this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 14 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Also, in a famine, it is grossly unfair to put all blame on a single leader/government. In USSR's case, during global famine, the US insisted debt be paid in food, and the government had to react to extortionist farmer class (Kulak) pricing. It is entirely political to create narrative of opponents fault for everything, when they are faced with hard decisions that your country imposed on them.

In this case, it is especially eggregious to not only force starvation by executive decision in times of relative abundance, but to further provide IRS directives that would collect less (minimum corporate tax rules) from oligarchs, so that budget/revenue is further reduced, and excuse to continue starving people becomes a manufactured crisis.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 6 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

USSR leadership absolutely used forced requisition (sometimes leaving nothing to the farmers) as a tool of power and control and to punish the farmers. The leadership in USSR was pretty vitriolic towards the agrarian population and treated them like shit at least until later in the Union's life.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

AFAIU, there were 2 farmer classes in USSR at the time. Collectives getting fixed price for their crops, and Kulak private farmers getting market prices. Famine makes those prices extortionist, and USSR chose to fight extortion.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 0 points 4 weeks ago

The farmers needed to buy stuff to keep the farm going and those prices had risen through the roof too. And the state sent in goons to requisition everything, leaving the farmers to starve. Sometimes burning the farms and killing the farmers just on the suspicion of not handing over everything. Real fucked up shit

The state just exacerbated the whole situation and using this opportunity to bolster their power instead of focusing on addressing the famine situation. Attacking and intimidating the farmers just made the situation worse.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

USSR leadership absolutely used forced requisition

True

as a tool of power and control and to punish the farmers

Bullshit.

The rapid collectivization of 1929-1934 was a very difficult endeavour, and is the FIRST IN HISTORY successful collectivization of agriculture. There have been many attempts since before the Roman Empire, but never had it been carried our successfully before. Grain requisitions were carried out because the effort of rapid collectivization was kickstarted in order to rapidly industrialize the nation. By introducing tractors into farms and collectivizing them in larger plots, fewer peasants were needed, and people could move to cities to build up an industrial sector. Moving people to cities meant feeding people in cities, and grain requisitions were carried out initially in order to force wealthy exploiter peasants (kulaks) to sell their grain at state mandated prices. Had it not been for the rapid collectivization and industrialization of the 1930s, the Soviets would have been crushed by Nazism, and tens of millions of people more would have been exterminated as it happened in Poland, Belarus or Ukraine. Rapid collectivization wasn't an ideological decision, it was a pragmatic decision that averted the extermination of Eastern Europe at the hands of Nazism.

agrarian population and treated them like shit at least until later in the Union's life

This is again bullshit. The region has never before or after seen the level of expenditure in infrastructure, education or healthcare that took place in rural USSR. Since the disappearing of the USSR, many massive rural exodus have taken place all over the eastern block.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Both the horrific ideologically motivated methods to punish peasants and agrarian population and the ideological dislike of agrarian population and the fast collectivization are well documented. I can quote you choice parts from Stalin: A new biography of a dictator by Oleg Khlevniuk when I get home from work, if you want the claims to be sourced.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Stalin disliking Kulaks or his personal beliefs towards peasants are not evidence of policy, and it's the only source you will be able to provide. In contrast, I can bring you quotes by Anna Louise Strong, an American journalist (first woman to get a doctorate in Chicago university) who traveled and documented the USSR, proving that peasants generally supported the Bolshevik movement and government during the collectivization, and how most trials against Kulaks were carried out by peasants themselves. But go ahead, bring your sources.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The book has ample evidence for it having been a systemic policy, don't worry about that.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

By it being systemic policy, what do you mean it? What policy, specifically, and in what timeframe?

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

So, grain requisitions? I never denied that those happened, I denied that it was used as a tool to oppress farmers. You also keep conflating Kulaks and non-landowning peasants, which is bad analysis.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Considering the systemic and politically motivated oppression and political terror and taking all their food, leaving them to starve, torturing people on the suspicion of not giving all of their grain etc just "grain requisitions" is pretty wild.'

But for the promised quotes, this is the first I came accross from the book "Stalin - A New Biography of a Dictator" by Khlevniuk, Oleg V. (2015)

While the en­tire coun­try suffered from fam­ine and mass re­pres­sion, Ukraine and the North Cau­casus were the most af­fected.37 It was in these two im­port­ant re­gions of the USSR where the policy of pun­ish­ing grain re­quis­i­tions and ter­ror were most bru­tally ap­plied. Two in­ter­re­lated reas­ons ex­plain Stalin’s fo­cus on these areas. The first could be de­scribed as eco­nomic. Ukraine and the North Cau­casus sup­plied as much as half of all grain col­lec­ted by the state. But in 1932–1933 they turned over 40 per­cent less than the pre­vi­ous year. While this de­cline was par­tially com­pensated by Rus­sian grain-pro­du­cing areas, which des­pite go­ing hungry had sig­ni­fic­antly over­ful­filled their plans, they could not com­pletely make up the short­fall. In 1932 the state col­lec­ted al­most 20 per­cent less grain than in 1931.38 These fig­ures par­tially ex­plain the de­mands Stalin placed on Ukraine and the North Cau­casus. He wanted “his” grain and was in­furi­ated that they were not provid­ing it.

