Recommended Poland's history books

In my effort to learn Polish history I've read a number of comprehensive histories of Poland. I've read the more famous ones that have been written in English. These would include:
·Adam Zamoyski
POLAND, A HISTORY, 2009
THE POLISH WAY, 1994
·Daniel Stone
THE POLISH-LITHUANIAN STATE, 1386-1795, 2001
·Norman Davies
GOD'S PLAYGROUND, Vols ! & 2, 1984 edition and 2005 revised edition.
·Jerzy Lukowski & Hubert Zawadzki
A CONCISE HISTORY OF POLAND, 2nd edition, 2006
·Patrice M. Dabrowski
POLAND, THE FIRST THOUSAND YEARS, 2016

I just finished a one hundred seven year old book (published in 1917 and described in the thread above). Surprisingly I found this book, THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF POLAND, to be one of the best. The narrative flowed easily thanks to Lewinski-Corwin's style of writing. The author wrote this book in 1917 while WW I was going on and a new Poland was attempting to be born. When he finished the book the Russian czar was already overthrown and the USA entered WW I.

The author mentions that few references have been given throughout the book. The reason ha says this was because his publisher advised against listing sources that a reader could not consult. Most of the references used were in Polish. His footnotes were printed though and I researched some of them.

August Sokolowski (1846-1924) and Wladyslaw Smolenski (1851-1926) where two of the historians used. Has anyone heard of them? Also Josef Grabiec, HISTORY OF THE POLISH NATION, 1909 was used as was ZARYS HISTORYI POLSKIEJ, 1913 (OUTLINE OF POLISH HISTORY).has any of the forum members used them or read them? It's too bad the references weren't published. They'd be helpful today.

One thing I will say is that the book was beautifully illustrated. I read a reprint version, pictured here, so I could write notes in it. The illustrations and some of the printing were poor and faded. I obtained an original copy through the library loan system from the library of Sarah Lawrence College in New York. The pictures were beautiful enough to be framed!

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the book it has its pluses and minuses. Another interesting part is when the author talks about what the future holds from the perspective of 1917!

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Yes, I have always wanted to say how impressed we are by your efforts but my forgetfulness is really a nuisance. You remind me of myself, I have also always been a maniacal devourer of everything concerning Poland`s history. I started in the second grade elementary school when I robbed my elder sister of her history book for grade 5. :):):)

Are you suggesting that MK is in 5th grade?

No. Did I say I robbed him of a history book???

I finally finished this history book. The author, Samuel Astley Dunham, wrote this history, in English, during the 1830 Revolution. He was very sympathetic to the caus.
"But, whether victor or vanquished, the Poles must have the respect of humanity."

But in reading the history he's very critical of the kings who ruled during the so-called "Golden Age" of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It's as if the Poles stumbled on good luck despite their perpetual bumbling in any social, economic or political sphere.

Casimir IV ruled almost forty-five years!!! "The feeble though obstinate Casimir IV was regretted by nobody. Whatever good appeared under his reign...must be referred to the favor of Heaven; whatever bad, to the weakness of his administration." That's all he gets for FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF RULING!!!

Zygmunt I "the Old' ruled over 41 years. He gets good marks. Zygmunt II Augustus "As a king, he ranks very high...with him ended the greatness of Poland."
Zygmunt III ruled for a little more than 24 years. His reign was disastrous. With him, Poland slipped into the reign of Wladyslaw IV and the Deluge and the end of a great nation.

From reading all these histories it seems that Zygmunt II Augustus is probably Poland's greatest king. That's my unprofessional opinion. But he seems to have known what he was doing. Personally, I think he's Poland's greatest king, above Casimir the Great, above Bathory, above John Sobieski.

THE HISTORY OF POLAND, Mieczyslaw B. Biskupski, 2000. Part of the Greenwood Histories of Modern Nations.
Highly recommended!

This history series deals with the modern histories of nations. Most of this history is devoted to the 1914-2000 era. One chapter deals with Poland up to 1795; another chapter entitled "Poland's Long Century, 1795-1914". This is my first attempt into tackling a modern history of Poland. There is a 2nd edition published in 2018 that updates this edition. So far I have been unable to procure it.

