PBS Documentary on Russian Famine.....Nonsense

[B0LSHEVIK]

Im steaming mad right now.

I just finished watching a PBS show on the Russian famine of the 1920's. Of how it's be blamed on Bolshevik incompetence, the Cheka, and simply revolutionaries not knowing what they are doing. Bullshit. I counted the number of times they said the term civil war, and in a hour long show only a handful of times was it mentioned. They dont mention how the white army's main purpose, besides attacking the reds, was to economically destroy the russian revolution. Tear up rail, burn farms, salt land, etc etc. All of which are documented. It never mentions how the western 'democracies' launched the attack on Russia that led to there being a shortage of food, or famine.

Then it goes on to say that, Herbert Hoover was anxious to help the russain people. Bullshit. Thats the same Hoover who a couple years later gave a fuck about Americans living in fucking tents and eating they're fucking boots and belts, so I call bullshit on his alleged humanitarianism. It says how the US sent lots of grain and wheat to Russia. Never mentions that Wilson also sent over a whole fucking division of fuckers to join the Whites.

Its fucking bullshit and biased. Of course, its pbs, what did I expect really.

[Zealot]

Oh well :p maybe when the American empire falls we can do the same thing

[Nox]

I bet they didn't mention that Imperial Russia had famines anyway, up to and over every 5 years.

[ComradeOm]

I bet they didn't mention that Imperial Russia had famines anyway, up to and over every 5 years.No, areas of the Russian Empire (specifically the Ukraine and the Volga regions) experienced periodic droughts and bad harvests. Actual famines (ie, mass deaths through hunger) were relatively rare. Perhaps someone can correct me but the only such occasion in 19th C Imperial Russia was 1891-92.

Even this has to be qualified by noting that that famine was due at least in part to Vyshnegradsky's strong anti-peasant drive to increase grain exports, and that Tsarist relief efforts, however primitive, ensured that at most half a million people died. So there is no law that states that millions of Russians or Ukrainians must die of famine every 5-10 or so


Then it goes on to say that, Herbert Hoover was anxious to help the russain people. Bullshit. Thats the same Hoover who a couple years later gave a fuck about Americans living in fucking tents and eating they're fucking boots and belts, so I call bullshit on his alleged humanitarianismHoover was personally involved, as head of the American Relief Administration, the international relief effort to alleviate the effects of the 1921 famine. In this he, and others, were responding to requests for assistance from the Soviet government. You can knock Hoover and his US contemporaries all you want but there's little denying that their intervention - the US government donated $20m, not an insignificant amount at the time - saved the lives of countless Soviet citizens

[Rafiq]

What country will not have a famine after being invaded by 17 of the most powerful countries?

[ComradeOm]

Which would have any relevance if Murmansk, Odessa and the Far East were major producers of grain. They were not and '17 invaders' explains nothing

The only foreign intervention that directly affected grain supplies was that of Germany in the Ukraine and that was over by 1919. Allied armies did not occupy or threaten Soviet grain supplies. Where Western governments did have an impact was in the funding/supplying of the White forces. Including the latter, the causes of the famine were overwhelmingly domestic in nature

So yeah, if you're going to try to explain the disaster then it's going to take more than a single line condemning foreign powers

[Rafiq]

Yes, because the bolsheviks having to focus on the production of weapons heavily to fend off those countries could never effect the production of grain. :rolleyes:

[Ismail]

Hoover was personally involved, as head of the American Relief Administration, the international relief effort to alleviate the effects of the 1921 famine. In this he, and others, were responding to requests for assistance from the Soviet government. You can knock Hoover and his US contemporaries all you want but there's little denying that their intervention - the US government donated $20m, not an insignificant amount at the time - saved the lives of countless Soviet citizensAccording to M. Sayers and A.E. Kahn in The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia, Hoover's organization did try to help the White Armies. (Hoover's men tried suing Sayers and Kahn for writing those parts in the book.)

pp. 86-87: "The American Relief Administration under the direction of Herbert Hoover placed large food supplies at the disposal of the German General von der Goltz. These supplies were withheld from the starving Baltic peoples until their territory had been occupied by von der Goltz's White troops. The food was then distributed under the General's supervision...

Representatives of Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration promised to make food available to areas occupied by General Yudenitch's troops. Major R. R. Powers, Chief of the Estonian Section of the Baltic Mission of the American Relief Administration, began making a careful survey to estimate the amount of food necessary to guarantee the seizure of Petrograd by General Yudenitch's White Russian Army. On June 15, 1919, the Relief Administration's first shipment arrived, when the U.S. Lake Charlottesville anchored in the harbor at Reval, carrying 2400 tons of flour and towing a barge containing 147 tons of bacon."

And in a footnote from pages 93-94: "Herbert Hoover placed millions of dollars' worth of American Relief Administration supplies at the disposal of the Polish Army. On January 4, 1921, Senator James Reed of Missouri charged on the floor of the Senate that $40,000,000 of the Congressional relief funds 'was spent to keep the Polish army in the field.' In addition, some $23,000,000 raised by Hoover by popular subscription for aiding children in Central Europe was spent largely in Poland, although the fund appeals published in the United States stated the money was to be equally divided among destitute Austrians, Armenians, and Poles.

The great bulk of the money raised in the United States allegedly for European relief was used to support intervention against the Soviets. Hoover himself made this clear in his report to Congress in January 1921. The Congress had originally appropriated funds for relief primarily in 'Central Europe'; but Hoover's report showed that almost all of the $94,938,417 accounted for was spent in territory immediately adjoining Russia or in those sections of Russia which were under the control of the White Russian armies and the Allied interventionists."

Footnote on page 106: "Until August 1921, Herbert Hoover's activities as Food Relief Administrator were directed toward giving direct aid to the White Russian armies and withholding all supplies from the Soviets. Hundreds of thousands starved in Soviet territory. When, finally, Hoover was compelled to bow to American public pressure and send some food to the Soviets, he continued — according to a statement by a Near East Relief official in the New York World in April 1922 — to 'interfere with the collection of funds for famine stricken Russia.'"

Don't forget that Hoover spoke of the founding of the Institution that shared his name in 1919 as working to demonstrate "the evils of the doctrines of Karl Marx — whether Communism, Socialism, economic materialism, or atheism — thus to protect the American way of life from such ideologies, their conspiracies and to reaffirm the validity of the American system." (B. Aptheker, The Academic Rebellion in the United States, p. 68.)

[danyboy27]

I dont know much about soviet russia or the civil war, but personally i dont see how demonstrating the incompetence of a regime in dealing with a famine in difficult circumstances a bad thing.

Nobody is immune to mistake and fuckups, its hardly a blow against the soviet union, especially if you consider the fact that they finally been able to get over this and industrialize the whole country, kick germany ass and rebuild again.

[ComradeOm]

Yes, because the bolsheviks having to focus on the production of weapons heavily to fend off those countries could never effect the production of grainRepeat after me: grain is grown in fields, weapons are made in factories

But then the whole point is silly. In the first place, arms production, by both sides, during the Civil War was relatively low. The conflict was largely fought with either Tsarist era or foreign supplied weaponry and ammunition. Indeed, the Bolsheviks had little choice but to shut down vast swathes of the country's pre-revolution defence industry because it was unable to procure the food to keep them going. This was because of the complete breakdown of the transportation network and the fact that large grain-producing regions were under the control of Germans/nationalists/Whites

Secondly, the only invading army that Bolsheviks drove out through force of arms was that of Poland. With the exception of the Czech Legion (whether they were even invaders is debatable) there was no significant conflict with any of the Western armies. For example, for his Moscow offensive Denikin could muster around half a million men total. In contrast the largest single action on the Arkhangelsk front comprised around three thousand British soldiers and one thousand Whites

[B0LSHEVIK]

the causes of the famine were overwhelmingly domestic in nature

I vehemently disagree, Comrade.

So the White army didnt engage in economic sabotage of the revolution?

They didnt tear up rail? (which in a country with Russia size is a death sentence if you cant get food from the fields to cities and across the steppe)?

They didnt burn farms and encourage peasants/cossacks to disregard Moscow?

I personally dont see how the civil war (sparked by the west) didnt impact food production. It obviously did. Why, then, in Germany, during the great war, were people starving? Because resources are shifted to armaments. It always happens. Mexico in the 1910's. Germany in both wars. Spain in the 1930's. ETc etc.

You are correct however, most whites were Russians.

Repeat with me, all resources are scarce, including labor. If you must shift to armaments and fighting a bloody war, chances are food production will fall behind, simple economics comrade.

[ComradeOm]

You are correct however, most whites were RussiansYes. So that takes care of all the above points

But even then blaming the famine on "economic sabotage" is far, far too simplistic. The Whites scorched the land to try and gain military advantage, as did the Reds. The chaos of war naturally devastated vast areas of the country but was not, by and large, deliberate. The transportation crisis, and indeed the economic collapse in general, pre-dated the Civil War and were well advanced in 1917. Civil War was only one element, albeit probably the primary one, in this general economic crisis


Repeat with me, all resources are scarce, including labor. If you must shift to armaments and fighting a bloody war, chances are food production will fall behind, simple economics comrade.No, that's not how economics works. It doesn't matter if you have spare workers in Petrograd if you can't get access to food in the agricultural districts. Workers and peasants do not fill the same functions

The fundamental crisis, with regards food, facing the Soviet government from 1917 onwards (and 1921 was the second famine in three years) was the failure to get food supplies into the Northern Consumer Region (ie, the industrial heartland of Soviet power) from the Southern, Central and Eastern Producer Regions. This was due to enemy occupation, lack of transport infrastructure and, particularly in 1921, collapses in production. Armaments production was not factor; urban workers consume food, they don't produce it


According to M. Sayers and A.E. Kahn in The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia, Hoover's organization did try to help the White Armies. (Hoover's men tried suing Sayers and Kahn for writing those parts in the book.)So this was the same actively anti-Soviet Hoover whose organisation was feeding, by one Pravda count, over ten million Soviet citizens? Damn, we could do with more of that sort of anti-Bolshevism

But then no one is suggesting that Hoover was a socialist or pro-Bolshevik. This is the problem with such a reductionistManichaeistic, and almost xenophobic, view that divides the world neatly into Reds and Whites. It simply can't account for people who, whatever their motives, rendered an immense humanitarian service to the Soviet people. The alternative to the ARA, and other foreign agencies, was the deaths of millions. Hoover, whatever his politics, is to be lauded for helping to prevent this

As for that propaganda piece, well I'm sure that even you can detect a work of apologism when you see it.Now I don't have the work itself but perhaps you can tell me if the claim that "$40,000,000 of the Congressional relief funds 'was spent to keep the Polish army in the field' " is actually substantiated or whether it remains just that – a claim by a Senator which is then to be reproduced as fact. This is the sort of nonsense that conspiracy theories are made of. If vast sums of US funds were being used to sustain the Polish army then this should be easily gleaned from any history of the Polish-Soviet War, no?

