What's your perspective of Holodomor?

[Broletariat]

I often see this brought up against me as proof of Socialist atrocities or something. What exactly happened in Ukraine?

[Chimurenga.]

Land owning peasants or Kulaks (who contributed to over 50% of Russia's food supply) destroyed, burned, and slaughtered their food rather than hand it over to the state to distribute to the starving cities of Russia. Needless to say that they, deservedly, were put down.

[Broletariat]

Land owning peasants (who contributed to over 50% of Russia's food accumulation) destroyed, burned, and slaughtered their food rather than hand it over to the state to distribute to the starving cities of Russia. Needless to say that they, deservedly, were put down.
I'm just going to take a reactionary's perspective of this response in order to better understand the situation based on your response.

Why should the peasants have to hand over their food and such to the state anyway? They worked for it etc.

[Chimurenga.]

I'm just going to take a reactionary's perspective of this response in order to better understand the situation based on your response.

Why should the peasants have to hand over their food and such to the state anyway? They worked for it etc.

This is going to be very jumbled because I'm quite tired, honestly. I'm not going to be able to give the rigorous response that I normally would.

My understanding (and to those who know more about this, feel free to correct me) is that the Kulaks land was given during Tsar Nicholas II but it became invalid under Lenin and Stalin. With the abolishment of private property, they could no longer just horde grain to themselves and tell everyone else to screw off. The jig was up, basically.

The Kulaks insubordination had been happening ever since the Civil War in which surplus grain was taken to feed the soldiers. Families had as much as they needed to survive and everything else was confiscated. With this came the act of resistance and this is where the Kulaks destroyed their crops. Similar situation around 1932-1933, cities needed food. Kulaks produced enough excess grain and whatnot to feed these cities. They just wanted it all to themselves. So when there would be confrontations, no one ousted anyone (at least to my knowledge), no one admitted, nor did they give any information out about it.

This is the liberal question pretty much, their "property". However, I have no sympathy for people who actively resist against massive amounts of people who need food in a desperate time.

[Antifa94]

Holodomor didn't involve the Kulaks, it involved the Ukrainians. The destruction of the Kulaks began in 1929, the Holodomor in 1932( though the holodomor was part of dekulakization). To my understanding, it was a natural famine exacerbated by government's preoccupation with industrialization, as well as somewhat of a reaction to growing Ukrainian nationalism. It was a great tragedy nonetheless.

I have an ambiguous view towards it.... I definitely believe that Stalin was involved with it and that it was politically motivated, then again, I can see how it was the unforeseeable result of industrial policies that neglected agriculture...

It is also the result of a famine that began in 1927 due to lack of rain, however Stalin also wanted to purge the Ukrainian intellectual/ national elite.

[piet11111]

There was widespread crop failure due to diseases and bad weather all over the european continent and even north america (the dust bowl)
And since soviet agriculture was more primitive they where simply more vulnerable.

[Nolan]

Holodomor didn't involve the Kulaks, it involved the Ukrainians. The destruction of the Kulaks began in 1929, the Holodomor in 1932( though the holodomor was part of dekulakization). To my understanding, it was a natural famine exacerbated by government's preoccupation with industrialization, as well as somewhat of a reaction to growing Ukrainian nationalism. It was a great tragedy nonetheless

It most certainly had to do with the kulaks. Ukrainian nationalism was encouraged earlier because of Polish aggression.


I have an ambiguous view towards it.... I definitely believe that Stalin was involved with it and that it was politically motivated, then again, I can see how it was the unforeseeable result of industrial policies that neglected agriculture...

As for Stalin's role in intentionally causing it, there is no proof. The Holodomor conspiracy crowd has gone over the archives and not found any conclusive proof of Stalin's part in causing it, much less proof of genocide against ethnic Ukrainians.


It is also the result of a famine that began in 1927 due to lack of rain, however Stalin also wanted to purge the Ukrainian intellectual/ national elite.