M.B. Biskupski is a Polish-American historian. He received his PhD from Yale in 1981 and since 2002 he is the Endowed Chair in Polish and Polish-American Studies at Central Connecticut State University. Previously he taught at various colleges and at the University of Warsaw.

What's great about this book is that he has a way of describing complex historical events in a well laid out narrative, especially the ethnographic struggles, the economic situations, the political infighting. Exceptionally clear is his comparisons of the Pilsudskiites vs the endecja; why Pilsudski's coup took place; how come Poland failed against the Nazi invasion; how the Allies betrayed Poland at the conferences; characters such as Beruit, Gomulka, etc.

The layout of this history is also refreshing. There is a "Timeline of Historical Events" which is always helpful in studying so complicated a history. The end contains a notable people list with mini-biographies: from Wladyslaw Anders to Stefan Wyszynski. Finally a glossary and list of abbreviations and terms are listed (and help a lot), e.g. kresy, Polonia, AK, PRL, PZPR, etc., etc.

I love it when an historian produces a bibliographic essay which Biskupski does. This essay is a critique of Polish historiography written in the English language. It's well worth reading and he comments on some other Polish histories. These comments pretty much sum up a view of Polish history in English. (Remember these comments are based on books from two decades ago).
·Norman Davies's GOD'S PLAYGROUND has "errors and controversial interpretations" . (He's addressing the original 1982 editions).
·Biskupski gives good points to Zamoyski's THE POLISH WAY (which has since been revised and updated) and R.F. Leslie's THE HISTORY OF POLAND SINCE 1863.
·Pawel Jasienica's English translated works are "extraordinarily readable".
·"Impressive" is Robert I. Frost's AFTER THE DELUGE. Biskupski says no one yet has produced a major synthesis of the Cossack wars and the Deluge.
·"Unsatisfactory" is R.F. Leslie's REFORM AND INSURRECTION IN RUSSIAN POLAND, 1856-1865.
·He says there are no decent biographies (in English) of Pilsudski or Sikorski.
·Again Norman Davies's WHITE EAGLE RED STAR comes off with "...occasional lapses in fact and judgement..."
·Richard C. Lukas's THE FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUSR is valuable "...though marred by its polemical tone regarding Jewish issues"
·Lastly the story of the WW II Polish Underground State still awaits a comprehensive history.

For me this was a great intro into modern Poland. Sort of smoothed things out for me concerning the birth of the Second Republic amidst the wreckage of WWI and the communist period. It was during this communist period, when I was in grammar school, that I came into contact with a lot of kids who were new immigrants from Poland.

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CIVIL WAR IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918-1921, THE RECONSTRUCTION OF POLAND, Jochen Bohler, 2018.

This book is part of a series called "The Greater War, 1912-1923" published by Oxford University Press. The series presents the rise of nation-states before and especially after World War I. Other books in the series cover, Lithuania, Turkey, Russia, Austria, etc.

This book was printed in the UK; written in American English and produced by a German historian. Yep! This is a very unusual Polish history of the birth of the Second Republic.

It is heavily researched: 28 pages of reference works cited; 237 works in English-language scholarship. Most of the archives consulted were in Poland (11 locations) followed by the USA (five locations).

Bohler is a professor at the University of Jena, Germany. After his studies he moved to Warsaw for ten years. He married a Polish woman and started to raise a family there.
The book has an exciting, fast-flowing narrative. But since I'm a novice in the study of Polish history, this book started to confuse me. Why? Bohler claims that the Second Republic grew out of a "Central European CIVIL WAR". His explanation of why this is so caused me to start researching book reviews on line.

Secondly the other main themes also confused me. Firstly, nothing and no one was UNITED. No unity. Also the level of VIOLENCE produced against civilians by the Polish was unbelievable. This idea of violence against civilians is presented in Chapter Four, "Violence and Crimes Beyond the Battlefield". Much of the violence took place in the kresy region, directed against Ukrainians and Jews. Maybe that's why Ukrainians butchered Poles during World War II?

Two reviewers, Krzysztof Jaskulowski (PhD-history; PhD-sociology) and Tomas Balkelis (PhD, Univ. of Toronto) say that the histories of the Second Republic are dominated by idealized narratives of a united Polish nation. Jaskulowski says this notion still exists in modern public thought and in Poland's social imagination. He maintains that many Polish historians skim over the violence that happened.

