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Author
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Topic: Statement on the Anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine
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Coyote
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4881
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posted 25 November 2006 10:41 PM
quote:
Seventy four years ago, from April 1932 to November 1933 in approximately 500 days, some
7 to 10 million people, a third of who were children, died of famine. For the first time in
human history, a government used the confiscation of a harvest as a weapon for the
destruction of the people. In 1932-33, Ukraine last every fourth or fifth person.
Ukrainian Canadian CongressI would actually dispute the assertion that this was the first such act in human history - witness the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849). The Holodomor is, nevertheless, an under-reported exemplar of the criminal nature of the former Soviet Union, especially during the Stalinist era. This topic has been started in furtherance of a discussion between Fidel and I here.
From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004
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Coyote
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4881
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posted 25 November 2006 11:08 PM
quote:
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The Russians pursued war communism out of necessity in order to put an end to the aggression, the homelessness and the misery caused by western attempts to keep them poor and subserviant. Russia was forced to industrialise and weaponize. What took the western world 300 years in moving from agrarian to industrial economy and with incalculable human suffering and misery was done in a matter of twenty years in Russia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------This was the bit where I decided to confront you, Fidel. You make it sound, here, as though Russia's twenty years of industrialization were unproblematic. They weren't. They included a genocide. And I'm sorry you consider this a personal attack. It's not intended to be. This is a matter of deep personal interest to me, and it actually is the 74th Anniversary of the Great Famine. You will note that I referred to the carry-over from the other thread as a "discussion", which I think is a fairly neutral term and not an attack.
From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004
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Vansterdam Kid
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5474
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posted 25 November 2006 11:59 PM
Speaking of this subject, an interesting book I found, when I took a course on the political history of the Soviet Union is Robert Service's 'A History of Modern Russia: From Nicholas II to Vladimir Putin. As it relates to this thread though, Service does anyone whose interested a service by describing the extremely non-democratic aspects of the USSR's ideology in great detail. He delves into how the revolution was set up to quash internal descent, and democratic struggle, and how Stalin exploited this to his benefit. He also goes into great detail how Stalin established, state capitalist ventures, for the sake of modernizing the country, and strengthening it against external threats. Which of course lead to tragidies like the Ukranian famine, as many of the farmers, in the rush to collectivize and conform to bureaucratic demands, had their produce stolen from them. If they didn't like it, they were often seen as internal 'threats', 'kulaks' or 'enemies of the revolution' and dealt with accordingly. And an interesting thing that he notes about the country is that, there was a certain amount of conservatism that crept into the ruling classes. These people were usually the managers, and high level government functionaries, who managed the production of various goods and services. In the rush to privatize many of these goods and services, after the fall of the USSR, the same people who once considered themselves 'communists' during the period of the USSR, were well placed to take control of the capital of the country which was previously state owned - hence 'state capitalist' and become private capitalists.
From: bleh.... | Registered: Apr 2004
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Ken Burch
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8346
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posted 27 November 2006 11:57 AM
quote:
For the first time in
human history, a government used the confiscation of a harvest as a weapon for the
destruction of the people.
While I agree that the famine in the Ukraine was a monstrous act and a betrayal of socialism's ideals(as were basically all other acts of Stalin, including his sabotage of the anti-fascist fight in Spain) I think that the Black 47 in Ireland would actually be a previous instance of confiscation of a harvest as a weapon for the destruction of the people.
In that case, crops other than the potato, more than enough food to have saved most of the Irish population, were shipped out of Ireland by the British as export crops. This was designed, partly, to force the Irish to stop working as subsistence farmers and consign themselves to jobs in the "dark, Satanic mills" of Britain's Industrial Revolution, and partly to force as many Irish as possible to leave, thus reducing the population and the chances of Irish independence.
From: A seedy truckstop on the Information Superhighway | Registered: Feb 2005
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