This is Medvedev's opinion. I've posted a longer version of this before, but
anyway... BTW Ekho Moskvy is a liberal radio station appealing to the
intelligentsia.
:
TITLE: RADIO INTERVIEW WITH ROI MEDVEDEV, HISTORIAN AND WRITER, ON
JOSEPH STALIN
[EKHO MOSKVY RADIO, 14:00, MARCH 5, 2003] SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (http://www.fednews.ru/)
Anchor: Hello and welcome to Ekho Moskvy. It's 14:08 Moscow time. I am Alexander Klimov. And our guest is historian and publicist Roi Medvedev. Good day, Roi Alexandrovich.
Medvedev: Good day.
Anchor: We are going to talk about -- guess what? It's the 50th anniversary since the death of Stalin. And I would begin by asking you to comment on this topic. But first let me give you the number of our studio pager to which you can page your questions: 961-2222. I will read out the most interesting ones and we will all try to answer them together. --- Anchor: And there is another myth. Stalin as the greatest military commander, the Generalissimo. And Vladimir asks whether Stalin lives up to that title?
Medvedev: He does because he commanded a colossal military machine. Over four years 15 million people took part in the war. It was a war unlike any other in the history of mankind.
Of course, there were appalling casualties. The Soviet Army lost 10,000 soldiers in combat every day. Nine million soldiers and officers died in the battlefield. 10,000 a day. And I am not speaking about prisoners of war, I am not speaking about the wounded. No other wars had ever inflicted such casualties. But the country had won that war.
Anchor: By the way, did it win because of the help of allies or would we have won single-handed?
Medvedev: We would have won anyway. At the end of the day we would have won by ourselves. That was obvious by the end of 1943. But the Allies did help in some ways and diminished our casualties and shortened the war. But otherwise we would have managed ourselves.
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