Also contrary to popular belief, Polish society was NOT UNITED. The book presents contradictory goals, different interests, various Polish "power centers", parties and "warlords" who sometimes fought each other.

Bakelis points out that Bohler shows Polish society displayed a total lack of participation except for urban areas. The peasants were the "silent majority".

I finally went to ChatGPT (AI) and received the following. Positively Bohler's book gives a detailed portrayal of the politico-military chaos of the era. His approach provides a comprehensive perspective on how the Polish state was constructed amidst civil unrest, foreign intervention (Bolsheviks) and internal divisions.

Leaning towards a more critical view is the usage of the term "civil war" and the portrayal of Polish nationalism. Bohler's usage of the "civil war" term to describe Poland's 1918-1921 rebirth misrepresents the nature of the period. Critics say that the struggles for independence, the Bolshevik war, the internal political unrest are NOT civil war. Civil wars are factions fighting within a single state.

Bohler presents the depiction of Polish nationalism as "imperialistic" and "aggressive", particularly against inhabitants of the kresy. He overemphasizes the negative aspects of rebirth and downplays Poland's legit struggles for self-determination.

"Presentism". This concept popped up. I never thought of it. Bohler looks at the 1918-1921 period through "modern lens". That's why he calls it a civil war. It was among Slavic peoples. He oversimplifies Polish motivation for wanting to create their own nation-state.

Overall summary. From my perspective you better know your modern Polish history in order to read this book. This book explores the power vacuum after the great empires fell.

Criticism centers around the term "civil war". It's misleading. Poland's struggles were wars of independence, they were border wars along with internal struggles. Lastly Bohler portrays Polish nationalism as overly negative --- he downplays Poland's legitimate struggle for rebirth.

One thing that Bohler mentions (and reviewer Balkelis emphasizes) is because of the violent wars after World War I, the little Central European countries (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania) became more authoritarian and fierce enemies of each other. They never untied in alliances and that's why they were easy prey for the Nazis and Stalin.

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Little? Maybe Lithuania. Czechoslovakia was a medium sized European country, and Poland was (and still is) larger than Italy.

This Bohler guy sounds a bit like a German version of Dugin. Central Europe was never a political entity, so the very title of the book is nonsensical in itself.

Think outside of your Polish imperial nationalism and tell us why the Polish Ukrainian war of 1918-19 could be called a civil war????

It could be called a Polish civil war, or a civil war in Poland. Ukraine was, as the name of the country attests, simply a Polish borderland. But to call it a civil war in Central Europe is to suggest that CE itself was a political entity at some point in time whilst it never was.

This Bohler guy probably considers Mitteleuropa to be essentially German lebensraum hence his calling it a civil war. Preposterous.

Indeed, some inbreed, instead of moving to Ukraine proper, claim ownership of the Polish lands. F them!
---

German phew, an artificial creation thanks to conquests made by the rebellious Prussian province. Should know their place upstarts.

BLOODLANDS EUROPE BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN, Timothy Snyder, 2010. 543 pages including preface, introduction, bibliography, footnotes, and index. It took me more than three months too read. This book is an historical nightmare. You read it because you're fascinated by the utter gruesomeness of human existence. This is a "for real" horror story. For now I'll just list some excerpts.

NOTE: This history is the story of Hitler, of Stalin and how they caused death to only civilian or unarmed prisoners. Military casualties are not covered in this history.

"Mommy, are the Soviets taking us to hell?
---Wieslaw Adamczyk, 11 years old, in a railcar on his way to Siberia after the Soviets invaded Poland

"One day the children suddenly fell silent (in the playground), we turned around to see what was happening, and they were eating the smallest child, little Petrus. They were tearing strips from him and eating them. And Petrus was doing the same, he was tearing strips from himself and eating them, he ate as much as he could. The other children put their lips to his wounds and drank his blood. We took the children away..."
---at a village in the Kharkiv region during Stalin's Great Famine in the Ukraine (1932)

"The chief executioner at Kalinin, whom the prisoners never saw, was Vasily Blokhin...he commanded an execution squad in Moscow (during the Great Terror). At Kalinin he wore a leather cap, apron, and long gloves to keep the blood and gore from himself...Using German pistols, he shot, each night, about two hundred and fifty men, one after another."
---in 1940

"The model came from Greiser, who ordered the creation of a ghetto for 233,000 Jews of Lodz on 8 February 1940."
---Arthur Greiser, the creator of the ghetto concept and a major proponent in various "euthanasia" programs starting in the 1930s.

