Stalin's rule.

Irina Flige, who heads Memorial's historical division, tells RFE/RL her group used accounts from local people, archival documents, and old aerial photos to locate the site. The group's painstaking efforts finally brought success in August when the first remains were found.

"[Toskovo] is the place where the executions were carried out in the 1930s. Maybe they started executing people here in 1929 and proceeded until the end of the 1930s, which included the period of the Great Terror. During these years more than 30,000 residents of our city were executed," Flige says.

Memorial says the majority of those victims were probably killed during the Great Terror of 1937-38, when Stalin sought to eliminate the old guard of the Communist Party and consolidate his personal power. Until the discovery of the Toskovo grave, only one other mass grave had been discovered near St. Petersburg. It is believed to contain the remains of up to 8,500 people.

Flige says there is no evidence to suggest the graves date from the German siege of Leningrad during World War II. She says the victims recovered from the graves so far have been piled on top of each other and killed in a manner characteristic of the NKVD -- with a shot to the back of the head.

"A forensic expert working on the remains confirms that people were killed with .45-caliber Colt pistols, [the type of gun used by the NKVD]. The experts confirm the shots were fired into [the back of the head]," Flige says.

Flige says the recovered remains indicate that women and children were among the victims.

Witnesses who lived near Toksovo told Memorial that in the 1930s, black trucks -- known as "black ravens" ("chyorniye voronki") -- could be seen nightly driving to the site. Shots would ring out from a nearby military testing range.

Flige says Memorial has sent a request to the Federal Security Service, or FSB, asking for information about Toksovo but has yet to receive a response.

Sixty-eight-year-old Ina Bulan lives in St. Petersburg. She was just 3 years old in 1937 when her father, Pavel, a Transport Ministry employee, was killed after being accused of being an "enemy of the people" and of conspiring to kill Stalin.

"I know with some certainty that he was killed in Saint Petersburg. From his file [in the KGB archives], I found out that a special [NKVD] commission came to Petersburg from Moscow," Bulan says. "I know the names of those people. He was executed 20 minutes after the verdict was announced."

Many of the victims were executed in the NKVD's St. Petersburg headquarters at 4 Liteiny Prospect -- now the local headquarters of the FSB and city police. Bulan says employees of entire departments of the ministry where her father worked were killed. Their families were told their loved ones had been sentenced to 10 years in prison with no right to correspondence.

Several years after the death of Bulan's father, her mother was also arrested and Bulan was placed in a children's home. Bulan, who grew up with the stigma of being the daughter of enemies of the people, says life at the time was difficult. Most people were enthusiastic supporters of Stalin and believed the Soviet Union represented one of the world's most progressive societies. Few people imagined that mass executions were being conducted at Stalin's behest.

"Arrests took place at night. People thought that those arrested really were enemies of the people. And when they themselves were arrested they thought it was a mistake, that the authorities would realize the truth and admit their mistake," Bulan says.

Bulan says many of St. Petersburg's educated upper- and middle-class residents were targeted for arrest and executions. It was only during the so-called "thaw" of the 1960s that authorities began to admit to the Stalin-era crimes and the truth about the mass executions began to surface.

Jan Rachevsky of Memorial tells RFE/RL that Toksovo may be one of the largest killing fields found yet in Russia. He says other mass graves have been discovered in Siberia and near Moscow, where one grave contains the remains of at least 25,000 victims.

Rachevsky says the Stalin-era death count reaches into the millions: "It is known almost exactly that more than a million were shot and killed on political charges -- approximately 1 million and several hundred thousand. At least 3 1/2 million were sent to the concentration camps, having been accused of various things by the authorities. It is not known how many of them died there. Many millions more were deported as part of the de-kulakization" -- Stalin's systematic elimination of wealthy, land-owning peasants.

Rachevsky says the exact number of Stalin's victims and the location of burial sites remain unknown partly because the FSB is not inclined to share information."

Another article corrobating the original, making specific references to FORENSIC evidence.

Now I am not exactly an expert on firearms, but I doubt the Germans would be using Colt Pistols, as opposed to the Soviets who did recieve lend-lease aid, and historically liscense built certain western armaments.

