Word: stalins
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...deporting whole peoples and destroying their cultures, Stalin greatly damaged the ethnic and cultural diversity that had always been an important part of Russia's strength. The state tried to replace ethnic and cultural differences with a deadening homogeneity. The very name of the country, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, carries no hint of ethnic or geographic reality...
Solzhenitsyn claimed that I had understated Stalin's crimes. According to one estimate, 60 million people had died as a result of terror, famine and associated disease. My figure of 10 million deaths in labor camps was too low. I was also wrong to differentiate Stalin from Lenin: corruption and destruction began the day the Bolsheviks seized power, and have continued ever since. It's a mistake to seek a multiparty system; what we need is a nonparty system...
...move in that direction would encounter huge political land mines. Harry Truman once tried to slash the Marines on the grounds that the Navy did not need its own army, but he was beaten by what he described as a Leatherneck "propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's." Aside from the clout of ten Senators and 21 Representatives in the current Congress who served in the Marines, the corps exudes such a mystical aura that it is unassailable...
...flew to Moscow on April 1, bringing a typed copy of the essay. Historian Roy Medvedev came to see me that evening, and I exchanged it for the final chapters of his book on Stalin. Medvedev showed my essay to friends (which I had given him permission to do), and he passed on their comments. After making a few changes, I gave the manuscript back to Medvedev. He was going to produce a dozen or more carbon copies. Some, he warned me, might end up abroad. I replied that I had taken that into account. (We were communicating in writing...
...Without a strong hand, we could never have rebuilt our economy after the war or broken the American atomic monopoly -- you yourself helped do that. You have no moral right to judge our generation -- Stalin's generation -- for its mistakes, for its brutality; you're now enjoying the fruits of our labor and our sacrifices...