"Together, between September 1939 and June 1941, in their time as allies, the Soviet and German states had killed perhaps two hundred thousand Polish citizens, and deported about one million more."

"As many Soviet prisoners of war died ON A SINGLE GIVEN DAY in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War."

"The Germans shot, on a conservative estimate, half a million Soviet prisoners of war. By way of starvation or mistreatment during transit, they killed about 2.6 million more. All in all, perhaps 3.1 million Soviet prisoners of war were killed."
(NOTE: Stalin regarded Soviet POWs as traitors. During the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet prisoners were just confined in camps without any food or shelter. The aim was to starve them to death as fast as possible.)

"Of the nine million people...of Soviet Belarus in 1941, some 1.6 million were killed by Germans in actions away from the battlefields, including about 700,000 prisoners of war, 500,000 Jews, and 320,000 people counted as partisans (the vast majority of whom were unarmed civilian)."
(NOTE: Soviet partisans also killed another 17,500 people "as traitors". Roughly two million non-combatants in Belarus perished)

"By spring 1943, fires burned at Treblinka day and night...Women, with more fatty tissues, burned better than men; so the laborers learned to put them on the bottom of the pile."

Chapter 10: Ethnic Cleansing

"By the end of 1947 some 7.6 million Germans had left Poland (as refugees or deportees)...from early 1945 to late 1947, perhaps 400,00 Germans native to lands that were annexed by Poland died; most in Soviet or Polish camps, and a second large group caught between armies or drowned art sea."
YIKES !!!

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BLOODLANDS EUROPE BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN, Timothy Snyder, 2010.
"Stalin's suggestions were transformed into orders, the orders into quotas, the quotas into corpses."
(Pg. 309)

The "Bloodlands" would constitute the geographical area from the Oder - Neiss Rivers west of Poznan all the way to Smolensk; from Leningrad to Kursk to Kharkiv to the Crimea. It includes all the famous cities: Minsk, Warsaw, Vilnius, Kiev, Lviv, Lublin, Riga, Lodz, Gdansk, Cracow, Novgorod, Balystock and on and on.

The victims were not combatants. They were unarmed civilians or prisoners of a regime or prisoners of war. The total murdered comes to over FOURTEEN MILLION. The major theme of the book is the intentional atrocities that occurred through the interaction of totalitarian regimes. Events that Snyder covers are:
The Holodomor (1932-33) - the man-made famine caused by Stalin's policies in the Ukraine.
The Great Terror (1937-38) - its purges, executions and deportations.
The Nazi invasion of the USSR.
Hitler's campaign to exterminate Slavs (especially Poles) and other "racially inferior" groups.
The Holocaust and how it developed over time.
Finally the post-WW II ethnic cleansing campaigns are dealt with.

Snyder emphasizes that these killings were not COLLATERAL DAMAGE due to warfare. They were deliberate attempts by the Soviets and Nazis to reshape societies. Snyder focuses on mostly civilian suffering, especially how ordinary people were the targets.

Snyder criticizes Western European-centric histories that just highlight the Holocaust and neglect other crimes against Slaves (Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, etc.) and also Stalin's role in contributing to the death toll. We view the Holocaust in isolation but Snyder includes it in the very insane machinations of Eastern European history. From this view I learned quite a lot.

Today many people don't realize the WW II started with Stalin as a Nazi ally attacking Poland. Stalin, between 1939 and 1941, massacred thousands of Poles. By the time WW II started Stalin was an expert in mass killings. Hitler and his gang had to learn quickly. Learn they did and they bypassed Stain's totals.
Snyder covers how the Holocaust developed into the Final Solution and how it fit into the Bloodlands. The Nazis believed the Soviet Union was a Jewish state. In the end the Soviets downplayed the Holocaust. To emphasize the Holocaust was to downplay the suffering of ALL SOVIETS in the motherland. That was Soviet thinking, especially after WW II.