The same stupid determination to see conspirators everywhere is evident in the other quotations you've provided. Take this:

"Until August 1921, Herbert Hoover's activities as Food Relief Administrator were directed toward giving direct aid to the White Russian armies and withholding all supplies from the Soviets. Hundreds of thousands starved in Soviet territory"

Well yes, largely because 'Soviet Russia' had not requested aid or granted access to foreign relief agencies until August 1921. What do you expect of the ARA? A unilateral excursion across the borders into Soviet territory? Then you'd be calling them an imperialist army. The suggestion that Hoover was "withholding all supplies from the Soviets" is absolutely false

Or this:

"The Congress had originally appropriated funds for relief primarily in 'Central Europe'; but Hoover's report showed that almost all of the $94,938,417 accounted for was spent in territory immediately adjoining Russia or in those sections of Russia which were under the control of the White Russian armies and the Allied interventionists."

This would be the same ARA that provided relief to almost two dozen countries, including France, Serbia and Turkey? It's fairly clear that it was not constrained to some ill-defined 'Central Europe'. Of course the ARA was also a nominally private organisation and over half its funding came from private donations, figures that it did not have to disclose to Congress

And, as already noted, the ARA could hardly enter Soviet Russia without the permission of the Soviet government. Why should the former not provide aid to parts of the former Russian Empire, areas that had been suffering from food shortages and epidemics since WWI, just because they were occupied by Whites? You'd rather that countless numbers of workers and peasants living under White occupation should die out of principle?

[Ismail]

The authors provided the following sources (p. 402): "For the details of Herbert Hoover's financial investments and promotional operations in Czarist Russia and for material on his anti-Soviet activities as Food Relief Administrator, the authors have drawn largely from three biographies of Hoover: John Knox, The Great Mistake (Washington, D. C, National Foundation Press, Inc., 1930); Walter Liggett, The Rise of Herbert Hoover (New York, the H. U, Fly Company, 1932); and John Hamill, The Strange Career of Herbert Hoover Under Two Flags (New York, William Faro, Inc., 1931)." Note that the book itself was written in 1946.


This is the problem with such a reductionistManichaeistic, and almost xenophobic, view that divides the world neatly into Reds and Whites. It simply can't account for people who, whatever their motives, rendered an immense humanitarian service to the Soviet people.Hoover wasn't some disinterested guy who just felt communism was personally wrong. If you'd like I can quote bits from the book on Hoover's financial activities in Tsarist-era Russia. The authors also note one instance in 1921 over the issue of a loan to Soviet Russia (p. 142, footnote): "There were others in the United States who were no less eager and fought no less energetically to prevent the loan. Among them was Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, whose animosity against the Bolsheviks was unabating. 'The question of trade with Russia,' Hoover informed Maxim Litvinov on March 31, 1921, 'is far more a political one than an economic one so long as Russia is under the control of the Bolsheviki.'"

I don't see how it's hard to believe that Hoover preferred to have the aid be used for the victory of the Whites rather than the Bolsheviks. According to Michael Parenti in History as Mystery (p. 258), "Hoover characterized his relief efforts in support of the Allied-sponsored government in Austria as 'a race against both death and Communism.'" Parenti also notes that the Béla Kun government was refused aid until Horthy took power and massacred the communists, since Hoover complained that the Kun government wasn't "representative" enough. I've also heard that Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia, 1921-1923 by B.M. Weissman offers more about Hoover's anti-communism in-re Soviet Russia.

[ComradeOm]

Was Hoover an anti-communist? Of course. Did he dislike the Bolshevik regime? Of course. This is not in question. He did not advocate aid to Soviet Russia out of some love for Lenin

However nor am I going to criticise him for a) not sending aid before August 1921, or b) sending aid after August 1921. Hoover's actions

On 13 July Gorky makes his famous appeal to the world. A week later, 22 July, Hoover officially asks for US permission to open talks with Moscow, claiming that:

"You will recollect my conversation of about six weeks ago in which I raised the desirability of extending relief to children and medical relief in Bolshevik Russia. Since that time the food situation has become more difficult, typhus is wider-spread. [...] I feel very deeply that we should go to the assistance of the children and also provide some medical relief generally. [...] I believe it is a humane obligation upon us to go in if they comply with the requirements set out; if they do no accede we are released from our responsibility."*

These words, from private correspondence, are not the words of a man under public pressure. Within a month agreement had been reached with Moscow to begin the aid efforts. It goes without saying that there were plenty of elements in Washington who opposed such an implicit recognition of the Soviet regime

But then there's nothing in Hoover's anti-famine efforts (and these covered an entire continent and then some) that conflicts with his political alignment. It is possible to be a staunch anti-communist and still shudder at the thought of millions starving to death. Hoover unquestionably perceived himself as being on the frontline in the fight against Communism, yet when push came to shove it's hard to fault the ARA's efforts to prevent millions of deaths in Soviet Russia. It takes some gall to argue the reverse and place it as part of some 'grand conspiracy'

*From Weissman, B.M., (1969), Herbert Hoover's 'Treaty' with Soviet Russia, Slavic Review, Vol. 28 (2)

[Iron Felix]

ComradeOm is very much correct in his assessment. The most ruthless oppression the peasants were subjected to(and most of Russia was peasants) during the civil war was from the Bolsheviks, and this pattern of terrorising the peasants into submission didn't stop after the civil war did either. Economic warfare was used by both sides during the civil war, but it has to be said that most of the destruction was not intentional.

[Ismail]

But then there's nothing in Hoover's anti-famine efforts (and these covered an entire continent and then some) that conflicts with his political alignment. It is possible to be a staunch anti-communist and still shudder at the thought of millions starving to death. Hoover unquestionably perceived himself as being on the frontline in the fight against Communism, yet when push came to shove it's hard to fault the ARA's efforts to prevent millions of deaths in Soviet Russia. It takes some gall to argue the reverse and place it as part of some 'grand conspiracy'Yet Hoover rejected that same amount of aid for both Austria ("should an uprising occur," according to Parenti) and Hungary (because of Béla Kun's government) out of concerns for the rise of communism. In Poland Hoover used his "food diplomacy" to force the Pilsudski regime to promote the US-friendly (and friend of Hoover) Ignacy Paderewski as Premier and, according to once source, "promptly sent a staff of expert advisers to administer and virtually run the Polish government... American advisers were seeded into the Polish departments of public health, mining, commerce, and finance. To complete the circle, Hoover's old friend Hugh Gibson was made American ambassador to Poland." (Lawrence Emerson Gelfand, Herbert Hoover: The Great War and Its Aftermath, pp. 101-102.)

I don't think anyone is denying that Hoover's efforts did cause a lot of peasants to avoid certain death, but I don't see why what Sayers and Kahn say about Hoover wanting to use aid to bolster the Whites is so outlandish.

[B0LSHEVIK]

it has to be said that most of the destruction was not intentional.

Does it really matter if it was intentional or not?

And actually, scorched earth policy is ALWAYS intentional. But, the point Im making is that the civil war itself, to a large degree, led to the famine. And, the civil war, was backed by the western democracies in an attempt to 'strangle the revolution in it's crib.'

Dont deny this ComradeOm.

[ComradeOm]

And actually, scorched earth policy is ALWAYS intentionalThere is a difference between ripping up rails to hinder the enemy and doing the same just to "sabotage" the national economy


But, the point Im making is that the civil war itself, to a large degree, led to the famine. And, the civil war, was backed by the western democracies in an attempt to 'strangle the revolution in it's crib.'Which is pretty much as simplistic as the "western 'democracies' launched the attack on Russia that led to there being a shortage of food, or famine" line. In short, it's so simplistic as to be incorrect

The famine has to be placed within the context of the economic collapse that had been unfolding since 1916. By 1921 there barely existed a national economy and the transportation network no longer functioned, over 50% of locomotives being out of service. Investment in both agriculture and transport had been effectively zero for half a decade and livestock numbers, in fact practically every economic indicator, were in sharp decline. Hunger had been sweeping the nation since 1916 and epidemics (most obviously Spanish flu) had completely overwhelmed Tsarist-era medical facilities. And, yes, you can add Bolshevik economic policies to the above. The latter most obviously being both grain seizures* and the division of the noble estates in 1917. Altogether these factors were far more than a few razed fields and represent a prolonged social and economic crash

Now the Civil War was obviously a large factor in all of the above, if only in that it made any recovery impossible. But two points. The first is that, as noted, this did not occur in a vacuum and urban famine had devastated Russian cities well before the main fighting had begun. Secondly, the Civil War was, as its name suggests, a Civil War. The vast majority of the fighting was between Russians (or former Tsarist and later Soviet citizens, if you want) and it did not make much of a difference that one side was equipped with British uniforms

Western intervention can be grossly overstated. The Polish invasion was important and the German occupation of the Ukraine was important; the occupation of the Empire's fringes by Allied armies was almost irrelevant and provision of arms to the Whites was of minor importance. The Whites would have fought regardless of foreign support and it's hard to see how this made any real difference to the course of the war. They might not have been able to advance as far but, as Mawdsley is correct to note, "material only arrived in quantity in the summer of 1919; Kolchak's spring offensive and Denikin's conquest of a south Russian base area came earlier"

To ascribe either the White actions or the famine as part of some sort of over-arching Entente campaign (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1920/05/25.htm) is just silly. You can't simply and neatly apportion blame to a complex socio-economic upheaval by frantically waving a finger in the direction of Western capitals

*If nothing else the whole Soviet experiment demonstrates the counter-productive nature of these. If there's not enough food in the country then seizures just makes the situation worse by draining the countryside of seeds and fodder

[DarkPast]

I bet they didn't mention that Imperial Russia had famines anyway, up to and over every 5 years.


No, areas of the Russian Empire (specifically the Ukraine and the Volga regions) experienced periodic droughts and bad harvests. Actual famines (ie, mass deaths through hunger) were relatively rare. Perhaps someone can correct me but the only such occasion in 19th C Imperial Russia was 1891-92.

