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[mainiac]

Well seeing how at no point I said that I thought the five year plan was efficient nor humane...

You seem to agree with me entirely.

[wierd]

As somebody who lost family in the holodomor in the Ukraine under Stalin, all I can say is that anything that even remotely resembles what happened, politically, is DOOMED to spectacular failure, and anyone considering such a course of action is either evil, mentally retarded, horribly naive, or just outright ignorant of historical data.

None of those are things that should ever be accepted from political officials or statesmen of any stripe.


Seriously, condemning the very farmers who grow your food for you, as being "Greedy" for trying to keep enough food to survive on AND grow crops with the next year, then sending goon troopers in to shoot the place up to get food trucked out and to distribution centers where the people processing it are less efficient than the keystone cops are at stopping crime, (thus simultaneously killing your farmers, the baseline production workers producing your food supply, brutally undermining your ability to grow crops the very next planting cycle by destroying seed stores, AND fucking up distribution in the process) JUST so you can blame somebody politically for your own god-damn supply fuckups, so you can do some kind of bullshit eugenic purging (Because ethnic Russians are so much fucking better because of some magic Russian special-ness or something), what the fuck did Stalin expect? That the food fairy would magically put vodka and rye bread under his pillow at night? That urban Russians, who had never even SEEN a field of rye before in their lives would somehow, magically-- because they were Russians-- know how to pick up plows and scythes and make a harvest the next year after displacing Ukrainians?  Stalin was clearly a fucking idiot.

I don't know enough about the "Leap Forward" event, but I know plenty about the holodomor. 

[Lord Shonus]

I don't know enough about the "Leap Forward" event, but I know plenty about the holodomor.

Imagine everything you just said, except the government is exporting tons of food to keep up appearances despite knowing full well that the rest of the world knew all about the famine.

[mainiac]

To get the Leap forward imagine that except throw in that they are wasting good seed on really stupid ideas, pulling numbers out their ass and taking away the tools to actually farm with for other projects...

Imagine everything you just said, except the government is exporting tons of food to keep up appearances despite knowing full well that the rest of the world knew all about the famine.

... Soviets exported during famine too.  That was part of why their economy grew so fast, confiscate food from the farmers and sell it to buy machine tools.  Pretty soon you've driven the farmers off the land to collectivize and you have gulag labour for your projects.

[Lord Shonus]

To get the Leap forward imagine that except throw in that they are wasting good seed on really stupid ideas, pulling numbers out their ass and taking away the tools to actually farm with for other projects...

Imagine everything you just said, except the government is exporting tons of food to keep up appearances despite knowing full well that the rest of the world knew all about the famine.

... Soviets exported during famine too.  That was part of why their economy grew so fast, confiscate food from the farmers and sell it to buy machine tools.  Pretty soon you've driven the farmers off the land to collectivize and you have gulag labour for your projects.

The difference is that the Soviets -due to a combination of remoteness and general isolation from the rest of the world (most nations were waiting for the Soviet Union to dry up and blow away) sucessfully hid the extent of the famine for 40 years - China couldn't, gained almost nothing (relatively speaking) from the grain they sold, and didn't even manage to get the meagre benefits that the Soviet Union did.

Honestly, the most damning thing I can say about Stalin's Soviet Union is that the forced famine isn't the worst of his crimes. It might not even be in the top five, and that is damning indeed.

[wierd]

Indeed....

While this is NOT the european politics thread, I sadly forsee a "Part II" of this atrocity playing out in the Ukraine with Putin's power grabbing and political spindoctoring about "Supporting ethnic Russians".

It's the same basic pathology:  "Russians are just plain better than any other ethnic group, because RUSSIANS!"

EVERY SINGLE TIME THIS SHIT HAS BEEN DONE (Ethnicity X is the bestest ethnicity ever, and all other ethnicities are the suxxors, and need to be destroyed, because X is X, and therefor better!) IT HAS ENDED IN HORRIBLE FAILURE.

Why the fuck do people still swallow this shit!?

Is it too hard for them to comprehend!? Can they not see history, and say 'That's fucking dumb!' when their leaders beat on the nationalist drums?  WHAT THE FUCK.

Sorry, but I HATE that shit.

[Angle]

~~~TRIBALISM!~~~

[wierd]

Seriously--- If Stalin wanted to make Ukraine into an "All Russian Territory", he should have done it THIS way:

Step 1)
Prevent Ukrainians from leaving Ukraine, by forbidding emigration to ethnic Ukrainians.

Step 2)
Incentivize Ethnic Russians to move to the Ukraine. Give them a bonus on toilet paper rations or something for moving there.

Step 3)
Wait 10 to 20 years under the above.
More than 2/3 of the population will identify as Ethnic Russian, simply from cultural assimilation pressures alone.  The resulting "Ethnic Russians" will know how to operate the farms, and you wont have a horrible famine that threatens the stability of your country for your trouble.

But that doesn't stroke the "Russians are the bestest best thing ever! EVER!" circlejerk G-spot or something, and clearly makes too much sense.

Not saying the above is by any stretch a "Good thing"--- It is STILL genocide, (Cultural and genetic, because you are making use of selective pressure to cull Ukrainians and promote Russians) but it is all the same 1) FAR cheaper, 2) Far more reasonable, 3) CAN ACTUALLY WORK, 4) Is better for Russians in the total scope of things, because Russians wont die from famine, and 5) Still promotes the nationalistic drivel bullshit that you are basing your political position on, and because it WOULD ACTUALLY WORK, will give you a GENUINE success story to croon about internationally.  Throw in some mechanization to boot, and you can actually have some bullshit inflated statistical figures to "Prove" that Russian farmers do a better job of producing food than the Ukrainians did even!

Is that what Stalin did? No-- He was a bloodthirsty, impatient, psychopathic idiot, who had to resort to petty use of scapegoats to cover up his own incompetence as a political figure.

[Frumple]

... my sleep deprived brain is really sad you didn't misspell that like I thought it did at first glance, ang. It would have been great OoCQ material.

[wierd]

Yes, "Tribaljism" captures the essence of what it really is quite succinctly.

[Frumple]

Not actually what I initially saw, though.

[Darvi]

Considering that we're now Ready For Hillary, it's only a matter of time until somebody makes a survival horror game called Four Years at Hillary's.

[scriver]

It was a period of rapid economic growth because the Russian Empire was very nearly at the "medieval serfdom" economic level, and the Soviet Union's Five Year Plans amounted to a forced Industrial Revolution. What caused the growth was the industrialization, which would have caused essentially the same growth no matter how it was induced.

So you agree with me then?

The whole reason the USSR was brought into a discussion about Hitler was as an example of why economic growth does not automatically equal better living conditions for the populace. In case you forgot what the discussion was about.

[mainiac]

There were a couple words tucked in there about that but it certainly wasn't a clearly stated thesis of the post I commented on.

[scriver]

Di you think each post lives in it's own separate world space, of something?