Most Brutal Dictator/Communist Leader

[ConfederateFly]

Which Dictator/Communist Leader was the most Brutal and tell why?

[zoomar]

My first knee-jerk reaction was to vote for Hitler, who was withour doubt the most EVIL. But after considering that BRUTAL was the operative term, I flipped a coin between Stalin and Mao...and chose Stalin. Hitler's pure evil led him to the most morally reprehensible genocide of modern times, but in some respects I suspect his view of the world was not dictated by the same crude brutality as Mao or Stalin. In many respects, the forced collectivization and massive industrialization undertaken by Uncle Joe and Chairman Mao were more brutal in their intent and outcome than the holocaust.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

The death toll of Stalin's regime might have been higher, but it was a longer period of time, and Hitler killed a greater number BY INTENT. Most of Stalin's deaths were regrettable side effects of necessary de-bourgeoisification.

[Beck Reilly]

The death toll of Stalin's regime might have been higher, but it was a longer period of time, and Hitler killed a greater number BY INTENT. Most of Stalin's deaths were regrettable side effects of necessary de-bourgeoisification.

What about all the loyal military officers slaughtered during the purges? Or the German soldiers sent to Siberia or massacred? (although, to be fair, the Germans did pretty much the same thing to the Russians).

[MerryPrankster]

"necessary de-bourgeoisification"

Necessary?

[Mr. G]

Which Dictator/Communist Leader was the most Brutal and tell why?
I voted for Josef Stalin. But truth be told it's a bit of a toss up between him and Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong.

[robertp6165]

The death toll of Stalin's regime might have been higher, but it was a longer period of time, and Hitler killed a greater number BY INTENT. Most of Stalin's deaths were regrettable side effects of necessary de-bourgeoisification.

Stalin's starvation of the Ukraine (where the majority of his twenty-odd million murder victims died), the millions who "disappeared," were shot in the back of the head by the NKVD and dumped in mass graves in the forests, and the millions who were sent to be worked to death in the gulags were all intentional. They were not "regrettable side-effects." Maybe he didn't herd people into gas chambers and ovens (he starved them or shot them in the back of the head instead), but they ended up just as dead.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

"necessary de-bourgeoisification"

Necessary?

Necessary to a communist. :eek:

[MerryPrankster]

Oh, it was a joke.

Somebody in a similar, earlier thread (I think it was on the new board) had meant it seriously.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Stalin's starvation of the Ukraine (where the majority of his twenty-odd million murder victims died), the millions who "disappeared," were shot in the back of the head by the NKVD and dumped in mass graves in the forests, and the millions who were sent to be worked to death in the gulags were all intentional. They were not "regrettable side-effects." Maybe he didn't herd people into gas chambers and ovens (he starved them or shot them in the back of the head instead), but they ended up just as dead.

I don't see how it is supportable to say that Stalin intentionally starved the Ukraine. The entire Soviet Union was collectivized, the Ukraine was just hardest hit because it was the most agricultural. There is no evidence that Stalin's aim was to cause millions of deaths, it was just carrying out the most basic aim of communism.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Stalin's starvation of the Ukraine (where the majority of his twenty-odd million murder victims died), the millions who "disappeared," were shot in the back of the head by the NKVD and dumped in mass graves in the forests, and the millions who were sent to be worked to death in the gulags were all intentional. They were not "regrettable side-effects." Maybe he didn't herd people into gas chambers and ovens (he starved them or shot them in the back of the head instead), but they ended up just as dead.

Collectivization is the most basic aim of communism, and the entire Soviet Union was collectivized, not just the Ukraine, which suffered the most only because it was the most heavily agricultural. I don't see how its possible to claim it was a deliberate attempt to kill Ukrainians, nor do I see why Stalin should wish to kill off the Ukrainians, since the population decline disrupted the economy and put his regime at risk. I don't see why everyone has to see a genocidal motive behind everything anyone does that causes deaths. Communism is a bad idea, it didn't work, and contrary to expectation, collectivization drastically reduced agricultural productivity rather than raising it.

[Kuralyov]

Why's Napoléon even on this list? He's a saint compared to all the other ones!

[robertp6165]

Collectivization is the most basic aim of communism, and the entire Soviet Union was collectivized, not just the Ukraine, which suffered the most only because it was the most heavily agricultural. I don't see how its possible to claim it was a deliberate attempt to kill Ukrainians, nor do I see why Stalin should wish to kill off the Ukrainians, since the population decline disrupted the economy and put his regime at risk. I don't see why everyone has to see a genocidal motive behind everything anyone does that causes deaths. Communism is a bad idea, it didn't work, and contrary to expectation, collectivization drastically reduced agricultural productivity rather than raising it.

Fortunately, not everyone is an apologist for communist dictators. See the following link and it will explain how and why Stalin murdered the Ukrainians by starvation. They siezed the grain, put it in guarded silos, and let it sit there...intentionally...while the peasants starved.

http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/

and another one...

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/famine.html

[Straha]

I have no idea and on another note I'm working on my first piece of AH fiction to post on the amateur writer's forum...

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Fortunately, not everyone is an apologist for communist dictators. See the following link and it will explain how and why Stalin murdered the Ukrainians by starvation. They siezed the grain, put it in guarded silos, and let it sit there...intentionally...while the peasants starved.

http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/

and another one...

http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/famine.html

You found it on the internet so it must be true. Thanks for being civil, BTW.

