Calling the Kettle Black

From today's Breitbart: Russian president slams 'totalitarian' USSR

President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday slammed the Soviet Union as a totalitarian regime that suppressed human rights, in the most damning assessment of the USSR by a Russian leader in recent years.
In an interview with the Izvestia newspaper published two days before Russia marks the 65th anniversary of victory in World War II, Medvedev said the crimes of wartime dictator Joseph Stalin could never be forgiven.

"The Soviet Union was a very complicated state and if we speak honestly the regime that was built in the Soviet Union... cannot be called anything other than totalitarian," he said.

"Unfortunately, this was a regime where elementary rights and freedoms were suppressed."

In addition to the many western reporters who chose not to cover Medvedev's comments, or provide the missing context, were these journalists and Putin/Medvedev critics:

Ivan Safronov, Russian journalist whose 5-story fall at his apartment building was ruled a "forcible suicide". Unfortunately, the story he was working on did not get published - a story about arms sales from Russia to the Middle East.

Or Alexander Litvinenko, who died of food poisoning. More specifically, Polonium 210.

Or Anna Politkovskaya, who died of lead poisoning inside her apartment door.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has the count at 13, or about 1.4 murdered journalists per year in the past 9 years. That's reasonable. Right?

Do not look to the CPJ for a current tally on the number of Russian journalists intimidated. Or for the number of western journalists who embrace the ideology behind these deaths.