Sounds a lot like modern US, actually.

None of the things you mention is unique to the Soviet Union. Concentration camps are British invention, the US used to put the Japanese population in camps as well.

History showed though, that the Soviets did stop the Nazi's genocide. As someone who's ancestors were on the receiving end of it, I am indeed grateful for it and would side with Stalin any time, thank you very much.

> I recall a guy called Chamberlain had similar, as well as extremely successful, approach to aggressors about 70 years ago.

Why? It has been indeed a success -- pushing the Germany to the East via Munich Agreement and Sitzkrieg aka doing nothing when Germany invaded Poland. Eventually Hitler did attack the USSR and everyone was happy for a while. Except the France who got occupied in the process.

The famine did not actually care about the ethnics. The Russians were the backbone of the Soviet Union and they suffered greatly as well. The matter is highly politicised in the Ukraine, to the point where no actual discussion is possible. Sadly, the Yushchenko's government did many blatant falsifications about that matter: apart from using the US' Great Depression photos to illustrate the Holodomor they also made a book of the Holodomor's victims where they put everyone who died in the affected regions, including very elderly.

Interesting fact I recall reading is that the US ambassador to the USSR praised the government's effort in fighting the famine.

Because the Tatars openly supported Hitler hoping to get their own country from the Nazis. As usual, the collaborators themselves escaped with the retreating Wehrmacht and the common people had to pay the price for them.

They got marionette governments to act as a buffer for Soviet Union. Because, you know, Czechs made a third of Third Reich's tanks, Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians were actually fighting along with Nazis. Poland, too, has happily participated in the division of Czechoslovakia (after capturing parts of Ukraine and Belarus in 1919-1921). And Germany, well, started the whole mess. Besides, the Germans should be really thankful for the GDR: without it US and UK would carry on with the plan of destroying Germany's industry and reducing the country to an agrarian one. Instead, the Western Germany got Marshall's plan, become the showcase of Western way of life and is now the locomotive behind the whole EU.

The war would be bloodier and take more time, but keep in mind that the vast majority of Lend Lease shipments happened after 1943. Prior to 1943 the Allies delivered much less than promised, e.g. only about one fifth of arranged trucks. The western front also happened in 1944, way after Stalingrad and Kursk.

The Soviets could successfully move their war production east to the Urals and defend the country till the production was running at full speed. The Germans simply didn't have enough resources to push further.

Sadly, no.

There are more Tatars outside of Sevastopol than in the city, but they are still a minority. Their history with Russia is pretty complicated and has many conflicts the latest being WWII where the Tatar community openly supported Hitler even after they were denied their own country. While most collaborationists themselves could escape with the retreating Wehrmacht, the common people were not so lucky: the Tatars were deported to Uzbekistan, many of them died. 1989 the Soviets acknowledged the deportation as a humanitarian crime and allowed the Tatars to return to the peninsula.

The area is a powder keg now. The Tatars share anti-Russian views with the Ukrainian nationalists and the Russians, who compose the majority of the people there feel threatened by the new government fearing Latvian-style discrimination.

He is not. Although Russian was not forbidden per se, the use of the language was severely restricted including the law that forbade teaching children in Russian.

Not to mention the fact that the Russians were not granted citizenship based on their ethnicity alone.

It's still no reason to strip said Russians of their rights like Baltic countries did. The fear is that the new Ukrainian government would do similar steps and the fact that one of the first laws passed by the new government was to remove Russian's language "regional language" status is a strong indication for it.

Ukraine 1941: 41 Mio. people, Ukraine 1945: 27,4 Mio. people. Ukraine 1993: 51,8 Mio. people.
Hint: 1941-1945: Nazis, 1945-1993: Communists.

> any more Ukrainians were killed by communist than by Nazis

Interesting... Ukraine 1941: 41 Mio. people, Ukraine 1945: 27,4 Mio. people. Ukraine 1993: 51,8 Mio. people.
Hint: 1941-1945: Nazis, 1945-1993: Communists.

As said, I don't care how noble their goals were. Siding with Nazis is an excuse to nothing. Vlasov and Bandera were used by the Nazi regime and whether they genuinely believed that they are fighting for noble cause is irrelevant -- both were sentenced to death for a reason.

I talk about SS parades and monuments in Latvia. Supported and mandated by the government. I talk about the discrimination of ethnic Russians who were refused the citizenship and were stripped of some rights there. Lithuanian government pursuits the use of Soviet symbolic but does not do the same to the Nazi insignia. All of the above routinely ignored by the European Union.

Hell, if the US makes a known Nazi Deputy Secretary of the National Security I'd be leaving Germany and joining Russia's army.