I think I'll take their word for it this time.

[The Commissar]

I always immagined it was more Stalin's style to work dissenters to death in the Gulags or the frontlines of the aptly named Stalingrad... or who could forget the classic poison tipped umbrella, anyway?

If Stalin didn't hold purges of the party, then who did? and how did it happen without Stalin knowing?

[Khenlein]

...if they are stupid enough to tell us the calibre of the gun...a calibre the Soviets never had till 1951.

This is easily dismissed




"6) Colt M1911 Russian Contract: S/N C23000 to C89000 = Feb. 19, 1916 to Jan. 18,
1917 ( Russia purchased 51,000 M1911 .45 ACP pistols during WW I. from this serial
number range. Russia purchased more M1911 pistols than any other country besides
the U.S.) Regular commercial model Colt except has "English Order" mark in
Russian on left side of frame."


Taken from

http://www.sightm1911.com/1911Production.htm

Anoter site selling Russian Holsters that held Colt 45s

http://www.aboutww2militaria.com/index. ... d_gear.htm (ww2, pre 1950's)



Now, this isnt 100%, but the fact that witnesses date the murders to the 30's (germany didnt invade till 41, get it?). The NKVD wasn't exactly adverse to murdering tens of thousands, and that Russian forensics experts claim Colt .45's were used,,

[S. P. Laroche]

It hardly matters who did it, but that it was done in the first place, and that society created an environment where it could occur. Whether they be Stalin's skeletons or war-dead matters very little in the long run if we do not learn from it. It's far more important to see what demogogues are capable of, and to try and avoid it, then it is to figure out which demogogue, despot, or dictator did it, especially when all parties involved are dead.

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

Flige says there is no evidence to suggest the graves date from the German siege of Leningrad during World War II. She says the victims recovered from the graves so far have been piled on top of each other and killed in a manner characteristic of the NKVD -- with a shot to the back of the head.

Hmm...and how did the Germans do it???

"A forensic expert working on the remains confirms that people were killed with .45-caliber Colt pistols, [the type of gun used by the NKVD].

Late 30s...Colts were almost completely phased out of service. Certainly for NKVD...standrad guns were Soviet made 7.62mm and 7.65mm pistols...Primary weapons were Nagant 1895 revolvers and TT-33 handguns...not Colts...Considering the large availibility of Soviet made guns...there was no need to use US Colts...

Actually...I don't think Colts were even used after WW1..from lack of parts and ammo (Russians simply did not produce that type of ammo)

Anoter site selling Russian Holsters that held Colt 45s

http://www.aboutww2militaria.com/index. ... d_gear.htm (ww2, pre 1950's)

Actually...the only holsters that held Colt 45s here are Lend-Lease holsters from 1943...and are actually universal holsters that COULD hold Colt 45s...as well as TT33s and Nagant 1895 revolvers. There are NO Soviet holsters there for a Colt 45...

Witnesses who lived near Toksovo told Memorial that in the 1930s, black trucks -- known as "black ravens" ("chyorniye voronki") -- could be seen nightly driving to the site. Shots would ring out from a nearby military testing range.

Thats what they do at testing ranges...shoot...

Rachevsky says the Stalin-era death count reaches into the millions: "It is known almost exactly that more than a million were shot and killed on political charges -- approximately 1 million and several hundred thousand. At least 3 1/2 million were sent to the concentration camps, having been accused of various things by the authorities. It is not known how many of them died there. Many millions more were deported as part of the de-kulakization" -- Stalin's systematic elimination of wealthy, land-owning peasants.

Hmm...I know the number of people sentanced to death and executed....so why doesn't he know it??? These are all in the archives...and detailed...

Total number of people who died for all reasons...more than 1 million...of which some 300.000 were executed (the rest died of natural causes in prisons)


So no matter if graves are being found...thats rather stupid...because they are graves of people we KNOW to have been executed....so its not a new find. Thats like going to a prison cemetary...and say you find amass grave of people...But wait a minute...we already know those people are dead from prison records...so you found nothing new.

The problem is however...most people executed were burried in cemetaries...with marked graves.

