the people the Russians chose indicate that they feel besieged, they feel that they are fighting for their existence and soverignity...because both Nevsky and Stalin defeated invasions.

And I think that they are. And I think it is DESPICABLE what Clinton and Bush have done with the great opportunities we had for peace and prosperity.

Additionally, I think we Americans don't know ANYTHING real about Stalin or any of them. We get the deamonization machine is all.

What did we do to Russia? I'm certainly not an expert but other than a nudge to help the USSR break up, we've been pretty hands-off for the last decade or more, haven't we?

We American's don't know anything real about Stalin? That's precious. Really. I suppose the millions of dead Ukrainians, gulags, and purges are figments of our imagination. The real Stalin was a saint.

You are confused...I am not defending Stalin, I am just saying that it is the Russians who know him, know exactly what he did, just like Americans my age know exactly what Nixon or LBJ did.

As for the "gulags" I know nothing of them nor do I know ANYONE who was in one. I did do an investigation of the numbers we claimed Stalin killed, and they do not wash...if he had killed that many, there would not have been many men left in Russia at the time.

We now imprison more people per capita than anyone on EARTH, not only now, but in all of human history; we have surpassed the Soviet Union entirely as to per capita prisoners so we have no right to speak of Gulags...let's clean up our own house before we try to impose our mess on someone else, shall we?

I honestly do not know what has been going on, but I'll take the word of the Russian peole over our utterly precious, biased intellectals and our disgusting media whores any day. After everything Bush has lied to us about, and with the fully complicity of the media and the intellectuals, I am afraid I do not BELIEVE you all.

Kake 79 (please google before you answer -- get some facts)

1. We promised Gorbachev that if he united East and West Germany we would NEVER extend NATO, but Clinton did, and now Bush is;

2. We bankrolled the "elections" in Georgia and Ukraine, and some say we bankrolled the rebellion in Chechnya.

3. We have encouraged the Latvians to desecrate monuments to Russian Soldiers in the war against Hitler...we have encouratged the Lativian former fascists to threaten the port at Kaliningrad, which is St. Petersburg's only year round port, as the Neva River freezes.

4. We refused to get out of CIS country, Uzbekistan, at the agreed upoin lease is up time;

5. Bush has that orange idiot in the Ukraine threatenting to remove Russia from the Black Sea, which is insane, provocative, because that will NEVER happen, not without the defeat of Russia and Ukraine cannot do that job. Bush also has that same freaking idiot orange man declaring a national ceremony for the Ukrainian who led the FASCISTS to support Hitler during World War II, the brazen scum. My father fought in that war and I will NEVER submit to that facist..

6. In a clear violation of international law, Europe simply took a bite out of Serbia by recognizing Kosovo, which humiliated the Russians and was probably the turning point for them...it also broke all international law, and was a kind of declaration by Bush that all bets were off, that a situation of lawlessness would prevail, that Europe and the USA would not reconize any existing international law whenever and wherever they pleased.

7. We imposed "shock therapy" on the Russian people, when they put themselves in our hands, and we impoverished them and humilaited them, and then when they decided to stand up on a limited basis and restore thier economy, we accused them of all sorts of crimes, incluidng poisoning agents, for God's sake!

8. We dismembered the Soviet Union, which caused an economic holocaust to the people who inhabited that territory.

SO now they hate us...fine...another stupid, senseless Empire building scheme by idiots who have nothign better to do after escargo and 500 year wine, I guess; who can blame them since they probably do not want to look at their zombie

Kake 79 (please google before you answer -- get some facts)

1. We promised Gorbachev that if he united East and West Germany we would NEVER extend NATO, but Clinton did, and now Bush is;

2. We bankrolled the "elections" in Georgia and Ukraine, and some say we bankrolled the rebellion in Chechnya.

3. We have encouraged the Latvians to desecrate monuments to Russian Soldiers in the war against Hitler...we have encouratged the Lativian former fascists to threaten the port at Kaliningrad, which is St. Petersburg's only year round port, as the Neva River freezes.

4. We refused to get out of CIS country, Uzbekistan, at the agreed upoin lease is up time;

5. Bush has that orange idiot in the Ukraine threatenting to remove Russia from the Black Sea, which is insane, provocative, because that will NEVER happen, not without the defeat of Russia and Ukraine cannot do that job. Bush also has that same freaking idiot orange man declaring a national ceremony for the Ukrainian who led the FASCISTS to support Hitler during World War II, the brazen scum. My father fought in that war and I will NEVER submit to that facist..

6. In a clear violation of international law, Europe simply took a bite out of Serbia by recognizing Kosovo, which humiliated the Russians and was probably the turning point for them...it also broke all international law, and was a kind of declaration by Bush that all bets were off, that a situation of lawlessness would prevail, that Europe and the USA would not reconize any existing international law whenever and wherever they pleased.

7. We imposed "shock therapy" on the Russian people, when they put themselves in our hands, and we impoverished them and humilaited them, and then when they decided to stand up on a limited basis and restore thier economy, we accused them of all sorts of crimes, incluidng poisoning agents, for God's sake!

8. We dismembered the Soviet Union, which caused an economic holocaust to the people who inhabited that territory.

SO now they hate us...fine...another stupid, senseless Empire building scheme by idiots who have nothign better to do after escargo and 500 year wine, I guess; who can blame them since they probably do not want to look at their zombie

Enlighten me, Candoxx. Why would the loss of several million peope (many of them women as well as men) cause a notable sex asymmetry in a region with approximately 160-180 million in 1914? And, in any event, why would such a sex asymmetry be impossible? If you're going to smear the all intellectuals with a broad stroke, you ought to back up your claims.

