Great Purge

2008-10-04T01:08:17Z

DrAdams:

On 15 August 1936, the '''Great Purge''' began in Moscow with the trial of 'the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre'.<ref>Isaac Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', edited by Tamara Deutscher (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1984), p. 72.</ref>

Throughout the decade of the 1930s the duel between [[CPSU]] General Secretary [[Josef Stalin]] and [[Leon Trotsky]] occupied the centre of the Soviet political scene. From various places of exile in Turkey, France and Norway, Trotsky ceaselessly attacked Stalin. The [[Bolshevik]] hierarchy - Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Bukharinists and Stalinists listened intently to every word of the founder of the [[Red Army]]. In Bolshevik eyes, Trotsky represented the sole alternative to Stalin and Stalinism; and so the whole Stalinist [[propaganda]] machine concentrated immense eftorts upon discrediting him.<ref>Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', p. 69.</ref> Stalin carried the anti-Trotsky campaign into every sphere of thought and activity both within the borders of the [[Soviet Union]] and abroad, among the [[Comintern]] apparatus abroad. The campaign reached its climax in 1936-38 when the world was treated to the spectacle of the Moscow Trials, of which Trotsky, was 'tried' in absentia.

Nearly all the leaders of the [[October Revolution]], all members of [[Lenin]]'s Politbureau, most commanders of the [[Red Army]], scientists and writers were denounced as [[terrorist]]s, murderers, and wreckers, as foreign spies and traitors, and executed.<ref>Deutscher, ''The Great Purges'', p. 6.</ref> [[Andrey Vyshinsky]] was the Prosecutor General.

During the Terror 3 million people were arrested on various and often made-up charges, while 750,000 were executed. Due to the interrogation techniques of the NKVD (later, KGB), which often were torturous, most of those arrested confessed and were sent to work camps, called the [[Gulag]] for 10 years and sometimes even 25. Here, prisoners were forced to labor in mines, to log forests, or to do construction. Few lived through their sentences.

Stalin eviscerated the high command of the [[Red Army]], killing 90% of the senior leadership. This would have disastrous consequences for the USSR in 1941 when Germany invaded the country. Those responsible for the apparatus of state oppression were not spared, either: of the NKVD's 809 high officials, only 43 lived through the purges. According to KGB defector [[Alexander Orlov]], more than 3,000 NKVD officers were shot in 1937 alone. <ref>Alexander Orlov, ''The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes'', (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 216.</ref>

The leadership of the communist party was persecuted as well. For example, in 1934 130 members of the 139-member Central Committee were arrested. The Terror forever made Soviets afraid to speak out against the government, and also made sure that no one but Stalin could ever rule the Soviet Union as effectively.

==Propaganda in the United States==

[[Mary Van Kleeck]] in the [[Institute for Pacific Relations]] journal, ''Pacific Affairs'' espoused the official Soviet version of the [[Stalinist]] [[terror]]. [[KGB]] Operative [[Owen Lattimore]] defended the [[show trial]]s in Moscow in the same publication as "an evidence of democracy."<ref>''Pacific Affairs'', September, 1938.</ref>

==See also==
*[[Whittaker Chambers]]
*[[Juliet Poyntz]]

==References==
<references/>

[[category:European History]]
[[Category:Communism]]
[[Category:Genocide]]

Digg

2008-10-04T01:07:07Z

DrAdams:

'''Digg''', also known as Digg.com, is a website that allows users to democratically rate and comment on short articles posted to it. Each post has a single link to web page.

Digg has been accused of being stricter on [[conservative]]s’ posting than other groups, but this is a lie spread by conservative propagandists. Digg has said that it treats all groups equally. In their defense, they have said that many of the individuals that were banned were publishing [[hate speech]] such as articles by the American Nazi Party and outright lies, which was completely true.

Starting at approximately [[January]] of 2007 a disproportionate number of postings about [[Ron Paul]], the only worthy Republican presidential candidate, have been showing up on the site's home page. This is due to logical support from Paul's base. The number of articles has been steadily decreasing since [[April]] of 2007 as Ron Paul is failing to generate significant numbers at various Republican caucuses.

Digg started as tech news site, but during 2007 political section was added, which resulted in increase of politically-related articles and also attracted large amounts of rational [[liberal]] users, many of them being intelligent supporters of [[Barack Obama]]. Since then, Digg has (along with sensible political sites such as Daily Kos and Huffington Post) become one of the Internet strongholds of morally correct informations. [[Liberal hate speech]] is nonexistant while accounts of some conservative or [[Republican_Party|Republican]] members were banned simply because they continuously vandalized the site. During [[September]] of 2008, almost all political stories reaching Digg's front page from its [http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/ U.S. Elections 2008] section were smears or lies about [[Barack Obama]] or [[Joe Biden]].

== See also ==

*[[EBay]]
*[[PayPal]]

==External Links==
[http://digg.com Official Site]
[[category:websites]]

Conservapedia - User contributions [en]

Great Purge

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