http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=986569
User Latias defends the USSR:
"The Holodomor, the notion that the Soviet government intentionally starved the citizens of Ukraine, is just folklore fabricated by right-wing Ukrainian nationalists."
"But I realized that these alleged atrocities are often embellished and are propaganda to discredit the Soviet Union. When one thinks about it, such accusations are prima facie implausible. The "Holodomor" for instance assumes that Stalin pulled a "Siege of Leningrad" in Ukraine, depriving it of any food and other resources. Also, there did not seem to be any extermination apparatus that could kill tens of millions of Soviet citizens. The "Holodomor" likely initially was innuendo from anti-communist Ukrainian nationalists that was popularized in the 1980s as a Cold War weapon to discredit the CCCP."
I've also watched some videos skeptical of it from communists, like this one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BBHKBj-Hiqc
I was just wondering what the consensus about it here is. I know there's some disagreement about Stalin and Mao's culpability generally, but the deaths attributed to the collectivization of agriculture always seemed like the most imposing attack on their legacy.
"you peasants are hording grain, hand it over"
"we use that stuff to plant next year's crop, have you never been on a farm before comrade?"
"die kulak"
"you peasants are hording grain, hand it over"
"we use that stuff to plant next year's crop, have you never been on a farm before comrade?"
"die kulak"
Where did America's missing millions go?
Holodomor Lessons
U.S. history contains a serious crime against its own people: the Great American Holodomor of 1932/33, which cost the lives of millions. Historian Boris Borisov suggests the U.S. should not lecture Russia on Holodomor in Ukraine, but take a closer look at the lessons from its own past.
The United States of America constantly try to teach us the "Holodomor lessons".
"A special commission, created by the US Congress in 1988, came to the conclusion that during the Holodomor period 25 per cent of the Ukrainian population - millions of people - were intentionally annihilated by the Soviet government through genocide, and did not just die as a result of famine.
"On October 20, 2003 the House of Representative of the US Congress accepted a resolution on the 1932-33 Holodomor in Ukraine, stating that this was an act of terror and mass murder, aimed at the Ukrainian people.
"In November 2005 the House of Representatives of the US Congress accepted a resolution which allowed the Ukrainian authorities to build a monument commemorating Holodomor victims and recognised it.
"This year (2008) the US Congress may consider a new resolution on the 1932-33 Holodomor in Ukraine"
These news lines make headlines. They are repeated by the press before making their way on to TV and into legal structures. In this way they are forced on millions of people around the world.
But a question comes up when we hear such news: why does the US Congress pay so much attention to things that happened 75 years ago in a far-away country? Why didn't well-informed Americans protest back then, in 1932-33?
Is it just a political interest in Russia's influence on the post-Soviet territory, or an attempt to split Russians and Ukrainians forever, that tempts Americans again and again to repeat the fascist propaganda of Goebbels in the 30s: that "millions of Ukrainians were intentionally annihilated by the Soviet government"?
The ultimate compassion and justice felt by American congressmen is hardly believable - just try to find at least one Congress resolution (one, not three), where genocide of Native Americans would honestly be called genocide, or at least "mass annihilation". Even though most of the peoples inhabiting the territory of the USA were wiped out completely and their total number was radically reduced.
American history records another crime against its own people: the Great American Holodomor, also in 1932-33, when the USA lost millions of citizens.
You will not find any critical resolutions on that, just like you won't find anything on the genocide of the indigenous people. American politicians don't give passionate speeches on the subject, no "memorials" are built to mark the anniversary of mass annihilation. The memory of this is hidden in fake statistical reports, in archives, cleared of all evidence of the crime, attributed to the"invisible hand of the market", glossed over by songs of praise to the genius of President Roosevelt, and the joy of community work, organised by him - not that different in essence from the GULAGs or the construction of the Baltic Sea Canal.
Of course, according to the American version of history "millions of men, women and children became the victims the criminal and cruel totalitarian regime in the Soviet Union". American history cannot be described in these terms.
Let's disprove this myth, using American sources.
Where are seven million people?
An attempt to get access to demographic statistics is followed by many surprises right away: statistics from 1932 were destroyed - or hidden very well.** They just don't exist. No explanation is given. Yes, they appear later, in statistical reports as retrospective charts. A diligent researcher will also be surprised studying these charts.
First, if you believe American statistics, in the 10 years from 1931 to 1940, 8,553,000 people were lost. And what is interesting is that the numbers of increase in population change at one point by 2 times - exactly at the border between 1930/31. They fall and freeze at this level for 10 years. And just as suddenly, a decade later, they climb back up. No explanation for this is found in the extensive report of the US Department of commerce's "Statistical Abstract of the United States". Even thought it is full of comments on other less significant issues.
The issue is just avoided. There is no issue.
Any responsible demographer not dependent on the US State Department or Mossad will tell you that an immediate double change in the population dynamics in a country with a population of one hundred million people is only possible in case of mass mortality.
It's possible that people moved, migrated, escaped from the awful conditions of the Great Depression. Let's use accurate and detailed data on immigration to/from the USA and population migration - which can be easily checked by cross-comparison with the data of other countries, and thus is worth trusting. Unfortunately, the immigration statistics cannot prove this version. In the height of the Great Depression, more people left the country than entered it - probably, for the first time in the history of the USA. In the 1930s, 93,309 more people left the country than entered it; while 10 years previously the number of people entering the country exceeded the number leaving by 2,960,782. After correction, the demographic loss in the USA during the 1930s is 3,054,000.
