While often disparaged these days, the US has long been one of the most charitable countries in the world both in terms of private citizen contributions and public government aid. Glad to see some of the good deeds finally being recognized!
That only shows government aid. The US is famous for its vast private charity.
Just Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg together will give away over 3x more than all the OECD countries on that list combined (on an annual basis). Or roughly equivalent to what Japan - the world's third largest economy - will do every ~35 years total.
Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg, Bezos = plausibly $450 billion in combined charity over time (assuming Bezos spends ~$20 billion on space). France at the government level does $9 billion per year by comparison; it'll take France 40-50 years to match just those four private US citizens.
No other nation in world history has seen its richest citizens routinely give the bulk of their wealth away (from Carnegie & Rockefeller, to Howard Hughes, to Gates & Buffett). The scale of private US charity is unprecedented and amounts to trillions of dollars over a century of time.
Contrast that with eg Germany, where 65% of their billionaires inherited their wealth, or Europe broadly where dynastic wealth is extremely common:
The parent said that the US government was one of the most charitable too and I was disputing that. There are some extremously generous private donors.
The US has always been disparaged for policy missteps that have resulted in much destruction around the world. The only reason it seems more evident now is probably due to easy access to information through the internet and the ability to share "disparaging" viewpoints more widely.
Well consider the extreme history absurdism going on here, that is being upvoted.
A very small contingent of US soldiers is involved in an allied invasion of Russia. Mostly those US soldiers do nothing, two hundred die (half from disease), they go home a very short time later having done almost nothing at all in terms of conflict. Then in this thread, that is being blamed for the forced Communist famine deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians.
It's the ultimate combination of Communism apologism (apologizing for the mass genocide and slaughter of millions of people under Lenin's policies), and blame America for everything'ism. And all of that is happening in the thread for an article that is about how Americans altruistically contributed historically vast quantities of food to keep millions of other people from starving to death.
I suspect what you are seeing is a reaction, or over-reaction, to how Americans have long censored our own history. Once you figure out the official (accepted, schoolbook, popular) depiction of history edits out the nastiest bits in favor cheerleading, the presumption that anything "left out" should be taken in the worst possible light comes naturally. This is especially true when the information in question ("The US invaded Russia? And we just dont mention it?!) seems so potentially loaded and relevant to current world events.
>Then in this thread, that is being blamed for the forced Communist famine deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians.
That sounds more like the famine of 1932 rather than the famine of 1921 being discussed here. In 32, you can directly point to policies put in place responsible for the famine. In 21, much of it was due to civil war that the US participated in by providing troops and resources.
The war materials they were giving to the Whites to help them fight the civil war. This isn't controversial, the US openly backed the Whites in the war.
That was the original reason for sending supplies to Russia and it had been going on for years. This expedition was after the fall of the Tzarists government, after Russia had exited WWI, and started months before the armistice.
And again, this is not all the actions taken by America in the conflict.
That's a pretty tough sell. The White terror was pretty terrible during the war, supposedly killing more people than the counterpart Red terror. And given the antisemitic nature of that killing, there are some incredibly grim possibilities for what the following years would have looked like.
That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook...
Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants.
And by the mid-40s USSR was quite antisemitic anyway, so I find it rather doubtful that a victory by any other party would have been worse than bolsheviks.
>That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook...
You really think a Soviet textbook mentioned the Red Terror?
>Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants.
Yes, there are hypotheticals that play out better than actual events. There are also many that play out similarly or worse.
Given the main warlords controlling the White forces, winning the war probably starts with a massive purge, fairly common in those situations. Those warlords would also have more in common with Facist Italy and Nazi Germany, leading to a potentially terrifying thirties.
Russian history is filled with tyrannical cruelty, before and after the Soviet era too. That wasn't likely to end with a civil war.
I had to study Soviet textbooks. They definitly did mention it. Of course as a completely necessary response to those naughty Whites, and they completely glossed over concentration camps, mass executions etc. etc., but they did mention Red Terror.
Main warlords were generally tsarist generals who may or may not have went to the Provisional Government side, but at least they were generally somewhat educated and somewhat reasonable people. Which, of course, never stopped anyone from committing all kinds of atrocities, but at least one could expect that they would not, after the war was over, engage in mass slaughter for no logical reason whatsoever, which is what bolsheviks did.