Actually Dzugashvili is not far from the truth:

Droughts and famines in Imperial Russia are known to have happened every 10 to 13 years, with average droughts happening every 5 to 7 years. Eleven major famines scourged Russia between 1845 and 1922, one of the worst being the famine of 1891-92. (emphasis added)

http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/savage/A-FAM.PDF

[CommunityBeliever]

Private
Bourgeoisation
Service

[ComradeOm]

Actually Dzugashvili is not far from the truth:

Droughts and famines in Imperial Russia are known to have happened every 10 to 13 years, with average droughts happening every 5 to 7 years. Eleven major famines scourged Russia between 1845 and 1922, one of the worst being the famine of 1891-92. (emphasis added)

http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/savage/A-FAM.PDFI don't suppose, for my own curiosity, that you have the original source for that quote? Can't seem to find it myself

What I really want to know is the criteria for defining famines. There is obviously a lengthy list of droughts and food scares in 19th C Russia but spikes in mortality rates seem to have been relatively rare. For example, a case study by Hoch* in a parish near Tula (which was hit by some droughts over the century) can't trace any spikes in mortality to food supplies. Similarly, Adamets** can list off a whole litany of bad harvests but only one major jump in mortality (1849, cholera epidemic IIRC). Certainly there does not seem to have been many occasions of mass deaths comparable to 1921 or even 1891. The latter stuck in the memory precisely because it was the first such devastation in at least a generation

The actual picture is probably more nuanced with irregular local droughts probably contributing to overall heightened mortality rates rather than periodic purges of the rural population

*Famine, Disease, and Mortality Patterns in the Parish of Borshevka, Russia, 1830-1912
**Famine in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Russia

[DarkPast]

Unfortunately no. The full source appears to be Southard, Famine, Encyclopaedia of Social Science, vol.vi, but I can't find it online.

Meanwhile, I've found this quote in E.J.Dillon: Russia To-Day and Yesterday: an Impartial View of Soviet Russia. I don't know how trustworthy the source is.

Famine and its consequences constituted another of the pressing problems which the Soviets had to encounter, and responsibility for which is laid entirely on their shoulders by most outsiders. As a matter of fact, the causes go much farther back. The civil war, to say nothing of the World War that preceded it, was a disaster unparalleled in recent Russian history. It threatened with destruction the government, the State, and the masses. While it lasted people were struck down in myriads as by Apollo's lethal arrows six millions by disease and five millions by famine, to say nothing of the losses in the field. Famine, unhappily, is an old acquaintance in Russia, and has never yet been eliminated. In the year 1892 I wrote: Famine in Russia is periodical like the snows, or rather it is perennial like the Siberian plague. To be scientifically accurate, one should distinguish two different varieties of it the provincial and the national, the former termed "golodovka," or the little hunger, and the latter "golod," or the great hunger. Not a year ever elapses in which extreme distress in some province or provinces of the Empire does not assume the dimensions of a famine, while rarely a decade passes away in which the local misfortune does not ripen into the national calamity. If we go back as far as the year 996 and follow the course of Russian history down to the year of grace 1892, we shall find that, while the little hunger is an annual incident, as familiar as the destruction of human lives by wolves, the normal number of national famines fluctuates between seven and eight per century. And it is impossible not to note in passing that the circumstance that we can thus discourse of the periodicity of this terrible scourge of the nation, much as astronomers and meteorologists talk of the return of a comet or of the showers of shooting stars, is balm to the hearts of Russian tshinovniks, who are delighted to be able to fix upon "a law of nature" responsibility for their own misgovernment. (there's more)
Full text here: http://www.archive.org/stream/russiatodayandye009000mbp/russiatodayandye009000mbp_djvu.txt

You are correct in saying that none of the famines before 1921 claimed millions of victims, but it is also seems to be true that smaller famines (claiming tens of thousands) were so common that they weren't even "news" (and, of course, there was less international interest about the conditions in 19th century Russia than in the 20th century).

It's devilishly hard to find information about the other famines, but they are mentioned sometimes. For example, this article about the 1891-92: http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1994-5/Lilly.htm mentions another famine in 1873 in Samara.

[ComradeOm]

The lack of data is annoying but also illustrative. It's very hard to believe that major famines were striking the Russian Empire every 5-10 years without leaving some trace. The famine of 1891-92 was not particularly deadly by later standards with a 'mere' 300-500k dying; any mass starvation that killed even a fraction of that should have been prominently recorded. As it is you can read a history of the late Tsardom without mention of famine before 1891. Plenty of peasant misery of course but no mass deaths

Interestingly, the data that we do have is equally enlightening by omission. Wheatcroft (The Great Leap Upwards, 1999) presents the average heights of Tsarist army recruits over the 19th C. The only period before 1891 where there's any noticeable fall in the average height is in the early 1860s. This roughly tallies with data on average terminal heights of Russian males collected over the same period. But these disturbances in the 1860s are the exception to what is otherwise relatively smooth upward curves. Certainly there's nothing like the prolonged troughs that marked the 1891 and later famines

Also interesting is that the only outbreak of cholera that compares to 1891 is in 1849. Now that does seem to have killed hundreds of thousands but I'm not sure if you can automatically assume that this was related to famine. Unfortunately I don't have any figures for typhus, which does have a strong famine link


You are correct in saying that none of the famines before 1921 claimed millions of victims, but it is also seems to be true that smaller famines (claiming tens of thousands) were so common that they weren't even "news"Adamets points out that prior to the 1870s famines were broader in that they affected wide swathes of southern Russia. Post-1870 you tended to get more localised affairs: the Volga and Ukraine appear to have particularly hard hit

What I suspect is happening is that 'famine' before this period tended to mean a general fall in production that led to peasant struggling but not necessarily mass deaths. Even ten thousand is a huge number. Years of plenty; years of hardship. Constant struggle and droughts would fit into our picture of the Russian peasantry. Then towards the late 19th C, perhaps due to the more integrated capitalist market, you get much sharper and deadly famines that are exacerbated, to a degree at least, by state intervention (see: Vyshnegradsky, War Communism, collectivisation, etc). The latter famines do kill massive numbers of people and would feed into your passage above

Anyways, whichever way we call it I think it's safe to say that the famines of 1918+ cannot simply be written off as a Russian tradition that rolled round every decade or so. They just killed too many for that and if this was happening in the previous century, even just killing thousands at a time, then we should be seeing some indication in the data


...there was less international interest about the conditions in 19th century Russia than in the 20th centuryShouldn't be an issue though. Tsarist Russia had a relatively advanced statistical bureau, or at least an intelligentsia with an uncommon interest in statistics. This carried over into post-revolutionary period. We probably know more about the nutritional habits of 19th C Russians than we do their English counterparts


To be scientifically accurate, one should distinguish two different varieties of it the provincial and the national, the former termed "golodovka," or the little hunger, and the latter "golod," or the great hungerThis is going from memory here but may be telling. Russian did not, at least not before the 20th C, have a word for 'death by starvation'; what would be today called golodomor (holodomor in Ukrainian). It may well be that these 'big hungers' and 'little hungers' were just years of hardship, ones in which people went hungry but without a massive rise (to 'famine' levels) in the mortality rate

[manic expression]

Anyways, whichever way we call it I think it's safe to say that the famines of 1918+ cannot simply be written off as a Russian tradition that rolled round every decade or so. They just killed too many for that and if this was happening in the previous century, even just killing thousands at a time, then we should be seeing some indication in the data
I'm not sure that's the point. I think it has more to do with the idea that Russian agriculture wasn't exactly stellar before the Civil War, and that the hardships of that conflict only compounded an already precarious situation and made it what it came to be.

[ComradeOm]

"I bet they didn't mention that Imperial Russia had famines anyway, up to and over every 5 years"

This could be a nuanced assessment of the state of Russian agriculture or it could be a shrug of the shoulders because those Russians had regular famines anyway, so like why you beating on the Bolsheviks dude? My money's on the latter

[Rowan Duffy]

This could be a nuanced assessment of the state of Russian agriculture or it could be a shrug of the shoulders because those Russians had regular famines anyway, so like why you beating on the Bolsheviks dude? My money's on the latter

Well, you yourself have in this thread made quite a lot of assertions which I'm dubious of without a lot of supporting evidence.

A) The western invasions and assistance of the Whites is overstated.

I'm curious how overstated you feel it is, and what metrics you use to come up with this?

B) There is little evidence of famine prior to the Bolsheviks

The fact that you lack evidence isn't proof that it doesn't exist. The one comment you made about prior famines appears to have come from Richard Pipes who I wouldn't count as an enormously neutral source.

Measuring famines is very hard without census and even then it generally uses the technique of counting excess deaths. Counting of excess deaths actually gives quite a lot of freedom to the person doing the counting. For instance, if the life-expectancy is much lower in 1890 then do we use that life expectancy, or a later one if we are to compare.

An excellent example of how you could count millions of excess deaths where people acknowledge hardship but don't necessarily recognise it as a mass famine occurred in the US in the great depression.

The value to the west of anti-communist propaganda is much more important than the value to the west of anti-tsarist propaganda. They're much more likely to shine a light on famines that happen after the revolution than prior. To see a more extreme example look at China.

C) The Bolsheviks are mostly to blame

There are several policies that the Bolsheviks implemented that probably exacerbated the grain harvest situation during the civil war. Some of them were probably avoidable decisions. However, we have to remember that all of the combatants were requisitioning grain. If you didn't do it, you'd almost certainly lose, since you can't feed an army on ideology.

Beyond this, the entire Russian society was in a state of collapse due to actions taken by the Tsarist regime. There wouldn't have been a civil war if society wasn't already falling apart. They have to be given a fairly large share of the blame. It's much harder to get yourself out of a quagmire than into one.

[DarkPast]

This is going from memory here but may be telling. Russian did not, at least not before the 20th C, have a word for 'death by starvation'; what would be today called golodomor (holodomor in Ukrainian). It may well be that these 'big hungers' and 'little hungers' were just years of hardship, ones in which people went hungry but without a massive rise (to 'famine' levels) in the mortality rate

Doesn't this strike you as odd since there definitely was a massive famine in the history of Russia before the 20th century? I'm talking about the one during the Time of Troubles (Wikipedia gives 2 million death toll). I mean just look at this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Cannibalism_1571.PNG

Anyway, when I think about it some more, is the 5 million figure for the 1921 famine all that high, considering the context? Wasn't there already a famine in the very last year of Tsarist Russia (winter 1916–1917)? There was also a famine in Germany (needless to say, a country with much less risk of famine due to far better infrastructure) towards the end of World War One which by some estimated took 760,000 lives. Had the war continued longer, I think it's likely the death toll would have reached millions. In Russia, there was only a brief respite from World War One before the country was engulfed in civil war.