However, if we consider all the reasons, including migration, we should add a further 11.3% to the decline of population in the 1930s because of the population increase in the 1920s and the demographic base growth.
According to the calculations, in 1940, the US population should have amounted to at least 141,856,000 people, given that the previous demographic tendency was preserved. But in reality in 1940 the population was 131,409,00, 3,054,000 of which can be explained by the change in the migration dynamics.
Thus, 7,394,000 persons as of the year 1940 are actually absent. There is no official explanation of this fact. And I suppose that it will never be given. But even if they appear, the situation with the destruction of the statistical data for 1932 and visible traces of forgery of the latest reports for that period do not give the government of the USA the right to comment of the issue.
However Americans are not alone in their desire to systematically destroy the damaging information and hide the population losses of hunger. This is a hereditary quality of the Anglo-Saxon policy which proceeds from the British empire. In 1943 British government did not prevent starvation in Bengal, as a result of which over 3.5 million people died, and before that they quite successfully starved Ireland.
The organization of mass starvation in India was the response of the British government to the 1942 riot and the population's support of the "Indian National Army". But you won't find such information in British sources for those years. Only after India gained independence did it become possible to collect and publish these materials. Otherwise the monstrous British holodomor of 1943 would have never come to light. All the facts and proofs would have been hidden or destroyed, as happened to the materials on the victims of the Great Depression. Actually all colonial powers have similar skeletons in the cupboard.
Only when the USA collapses will we be able to learn many interesting facts about the crimes of the US government against its own people, including the genocide of the continent's local population. And it is possible that the well-informed reader will be surprised at how the wise Roosevelt is compared with evil Stalin - just as we are surprised now at how one governor from cruel and ancient times is praised at the expense of another, when we know all of them had blood on their hands.
But we live today, when the monstrous Stalin who starved whole nations is faced by a glorious and shining Angel of Good with the label "Made in the USA", which is desperately crying out about the millions of deliberately starved in Ukraine. How does the Congress count the number of the holodomor victims? It's not an easy matter. The holodomor researchers often complain about the lack of statistic data, its being incomplete, and that the number of the starved should be calculated using the system we have applied here. *** Based on these calculations, the US Congress and its followers regularly accept new resolutions blaming the USSR, Russia and communism for creating millions of victims.
The essence of the calculations stated above provides a challenge for the USA to apply the same principles to its own history. And the citadel of democracy and human rights fails to take it up.
So, ladies and gentlemen:
Where are the 7,394,000 people who disappeared from the statistics reports of the 1930s?
Anyway, we know the answer.
The background of the Great Holodomor.
The beginning of the 1930s was a real humanitarian catastrophe in the USA. In 1932, the number of unemployed reached 12.5 million people. The total population of the USA including children and the old was 125 million. The peak of unemployment came in 1933 when the number of jobless reached 17 million; when you add that figure to the family members of those without work, it rivaled the number of unemployed in Britain and France together!
When in the 1930s a Soviet company Amtorgâ advertised vacancies in the USSR with a small soviet salary, more than 100,000 (!) applications from America were received. It looks like every second American citizen (among those who read the Amtorgâ notice) submitted an application.
During the peak of the economic crisis every third person was fired. Partial unemployment became a real disaster. According to the American Federation of Labor, in 1932 only 10% of the workers were fully employed. The law on old age and unemployment insurance was accepted only in 1935, five years after the beginning of the crisis, when the major part of those who "did not fit the market" had already starved.
However the insurance did not protect the interests of farmers or other categories of employment.
Looking back there was no insurance system in the country in the height of the crisis - which means that people could only rely on themselves. Help for the unemployed started in the middle of 1933. The administration had had no federal program against unemployment and the problems of the unemployed were left for state authorities and city municipalities to solve. However almost all the cities had become bankrupts by then.
The tramps, the poor, including homeless children, became the symbol of the period. Deserted cities and ghost towns appeared as people left in search of food and work. About 2.5 million people lost their homes and were thrown onto the streets.
The famine started in the cities. Even in the prosperous and the richest part of the country, New York, there was mass starvation. City authorities began giving out free soup to the homeless.
Here are a child's memories from those times:
"We changed our habitual favorite food to more available - instead of cabbage we used bushes, leaves, we ate frogs - within a month's time both my mother and elder sister died." (Jack Griffin)
However not all the states could afford free soup for everybody.
It's strange to see the photographs of those long lines for the field kitchens: respectable faces, decent clothes, not shabby yet, typically middle class. It looked as if they'd lost their job only yesterday and got onto the sidewalk. I have nothing to compare it with, except maybe photographs from the Berlin freed by the Red army, where "Russian occupants" fed the peaceful citizens who survived. But the eyes in these pictures are different: in them there is hope that the worst is over.
Mechanism of Deceit
Infant mortality stands out in the demographic loss. Because there was no internal passport system or residential registration, it was easy to conceal infant mortality simply by not registering it. Even nowadays not all is good with the USA infant mortality rates (for example it’s higher than in Cuba), and in the prosperous year of 1960, 26 out of every 1,000 babies died during the first year of life. Furthermore, the death rate of Afro-American children reached 60 in every 1,000 in the most prosperous time.