99.9% of these "mass graves"...though they never really dig out more than 10-20 bodies (but somehow ESTIMATE to billions and trillions)...are mass graves from the war years.


Same thing when they found 50 dead Jewish children in the Ukraine...and blamed Stalin of course...Strange...but UPA was the one that usually did such things...but no one blamed them. Why would NKVD kill 50 Jewish children??? There is no RECORD of them doing it...nor any reason. Yet there is plenty of reason for UPA to do it...


Again...EVERY person executed by NKVD is recorded...and such records are available. There is no need for them to hypothesize on how many people were executed...or where they are. Look in the archives...

Now I am not exactly an expert on firearms, but I doubt the Germans would be using Colt Pistols, as opposed to the Soviets who did recieve lend-lease aid, and historically liscense built certain western armaments.

Lend-Lease is in the 1940s...the western weapons the Soviets poduced...were usually of European origin...no US...and BTW the main weapon of the SS was a version of the US Browning pistol...produced in Belgium and Germany from the mid 30s. Also Soviets produced several MILLION Nagant and TT pistols...including a special NKVD Nagant pistol...so a 50 thousand Cold order is TINY by comparison...and the Colt was phased out a LONG time before then 1930s...

Nor am I too sure it was a Colt...simply because they say it was a Colt...It doesn't seem to me they know what they are talking about...if they say that the NKVD used Colts as its main fire arm (not true at all...they didn't use them)...so this is an attempt to fabricate things which aren't true.

I always immagined it was more Stalin's style to work dissenters to death in the Gulags or the frontlines of the aptly named Stalingrad... or who could forget the classic poison tipped umbrella, anyway?

My my...what a vivid immagination you have...

If Stalin didn't hold purges of the party, then who did? and how did it happen without Stalin knowing?

Stalin didn't hold Purges of the Party...it was an NKVD affair. Stalin in fact stopped the NKVD from arresting any more people...put the sentances on hold and reexamined each case again...and in fact found that thousands of people were wrongly accused and were freed. NKVD officers who carried out abuses of power were arrested themselves...and Yezhov was replaced.

[CasX]

Hmm...I know the number of people sentanced to death and executed....so why doesn't he know it??? These are all in the archives...and detailed...

Records show that more than 60,000 residents of St Petersburg, then named Leningrad, were shot during the Stalin years - 40,000 in the 1937-38 purges alone.

Every in-depth, well-documented, well-backed up, historical resource I have read, by well-known historians from both Russia and abroad, have pointed out the FACTS of murder of MILLIONS of INNOCENT people by the soviet union authorities with the knowledge of Stalin, who directed things from his position as the supreme and total leader - DICTATOR - of the Soviet Union.

I couldn't be less impressed if you were trying to re-write the holocaust to say it never happened. Because STALIN alone stands as the single greatest genocidal murderer of the twentieth century.

[Khenlein]

I concur Casx,

The two only viable are options are that during their siege of Leningrad, the Germans found time to commit such an act during the '40s,

Or that during the '30s the Stalinist government was responsible for such an action.

I'm going to go where the preponderance of evidence points me.

Oh and by the way here is another Associated Press article on the subject

September 20, 2002
By Irina Titova Associated Press Writer


TOKSOVO, Russia (AP) - Working to uncover the secrets of the collapsed Soviet Union, diggers say they have found 20 sets of bones in what they believe is a vast burial ground for thousands of victims of dictator Josef Stalin's firing squads.

So far, the volunteers from the human rights group Memorial have sent nine sets of remains to a forensic laboratory for tests of identifying features including age, sex, cause and time of death.

Russian officials have said they believe millions of people died from executions and brutal imprisonment under Stalin's rule. His security forces ruthlessly arrested people suspected of political disloyalty, espionage, failure to work hard enough in factories or on farms, or of not fighting hard enough against German invaders. Stalin died in 1953.

Memorial will stop digging and declare the site a monument to the victims if the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, breaks its silence and confirms the area is part of the suspected Stalin-era mass grave, Memorial activist Irina Flige said.

