Stalin waxing lyrical about the friendship of peoples in April 1941, a famous period of international idyll when there were no other important concerns:
… I want to say a few words about the Tajiks. The Tajiks are a special people. They are not Uzbeks, Kazakhs, or Kyrgiz – they are Tajiks, the most ancient people of Central Asia. The Tajik – that means the one who wears the crown, that is how they were called by the Iranians, and the Tajiks have justified this title.
Out of the all the non-Russian Muslim peoples of the USSR, the Tajiks are the sole non-Turkic ethnicity – they are an Iranian ethnicity. The Tajiks are the people whose intelligentsia produced the great poet Ferdowsi, and it is no surprise that the Tajiks draw their cultural traditions from him. You must have felt the artistic flair of the Tajiks in the past decade, that their ancient culture and unique artistic talent as expressed in music, and song, and dance.
Sometimes our Russian colleagues mix them up: The Tajiks with Uzbeks, the Uzbeks with Turkmen, the Armenians with Georgians. This is, of course, incorrect. The Tajiks are a unique people, with a huge and ancient culture, and under our Soviet conditions they are marked out for a great future. And the entire Soviet Union must help them with that. I want their art to enjoy everyone’s attention.
I propose a toast to the flowering of Tajik art, to the Tajik people, and so that we, Muscovites, are always prepared to help them with everything that is necessary.
This is approximately a bazillion times less well known than Stalin’s toast to the Russian people at the end of World War 2, which is often cited by anti-Russian Cold Warriors (and many deluded Russian nationalists) to equate Stalinism with Russian nationalism.
While I don’t have anything particular against the Tajiks, the above toast does not strike me as something that would be uttered by any Russian nationalist like… ever.
The reality is that Stalin hated and persecuted Russian nationalism as much as any other Bolshevik ideologue, but opportunistically adopted some of its talking points every now and then to shore up his regime. Of course actual Russian nationalists who took him at his word seriously enough to return to the USSR tended to meet sticky ends.
The main thing that distinguished Stalin from his multinational predecessors was that he was more consistent and also went after the other national minority – Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish, etc. – nationalisms that the Old Bolsheviks had fostered. Considering the ethnic composition of the most active Cold Warriors and neocons explains a lot about their curiously specific hatred of Stalin and (regrettably, rather successful) efforts to associate him with Russian nationalism in the Western discourse.
I read somewhere that Stalin may have been partly descended from Ossetians. If true this might explain his affinity for the Tajiks. Ossetians, like Tajiks, are originally descended from the ancient Iranians.
AK, do you not make a distinction between nationalists and fascists?
Chechens, Avars, etc. don’t count or was that him showing ethnic bias from back home?
Old Bolsheviks-Trotskyists-Cold Warriors-Neocons hate Stalin because he took power away from them and turned the USSR in a completely different direction. They fought the Cold War to regain power and resume their sorts of policies in Russia. They succeeded at this in the 1990s. Then Putin took power away from them again, but much less completely and in a much milder fashion than Stalin. This is a really, really pale shadow of what happened in the late 1930s. Cold War II is the neocons’ effort to get back to power in Russia and reestablish their kinds of policies.
Of course it’s all essentially ethnic. All politics is ethnic and tribal. We’re just vessels and instruments that our genes use to advance themselves. Well, except for me and the SWPLs. Maybe I’m just a weird kind of SWPL, though I prefer to consider this a search for the truth.
Anyway, all political conflict is tribal, but some of its consequences are cultural and economic – stuff that can be classified as left or right.
In that sense Stalin was right-wing and his Trotskyist-Cold Warrior enemies were left-wing. The Old Bolsheviks legalized homosexuality. He banned it again in 1935. They blew up churches. He stopped doing that and concluded an agreement with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1943. They eliminated school grades. He reinstated them in 1935. They looted the economy the way that 1990s oligarchs looted it later. He built an enormous amount of industry, without which the USSR would have probably lost to Germany later. They supported modernist, degenerate art. He supported traditional, realistic art.
As for nationalism, obviously he was a Georgian who loved Georgia. And I think he favored it a bit from Moscow, and I think that Georgians knew it. There were riots in Tbilisi when Khruschev condemned Stalin’s memory.
Beyond that he tried to run a multiethnic state without offending any of the ethnicities in it. Unless of course they collaborated with the Germans in WWII. Putin is a patriot of the multi-ethnic Russian state and I guess to some extent Stalin was too.
In Houellebecq’s Submission Ben Abbes is socially conservative. The left brings him to power because he’s not French and because they hate Frenchness. But he then proceeds to dismantle a lot of the leftism that they so painstakingly created. Which would actually have been good for the French if they weren’t likely being drowned out under him through immigration. Houllebecq is silent about additional immigration under Ben Abbes, but considering Ben Abbes’s project to include MENA in the EU it’s likely.
Well, there was no Stalinist equivalent of the modern European immigration issue.
I think that a part of his father’s ancestry was Ossetian. Both of his parents were Georgian speakers from Georgia though and I think that he considered himself Georgian.
