Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
The Holodomor was a genocide
No, it was not. Once discovered that a famine was occuring, the soviets did what they could to prevent and alleviate it once it had started. The idea of an intentional famine is simply fringe among contemporary historians, same with claims of white genocide in South Africa. For example, serious bourgeois academic sources tend to say it was a failure of planning, rather than intentional and genocide. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Muggeridge and Jones reported on the famine. Völkischer Beobachter reported on it as intentional, and then spread the story around further. Why would the soviets try to starve their own people? It was because of the soviets and collectivization of agriculture that famine was ended, and that’s why outside of wartime the 1930s famine was the final famine in those regions, with life expectancies doubling.
Overall, trying to hold on to red scare historiography does absolutely nothing to help the cause of socialism. The soviet archives have provided a wealth of knowledge largely affirming the communist narrative, and debunking liberal and fascist narratives about existing socialism. If you consider yourself a leftist of any sort, then you’ll inevitably run into people using the red scare against you too, so perpetuating their mythos just shoots your own movement in the foot.
Nice copy paste of r/communism talking points you got there
If your argument can be dismantled by copying and pasting that’s entirely your own fault
Fuck off dude
If I have spoken about something before, then there’s no advantage to rewriting the same information, is there? Do you dispute any of the evidence I brought? Do you have any of your own? It seems like you’re using the fact that this topic has been discussed before as proof of not needing to look at existing evidence, which is blatantly wrong. The fact that communists tend to agree on something is not evidence of it being “false,” no matter how much you frame agreement as “talking points.”
Either way, I am curious how long it will take you to become a Marxist, given you seem more curious about theory than most anti-communists.
Been a Marxist a while now buddy. I’ve read most of the foundational texts, much to the detriment of my academic work. The genocidal character doesn’t take away from the rapid technological advancements that came from the collectivisation, but facts are facts.
The evidence is there and has been presented by many historians. Most historians agree that the Holodomor was a genocide, but i know all too well the character of your response to this evidence.
Here’s a good literature review by Olga Andriewsky that corroborates the genocide view
I know you consider yourself a Marxist, but when you push ideas like “opposing slur usage is idealist,” you completely betray any comprehension of what you’ve read. I’m curious what you consider to be “most of the foundational texts,” but either way, simple input does not make one an actual Marxist. That’s why theory and practice have to be unified. I don’t know if you’ve moved beyond that particular position, but it’s just an example.
The famine was not a genocide. This theory is pushed by liberals and by fascists, but as I already showed, there was no targeting of Ukrainians or any ethnicity, and archival evidence from opening the soviet archives proved definitively that the soviets did all they could to alleviate famine. You haven’t actually addressed my claims. Facts are facts.
There’s nothing wrong with opposing slur usage. You’re misrepresenting my argument. A white guy singing a rap song and mentioning the ‘n-word’ wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—give me or anyone much pause, as opposed to a random white guy (or even a black person for that matter) using the word insultingly on an airplane. Interpretijg the two scenarios as the same is metaphysical and anti-dialectical.
Other than the politzer book and blackshirts and reds, I’ve read the manifesto, socialism utopian and scientific, dialectical and historical materialism, critique of the gotha pogramme, foundations of leninism, what is to be done?, imperialism the highest stage, right of nations to self determination, reform or revolution, and so many other pamphlets/articles by Lenin i can’t recount.
Because liberals and fascists push the theory doesn’t mean it is not true.
This is actually not true. The article i linked shows that the Soviets refused Ukrainian communist party requests for famine relief, and purged those same leaders as being counter-revolutionary.
Back when we last discussed slurs, you had said that opposing their usage itself was idealist, and that we give words power by caring about it. I still disagree with using slurs no matter the context, but this is an advancement on your prior position, or at minimum an advancement in your communication as such.
As for what you’ve read, pretty good start! I mean that genuinely. The State and Revolution, The Tax in Kind, and of course Capital are all good places to go next. The Tax in Kind is directly related to the background of the 1930s famine, so it’s helpful immediately, though do keep in mind terminology has advanced since it was written to be clearer.
Returning to the 1930s famine, as I showed above the Central Committee was kept in the dark by the Ukrainian communists as to the famine. They tried to save face by telling the Central Committee that everything was fine and under control, but this was not the case. Drought, flooding, and kulaks burning their crops and killing their livestock as protest against collectivization had destroyed output, and the soviets were still exporting grain in order to trade for industrial equipment with the west (which is what the west wanted in exchange for industrial equipment).
Upon learning the truth of how bad it was getting, the Central Committee was furious. The officials responsible in Ukraine were held accountable, hundreds of tractors and other farming equipment was directed to Ukraine, as well as ~17 million poods (~14ish kg/pood) of grain were redirected towards Ukraine. The Central Committee had been deciding policy based on the reports they were recieving, and these reports were falsified to protect the Ukrainian communist party leadership.
Had famine been the goal, no aid would have been given at all, or perhaps token aid. Sending hundreds of millions of kg of grain to Ukraine is no petty tribute, and punishing Ukrainian party leaders that lied and facilitated famine was the correct course of action for such treason. Counter-revolutionary is correct! They had put their own skin above the peasantry.
In all of this, there was absolutely no reason to have intentionally created a famine. The USSR needed grain for industrial equipment and to feed its people, it would not have sabotaged output deliberately. On top of this, there was existing accusations of the soviets overly supporting Ukrainian national identity, Lenin had given them the Donbass region and in an effort to overturn the Tsar’s oppression the soviets highly valued national identity and self-determination.
There is no real evidence of deliberate starvation or creation of famine. All that exists is evidence of tragedy, weather adversity, class conflict between kulaks and the peasantry, and mismanagement in part by the Ukrainian communists and in part caused by disinformation fed to the Central Committee, which changed how they treated Ukraine. Again, they needed grain for industrialization, which they saw as necessary for defense (and this was proven correct as the rapid industrialization in the 20s and 30s is what enabled soviet victory over the Nazis in the 40s).
That was not my argument. Revisit the thread
Although i haven’t read The tax in kind, I’ve read other literature about the NEP. I’ve also studied a fair bit on the history and politics of the USSR from the October revolution till Lenin’s death. I decided to postpone reading Capital until I finish university—even then, I’ll probably still delay further because it is very difficult.
Ukraine was still a net exporter of grain despite the aid. They also had to meet quotas else they wouldn’t receive aid.
Additionally, if there WAS aid, why were there still peasants attempting to flee Ukraine? The CC directives ordered all departures from Ukraine to be prevented further corroborating the genocide point.
Even if we give the USSR all the benefit of the doubt, there were still calls within the party warning how dangerous forced collectivisation would be. War communism proved you couldn’t forcibly collectivise grain without major consequences. Bukharin, all too fervent in his warnings about the famine, was purged. He would later be proven correct. I’ll never understand die-hard Stalin defenders.