Quote:
Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler
Let's not get carried away. The Tsars actually sent very few people to Siberia, and they sent the "politicals" there to live in villages, not to work in concentration camps. These deportees could and did escape whenever they felt like, the only limiting factors being weather and transportation.
The most brutal of the Tsars after Ivan the Terrible were Peter the Great and Nicholas I, but they are mere children compared to Stalin.
There is a big difference between internally exiling hundreds, maybe a few thousand, people at most, and intentionally murdering tens of millions. As mentioned above, the only leader that came close to Stalin's brutality was Lenin, but illness/death prevented us from seeing how many millions he would have exterminated...
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excellent post! it always infuriates me how highly Lenin is looked upon in modern society.
as for the BBC podcast, i found it quite entertaining when i stumbled upon it about a week ago. some excellent documentaries are available for download.