The work is grim in the forest outside Toksovo, about 20 miles northwest of St. Petersburg. With the sound of artillery shells exploding on a nearby army testing range, volunteer diggers stand waist-deep in pits, groping for bones with gloved hands.

Volunteers working with Memorial searched for five years before finding the grave, which they estimate could contain about 30,000 bodies in an area of about 500 acres. They have been digging here since August.

The only other known mass grave in the St. Petersburg area is believed to contain the remains of up to 8,500 people, according to drivers who brought the victims to be execution place in 1937-38, at the height of the Terror.

The drivers were questioned by the KGB in 1965, during a time when Soviet authorities gingerly began to admit the massive scope of Stalin's crimes.

Russian officials have said they believe millions of people died in the communist purges before Stalin's death.

Yet there was no trace of tens of thousands of other victims who were rounded up in and around Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known in Soviet times. According to official Soviet-era data, 39,488 people from the region were executed between Aug. 5, 1937, and Nov. 16, 1938. Almost 7,000 people vanished in 1930-36.

Both the KGB and the Federal Security Service kept silent about where the victims were buried, so in the mid-1990s Memorial began publishing appeals for information in newspapers.

The group was founded during the Perestroika era to preserve the memory of the victims of political repression in the Soviet Union. It has since become one of Russia's most respected human rights groups.

Witnesses who had lived in the villages around Toksovo in the 1930s came forward, testifying that black trucks would make nightly visits to the artillery ground. The vehicles stood with their headlights on as shots rang out from the Rzhevsk testing range.

"The range made this area very convenient for NKVD executions," said Miron Muzhdaba, one of Memorial's volunteer diggers, using the acronym for a precursor of the KGB. "They were to conduct the shooting as secretly as possible, so they hoped the testing would somehow hide the fact of real murders."

Muzhdaba pointed to a bone pierced with a neat circle, and said it was the hole from a bullet shot into the nape of the neck - the classic execution method in Soviet Russia.

"Most of the 20 skulls we've found here over the last month have similar holes in the same part of the neck," he said, adding that the bullet traces mostly matched .45-caliber Colt pistols, the type of gun carried by the Soviet secret police.

Memorial has come across other, indirect evidence that indicates the approximately 30,000 missing victims were buried at the range. It includes official documents and aerial photos showing tire tracks in part of the Rzhevsk range, now overgrown with trees and shrubs.

Anyone buried there could not have been killed by the Nazis because German forces did not reach this area in World War II, Memorial said.

Many of the volunteers lost relatives in the Great Terror and said they were motivated in part by the desire to have a place to mourn.

"I know how important it is for them to have a place where they can come and remember their dear ones," said Anna Reznikova, a graduate student.

Muzhdaba said his great-grandfather was a priest who was executed in 1937. He may buried in the marshy ground where the volunteers are digging, Muzhdaba said.

"When we drive along the road leading to the range, I shiver sometimes," Muzhdaba said. "I can't imagine how it felt for the people in those trucks, realizing that they were on the way to their death."

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

Ahm..I will reapeat this once more...EVERY person executed by the NKVD...is recorded and records do exist of them. So finding their graves...means nothing...we already KNOW they are dead.

have pointed out the FACTS of murder of MILLIONS of INNOCENT people by the soviet union authorities with the knowledge of Stalin, who directed things from his position as the supreme and total leader - DICTATOR - of the Soviet Union.

I would like to hear of ONE such historian..from russia or elsewhere...who using SOVIET ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTDS have given figures of MILLIONS of INNOCENT people...

Becasue guess what.....I...know the figures becasue the figures ARE out. They are NOT in the millions...

Much less being innocent...

Stalin's position was a supreme and total dictator??? Hehe...he was General Secretary of the CP...and as such he took actions only with a general vote of the CC of the Party...Try reading a book once...instead of watching the History Channel...it does a world of good.


Now liseten...and please no ridiculous "Stalinas the sole evil dictator of all evildoers of the world working with satan, the Klingons and the Borg...killed 56 trillion people on earth and on mars..."


As I said Soviet archives are very detailed...and every single execution is documented. We already knew about every single execution long before these graves were found...

According to the Soviet Archives...the number of people who died during this period for all reasons in captivity was 115.922 persons. And this is for all reasons...executions were actually a small part of that.