Stalin created the gulags in 1931 and by the post-war they grew to 476 camps holding 18 million people ( more than every man, woman, child in New York City, TWICE OVER).

The starvation in the Ukraine (1932-33) that Stalin caused killed not only Ukrainians but Poles, Russians, Jews, Germans and whoever happened to be living in that area at that time. No one in the outside world knew of this famine. The NY TIMES was especially duped. Stalin was brilliant like a magician to hide the death of millions.

Stalin's Great Terror (1937-38) was the ethnic killing of nationalities in the Soviet Union. The largest group of butchered ethnic peoples were Polish, especially in Ukraine and Belarus. Stalin believed the Poles were fascists attempting to undermine the USSR, The Great Terror also went unnoticed in the Western world except for some show trials and army purges.

Most Polish Jews were exterminated at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka by carbon Monoxide gas (1942). These were not "concentration camps" but "death factories". You were shipped there to be killed.. Most Jews east of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line were killed by shooting or starvation and not by gassing. You can say overall, in the Bloodlands, from 1932 to 1945, most of the killing was by starvation then shooting then gassing. The shooting was quite personal. One on one during Stalin's purges or the Nazis execiuting groups over open pits.

Some interesting points. The highest number on non-combatant deaths in one area would be Minsk, Belarus. More people died in Ukraine than anywhere in Eastern Europe or in Europe or in Asia (including China) during this period. It included not just Ukrainians but anybody else who happened to live in or be there: Poles, Belarussians, Jews, German Soviets, etc., etc.

Other points of interest. "Nearly as many NON-JEWISH Poles were murdered during the war as European Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. For that matter, more non-Jewish Poles died at Auschwitz than did Jews if any European country, with only two exceptions: Hungary and Poland." (Pg. 406)

The Wehrmacht was told that Poland wasn't a real country, that Polish soldiers were not real soldiers, that the German dead were "murdered" not killed in action. Thus it was logically correct to kill Polish POWs.

When the Nazis captured Soviet POWs they put them in camps without shelter or food and left them to starve. Cannibalism started up. The Nazis offered the Soviet POWs a form of salvation. Join the Nazis. Many did, especially Ukrainians. They were sent to a training camp called TRAWNICKI where they became police and concentration camp guards and were called "Trawnicki men". Thousands of Belarussians, Russians and Germans living in the USSR were recruited into occupation police forces.

Everyone lumps concentration camps together but there were death camps and there were work camps. Auschwitz was famous because it was large and it was both types. In 1944 Auschwitz became the pre-eminent site for the Final Solution. By then most of the Polish Jews were dead; exterminated in camps that had been built and already dismantled (see above).

Auschwitz is famous because it began taking in Jews from areas OUTSIDE the Bloodlands, e.g. Hungary, Franc, Italy, etc.

"Auschwitz was indeed a major site of the Holocaust: about one in six murdered Jews perished there...Auschwitz was also not the main place where the two largest Jewish communities in Europe, the Polish and the Soviet, were exterminated. Most Soviet and Polish Jews under German occupation had already been murdered by the time Auschwitz became the major death factory. By the time the gas chamber and crematoria complexes at Birkenau came on line in spring 1943, more than three quarters of the Jews who would be killed in the Holocaust were already dead. For that matter, the tremendous majority of all of the people who would be deliberately killed by the Soviet and Nazi regimes, well over ninety percent, had already been killed by the time these gas chambers at Birkinau began their deadly work. AUSCHWITZ IS THE CODA TO THE DEATH FUGUE."
(Pg. 383)

Finally the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 unveiled Stalin's evilness to the eyes of the Allies and this time period could be said to be the first stirrings of the "COLD WAR" that was to come. Then came Yalta (Feb., 1945) and Potsdam (July, 1945) and the Allies knew Stalin's real make-up. By then Stalin didn't care. He was the "master manipulator". He destroyed Hitler and the Nazis. He destroyed all the enemies (real or imagined) of the USSR. He re-shaped all of Eastern Europe and its many societies. Churchill and FDR kow-towed to his demands.

I do believe in heaven and I do believe in hell. After reading this book there has got to be a hell as a reward for the perpetrators who created the Bloodlands.

And russians still love him.

