You don't need to go shouting it, but if someone starts talking politics at you, fucking own it. Some coworker is like "trump sucks", say "yeah I know, I'm a communist". Your grandpa says "trump rules", say "no he sucks ass, I'm a communist". You're on a date and they ask who you're voting for? Say "I'm a communist". Cashier asks would you like change? "Yes, I am a communist".

Be open about your politics and lay claim to the title. Be a communist.

  • Sampson80 [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    😬 It's not particularly cool to blame the peasants for their own starvation. Some kulaks butchered heads of their cattle so they could at least get some benefit from them, but the effect on the extent of the famine was negligible. It's a very convenient scapegoat for a communist government, blaming "wealthy peasants" behaving selfishly and wastefully, but that itself should be a cause for scepticism.

    • jack [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Oh, I'm definitely not blaming the majority of the peasants! And I'm not absolving the Soviet government of blame. There was real mishandling of the famine. What I'm saying is that wealthy peasants had turned themselves into a landlord class and intentionally exacerbated the famine via destruction of cattle and crops well beyond normal numbers because their class position was threatened by the Soviet government. The majority of peasants, who were poor, suffered due to this. Like any famine, there is a confluence of factors.

      1. Environmental conditions

      2. Insufficient government response

      3. Landlord sabotage of food stores

      • ComradeBongwater [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Drop the word "peasants". It's unnecessary and detracts from your argument in practice.

        Very few actually know about the exact socioeconomic conditions of the Ukraine at the time beyond as a meme, and if they do, they're either one of us or an experienced propagandist whom engaging would be a waste of time.

        I'd suggest using the phrasing "the wealthy destroyed their own crops to prevent the populace at large from benefiting from the wealth others labored to bring them." and "they preferred their own countrymen starve to not having social and economic power over them."

        Mentioning mismanagement in handling the fallout is a good idea. Criticize something (mildly) first if you want someone to open their mind to the positives of that thing.

        Also, it wouldn't hurt to split "environmental factors" by enumerating the tangible causes. I always try to mention disease and drought separately.