Just my two cents.

[ComradeOm]

Doesn't this strike you as odd since there definitely was a massive famine in the history of Russia before the 20th century? I'm talking about the one during the Time of Troubles (Wikipedia gives 2 million death toll). I mean just look at this*Shrugs* Famine has certainly visited Russia in the past, I didn't for a second mean to deny that, but this was a linguistic curiosity that struck me some time ago. Probably when reading Davies' and Wheatcroft's excellent Years of Hunger. It might only refer to a specific event; as I say, I'm working from memory here


Anyway, when I think about it some more, is the 5 million figure for the 1921 famine all that high, considering the context?Well, yes. Five million (minimum) is an immense figure for any European famine. It's also just part of the estimated 14m who died as a result of starvation or disease in the period 1917-23. This dwarfs, in absolute terms at least, anything seen in Russia or Europe prior to the 20th C. The figures only seem less striking when set against the devastation that accompanied the collectivisation drive a decade later

And again I reiterate that the famine has to be seen as part of the wider social and economic collapse that marked the fall of Tsardom. Including emigration and military deaths, the total number of lives lost in this period was probably 18-20m. It was a period of near unimaginable destruction


There was also a famine in Germany (needless to say, a country with much less risk of famine due to far better infrastructure) towards the end of World War One which by some estimated took 760,000 livesThe difference there being that Germany, as a relatively advanced industrial power, was crippled by the Allied blockade of food and fuel. This was not a product of the inherent weakness of German agriculture

[Rowan Duffy]

Well, yes. Five million (minimum) is an immense figure for any European famine. It's also just part of the estimated 14m who died as a result of starvation or disease in the period 1917-23. This dwarfs, in absolute terms at least, anything seen in Russia or Europe prior to the 20th C. The figures only seem less striking when set against the devastation that accompanied the collectivisation drive a decade later

The Irish famine was proportionally around 20% of the population, so it's not the case that this scale of famine was totally unheard of. Similarly, during the Holomodor, there were around 3 million excess deaths in the US due to the depression.

You seem to be trying to make the case that Russia was an extreme exception, when it appears to me that it wasn't really as extreme as you're making out.


The difference there being that Germany, as a relatively advanced industrial power, was crippled by the Allied blockade of food and fuel. This was not a product of the inherent weakness of German agriculture

So being at war with an external enemy rather than an internal enemy funded from the outside changes the situation entirely and makes it justifiable? I have to admit, I'm rather confused.

[B0LSHEVIK]

Comrade Om, what exactly do you disagree with the statement that 'the civil war led to famine.'

I mean, you're fucking saying yourself that the civil war made any kind of recovery impossible, and that tearing up rail for military purposes doesnt equal economic sabotage (bullshit). BUT, would you say that given NO CIVIL WAR, famine would have occurred anyways? I have my doubts on that one.

Also, it is simplistic, but then again, Im not going to write a fucking thesis and dissertation for you to read on a fucking website either.

[B0LSHEVIK]

And besides, my main point was to call bullshit on Hoover's 'humanitarianism.'

Hoover-villes, or Hoover-towns ring a bell?

[ComradeOm]

A) The western invasions and assistance of the Whites is overstated.

I'm curious how overstated you feel it is, and what metrics you use to come up with this?Well the most obvious ones would be area occupied by Allied armies, Allied soldiers engaged in combat operations and amount of aid received by the Whites. Now the figures for the first two - like almost everything in the RCW - are obviously vague and imprecise but no one can argue that they were significant. With the exception of the German and Polish interventions, which I've constantly maintained were important, Allied occupation was limited to the fringes of the Empire and involved little actual conflict with the Bolsheviks. Certainly not on a scale comparable to the main fighting with the Whites. Having 10k+ US soldiers in the Far East is pretty irrelevant if they're not doing much

The third factor (supplies) is obviously more important but, as I stated, this aid only began arriving in any numbers in mid-1919. By this stage the contours of the Civil War were set. The Whites may not have been able to threaten Moscow but, having established their base in the south, the fighting would have almost certainly still dragged on to 1920. I don't have time to look up tables now (running for a plane) so you'll have to make do with the word of the historian I quoted

Against this relatively limited intervention you have the image of vast Allied armies traipsing across Russia or of the Whites being nothing more than London's puppets. The Russian Civil War was a civil war fought first and foremost by Russians in Russia using Russian arms


B) There is little evidence of famine prior to the Bolsheviks

The fact that you lack evidence isn't proof that it doesn't exist. The one comment you made about prior famines appears to have come from Richard Pipes who I wouldn't count as an enormously neutral source.Where did I quote Pipes?

And of course the lack of existence isn't proof of non-existence. I've never declared that a famine absolutely did not happen; that should be fairly clear from my posts. What I have said is that the data that we do have is fairly strong circumstantial evidence that there was no famine of comparable scale to 1891 or 1921 in the early 19th C. If you can show me that a famine killed hundreds of thousands in, say, the 1860s then that's fair enough. That's what I've been asking for


Measuring famines is very hard without census and even then it generally uses the technique of counting excess deaths. Counting of excess deaths actually gives quite a lot of freedom to the person doing the counting. For instance, if the life-expectancy is much lower in 1890 then do we use that life expectancy, or a later one if we are to compare.Yes, that's why a famine is marked by excess mortality above the norm. Obviously census data would be ideal but deaths in Tsarist Russia were recorded on a local level and I've already referenced one study that examples such a case study. The other data that I've used (basically heights) was also collected by central authorities and does provide a relatively good indication of a prolonged nutritional shortfall - both 1891 and 1921 made an obvious impact on these height series


The value to the west of anti-communist propaganda is much more important than the value to the west of anti-tsarist propaganda. They're much more likely to shine a light on famines that happen after the revolution than prior. To see a more extreme example look at China.Well then it's a good thing that the world doesn't revolve around Western academics, no? Leaving aside the notion that Western academics were studiously deleting references to famines from their histories, Russian/Soviet academics were perfectly capable of writing their own histories. 1891 is so well known precisely because of the efforts of contemporary Russians to publicise it

You are seriously boiling down almost a century of Western history to "anti-communist propaganda"? Oh dear


C) The Bolsheviks are mostly to blameWhere did I say that? You must not have read any of my posts because I've consistently placed Bolshevik actions within the context of "entire Russian society was in a state of collapse due to actions taken by the Tsarist regime". That's my whole point when arguing against B0LSHEVIK's simplifications. So I don't know where you're getting that from

Nor have I condemned Bolshevik actions. They probably were necessary. What is clear is that they played a role, a negative one, in creating famine conditions. You can draw your own conclusions as to necessity, I'm just listing factors


So being at war with an external enemy rather than an internal enemy funded from the outside changes the situation entirely and makes it justifiable? I have to admit, I'm rather confusedYou shouldn't be. The collapse in German agriculture was entirely attributable to Allied actions. Can you demonstrate that the same was the case in Russia?


Also, it is simplistic, but then again, Im not going to write a fucking thesis and dissertation for you to read on a fucking website eitherBut you'd expect me to do it? It took me a few hundred words in an above post to place the Civil War within the context of the general late Tsarist collapse. Rowan Duffy did it in even less. There's exhaustively exploring every factor in-depth and then there's not reducing everything to two words - whether 'Allied intervention' or '17 invaders' or whatever

[Rowan Duffy]

The third factor (supplies) is obviously more important but, as I stated, this aid only began arriving in any numbers in mid-1919. By this stage the contours of the Civil War were set.

The famine didn't happen until 1921 so actions in mid-1919 seem to be of clear significance to what occurs in 1921. If material support was more important how important was it? Would the war have ended earlier if they hadn't given material support? I don't know the answer to these questions, but all I've seen in the way of evidence from you that this is the case is assertion without support. I'd like to see something about the actual relative quantities of material support in arms to local arms before making a judgment. Do you have sources which can give some quantitative meaning to this claim?



Well then it's a good thing that the world doesn't revolve around Western academics, no? Leaving aside the notion that Western academics were studiously deleting references to famines from their histories, Russian/Soviet academics were perfectly capable of writing their own histories. 1891 is so well known precisely because of the efforts of contemporary Russians to publicise it

You are seriously boiling down almost a century of Western history to "anti-communist propaganda"? Oh dear

First, I'm not boiling anything down to anti-communist propaganda. I'm curious about the history and I'm not content with mere assertions of what occurred.

Secondly, I think you're vastly underestimating the impact of anti-communist propaganda. Scholarship in English absolutely revolves around western academics. Are you asserting that it does not?

Nobody has to studiously delete anything for us not to know about it. All that has to happen is that people don't dig to find out what really occurred. Then we're left with sources like the Black Book of Communism which, you should note, is the source of a large number of the statistics on wikipedias articles.

You actually gave a good example of this fact regarding the Holomodor. Until Davies & Wheatcroft we'd have had to make due in English, for the most part, with either Stalinist nonsense or western claims of intentional holocaust.



You shouldn't be. The collapse in German agriculture was entirely attributable to Allied actions. Can you demonstrate that the same was the case in Russia?

Ok, so the Bolsheviks are responsible for getting into a protracted civil war which lead to a need to requisition grain in order to win. A policy failure on the head of the Bolsheviks. Well, I can somewhat understand this, but then what were the other options. A continuation of war with the Germans under tsarist rule would have been significantly better? Maybe there was some third route?

Yet the Germans are not responsible for having started a war with the Allies? I think this is a very inconsistent stance and what I'm trying to understand.

If the Whites had give up rather than fight would the famine have reached such epic proportions? It seems unlikely to me considering that Lenin was already implementing the NEP before it was clear that there would be widespread famine which was only understood clearly by the Spring of 1921 when sufficient rains had not come.

[manic expression]

The difference there being that Germany, as a relatively advanced industrial power, was crippled by the Allied blockade of food and fuel. This was not a product of the inherent weakness of German agriculture
The difference? Seems more like a point of comparison.