Second, Stalin saw the crisis of 1932 as the con­tinu­ation of the war against the peas­antry and as a means of con­sol­id­at­ing the res­ults of col­lect­iv­iz­a­tion, and he had a point. In a let­ter to the So­viet writer Mikhail Sho­lok­hov on 6 May 1933, he wrote: “The es­teemed grain grow­ers were in es­sence wa­ging a ‘quiet’ war against So­viet power. A war by star­vation.”39 He un­doubtedly con­sidered the peas­antry of Ukraine and the North Cau­casus to be at the fore­front of this peas­ant army bat­tling the So­viet gov­ern­ment. These re­gions had al­ways been hot­beds of anti-So­viet sen­ti­ment, and Ukraine had been at the fore­front of the anti-kolk­hoz move­ment in 1930. Re­peated in­cid­ents of un­rest flared up in both Ukraine and the North Cau­casus in 1931–1932. A fur­ther cause for con­cern was Ukraine’s bor­der with Po­land. Stalin feared that Po­land, in its hos­til­ity to­ward the USSR, could ex­ploit the Ukrain­ian crisis.40 Over­all, as Hiroaki Kur­om­iya points out, Stalin was sus­pi­cious of all peas­ants, but “Ukrain­ian peas­ants were doubly sus­pect both for be­ing peas­ants and for be­ing Ukrain­ian.”

By pro­claim­ing grain col­lec­tion to be a war, Stalin was un­ty­ing his own hands and the hands of those car­ry­ing out his or­ders. The ideo­lo­gical basis for this war was the Sta­lin­ist myth that “food dif­fi­culties” res­ul­ted from acts of sab­ot­age by “en­emies” and “ku­laks.” Any sug­ges­tion of a link between the crisis and gov­ern­ment policy was cat­egor­ic­ally re­jec­ted. By blam­ing all food short­ages on “en­emies” and on the peas­ants them­selves while also pro­mot­ing the idea that the scale of the fam­ine was be­ing ma­li­ciously ex­ag­ger­ated, Stalin re­lieved him­self and the cent­ral gov­ern­ment of any ob­lig­a­tion to help the hungry. A state­ment by the gen­eral sec­ret­ary in Feb­ru­ary 1933 at a con­gress of kolk­hoz shock work­ers shows the depth of his cyn­icism: “One of our achieve­ments is that the vast masses of the poor peas­ants, who formerly lived in semi-star­va­tion, have now, in the col­lect­ive farms, be­come middle peas­ants, have at­tained ma­ter­ial se­cur­ity.… It is an achieve­ment such as has never been known in the world be­fore, such as no other state in the world has yet made.”42 This state­ment came at a time when thou­sands were dy­ing every day.

And so on.

It's a good book and very approachable. I highly recommend it.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

So, as I had predicted, the only sources for intentionality against Ukrainians are a few personal remarks by Stalin in some obscure letter to a writer. I literally called this out before you brought up your comment because if there were any further evidence, it would be plastered all over, since there are BIG reasons for western propaganda to promote Russophobia and anticommunist sentiment now that Ukraine is an ideological hotbed.

Also, your source doesn't discriminate between Kulaks and non-landowning peasants, again as I called you out for in another comment. Funnily enough the only numerical evidence in your source supports my thesis: that the regions most affected by the grain requisitions were the main grain-producing regions, including Ukraine and the Caucasus but also Southern Russia (not mentioned because you don't care about Russians dying).

The final remark by Stalin is also true, by the way. The vast majority of peasants in 1929 were non-landowner peasants exploited by Kulaks in exchange for miserable wages, and by 1933 the collectivization was essentially complete and these peasants could now work their own lands collectively. There is no cynism there: one of the main motivations behind the Russian Revolution was the redistribution of lands, and the Bolsheviks achieved this for the first time in human history.

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You might want to check out the whole chapter and the associates sources in it, if you're not happy with the ones presented here.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com -1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not interested in anticommunist propaganda that doesn't even portray the class differences between Kulaks and non-landowning peasants. Being born in the west I've been exposed to my fair share of anticommunism throughout my life, and I continue to be exposed to it whenever I bring historical facts to lemmitors.

If you were truly concerned about the lives of Ukrainians, you'd be condemning the capitalist restoration and the end of the USSR, which brought untold suffering and death on the Ukrainian people:

Do you also have a scary word like "Holodomor" to refer to the immense post-1990 suffering in Ukraine? Or do you reserve your propagandistic catchy words to anticommunist propaganda exclusively?

