There was a natural famine happening at the time and people were starting to starve in central Asia, particularly in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Part of the problem was that for generations, a new class of peasants had begun to form who were able to buy and own land, gradually displacing the former feudal system where most of the land was used by peasants for distant landowners who weren't really interested in the region.
This new landlord class (kulaks) basically perpetuated the same feudal system, with other peasants continuing to work for them on the land they acquired. Naturally this exacerbated wealth inequality in the region and gave the landlord class relative privilege and control over the peasant workers.
When the famine hit and people started to starve, the landlord class was relatively insulated from the problem, even being able to hoard food and resources. As the workers became more desperate, they were willing to work for less food, which allowed the landlords to hoard more, which made the workers position more desperate, causing them to be willing to work for less, and so forth in a snowball effect.
All of this was pretty normal for the region. It was a problem, with the relatively wealthy hoarding wealth and the workers becoming increasingly desperate to work for them in the middle of a natural disaster, but it was a problem central Asia had been dealing with for hundreds of years, if not longer. The new landlordism wasn't particularly parasitic when compared to feudalism, but it was parasitic nonetheless.
When people started starving to death the government stepped in and started organizing collective farms, redistributing land and hoarded resources to the peasants so that they could work for and feed themselves in a more efficient, equitable model for everyone.
The landowning class however, like capital controlling classes throughout history, weren't satisfied to work for themselves and allow the peasants to work for themselves alongside them.
Their response was to start sabotaging the collective farms, and to begin raiding and destroying depots where food was being distributed to starving people, as well as burning fields, grain silos, and slaughtering livestock, including breeding stock and egg and dairy producing stock.
The death toll is vastly overblown by those who want to make it out to be a genocide perpetrated the the Soviet government against her own people. The aforementioned Robert Conquest initially claimed a completely unrealistic 20-30 million deaths, before revising his claim by several million just years after his now infamous propaganda piece was published, and again as low as 13-15 million deaths decades later when his claims were immediately and categorically disproven by the opening of the Soviet archives.
Decades of propaganda and its consequences are hard to undo however, and these indisputable, verifiable facts of recorded history are never welcomed in certain circles. The western public consciousness truly is a poisoned well, and facts alone aren't enough to undo that damage.
If I recall correctly, you posted this exact answer some months ago and I criticized it on a number of points, but you reposted it again exactly the same way, down to the repeated description of Ukraine being in Central Asia. The affected areas, once again, were (in order of magnitude), Ukraine, Southern Russia, the Volga region (all in geographic Europe), and lastly Kazakhstan (the only one in Central Asia).
The whole "it was all just the kulaks" angle is counter-propaganda. The dekulakization program began in 1929, the famine happened in 1932-33. The focus on disempowering and dispossessing the kulaks (which was done overly harshly and affected poor peasants as well) contributed to the government missing the signs of the famine - they thought the kulaks were withholding grain on purpose, and reacted by requisitioning it more ruthlessly, which made the famine worse. Maybe the kulaks made some contribution to the famine, but putting most of the blame on them is wishful thinking. The government was exporting grain during a famine - they were hurrying to industrialize and prepare for war and didn't understand the scope of the famine - but they were still calling the shots.
Your post is mostly well-researched in other ways, like on the number of dead. But please do take care to amend and expand your knowledge on the topic instead of reposting the same flawed thing.
There's another post above they quotes an essay that says the exported amount was around 1% of the harvested total, and probably wasn't a major contributor to the situation. Is this incorrect?
Haha, that's my own post too. Yeah, I wish I understood that detail in greater depth. "Grain was exported during the famine" is something that's present in all detailed accounts I've read of the famine. This source says 'exported in the first half of 1933', which was later in the crisis, so more could have been exported earlier. (The low 1932 harvest would have been collected in late 1932 and exported then.)
Plus, export refers to international trade only and thus does not capture grain being moved from the country to the cities. The peasants were the ones starving - and fleeing for the cities despite growing the food. One of my ancestors tried to escape the countryside (Volga region, RSFSR) and find food working in the city, but froze to death on the way.
Maybe that factoid incorrectly reflects the overall story - but it's not the only flaw in the government response to the famine. Take the famous prohibition on gleaning - prison and death as punishment for starving peasants picking up leftover grain that would otherwise rot.
Ah! How funny! In the excerpt you posted it's a bit of an offhand remark, but it would be interesting to investigate the export aspect in greater detail. Like you mentioned, "when" is as important as "how much".
This is what's frustrating about talking to you. I'm giving you 10 points, you laugh at 1 that contradicts what you've clearly rote-memorized as dogmatic fact and then you lol and then you move on like you're right and need to change nothing about what you believe.
There was a natural famine happening at the time and people were starting to starve in central Asia, particularly in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Part of the problem was that for generations, a new class of peasants had begun to form who were able to buy and own land, gradually displacing the former feudal system where most of the land was used by peasants for distant landowners who weren't really interested in the region.
This new landlord class (kulaks) basically perpetuated the same feudal system, with other peasants continuing to work for them on the land they acquired. Naturally this exacerbated wealth inequality in the region and gave the landlord class relative privilege and control over the peasant workers.