[Ismail]

You actually gave a good example of this fact regarding the Holomodor. Until Davies & Wheatcroft we'd have had to make due in English, for the most part, with either Stalinist nonsense or western claims of intentional holocaust.What "Stalinist nonsense"? The only thing I can think of are those who claimed either that conditions didn't actually reach famine levels (since the Soviets didn't want to admit there was a famine and didn't formally admit it until 1988) or overemphasized sabotage of collective farms by kulaks. The former was more a technicality than anything ("conditions were terrible but it wasn't a famine because xyz") and the latter isn't so strange as to be derided as "nonsense," and neither have to do with the question "Did the Soviet Union seek to genocide the Ukrainians?" Obviously Davies and Wheatcroft wrote a good, academic book on the subject, but I don't see how everything was a dark void before that to be duked out between the dreaded Stalinoid madmen on one side and Ronald Reagan on the other.

[ComradeOm]

The famine didn't happen until 1921 so actions in mid-1919 seem to be of clear significance to what occurs in 1921The point I'm making is that the broad contours of the Civil War would remain fairly unchanged regardless of the Allied shipments. Whether or not these arrive in mid-1919, the turning point has been reached in Siberia and 1920 will see fierce fighting on the southern front. This is not going to change in any significant way. The frontline might be pan out differently in our 'what if' scenario but the same campaigns still have to be fought


If material support was more important how important was it? Would the war have ended earlier if they hadn't given material support? I don't know the answer to these questions, but all I've seen in the way of evidence from you that this is the case is assertion without support. I'd like to see something about the actual relative quantities of material support in arms to local arms before making a judgment. Do you have sources which can give some quantitative meaning to this claim?Again, the reference is Mawdsley's The Russian Civil War. Quantities are certainly discussed there, even if I don't recall the sort of tabulated data that I so love. As I hinted, I'm out of the country and do not have access to this ATM


Secondly, I think you're vastly underestimating the impact of anti-communist propaganda. Scholarship in English absolutely revolves around western academics. Are you asserting that it does not? And what does that have to do with anti-communist propaganda? It should also be noted that Western research does not revolve around scholarship in English


You actually gave a good example of this fact regarding the Holomodor. Until Davies & Wheatcroft we'd have had to make due in English, for the most part, with either Stalinist nonsense or western claims of intentional holocaustExcept for Carr, Nove, Harrison, Ellman, etc, etc. There's also a host of other historians (from France, Germany and, of course, the USSR/Russia) that have made fantastic contributions to the history and often found their way into English accounts. Davies & Wheatcroft had made immense contributions to our understanding of the topic but they were not the first. Indeed they themselves draw heavily on Soviet historians like Danilov


Ok, so the Bolsheviks are responsible for getting into a protracted civil war which lead to a need to requisition grain in order to win. A policy failure on the head of the Bolsheviks. Well, I can somewhat understand this, but then what were the other options. A continuation of war with the Germans under tsarist rule would have been significantly better? Maybe there was some third route? Well no, that's not what I'm saying at all. I don't know where you're getting that from. Civil War was something forced upon the Bolsheviks. They can be blamed for specific policies that the followed during/after the conflict but civil war itself was surely inevitable

My point with regards Germany is that in Germany the famine was unquestionably the result of the actions of foreign powers. Had the Allies not maintained the blockade then hundreds of thousands would not have died. Open and shut case.

This is not the case with Russia where the famine was, at least in part, tied to weaknesses in Russian agriculture and the more general economic collapse of these years. Foreign intervention, as I contend, was not a significant factor. Therein lies the difference between Russia and Germany


If the Whites had give up rather than fight would the famine have reached such epic proportions? It seems unlikely to me considering that Lenin was already implementing the NEP before it was clear that there would be widespread famine which was only understood clearly by the Spring of 1921 when sufficient rains had not come.Well let's try this thought exercise:

If there is no White resistance, no civil war then the Bolsheviks merely have to contend with: the urban famine of 1917-18, the loss of the Ukraine to Germany/nationalists, near-total collapse of the transportation network, the liquidation of the working class, the increasing divergence between the industrial and agricultural sectors, loss of productive estates, lack of foreign trade opportunities, years of no investment in industry, actual droughts, etc, etc. All of these would have occurred regardless of the actions of Kolchak et al and would have presented an immense challenge to any new government. In short, a near total economic collapse

Now you'd have to imagine that without the Civil War the Bolsheviks would have been able to recover from these and be in a strong enough position to avoid/alleviate famine in 1921. You'd hope, even if it was exceptionally difficult. You're probably correct in that the Bolsheviks would not have been forced into War Communism measures but I don't know for sure and I don't pretend to know. Still, that's the context that Civil War has to placed in

Of course it's just a thought exercise, White reaction was inevitable

What I am confident about is that if you allow for White campaigns without foreign material supplies then you're still adding 3-4 years of civil war into the above factors. And that's just making a difficult job almost impossible


What "Stalinist nonsense"?So you accept that government policies played a role in the famine of the early 1930s?

[Ismail]

So you accept that government policies played a role in the famine of the early 1930s?Doesn't everyone by now? I can't think of a single "Stalinist" on RevLeft who doesn't think that the government's efforts did disrupt agriculture for a bit and contributed to the famine as a result of administrative mishaps and excesses.

[ComradeOm]

Well there's a happy turnaround. Stalinists rejecting the consistent line of the Stalinist regime. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside

Unless of course by "administrative mishaps and excesses" you're resorting to the ultimate Stalinist excuse of blaming the execution and not the policy. So just to clarify, you don't think that collectivisation was the correct policy at the correct time that just happened to be bungled by bureaucrats? The central organs carry no blame for the disaster?

Just checking

[Ismail]

Of course collectivization was correct, issues were bound to be created due to the material conditions of the time. That doesn't mean that it suddenly had to be "stopped" just because of initial problems. Neither Stalin, Molotov or Kaganovich (the latter two in their memoirs) felt that collectivization had to be stopped just because of said issues that came up. It is to the credit of Stalin and the leadership that collectivization was able to be carried out despite resistance and despite said issues. Of course Stalin did write tracts such as "Dizzy with Success" to point out that yes, excesses were made, but that doesn't suddenly mean you stop progress, and that efforts should be made to put a stop to excesses to the best of one's ability.

Similar things (although again, material conditions were different so no famine) occurred in Albania. In the 1950's the collectivization drive was cooled down, but by the 60's it was again in full force and by 1970 even highland peasants were united under collectives. In fact in the early 80's there were efforts to completely do away with private property in the collectives, involving the collectivization of all livestock. This plan had to be delayed because of resistance but was abandoned only after Hoxha's death when his successors pursued rightist policies.

[ComradeOm]

Of course collectivization was correct, issues were bound to be created due to the material conditions of the time. That doesn't mean that it suddenly had to be "stopped" just because of initial problems.So the 'material conditions' weren't right but the leadership pushed on with a wildly ambitious reform campaign anyway. Treason or stupidity?

And note Stalinist fallacy #116: TINA. It doesn't matter that this programme contributed to the deaths of millions (apparently inevitable given the "material conditions") because it had to be carried out. It was either that or... well, support 'the restoration of capitalism', to borrow from contemporary propaganda. Never mind that from 1932 onwards the State itself, having driven the economy to the very brink of destruction, moderated its own course and tacitly abandoned a number of aspects of the pre-1932 programme* that the centre had previously strongly pushed. Any volte face was of course, in typical Stalinist fashion, attributed to misinterpretation of the bureaucracy and not the policies of the centre


Neither Stalin, Molotov or Kaganovich (the latter two in their memoirs) felt that collectivization had to be stopped just because of said issues that came upNo one is pretending that the Stalinist elite had any qualms over the deaths of millions


Of course Stalin did write tracts such as "Dizzy with Success" to point out that yes, excesses were made, but that doesn't suddenly mean you stop progress, and that efforts should be made to put a stop to excesses to the best of one's abilityLet me get this straight: Stalin strongly pushes radical policy (including weighting in against moderation); radical policy strongly backfires; Stalin blames underlings for being too radical. But no! Don't draw any conclusions from that because Stalin said that someone else was to blame. And we can trust Stalin entirely, no?

Getty probably sums this mental gymnastics up best in The Road to Terror (talking specifically about the Great Purge):

"Discursive rules in the party forbade any admission that previous that previous policy had been in error, so one blamed the executors, not the policy makers, and praised the previous policy while abolishing it. There is clear documentary evidence that the sins now attributed to the NKVD were encouraged, if not ordered, by Stalin himself. The 'mass operations', slipshod procuratorial controls, forced confessions and the rest were part of high policy that did not originate with the NKVD."

By the same token we have clear evidence that Stalin was personally involved in pushing for a radical interpretation of collectivisation (such as editing the CC decree of 5 Jan 1930 to remove references to restraint and caution). A policy that he'd later return to after the fiasco of 1930. Yet we're expected to believe that 'high policy' was fine and that it was the incompetence of others that led to disaster? No

*Including, incidentally, the collectivisation of livestock. One word: disaster

[Ismail]

Actually the fact that he was willing to take the most "radical" route, as Hoxha was 30-50 years later, says good things about him. Obviously the most "radical" of the policies weren't implemented, but it's pretty obvious that Soviet agriculture before 1930-1933 was quite different than what came after it. In Albania, where collectivization was also ambitious, there were also "regrouping" periods where renewed efforts would be made at collectivization in a few years or months. I don't see how it's "treason" or "stupidity" or in any way a bad thing. As you well know, Stalin's "Dizzy with Success" was met with more collectivization months later. Hoxha spoke in the early 80's of the necessity of psychologically remolding peasants to be better receptive to collectivized livestock and so on. The goal of collectivizing livestock was not achieved, but as noted it was only abandoned after Hoxha died.

Also yes, the NKVD bits in regards to torture and such are true. Erik Van Ree in his book The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin notes that, "Stalin was so convinced of the guilt of his victims that he believed he was forcing the latter to unveil the truth... confessions were demanded even when cases were tried in secret or did not come to court at all. People were questioned because Stalin wanted answers." (pp. 124-125.) It was very similar in Albania with Hoxha. Again, obviously no one likes forced confessions, but I don't see the horrible scandal here.

[ComradeOm]

Actually the fact that he was willing to take the most "radical" route, as Hoxha was 30-50 years later, says good things about himFrankly I don't care about the 'radicalism' of Stalin's policies. Not here at least. The point is that we have radical Stalin urging radical policies and then berating others for following those radical policies. Blaming local officials for "administrative mishaps and excesses" is a cop-out.