Ok, but it had nothing to do with Ukraine in particular. This happened all over the USSR.

[Kléber]

And why did the kulaks get so strong, that it required a giant military operation against the peasantry?

The answer is that Stalin and Bukharin had been allowing these parasites to gain strength throughout the 1920's, blocking the attempts by the Left Opposition to industrialize and collectivize until it was too late to do it except with the most brutal and undemocratic methods.


Ok, but it had nothing to do with Ukraine in particular. This happened all over the USSR.
Racism happened all over the British Empire, does that make the atrocities in, say, Nigeria, perfectly OK?

[Spawn of Stalin]

Why should the peasants have to hand over their food and such to the state anyway? They worked for it etc.

Right here you sound just like an individualist capitalist.

[the last donut of the night]

Right here you sound just like an individualist capitalist.

To be fair, he preceded that comment by saying he was being a devil's advocate.

[Broletariat]

To be fair, he preceded that comment by saying he was being a devil's advocate.
Yea, that was the entire point, I was trying to get a few leftist responses so I could better know how to shape my argument. Learning by example and all that

[Barry Lyndon]

And why did the kulaks get so strong, that it required a giant military operation against the peasantry?

The answer is that Stalin and Bukharin had been allowing these parasites to gain strength throughout the 1920's, blocking the attempts by the Left Opposition to industrialize and collectivize until it was too late to do it except with the most brutal and undemocratic methods.

This.

One should also add that Lenin engaged in brutal repression, but it was specifically targeting the kulaks. Stalin made no such distinctions, but blanketly punished every man, woman, and child who got in the path of collectivization. One of my professors at my college, a specialist in Russian history by the name of Brian Boeck, attended an international conference of Western, Russian, and Ukrainian historians on the Holodomor. He told me that the consensus seems to be that while it was not a 'genocide' like Ukrainian nationalists and Robert Conquest claim, the Stalinist regime exacerbated an already existing famine as a way to punish recalcitrant peasants, kulak and non-kulak alike. One of the points of agreement was that the NKVD did seal off the train stations so that starving peasant refugees could not reach the cities at the height of the famine.

This is why, in my view, even though Stalin may not have originally created the famine, he prolonged it, cynically used it for his own political ends and therefore the Soviet regime under Stalin is every bit as responsible for the millions of deaths that resulted as Britain was for famines in India and Ireland or the US was for the deaths of half a million children in Iraq through sanctions.

[Weezer]

The famine happened, but it wasn't intentional. Ukrainian Nationalists can scream all they want, but the famine wasn't the fault of the Soviet Government.

[Antifa94]

Redvelvet, they certainly didn't make it any better/ provide aid for them.

[Nolan]

Redvelvet, they certainly didn't make it any better/ provide aid for them.

Actually they did, it was just too late to stop starvation.

[Nolan]

Racism happened all over the British Empire, does that make the atrocities in, say, Nigeria, perfectly OK?

The obvious difference being what happened in Ukraine was not intentional.

[Pavlov's House Party]

There was a natural famine that was mishandled by the bureaucratic Soviet state, and possibly even used as a weapon against the kulaks later on.

One can draw parallels to the Irish Famine of 1845-1850, where the British imperial government initially mishandled a natural famine, but eventually used the blight to their advantage as a political tool to try to kill off the native Irish. You don't hear many bourgeois liberals crying that the British committed genocide in Ireland, but as soon as it happens under "socialist" state run by Slavs, everything about it was designed to kill Ukrainians.