Any facts or figures on your prison statistics would also be much appreciated. And I would take your prison population figure -- to the extent it can be supported with empirical data -- with a grain of salt. I also don't personally think we have marvelous justice system in the U.S., but in a different time and place (e.g. Stalinist Russia) we would have simply executed political and legal offenders to spare ourselves the burden of keeping them behind bars. Our rate of imprisonment partly reflects the that 1) we can afford to keep prisonsers, and 2) first degree murder is presently the only crime for which we execute prisoners.

(1) "We" did not "dismember" the USSR; it dissolved itself.

(2) Kosovo was a part of a confederation of states called Yugoslavia; it was not part of Serbia. Most of the other member states had already seceded from that confederation. Indeed, Serbia's failure to recognize that Kosovo and the other smaller states were not part of Serbia is what led these states to dissolve the federation. To compare Kosovo's vote to leave the remnants of the Yugoslav federation to Russia's forcible annexation of parts of Georgia and the Ukraine is almost as stupid as saying that Stalin didn't kill, directly or through his deliberate starvation policies, millions of Soviet citizens.

(3) I'm not sure who the "some" are who say that "we" bankrolled the Chechen rebels, but "they" are idiots useful to Putin's nationalistic propaganda machine. Otherwise "they" would not exist, since the evidence "they" use to support their claims is laughable.

(4) Show us the treaty wherein "we" pledged that NATO would never expand if Germany was reunified.

(5) The evidence that Russian dissidents are murdered -- including through poisoning -- by Russian agents has nothing to do with the fact that when attempting the transition to a market economy, the Russian economy was seized by Russian gangsters and political hacks. Nor is this seizure the fault of the United States. The Russian response was to adopt a fascist state wherein the government is the biggest, baddest gangster of them all, snuffing its enemies, rewarding its friends, and utterly ignoring the rule of law except when it suits it. All of this was done entirely by Russians, with the willing complicity of a fair number of Russian citizens. To blame the United States for Russia's failures is pathetic. For a people so much given to chest-thumping nationalism these days, they should be ashamed to think that the United States has so much power and that they have so little.

candoxx, I didn't answer; I asked a sincere question which didn't deserve the tone you took in your response to me.

Tradbert and Rocket88, thanks for the backup. :o)

Candoxx: who is threatening Russia's sovereignty now ? The Chechens?disigny

Sorry if I offended anyone.

We can quibble over the details, a simple google will settle things for anyone interested in the facts...like that we sent a warship into the Black Sea, which never happened before, like that the Ukrainian "president" is calling for national honors to the fascist leader who sought to and did help Hitler in the Ukraine during World War II.

In any case, you all think you know better than the Russians themselves how they feel...this sort of arrognace is what gets us in a lot of trouble. Clearly, they feel under seige. You can argue that they are brainwashed, but otherwise, you have to accept their feeling.

One point I will argue: it doesn't matter what Kosovo was part of during the Warsaw Pact, the fact is it declared its independence from Serbia unilaterally, and was ILLEGALLY recognized by Europe and the USA for doing it. Then we turn right around and deny the same right to South Ossetia and Abkhazia. What do you suppose we would do if Palestine declared itself an independent state, unilaterally and was recognized as such by other nations?

We are LAWLESS now; we are the main perpetrators of international lawlessness which started with the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war, and has not let up and I fear this will end only in world war.

Hmm. Better flee for the safety of the Urals while there's still time.

Dear candoxx,

It seems that everything Russia does is justifiable and good in your eyes, but everything America does is LAWLESS and bad. Yet most of their people live poorly and have to make do with lawlessness, and more of our people than ever have to fight obesity and “suffer” the benefits of welfare. And your choice is…

When the grass looks to you so much greener on the other side, maybe you should consider moving to the other lawn? I highly recommend it for those people who love Palestine, think the Ukranians are their little brothers and Georgians are the strange people with accents who sing great harmony and dance well but shouldn’t want to have their own country.

En route to your new pastures, ponder why Russia has always envied the west, on the one hand, and declared that they do things better, on the other (Slavophiles and Slavophobes opposition). Maybe they can’t decide because their DECIDER isn’t as good as ours, even considering the great debacle of the past eight years and even greater one of the next eight. Maybe they can’t decide because—at least for now—the average decision making mechanism isn’t as smart as American. But we are getting there. With your help.

I can't claim to be a huge fan of American foreign policy. And I'm not a "Bush-ie" but your statement about things starting with the Bush Doctrine is contradictory to your statements about Yugoslavia. Bush wasn't President when that went down. Again, not arguing for or against our actions there, just pointing out that there is an established pattern for America's behavior in the international community and it far predates the current President.

And I don't think any of us think we "know better than the Russians". I think, for the most part, we're all just surprised by their choice. It seems like (looking in from the outside) that they feel under seige (which they aren't... is any currently trying to invade Russian or overthrow their government) and are blindly turning to a fierce nationalism and painting this rosy picture of Stalin as defender of the motherland without regard for the atrocities he commited. I not trying to knock the Russians... this happens a lot; in America, in China, in every group be it ethnic, religious or otherwise.