Did Stalin really kill 25-30 million ?

[learningaboutheleft123]

Did he really ? or is it just capitalist lies.
During the 1930's, one of many Nazi sympathisers in the US, Norman Conquest, had an important role in the media and press of America. He was part of the bourgeoisie press who were all against socialism and the soviet union. He claimed that millions and millions and millions of people were murdered in the Soviet Union, with numbers coming close to 60,000,000 !, how could this be when during the period of when the Soviet Union were in power, every 5 years or so, the population increased, with the exception of the second world war period.

Do you agree ?
P.S. im not a stalinist by the way, Im just curious to whether these numbers are facts and the truth, or just plain western capitalist lies.

[Quail]

inb4 shitstorm

[L.A.P.]

No. Simple as that.

[L.A.P.]

inb4 shitstorm

This forum is too predictable.

[Comrade Wolfie's Very Nearly Banned Adventures]

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2009/4/5/128834253342299239.jpg

What have you done!?!?

[dearest chuck]

yes, if you hold him accountable for all the soviet deaths from the nazi invasion.

[Spawn of Stalin]

I have spent years studying Stalin, and can safely say that he did in fact kill all those people, he did it himself, with his bare hands, and a big smile on his face. Also the figure is closer to 60 million, I don't know who you are getting your information from, but they are clearly communists.

[learningaboutheleft123]

I think they are capitalist lies, I'm just curious to see what other people think.

[learningaboutheleft123]

I have spent years studying Stalin, and can safely say that he did in fact kill all those people, he did it himself, with his bare hands, and a big smile on his face. Also the figure is closer to 60 million, I don't know who you are getting your information from, but they are clearly communists.

I meant that the capitalist right wing propaganda lies said the number was closer to 60 million, hence why I mentioned Norman Conquest.

[4 Leaf Clover]

Oh , he opened unholy book , the pandora box, black magic , the ninth gate. Lord have mercy upon us

[Spawn of Stalin]

Well then the answer to your question would be no. I have never seen any evidence to suggest that Stalin killed anywhere near that many people, I have seen many CLAIMS, but no FACTS to back them up, and it is highly unlikely that I ever will. Big Joe has been dead for over half a century, if the evidence existed it would be public by now. Instead the capitalists must rely on the half-truths and outright lies they use to subtly brainwash you from cradle to the grave.

[F9]

Comrade wolfie,
STOP FUCKING TROLLING LEARNING

Now on topic... You may have noticed that most people responded are (a some kind of) Stalinists, but having in mind my high dislike for this figure and generally the ideology, i have to say that blaming someone for 30 million deaths is a bit... stupid.You cant "credit" the death of soldiers fighting fascism to Stalin, even if it was under his commands.If you take those deaths out the number gets smaller but its still a pretty high number for a "communist" but of course and nothing near 30 millions...

ps:I am not in any way possible defending Stalin or stalinism btw, its still "shit".

Fuserg9:star:

[Widerstand]

Some assumptions: Even if it were true, I doubt would be any evidence from the USSR documents, and foreign observation (non made up) should be close to non-existent.


I have spent years studying Stalin, and can safely say that he did in fact kill all those people, he did it himself, with his bare hands, and a big smile on his face. Also the figure is closer to 60 million, I don't know who you are getting your information from, but they are clearly communists.

Fuck, I wanted to drop the "bare hands" remark :'(

[StalinFanboy]

What's more important is that the USSR under Stalin was in no way socialist or communist, and that any deaths that did occur were because of an intense and extremely fast industrialization of a country. This is what capitalism does.

[dernier combat]

What's more important is that the USSR under Stalin was in no way socialist or communist, and that any deaths that did occur were because of an intense and extremely fast industrialization of a country. This is what capitalism does.
I think it's very inaccurate to call the Soviet Union under Stalin 'capitalist'. I very much doubt the bureaucrats in Moscow and elsewhere hired private contractors to rebuild their entire military and infrastructure. Perhaps there are similarities between capitalism and the Soviet system, but to refer to them as being one and the same is hilariously wrong.

[ComradeOm]

During the 1930's, one of many Nazi sympathisers in the US, Norman Conquest, had an important role in the media and press of America. He was part of the bourgeoisie press who were all against socialism and the soviet union. He claimed that millions and millions and millions of people were murdered in the Soviet Union, with numbers coming close to 60,000,000 !, how could this be when during the period of when the Soviet Union were in power, every 5 years or so, the population increased, with the exception of the second world war periodTo give an actual answer...