My first reaction to reading your comment was "He's absolutely right, no questions about that." While I was reading BLOODLANDS, I was also reading Niall Ferguson's THE WAR OF THE WORLD, 2006. This is a history of the world from 1904 to 1953. Ferguson contends that this time frame was actually one continuous war of our world.

Naturally "Uncle Joe" Stalin plays a major part. From a world view he even put the Japanese in their places. That's why Japan thought nothing of attacking the USA but were afraid of Stalin and never bothered the Soviets during WW II.

I think that Stalin shaped the worldview for decades of the 20th century. Even though he butchered his own people and afterwards they tried to downplay "Stalinism", I really believe he is secretly revered in Russia today. The yearning for those "idealistic memories" of his times are still --- I believe --- near and dear to the Russians even to this day. They may talk of Peter the Great but secretly they wish they, as a country, were at the level of power during Stalin's time.

there's no secret about it, they're still erecting statues and still have icons with his picture....

it's not despite the killing he did, but because of it, the more russians a russian leader kills the more beloved they are (I welcome counter examples if anyone can offer them).

@mafketis
The US killing millions of native Americans made a whole series of Presidents popular. Does that count?

@Barney
Just a reminder to you that this is a Polish History forum. If you would like to discuss Native Americans I can recommend some great history forums to you.
It does surprise me that the moderators allowed your diversionary comment to be posted. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the topic.

@marion kanawha
My comment is relevant as a comparison of the veneration of Stalin and the office of the president of the US. Both killed their own citizens by the million.

You read Ferguson and Snyder but didnt mention the obvious bias of both authors, I've read both. Snyders book is by far the better, its well researched however the one dimensional driving narrative becomes frustrating after a while. Fregusons' is more akin to a party trick or a TV special on the history channel..

Ferguson is on the conservative side but does make some good points.


They don't seem to have much to cherish and if course fatalistic societies do tend to favour either a 'hard' leader or an absolutist religion or ideology as a way of abrogating themselves of responsibility for what is around them.

There are elements of that in Poland too.

oh rrrreeeeeeeeeaaaalllyyyyy?

Which US president(s) killed millions of US citizens? How? When?

That's a very strong claim... wanna walk it back or do you have evidence/sources?

All of them until there were so few left it wasnt worth the effort. They never bothered documenting the slaughter in detail but its generally accepted that this series of genocides happened. I'm surprised that you have never heard about it.

Oh, you're talking about Native Americans.... most of them weren't citizens (all Native Americans in the US were made citizens in 1924 which was not popular with all of them) they were competing ethnic groups that were often at war with each other as much as with settlers. More were killed by European diseases than anything else.

Very regrettable but it's hard to say the US is responsible for 'millions' of deaths of its own citizens.... no one has any realistic idea of how many people were in the current US in 1492 but recent estimates say about 3.8 (US and Canada combined). Other estimate range from about one million to about 8 million....

Wanna try again?

No need, the genocides happened to MAG and the perpetrators are still lauded just like Stalin in Russia.

MAG??? and you've obviously never talked to normal Americans about the issue.... there is a _lot_ of regret and generalized guilt but it happened and there's no going back...

You claimed that US presidents killed millions of US citizens and can't back that up so you changed the topic.

Mafketis 1
Barney 0

Yay me!

I didnt realise that the people killed dont count as they were not worthy of US citizenship.

So I should have said that unlike Stalin the office of president of the United states didnt kill its own citizens it simply oversaw the seizure of indigenous land and murdered the people who had lived there. All to make America great.

Thats grand, nothing to complain about, US good rest of world bad.

You made the statement, not me...


Yay! We found something we can agree on!!!

I did indeed without realising that for Americans citizenship is important with respect to murder specifically who does it and who dies.

Barney as an 'adopted' US citizen I must tell you are in the wrong. It is a different qualifier if your government kills its citizens and when it kills outsiders.
At least when I got it US citizenship meant something, nowadays, especially in Europe if you are a citizen you have fewer rights and are treated worse by your government than outsiders especially if they are illegal aliens.
That is something that makes no sense - in the sane world.

Yes it its. You can't compare deaths (even civilian deaths) during hostile group encounters/wars over land and domestic repression of political enemies.

the US has nothing remotely resembling either the holodomor or the purges or the gulag.....