These years were actually the highest years for executions...as during the other 30 years of Stalin's rule only 117.763 people were sentanced to death for all reason.

Now guess what...these numbers come from the Soviet Archives...State Archives of the Russian Federation, Fund 9402, Inventory 2, Case 450...


There are NO MILLIONS of people executed...

Over 1 million people died in captivity to ALL reasons..including natural causes over this 30 year period. But if you will read another post here in this History Forum...I did some research...and it turns out the death rate in Russian prisons today is about 2 times higher than it was in the USSR of the time...


Did USSR kill more people than other countries??? At some points...yes..overall...NO. Death rates in Soviet prisons were lower than death rates in Russian priosons today...and by the 1950s deathr ates in Soviet prisons were actually less than death rates in US prisons today (about 0.1%)

Why were these people executed?? At the time..in the 1930s...crimes like murder, rape and such...were offenses punishable by death...not only in the USSR...but in most of the world. Counter-revolutionary activity was punshible with 10 years of prison accoridng to the Soviet constitution...though this allowed for less prison term depending on the gravity of the crime.

According to Soviet archival data...the vast majority (90% and over) of prisoners recieved prison terms of 1-5 years...Among political prsioners (read counter-revolutionaries...wreckers...diserters...war criminels...thiefs of public property)...1% recieved prison terms of grreater than 10 years (usually meaning execution...as 10 years was the maximum at the time). Among common prisoners...only about 0.1% recieved death penalty.



Now...were these people..."innoecnt"?? Absolutely not!!! were innocent people arrested?? Yes...they are arrested everywhere...there is no system which does not arrest innocent people.

The fact is Stalin stopped the NKVD from arresting more people...becsue the NKVD did carry out abuses...and these abuses were made PUBLIC in the USSR...and the people respornsible for these abuses were arrested themselves. For example...the Leningrad NKVD chief. He arrested many innocent people...who appealed their case (thats right...in the USSR you COULD and DID appeal your case) After further investigation...it was found that this NKVD chief was arresting innocent people for personal reason...so he was immediately arrested himself...and this scandal was made public.



So all these deaths are already known....we already know them...and there is no need to hypothesize with crazy numbers in the millions...simply becasue there were no millions of deaths...there were no millions of executions...far from it.


It never fails to amaze me...of the fact that the archival numbers ARE known...and yet people keep hypothsizing. Why?? We know the numbers!! If you don't want to believe them...thats another story...

[Sheep...]

And how do we know those numbers were not falsified? I seem to remember that the NKVD was fond of air brushing 'unpersons' out of pictures that usually features comrade Stalin.

[jaakko]

And how do we know those numbers were not falsified? I seem to remember that the NKVD was fond of air brushing 'unpersons' out of pictures that usually features comrade Stalin.

Hmm... What does that mean? You are reasoning your belief the same way the religious people do; "we can never be entirely sure, there's always the possibility..."

But in order to claim something, one must have something on which he bases his claim. You believe Stalin was the ULTIMATE EVIL MASTERMIND with bztrillion victims, but have no evidence or arguments to claim it. Untill you have, keep your beliefs to yourself. That's what I usually do when I 'feel' something but can't argue for it. A lie doesn't become the truth, no matter how many times and by how many 'respected personalities' it is repeated.

[S. P. Laroche]

A lie doesn't become the truth, no matter how many times and by how many 'respected personalities' it is repeated.

Winston Churchill once commented that "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." I think it applies to any rumor. On a side note, if a lie didn't become truth after serious repitition, then it wouldn't matter who wrote history (the victors or the losers), as both sides would obviously be lieing. The fact that most people consider Stalin to be a heartless mass-murder is evidence of this.

[Sheep...]

Hmm... What does that mean? You are reasoning your belief the same way the religious people do; "we can never be entirely sure, there's always the possibility..."

You've never heard of the air brushing?
And on religion... By your posts you seem very religious.

You believe Stalin was the ULTIMATE EVIL MASTERMIND with bztrillion victims,

Where did I say this?