Robert Conquest's (you may be thinking of Norman Davies who has similarly given high numbers) figures emerged in the 1960s and were considered high even then. While once accepted in academia, they have consistently been revised downwards by later historians. Today the generally accepted range (largely formulated by statistical or economic historians such as Nove, Ellman, RW Davies and Wheatcroft) tends to be around the 10 million mark for the period 1927-38. Of this figure around 1-1.5 million are believed to be the result of direct repression (ie, execution or death in prison) with the remaining 7-8 million being due to famine pre-1936

Obviously even within these figures there's a considerable range and degree of debate, unsurprising given that most of them are deduced from demographic data and, in the case of Conquest, anecdotal evidence. The opening of the archives has greatly helped but putting exact numbers down is simply impossible. That said, you occasionally see the old 50+ million figures being thrown around but no serious historian would use them today. I've uploaded a useful overview of them to Rapidshare here (http://rapidshare.com/files/432611058/Ellman_-_Soviet_Repression_Statistics.pdf). The conclusions are particularly well put

With all of the above said though, I don't think it makes a major difference if we're talking about 10 or 50 million. Neither is acceptable or something that should be defended as such. All the research that has lowered this death toll has simultaneously reinforced just how bankrupt Soviet denials and excuses were


Some assumptions: Even if it were true, I doubt would be any evidence from the USSR documents, and foreign observation (non made up) should be close to non-existent.What happens when you assume something? You make an ASS out of U and ME. The evidence is obviously incomplete but there is a vast amount available. This ranges from archive data (hence the GULAG and execution totals are relatively well established), demographic data (Soviet statisticians were, despite political pressure, world leaders at the time) and other primary sources (such as memoirs and newspapers)

Edit:

Well then the answer to your question would be no. I have never seen any evidence to suggest that Stalin killed anywhere near that many people, I have seen many CLAIMS, but no FACTS to back them upWhat are you expecting? Some sort of smoking gun or a FACT dropped before you in flaming fifty foot high letters? Conquest's methodology and figures are unsustainable today (he himself has revised them downwards) but they can't simply be dismissed for not being FACT. Its taken decades of subsequent research to show that the figures of 30+ million are incorrect but we are still nowhere close to providing FACTS and almost certainly (short of a combination of time travelling and mass microchip tagging) never will. So Conquests' works, which the OP referred to, are as much FACT as anything since produced to prove him wrong

[Wanted Man]

During the 1930's, one of many Nazi sympathisers in the US, Norman Conquest, had an important role in the media and press of America. He was part of the bourgeoisie press who were all against socialism and the soviet union.

A historical event in Britain from 1066 was part of the bourgeois press in the 1930s? :ohmy:


P.S. im not a stalinist by the way, Im just curious to whether these numbers are facts and the truth, or just plain western capitalist lies.

Aren't you in the CPGB-ML? I think someone is about to have an appointment with the local party boss. :lol:

[Os Cangaceiros]

inb4 a Stalinist trots out J. Arch Getty.

But seriously, I don't like these discussions because:

1) Stalin didn't personally kill anyone (that I know of);
2) The people who's deaths do fall on his shoulders don't represent the lion's share of the deaths that are actually attributed to him;
3) Would it matter if Stalin had only "killed" 5-10 million people, as opposed to 25-30? Would that be more "acceptable"?
and
4) There were other forces at play besides Stalin that were just as responsible for the terror.

And I quote from Lewis Siegelbaum:


Thus why "it" [the Terror] happened can be explained by power struggles between the Kremlin center and power holders on the periphery; by the embitterment of bureaucratic relations within the party-state machine occasioned by the ability of cadres to deflect disciplinary initiatives onto scapegoats; by the survival of large numbers of previously repressed individuals and those expelled from or reprimanded from the party, leading to the "logic" of the top leadership's desire to eliminate a potential "fifth column" in a time of increasing international tensions; by the party's "inquisitorial mind-set" that grew out of it's theocratic responsibilities and the empowerment of the secret police with virtually unlimited power to hunt down and round up enemies; by a more generalized belief in the existence of spies, wreckers and other "enemies of the people", whose elimination by the NKVD would truly make life better; by the nomenklatura elite's "corporate anxiety" feeding Stalin's suspicions of "enemies with party cards", which led to a replacement of "normal politics" by a "paranoiac war of all against all"; or by a combination of all of these explanations.

I view Stalin as just one (albeit important) cog in a rotten machine.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

To give an actual answer...

Robert Conquest's (you may be thinking of Norman Davies who has similarly given high numbers) figures emerged in the 1960s and were considered high even then. While once accepted in academia, they have consistently been revised downwards by later historians. Today the generally accepted range (largely formulated by statistical or economic historians such as Nove, Ellman, RW Davies and Wheatcroft) tends to be around the 10 million mark for the period 1927-38. Of this figure around 1-1.5 million are believed to be the result of direct repression (ie, execution or death in prison) with the remaining 7-8 million being due to famine pre-1936



Do you have any numbers on how many (if so..) of these, who where just simpel criminals, kulak-sabotages and so? Or are all these people trialed for rideccolous charges?

