To: AK2004 who wrote (10675 ) 10/4/2003 3:51:58 AM From: unclewest Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 793742 Stalin never tried to exterminate the whole race of people no matter how much he disliked the Jews (also historical fact) nor did Stalin had well organized plans in reduction of population as Hitler did Someone once said,"The murder of an acquaintance is a tragedy. A million murdered is only a statistic." I hope you are not condoning Stalin because he didn't concentrate his killing on Jews alone. Depending on which book you read, Historians attribute up to 20 million deaths to Stalin. 12-17 million of them murdered. I think most would consider that pretty well organized. Like Hitler and Saddam, Stalin "purged" everyone he thought might be opposed to him. A million here or a million there don't matter much when it is a only statistic. You are right. In Russia it was not just about Jews. Bourgeois, Cossacks, Kulaks and Jews were all purged for the great crime of being who they were. Some have written that Stalin and Lenin combined account for the purging of 50 million. The millions are so hard to imagine, they do just become a statistic. Don't you like the historians' word purge?...what a nice word for human slaughter. Some in the American press called the ritualistic murder of Saddam's 2 sons-in-law by Chemical Ali Majid a purge. He also purged 5,000 Kurds in one afternoon with chemicals to bring his total purges to over 100,000. The location of the purge is important too. The location can also soften the image. 3,000 murdered in NYC on TV is a real number we can start wars over. 5,000 purged Kurds in the boonies is a number we can gasp about. 6 million purged Jews in Poland and Germany is a statistic. 50 million purged Russians. That figure for sure is only a statistic. uw