The Chechens and Avars are neither Turkic nor Iranian-speaking. Their languages are Caucasian, like Georgian. Ossetians are Iranian-speaking, but in that quote Stalin was clearly only taking about union-republic-level ethnicities. Ossetians were one level below that.
Oh, and plus Ossetians are Christian. He talked about Muslim ethnic groups in that quote.
This is an interesting point you make about Stalin and Russian nationalism. I met some old-guard White Russian emigres who were similarly dismissive of Stalin’s claims to be a defender of Holy Russia, but those types are a rapidly vanishing voice as Putin gathers all expat Russians into his embrace and push the narrative of Stalin as Great Patriotic Russian Leader.
Putin’s stated view of Stalin is very negative.
About as negative as his view of Russian nationalism, I might add. This is all more complicated than you seem to think.
I first read of Stalin’s possible partial Ossetian ancestry in Montefiore’s biography about Stalin during his youth. The claim is that his father was a Georgianized Ossetian.
Fun fact: Ossetians remained pagan up until the 17th century.
Duplicate from other thread:
I had a colleague back in USSR, senior than me, who in approx. 1960 was allowed to visit USA on scientific (STEM) business. He managed to visit Hoover Institute at Stanford University, and was extremely lucky to meet there in person A. F. Kerensky (1881-1970): the last Prime-Minister of Russia before Bolshevik coup, October of 1917.
*
Kerensky told to my astonished colleague: “You in Russia are so lucky, that Trotsky did not come to power. In comparison with Stalin, he would do much more harm to Russian people.”
*
Disclaimer: I, I.f.f.U., consider Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin
as bunch of greatest scoundrels and tyrants in history.
Kerensky told to my astonished colleague: “You in Russia are so lucky, that Trotsky did not come to power. In comparison with Stalin, he would do much more harm to Russian people.”
This would be very difficult to deny. Trotsky’s problems with Stalin were that he protected the kulaks too much during the collectivization campaign (I’ve posted quotes on that here in the past), that he sabotaged collectivization, feigning enthusiasm for it while working against it and against the revolution in general in secret, that he abandoned the ideal of worldwide revolution, etc. In short, Trotsky said that Stalin betrayed the revolution, and this was true.
The irony of Cold Warriors as the real, original commies trying to get the revolution back on track would seem bizarre to most people, but like all the best ironies it’s based on reality.
The privatization of the 1990s was a second collectivization, with a number of victims that was roughly equal to the first. Color revolutions are worldwide revolution.
Neokahns shamelessly fabricated a Putin rehabilitation of Stalin to justify a new Cold War. Stalin, not Lenin, since the latter was a stronger internationalist and social leftist.
Dear Glossy:
My respectful greetings to you.
Apparently the level of my understanding of English is not advanced enough.
You wrote:
Trotsky’s problems with Stalin were that he protected … .
Whom of those two did you mean by “he” ?
Who of them sabotaged the collectivization,
and whose opinion about that sabotage did you express:
yours or the opinion of one of those two ?
I can imagine that in Russian language such uncertainty would be removed by grammar of “skloneniya, spriajeniya, padezha, roda i chisla” etc.,
but my understanding of English is not good enough
to decode the flow of you sentences.
Friendly yours, I.f.f.U.
I just read Anatoly’s other piece on this subject and I’m happy to be corrected about Putin’s role in this rehabilitation. The rehabilitation is real, but seems to have little to do with Kremlin policy.
I meant that Trotsky’s problems with Stalin were that Stalin was too lenient with kulaks, abandoned the ideal of worldwide revolution and betrayed the revolution in general.
In other words the he that you asked about was Stalin.
Thank you for this clarification about “he”.
But I sincerely hope that you, Mr. Glossy, do not consider
Stalin’s actions as too lenient with kulaks.
I am very sorry to note, that Stalin did not betray World revolution.
Stalin (to my utter sorrow) instead of breaking with the idea of World revolution,
just postponed the technical actions
in the implementing World revolution till the opportunistic moment;
the moment when USSR got fully militarized for that cannibalistic task.
“Comintern” organization had World revolution as the goal;
it was getting enormous financial support
from Stalin’ government all those years: 1920-1940s.
Friendly, I.f.f.U.
But I sincerely hope that you, Mr. Glossy, do not consider
Stalin’s actions as too lenient with kulaks.
I don’t. I think that the revolution was a horrible thing, that it was good to betray it and that Stalin did basically do that. Speaking of which, for the sake of Ukrainians I hope that someone eventually betrays the Maidan. And if that person does that while saying that he’s eternally committed to the Maidan’s ideals, I won’t care in the least.
Thank you for clarity, and have a nice day !
Is this just your reading on Trotsky-Stalin, or do you have something that proves Trotsky said we need to kill more kulaks? And I am not talking about some general purpose statement about liquidating enemies of the Revolution.
Stalin also outlawed abortion.
This book quotes Trotsky talking about collectivization from exile:
https://books.google.com/books?id=365Sg54_D5QC&lpg=PA93&ots=-NaafHvLTI&pg=PA93&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
the successes in the sphere of industrialization and collectivisation became possible only because the Stalinist bureaucracy came up against the resistance of its protege, the kulak, who refused to surrender grain to the state, and thus the bureaucracy was compelled to take over and carry out the policy of the left opposition.