[Os Cangaceiros]

Do you have any numbers on how many (if so..) of these, who where just simpel criminals, kulak-sabotages and so? Or are all these people trialed for rideccolous charges?

I'm not sure how you could possibly determine what percentage of the imprisoned/executed population were actual criminals vs. how many were not. If you were unlucky enough to find yourself in that situation, chances are you were a criminal of some sort in the eyes of the Soviet state.

[Reznov]

So you guys would call all the Holodomor survivors liars?

Just saying, its like going up to Jews and saying "The Holocaust? Just some right wing bullshit so we can demonize the nazis and justify us going into war and taking over eastern europe, tough shit."

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I'm not sure how you could possibly determine what percentage of the imprisoned/executed population were actual criminals vs. how many were not. If you were unlucky enough to find yourself in that situation, chances are you were a criminal of some sort in the eyes of the Soviet state.


No, since the numbers are refering to people who faced charges, i was more thinking of the possibility that they might bee counting in murderers and people who just critisise the state, in the same stats

[ComradeOm]

Do you have any numbers on how many (if so..) of these, who where just simpel criminals, kulak-sabotages and so? Or are all these people trialed for rideccolous charges?Would be exceptionally difficult to do an accurate breakdown of the deaths, largely because the Soviet categories were themselves so malleable. To take an example, 'socially harmful elements' - an exceptionally broad category that included the likes of the homeless, prostitutes, beggars, juvenile delinquents, 'hooligans', etc, etc - were reclassified as dangerous "anti-Soviet counter-revolutionaries" 1937. This is without even delving into the cases of 'speculators', 'ideological kulaks', 'de-classed elements' and even the questionable category of kulaks (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1761699&postcount=18)

There were criminals mixed up in this of course but Christian Gerlach and Nicholas Werth have suggested that of those persecuted by the NKVD, the majority were these social outcasts or 'socially harmful elements'. This is one major problem with a reliance on demographic or archive data - the base figures are, more or less, sound but the classification system used is, to quote Ellman, "highly misleading"

That said, I think that the figures often speak for themselves. Does it really matter what percentage of the 682,000 NKVD shootings (alone) carried out under Order 00447 were criminals and what percentage were 'counter-revolutionaries'? It is still a staggeringly large death toll - all the more so when considered that it is only the lower limit of repression deaths - and pretty much indefensible. This sum for a single year dwarfs, for example, the total number of executions carried out during the Russian Civil War

[Obs]

So you guys would call all the Holodomor survivors liars?

Just saying, its like going up to Jews and saying "The Holocaust? Just some right wing bullshit so we can demonize the nazis and justify us going into war and taking over eastern europe, tough shit."
I love how you just assume that a famine in the Ukraine during the 1930s was necessarily an attempt by Stalin to eradicate the Ukrainian people.

[Sir Comradical]

Did he really ? or is it just capitalist lies.
During the 1930's, one of many Nazi sympathisers in the US, Norman Conquest, had an important role in the media and press of America. He was part of the bourgeoisie press who were all against socialism and the soviet union. He claimed that millions and millions and millions of people were murdered in the Soviet Union, with numbers coming close to 60,000,000 !, how could this be when during the period of when the Soviet Union were in power, every 5 years or so, the population increased, with the exception of the second world war period.

Do you agree ?
P.S. im not a stalinist by the way, Im just curious to whether these numbers are facts and the truth, or just plain western capitalist lies.

Looking at the USSR's population graphs will tell you that these figures are bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union

^^ The falls in population correspond to WW1, the Russian Civil War and WW2. So it's the capitalists with blood on their hands.

[StalinFanboy]

I think it's very inaccurate to call the Soviet Union under Stalin 'capitalist'. I very much doubt the bureaucrats in Moscow and elsewhere hired private contractors to rebuild their entire military and infrastructure. Perhaps there are similarities between capitalism and the Soviet system, but to refer to them as being one and the same is hilariously wrong.
It's hilarious that you think that capitalism requires a private bourgeoisie...

[Burn A Flag]

Can we agree on some kind of death toll for the Stalin Beauracracy and sticky it or something? This thread comes up SO often.

