This man was way ahead of Von Braun in developing ballistic weapons but of course instead of the Red Army having the ability to launch cruise missles on Berlin in 1943, he was languishing in a prsion cell as a result of Communist insanity.

Try harder Dewi, you’re doing great son, you’ll come up with something eventually.

Yes after allying with, arming and supplying the Nazis the Communists finally mobilised to fight them.

Maybe the Nazis would have caused serious problems to the Russians under a democratic government but at least in that situation the Russian army would have started the war as a functioning, well armed, disciplined force with well trained officers rather than the dysfunctional, paranoid, ill equipped rabble that Stalin’s purges had created and which lost millions of prisoners and millions of square miles of territory because the Communists couldn’t believe their good friends the Nazis would ever attack them.

I repeat my question:

“Name one single achievement of the Soviets that the Russian people wouldn’t have been able to achieve with a liberal democratic government?”

Kursk Salient.

Can’t resist can I.

Remember Joe Stalin and his Communist friends almost single handedly led Russia to massive defeat when his ally and friend Adolf Hitler betrayed him and attacked a Red Army that had been utterly demoralised and eviscerated by paranoid Communist purges.

That’s plain enough then, I’ll take that as a no.

Amazing! You believe that a system of government which never managed to achieve the consent of a majority of voters in a single national election in a hundred years but which during its time of operation saw the murder of at least a hundred million innocent men women and children and the enslavement of at least a billion more, is superior to the system in which you are free to express your political views and leads you and your family to live in peace, health and prosperity.

Have you tried Pyongyang, Garibaldy? I believe the weather’s lovely at this time of year.

Hows about a little sample from the literary world of St John of Hume in his “Personal Views”:

p130 … we do not expect the centre to solve our problems . we expect it to make it possible for us to resolve them ourselves . we are polygamists. rather than put all our hopes in the Belfast or London baskets, we look for opportunities and partnerships with an entire harem of centres
p131 … in a polycentric world, promiscuity is an advantage

Ironically, his three-stranded analysis failed to complement his post-nationalist/regionalist concepts outlined above.

Variety is the spice of life and the archipelago dish has many distinctive flavours. Pass on the salt …

So what I will say is that I think a socialist world would be fairer and more equitable than the one we have today. I am also happy to acknowledge the many mistakes made by the Soviets. But equally I am happy to laud their many achievements.

Can I ask you one simple question, a yes or no wil suffice; in the struggle between Marxist imperialism of the Soviet variety and liberal democracy of the western European variety, which came to an end with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, do you believe the right side won?

Let’s be clear about something. Hitler’s willing excecutioners were not just German. Huge segments of the population in all those countries were incredibly hate-filled, anti-semetic and right-wing. They were far from democrats. These were not stable “normal” circumstances, and the creation of the states must be seen in those terms. So if we want to look at things as historians we must look at them in that context.