Many ( most? ) of the killed were not "red" or even ethnically Russian ( see for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor ). Many of the "reds" were not ethnically Russian either. Your "of their own" doesn't really makes sense.
Hmm, this article doesn't mention the allied invasion of russia (of which the US was a major part) that ended in 1920. Sure, the US was a great humanitarian but also contributed to their being a famine!
This really isn’t correct. The civil war - as well as the failure of agriculture during the great war was the primary mover. Us forces never moved inland from the ports that they were dropping supplies off of. It’s a common meme, but not much more. Other powers the Japanese and the British in particular did more.
The American aid was so effective that it propped up the Lenin regime, and got them through the last set of emergencies at the end of the Russian civil wars. It also made Hoover a household name back in the states.
Ironically the biggest force both for and against the Bolsheviks was the Germans. The bankrolled the communists - in a way that had direct echoes of present day - then supported the whites and then again signed a absurdly lucrative trade deal that saved Lenin’s ass.
And you don't mention that once the Bolsheviks won the civil war, that tens of millions of Russians were murdered, put in concentration camps, starved under communist rule.
edit: downvoters, feel free to correct what I'm saying if you can. I'm going by the factual history of what actually happened, what role the US actually played in the conflict (barely any), and the trivial scale of that role.
It's not mentioned because the US was not a major part of any invasion into Russia and did not contribute to the famine. Factually the US involvement in that conflict was something below trivial. Although feel free to explain how a couple hundred US soldiers contributed to the forced famine of a nation of tens of millions of people.
Though I disagree with you I gave you an upvote -- the right way for people to disagree is to comment, so thank you for adding that edit and alerting me to the downvoting.
I agree that in a country the size of russia the counterrevolutionary invasion was, in a sense, trivial (as had been the counterrevolutionary invation of revolutionary France). However it had various long term consequences in terms of policy, resentment, pride etc which, sad to say, do effect politics in international relations today as well.
However on the subject of the invasion itself, there were about 150K invaders of various nationalities (about 100K in the north, of which the US personnel was about 10%). However US materiel support was substantial, as they had barely entered WWI and had plenty to supply. in addition the blosheviks -- not particularly well organized or rational) were quite distracted by this force. You can see from the treaty of Brest-Lutovsk that they were quite eager to be shed of foreign obligations, wanting to consolidate domestic control. I don't claim the invasion was the cause of the famine, nor do I believe the bolsheviks would have been competent to deal with it without the invasion, but it has a significant distractor as you can see from their records.
But to present the article as the US being the rescuing heros without mentioning their bloody opposition in the years immediately leading up to the famine I do consider rediculous.
The fundamental problem I have with the premise, is that the US soldiers played no role in the actual famine and its causes. The US role in that conflict was as glorified guard duty.
Lenin's policy of prodrazvyorstka, was not caused by the small US involvement in that conflict. Lenin's land & production seizure policies were also not caused by US supplies to the allies in WW1.
"Unlike his Allied counterparts, General Graves believed their mission in Siberia was to provide protection for American-supplied property and to help the Czechoslovak Legion evacuate Russia, and that it did not include fighting against the Bolsheviks. Repeatedly calling for restraint, Graves often clashed with commanders of British, French and Japanese forces, who also had troops in the region and who wanted him to take a more active part in the military intervention in Siberia."
Of course in this case US were rescuing heroes... And just how bloody was their opposition given the very limited effort expended.
Besides, would it be US' fault that by 1945 Germans were rather starving, too? After all, armed opposition to communism is no less justified than armed opposition to nazis.
What "bloody opposition"? Proof please. The fact that we got involved on the side of the Royalist does not prove we oppressed anyone. The largest damage ever done to the population of the USSR was always by their own government, FULL STOP.
I think "Bloody opposition" in this context is a sensationalized way to say "military involvement", it doesn't refer to the magnitude of the blood spilt nor of oppression.
“But to present the article as the US being the rescuing heros without mentioning their bloody opposition in the years immediately leading up to the famine I do consider rediculous.”
I do not think so. Pretty much is an direct statement accusing the US of it.
They extracted Lenin from Switzerland and transported him in a sealed train ("like a bacillus") during the war in the hope he would destabilize Russia. Which he did.