[Shining_Liberator]

The NKVD meticulously kept data on executions and who died in Gulags and for what reasons...and there is only 850,000 execution authorizations that were in the Kremlin archives. of course, most people love to inflate this figure by adding all the deaths from Holomodor (which contrary to popular belief, was just a famine: Stalin would've marched troops through Ukraine if he intended to commit "genocide" against them) and WWII.

tl;dr: it's propaganda to somehow make our genocidal warlords (like Bush, who has at least 1,000,000 dead afghanis and Iraqis on his hands, or Eisenhower, responsible for throwing Central America into turmoil) look less bad than they are.

[dernier combat]

It's hilarious that you think that capitalism requires a private bourgeoisie...
Yes, it does if we understand capitalism to be a mode of production in which private property-owners hire workers to perform labour for them and sell their goods and services on the market for a profit. I can't think of any other definition of capitalism, can you?

[ComradeOm]

The NKVD meticulously kept data on executions and who died in Gulags and for what reasons...and there is only 850,000 execution authorizations that were in the Kremlin archivesWhich is what the 1-1.5 million figure is based on. The number of executions is the base level to which must be added deaths in the prison/camp system, deaths during deportation and deaths in detention. Plus some uncertainty over the data. It does not include those who died shortly after being released from the GULAG due to serious illness


...of course, most people love to inflate this figure by adding all the deaths from Holomodor (which contrary to popular belief, was just a famine: Stalin would've marched troops through Ukraine if he intended to commit "genocide" against them) and WWII7-8 million deaths cannot be simply ignored because their deaths were due to disastrous economic mismanagement rather than direct state repression

[4 Leaf Clover]

Can we agree on some kind of death toll for the Stalin Beauracracy and sticky it or something? This thread comes up SO often.

How can we agree , when no one knows how many did he killed , and did he kill any

[Os Cangaceiros]

Can we agree on some kind of death toll for the Stalin Beauracracy and sticky it or something? This thread comes up SO often.

Did you miss this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-thread-all-t100814/index.html) thread?

Not that it's strictly dedicated to Stalin's "body count", but it does seem like the most sensible place to field questions related to that particular topic.

[manic expression]

7-8 million deaths cannot be simply ignored because their deaths were due to disastrous economic mismanagement rather than direct state repression
Of course not, but the question of intent can't be thrown out the window, either. Collectivization was a combination of economic mismanagement (one of the more ignored mistakes by Stalin was in waiting too long to initiate collectivization, by which time the kulaks had a veritable power base in the countryside), bad harvest/weather and also class warfare. Collectivization, by 1933-34, had become something of a civil war, and so the deaths (every last one of them tragic) that came about from this process can't just be blamed on the Soviets. The kulaks who fought tooth-and-nail to resist collectivization deserve at least as much responsibility as the Soviet Union.

[ComradeOm]

How can we agree , when no one knows how many did he killed , and did he kill anyYeah, its bound to remain a mystery forever. Unless of course a whole school of historians spends decades looking at the numbers and slowly refining them down to a generally accepted range. But how likely is that?


The kulaks who fought tooth-and-nail to resist collectivization deserve at least as much responsibility as the Soviet Union.Given that I don't recall the kulaks launching any massively misguided and disastrously managed agricultural reforms, I'm going to have to keep these deaths on Stalin's balance sheet. But there's an interesting question here - who were these dastardly kulaks?

I've already mentioned above that by the time of the Stalin reforms the term kulak no longer had any "class content" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1761699&postcount=18). By 1929 it had become an entirely artificial category used as a fig leaf to cover the state's war against the peasantry as a whole. Which is not to say of course that there were not rich peasants; there were, if not in the sense that the term had pre-1917, but these were a tiny minority and actually lived quite modestly*. Nor, as events would prove and Bukharin was forced to admit, did the supposedly fabulous reserves of grain 'hoarded' by these kulaks actually exist

Of course by the 1930s the Soviet state had effectively given up the pretence of even relating kulaks to a social class. Witness the emergence of slurs such as 'ideological kulaks' or 'kulak choirboys', terms that are deeply perverse to those who believe that class actually means something

No, by the 1930s the term 'kulak' becomes entirely empty as a socio-economic label and was simply applied to any peasant resistance to the forced collectivisation. By this stage any actual private farmers or notably rich peasants had long been deported. It merely serves to mask the fact that real resistance to these reforms came not from the richest peasants but from the seredniaks (middle peasants), and that the object of the state's ire was not the richest peasant stratum but the village commune, the obshchina. As a result, dekulakisation was not even primarily aimed at the supposed kulaks but used as a threat against peasants reluctant to join the new collective famrs

So who was running around cutting the throats of cattle? Nobody, at least not in any numbers. The kulaks were a handy boogeyman but presented no real threat to the Soviet government. The problem was the rest of the peasantry. So apportioning blame to a non-existent class makes about as much sense as classing the homeless as counter-revolutionary


