>>IMO Stalin wouldn't have minded the loss of life so much. The Germans saved him doing it to his own people himself - all he was interested in was the sovereignty of the USSR.
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>There's that, though the reasons he did that to his own people were mostly the dictator's paranoia - looking for scapegoats, traitors and whatnot behind every corner. And always looking out for a potential competitor in his top ranks. Sometimes the whole nations within USSR were branded as traitors - and were moved into some remote area just like that. Or the surviving POWs who returned home - they were suspect for being alive.

The scapegoats and "traitors" included offing most of his top brass just before the war. Apart from his political "enemies" and the 1000s he xferred to gulags there were the peasants who collectively starved to death as a result of his collective agricultural policies

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>>>Don't you understand their pov? Is it really that hard to look through 'the bad communistic' views ?
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>>There's a lot of truth in that, but they used the end of the Patriotic War as an excuse to land-grab, and extend their "buffer zones"
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>There's one thing which is easily forgotten, or conveniently omitted. When the young Soviet country was just getting its legs, in 1919-1921, there was an attempt to surround it, with a lot of aid from UK et al. That's where any Soviet (and later Russian) leader got the idea of "we shall not be surrounded ever again" hammered into their heads.

What? they saw the offer of aid as being surrounded? How could other states "surround" the empire?

>Their doctrine on avoiding that was to surround themselves with buffer countries. The communist internationalism etc was just the propagandistic excuse for this - these countries were practically hostages in case anyone tried again.

Agreed

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>Just like the US got their own idea of "we won't be surprised by another Pearl Harbour ever again" deep into their military doctrine and spread the CIA and military bases all over the world, plus satellites above.

And 9/11 "a day that will live in infamy" didn't surprise the USA like Pearl Harbour?

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>I wonder what brand of paranoia do the Chinese nurse?

That the people shall get democracy.