If you were googling for it, maybe Google knows something interesting about you that it redirects you to nazi sites?
Just because some nazis might want to blame only Jews for forced Soviet famines it does not mean that Soviets did not exterminate millions of their own citizens, often by forced starvation.
Uh, the same Wiki? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%9... Given how many other famines communists had unleashed, pretty much none of which was caused by big bad American intervention, it is still surprising that the only links you can find are from some fringe sites.
"According to the official Bolshevik position, which is still maintained by some modern Marxists, the rich peasants (kulaks) withheld their surplus grain to preserve their lives;[2] statistics indicate that most of the grain and the other food supplies passed through the black market.[3][4][5] The Bolsheviks believed peasants were actively trying to undermine the war effort. The Black Book of Communism asserts that Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain in retaliation for this "sabotage", leading to widespread peasant revolts.[6] In 1920, Lenin ordered increased emphasis on food requisitioning from the peasantry."
And I'm still not seeing any claim of "forced famine". Did you forget to edit the page before copying it?
All your quote says is that some people claim one side was to blame and some people claim another side was to blame.
More interesting is that you don't consider to be a "fringe source" the far-right bible The Black Book of Communism - a publication discredited and disowned even by its main authors - which in order to fabricate a high enough death count to paint the Nazis as not so bad after all and the Holocaust as nothing special, classifies as victims the likes of Nazi/SS military personnel and anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalist militias who murdered thousands of Jews in countless pogroms.
Oh, I am sorry. I did not realize that you are defending communists. I guess killing more people than Nazis is OK, as long as they were the wrong kind of people...
And seriously, if the best criticism of The Black Book is that it compares Nazis and communists, I do not see what the problem is... other than that communists are quite a bit worse. Criticism of "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union" is laughable on its face.
So I guess neither Russians, nor Ukrainians, nor Kazakhs, who probably have not even heard about Jews' existence, nor other millions of people slaughtered by communists count. Only Jews? That's not much different from making excuses for Nazis. Except, of course, that they had killed far fewer people.
Exact numbers in the Black Book might be inaccurate -- unlike Germans, Soviets did not keep precise accouinting, but even the alleged discrediting by its authors boils down to quibbling over whether it was the exact 100 million (a suspicious number indeed), or 93 million, or maybe only 67 million. Other criticism is just pathetic bleatinbgs from fellow travellers who have as much credibility on crimes of communists as David Irving has on the Holocaust.
As a little amusing fact, Roland Freisler was one of those people taking last grain away from Russian peasants. But then the revolving door betweem commies and nazis was wide open back then https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D1%80...
> So I guess neither Russians, nor Ukrainians, nor Kazakhs, who probably have not even heard about Jews' existence, nor other millions of people slaughtered by communists count.
Anti-Semitic Ukrainian mass murderers don't count, no. Nor do Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs or any other useful idiots (that the Nazis considered untermenschen) who signed up to help Germany carry out the Final Solution and Generalplan Ost (until it was their turn).
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that if the vast majority of people, communist or not, disagree with your belief that Nazi Germany wasn't as bad as the USSR, then you might be wrong.
As a former citizen of the USSR, as you seem to claim in another post, how much better do you seriously imagine your life would have been, assuming you even made it to conception, under Nazi rule?
> Exact numbers in the Black Book might be inaccurate -- unlike Germans, Soviets did not keep precise accouinting,
So because it's not possible to know the true number it's okay to just make one (or several) up and act like it's historical fact?
> quibbling over whether it was the exact 100 million or 93 million, or maybe only 67
If a difference of 33 million doesn't matter, and is mere quibbling, what's the motivation for even bothering to come up with a number at all?
Answer: to make the argument that the Nazis and the Holocaust weren't uniquely bad.
What kind of person, do you think, would bother making the effort to do that?
What does Kazakh famine of 1919 [0] has to do with Germans??!!Maybe you should not be the one talking about useful idiots. Really, Ukrainians (and Jews) killed by MGB troops operating under OUN-UPA flag have nothing to do with Germans either. And how about the famine that this thread is about? How many Russians could have possibly cooperated with Germans 20 years before the war even started?