-----

Now that we've seen that the crimes of the kulaks are questionable at best, let's turn to the Soviet side of the balance. Frankly, there are few words to describe just how incompetent the devising and implementation of the new agricultural programme was. Economic mismanagement barely begins to describe it. A few dates will illustrate the scale of the problem:

On 7 Nov 1939 Stalin makes his 'great turn' and publicly calls for "large-scale, advanced, collective agriculture". This is almost two years after forced grain seizures have first begun. A plenum of the CC echoes this two weeks later. It was only on 8 Dec that Kolkhoztsentr was assembled to actually draw up plans for collectivisation. This being a month after Stalin had publicly claimed that "the peasants are joining the collective farms". This enormously complex task was completed with indecent haste and a slap-dash agricultural programme put together in the space of two weeks. Not that plans were needed before collectivisation could start in earnest - Kolkhoztsentr telegrammed the regions on 10 Dec urging an immediate start to the collectivisation of 100% of the land. Stalin himself amended the draft proclamation to remove references to caution and restraint. This decree of 5 Jan was virtually the only concrete instructions that the confused local apparatus received from the centre on the practicabilities of the transition

The result was, as we know, a disaster. A massive agricultural reform programme, probably the largest in history, was conceived and launched within two months. Within seven weeks of its launch it had forced over 50% of the peasant population onto collective farms (where they lacked seed, tools or livestock) at immense disruption to the spring sowing. Naturally Stalin blamed the local officials, ignoring that the messages from the top were confused at best, and called for a halt on 2 Mar 1930. Within weeks of this over half of the collectivised peasantry had fled back to the communes... until it started all over again

The whole affair would be funny if it weren't so tragic. I haven't even gotten to the famine years yet and you can already see just how badly conceived and handled the whole programme was. This sort of chaos would continue for another two years and caused immense disruption. When the weather worsened slightly in the SE... well that just turned a botched reform into a humanitarian disaster. Blame the kulaks and the peasants who were suffering here? No, blame the Soviet state and blame Stalin, who got it so badly wrong when he boasted that, "All the objections raised by 'science' against the possibility and expediency of organising large grain factories of 40,000 to 50,000 hectares each have collapsed and crumbled to dust"

*There was, interestingly, an additional set of peasants who do fit the Soviet definitions of a kulak. These were the so-called 'new pomeshchiki' but their numbers were tiny and, more importantly, they almost never featured in Soviet propaganda or decrees. These remained entirely fixated on their own manufactured definitions

[scourge007]

What's more important is that the USSR under Stalin was in no way socialist or communist, and that any deaths that did occur were because of an intense and extremely fast industrialization of a country. This is what capitalism does.
Wasn't Stalin's USSR more of a facist state draped in communism ?

[Obs]

Wasn't Stalin's USSR more of a facist state draped in communism ?
Oh my god, did you just-...? Jesus Christ.

[Luisrah]

No, Stalin, out of his, around 150 million, population, he wiped ou 70 million, and another 22-26 died in the war, which resulted that Stalin only had around 50 more million to play with, or that in every 3 people, 2 died in that time.

Which, as you can think, is kind of ridiculous.

But it should never be forgotten how in those deported to Siberia, many were sent unjustly to their deaths, it seems there was some sort of political police, and that ''counter-revolutionary'' was probably many times used opportunistically in order to push away some potential political opponents. You can most probably call the man a dictator, but he certainly was no fascist as many others on the super left like to say.

So, it wasn't hell like capitalists paint it for everyone to fear communism, but don't believe those stalinists that say it was a sea of roses, and that stalin tried to combat the bureaucratization and the cult of personality, and that he was a democrat.

[Rafiq]

No

[WeAreReborn]

Yes, it does if we understand capitalism to be a mode of production in which private property-owners hire workers to perform labour for them and sell their goods and services on the market for a profit. I can't think of any other definition of capitalism, can you?
It was State Capitalism because the means of production were NOT held in common, instead it was owned solely by the government. So the government acted as the bourgeoisie. In many cases one can say it is better then private Capitalism and would be correct but it has the amazing potential to turn to hell and quick.

[Spawn of Stalin]

The CPSU was not a for-profit entity and cannot be compared to any "new bourgeoisie. Capital was invested in education, defence, medicine, all the things a country needs which should be state funded, this is not the way the bourgeoisie acts when they make a profit, that money goes straight into their back pockets. If the CPSU acted as a capitalist organisation which operated on a for-profit basis with workers getting no say in anything, with the state literally owning the means of production, buying labour in exchance for a wage, using the profits to buy more materials while pocketing any excess, this would have essentially made the USSR the largest and most valuable entity the world has ever seen: tens, no, hundreds of thousands of factories, shops, farms, hotels, theatres, even houses, every last asset in the world's largest country and fastest growing economy all under one "holding company", the USSR.