When the famine hit and people started to starve, the landlord class was relatively insulated from the problem, even being able to hoard food and resources. As the workers became more desperate, they were willing to work for less food, which allowed the landlords to hoard more, which made the workers position more desperate, causing them to be willing to work for less, and so forth in a snowball effect.
All of this was pretty normal for the region. It was a problem, with the relatively wealthy hoarding wealth and the workers becoming increasingly desperate to work for them in the middle of a natural disaster, but it was a problem central Asia had been dealing with for hundreds of years, if not longer. The new landlordism wasn't particularly parasitic when compared to feudalism, but it was parasitic nonetheless.
When people started starving to death the government stepped in and started organizing collective farms, redistributing land and hoarded resources to the peasants so that they could work for and feed themselves in a more efficient, equitable model for everyone.
The landowning class however, like capital controlling classes throughout history, weren't satisfied to work for themselves and allow the peasants to work for themselves alongside them.
Their response was to start sabotaging the collective farms, and to begin raiding and destroying depots where food was being distributed to starving people, as well as burning fields, grain silos, and slaughtering livestock, including breeding stock and egg and dairy producing stock.
Even anti-Communist propagandists like Robert Conquest (whose propaganda was cited extensively during the Cold War before most of it was debunked and he was forced to recant his claims over and over again) claim that the landowning class destroyed about 96 million head of cattle, and possibly twice as much tonnage of grain and other foodstock, completely wrecking the food production capacity of the region in the middle of the famine and exacerbating the problem beyond anything seen before.
The death toll is vastly overblown by those who want to make it out to be a genocide perpetrated the the Soviet government against her own people. The aforementioned Robert Conquest initially claimed a completely unrealistic 20-30 million deaths, before revising his claim by several million just years after his now infamous propaganda piece was published, and again as low as 13-15 million deaths decades later when his claims were immediately and categorically disproven by the opening of the Soviet archives.
As genuine investigative research continues to debunk claim after claim made by propagandists like him, the numbers continue to dwindle and the legacy of the self-proclaimed "Cold Warriors" is continuously eroded. To this day, the Ukrainian government claims ~4 million cases of starvation in the region during that period, completely disregarding blatantly false "research" conducted from a time before evidence was even available.
Eventually before his death, Conquest was forced to admit that there was no way the Soviets could have caused the famine, although he stubbornly refused to admit that they did anything to prevent it or that the land-owning capitalist class destroying 2-4 million tons of food for every starving person and wrecking the productive capacity of the region might have been responsible, despite this being the inevitable conclusion of his lifelong body of work, ironically vindicating the Soviets through desperate attempts to portray them as villains.
Decades of propaganda and its consequences are hard to undo however, and these indisputable, verifiable facts of recorded history are never welcomed in certain circles. The western public consciousness truly is a poisoned well, and facts alone aren't enough to undo that damage.
credit to /u/spookyjohnathan
If I recall correctly, you posted this exact answer some months ago and I criticized it on a number of points, but you reposted it again exactly the same way, down to the repeated description of Ukraine being in Central Asia. The affected areas, once again, were (in order of magnitude), Ukraine, Southern Russia, the Volga region (all in geographic Europe), and lastly Kazakhstan (the only one in Central Asia).
The whole "it was all just the kulaks" angle is counter-propaganda. The dekulakization program began in 1929, the famine happened in 1932-33. The focus on disempowering and dispossessing the kulaks (which was done overly harshly and affected poor peasants as well) contributed to the government missing the signs of the famine - they thought the kulaks were withholding grain on purpose, and reacted by requisitioning it more ruthlessly, which made the famine worse. Maybe the kulaks made some contribution to the famine, but putting most of the blame on them is wishful thinking. The government was exporting grain during a famine - they were hurrying to industrialize and prepare for war and didn't understand the scope of the famine - but they were still calling the shots.
Your post is mostly well-researched in other ways, like on the number of dead. But please do take care to amend and expand your knowledge on the topic instead of reposting the same flawed thing.
There's another post above they quotes an essay that says the exported amount was around 1% of the harvested total, and probably wasn't a major contributor to the situation. Is this incorrect?
Haha, that's my own post too. Yeah, I wish I understood that detail in greater depth. "Grain was exported during the famine" is something that's present in all detailed accounts I've read of the famine. This source says 'exported in the first half of 1933', which was later in the crisis, so more could have been exported earlier. (The low 1932 harvest would have been collected in late 1932 and exported then.)
Plus, export refers to international trade only and thus does not capture grain being moved from the country to the cities. The peasants were the ones starving - and fleeing for the cities despite growing the food. One of my ancestors tried to escape the countryside (Volga region, RSFSR) and find food working in the city, but froze to death on the way.
Maybe that factoid incorrectly reflects the overall story - but it's not the only flaw in the government response to the famine. Take the famous prohibition on gleaning - prison and death as punishment for starving peasants picking up leftover grain that would otherwise rot.
Ah! How funny! In the excerpt you posted it's a bit of an offhand remark, but it would be interesting to investigate the export aspect in greater detail. Like you mentioned, "when" is as important as "how much".
lol
This is what's frustrating about talking to you. I'm giving you 10 points, you laugh at 1 that contradicts what you've clearly rote-memorized as dogmatic fact and then you lol and then you move on like you're right and need to change nothing about what you believe.
this poster is really toxic. I've seen them shit all over multiple threads like this.