I've often wondered about that, because Russians on this site never identify themselves. I had a hunch you were Russian, because of your knowledge of Russia in WWII. Did you get that on your own (perhaps while living in Europe) or do they actually teach the good and the bad about Russia in public schools?

Certainly the USA isn't perfect here, either. It was a long time before our under age 18 textbooks talked about the raw deal the American Indians got (300 broken treaties, almost every land deal reneged on by the government), atrocities committed in Vietnam, and so forth. Slowly, these things are being talked about.

I never studied in Russia, but in Ukraine - still, we were often using Russian or even Soviet textbooks, as Ukraine seems to be incapable of producing own textbooks :D. I went the entire way from elementary school to undergraduate in Ukraine and repeated the last three years of high school in Germany (because Germany does not recognize Ukrainian undergraduate certificates).

First, Ukraine. The Russian Civial war is covered very sparsely, only to the extend needed to understand the chaos in Ukraine itself during the years 1917-1921. Of course, we learned that there was such a war and that the Reds won, but no particular battles or anything big about how the war went. Red/White terror also goes down because of it.

As for Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-38 (it were not only army purges. 1% of the population was killed and almost in each bigger family someone arrested). It is covered quite extensively. But it doesn't prevent from many seeing Stalin positive. I actually had many opportunities to talk to those Stalinists - they either think the terror was necessary or say it were local governors who committed the crimes, while Stalin wanted to kill real enemies only (somehow they are not disturbed by the fact that many of those lists of people to be shot or arrested were signed by Stalin himself, and there is at least one instance known of Stalin almost doubling requested number of people to be shot).

Hm, there was terror (from both Reds and Whites) during the civil war, with millions dead. In the immediate aftermath it actually became quite quiet, before a wave of arrests in the late 1920s/early 1930s (mostly arrests, no killings).

the USA misdeeds aren't in the same league as what occurred in the old USSR.>

The article is about Seirawan's experience as Korchnoi's second. To be fair, those who appreciate anecdotes will enjoy the piece, but the only game discussed (and only the 5 moves after the adjournment) is Korchnoi vs Petrosian, 1980, from the Korchnoi-Petrosian 1980 candidates match, where Seirawan narrates in detail how hard he worked on it and how creative he was, and how Korchnoi won the game playing his suggestion. As a by product, the article only mentions one game between the author and Korchnoi (won by the author), leaving the wrong impression that he had a plus score against him.

Oddly enough, Mr. biggest-ego-in-the-world wrote a quick obituary a day after VK's passing that I found much more interesting: https://www.chess.com/article/view/....