[Spawn of Stalin]

If any of that were true, then by the time of his death, Stalin would have been twice as wealthy and the second wealthiest man alive. Don't you think the workers would have got just a little bit pissed off and maybe tried to overthrow him? I know I'd be pretty upset at the whole situation.

[ComradeOm]

Don't you think the workers would have got just a little bit pissed off and maybe tried to overthrow him?See Kevin Murphy's Revolution and Counter-Revolution for an examination of how the instruments established in the early years of the Revolution were used, together with the impact of the Civil War, to systematically weaken the proletariat's class conciousness from the mod-1920s onwards. There was resistance at a factory level (not to mention the countryside) to the 'productivist' turn, but the workers found their old vehicles of expression (party, soviets, unions) turned against them and opposition was effectively silenced

[manic expression]

Given that I don't recall the kulaks launching any massively misguided and disastrously managed agricultural reforms, I'm going to have to keep these deaths on Stalin's balance sheet. But there's an interesting question here - who were these dastardly kulaks?

I've already mentioned above that by the time of the Stalin reforms the term kulak no longer had any "class content" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1761699&postcount=18). By 1929 it had become an entirely artificial category used as a fig leaf to cover the state's war against the peasantry as a whole. Which is not to say of course that there were not rich peasants; there were, if not in the sense that the term had pre-1917, but these were a tiny minority and actually lived quite modestly*. Nor, as events would prove and Bukharin was forced to admit, did the supposedly fabulous reserves of grain 'hoarded' by these kulaks actually exist

Of course by the 1930s the Soviet state had effectively given up the pretence of even relating kulaks to a social class. Witness the emergence of slurs such as 'ideological kulaks' or 'kulak choirboys', terms that are deeply perverse to those who believe that class actually means something

No, by the 1930s the term 'kulak' becomes entirely empty as a socio-economic label and was simply applied to any peasant resistance to the forced collectivisation. By this stage any actual private farmers or notably rich peasants had long been deported. It merely serves to mask the fact that real resistance to these reforms came not from the richest peasants but from the seredniaks (middle peasants), and that the object of the state's ire was not the richest peasant stratum but the village commune, the obshchina. As a result, dekulakisation was not even primarily aimed at the supposed kulaks but used as a threat against peasants reluctant to join the new collective famrs

So who was running around cutting the throats of cattle? Nobody, at least not in any numbers. The kulaks were a handy boogeyman but presented no real threat to the Soviet government. The problem was the rest of the peasantry. So apportioning blame to a non-existent class makes about as much sense as classing the homeless as counter-revolutionary
The kulaks weren't a class in the true sense of the word, but rich peasants, whatever you want to call them, were a group that did not want to give up the position they had. The fact that they lived "modestly" means absolutely nothing, their motivation and goals mean everything. That we're even discussing a group of peasants who were better off than the rest of the peasantry essentially confirms the Soviet claim: you can use whatever term you find most reasonable, but the Soviet Union had enemies within the peasantry.

Also, are you denying that peasants chose to destroy crops and livestock as a way of resisting collectivization? Are you denying that certain layers of the peasantry were leading this resistance? Sure, a great deal of peasants were against collectivization, but I find the idea that they all just decided on their own to oppose the project quite unpersuasive.


Now that we've seen that the crimes of the kulaks are questionable at best, let's turn to the Soviet side of the balance. Frankly, there are few words to describe just how incompetent the devising and implementation of the new agricultural programme was. Economic mismanagement barely begins to describe it. A few dates will illustrate the scale of the problem:

On 7 Nov 1939 Stalin makes his 'great turn' and publicly calls for "large-scale, advanced, collective agriculture". This is almost two years after forced grain seizures have first begun. A plenum of the CC echoes this two weeks later. It was only on 8 Dec that Kolkhoztsentr was assembled to actually draw up plans for collectivisation. This being a month after Stalin had publicly claimed that "the peasants are joining the collective farms". This enormously complex task was completed with indecent haste and a slap-dash agricultural programme put together in the space of two weeks. Not that plans were needed before collectivisation could start in earnest - Kolkhoztsentr telegrammed the regions on 10 Dec urging an immediate start to the collectivisation of 100% of the land. Stalin himself amended the draft proclamation to remove references to caution and restraint. This decree of 5 Jan was virtually the only concrete instructions that the confused local apparatus received from the centre on the practicabilities of the transition