A lie doesn't become the truth, no matter how many times and by how many 'respected personalities' it is repeated.

Goes for your side too.

[Khenlein]

But I think clearly they are not being payed enough...if they are stupid enough to tell us the calibre of the gun...a calibre the Soviets never had till 1951.

Lie, or at least a mistruth. Of course once I pointed it out you then tried to rationlize some foolisheness about the guns being thrown in a ditch or sent via rocket into outer space before ww2 started or something.

....Putin to fabricate things

Damn those ex-KGB officers eh?

So why do these idiots say Stalin did it??? Do they have any proof??? Even I...was able to throw down their entire theses...Stalin DID NOT do it...it was the Germans...bullets prove it.

The graves were found in in an area where no German Soldat EVER SET FOOT IN, GET IT??

I don't think Colts were even used after WW1

Show me something that says directly or indirectly that they weren't used, and there was no possibility that they were used, as your the one trying to refute the forensicly based conclusions of these organizations.

Hmm...and how did the Germans do it???

Efficiently to be sure, when it was actually their work.


Learning more and more about this specific incident, I become more and more convinced (and the other rational people aussi) who was responsible for these specific deaths.

To be honest I didnt read that last post of yours, after the first two paragraphs it was clear that reading the rest would be frivilous.


Why you lend so much credence to the "historical record" of an organziation of Internal Security whose aim was to keep a Ruthless dictator in power, is perhaps a matter for your own internal reflection.

The fact that the most respected Human rights institution in Russia , along with their witnesses, forensics, and credibility point to one faction as the culprit.


Is sufficient in my case, as I think the record stands for itself.

I'm done with this particular subect

[CasX]

Try reading a book once

Virtually all the information I get is from books.

Try reading a book once...instead of watching the History Channel...it does a world of good.

What the hell is the history channel?

Anyway, Sheep and Khenlein put it well.

[Tovarish Spetsnaz]

Sheep...airbrushing and photo manipulation are something that the press ALL over the world does...just look at the glorious welcoming the Iraqi people gave to the US (in CNN photos at least)

But that is totally irrelevant to this discussion. Those numbers come from NKVD, court and military court SECRET archives...and they don't show millions at all. In fact...even the numbers they do show...don't necessarely mean that those people were executed...becasue many execution cases (especially in the 37-38 years) were retracted or reduced.

As for Germans never setting foot in that area...I'll have to check that fact first...as it may have been in the Finish zone of occupation...or the German...but I don't take my facts from this article.

And regarding the guns...50.000 Colts in WW1...means that nearly none ever found themselves in service with Soviet soldiers in the 1930s. Bolsheviks also bought large numbers of 9mm guns from Germany in the 1920s...none were left by the 1930s. these were not standrad issue guns...After WW1...most soldiers took these guns home with them. Certainly they were not issued to any military, police or NKVD units. USSR produced several million handguns...primary among them the Nagant 1895 revolver...which was the standard issue NKVD revolver...until replaced in the mid 30s by the TT-33...though not entirely as the Nagant 1895 continued in production until 1945.

On the other hand...as I said...the primary handgun of the German SS was a Browning automatic pistol...almost identical to the Colt (TT33 was also but had different calibre) which the Germans and Belgians produced under license since the mid 30s.


However...EVEN if these are people executed by the NKVD (and remember...they only found 20 bodies...not 80.000...they can make up any number they want)...than they are known to have been killed a long time ago....becasue the NKVD has records of everyone executed...and are included in those secret archive numbers.

The only problem...is that people executed by the state WERE burried in public cemetaries...prison cemetaries...or for those prisoners who died in construction accidents...were burried near the site of the project.

Another explonation...is various Partisan groups carrying out the executions...be it Soviet Partisans or anti-Soviet groups. During WW2...I can say for sure...enemy collaborators were shot and burried on site...be it by the NKVD or Partisans.


However...the usual response is always...STALIN DID IT!!!...even in cases when it is clear the Soviets did not do it. Take for example...the 50 Jewish children found in a Church in the Ukraine. Everyone blamed the Soviets...forgeting that the UPA did this sort of massacres regularly against Jews in the area...not only during WW2...but up to 1950.