It's interesting to note that the official American statistical data (mind you, in retrospect) does not show the increase, but decrease (!) in population in 1932-1933. This is made clear in the background of more than 5 million refugees, 2.5 million who lost their homes, and 17 million unemployed - which definitely proves the fake character of official USA statistics for the period. Those who falsified American statistics in the period overdid it to such an extent that in the peak crisis years of 1932-1933, they showed mortality rates lower than in the prosperous year of 1928. ***
The mortality records in the states are more impressive: Washington D.C. shows 15.1 deaths for every 1,000 people in 1932, confirming that mortality had grown. The calculation was done for the capital and that's why the data looks authentic.
But mortality in North Dakota in the crisis year of 1932 is allegedly 7.5 persons out of 1,000 - twice as low as in the capital, and lower than in North Dakota in the prosperous year of 1925! South Carolina undoubtedly becomes the deceit champion: for the three years of 1929-1932 it made up figures of the death rate changed from 14.1 to 11.1 for every 1,000 persons.
According to the report the infant mortality situation in the country at the height of the depression had improved sufficiently in comparison with the prosperous years. From these reports we gather the impression that infant mortality rates in 1932-1933 proved to be the lowest in the whole history of statistics in the USA from 1880-1934.
Do you still believe in these figures?
How Many Children Have Died?
Where are the 5,570,000 people?
American statistics for 1940 contain data on the age distribution of the surviving children. And, if in 1940 the number of people born in the 1920s was 24,080,000, the same demographic trend should have continued in the 1930s and reached at least 26,800,000 children. But in the 30s there's a glaring lack of 5,573,000, no less! Maybe there was a drop in the birth rate. But even in the 1940s, during WW2, in spite of all the losses and the millions drafted, the birth rate got back to almost the same level. The giant population losses of the 1930s cannot be explained by any "birth rate decrease". It was the result of many additional deaths, the scars left by the millions of lost lives, the black mark of the Great American Holodomor.
We can also use these figures to estimate the overall effect which hunger had on the American population as the difference between the decrease in the number of people born in the 1930s and the overall population reduction. The adult population surely couldn't just "fail to be born"! We can definitely say that there were at least 2 million dead people over 10 years of age, and about half of the 2.5 million child deaths can be divided between mortality and a natural drop in the birth rate. *****
Thus, we can surely say there were around 5 million victims of the Holodomor of 1932/33 in the United States.
An extremely high mortality rate was registered among the US ethnic minorities. They have never received much care in the States, but what happened during the Great Depression borders on genocide. Whereas after the first genocide of the native population, which had lasted almost until the early 20th century, in the 1920s the population of ethnic minorities and natives increased by 40 per cent. It then dropped drastically from 1930 to 1940. This can mean only one thing: in the early 1930s the ethnic minorities lost a considerable proportion of their original population.
If that's not genocide, then what is?
Dispossession American-style: From "kulaks" to the claws of the American Beriya.
Almost everyone in Russia, thanks to TV anchor and political commentator, Nikolay Svanidze, knows about the two million "kulaks" - rich Russian farmers dispossessed and displaced by the communists (who called them "special migrants"). In fact, the "kulaks" got either land or work in the areas where they were sent. But few people know about the five million American farmers (around one million families), who at the same time were driven from their land by banks reclaiming debts. They did not get anything from the US government - no land, no work, no social benefits, no pensions - nothing.
This is dispossession American-style - even if "justified by the necessity to strengthen agriculture" - and it can truly be compared to the banishments which happened in the USSR at exactly the same time, on the same scale and even to counter the same economic challenges, like the need to develop and mechanise agriculture, and increase its productivity during the pre-war period. One in every six American farmers became a victim of the Holodomor steamroller. People were going nowhere, robbed of their land, money, their homes and property. All that lay ahead was an uncertainty plagued by mass unemployment, hunger and crime.
This vast, redundant population became a catalyst for Roosevelt's New Deal policy. During 1933-1939, at any one given time more than 3.3 million people were taking part in public works, such as the construction of canals, roads and bridges in uninhabited and swampy areas. They were organized by the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Civil Works Administration (CWA). All in all, more than 8.5 million people - apart from convicts - took part in the American GULAG.
The work conditions and mortality figures are yet to be studied carefully.
Praising the wisdom of Mr. Roosevelt, who started the public works, is roughly the same as praising the wisdom of Mr. Stalin, who launched the construction of the Moscow channel and other grand projects of the communist era. In fact, the systematic similarity between the two leaders was noted by the Republicans back in the 1940s: then they criticized Roosevelt for his "communist" approach.
There is another thing which explains the almost demonic likeness between PWA and GULAG. The administration was headed by none other than the "American Beriya", Secretary of Interior Affairs Harold Ickes ******, who, starting from 1932, sent more than two million people (!) to youth unemployment camps. Their monthly salary was $30, out of which they were obliged to pay $25 to the state.
Five dollars for a month of back-breaking labour in a malaria-infested swamp. A worthy reward for the free citizens of a free country.
State destroys food: benefit for the market, more slave labour for the hungry.
The US government has also been accused of systematically destroying large amounts of state food supplies to suit the interests of the agricultural business lobby, and all that was happening against the background of mass hunger and deaths of an "excessive" population. Of course, the government only used "market methods". Food was destroyed in a number of ways and on a grand scale: the grain was burned and dumped into the ocean. For instance, 6.5 million pig heads were destroyed, and 10 million hectares of ripe crops were ploughed in.