Trotsky is calling the Stalinist state “the bureaucracy” here. He’s saying that this bureaucracy didn’t really want to collectivize the countryside. It was dragging its feet. Why? Because it viewed the kulaks as its proteges, not as enemies, as Trotsky viewed them. He calls taking grain from the kulaks the policy of the left opposition. That’s him and his supporters. So collectivization, taking grain from the kulaks, is in his view his policy that the Stalinist bureaucracy implemented reluctantly and too late.
More from that book:
“Trotsky had viewed the grain procurement crisis of 1927-8 as a manifestation of kulak power, and regarded the belated and small price rise of mid-1928 as an intolerable concession to the kulaks.”
Not a direct quote, but an author’s characterizaton. When I looked through that book, the author seemed to me generally positive to Trotsky.
There’s more of that kind of stuff in that chapter. Looking at collectivization from exile Trotsky said that it was too little too late. I remember him saying that the army didn’t have enough involevement. He called the kulaks Stalin’s proteges and implied that Stalin was sabotaging the Soviet state’s fight with them.
Yes, if Trotsky came into power the USSR would likely have adopted a Neoconservative-style foreign policy, with predictable results. Actually, probably the main reason the USSR kept chugging along for so long was that it was probably the most cautious and risk-avoiding great power in history.
Akarlin, have you read much of Nikolai Stavrogin?
I didn’t know that. Thank you for pointing that out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Russia
Legalized in 1920, banned again in 1936, legalized again in 1955. Conclusion: Stalin was anti-abortion.
Stalin’s mid-1930s rightward turn was so broad and general that it must have affected thousands of issues, big and small. For example, Ded Moroz (for those who don’t know, Russia’s equivalent of Santa Claus) was eliminated by the early Bolsheviks but brought back by Stalin in the mid-1930s.
Thank you.
It seems likely to me that Trotsky was trying to tie Stalin to the kulaks and neither he nor Stalin actually thought of them as his (Stalin’s) protégés. The commies were in complete control of all media and propaganda at that point and for the “masses” the kulaks would have been enemy #1. Trotsky was probably writing for the few in the Party that had access to his writings.
We know that for all of the historical period we can see that the elites of the urban areas, in times of famine, always used lethal force to take the grain from the peasants, so this is nothing new.
Unlike you and some of the other commenters, I am a partisan of the revolutions. That said, it is obvious that many things went terribly wrong in the Soviet Union.
My reading queue is such that I will never reach the end, but I will try to read more on the subject. I think the R. Conquest book is in my queue.
Incidentally, Georgians like Stalin more than Russians.
Of course that particular poll I wrote about would be cited by a mainsream Western thinktank, like, never.
I’m not aware of Stalin ever really persecuting Georgians like he did with most of the rest of the USSR. The collectivization famines passed it by without trace. Georgians appear to have been heavily underrepresented as a share of prisoners in the Gulag. There was the Mingrelian Affair to be sure, but it was ultimately just some minor political infighting. I can definitely see why I might like Stalin if I was a Georgian.
Re-Houellebecq. Doesn’t Ben Abbes restrict immigration, though? Of course the big problem with the Islam-is-our-solution wing of the Alt Right crowd is that its family formation patterns are in the longterm incompatible with high civilization.
Yeah, but by that time Trotsky was merely sniping from the sidelines, criticizing Stalin for whatever it is that comes to mind. Besides, he had no way of knowing the true situation on the ground; all he had to go on was Stalin’s government’s rhetoric (which was actually quite moderate at the time, by the Communist standards.)
A better way to judge Trotsky would be be to consider what he did while he was in power. So here is two relevant data points.
“Scissor of prices.” After the Bolsheviks allowed the private enterprise again as part of NEP, agriculture bounced back rapidly but manufacturing not so much. As the result, the price of grain collapsed and the price of manufactured goods skyrocketed. The peasants got caught between the falling incomes and rising living expenses (the “scissor”.) Trotsky was the one to identify the problem, give it a name, and present it at a party problem. His solution was to confiscate grain from the peasants until they starve to death and shoot all who protest.
Actually, no, this wasn’t his solution. I just made it up. What Trotsky actually suggested was for the government to buy the grain surpluses in order to support the prices. This grain would be exported abroad and the hard currency earned on those exports would be used to purchase equipment, etc. thus jump starting the manufacturing. Not a bad solution, and it might’ve worked, too, given time.
This is not to say that Trotsky was a nice guy, or better than Stalin. One thing that we can more or less sure be about is that Trotsky didn’t have it in him to grab absolute power for himself, Stalin style. Probably, it wouldn’t even occur to him. Soviet Communist party had a strong tradition of collective leadership. It was there before Stalin and resumed again after him. And even Stalin himself had to pay homage to it.
There was nothing about an immigration increase or immigration restriction in the book. I would guess that a real-life Ben Abbes wouldn’t restrict immigration and might increase it.
In 1937-1938, Stalin slaughtered 100,000 Orthodox priests but the compliant, cowed remains of the Church were allowed to function under strict Bolshevik supervision. It seems that this was driven by the German invasion, not for internal reasons.
