Re: "You stand convicted by your own words. This exerpt is an excellent example, no famines, no mass murder, no gulag, no deportations. And most especially, no failure to produce enough to adequately feed the Soviet people." Fred, Did you look at the title? The article is on the "economy of the Soviet Union," focusing on the Soviet Union right before its collapse, the Soviet Union of the 1980s-- not the Stalinist USSR of the 1930s. In addition, the article compares well to Encarta's entry in both tone and substance (http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553017_2/Union_of_Soviet_Socialist_R…). Also note this except taken from the article: "As growth rates sank, supply shortages of food and consumer goods became more and more widespread. Perhaps belatedly, calls for greater freedom for managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and 1980s." Again, note: "Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major factor explaining the sector's poor performance. In the new state and collective farms, outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account. Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred resentment and worker alienation across the countryside (although some landless or poor peasants benefited from the process). The human toll was catastrophic. In the collective farms, low labor productivity was a consequence for decades to come." BTW, an aunt of mine was murdered by the Stalinist USSR. Aside from her one surviving sibling, the rest of her family was murdered by Nazi Germany. I don't need some senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback lecturing me about totalitarianism. _________________________________________________________________ Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://youroffers.msn.com