The goal was not kept a secret. It was to double the food prices, in the interests of the agricultural capital. Of course, it fully suited the interests of the major capitalists in agriculture and stock holders, but it wasn't very popular with the hungry masses. The "hunger marches" during Hoover's term in office became a part of everyday life even in America's largest cities. But what Roosevelt's New Deal brought about was more profit for the capitalists, and GULAG public works for the hungry. To each his own.
Still, the US government was never really worried about its population dying from starvation - unlike the victims of other "holodomors", or famines, which could be used to attain political goals.
"I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope", said President Hoover on the eve of the Great Depression. And we have no fears for the past of the United States - according to the US-made version - just as Caesar's wife, it's always above suspicion.
It's important to note that until 1988, when a committee for investigating the "Ukrainian holodomor" was created in the US Congress, America did not try to create much publicity around this issue, just as other issues from the "Goebbels golden collection", such as Katyn or "war-ravaged Germany". The States knew that they have their own starved-to-death skeleton in the closet, and the ideological counterstrike from the Soviet Union would be quick and precise, and this would be a battle America will never win. The depth of the 1930s demographic pit in the USSR and the USA was perfectly comparable. Their mutual silence on this slippery issue was a part of the tacit Cold War code. Washington only started making the Ukrainian holodomor story public in 1988, after it got itself a group of high-ranking agents in the Kremlin led by Mikhail Gorbachev, with a liberal-minded Yakovlev who replaced the "iron man" Suslov as the ideological counterpart, and knowing that the Soviets would not strike back. That was perfect timing.
We cannot expect that the U.S. will reveal all the facts about their own holodomor, and publish archive documents and confessions, like those initiated - and, probably, fabricated (SWAMPMAN NOTE: Yes. Fabricated. Order your Grover Furr today) - in the 1980s by Gorbachev's team under the slogan of "restoring the historical truth". There is no hope that justice will be restored before the Western Evil Empire collapses. Hiding the truth about the Great American Holodomor is a policy of the American political elite, both the Democrats and the Republicans. Both the Hoover and the Roosevelt administrations share equal blame for the mass deaths of the 1930s. Each is responsible for millions of deaths caused by their merciless policy. That's why the US political system is unified in its denial of the American Holodomor and the many millions of deaths which it brought about. The fifth column of human rights activists will also deny it furiously, the activists which are in the payroll of the US Department of State and are part of the system. But the historical truth will out - sooner or later.
In fact, the U.S. should stop barking at Russia, which they usually do, and sniff their own butt instead.
Boris Borisov, April 4, 2008.
OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND NOT NECESSARILY OF RT.
____
* "Holodomor, applied externally" (latin)
** This is a fragment of a screenshot showing a US government statistics site.
The text says, "Statistics report for the current year was not compiled". A good way to cover your tracks - just don't make the report.
*** Here is an example of how death-rate changes under conditions similar to the Great Depression, the economic crisis of 1991-1994 in Russia (here, there's no doubt in the reliability of these figures). The number of deaths among men in Russia: 1991 - 894,000 people, 1994 - 1,226,400 people (this is a 37% increase).
(figures according to Anatoly Vishnevsky and Vladimir Shkolnikov, "MORTALITY IN RUSSIA", Moscow, 1997)
**** (In fact, I have yet to come across research of the holodomor which makes a serious account for the migration (mass departure) of population from the hunger-hit areas. All the population losses are written off as "victims of communism". But we know it for a fact that 700,000 of these 2.5 million "special migrants" just left their villages quietly, without encountering any resistance.
***** I can envisage a question about the proportion of dividing the proven population loss between mortality and the lower birth rate. Owing to the fact that the U.S. information is not reliable, we are forced to resort to the method of analogy (international comparisons). Population loss in other countries under the conditions similar to the Great Depression (including Russia in the 1990s) divides equally (with a large gap of the ratio from one to two to two to one) between the population decrease and mortality increase. It is this proportion - halving is accepted as basic, to which necessary reasonable adjustments can be made. Anyway, with any adjustments we get a number of several million people dead.
****** Yes, it really is Ickes, Harold LeClair, 1874-1952, the counterpart of the ill-famous Soviet head of the GULAT, Lavrentiy Beriya (He can be called the head of the US GULAT, so to speak), Secretary of the Interior (1933-1946) with the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman administrations. He's the person who later, bravely and quickly, with the help of the US Army, interned US ethnic Japanese in concentration camps (1941/42). The first stage of the operation took a mere 72 hours. A real professional, worthy of his Soviet counterparts Yezhov, Beriya and Abakumov.