In Glossy’s world this makes Stalin a “conservative.”
That isn’t really true. Trotsky said “Total collectivisation equals total weeds in the fields”.
Unusually for a Jew, his father was a kulak. He knew something about farming.
[ I am a partisan of the revolutions]
What, all of them ??
Budu Mdivani and Nestor Lakoba would beg to differ on the assertion that Stalin did not repress Georgians.
In this thread the commenter inertial added to my long list of Stalin’s conservative initiatives by pointing out that Stalin outlawed abortion. This happened in 1936. Abortion was again legalized in the USSR in 1955.
Elsewhere in this thread I quoted Trotsky criticizing Stalin from exile for being too lenient with the kulaks during the collectivization campaign and for treating them as his protégés. He described a small price increase (of grain presumably) of 1928 as an intolerable concession to the kulaks.
From memory I that the NKVD switched from Jewish plurality and other minorities being significantly over represented, to only Russians and Georgians being overrepresented in regards to their share of population during Stalin’s reign. I think the source I got this from is Bloodlands by Timothy Schnider.
In the passage I quoted above Trotsky describes collectivization as a policy of the left opposition (that’s him and his supporters) that the Stalinist bureaucracy was finally forced to reluctantly adopt because of the kulaks’ wicked intransigence in surrendering grain to the state.
Ha! Good question. I am trying to work on my rushing in.
I should make a list.
The French Revolution, American, Simon Bolivar’s, Garibaldi, Russian, the Republicans in Spain, Cuban.
(Industrial)
As a general rule any revolt of the commoners against the ruling classes.
If I had a better grounding I am sure I could find some where is was primarily one faction of the ruling class using the peasants to take power from another faction, in which case my enthusiasm would be curbed.
I think that you should pay attention to comment #28.
It sounds as if Stalin had a hierarchy of ethnicities that had different rankings.
I am still stumped by the fact that the average Russian foot soldier loyally followed orders from Stalin (a non Russian) that lead to the death of millions of Russians. People will endlessly talk about what went on in the minds of Trotsky, Stalin, Solzhenitsyn, etc, but the common Russian that so eagerly supported Stalin is beyond me, even with all the propaganda, how could they allow this Georgian to kill so many of their own countrymen ?
Thanks to all of the knowledgeable commenters here supplying the historical perspectives.
I look at the Bolsheviks as the foremost and dedicated poster children for Blank Slatism and this was crucial to many of their most tragic mistakes. We now know better, but we are still suffering from more and bigger doses of the same medicine.
AFAIK, outlawing abortion by Stalin was not done because of the belief that unborn children are human beings whose lives matter, but simply to boost population (the Stalin did not value life). The intention did not reflect conservative principles.
Glossy has a habit of ignoring information that contradicts his often-strange ideas.
ignoring information that contradicts
Yes, we all do this, it is our nature. However, if one wishes to learn and understand rather that push a viewpoint then you have to acknowledge this to oneself and work around it.
I think that on this particular subject commentator AP is 100% correct:
Conservative, not conservative is beyond my pay grade, it is “Как строчка из другого цикла. (Пастернак)”.
Ignoring information that contradicts one’s ideas, exhibit 629372518.
And this is truer still of your dismissal of Stalin’s “concordate” with the church, his industrialization campaign, his re-banning of homosexuality, of the internal peace that followed the execution of the last Old Bolsheviks in 1938, etc. You dismiss things that contradict your view and then you accuse me of doing the same.
AP, I particularly remember your dismissal of Stalin’s turn away from modernist “art” towards real art. You said that the later Soviet conception of art was narrow, restrictive or something of that sort. Those are usually code words for “not enough piss on canvas”.
Do you actually like looking at piss on canvas? Probably not.
You think that Stalin was good for Russians, and as a West Ukrainian who identifies to some extent with Poland you consider everything that’s good for Russians to be bad for you. And you’re moved by this tribal logic to dismiss huge chunks of reality and accept a lot of crap, including some that was literally thrown on canvases in attempts to defy “narrow” and “restrictive” conceptions of art.
I’m not moved by this sort of tribalist logic, but I understand it when I see it in others.
[any revolt of the commoners against the ruling classes]
I don’t think the American, Bolivarian and Garibaldi revolutions can muster even much of an appearance of being that.
What about the Iranian revolution of 1979?
I didn’t ignore it, I addressed it. You, in contrast, ignore information that contradicts your ideas.
It’s likely that Stalin considered unborn children innocent and Old Bolsheviks, Nazi collabirators, etc. guilty of crimes. That didn’t occur to you?
Duplicate from other thread:
This reminds me Solzhenitsyn’s preface to one of his books.
He states that particular book definitely could not be published in the USSR.
Reason: Solzhenitsyn insists that the word “Бог” (God in English) at the time described in the book (1914 ?) was always written with capital letter “Б”. Meanwhile that was forbidden at the USSR time. Solzhenitsyn writes further:
And all this is when such words as “КГБ”, “Чека”, “КПСС” etc. are all written with capital letter(s) (KGB, Tcheka, CPSU in English.)