I guess, not being a former Soviet citizen you have no idea what it was. And how good Jews had it there. You could try asking Solomon Mikhoels [1]. Oh, wait, Stalin had him killed. Maybe check with some prominent Soviet Jewish doctors? Oh, they got wrapped up in the Doctor's Plot [2] and barely survived (some of them, anyway) because Stalin croaked before Jews, as was the plan, could have been loaded in railroad cars (for their own protection against the just wrath of the Soviet people, of course) and sent to camps in Siberia.
Just because Soviets didn't use poison gas on Jews (and those Russian peasants who did get gassed in the Tambov rebellion [3] obviously did deserve it, after all some of them may not have liked Jews and would have cooperated with Germans, have they lived another 20 years!) does not, by any stretch of imagination mean that communists were an iota better than Nazis. They just slaughtered people (far more people than Nazis ever managed) by a different criteria.
Your insistence on excusing mass murder because some of those murdered might have, at some point in the future, possibly, had they survived, killed someone else isn't much different from what Holocaust deniers do. Does show where antisemites come from, though.
> What does Kazakh famine of 1919 [0] has to do with Germans??!!
You didn't mention "Kazakh famine of 1919", you mentioned "Russians, Ukrainians and Kazakhs" in reply to my posts about Nazis being classed as victims by the The Black Book Of Communism.
> I guess, not being a former Soviet citizen you have no idea what it was.
You were a Soviet citizen in 1919? Because that's the only way you know any better than I do.
What part of the USSR are you from anyway? You seem quite cagey about it, despite thinking being born in some corner of the largest state on Earth 27+ years ago somehow wins you an argument by default.
> And how good Jews had it there.
So you want to make treatment of Jews part of your Naziism is better than Communism argument too?
> does not, by any stretch of imagination mean that communists were an iota better than Nazis
Then, for the second time of asking, explain how your life would have been improved by your country being under Nazi occupation rather than living under Communism.
> Your insistence on excusing mass murder because some of those murdered might have, at some point in the future, possibly, had they survived, killed someone else
Feel free to quote anything I've written that's even remotely close to the ballpark of anything even approaching that.
> isn't much different from what Holocaust deniers do.
This from someone who could be doing literally anything on the internet, and chooses to spend time minimizing the number of people killed by the Nazis - direct quote from you: "[the Nazis] killed far fewer people" - which is exactly what Holocaust deniers do.
> Does show where antisemites come from, though.
You should probably clarify this statement, because it sounds like you're justifying people becoming anti-Semites. Are you?
>You didn't mention "Kazakh famine of 1919", you mentioned "Russians, Ukrainians and Kazakhs" in reply to my posts about Nazis being classed as victims by the The Black Book Of Communism.
And you replied with "they deserved it". Obviously, noone can expect a commie sympathiser to actually know, or care, who was slaughtered by commies and when. But people who do not want to end up at the next Nuremberg trial consder collective responsibility to be a little bit out of fashion these days.
> You were a Soviet citizen in 1919? Because that's the only way you know any better than I do.
There was no Soviet Union in 1919. It would logically follow, though, that there are some Russian citizens who were alive in 1919 among my ancestors. They told stories.
> What part of the USSR are you from anyway? You seem quite cagey about it, despite thinking being born in some corner of the largest state on Earth 27+ years ago somehow wins you an argument by default.
I didn't know thjat not answering a question that was never asked is being cagey. Why don't you straight out asdk what my ethnicity is?
Also, yes, having first-hand experience does win some arguments with ignorant kids easily.
> So you want to make treatment of Jews part of your Naziism is better than Communism argument too?
It is you who reduces everything to treatment of Jews.
> Then, for the second time of asking, explain how your life would have been improved by your country being under Nazi occupation rather than living under Communism.
Not everything in life is about you.
> Feel free to quote anything I've written that's even remotely close to the ballpark of anything even approaching that.
Umm, any of your messages in this thread? Because that's exactly what you have been writing.
> This from someone who could be doing literally anything on the internet, and chooses to spend time minimizing the number of people killed by the Nazis - direct quote from you: "[the Nazis] killed far fewer people" - which is exactly what Holocaust deniers do.
Actually, Holocaust deniers go on and on that nothing happened, and if something happened it was very minor, and if anyone got killed, they surely deserved it. Which is exactly your line ofd reasoning here. Even applied to at least hundreds of thuosands of people killed before there even were any nazis in existence.