So we return to the original point. Millions died and immense economic damage was incurred during the collectivisation drive... yet you maintain that it was the correct policy. Not much has changed with regards 'Stalinist nonsense'


Also yes, the NKVD bits in regards to torture and such are true. Erik Van Ree in his book The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin notes that, "Stalin was so convinced of the guilt of his victims that he believed he was forcing the latter to unveil the truth... confessions were demanded even when cases were tried in secret or did not come to court at all. People were questioned because Stalin wanted answers." (pp. 124-125.) It was very similar in Albania with Hoxha. Again, obviously no one likes forced confessions, but I don't see the horrible scandal here.No, you probably don't see the problem with torturing confessions out of innocent people that you merely suspect might be guilty

Nobody seriously believed that half the CC was comprised of 'left-right, Trotskyist-Bukharinist, German-Japanese-British-Polish spies' who sought to dismember the USSR. Even Molotov could admit as much decades later. But in the twisted world of Stalinism the mere suspicion of opposition was enough to condemn one to the tender mercies of the NKVD. Objectively so and so could not possibly have committed the charges levelled against him but the very act of being 'questioned' by the NKVD placed them into opposition and made them enemies of the state. So we have the likes of Molotov admitting that people were 'worked over' to extract false confessions and then defending this as necessity. Pure doublethink

And I have no doubt that most of the involved, including Stalin, genuinely believed that there were enemy agents at work. This doesn't excuse the regime from being a murderous one, it just makes it a delusionally murderously one

(Again of course Stalin would condemn many of these practices when he curtailed the Great Purges. Despite his strong endorsement of them mere months earlier)

[Ismail]

Collectivization is a correct policy, how is it not? Many people died during industrialization as well, I don't see how that wasn't a correct policy either. I also don't see what's wrong with making a point that people shouldn't be overzealous with their work. Again, to take the case of Albania during the phase where Chinese influence was the strongest, Hoxha decided that banning religion completely could be accomplished and obviously violence was used during this period, but Hoxha also pointed out that persuasion, if it could be used, should be used. It doesn't mean that Hoxha shirked from using violence or that he was "covering his ass" or whatever like you've said other times about Stalin in-re "Dizzy with Success," it means that excesses were to be avoided because they would incur far more damage than a regulated course of action.

In a similar scenario, Stalin obviously knew that excesses were being committed under Yezhov's watch. He probably didn't know the full extent, and obviously Yezhov could not have done what he did without Stalin's prior blank approval, but I think Ian Grey's conclusion is correct: "Stalin could not maintain direct control over the purge. He was aware that the NKVD had arrested many people who were not guilty and that of the 7 to 14 million people serving sentences of forced labor in the GULAG camps many were innocent of any taint of disloyalty. They were inevitable sacrifices, inseparable from any campaign on this scale. But he resented this waste of human material. The aircraft designer Yakovlev recorded a conversation with him in 1940, in which Stalin exclaimed: 'Ezhov was a rat; in 1938 he killed many innocent people. We shot him for that!'" (Stalin: Man of History, p. 289.)

I'm pretty sure during the "War Communism" period that Lenin cautioned people during grain requisitioning not to alienate peasants if they could. Does that mean Lenin was "covering his ass" as well? I mean I can't think of a single official who didn't urge caution and/or restraint in some conditions. Maybe Pol Pot, so perhaps you would have preferred Stalin to be like him?

Moralistic comments about the "murderous regime" shouldn't carry any weight. Reactionaries say the same thing about Lenin.

[ComradeOm]

Collectivization is a correct policy, how is it not?Personally, and this is just me, I tend to find that a policy that contributes to the deaths of millions, almost destroys both the economy and Soviet power, has to be significantly revised after leading to a demographic/economic catastrophe and leaves a toxic legacy... well, that's probably not entirely correct

But then this brings us back to TINA and the idea that there was no way but Stalin's way. Socialising agriculture does not include an abolition of crop rotation :rolleyes:


It doesn't mean that Hoxha shirked from using violence or that he was "covering his ass" or whatever like you've said other times about Stalin in-re "Dizzy with Success," it means that excesses were to be avoided because they would incur far more damage than a regulated course of action.Except that in early 1930 it was Stalin who was arguing against a "regulated course of action". As he would do again in later campaigns. Yet in Dizzy he apportioned none of blame to himself or Molotov or other senior leaders. Instead it was the cadres who were blamed for 'excesses' that stemmed from policy decisions made at the highest level

It wasn't the rank and file who decided to, for example, consistently increase the sown area in the yearly plans at the detriment to crop yield. It wasn't the regional bodies who were issuing Union-wide decrees urging 100% collectivisation. It wasn't the cadres who announced the 'Great turn' without any prior preparation. And so on

Yet in Dizzy we have Stalin berating those who were merely following instructions from the centre (and, as Kalinin pointed out, disobeying Moscow opened one to the accusation of being a 'right-wing deviations) and simply lying about the nature of the programme ('voluntary character' my ass). So don't talk to me about Dizzy when it merely exposes the duplicitous and cowardly nature of Stalin's communications


In a similar scenario, Stalin obviously knew that excesses were being committed under Yezhov's watch. He probably didn't know the full extent, and obviously Yezhov could not have done what he did without Stalin's prior blank approval...No, this is more than "blank approval". Getty's whole point is that the policies that there is documentary evidence that the policies Stalin later condemned had been explicitly condoned by Stalin and the Politburo. Yezhov may have been making the arrests but it was Stalin, and others in the leadership, who were signing vast numbers of death warrants


I'm pretty sure during the "War Communism" period that Lenin cautioned people during grain requisitioning not to alienate peasants if they could. Does that mean Lenin was "covering his ass" as well?
No. Lenin did not plunge into the same failed policies the next year. Nor did he deny the scale of disaster once it became apparent. Nor had he previously urged a reckless and unnecessary campaign in the first place. In fact the differences in Soviet approaches to both famines is instructive


Moralistic comments about the "murderous regime" shouldn't carry any weight. Reactionaries say the same thing about Lenin.So we shouldn't pass any judgement on any regime? Sure, why not refrain from passing "moralistic comments" on the Holocaust; the Nazis genuinely did feel that the Jews were a threat to the German people :rolleyes:

Or perhaps Stalin is exempt because he was a 'socialist'?

[Ismail]

So we shouldn't pass any judgement on any regime? Sure, why not refrain from passing "moralistic comments" on the Holocaust; the Nazis genuinely did feel that the Jews were a threat to the German people :rolleyes:

Or perhaps Stalin is exempt because he was a 'socialist'?No, Stalin is "exempt" because the Holocaust and collectivization are not the same thing. The Holocaust was obviously a deeply reactionary event, conducted by a reactionary government whose express goals were to stamp out communism and promote German imperialism across much of the globe, plus obviously genocide Jews and other "inferior" ethnic groups. Calling the Nazis (or say, Pinochet, apartheid South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or any other reactionary government of varying degrees) "evil" or "murderous" sounds good in a speech, but should be avoided when one is conducting a materialist analysis.

Collectivization was undertaken to socialize agriculture and to ensure that it would operate in tune with the planned economy and its needs. The Great Purges were undertaken to eliminate all elements seen as anti-government and hostile to the construction of socialism.

Stalin's "Dizzy With Success" was more or less going to naturally appear under the circumstances for psychological reasons if nothing else. To return to Albania yet again, the policies laid down had to be carried out. All churches and mosques (save for like, ones of particular historical value which were never, ever used, just turned into museum pieces) were converted into storehouses, theaters, and other public buildings. All religious figures were either forced to give up the robes or be arrested and/or executed. Conducting a baptism was grounds for death, and years of labor for the person receiving it for the baby. Religiously-based personal names (for newly-born children) were forbidden, and religiously-based place names were renamed. Not to mention that there was a spirited effort to promote atheist propaganda all across Albania. Private worship within the home was itself outlawed.

Obviously these policies leave little room for disagreement. All urging caution essentially means is either "try not to alienate people" or (in the case of Soviet and Albanian collectivization) "we were too hasty, but we'll pick up the pace soon." There was apparently noticeable disagreement within the Party for going through with the anti-religious campaign, and it indeed marked one as a right-wing deviator to oppose it. As I said, there wasn't much room to disagree with it due to how "radical" it was. These were massive programs designed to bring about fundamental change, not price adjustments or some sowing of extra hectares of land.

[Gustav HK]

I have read a bit, that Hoxha himself was a bit sceptical of the anti-religious campaign.

I believe he critiscized those, who thought that you could eradicate religion by just making laws against it and using the police and sigurimi.
He knew that it was more a question of education and the like.


Enver Hoxha, "The Communists Lead by Means of Example, Sacrifices, Abnegation: Discussion in the Organization of the Party, Sector C, of the 'Enver' Plant", 2 March 1967, in Hoxha, E., Vepra, n. 35, Tirana, 1982, pp. 130–1. "In this matter violence, exaggerated or inflated actions must be condemned. Here it is necessary to use persuasion and only persuasion, political and ideological work, so that the ground is prepared for each concrete action against religion."


"We shall not allow the use of administrative measures to eliminate useless religious institutions, customs and beliefs. There is only one road for the solution of these problems: political, ideological work and persuasion. . . . Backward customs and religious beliefs do not disappear suddenly, but gradually, through long and continuous work . . .
. . . In no way must we hurt the feelings of the people over the tower of a minaret which, if it is not destroyed today, will be destroyed next year, when the people have become convinced of the uselessness of religious beliefs."
Enver Hoxha, "In the Struggle against Religious Beliefs there is only One Road - Political, Ideological Work, Persuasion: From a Talk with the First Secretary of the Party Committee in the Dibra District," 7 April 1967, in Hoxha, E., Vepra, n. 35, Tirana, 1982, p. 226.


There was a Danish radio program about Soc. Albania for not very long time ago.
And there was a story about the anti-religion campaign under the Cultural and Ideological Revolution.

IIRC, it was about a church in a village. First the youth used iconoclastic measures, went into the church and destroyed some statues and things like that.
But after that, the Party decided that it should be more ordered, and there was a meeting first in the school, where it was decided that there should be an even more bigger meeting in the village, where at least one from the Party was attending, and the village priest too.

The outcome was peaceful, the priest wasn´t punished, but found another job.

[Ismail]

It doesn't change the fact that there was a lot of violence and coercion used, as Edwin E. Jacques notes in some detail. Ideally most issues would be resolved peacefully, but then again I'm pretty sure Stalin would have preferred if every collective was voluntarily formed and had all people voluntarily join as well.

