41–50 of 91 posts
Not to mention that many people in the west have had more than a nibble on a fingernail when it's presented itself. Yet again there is a failure to mention that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No famines were ever caused by western capitalist powers in any of their colonies or vassal states.
It's useful to distinguish between deaths due to malevolence, neglect, and other factors. Capitalist countries have killed plenty of people through malevolence or neglect. The Bengal Famine if 1943, for example, was caused by a combination of overpopulation, British imposed inter-province trade restrictions, Japanese occupation of Burma, and diversion of shipping capacity by the British for WWII. It was not, however,…
I think the main point of the story should be the famine rather than the supposed cases of cannibalism. I don't think it's that unheard of for people to resort to eating human flesh (usually already dead) when starving. And we're talking about millions of people starving to death. I'd be shocked if there were no cases of cannibalism. Of course it does make for a pretty sensational title and probably better book sales…
It's hard to get an emotional reaction out of bare numbers and facts. If you tell people "x million people starved to death in a famine", we all intellectually agree that it's horrible, but it doesn't seem shocking. If you tell people, "no seriously, here are some stories about people cannibalizing each other because they were starving from a famine", it gives you an emotional gut punch because you get a stronger gra…
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> this was a mere 4 years after the socialist revolution Also in 1970s in Kampuchea, the 4 years from 1975 to 1979 when the Communist Party of Kampuchea was in power, they managed to get 21% to 24% of the country's population killed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_rule_of_Cambodia
1921 was not Soviet Union. Soviet Union was established in 1922.
While that is techically correct, the best kind of correct, it is bit misleading not to mention that it was Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic that existed for some years during the Russian civil war and formed the Soviet Union in 1922. For all intents and purposes it is the same political entity.
And “Soviet” as an adjective describes organs of the RSFSR, those of any of the other soviet republics that came to constitute the USSR, or of the USSR itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this was a mere 4 years after the socialist revolution Also in 1970s in Kampuchea, the 4 years from 1975 to 1979 when the Communist Party of Kampuchea was in power, they managed to get 21% to 24% of the country's population killed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge_rule_of_Cambodia
Pol Pot and his regime were brutal. To minimize the possibility of dissent, they went after the educated class. Sometimes, simply wearing glasses would be enough to get you killed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to get an emotional reaction out of bare numbers and facts. If you tell people "x million people starved to death in a famine", we all intellectually agree that it's horrible, but it doesn't seem shocking. If you tell people, "no seriously, here are some stories about people cannibalizing each other because they were starving from a famine", it gives you an emotional gut punch because you get a stronger gra…
Also sickening is the understanding that the massive horror of the famine (in large part a result of the policies of confiscation of goods) was seized upon as an opportunity to punish the suffering peasants and diminish the authority of the Orthodox Church. I'm troubled there wasn't there an ounce of humanity among leaders, those who would rather grab power than alleviate the suffering. But then, to admit the scale o…
That is the state policy of forced buying at fixed price which on practice basically was outright confiscation of food from peasants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka#Soviet_prodraz... Beside everything else (like massive loss of work capable men and horses (there were no tractors back then) due to WWI and the Civil War), the important point here is that usually everything was taken away, including that…
"Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine" is a related book, which covers this phenomenon in 1950s China. It's not a pleasant topic. Some people ate their children to survive. It's interesting though how very well meaning utopian policies can lead to this result. Planting the seed 5 ft beneath the ground will result in great crops because the seed will have to struggle and thus only the best seed will make it to harvest.…
It's interesting though how very well meaning utopian policies The largest tragedy of the 21st century is that people still think these policies and these people were 'well-meaning' or 'it just went a bit wrong'. It seems that only when we defeat murderous totalitarians militarily that we understand them for what they are.
It’s awfully hard to imagine that Mao actually was hoping that people would die, and that they would die en masse of starvation: even if he was strictly self-serving and heartless, he must have known in the back of his mind that huge populations of starving people are unpredictable and difficult to govern. The only way I can picture this taking place is that he (like all dictators) successfully instilled such fear in his direct reports that they never gave him bad news or challenged what he thought sounded like good ideas at the time.