Also, apparently sometimes one does need to point out obvious and commonly accepted truths. Like how even the low-end estimate from those critics of The Black Book that you mention put the number of victims of communism at ~3 times that of nazis. Granbted, commies had more time to go at it.
> You should probably clarify this statement, because it sounds like you're justifying people becoming anti-Semites. Are you?
As nicely as it wuild've fed your persecution complex, no, they would not take me, if you knowq what I mean.
The only person who has said "deserved it" in this discussion is you, so I don't know why you're pretending to be quoting me.
I said they - people who fought on the side of the Nazis, particularly against their own country, in order to enable Nazi genocide programs - don't count as victims of Communism.
> There was no Soviet Union in 1919.
I didn't say there was a Soviet Union in 1919. There was Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1919, which as a "Soviet citizen" I assumed you would be aware of.
> It would logically follow, though, that there are some Russian citizens who were alive in 1919 among my ancestors.
How would that logically follow? You haven't said that you're Russian, despite me asking where you're from multiple times.
> I didn't know thjat not answering a question that was never asked is being cagey.
I literally just asked you - again - what part of the USSR you are from and again you didn't answer.
> Also, yes, having first-hand experience does win some arguments with ignorant kids easily.
To have even first hand memories, let alone experience, of even the most recent subjects you've talked about you'd have to be about 75 years old. Are you?
> It is you who reduces everything to treatment of Jews.
Nice to know that you think the topic of the treatment of Jews constitutes reducing an argument, even in a reply where you were criticizing the anti-Semitism of Stalin (the same Stalin who set up a Jewish homeland on Soviet soil, and was the first person in the world to recognize Israel).
Ah wait, I forgot, you're arguing the Nazis were better than Communists, aren't you. And the only way to do that is attribute all deaths on Communist soil to malice on the part of Communism (then add whatever it takes to reach "100 million") while ignoring deliberate, systematic and industrial-scale human extermination programs and policies - absolutely unheard of anywhere else in history, before or since - enacted by the Nazis.
> Not everything in life is about you.
No, the question was about you. Specifically how your life would have been improved had you lived under Nazi occupation, since you argue that what you lived under - Communism - is "quite a bit worse" (your words) than Nazism.
> Actually, Holocaust deniers go on and on that nothing happened, and if something happened it was very minor
As I said, like spending their time arguing that what the Nazis did was very minor - "they killed far fewer people" - compared to something else.
Again, what kind of person would even think of bothering to exonerate or rehabilitate the Nazis in such a way?
> Like how even the low-end estimate from those critics of The Black Book that you mention put the number of victims of communism at ~3 times that of nazis.
Hah, "those critics"? You mean the actual authors of the book.
Let's repeat how absolutely inane and insane this is:
The authors of the book could not even decide amongst themselves on which imaginary - but definitely Worse Than The Nazis(tm) - number was historically factual, to the point where they themselves denounced their own book as fictitious.
Meanwhile MAGA-heads, up to and including the White House itself, cite the number that even the authors - even you - think is going too far (not because it's made up, but because it looks made up).
So which number, from the several provided by this fine example of historical research, do you think is true?
Since only one number can be true, we know for a certain fact that most of the numbers given have to be false. So why believe any of them?
> As nicely as it wuild've fed your persecution complex, no, they would not take me, if you knowq what I mean.
>>Anti-Semitic Ukrainian mass murderers don't count, no. Nor do Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs or any other useful idiots (that the Nazis considered untermenschen) who signed up to help Germany carry out the Final Solution and Generalplan Ost (until it was their turn).
You wrote this, not me. Collective responsibility went out of fashion long time ago.
>I said they - people who fought on the side of the Nazis, particularly against their own country, in order to enable Nazi genocide programs - don't count as victims of Communism.
How many people helped by ARA fought for nazis?
> I literally just asked you - again - what part of the USSR you are from and again you didn't answer.
Moscow. Do you need a street address as well?
> To have even first hand memories, let alone experience, of even the most recent subjects you've talked about you'd have to be about 75 years old. Are you?
You do not need to be anywhere near that old to have experience with, for example, Soviet antisemitism.
> Nice to know that you think the topic of the treatment of Jews constitutes reducing an argument, even in a reply where you were criticizing the anti-Semitism of Stalin (the same Stalin who set up a Jewish homeland on Soviet soil, and was the first person in the world to recognize Israel).
