1. Joseph Stalin was guilty of genocides and crimes against humanity that exceeded Adolf Hitler's. He was not hanged at Nuremberg only because he was on the winning side.
•  In 1932, Joseph Stalin perpetrated genocide by shooting and mass starvation of between seven and nine million Ukrainians.
• In 1939, he joined forces with Adolf Hitler to invade Poland. He then overran the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and, in December, launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Finland
• During its occupation of Poland, the Soviet Union deported a million Poles, many of whom were never heard from again. The Soviet Union also perpetrated the Katyn Massacre of four thousand Polish prisoners of war.
•  When the Polish Home Army launched an uprising in Warsaw in 1944, the Soviet Army stood idle while the Nazis leveled the city. The Soviets refused to allow British and American supply aircraft to use Soviet airfields to supply the Poles. Stalin wanted to get as many Poles killed as possible, even if it involved collaboration with the Nazi enemy.
2. The Russian soldier  was often himself a victim of Stalin's callous indifference to human life. Stalin often positioned NKVD (Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs) "blocking units" behind the Russian lines, with orders to shoot soldiers who gave ground even to find better positions from which to fight. The beginning of the movie Enemy at the Gates shows how blocking units operated.
3. The Soviet Union was throughout its history a menace to regional and world peace.
• Soviet-supplied weapons killed thousands of American soldiers in Korea and Vietnam.
• In 1956, Soviet troops rampaged through Hungary, slaughtered Hungarian civilians, and razed a good part of Budapest to the ground. James Michener's The Bridge at Andau describes how the Soviet Union and its Communist proxies behaved in occupied Eastern Europe. Examples include the beating of political prisoners with steel-cored rubber hoses.
• In 1968, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to suppress a pro-democracy movement.

WE, THE RESIDENTS OF CALIFORNIA, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE WORLD, formally protest the monument in West Hollywood, California, USA, that is being "dedicated in honor and tribute to the World War II veterans from the former Soviet Union," today.

WE THE SURVIVORS OF THE SOVIET GULAG"SYSTEM"ANDTHEIR DESCENDANTS, can not forget the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet Union in World War II. 

While residents of the former Eastern Bloc countries are well-versed in what this army did during World War II, this is not always the case in much of the West.  Allow us to highlight a few items deserving special mention:

The Second World War began in September 1939 when Poland was attacked by Germany and, in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was signed by both Germany and the USSR, the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Eastern Poland.  It was both Hitler and Stalin's fervent desire to remove Poland from the world's map as a free and sovereign nation.

For years the USSR (Soviet Union) aided Nazi Germany, and, therefore, aided the enemy of England, France, Canada, and the other Allies.  The Soviet Union only joined the Allies, later becoming one of the "Big Three," when it was attacked by Nazi Germany in June 1941.

In four massive train convoys, beginning in early 1940, the Soviet Army deported "well almost 2 million" Polish citizens from eastern Poland to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Soviet Asia.  The deported included infants, children, teens, women, and the elderly--Polish people from all walks of life.  Of this number, which some historians estimate at 1.7 to 2 million people, only 115,700 were evacuated from the USSR in 1942.  The vast majority of those who were not evacuated died on Soviet soil, many without burial, or buried in communal or unmarked graves.  The whereabouts of the remainder are still unknown to this day.  This is the Soviet Army that West Hollywood, California, USA, the one that is being HONORED TODAY!
     
Over 4,000 Polish army officers were killed by the Soviets in the Katyn forest massacre.  There were other killing fields, and historians have estimated that at least 21,700 men in total were shot in the back of the head and buried by the Soviets at these locations. In contrast to Germany, the USSR/Soviet Union/Russia refuses to admit to or apologize for these war crimes to this very day.  This is the Soviet Army that West Hollywood, California, USA, the one that is being HONORED TODAY!
     
During the Warsaw "Rising," in which the Polish Underground Army rose to throw off the Nazis, the Allies agreed that Warsaw was to have military assistance from the Soviet Army.  However, throughout the 63-day uprising, Soviet troops sat on a hill across the Vistula (Wisla) River watching the slaughter and destruction of Warsaw, doing absolutely nothing to help.  During each week of the uprising, approximately 10,000 people were killed, and Warsaw was totally annihilated by the Nazis.  This is the Soviet Army that West Hollywood, California, USA the one that is being HONORED TODAY!

Would the USA ever contemplate a monument dedicated to the German/Nazi Army on US soil?  Of course not!  Yet the Soviet Army, whose hands drip with Polish blood and that of many citizens of the Baltic states, is to be commemorated on American soil!  This is an outrage and deeply offensive to the survivors and the surviving relatives of the victims.

WE, THE RESIDENTS OF CALIFORNIA, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE WORLD, vehemently protest this monument, which to us is a symbol of Soviet oppression and death.  This monument does not belong in the United States, the "Land of the Free," a land where many victims of the Soviet Union and its Army chose to make their homes.