Todd J. Juvinall

I Miss my Husband very much! Todd was simply all about loving God, County, Family and People. My love , My husband is with Jesus in Heaven. He enjoyed communicating with each of you on Sierra Dragon's Breath. Todd was a Great, Loving, Kind man and will be Missed. Love you honey! Till wee meet again.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Kolyma, the Stalin/Communist Killing Fields

When we were growing up here in the USA, most of us were told if we didn't behave we would be sent to Siberia.  Of course we were too young to put two and two together so it was many years later we figured out what that truly meant.  The Russian people are having a conflicting set of decisions to make regarding their leadership.  Vlad Putin wants to be "king" and there are many who don't want that to happen including the former "green" President, Mikhail Gorbachev.

HERE is a little slide show on the reason I think many Russians don't want  ar return to a dictatorship.

The freezing far northeast corner of the huge Russian state was the burial grounds for more than three million Russians and other people the Russian government, led by Stalin, later others, didn't want around.  They sent them to their deaths by working them to death in mines, starving them to death because the guards stole their food, and froze to death because their clothing was inadequate for 50 degrees below zero cold.  They were as deadly to humanity under communism as people  were under the Nazis in Germany.

The reason I think it is important to remember the genocides of the communists is there are people in our country who would like to emulate them.  Those people are in every part of our culture and our government.  They call their beliefs "progressive" and I can't seem to understand why a person claiming to be a "progressive" would want to return to a government system that readily murders millions of its citizens.  Call me naive I guess.  The tragedy of the Kolyma strategy of Stalin was his ability through his propaganda machine to insulate himself from the blame the prisoners heaped on the system.  Honestly, they actually mailed hundreds of thousands of letters to Stalin asking him to help them!  What they didn't understand or know was Stalin was the reason they were in Siberia!  His propaganda machine was so effective that the prisoners thought Stalin was a "GOD"!

We can never let the government or a cult of personality become so "GODLIKE" that we give up our individual liberty and our Constitution.  I know the left says it has nothing but "good intentions" and the best for every person.  Well, one only needs to study Kolyma and its communist/socialist horrors to understand why many in America fight to ensure the "progressives" never gain power again.  Americans need to stay diligent and never accept security over liberty or we will end up as a mountain of white skulls as those in Cambodia did.

HERE is a Wiki look at Kolyma.   HERE is a personal story by a Polish prisoner during WW2.

Remember all the victims of big overarching government and dictatorships.  America is a unique respite from the usual terror humans have been subjected too since the "cave".  We must stay vigilant and unafraid and remember every person is a unique and important life.

4 comments:

  1. As one whose lost family to the Gulag, thank you Todd.

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  2. Todd: You should read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If memory serves me correctly, it is not an incredibly long read, but the book will leave a lasting impression. Since 2009, the book is required reading for all high schoolers in Russia...likely to remind the kids about the past instead of trying to redefine it.

    "Those who fail to study history are damned to repeat it."

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  3. I read that book when itmade it into the western reading rooms way back. It was certsainly a conformation of ehat we all were told about the gulags. I just read a news article that there is now a main street in Moscow nsamed Sahkarov.

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  4. I used to live about three doors down from where Sakharov lived when I lived in Moscow!

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Real name thank you.