WElcum 2 oUr ReAlm
karphead posted:our opinion (especially tpaine's) is that the soviet union had been fighting capital since it's inception and that anything that resulted under it's administration can only be critiqued in accordance with proper MLM thought
WElcum 2 oUr ReAlm :twisted:
i'm just here to learn and endure sick gif burns.
in the 1920s, the soviets believed that the rural commune was becoming a reserve force of capitalism because the peasants had the ability to hold back labour and goods to the cities. if there was a grain crisis, for example, peasants could just hide grain or refuse to sell, and they'd eat okay, but the cities would starve. and since the cities were the core of advanced industrial development, starving the cities with a hostile countryside would paralyze the revolution. the differentiation in the countryside was also favouring peasants who could hire semi-proletarian labourers, so people were building little niches of relative prosperity - something happening in cities as well when the NEP created a class of middle-men and traders.
the 'land to the peasants' strategy was always transitional for bolsheviks because they only promised this really to win the support of SRs and other leaders who had the trust of the progressive peasantry. in theory they thought that agriculture was just like any other modern industry and would be organized like a trust in a rational manner, rather than chaotic little plots. historically, capitalism had required massive coercion to force people to sell their labour and (eventually) leave the farms. the problem is that the soviets felt they were in a trap where an advanced industrial sector was going to remain static in the absence of increased agricultural productivity that was actually translated into exchange between cities and countryside. so collectivization had a rational purpose: consciously develop a modern agricultural sector that was integrated into a socialist industrial economy. the idea it was designed to "punish" ukraine seems unlikely.
the problem was that it quickly became almost a civil war, because the various encouragements and inducements quickly spilled over into violence. and each side saw the escalations as defensive. there was also a lot of confusion over what was happening and where, a lot of people probably did think stalin was trying to genocide them based on number of deaths and such. peasants might be considered well-off because they owned some animals, and when they believed these animals would be taken from them they killed them and ate them. like millions of animals were killed for this reason and because people were hungry. but the stock of animals is important to the agricultural economy so it was otherwise insanity to do that. in terms of blame, you could say, oh, they should have known this would all happen, but i mean, it was unprecedented in scale because it involved the transformation of one of the largest agricultural sectors in the world in a few years.
in china they deliberately tried to avoid this by rooting industry in the local communities. paradoxically that contributed to the problems there, because people tried to meet industrial targets at the expense of agricultural targets. in most of china this was painful, but confusion in sichuan was the cause of most deaths i think (including outright confrontation between mao and the province head). like USSR, most famine deaths were centered in one outer region. in china there was not an absolute scarcity of food, which is also why it wasn't repeated.
gyrofry posted:
uncalled for, imho.
gyrofry posted:additional detail is available in the following rap http://tindeck.com/listen/rznv
icecrystal posted:I was reading the Stalin thread and someone posted a link to this discussion about the Ukrainian famine on the Catholic Answers forum.
the type of sentence you'll only find, here, at the rhizzone
there are historically contingent differences of course but the essence is always the same. the transformation of feudal agriculture into capitalist agriculture and the transformation of wage labor agriculture into huge monopoly farming both require massive violence imposed by force. in capitalism this usually takes place over a long time and in different periods because of the bonapartist character of the modern state but this only makes it more violent (for example the genocide of natives in America that allowed agriculture to support American industrialization was far more vicious than what happened in the USSR).
babyhueypnewton posted:actually the famines in china and the ussr were identical because they are the same as what happened in England during the industrial revolution, the U.S. multiple times (incorporation by force of the Southern agriculture into market relations and again modernization of agricultural techniques during the 20s culminating in the dust bowl and great migration), and in every capitalist country that has modernized its agriculture. granted this is not every country, many places like Japan and Germany had incomplete agricultural revolutions and as a result are far more reliant on imperialism for their food needs. but industrialization requires violence and government force and in those cases this violence was displaced onto occupied peoples (Korea became the breadbasket of Japan and the Nazi policy was literally an excuse to feed the German population without modernizing agriculture or impose austerity).
there are historically contingent differences of course but the essence is always the same. the transformation of feudal agriculture into capitalist agriculture and the transformation of wage labor agriculture into huge monopoly farming both require massive violence imposed by force. in capitalism this usually takes place over a long time and in different periods because of the bonapartist character of the modern state but this only makes it more violent (for example the genocide of natives in America that allowed agriculture to support American industrialization was far more vicious than what happened in the USSR).
Personally, I think one of the benefits of socialism should be that it is not insanely repressive to advance rises in output of commodities.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
the former is the argument Robert C. Allen makes in Farm to Factory and Chris Bramall makes in Chinese Economic Growth. this argument makes sense if you look only at the numbers without understanding class or history. obviously the breakneck industrialization of the USSR isn't necessary if one looks at an economic model. but in the real world when the encirclement of the USSR by imperialism and the rise of fascism mean that not only would the USSR have to industrialize on its own but that it would have to prepare for war (a form of industry which is entirely unproductive) of course industrialization and collectivization of agriculture were not maximally efficient. further, whereas in the abstract one can compare agriculture in the USSR and the USA, in reality the nature of the russian revolution and the NEP meant that kulaks and peasants broadly were organized as a class whereas in the USA native americans, black sharcroppers, mexican peasants in the Southwest, and all of the other populations which were murdered en masse to create America's modern agriculture were never organized in the same way against the state. this is where the work of historians should come in rather than finding reasons to demonize the remarkable industrialization and food self-sufficiency the USSR was able to achieve.