The result was, as we know, a disaster. A massive agricultural reform programme, probably the largest in history, was conceived and launched within two months. Within seven weeks of its launch it had forced over 50% of the peasant population onto collective farms (where they lacked seed, tools or livestock) at immense disruption to the spring sowing. Naturally Stalin blamed the local officials, ignoring that the messages from the top were confused at best, and called for a halt on 2 Mar 1930. Within weeks of this over half of the collectivised peasantry had fled back to the communes... until it started all over again

The whole affair would be funny if it weren't so tragic. I haven't even gotten to the famine years yet and you can already see just how badly conceived and handled the whole programme was. This sort of chaos would continue for another two years and caused immense disruption. When the weather worsened slightly in the SE... well that just turned a botched reform into a humanitarian disaster. Blame the kulaks and the peasants who were suffering here? No, blame the Soviet state and blame Stalin, who got it so badly wrong when he boasted that, "All the objections raised by 'science' against the possibility and expediency of organising large grain factories of 40,000 to 50,000 hectares each have collapsed and crumbled to dust"
So I take it we're to blame Stalin for the intense resistance to collectivization? We're to blame Stalin for the fact that the first wave of collectivization was an incredibly difficult task for local officials and planners in Moscow alike?

I blame Stalin for waiting so long, and allowing rich peasants (aka kulaks) to build up a power base in the countryside. In some cases, the poorest of peasants objected to collectivization because they said the kulaks worked the hardest, and thus deserved to live better...which is vintage capitalist ideology. Had collectivization been made gradual starting in the mid-1920's, this all would have been avoided. Further, I blame Stalin for giving vague instructions and then blaming local officials when they improvised in a bad situation. Lastly, I blame Stalin for planning the whole thing cross-eyed.

But we cannot blame Stalin for the actions of the peasantry, and most importantly the most powerful sections of the peasantry. It would be a bit like blaming Lincoln for the stubbornness of the Confederacy...and like in the Soviet countryside, the poor southern farmer was enthusiastic in his resistance to the Union. I guess that means we should dispose of any conception of the plantation aristocracy and its influence, since the vast majority of the white south was anti-abolitionist, right? That would make about as much sense as saying kulaks/rich peasants didn't matter during collectivization.


*There was, interestingly, an additional set of peasants who do fit the Soviet definitions of a kulak. These were the so-called 'new pomeshchiki' but their numbers were tiny and, more importantly, they almost never featured in Soviet propaganda or decrees. These remained entirely fixated on their own manufactured definitions
Interesting. So were these "new pomeshchiki" influential among the peasantry during the collectivization process?

[ComradeOm]

The kulaks weren't a class in the true sense of the word...Ah yes, there is the 'truth' and then there is the 'fundamental truth'. Or, as EH Carr put it, "it was no longer true that class analysis determined policy. Policy determined what form of class analysis was appropriate to the given situation". The definition of kulak was a sham


The fact that they lived "modestly" means absolutely nothing...It means everything when you consider that the kulaks were categorised as speculators who lived off the labour of others and hoarded vast amounts of grain. In reality there was a very small difference, on average, between the rich and middle peasantry. This was almost to the point where it is disingenuous to talk of a 'rich' peasantry. Some were more prosperous than others, of course, but the numbers of those who could be said to be truly well off (and these would be more aptly-characterised as 'new pomeshchiki') were truly tiny. Indeed, the seredniaki were the principal employers of hired labour (almost two thirds of the total) in the fields, a supposedly key indicator of kulak status, according to the Soviet historian Danilov

The picture that emerges is one in which class divisions within the commune are weak at best. The Black Repartition of 1917 had destroyed the kulaks, in the original sense of the term, and significantly eased class tensions in the villages. The NEP had of course introduced some more, but could certainly not return to a pre-1914 state in a mere half a decade. No, the twisting and reinvention of the term 'kulak' was necessary precisely because class antagonisms within the commune were not clearly defined. It masked the fact, see below, that resistance within the villages came not from some privileged class but from a broad spectrum of the peasantry - in particular the seredniaki, supposed allies of the Soviet state


Interesting. So were these "new pomeshchiki" influential among the peasantry during the collectivization process?Not at all. That their name literally translates as 'new landlords' gives an idea of how they were viewed. Critically, unlike the so-called kulaks or rich peasants, these 'new pomeshchiki' were private farmers who existed outside of the commune system. In fact, I erred above in referring to them as 'peasants' at all. Its all slightly academic though given that they were never confused with the kulaks


That we're even discussing a group of peasants who were better off than the rest of the peasantry essentially confirms the Soviet claim: you can use whatever term you find most reasonable, but the Soviet Union had enemies within the peasantry.Of course. What is disputed is whether these enemies were drawn from the more prosperous peasantry and, in particular, the validity of the Soviet characterisation of the resistance as such

