> As an aside, the oft quoted “50 million” number is BS. It counts famines, deaths in the war, etc.

The number I quoted is adjusted for the war related deaths. As for the famines engineered and caused by the Soviet Government, please do not minimize those deaths by saying they do not matter. Members of my grandfathers family died during that time because of the famines and because of how the Soviet government was literally stealing the food from Ukraine.

> Poland was different, Czechoslovakia was different, East Germany was different etc.

I did not live in Communist East Germany, Poland, or Czechoslovakia, but I am sure many people on this board have. And I am sure that most of them have stories to tell about how terrible those governments were. You haven't lived though any of those regimes either, so please do not pretend like you know best.

> Are you really familiar with the history of those states, or just repeat what you’ve read or seen in movies about very specific periods and very specific countries?

I was borne in Ukraine in 1984. I lived through the tail end of it, but my Mom and Dad, as well as my grand parents, lived through the thick of it. Not every one was send to Siberia, but many people were. My grandfather was a Ukrainian military doctor, so he was part of the "party," but he was a very conscientious man, and his hart would bleed for the poor conscripted soldiers he was treating. The Soviet government would literally use them as slave labor. When Chernobyl meltdown happen, my grandfather was sent to triage the injured. He was stationed miles away from the reactor, treating the injured soldiers coming back from the power plant. They were dying from radiation poisoning, and the Soviet government would just send new once in there, to die.

You see, in the communist country, a human life is worth nothing. If it's easier to send a 1,000 soldiers to die, they will do that, no questions asked. I know, soldiers are sent to die all the time, but these poor guys didn't have a chance, not a chance. I realize that US did the same in Vietnam, and it's wrong. But 2 wrongs don't make a right.

> Or are only citizens “individuals” and foreign people don’t matter? Even so there are a million black people in jail in the US, aren’t they individuals or don’t they have rights?

Again, you can't argue that because US has it's problems, and is doing a lot of really wrong things, now and in the past, that somehow this makes all the horrible things that the Soviet government did just pitchy. I lived through the tail end of communism, my parents lived through a lot of it. We moved to US as soon as we could. And with all it's problems, I would take US over USSR any day of the week.

I understand that you lived through a dictatorship, that Greece is right now in a complete financial ruin, in large part due to the idiotic way the EU is setup, and that you probably want to blame EU and US for all of it. But don't look to Russia and the olds style USSR for answers, the answers they have are the wrong answers. My fear is that if Greece does not recover from it's problems soon, they will be tempted to do a deal with Russia and Putin. Your opinions are not unique in Greece, I believe. I really hope that doesn't happen.

In any case, you are not going to see it my way, and I am not going to see it your way. So let's part here.