the second argument is ridiculous, in reality it's just a historical blindness to the millions of indians and irish who died to build the British Industrial Revolution. it should be noted that both Russia in 1913 and China in 1952 were less developed and had lower GDP per capita than England in 1801 (and it's not particularly close)
Table 2.1 GDP per capita on the eve of modernization
Country Year GDP per capita (1990 US$)
China 1952 537
India 1952 629
Japan 1870 737
England and Wales 1801 2006
Former USSR 1913 1488
Africa 1950 852
Source: Maddison (2001: 247, 264, 304)
so the tasks of the USSR and China were actually far more difficult than what faced the USSR and the USA (and Germany) which nevertheless committed genocide for the primitive accumulation necessary to industrialize. economic change is violent, if you don't like it live in another universe (the universe where anarchists live maybe).
getfiscal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:actually the famines in china and the ussr were identical because they are the same as what happened in England during the industrial revolution, the U.S. multiple times (incorporation by force of the Southern agriculture into market relations and again modernization of agricultural techniques during the 20s culminating in the dust bowl and great migration), and in every capitalist country that has modernized its agriculture. granted this is not every country, many places like Japan and Germany had incomplete agricultural revolutions and as a result are far more reliant on imperialism for their food needs. but industrialization requires violence and government force and in those cases this violence was displaced onto occupied peoples (Korea became the breadbasket of Japan and the Nazi policy was literally an excuse to feed the German population without modernizing agriculture or impose austerity).
there are historically contingent differences of course but the essence is always the same. the transformation of feudal agriculture into capitalist agriculture and the transformation of wage labor agriculture into huge monopoly farming both require massive violence imposed by force. in capitalism this usually takes place over a long time and in different periods because of the bonapartist character of the modern state but this only makes it more violent (for example the genocide of natives in America that allowed agriculture to support American industrialization was far more vicious than what happened in the USSR).Personally, I think one of the benefits of socialism should be that it is not insanely repressive to advance rises in output of commodities.
personally i think one of the benefits of socialism is everyone should get to sit around and play video games. but in the real world not only is development a violent act but the people who it will affect, the proletariat of the world (which includes the reserve army of labor of about 2 billion) already live with the spectre of death everyday.
EmanuelaBrolandi posted:Imo Allen just says the policy of forced collectivization during one Plan was unnecessary but otherwise doesnt wholeheartedly say he opposed the general policy of the ussr
true he has his model of potential growth against actual growth but he is at least honest enough to stress it is just a model. his actual judgement of the USSR's policies is mixed from what I remember which is more than we can expect from a bourgeois economist.
getfiscal posted:the soviet preparation for war was not done efficiently and the output it gained from industrialization wasn't even mostly oriented for war with germany. in fact it wasn't tooled for military uses at all, it was retooled later, and also much of it had to be moved or was lost to the invasion. the incredible collapse in ukraine probably didn't benefit the eventual war effort. even if you think it was a plausible strategy to try, to say it was defensible in retrospect is silly. beyond that, a significant amount of weaponry and supplies used during the war came as aid from outside the USSR. and they suffered incredible losses in the war. the fact that they happened to win is like a child's view of history, it doesn't tell you much in itself. if hitler had chanced to capture moscow it wouldn't have retroactively changed all the factors at play during decisions over collectivization.
actually it's the opposite, this is the child's version of history because you are nitpicking instead of looking at the overall picture which requires nuance and analysis. for example, soviet industrialization was the factor that defeated the Nazis culminating in the t-34. this is indisputable.
if there was any power in the 1930s and 1940s that exemplified the Fascist slogan of the 'triumph of will' over material circumstances it was not Nazi Germany, or Fascist Italy, but Stalin's Marxist dictatorship. Not only did the Soviet regime not crack like its Tsarist predecessor, it proved capable of absorbing casualties vastly greater than those suffered by any other combatant. And despite its relative economic backwardness, it proved capable during the emergency of 1941-2. of mobilizing a greater share of national economic resources.12 Rather than succumbing to its supposed lack of sophistication, the Soviet Union punched several classes above its weight. In large part this was an effect of terroristic coercion. But Stalin's political power was inextricably tied up with the real achievement of Soviet industrialization, of which the excellent weaponry of the Red Army was the most dramatic expression.13 In France in 1940 the Wehrmacht had found ways of defeating France's lumbering Char Bs. To the thousands of agile, heavily armoured T-34S that now began to pour off the Soviet production lines, the Germans had no answer.
...
Fully aware of the Wehrmacht's impending exhaustion, the Red Army had been husbanding all possible resources for a massive counter-stroke. Informed by their excellent intelligence sources that the Japanese definitely intended to honour the Neutrality Pact of April 1941, the Soviets moved a significant number of first-line troops from Siberia and the Manchurian border to Moscow to form the 1st Shock Army, the 10th and 20th Armies.71 In total, by early December 1941 Zhukov's Western Front controlled an offensive force of 1.1 million men, 7,652 guns and mortars, 774 tanks and 1,370 aircraft. Given the huge losses sustained since June, there was no margin of numerical superiority, but the Red Army had the initiative and achieved total surprise.72 For the first time in the war the tables were turned on the German army. The offensive began to the north of Moscow on 5 December. Within days, Army Group Centre was knocked to its knees
...