[ComradeOm]

No, Stalin is "exempt" because the Holocaust and collectivization are not the same thing. The Holocaust was obviously a deeply reactionary event, conducted by a reactionary government whose express goals were to stamp out communism and promote German imperialism across much of the globe, plus obviously genocide Jews and other "inferior" ethnic groups. Calling the Nazis (or say, Pinochet, apartheid South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or any other reactionary government of varying degrees) "evil" or "murderous" sounds good in a speech, but should be avoided when one is conducting a materialist analysis.

Collectivization was undertaken to socialize agriculture and to ensure that it would operate in tune with the planned economy and its needs. The Great Purges were undertaken to eliminate all elements seen as anti-government and hostile to the construction of socialismYou say no but then yes. The Holocaust was according to Nazi standards a rational response to perceived threats to the German people. According to Stalinists the millions who died either did so because they were "anti-government and hostile to the construction of socialism" or the victims of such anti-Soviet elements*

This is staggeringly delusional but that does not provide an excuse. Just because the Stalinist state claimed that it killed in the name of socialism, and even if the leadership genuinely thought that, does not make this acceptable. That is the sort of relativism used to justify Nazi atrocities: you have reduced an atrocity's merits down to the intentions of the perpetrators. In this perverse argument Stalin is okay because he's Stalin; the Nazis are bad because they're Nazis

But then welcome to the wonderful world of Stalinism; where everything proceeds from the assumption that the sun shone out of Stalin's arse. With this article of faith any crime can be excused in the name of "constructing socialism". And so we go round and round because you are incapable of questioning this core tenet. Socialism is Stalinism

And get off your high horse. 'Murderous' is not 'evil' and is a perfectly acceptable term to use in describing a regime whose primary tool was repression. Don't tell me that any state that can execute between 700k and a million of its citizens in the space of two years should not be described as 'murderous'. And definitely don't talk of a "materialist analysis" when following up with a trite recitation of dogma

*For example, it wasn't until 1933 that the Politburo accepted, privately of course, that there might actually be more to these constant reports of starvation than 'kulak' agitation


Obviously these policies leave little room for disagreement. All urging caution essentially means is either "try not to alienate people" or (in the case of Soviet and Albanian collectivization) "we were too hasty, but we'll pick up the pace soon."No, urging caution means not blindly rushing into a disaster that kills millions. The Stalinist leadership had the responsibility for their reforms and they bear responsibility for the immense costs that they incurred. Stalin never accepted that. He never accepted the notion that his role in formulating policy came with responsibility for the impact of said policies. To do so would undermine his legitimacy. Dizzy remains the premier example of him shifting the blame in, as I've said, a cowardly fashion

Buy hey, TINA, right? Is it really that inconceivable for you that it was possible to socialise agriculture, even within the kolkhoz model, without the unquestionable errors that the leadership committed?


These were massive programs designed to bring about fundamental change, not price adjustments or some sowing of extra hectares of land.And this is actually a very insightful comment. The Stalinist state, committed as it was to 'shock' campaigns, was simply incapable of carrying out the tasks it set itself. Without massive loss of life at least. Stalinists at the time, and apparently today, genuinely thought that they could transform Soviet agriculture in a short period of time without regard for 'details' such as prices or crop yields or any actual knowledge of economics or agriculture. Who cares if their plans actually destroy crop yields and reduce the harvest or wipe out livestock levels, just blame it on kulak conspiracies. They were like a bunch of children, complete with wild tantrums, trying to operate some complex piece of machinery. What does this lever do? Who cares, pull harder comrade!

Maybe if the Stalinists hadn't been so infused with hubris then they might have actually been able to avoid the deaths of millions. But then actually giving a damn about their subjects was never a priority of the Stalinist elite

[Ismail]

You say no but then yes. The Holocaust was according to Nazi standards a rational response to perceived threats to the German people. According to Stalinists the millions who died either did so because they were "anti-government and hostile to the construction of socialism" or the victims of such anti-Soviet elementsExcept you are adopting a relativist position that murdering millions of Jews is the same as collectivizing agriculture and eliminating what were seen as dangerously anti-Soviet elements.

Yes, both the Nazis and Soviets justified (with their own standards) their violent (for lack of a better word) policies. That doesn't make give them equivalency. It's the same argument liberals use to equate Nazism and Communism. It's the same exact argument LSD (the old RevLeft user) used to condemn both (except praising Nazi Germany's "mixed economy" in favor of "failed" central planning), throw his hands up into the air, and proclaim that communist efforts could only ever end in "mass murder." In reality both the Holocaust and the Great Purges were carried out for very different reasons. On average though I'm pretty sure the person in Nazi Germany convicted of anti-government activity was going to be a lot less reactionary than the person convicted for the same in the USSR during the non-Purge periods (and probably the Purge period as well.)

Again, no "Stalinist" today says that everyone died because they were spies and saboteurs, or that everything negative that occurred in collectivization was because of kulaks. Obviously the "Stalinist state" naturally emphasized such views from low-level bureaucrats whose interests obviously coincided with presenting a picture either rosy or bad simply because of others. When the Great Purges ended focus was put on careerists who had used their positions during the period to denounce others so that they could become replacements.

As a note, this reminds me of an interesting incident:

"In April 1930, the peasants of the village Kisel in Ostrovskii raion, Leningrad Region, wrote Kalinin the following letter:

'Our rural soviet chairman carried out collectivization by force. He yelled at anyone who did not agree to enter the collective farm, just like the old gendarmes. Whoever did not sign was led to the table by the arm and forced to sign. And whoever did not want to sign was told that his teeth would be knocked out and his hide pulled off.'

Another peasant complained that he had been arrested for publicly reading Stalin's 'Dizziness from Success' to fellow peasants."
(Lynne Viola. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. New York: Oxford University Press. 1996. p. 94. Bold added by moi.)

[ComradeOm]

Except you are adopting a relativist position that murdering millions of Jews is the same as collectivizing agriculture and eliminating what were seen as dangerously anti-Soviet elements.Except that I have never suggested such. What I have done is drawn a comparison between the Nazi and Stalinist justifications for their crimes. Murdering six million Jews becomes obvious once you have decided that Jews are an existential threat to the survival of the master race; pushing through policies that lead to the deaths of millions is easily excused if in the pursuit of "constructing socialism"

This, rather obviously, does not automatically equate Soviet economic policy with Nazi genocide. It's the unquestioning logic behind them that I'm criticising; the logic that insists that one must accept the justification before judging the crime


On average though I'm pretty sure the person in Nazi Germany convicted of anti-government activity was going to be a lot less reactionary than the person convicted for the same in the USSR during the non-Purge periods (and probably the Purge period as well.)I'm tempted to bite on this but I'll hold off for now. Safe to say however that the Stalinist state brutally prosecuted 'dissidents' both in high office and on the shop floor


Again, no "Stalinist" today says that everyone died because they were spies and saboteurs, or that everything negative that occurred in collectivization was because of kulaks. Obviously the "Stalinist state" naturally emphasized such views from low-level bureaucrats whose interests obviously coincided with presenting a picture either rosy or bad simply because of othersAh, but here's the interesting thing. This language was almost uniform from top to bottom. Unsurprising given that it was following a template established by the top. It was the central party apparatus that was talking about spies, deviationists, etc. I wish I had my reference works on hand but one example springs to mind. After the mass unrest in the Ivanovo region in 1932 Kaganovich firmly placed the blame on 'kulaks' leading 'backward workers' astray (with the implicit criticism that the local Party apparatus should have prevented this) but when Kaganovich revisited the region in 1937, as part of the supervision of the terror, it was suddenly revealed that the local Party head had actually been a 'Right Oppositionist' agent all along who had consciously sought to weaken Soviet power, sabotage food supplies and sow discontent amongst the population. This was the line, which was a real shift from that of the previous years, being passed down from the top, not coming from the bottom up

Even in their private correspondence, that which survives, we find the likes of Stalin and Molotov talking in terms of kulaks and Western spies. The Politburo (or Stalin, can't remember which) even blamed the refugee wave that followed the 1932-33 famine on Polish provocateurs! I could quote countless such examples if I had my books

And this remains the Stalinist line. Do you believe that Bukharin was a fascist spy who fought to dismantle the USSR? If not then do you accept that the mere act of being in disagreement with Stalin, or suspected of such, is grounds for execution? That's the contradictory and nonsensical scenario that is Stalinism

[Ismail]

And this remains the Stalinist line. Do you believe that Bukharin was a fascist spy who fought to dismantle the USSR? If not then do you accept that the mere act of being in disagreement with Stalin, or suspected of such, is grounds for execution? That's the contradictory and nonsensical scenario that is StalinismBukharin admitted that some of his followers discussed killing Stalin (as Thurston notes in his book.) Humbert-Droz also notes that Bukharin discussed the use of "individual terror" against Stalin. During the trials Bukharin denied being a spy more strenuously than he denied all other charges, so evidently he probably wasn't, but that doesn't suddenly make him a wonderful guy. He was a leading force of the rightists within the Party. Objectively a right-wing path means an end to socialist construction and the restoration of capitalism.

As for private correspondence, yes. Van Ree notes that in his book as well.

[ComradeOm]

Bukharin admitted that some of his followers discussed killing Stalin (as Thurston notes in his book.) Humbert-Droz also notes that Bukharin discussed the use of "individual terror" against Stalin. During the trials Bukharin denied being a spy more strenuously than he denied all other charges, so evidently he probably wasn't, but that doesn't suddenly make him a wonderful guyIt's not a matter of him being a wonderful guy, it's a case of an innocent man being executed. But then Bukharin also admitted to, and I quote, being "guilty of the dastardly plan of the dismemberment of the U.S.S.R., for Trotsky was negotiating about territorial concessions, and I was in a bloc with the Trotskyites". And indeed "treason to the socialist fatherland, the most heinous of possible crimes, of the organization of kulak uprisings, of preparations for terrorist acts and of belonging to an underground, anti-Soviet organization"

So there you have it, Bukharin the theorist was sulking around the Russian countryside organising the peasant resistance. But should we ignore this bit of his testimony, which is clearly false, and focus on the aspects that might be true? How can you tell the latter given that coercion was used to extract confessions from him and others?* How can you possibly treat X as true and Y as false when the whole affair was such a farce?