Dear Glossy:
Check your usage of English. It can betray those your feelings, which you may be not aware of yourself.
You write “the church” in small letters, which, as applied to Russian realities, means a particular building. You probably meant “the Church”.
You wrote “Old Bolsheviks” in capitals,
and that is about the group of most heartless executors (rasstrel’nikov); people who had no feeling of Motherland, which needs defense; enemies of simple people.
On a personal level, I am sympathetic with your fate, your life.
Take care of yourself.
Your I.f.f.U.
As I’ve explained many times, I think that the Old Bolsheviks were evil. I don’t use capitalization to denote approval.
Nope.
Nope, again.
I am anti-Soviet but neutral with respect to nationalisms, although I am generally conservative and as such I like local traditions and prefer ideas that respect and correspond to them. In Ukraine’s case, artificial conformism to Great Russian culture was artificial and bad, as was the attempted construction of Homo Sovieticus, but Little Russianism and Ukrainianism were both valid.
As for art – pissing on canvas isn’t generally considered modern art, but contemporary art. Modern art flourished under the Tsars (obvious examples – much of Chagall’s work preceded the Revolution, Malevich’s famous black square was painted in 1915). There was a nice exhibit of Russian modernism in New York last year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/arts/design/review-russian-modernism-at-neue-galerie-figurative-focus-with-amorphous-results.html?_r=0
It was a product of Imperial, not Soviet, Russians.
In your world, was Stalin more conservative than the old regime?
Is a centralized state bureaucracy determining what is and is not art conservatism in your world?
(will you ignore this information that contradicts your strange ideas?)
His famine polices led to the deaths of many children from inconvenient classes, so I doubt respect for (innocent) life was a motivating factor for him.
He murdered 100,000 priests, destroyed much of Russia’s churches, and established total atheist-Soviet control over the remnants. Those remnants were allowed to survive and grow a little, under strict Soviet-atheist supervision.
Done in a way that involved the destruction of the most traditional part of Russian society – the countryside.
Were homosexuals being actively persecuted when Russia was ruled by the Tsars? Tchaikovsky seems to have lived a good life.
Stalin certainly consolidated the Revolutionary Soviet state. I don’t dispute this. This doesn’t make him a conservative, however.
We’ve gone over most this before and for now I’m tired of arguing.
The American Revolution was the gateway drug to what we have today. I am fully aware of the social class of most of the Founding Fathers and their restrictive view of “all men.”
S. Bolivar most definitely. Of course, initially it was just for the criollos, but it quickly went viral and spiraled beyond their control with the slaves, Indians, mestizos, mulattos, everybody joining in. An argument can be made that he would have failed without timely help from the Hatians.
Garibaldi: the original “redshirts.”
1979 Iran
Seems like they exchanged a secular authoritarian regime for a religious one.
Garibaldi’s activities in southern Italy amounted to the imposition of a foreign rule and ideology on populations which overwhelmingly wanted no part of them.
The Vendée was a revolt of the commoners against their rulers the revolutionary bourgeoisie, do you support it?
Georgian and Chechen are “Caucasian” languages only in that both are spoken in the Caucasus. They do not have any known genetic relation to each other. Chechen and Avar are however both part of the Northeast Caucasian Language Family which is regarded as a valid linguistic family by most linguists. The Northeast Caucasian Languages have no apparent relation to either the Altaic or Indo-European Languages.
Ossetian is indeed an Indo-Iranian language.
A minority of Ossetians are Moslem but most are Orthodox.
I’ve heard that Avar is one of the ugliest languages in existence. Interesting that they’re apparently not related to the Turkic Avars of the 7th century
Maybe because “this Georgian” didn’t actually “lead to the death of millions of Russians”? Maybe because those were executed according to the law and the actual number was not in the millions?
Oh, look! Ukrainian emigrant conspiracy theorist going full “Holodomor was artificial”. Quelle surprise!
Oh look! Sovok freak disputes the wideranging consensus that the Soviet famines that killed millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs, etc. were artificial! What a surprise!
Some of us have known people who survived that event. Your ilk ought to wait a generation before claiming your nonsense.
Oh look! Banderstadt emigrant svidomite is trying to present an opinion of the rabid anti-Sovietest, Russophobes and the Western elite’s ever so fickle Hive-Mind as a “wideranging consensus”.
But if Holodomor was artificial – than any other famine in Russian Empire was artificially, caused by the state’s desire to export more bread.
And, without doubt, some of “you” also known Bandera and Shukhevitch. As for “waiting generation” or what – in your dreams, AP. “Can’t stop me now” (c)
The worst late Imperial Russian famine was the 1891-92 Volga famine, which caused excess mortality of half a million – and brought a (deservedly) huge wave of criticism and unrest down on the government.
Under the USSR, there were three big famines: 1918-1922 (~10 million), 1930-33 (5-6 million), and 1947 (500,000).
That’s right, the postwar “Russian nationalist” (according to some) USSR, with a level of industrial production an order of magnitude greater than the Russian Empire in the 1890s, had a famine which killed as many people as the very worst famine of late Tsarist Russia while supplying its new puppet states (including East Germany) with grain – and naturally, didn’t permit a squeak of protest about it.
