Putin: Hiroshima and Nagasaki worse than Stalin's Great Purge

President Vladimir Putin said no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalinist era -the so-called Great Purge of 1937 - saying that "in other countries even worse things happened."

Speaking at a televised meeting on Thursday with social studies teachers, Putin noted that 2007 is the 70th anniversary of a year that many Russians regard as a synonym for state-sponsored terror. It is an anniversary that has, however, gotten relatively little attention in Russian media.

"Yes, we had terrible pages" in Russia's history, Putin said in remarks broadcast on state television. "Let us recall the events since 1937, let us not forget that. But in other countries, it has been said, it was more terrible."

"No one must be allowed to impose the feeling of guilt on us," he said. "Let them think about themselves. But we must not and will not forget about the grim chapters in our history."

Speaking with the teachers, Putin suggested the United States' use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II was worse than the abuses of Stalin. He also cited the massive US bombing campaigns during the war in Vietnam, as well as the use there of the defoliant Agent Orange.

"We have not used nuclear weapons against a civilian population," he said. "We have not sprayed thousands of kilometres (miles) with chemicals, (or) dropped on a small country seven times more bombs than in all the Great Patriotic (war)," as WWII is known in Russia.