Following the frustration of its Blitzkrieg strategy in the autumn of 1941, the leadership of the Third Reich proved capable of yet another act of innovative, strategic improvisation. From the spring of 1942 onwards, the new leaders of the German war economy combined an expansive effort at industrial mobilization with some of the most destructive components of Nazism's ideology, to fashion a radical new synthesis of total war. This was not a strategy that promised Nazi Germany any real chance of victory. In this sense, the turning point in December 1941 was final and decisive.
from Adam Tooze's Wages of Desctruction.
please stop being anti-communist
thus to respond to the holomdor one must understand that it is not a historical question at all but a political question in the broadest sense of the term. thus, one must understand it as part of a great industrialization project, a drive for self-sufficiency, and an armament for war that does indeed characterize all previous socialist experiments. to understand the holomodor one must understand it scientifically, removed of all morality or mysticism.
world war two is the same. interrogating the conduct of the USSR or the choices in industrialization policy are not scientific questions. after all, does the conduct of Sherman and Jackson say anything about their respective social systems? does the competence of Charles De Gualle in fighting the Germans say anything about capitalism as a whole? the initial posting of the question is political and until this is revealed the specificity of policy is simply a disguise for political anti-communism in the way stories about Mao saving Stalin's poop are political questions disguised as narrow history.
this: "the soviet preparation for war was not done efficiently" is in fact a highly political statement which does not stand up to historical scrutiny, but only once the political paradigm is understood. efficiency is the most political word in economics as 40 years of neoliberalism should have taught us.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
babyhueypnewton posted:the problem is the holomodor (and the great leap forward) are fundamentally political concepts. what separates them from the thousands of other famines throughout history? why do they even have names? this is only because they are posited to be the result of some essential feature of a socialist system. this is also why pointing out the billions who have died as a result of capitalist made famines isn't really convincing, one must attack the premise at the source. attacking the policies of Stalin is also irrelevant since they are understood as an inevitable feature of socialism, repeated in dozens of other contexts: north korean famine, ethiopian famine, cambodian famine, etc. the 'tyranny' of stalin is understood to be a feature of socialism itself, repeated countless times by Mao, Kim Il-sung, Castro, Kim Il-sung, etc. an area in which reactionaries have far better understanding of how history works than liberals and trots.
thus to respond to the holomdor one must understand that it is not a historical question at all but a political question in the broadest sense of the term. thus, one must understand it as part of a great industrialization project, a drive for self-sufficiency, and an armament for war that does indeed characterize all previous socialist experiments. to understand the holomodor one must understand it scientifically, removed of all morality or mysticism.
world war two. interrogating the conduct of the USSR or the choices in industrialization policy are not scientific questions. after all, does the conduct of Sherman and Jackson say anything about their respective social systems? does the competence of Charles De Gualle in fighting the Germans say anything about capitalism as a whole? the initial posting of the question is political and until this is revealed the specificity of policy is simply a disguise for political anti-communism in the way stories about Mao saving Stalin's poop are political questions disguised as narrow history.
this: "the soviet preparation for war was not done efficiently" is in fact a highly political statement which does not stand up to historical scrutiny, but only once the political paradigm is understood. efficiency is the most political word in economics as 40 years of neoliberalism should have taught us.
you rascal!
smh
babyhueypnewton posted:only reason im annoyed is because everyone upvotes getfiscal and I get nothing
some people get quiet respect and gratitude which doesn't translate well into upvotes. sort of like how crowds of people don't show up to cheer for mathematicians, but they still do a valuable service. on the other hand, my showy demands for attention garner heaps of sympathetic votes as people encourage me to tie my shoes right for once.
EmanuelaBrolandi posted:Imo Allen just says the policy of forced collectivization during one Plan was unnecessary but otherwise doesnt wholeheartedly say he opposed the general policy of the ussr
i really consider Imo Allen a fair and impartial historian.
a good conversation facilitates understanding instead of just proudly stating Correct things and sneering when the normies don't get it. so this was a Good Conversation imho.
*thanks yous*
Those of you who are familiar with political economy will know that the bourgeoisie as a class passes through the stage of primitive accumulation which is distinguished by its extreme barbarity of exploitation and self-exploitation for the petty-bourgeois, the embryo of the bourgeois exploits himself. He does the donkey-work: he exploits his wife and his children until he obtains the minimum of capital which is necessary for him to exploit wage labour. Then the petty-bourgeois turns into a middle bourgeois, raises himself up and becomes stronger and stronger.
We have received a devastated country and the proletariat which possesses the state is forced to go through the stage which you could call the stage of primitive socialist accumulation. We do not have the opportunity of making use of the level of technique which there was prior to 1914. It has been destroyed, it has to be recreated step by step under the conditions of the workers’ state but by means of a colossal strained effort by its living workforce. In this is our task and also our predicament and above all a predicament of education.
At the present time it is essential for us to go to young workers, and secondly young peasants too, with a more finished and broader grasp of things. At the present time the life of a whole class and a whole people is posed at point-blank range and socialism can only be arrived at by way of the greatest sacrifices and straining of energy, blood and nerves of the working class. Only in that case where the working class has the firm conviction that it is right here on this earth and upon this soil that we must create the new and that here shall be the crowning of all our aims and that outside of this there can be nothing.
trotsky's idea of primitive socialist accumulation was adopted wholeheartedly by his followers preobrazhensky and the left opposition. the left opposition in fact saw stalin's initial development of the first five year plan as a turn toward their left deviationist principles. one member of the sect, Aleksandr G. Ishchenko, stated as much in 1928 - in a letter to trotsky himself:
The situation opens up the possibility of a concrete action for reinstatement in the Party and to avoid reinstatement being put off indefinitely. A prolonged stay of the Opposition outside the Party would be dangerous for the dictatorship of the proletariat.’