Now at least the 1918-1922 famine was during wartime and in significant part due to the breakdown of railway transportation, but there are no feasible natural explanations for the other two – especially considering that the USSR in 1930 and especially 1947 was considerably more developed than Russia in 1892 (Stalinists after all adore that falsely attributed Churchill quote “Stalin came to Russia with a wooden plough and left it in possession of atomic weapons”).
If you put on a cap made of aluminum foil, will you be safe from the “Hive-Mind?”
There is no wide-ranging consensus that the famines was genocide, but there is wide-ranging consensus that it was artificial. Stalinist freaks might disagree, of course.
Other famines didn’t involve people coming into villages and confiscating grains and food from peasants, leading to the peasants’ starvation.
The artificial nature of the 1932-1933 Soviet famine (in contrast to famines that occurred prior to the Revolution) is reflected in the fact that the Soviet famine had 6-7 million victims (latter figure mentioned by the Russian State Duma in 2008)across the USSR, whereas for example the Russian famine of 1891-1892 had about 400,000 victims.
There are a lot more people in the world who had grandparents who lived through this artificial famine, than who knew Bandera. These grandparents shared details that contradict your fairy tales. Why do you bring Bandera up btw? Are you obsessed with the man?
It might be the worst – but it wasn’t the last, and neither was it the first one to happen. Before that there were “mild” famines in 1873, 1880, 1883 when, indeed, only half a million perished. There were famines in 1897-98, 1901, 1905, 1906, 1907 and 1911 – all during the reign of one czar. And in Russian Empire the reasons for nearly regular famines (affecting, first of all, peasantry) were nearly always caused by domestic factor – and not by external, as it was in the USSR’s case.
Actually, the number of people perished from famine in 1891-92 is more close to 1 million of “Russian Orthodox souls“. If we add “inorodtsi” it might very well be as high as 1.2-1.3 million. But this is very conservative estimate (to which I prefer to stick), but some historians name the number as high as 3 millions. The death rate among the peasants under the czars was appalling 3-5% yearly, with as many as 10% during the famines. I.e. – we are talking a couple of millions per year. But, hey – this was natural and ordained by the Free Market!
I see you still try to peg the post-war famine on “supporting the puppet regime”, blissfully ingoring the general state of agriculture within the USSR during and after the war. This number – 500K – appears to me as taken at random.
As for the so-called “Holodomor”, which affected many areas of the USSR, there were also external factors present – like economic blockade from the rest of the world, which made virtually impossible the acquisition of the grain abroad, direct sabotage by the locals (like former and escaped kulaks) who were in that way “heroically resisting collectivization”, add to that the fungus epidemic and the general shitty weather, that affected the whole Black Sea region.
How you came up with “1930-33”, when it’s always been “1932-33” is beyond me. And how you “blew” the Volga famine of 1921-22 to encompass 1918-20 is also equally puzzling. But you don’t strike me as a professional historian.
I’m also interested in how did you come to the number of “5-6 millions” of people perished in the state-wide famine. In 1930-33 period the population of UkrSSR actually increased by 1.5 million, with the proportional representation in ethnicities remaining more or less the same – so you can’t explain it by the “colonization by katzaps”.
Actually, the total number of deaths in the whole of the USSR during the famine of 1932-33 is more close to 2.3 million max (including both those who died from malnutrition and for whom it was an indirect cause of the death), with the most of fatalities being in KazakhSSR.
Wide range – as “in Russophobic circles”, you mean?
Perhaps – you are even right, AP! After all, one of the chief causes for the Holodomor had been the sabotage by de-kulakized elements and all those who wished to destroy the Soviet power. Oh, and screw ups by a lot of local corrupt party functionaries, even on republican level. Then you must take some solace in the fact that most of them were persecuted in 1937-39.
That was exactly what was happening regularly in Czarist Russia. It’s called “taxes”. And the chief way for the peasants to pay them was by giving up their bread.
And in Russia there are a lot more people whose ancestors were not “victims of the Regime” and whose lot actually improved manifold. They also shared these details that contradict both liberast and Banderite horror tales. But what is more important – their accounts are actually supported by evidence.
I’m bringing up Bandera (the hero of the present day Ukraine) as a symbol of Ukies svidomites across the world. You see, it is they who are obsessed with them, not me. With him and playing their “eternal victim” card in hopes that it might somehow trump all opposition to their regular nonsense.
P.S. Russian Duma as a souce of historical data? You are hilarious, AP!
[some historians name the number as high as 3 millions]
Yes, and some historians claim Stalin killed 70 millions. Have a cookie.
[The death rate among the peasants under the czars was appalling 3-5% yearly, with as many as 10% during the famines. I.e. – we are talking a couple of millions per year.]
This is innumerate as well as ignorant.
Is the Russian State Duma a member of the “Russophobic Circles”?
While denying that the Soviet famine was genocide (an arguable but not unreasonable position), it declared “the leadership of the USSR and union republics used repressive measures and grain procurement which aggravated considerably the dire consequences of the crop failure of 1932.”