*Getty has also, interestingly, drawn attention to the role that the ritual apology (aka 'self-criticism') played in Stalinist discourse. Bukharin knew how the game was played


He was a leading force of the rightists within the Party. Objectively a right-wing path means an end to socialist construction and the restoration of capitalismAnd this brings us back to the 'Stalinist nonsense' that I've discussed in previous posts. This is why none of the actual details about Bukharin's case actually matter. He wasn't executed because he was a spy or a terrorist, he died because at one point in the past he had been in opposition to Stalin. And in the saintly world of Stalinism there is no greater crime

Look at yourself here. Let's follow the logic through the buzzwords. The first key notion is that Stalin's policies actually were "socialist construction"; I intend to examine this at a later date but for now accept that this scrap of dogma is the sun around which Stalinism orbited. From here it's a very short hop to accepting the idea that 'rightism', or any other deviation from the official line, is a threat to "socialist construction". The content of the dissenting policy is irrelevant, it is just not acceptable to adopt a position in opposition, however slight, to Stalinism. Third, those who do not pay sufficient lip service to the holy writ (see step one) must therefore be capitalist sympathisers/agents (or fascists or 'kulaks' or whatever) because if you're not with us you're against us, right? Finally, such dangers must be removed. Permanently

As Getty puts it: "According to Stalin's formula, criticism was the same as opposition; opposition inevitably implied conspiracy; conspiracy meant treason. Algebraically, therefore, the slightest opposition to the regime... was tantamount to treason"

And that's the core of it. That's what Stalinists keep returning to. In this thread alone we've seen plenty of inconsistencies in Stalin's actions/words/policies but they are to be ignored because you can't question that central tenet: maybe this wasn't socialism after all. Do that and the whole logical edifice comes tumbling down. "Objectively", "materialist analysis"... these are just buzzwords to you

[Ismail]

(Edit: I wrote the stuff below while half-asleep, but yeah.)

I don't see any examples of Stalin being inconsistent. Writing "Dizzy With Success" could be seen as fulfilling a basic psychological need to at least somehow, however much in vain, downplay the most "negative" of events that obviously cropped up during collectivization. If you mean that full-scale collectivization had periods of slowing-down and such, that isn't inconsistent, that's just weighing things in. The goal was still there.

Now for the rest of your post, it basically depends, of course, on what one considers "constructing socialism" and "socialism" itself to be. You had the Titoists who proclaimed "workers self-management," which was praised by Deng and Gorbachev but would be alien to Lenin, Stalin and Hoxha. You had the Eurocommunists who sought to bring Marxism solely into the intellectual realm and dismantle any revolutionary content from it, you had those various factions within the countries of People's Democracy, not to mention the USSR itself, who called for a break on collectivization, who criticized the claim that the choice must objectively be between bourgeois dictatorship and proletarian dictatorship, who opposed the focus on heavy industry (that is, the production of the means of production) in favor of greater consumer goods and light exports, and with this a natural connection to improved relations with capitalist states who will benefit more from such light industry than said country producing the products, etc.

I know from an earlier post you made that you consider the term "revisionism" to be essentially meaningless and subjective even when applied against Bernstein. But in reality the objective of all proletarian dictatorships is to understand what is objectively beneficial to socialist construction and what is objectively harmful to it. Betraying socialism is obviously a great crime and its effects are obviously dramatic, so the struggle against revisionism. As Lenin wrote (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/apr/03.htm), "In the sphere of politics, revisionism did really try to revise the foundation of Marxism, namely, the doctrine of the class struggle....The inevitability of revisionism is determined by its class roots in modern society. Revisionism is an international phenomenon." Revisionism comes in all shapes and colors (although under the proletarian dictatorship it almost always assumes the character of "raising the red flag to oppose the red flag," to use Maoist terminology, hence Khrushchev praising Stalin one day and, after he ceased breathing, working to undermine him alongside other revisionists the next.)

Now obviously you don't believe the USSR was constructing socialism, so naturally most everything I say on the subject will be of very limited value (if any) to you. However it is obvious that the central task of just about every Marxist (in theory, economics, etc.) once the working-class assumes state power is to combat revisionism, which can also be considered the same in effect as opportunism, liberalism, etc. If someone organizes against the construction of socialism, then objectively that person is a reactionary, he is going against progress designed to benefit, essentially, all mankind.

Obviously under such conditions class struggle continues since you have lines which are objectively in the service of capitalism and those lines which, for better or worse, do align with the interests of socialism.

If you want to combat us "Stalinists" you will need to do it more or less on a fundamental level. You said you "intend to examine" Stalin's efforts at socialist construction, that is what is necessary. Otherwise you're debating with people whose worldviews and approaches are quite different from yours.

You could debate whether or not Bukharin deserved to die. His writings alone, however, were enough to classify him as an enemy of socialism in practice, despite whatever interesting works he may have written on subjects not related to socialism itself. The entire point of Bukharin and Co. not being all completely isolated and exiled after the late 20's was the view that they had fully recanted from their rightist positions, which obviously did not happen, and which obviously caused Stalin considerable consternation, hence his initial attempts during the purges to defend Bukharin and only later recognizing that he was an irreconcilable rightist.

[Sam Varriano]

Everything on PBS is basically nonsense.

"Hey we have no commericals but you still have to wait a ridiculously long amount of time to watch an incredibily basied documentary give us money plz!"

[Die Neue Zeit]

Buy hey, TINA, right? Is it really that inconceivable for you that it was possible to socialise agriculture, even within the kolkhoz model, without the unquestionable errors that the leadership committed?

The former had to be pursued, but kolkhozization was a mistake to begin with.

[Rowan Duffy]

Collectivisation has been successful in other contexts. The Stalinist programme of forced collectivisation was really an unmitigated disaster.

[Jose Gracchus]

DNZ thinks somehow if only Stalin had ordered his cadre to force peasants onto all state farms, without even the pretense of ownership, that somehow would have gone over better. He thinks the peasants somehow would not realize the Soviet state was ripping them off, and Stalin's hijinks really a question of improperly bamboozling the peasantry.

[deadsmooth]

i do not have sources at hand, but you can find first-hand accounts of huge piles of food rotting throughout the Empire of Russia in 1914 C.E. The Great War started in August, just about harvest time, and harvests were brought to pre-arranged pick-up points, namely railroad stations, barge stations, etc. as usual.

The difference this time was that the Imperial Russian Army had requisitioned all available transportation to move men and material to the front and literally nothing was left for agricultural use. Temporary storage areas like silos, bins, etc rapidly filled up and were not emptied to make room for the next shipments from the farms.

This is why the first food riots occurred in the Empire in the spring of 1915. It was not due to a bad harvest, inefficiency, etc. but no transport.

What made it worse from then on was: 1. Manpower shortages due to the draft. 2. Destruction of transportation infrastructure due to the war. 3. The farms of the EoRussia were paid not F.O.B. but C.O.D. Because no deliveries were made in 1915, regardless of their productivity they were not paid for the food they delivered to the railheads that rotted away. Due to its own financial difficulties due to the war, the EoRussia either refused or was unable to provide financial assistance to its farmers and productivity declined further and did not recover until around 1925.

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ thinks somehow if only Stalin had ordered his cadre to force peasants onto all state farms, without even the pretense of ownership, that somehow would have gone over better. He thinks the peasants somehow would not realize the Soviet state was ripping them off, and Stalin's hijinks really a question of improperly bamboozling the peasantry.

That's not what I said:


Stalin and co. didn't need to send in the NKVD and say, "These farms are now state property, dear peasants!" Historically the First Five-Year Plan was characterized by, among other things, high inflation (related to the artificial depression of real wages that I have a major beef with). The regime could simply have used eminent domain and given printed money to the peasants as "compensation" for their farm property.

Work could then have begun on reconsolidating former landlord estates into sovkhozy, and on consolidating other non-sovkhoz estates into sovkhozy. Red directors could then be installed to oversee both the explicit atmosphere of labour discipline and rising labour productivity (possibly enough to minimize or eliminate the artificial depression of real wages of the urban workers, the non-farm rural workers, and the new farm workers) way before the time of the model Gorodets state farm... and construction materials plant!


As I've said before, there is a hidden, underestimated carrot in all of this that might lead to less rural resistance: business risk. The wage farm / sovkhoz model forces the state to absorb the business risk, particularly if there's no piecemeal compensation like there was elsewhere in the Soviet industrialization campaign. Even illiterate peasants can understand the difference between them bearing the business risk (minimum quotas and quota prices set by other parties) and another entity bearing it (production targets assume a different character altogether).

[RED DAVE]

Also yes, the NKVD bits in regards to torture and such are true. Erik Van Ree in his book The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin notes that, "Stalin was so convinced of the guilt of his victims that he believed he was forcing the latter to unveil the truth... confessions were demanded even when cases were tried in secret or did not come to court at all. People were questioned because Stalin wanted answers." (pp. 124-125.) It was very similar in Albania with Hoxha. Again, obviously no one likes forced confessions, but I don't see the horrible scandal here.You fucking don't see the "horrible scandal" when the leader of an allegedly socialist country countenanced torture? What kind of human being, let alone a Matxist, are you?

Two Maoists got banned here recently for justifying the rape of German women by Red Army soldiers. What makes you any different from them?

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

DNZ: This money would've been worthless, and the peasants would know it, since it would buy no more goods. The peasants did buy goods from the cities, hence the origin of the 'scissors crisis' in prices in the first instance.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ As I said earlier, the real-life Soviet economy already had inflation. I'm leaning towards the notion that the peasants already couldn't buy goods from the cities during a mere kolkhozization campaign.

[Jose Gracchus]

The point, if you are capable of grasping it, is that the peasants would have resisted just as intensely, and probably more. Therefore your 'proposal' has nothing to say in its favor.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have grasped it quite well. I read a couple of English-language Ukrainian websites on the "Holodomor" deriding Marxist approaches to collective farming vs. wage-based state farming. However, it ignored a number of things:

1) Illiteracy
2) Reactions to receiving printed money for purchased land
3) Personal options between being a wage worker in the countryside or moving into the cities (during kolkhozization many peasants who didn't resist simply moved into the cities, and the main purpose of the propiska system was to curb immigration to the cities)

Meeting my preferred two points in my stated policy triangle (urban worker conditions and rapid industrialization over peasant conditions) may still require the propiska system for the more passive peasants-turned-farm-workers. However, if they hear horror work stories from the cities, then it could be implemented on a much smaller scale.