[ComradeOm]

I make a number of relatively in-depth posts on the subject in the first few pages of this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-thread-all-t100814/index.html). In particular this post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1356546&postcount=58) addresses the question as to whether it was an act of genocide


My understanding (and to those who know more about this, feel free to correct me) is that the Kulaks land was given during Tsar Nicholas II but it became invalid under Lenin and StalinNope. The kulaks were merely a substratum of the peasantry. The majority of them were "given land" by the Tsar only in that, along with the rest of the peasantry, they were allowed to buy land from landlords as part of the 1861 emancipation reforms

But then this leads on to the rather more interesting question as to just what precisely is a kulak. How is this apparently malignant class to be defined? According to Sovnarkom's 1929 "Indices of Kulak Farms" a peasant could be considered a kulak if he met even one of the below criteria:

1) Hiring of permanent workers for agricultural or artisan work
2) Ownership of an "industrial enterprise"
3) The hiring out of mechanised agricultural equipment
4) The hiring out of premises or buildings for business purposes
5) Presence in the family of those who have sources of income not derived from labour

This was just one of many definitions that was used throughout the first decades of the Soviet Union with others emphasising arbitrary plot sizes, livestock numbers, etc. Interpretation of each criteria was also left to local authorities. What should be clear is that from a Marxist perspective this is all far too vague to be satisfactory; indeed one Soviet contemporary researcher (A. Gaister) concluded at the time that the term had "no class content" and that there was no real difference between the supposed kulaks and the serednyaks (middle peasants). By the 1930s the Soviet categorisation of the peasantry, flawed to begin with, was little more than a propaganda tool that bore little relation to reality

The reality of course being that the collectivisation offensive was not aimed at a simple obstinate minority of rich peasants (whose influence had already been diluted by the great redistributions of 1917) but was instead directed against the entire peasantry as a class


And why did the kulaks get so strong, that it required a giant military operation against the peasantry?

The answer is that Stalin and Bukharin had been allowing these parasites to gain strength throughout the 1920's, blocking the attempts by the Left Opposition to industrialize and collectivize until it was too late to do it except with the most brutal and undemocratic methods.A pretty specious theory in my opinion. The reason that the first Soviet attempts to modernise the Russian economy (aka War Communism) failed was due to insurmountable peasant resistance. The kulaks, if we are to use this term, proved too strong for Lenin's initial policies, which had emphasised the role of committees of the village poor, and the unravelling of these ultimately led to the collaborative NEP period. The Soviet state, regardless of the intentions of the Left Opposition, was simply in no position to "industrialise and collectivise" until the late twenties

[Kléber]

The reason that the first Soviet attempts to modernise the Russian economy (aka War Communism) failed was due to insurmountable peasant resistance. The kulaks, if we are to use this term, proved too strong for Lenin's initial policies, which had emphasised the role of committees of the village poor, and the unravelling of these ultimately led to the collaborative NEP period.
War Communism was just that, during a war. Once the existential threat to the Soviet power was gone, it was time to put an end to NEP, but the working class was much smaller than it had been in 1914, many of the most class-conscious workers had died in the conflict, so the proletarian Left was defeated by a pro-NEP alliance of the Right and the center.


The Soviet state, regardless of the intentions of the Left Opposition, was simply in no position to "industrialise and collectivise" until the late twentiesPolitically, the workers were too weak to implement these policies or even maintain control of the state they had set up. So no, it wasn't in the political position until the grain shortfall forced the bureaucracy to recognize that a crisis existed whose only solution was collectivization and industrialization.

The Soviet state was never in a nice economic position to industrialize and collectivize after 1928 either, it had to be done through the most brutal, militaristic methods to catch up to the West and to solve the grain shortage. It wasn't because Stalin was evil, it was because, as they learned the hard way, there was no alternative or shortcut to taking over the agricultural surplus and building up heavy industry, and the state had spent five years encouraging the growth of bourgeois elements who were mortally opposed to those policies.

It would have been better to get a head start on these inevitable tasks rather than put them off as long as possible and adopt the exact opposite strategy of promoting a light industry and private accumulation, telling the petty bourgeoisie, "Enrich yourselves! (http://www.uea.ac.uk/his/webcours/russia/documents/bukharin1.shtml)"

If collectivization efforts had been steadily under way before the agricultural crisis of '28 forced Stalin to act, collectivization would not have to have been targeted at the entire peasantry as a class.