So you are claiming that in Czarist Russia while peasants were starving, Russian tax authorities were systematically taking food from them?
“Evidence” such as your ridiculous inflation of the 1891-1892 Russian famine death toll from around .5 million to 3 million? Or reducing the Soviet 1932-1933 death toll form 5-7 million to 2.2 million?
And SoLZHEnitsyn said 110 millions. I don’t belive this number either. Nor did I claimed that the number of 3 million is absolutely true one.
Nope – it’s called statistical data. E.g. – Рождаемость и смертность православного населения в Российской Империи в 1889-1891 гг. Всеподданнейший отчёт Обер-Прокурора Святейшего Синода по ведомству Православного Вероисповедания за 1890 и 1891 гг., а также за 1892 и 1893 гг.), Синодальная типография. С.Петербург, 1895 г. and compare to the statistical data from 1884-90 period. In earlier period the annual death rate was c. 2 820 363 per year (3,34%). For 1892 the number is 3 563 398 (3,92%).
Not now, and not entirely. But surely it’s not a good source of historical data.
Peasants in Russian Empire were nearly constantly starwing, were systematically malnutritioned and had to pay taxes and tithes literally with food.
I never calimed the number of 3 million to be absolutely true. As I said, I stick to more conservative estimate of 1.2-1.3 million
And where did you came up with 5-7 millions of famine dead in the USSR? In зал УПА?
Russia in the early 20th century was what would today be known as a Third World or least developedcountry, and with a death rate to match: 30-40/1,000 per annum was entirely typical.
I don’t think anybody here is arguing otherwise. I certainly am not.
And yes, it is true that after the Soviet state stabilized in the 1920s, the death rate would begin to progressively go down and, despite the occasional famine-caused spike, age-adjusted mortality levels would converge to that of First World nations by the late 1950s (before beginning to diverge again from 1965, an inconvenient development that uncritical Soviet fans tend to studiously ignore for some reason just like official Soviet statistics responded by stopping the publication of detailed demographic data, in time-tested sovok fashion).
However, Stalinists don’t tend to have a very good grasp of historical context, and tend to ignore or glide over the following two points:
(1) In demographic terms Russia was typical of the world c. 1900. It was only industrialized Western Europe and its colonial offshoots that had already managed to embark on a pattern of steady reductions in child mortality and increases in life expectancy by that period. But Russia’s stats were typical of most of the world, including the less developed parts of Europe i.e. Iberia, Southern Italy, Japan, Korea, etc., that would go on to become developed in the 20th century. Some of them, such as Korea and Taiwan, – South Korea, usually not necessary to clarify, but I suppose an exception has to be made when arguing with a Stalinist – were in fact substantially less developed than Imperial Russia, but overtook the USSR around the 1980s.
(2) The (il)logically amazing and self-serving assertion/insinuation that Tsarist Russia’s health (education, economic, etc.) trajectory would have remained stuck at those largely preindustrial levels indefinitely, while the entirety of the rest of the world moved on.
“As many as 10% during the famines” would give over 10 million deaths a year in, say, 1891.
[Peasants in Russian Empire were nearly constantly starwing, were systematically malnutritioned]
Bizarre nonsense. Their caloric intake in 1910 matched that of the inhabitants of the FRG in the early fifties.
In this case Lyttenburgh is correct; that Tsarist Russia was malnourished is borne out by the average height statistics.
Caloric intake might have been similar to the 1950s FRG, but Russian peasants did more physical work, lived in a far colder climate, had far higher parasitic load, and their diet was a lot more monotonous.
Of course the point is diminished by the banal fact that the vast majority of countries then were malnourished to some extent, some like those of East and South Asia, more so.
So the whole world was malnourished until the 1950s, because those who grew up then were shorter than later generations? We seem to define the word differently.
Well, yes, actually. Malnutrition tends to be chronic in Malthusian agricultural societies.
Though some were more malnourished than others (on average).
Here’s a famous and largely representative photograph of soldiers from the Eight Nation Alliance:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Troops_of_the_Eight_nations_alliance_1900.jpg
From left to right, that’s: Britain, United States, Australia, India, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan.
(On average 100 years ago Britons were shorter than Americans and Australians, India would have been near the bottom with Japan, but otherwise correlates with reality).
The average height statistics you linked to show that Russians even in the shortest cohorts were about as tall as 19th century western Europeans:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-only-way-is-up-mens-average-height-up-11cm-since-1870s-8794611.html
I’m not sure that I would characterize western Europeans of the 19th century as a malnourished people. Apparently not only nutrition but other factors such as disease and family size impact average height, so increase in height may be due not only to improved nutrition but also discovery and spread of antibiotics and vaccines, and smaller families.
Tajikistan, former Soviet Russian Muslim-majority colony, has population of only nine million people. What makes it unique is the fact that no other Muslim country has as many foreign military boots in it to save its Muslim population from political Islam.
Tajikistan, is home to largest Russian foreign military base with 9,000 military personnel. In addition, it has military boots from United States, France, Israel and even India.