Yeah. I heard there were even a few Jews who went there without being forcibly put into railcars.
> hile ignoring deliberate, systematic and industrial-scale human extermination programs and policies - absolutely unheard of anywhere else in history, before or since - enacted by the Nazis.
Actually, well-heard of, if you care to listen, in every country where communists came to power. You may want to look up one Asian politician with potential. He was really good at making sure his citizens would never engage in any atrocities you would not6 approve of.
> No, the question was about you. Specifically how your life would have been improved had you lived under Nazi occupation, since you argue that what you lived under - Communism - is "quite a bit worse" (your words) than Nazism.
Yes, I noticed, you seem to think that as long as you and yours are fine, it does not matter if millions of other people are killed.
> As I said, like spending their time arguing that what the Nazis did was very minor - "they killed far fewer people" - compared to something else.
Are you saying that those who had killed more people are perfectly fine, as long as they were killing people you do not particularly approve of?
> Again, what kind of person would even think of bothering to exonerate or rehabilitate the Nazis in such a way?
Does not seem to stop you from exonerating communists, who did kill more people.
> The authors of the book could not even decide amongst themselves on which imaginary - but definitely Worse Than The Nazis(tm) - number
Yes, I did notice, you do not consider those killed to be people (hmm, what does it remind one of?), certainly not worth counting.
> Meanwhile MAGA-heads, up to and including the White House itself, cite the number that even the authors - even you - think is going too far (not because it's made up, but because it looks made up).
What does it have to do with anything?
> Since only one number can be true, we know for a certain fact that most of the numbers given have to be false. So why believe any of them?
Yeah, I have heard there are quite a few people who do not think that many Jews were killed by nazis. And there are different numbers, too. Are you sure this is the direction you want to go in?
> I don't. What, specifically, do you mean?
Who, do you think, those people really do not like to associate with?
I'm not sure what point you're missing here. If you invade another country, particularly with the intention of commiting genocide there, and you get killed for doing so, you are not a victim of the country you were trying to wipe out, or its ideology, you're a victim of your own actions.
> Yes, I noticed, you seem to think that as long as you and yours are fine, it does not matter if millions of other people are killed.
Okay, explain how the lives of the majority of people in Russia would have been improved under Nazi occupation than under Communism.
> Are you saying that those who had killed more people are perfectly fine, as long as they were killing people you do not particularly approve of?
"Communism" has not killed more people. That's simply a fantasy based on an absurd publication denounced as fictitious even by its own authors.
> communists, who did kill more people
So you keep insisting. Who are you trying to convince, me or you?
> you do not consider those killed to be people [...] worth counting.
I don't believe people who were not killed by Communism should be counted as being killed by Communism.
> What does it have to do with anything?
What does any of this thread have to do with your incorrect insistence, supported by no credible source, that the famine of 1921 was a "forced famine"?
> I have heard there are quite a few people who do not think that many Jews were killed by nazis. And there are different numbers, too
And do you accept any of their different numbers?
> Who, do you think, those people really do not like to associate with?
Then another famine was created to sell wheat to pay Americans for factories. It is usually shown as Ukrainian genocide, but when you look at absolute numbers, large areas of greater Russia and present-day Kazakhstan were affected to the same extent.
This article makes no mention of the role the Wilson administration likely played in creating the famine to begin with. Following 1917, anglo-american support of fascist paramilitary groups in Russia led to the bloodiest civil war in history.
1. The famine occurred tens of thousands of kilometers from where US forces landed.
2. Fascism did not exist in 1917. The whites were extremely diverse, ranging from royalists to outright socialists.
3. The United States role in starting the Russian Civil war was minimal at beast. The main catalyst was the Bolshevik party seizing power a few months after losing the Russian Constituent Assembly election.
4. The Russian civil war likely had less deaths than the Chinese Civil War, and unquestionably less deaths than the Taiping Rebellion.
The articles makes no mention of it, because the famine was directly caused by Lenin's government forcibly removing farmers from their own land and taking state control of food production and distribution. The famine occured several years after the Russian civil war was already over.
The Wilson Administration played no role in making Lenin and the nascent Communist system seize control of farm land, intentionally starve millions of people to death by stealing their food, and seize control of most food production and distribution.
