• bioemerl@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    War resulted in famine my ass.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933

    And famine is just the start. If you think any government is competent enough to handle the orchestration of a system is large and complicated as a modern economy you are hilariously mistaken.

    I wouldn’t even know where to start. Basically every single item in your house runs through some sort of supply chain that would get fucked up if we tried to manage them all through some central planned economy.

    • Raphael@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same page:

      Slaughter of livestock

      During collectivization, the peasantry was required to relinquish their farm animals to government authorities. Many chose to slaughter their livestock rather than give them up to collective farms. In the first two months of 1930, kulaks killed millions of cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and goats, with the meat and hides being consumed and bartered. In 1934, the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) reported that 26.6 million head of cattle and 63.4 million sheep had been lost.[68] In response to the widespread slaughter, the Sovnarkom issued decrees to prosecute “the malicious slaughtering of livestock” (Russian: хищнический убой скота).[69]

      Resistance

      Thousands of Kazakhs violently resisted the collectivization campaign with weapons left over by the white army with 8 rebellions occurring in 1930 alone. [97] In the Mangyshlak Peninsula 15,000 rebels resisted between 1929 and 1931.

      Also

      Some kulaks responded by carrying out acts of sabotage such as killing livestock and destroying crops intended for consumption by factory workers

      They fought against collectivization thinking something would happen. They unleashed a famine upon themselves.

      EDIT: This part is so ridiculous I need to repeat it:

      reported that 26.6 million head of cattle and 63.4 million sheep had been lost.

      So much milk lost, could have fed so many people, you can bet there were millions of chickens too, millions of eggs that were never laid, kill the cattle, kill the natural cycle of reproduction, tonnes and tonnes of meat that were never born.

      Some reactionaries BURNED FARMS to oppose communism, no wonder they starved.

      • bioemerl@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        You do a very good job cherry picking, but all of these things together couldn’t starve a nation.

        At the end of the day what killed the Soviet Union was the fact that they.

        1. Created a system or the people producing the food weren’t making shit and had no incentive to actually work.

        2. Opted to try to blame rich people instead of their own shitty system for causing the famine.

        • Raphael@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Killing millions of cattle and burning crops couldn’t starve a nation, hmm. OK, supremacist.

          • bioemerl@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The cattle part could could cause shortages, but at the end of the day when you don’t have cattle you can still feed people perfectly fine.

            You won’t get to eat nearly as much meat, but you can still eat.

            I’m mainly referring to the fact that you’re trying to blame the rebellion from the evil rich people for the cause of the famine instead of the very real economic misincentices created by the Soviet Union

            • Raphael@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Burning crops, how many times do I need to repeat this part. They were also actively sabotaging collective farms.

              • bioemerl@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                And how many times do I have to repeat this part? The amount of sabotage going on was almost certainly not enough to cause mass famine.

                Mass famine would require mass action. If there was enough rebellion to starve the country, it would have deposed the Soviet Union entirely.

                The maximum number on the people actually having rebellions was what? 150,000? That’s nothing.

                No, the famine was caused by misaligned economic incentives which fucked the entire system.

                Also don’t forget that a very similar famine resulted from mao trying the same shit. This is not a uniquely Soviet phenomenon.

                • Raphael@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Millions of… millions of cattle killed.

                  Mao’s famine was caused by killing birds, because he did not listen to science. We must always listen to science. That thing could’ve happened if China were a Christian Theocracy. There have been countless famines in history but you only care about communist ones.

                  • bioemerl@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    Mao’s famine was caused by killing birds, because he did not listen to science.

                    You’re missing about 10 other bad decisions in there, and you’ll never guess what those 10 decisions were related to.

                    Millions of… millions of cattle killed.

                    Again. If we killed all the animals right now in every country in the world we would have…

                    More food.

                    Animals eat food. They provide less than they eat, so if you took all the food that would have gone towards cattle and instead put them towards humans, you’d see people eating more, not less.

                    I’m not totally going to say that that wasn’t a factor, but at the end of the day the famine in the Soviet Union still had a root cause.

                    Say it with me and say it again.

                    Shitty misaligned economic incentives.