Emomali Rakhmonov like the most western leaders, also see the US-Israel created ISIS as great threat to his regime. In May 2015, Jewish press reported defection of Gen. Gulmurod Khalimov, the head of the Ministry of Interior special forces OMON units to ISIS. Ironically, Khalimov in a video confessed visiting United States for military training three times including his contacts with Judaized Blackwater mercenary militia.
The western pundits accuse Tajikistan as a major heroine smuggling route from Afghanistan since crackdown by Iranian and Pakistani authorities on this multi-billion dollars business while ignoring the fact that the major beneficiaries of this poisonous racket are CIA and Russian Jewish drug mafia.
Tajikistan’s strategic location – bordering China, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan makes the country a playground for the world powers geopolitics. It is also rich in mineral deposits of gold, silver, cadmium, iron, lead, mercury and tin.
Italian explorer, merchant and journalist Marco Polo (1254-1324) called Tajikistan: The Roof of the World.
Emperor Babur, founder of India’s famous Mughal empire came from that region.
Tajikistan is more closer to Iran and Afghanistan historically, religiously and linguistically. Persian is spoken by majority of Tajiks.
https://rehmat1.com/2016/02/07/tajikistan-and-foreign-military-boots/
The principal if not the only argument for his partial Ossetian origin is that the root of his surname, Dzhugashvili, may have come from an Ossetian word (-shvili here is the pure native Georgian word for “son of”). I don’t know much of Georgian and I know only basics of Ossetian, but, as a person who knows well linguistics in general, I can say for sure that such an etymology is highly speculative. The root may have come from any other word as well. Actually, there are more evidences that the root of the surname is a corruption of some other Georgian word.
I think this “Stalin is Ossetian” myth is a clearly Georgian plot. Georgians cannot stand the fact that one of the most prominent and despotic Communist leader of all times was of their stock and of their blood, so they invented some rumours that he was of another stock and, what a coincidence, of a tribe that Georgians hate the most. And, what a more surprising coincidence, the rumours first were made by a runaway Menshevik Georgian, who published a book about Stalin in 1932 in Germany. Too many coincidences to take this seriously.
There are no any evidences that his father was even in part Ossetian, only some rumours. And the rumours were first brought to light by a runaway Menshevik Georgian in 1932, that made the rumours even more dubious. The father was born in a village near Tbilisi, both the parents were speakers of Georgian and Georgian Christians, the surname is clearly Georgian, so there is no reasons to take “Stalin” for anything but ethnic Georgian. Georgians just must settle down and face the bitter fact that one of the bloodiest dictators of the 20th century was theirs.
I think you too idealize both Putin and Stalin.
Stalin wasn’t either right-wing nor left-wing (as if it were possible at all to apply the left-right coordinates to Communists), but was just another dictator who hardly care about anybody but himself and his power, because he knew if he just slip the power out of his hands he would be dead. And in a very intense struggle for the power, he ought to be extremely brutal. He hardly stopped any atrocities and destructions (like killings of Russian priests and destructions of Russian churches, Stalin’s role in that must not be underestimated).
As for Putin we must never forget whom he was and how he has come to power, he was a protege of Yeltsin and the “Family”. And what he has been doing for the last 17 years is protecting the interests of the “Family” (or whatever it can be named) and the oligarchic clique that really owns and rules Russia. That is the continuation of the policy of robbing Russia. Everything “patriotic” or “nationalist” Putin might say or do is just a part of his game for public. You’ve just been tricked by his play.
The power of propaganda and the deliberate information vacuum must not be underestimated. When you are an uneducated peasant or factory worker who hardly can read and write (the majority only attended the three-year primary school, and many didn’t know even that), when the press, the radio, the cinema and the entire culture are totally controled by the state, when even a slightest resentment is brutally prevented and persecuted, you hardly has a chance to think straight, not to say raise your voice against or revolt. And in many cases Stalin did not do much more harm for the common Russians, than it might be done by other communist leaders like Trotsky or Beria. So why to rebel, if nothing would change? If not Stalin somebody else similar would come. The Whites lost anyway years ago, so there were not many alternatives.
And when the war started the dilemma became even more intense. Either to surrender and die in the hands of the enemy, or fight even under the bad leaders and the bad ideology, but at least you would fight for your country and your people. Don’t forget that when a Russian soldier fought against the Nazis he fought not for Stalin or Communism, but for the survival of his family who might live under the occupation or who was killed, then the soldiers just revenged. There was not much propaganda needed to make the Russians fight, you did not have to remind them it everyday, they knew it perfectly themselves.
By contrast, you really needed to try hard to explain the British and the American soldiers what the hell they were doing in Africa, Italy, Normandy or in some obscure island in the middle of nowhere. The fact that they fought quite eagerly makes you much more stumped.
The fact that the Communists might persecute not 100 million, but “just” 5 or 10 million and kill 1 or 2 million of them does not make their cause any better and does not excuse them in any way.
And their laws were hardly justified. I’m not only speaking about things like Article 58 “Anti-Soviet activity” (do you really think it might be justified?), but other crazy laws like persecution of children for stoling wheat from the fields or imprisoning of factory workers for being late for work, absenteeism or alleged sabotage.