[–] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm sorry to hear that you're not happy with the book

[–] yeather@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

I cannot find a single source about US insisting debt payments be made in food. Most of the kulaks were also imprisoned or deported in the late 1920’s during collectivization. The USSR in the early years had targeted food shortages in Ukraine and the Caucuses to starve the population into submission. There was later a union wide food shortage because Stalin increased the export of wheat without adequately increasing production.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 2 points 4 weeks ago

Also Stalin's promotion of Trofim Lysenko and his crackpot ideas on agriculture that mirrored the crackpot ideas of Leninism. Exacerbating famines and helping to kill millions.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 weeks ago

The wikipedia article (holomodor), unless it's been nazi washed recently, has/had all the points I made even if it's balanced to "always hate Stalin". I don't know what caused Stalin to not repay US debt (explains food exports), but that too would have led to complaints about his handling of famine. Holomodor is a Ukrainian word, and its enthusiastic eastern cooperation with nazi Germany, including administrating extermination camps, colours its history/politics to this day. Still, they had fewer famine deaths than other parts of the USSR.

Recently, famine/drought in Syria was a great opportunity for the empire and its Al Quaeda and ISIS proxies to rise up and eventually overthrow the long time leader. It is not in demonic evil scum's nature to assist people's survival through cooperation with their government, if a narrative gives them more control over the world.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The USSR in the early years had targeted food shortages in Ukraine and the Caucuses to starve the population into submission

This is a false anticommunist narrative created by western imperialists to boost anticommunism and Russophobia. Plenty of people in Southern Russia died during the 1930s famine, and there is no document proving anything remotely close to your claim of "starving people into submission".

There was later a union wide food shortage because Stalin increased the export of wheat without adequately increasing production

Production was attempted to increase, and achieved subsequently, it simply lagged behind for a few years because, you know, it was the first ever successful experiment of land collectivization in human history, and there were unexpected difficulties that weren't properly addressed with policy at the time. It's easy to judge in hindsight, but the authorities really did everything they could to minimize the famine.

As for grain exports, these weren't a capricious ideological decision, they were forced by the threat of external invasion. The USSR in 1929 was a preindustrial feudal shithole, conditions inherited from the Tsarist Empire. 80% of people were peasants, and life expectancy was of 28 years of age. The collectivization was carried out in a very rapid fashion in order to pursue rapid industrialization, again not out of ideological reasons. There was big debate in the CPSU against rapid collectivization, but the threat of external invasion (evidenced by the invasion by USA, Britain, France and many more countries during the Russian Civil War for the unforgivable sin of being communists) eventually triumphed and rapid industrialization was pursued.

Rapid industrialization, which necessitated rapid collectivization in order to relieve labour from the fields and move it to industry, was the key measure that allowed for the defense of the USSR 10 years later against Nazism. After yearly growths of 15% in GDP, the USSR industrialized just enough to defeat Nazism, at the horrendous cost of 25 million Soviet lives at fascist hands. Had the USSR not pursued rapid industrialization (only enabled by export of grains, the only product the USSR could offer at the time to international markets given its low level of development), Eastern Europe would have been genocided on an unimaginable scale, and Nazism wouldn't have been defeated in Europe. Tens of millions of lives would have been lost to Nazi extermination.

Furthermore, the rapid industrialization boosted the economic capabilities of the country massively, allowing for universal healthcare, the elimination of hunger forever in the region, and therefore the more than doubling of life expectancy between 1929, when industrialization was kickstarted, to 1955 when Stalin died. People went from having a life expectancy of 28 years to above 60 in this timeframe. This, again, saved tens of millions of lives by any demographic measure you use. For comparison, Brazil went from 40 years of life expectancy to slightly above 50 in that timeframe.

[–] yeather@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor

Joseph Stalin violently shut down any resistance to collectivization of farmland, then kidnapped or starved the Ukranian population to prevent a resurgence of Ukranian culture, arts, and science that was rivaling the culture and intelligence of Moscow.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

What a load of unsourced bullshit full of lies. This is an opinion article written by a western anticommunist, full of tropes, lies. From claiming that in 1917-1921 Ukraine fought for "liberation from Bolsheviks" (when the Bolsheviks saved most of Ukraine from Polish invasion in the Polish-Ukrainian war), to completely ignoring the role of rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union and the saving of Ukraine from Nazi extermination. It implies that countrywide policies were taken only in Ukraine such as grain requisitions or grain exports, it implies no famine relief was taken (it was taken), and provides no evidence whatsoever that the famine striking especially hard in Ukraine has anything to do with political motivations, especially when, as stated in the article, there was an indigenization policy in the early 1920s in Ukraine (as in the rest of the USSR).

Your claim of repression of Ukrainian intellectuals obviates the repression of Russian intellectuals, and the fact that, after Stalin, the following two presidents of the USSR were Ukrainian. There is no claim of precedent or followup of repression in Ukraine other than two specific years of famine, and at the time, many Ukrainian workers like Stakhanov, Praskovya Angelina or Maria S. Demchenko were praised Union-wide for their excellent work.

Surely you, as a Ukraine defender, are against the return of capitalism in Ukraine, which has caused the greatest mortality and demographic crisis in the region since Nazi invasion:

Where are your concerned comments on the millions of deaths of Ukrainians by capitalism through malnutrition, violent crime, suicide, alcoholism, drug use or treatable disease since 1990?

[–] yeather@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Answer, o defender of Ukrainians. Or maybe your concern was only performative and you don't give one flying fuck about Ukrainians if you can't weaponize them against communism? Look at the 1930 hiccup in the graph and compare it to 1990. Now tell me how much you really care about Ukrainians.

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