preobrazhensky addressed to trotsky in letter similar sentiments:
We based our tactics in 1927 on the worst case variant. We gambled on pessimism. We must now have a different tactic, we must take a chance on optimism. If Thermidor has not yet occurred, we should rejoice at that and seek a rapprochement with the Party. Otherwise the Left Opposition will turn into a little ‘sect of true Leninists’.
trotsky himself would actually affirm the sentiments of the left opposition members, albeit more conservatively. he declared from exile in 1928:
The decisions on domestic matters (in regard to the kulak, etc.) and the decisions of the recent ECCI represent an inconsistent and contradictory step; but all the same they are unquestionably a step in our direction, that is, toward the correct path. This must be stated plainly and distinctly. But, in the first place, we must not overstate the size of this step. After the experiences we have gone through, we must be more cautious than ever when a turn comes, giving no unnecessary credit in advance. In the second place, we must briefly explain the causes, the mechanics, and the ideology behind this turn.
such an identification with this vulgar notion of stalin's policies as a sharp turn toward the "left," recognised by trotsky and his followers, led several hundred deviationist members of the left opposition turn toward the party
if you accept the left deviationist thesis of attributing to stalin the quality of "primitive socialist accumulation" as huey does, you are explicitly capitulating to the views of the trotskyites and ascribing to him the views of his opponents. this is a very unusual way of "standing up" for stalin
the trotskyite view that huey shares is, however, a thesis proposed by blind opportunists. stalin did not in fact share the vision born of contempt of the peasantry held by the left opposition. the basis of trotskyite visions of primitive socialist accumulation - as it was in the experience of bourgeois primitive accumulation - is the subordination of the entirety of the peasantry. stalin opposed this left deviationism just as he had opposed the right deviationism that allied with the kulaks, to quote moissaye olgin:
In contrast to this, there were developed two theories: the Right and the “Left”. The Right underestimated the capitalist nature of the kulak; it saw in the kulak a middle peasant. The “Left” (Trotsky) overestimated the petty-bourgeois nature of the middle peasant; it saw in the middle peasant a kulak.
Trotsky suddenly discovered a peasantry consisting to a very large extent of “kulaks”. The Communist Party fought both tendencies—because they knew where they were headed.
the fantasy of "primitive socialist accumulation" sees the transition to socialism as the path through blood of the entirety of the peasantry just as they had experienced the dispossession of the bourgeois industrial revolutions. this barbarism allows a supposed communist to see the developments of the soviet union and the prc as essentially the same as the violence perpetuated by bourgeois imperialists against the countryside. getfiscal is correct to suggest that "one of the benefits of socialism should be that it is not insanely repressive to advance rises in output of commodities" - this is something that is in fact recognised by stalin:
Our main task is to create intimate bonds between ourselves and the broad masses of the peasantry (said Stalin May 9, 1925, in a report to the Party functionaries of Moscow), to raise the cultural and material standard of the peasant’s life and to place the feet of these peasant masses on the road leading toward socialism. Our main task is to upbuild socialism shoulder to shoulder with the peasantry under the leadership of the working class; for only under such leadership can we guarantee that the economic organization of the country will be carried out along socialist paths.
How can the peasantry be drawn into the general current of Soviet economic development? By means of the cooperatives. By means of cooperative credit, agricultural cooperatives, distributive cooperatives, and productive cooperatives. Such are the ways and means through which the peasantry will slowly but surely be drawn into the current of the general system of socialist construction.
moissaye olgin elaborates on stalin's argument:
Why was this to proceed slowly? Because the socialist factories and plants had to produce enough machinery and implements to serve as an inducement for the peasants to organize into cooperatives; because the Soviet mines had to produce enough coal and ore for the production of iron and steel to be used for agricultural machinery; because the workers had to be trained to be able to produce—and all this took a few years. Altogether it took no more than seven years—from 1922 to 1929, from the beginning of the N.E.P. to the great rush of collectivization. But what a noise the Trotskyites raised during those years! What a lot of mischief they did! What monkey wrenches they were throwing into the machinery of Soviet economy! How they were undermining Communist Party unity which was the first condition for the carrying out of the program of building socialist economy!
it would be asinine to qualify such a path as that of the left line held by the left deviationists trotsky, preobrazhensky and their followers. stalin in fact advocated for the material investment in the majority of the peasantry with the fruits of industrial development, the freedom from taxation and the provision of credit. he advocated for the incentivisation of the peasantry to form collectives by developing their material and cultural standards of living
the only resemblance held between the thesis of the left and stalin is that stalin used the methods the left advocated toward the majority of the peasantry as a weapon against the minority of rich peasants. to compare these as essentially the same thing is to attribute to stalin the contempt of the peasantry held by trotsky and his cult
huey makes exactly the same mistake when he alleges that the new economic policy led to "kulaks and peasants" being broadly organised as a class. the obvious flaw in this is that the the peasantry in fact were divided into several different groups. the left deviationists, blinded by hatred of the peasantry, saw only one class - the kulaks - and thus saw the methods appropriate to suppressing only the parasitic rich peasantry as appropriate to dealing with the entirety of the peasantry. as such the policies they advocated were on par with the barbarism wrought by the bourgeois imperialist powers against the countryside