It was directly caused by Lenin's prodrazvyorstka, and began formally in early 1919 and gradually spread to every form of food and food production over the following years:
From the article you linked, "The term is commonly associated with war communism during the Russian Civil War when it was introduced by the Bolshevik government. However Bolsheviks borrowed the idea from the grain razvyorstka introduced in the Russian Empire during World War I, in 1916."
The point being made that this has something to do with Lenin and communism "directly" is ignoring the context. The context is that this famine, as well as the revolution were caused by the extreme failures of the Tsarist rule, compounded with the pawn role Russian Empire was given in the World War I. Russian Empire was used a supplier of the Entente in both grain, and ground forces.
You can perhaps blame Lenin for the famine, but Lenin has steered the country out of the World War, in which Russia would have been the loser, regardless of which side won.
Fascist paramilitaries in 1917 is rather creative reinterpretation of history.
So is the idea that forces opposing the communist plague were any less legitimate than bolsheviks. Of all the participants in the civil war, bolsheviks were the least legitimate, anbd the most blood-thirsty.
Wait, so somebody actively tried to kill the scourge of communism in it womb, and you say it like it's a bad thing?!
Maybe that civil war should've been bloodier, if only the other side could have won... it would have spared the rest of the world at least (hint: Eastern Europe) from the hideous ideology and politics that spread from Rusia and infested them and dragged them down for decades after decades.
Please don't use this site for refighting old ideological battles, regardless of how right you are or feel. There's nothing more destructive of the intellectual curiosity that is HN's raison d'être.
OK. Sorry. I said it in a very over the top and inflammatory way, in a sort of "ideological trolling" way. Anyway, thanks for the civil reply and for me still having an account :) I'll try to refrain from using HN when I'm too bored/annoyed to say anything of value and not too inflammatory.
You can't really look at history in a compartmentalized manner like this, or rather, I guess I'm arguing that your "maybe" is closer to "probably not". If we're going to explore hypotheticals, it is very likely that without the harsh policies of forced industrialization in the USSR at the hands of Stalin that Russia would not have been in a position to resist Nazi Germany. Which would spell a worse fate for Eastern Europe at the hands of the Nazis (extermination, enslavement of the Slavic races, etc), not to mention a much bigger problem for the rest of the world in terms of dealing with Hitler.
It is also quite possible that without USSR to run interference in Weimar, and Stalin's support for NSDAP, nazis might not have come to power, or would have fewer resources to work with.
It is also not a given that Russia would not have industrialized even by more reasonable means.
Russia is in a geographical position where it will always have pretensions on Eastern Europe. Communism was a veneer for imperialism, and if it weren't for NATO and the EU, the same would happen today.
You realize that communism didn't drag Russia down but actually improved their quality of life from the reign of the Czars right? They were an unindustrialized starving shithole and became 2nd world power. Communism was far from perfect, but it was a step forward at least up until the mid 1950s.
"it was a step forward" that is no way to move forward. Setting aside political ideology it was one of the most murderous regiemes the planet has ever seen. For the tens of millions who it intentionally starved to death, worked to death in the gulag, or just summarily murdered it was certainly not better than living in an undeveloped shithole. For them its forward movement was only toward the grave.
Imagine all the good that might have been done by these millions if their human dignity were upheld and they were allowed to live. Perhaps one of them would have developed a great medical breakthrough. Imagine the inumerable works of art and music, theater that might have been made. Imagine the things they could have built and done to make the world a better place. If they had children and grand-children what of their potential contributions? Russia might actually have become the greatest world power.
Fair enough, combined all purposive deaths, though hotly debated, per wikipedia under Stalin alone the number ranges from 8 to 61 million. So my tens of millions in that context is not out of line though safer to say millions. Either way its abhorrent.
Unindustrialized? Sure. Starving? You could add up the death counts of all known famines in Russia's pre-Bolshevik history and you end up with no more than half the amount dead in just the famine referenced in OP. And that's largely due to the policies implemented by Lenin[1] to ensure that food went primarily to supporters of the Bolsheviks.
How about the famine of 1932-1933[2][3] in which ~10 million (the number is disputed, but when it varies by millions, the point is made) died due to dekulakization[4], in which those farmers that had proved to be competent enough to gather some wealth after having been liberated by the Tsars a half-century earlier were brutally raped and murdered. Guess what happens when you kill all the competent farmers?
