"A particularly telling Milne moment came in 2006, when the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly voted to condemn "the massive human rights violations committed by totalitarian communist regimes". In the article he wrote in response, Milne admitted the USSR executed 799,455 people, then moved on. "For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality," he insisted. Now, you can quibble with the facts. Focussing only on the USSR's executions ignores the millions it starved to death in Ukraine, or in the mass deportations from the Caucasus and Crimea, the way it used rape as a weapon, or that fact it invaded without provocation half a dozen countries. You can also question those "huge advances" considering the fact that life expectancy in the USSR peaked in 1962, then declined steadily as chronic alcoholism took hold."
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Seumas Milne
Seumas Patrick Charles Milne (born 5 September 1958) is a British journalist and former political aide. A journalist at The Guardian from 1984, later a columnist for the newspaper, he was appointed as the Labour Party's Executive Director of Strategy and Communications in October 2015 under party leader Jeremy Corbyn. He left the role when Corbyn ceased being leader in April 2020.
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