Now I've already noted that the label kulak had no appreciable class content and that the gap between the seredniaki was not significant. The reality is that the 'kulaks' that the Soviet state was fighting were not simply the rich peasants but a broad category of peasant resistance. The bulk of this was drawn from the seredniaki and the better off bednyaki (poorer landowning peasants) if only because, in numerical terms, these two categories comprised the bulk of the peasant population

Why were these enemies of the Soviet state? Well they weren't always and had managed to coexist peacefully with the state during the NEP years. However the Stalin reforms - first the 'emergency' grain seizures (the Ural-Siberian method) and then forced collectivisation - understandably drew protests from the peasantry. By and large this was not active, see below, but it was strongly motivated by the Soviet assault on their land, on their organisations and on their livelihood. As I said, this was an assault on not just the kulaks but on the entire peasant world (literally in the case of the mir). So the flip-side to the myth of the kulaks is the myth that the Soviet state was fighting on behalf of the seredniaki and other peasants


Also, are you denying that peasants chose to destroy crops and livestock as a way of resisting collectivization?More or less, yes. There were violent peasant disturbances, although of a relatively small scale nature, but most of the lost crops and livestock was due to the disruption of the reforms. There were no bands wandering the countryside cutting the throats of cattle - or at least not on any real scale - and this is merely another Soviet tale, another crime to pin on the kulaks

The vast majority of the livestock losses occurred because the peasants were either starving, could not afford to feed their animals, or believed (with good reason) that the horses and cattle would be seized by the authorities on entering the collective farm. In each case it was judged better to have salted meat than no animal. This was not a light decision, livestock were highly prized in these communities, but one forced on them by events. It was certainly not driven by simple spite

Ditto with the crops. Again the collectivisation was a major disruption, as noted in the above post, but the basic dynamic was that either the peasants didn't have enough seed (as a result of previous seizures) or it was simply not in their interest to grow surplus grain. The latter being the reason for the whole collectivisation programme in the first place. Again, we're talking about a rational response to the conditions faced by the peasantry rather than a malicious anti-Soviet campaign

Not of course that the whole affair was not reported as exactly that in the Soviet press and official histories. Kulaks White Guardists running around causing chaos for the good and humble poor peasant, etc, etc. Any peasant opposition was automatically considered to be kulak or at least kulak in character. All propaganda and product of a society/state that saw enemies everywhere


So I take it we're to blame Stalin for the intense resistance to collectivization? We're to blame Stalin for the fact that the first wave of collectivization was an incredibly difficult task for local officials and planners in Moscow alike?Most emphatically yes in the first case (the peasant resistance was sparked by his anti-peasant policies) and similarly so in the second

The collectivisation process was so difficult preciously because it was so poorly managed. The immense practical difficulties of forcing tens of millions of peasants into collective farms was significantly exacerbated by the near-complete lack of communication and control from the centre. In some cases, which I've already referred to, this was a case of Stalin personally interfering to urge ever more rapid and reckless behaviour. This would have been a problem if the peasantry had been voluntarily joining the new farms but they were not and the whole affair became an administrative nightmare. Seriously, two weeks to plan the most ambitious agricultural reform programme in history (which had by then already started)? That's madness

[Reznov]

I love how you just assume that a famine in the Ukraine during the 1930s was necessarily an attempt by Stalin to eradicate the Ukrainian people.

Ah, I love it when you put words in my mouth.

Good one though, I bet your one of the best debators in your school.

[ourhandsaretied]

Unequivocally no, and I AM a Stalinist (though I don't like labels; there are many figures I admire, past and present)

[4 Leaf Clover]

ComradeOm , can you tell me , where do you get your info please ? Especially all that verified info about kulaks and agricultural reform ?

[Invader Zim]

Unequivocally no, and I AM a Stalinist (though I don't like labels; there are many figures I admire, past and present)

So how many do you agree that Stalin's regime did have killed? How do you justify the rergimes actions while remaining a 'Stalinist'?

[ComradeOm]

ComradeOm , can you tell me , where do you get your info please ? Especially all that verified info about kulaks and agricultural reform ?Works used for this particular thread are as below. There's obviously some overlap between sources but I've grouped them roughly according to topic

Demographic data on deaths, executions, etc:

Davies et al, The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union
Ellman, Soviet Repression Statistics
Wheatcroft, Soviet Statistics During Times of Famine

On the agricultural reforms and composition of the peasantry:

Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (particularly good on the composition/nature of the 'kulaks')
Narkiewicz, The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus

Nove, An Economic History of the USSR is excellent on both topics and highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the period