You've said that it was a "step forward at least up until the mid 1950's", meaning during Lenin and Stalin's reign? Do some damned reading[5] before you make claims like this.
I'm going to assume that you are just reaching out for counterfacts without being particularly well-versed on the history here, because the Russian Duma was, from inception to the revolution, a very bad joke. It was only barely tolerated by Nicholas, and dissolved for years at a time whenever it tried to compel the autocracy toward meaningful reforms. That parliament has a very great deal to do with why events took the radical course they did - it effectively discredited everyone who tried to work within the system.
Things had been on the up and up for the commoners in Russia since ~1860s, and Nicholas II was a relatively fair minded ruler. His biggest flaw was a thirst to maintain power, even though he objectively was impressed with constitutional monarchy. If he had let Russia transition peacefully into that form of government, we could have avoided communism.
In line with the same type of intentionally forgotten history, US investors and business persons built and provided a large portion of the Soviet industrial capabilities prior to WW2 [1], which the Soviets later pretended were their own accomplishments. It's a theme that repeats throughout all of Soviet history, where Communist propaganda collides with market economy prosperity, on up to the famous 1959 Kitchen debate between Nixon and Khrushchev [2], or Yeltsin's visit to the Texas supermarket [3].
Communism universally, completely failed at providing superior material prosperity, which was one of its most touted foundational claims. Worse, it failed at providing nearly any consistent materialism at all, as witnessed by the second great Soviet famine under Stalin in 1932-33 [4], in which millions of people perished.
Let's not have yet another battle about how bad communism was. On HN, generic tangents are always off topic because the discussions they produce are predictable. Ideological battle is the worst subtype of those.
I know the theme is adjacent to the article's material, but so are plenty of other things, some of which are specific rather than generic, and those are the ones that can seed good conversation. Who even knew this massive event had taken place? or that Herbert Hoover played a central role? I sure didn't.
Relitigating communism, on the other hand...not so much. Nearby generic themes trigger quick reactions because we all have many pre-existing associations to them. But for internet discussion, they are the black holes we need most to steer clear of.
Fair enough. I thought it fit well with the parent article. I get your point about how wandering anywhere near Communism as a discussion can quickly lead to low quality argumentation.
You are taking this way too far as an argument. Russia at the time was miles and miles behind any Western nation in terms of development. They knew it, which is why they thought their revolution would fail unless Western nations, German workers in particular, would start their own revolution.
So they already started with a huge handicap - on top of that WWI and the civil war after the revolution, which was a fight tooth and nail, as bad as it gets, put them down even further.
So even if the "experiment" would have stopped right then and there and they would have switched to pure capitalism, what kind of development would you have expected?
This is not to take anything away from your mention of their propaganda efforts to appear a lot bigger than they are, but your argument leaves out some important "details".
>So even if the "experiment" would have stopped right then and there and they would have switched to pure capitalism, what kind of development would you have expected?
this is exactly what was done when the things hit the rock bottom. It was a choice - either continue the "experiment" and everybody dies from hunger ... or pause the "experiment". They paused it. It is called "New Economic Policy" - remotely similar to what China does today. Allowing limited capitalism. As result the country almost immediately rocketed into economic recovery.
> So even if the "experiment" would have stopped right then and there and they would have switched to pure capitalism, what kind of development would you have expected?
I would expect something more like 350 million strong Norway, not 140 million strong Honduras that is the result of a century of communist experiment.
I am often reminded that Eastern Europe was always poor. Guess what? So were Norway at the time of divergence. Moreover, poverty and corruption is a direct result of communism that can't be ignored.
Well, Norway discovered oil and managed to distribute the profits evenly (I think). Not many oil-rich countries did that.
And regarding Eastern Europe, it was not always poor, for example the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was more prosperous than Austria both before and immediately after WW2, but that changed during communism and Austria is still much more prosperous nearly 30 years after the fall of communism.
Norway, capitalistic, manages to distribute the profits.
USSR, communistic, fails. It spends all the oil and gas and all other minerals known to man on communisty things like insane amount of weaponry, help to fellow communist regimes who never pay back, etc, etc. But its citizens lead the life so miserable that the only joy is binge drinking and the country dissipates overnight. And from this point it only gets worse.