[robertp6165]

You found it on the internet so it must be true. Thanks for being civil, BTW.

I have seen the same thing in printed books. Does it make it more true if it is in a printed book? The truth is the truth, wherever it is printed.

I have also spoken to Ukrainians who were there (or in some cases whose parents or grandparents were there)...and who saw the very things described in these articles. I have no reason at all to doubt these people.

At least I bothered to try to locate some easily accessable sources for my argument. What sources have you offered?

[TimeStorm]

And what about Pol Pot? For me, he was the most brutal.

[zoomar]

I don't see how it is supportable to say that Stalin intentionally starved the Ukraine. The entire Soviet Union was collectivized, the Ukraine was just hardest hit because it was the most agricultural. There is no evidence that Stalin's aim was to cause millions of deaths, it was just carrying out the most basic aim of communism.


...and that is why I would argue that Stalin's regime was more brutal, while Hitler's was more evil. To Stalin the death of millions was of no consequence as long as the baisic aims of communism were being carried out. Stalin would have killed 100 million Russians to build his factories and collectivise his farms - Hitler would have stopped when he ran out of untermenchen. Hitler actually desired the death of his victims on a nearly personal level, to Stalin they were merely impersonal debris to be pushed out of the way. I see the latter as more brutal.

[MerryPrankster]

Here're some books, for those of us who don't trust Internet sources much...

1) "Harvest of Sorrow" by Robert Conquest

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195051807/qid=1074644808/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-4500604-7183920?v=glance&s=books

2) "Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust" by Miron Dolot

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393304167/ref=pd_sim_books_1/104-4500604-7183920?v=glance&s=books

3) "The Black Book of Communism" by Stephan Courtois, et. al.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674076087/qid=1074645051/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-4500604-7183920?v=glance&s=books

For the opposite view...

"Fraud, Famine, and Fascism" by Tottle (no first name given)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0919396518/qid=1074645087/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-4500604-7183920?v=glance&s=books

[MerryPrankster]

As a %, Pol Pot was the most malevolent. 1/4 to 1/3 of your country's population is BAD. However, in absolute terms, Stalin and/or Mao top the most-killed scale, with Hitler a close third (when WWII in Europe is included).

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I have seen the same thing in printed books. Does it make it more true if it is in a printed book? The truth is the truth, wherever it is printed.

I have also spoken to Ukrainians who were there (or in some cases whose parents or grandparents were there)...and who saw the very things described in these articles. I have no reason at all to doubt these people.

At least I bothered to try to locate some easily accessable sources for my argument. What sources have you offered?

Once you decide you can stop being hostile and just discuss, I will be glad to. And listing the first two sites that come up in the google search "Ukrainian Genocide" is not providing "sources", it's providing links to nationalist propaganda. Give me a written order from Stalin to deliberately kill off millions of Ukrainians in a concerted effort at genocide, and I'll concede your point.

Even at the height of the Cold War the most die-hard anti-communists never claimed there was a Ukrainian Genocide. This is all part of the ever-growing genocide industry piggy-backing on the Holocaust, which was a REAL Genocide.

Anway, if you can find it,

Famine in Ukraine, 1932-1933
by Roman Serbyn (Editor), Bohdan Krawchenko (Editor)

is fairly definitive.

The question is not whether or not there was a famine, it's whether or not Stalin deliberately killed millions of Ukrainians in a policy of genocide.

Collectivization was supposed to improve agricultural productivity and produce grain reserves to feed the growing urban labor force, and the anticipated surplus was to pay for industrialization. Collectivization was also expected to free many peasants for industrial work in the cities.

He DID deliberately destroy the Kulaks, who were the wealthier farmers, who were considered hopelessly bourgeoise - they were scattered all over the Soviet Union and something like a million of them died in transit. So, the dispersing of the most productive farmers and the fact that the peasants were much less motivated to work on a state collective caused productivity to fall rather than rise, leading to the famine.

I lived for quite some time in Eastern Europe, and I think everyone is forgetting about the mind-boggling incompetence of state bureaucracy, especially one run by people with no education.

And I must say, "The truth is the truth, wherever it is printed." is an amazing statement. So who decides what the truth is? I always thought that having evidence to back up a position and a lack of evidence to disprove a position is what makes something true. That there is no documentary evidence whatsoever to support that Stalin deliberately orchestrated a Genocide is apparently irrevelant.

[MerryPrankster]

Oh lookie, another one!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674294262/qid=1074645763/br=1-7/ref=br_lf_b_7//104-4500604-7183920?v=glance&s=books&n=4918

14.5 million dead, John. That's a lot of people. That's more than 2x the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, more people who died in the entirety of WWI (not counting the Russian Civil War or the great flu pandemic).

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

What exactly is your point? I am not denying there was a famine, I am denying that it was a deliberate Genocide. You posted a book that is a catalogue of a photographic exhibit at Harvard in 1983. Does that prove that Stalin orchestrated a genocide?

Here, read this, there's a large bibliography at the end.

http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/tauger.htm

All the books you posted previously are highly biased and political, on both sides. You have to learn to distinguish between inflamitory revisionism designed to sell books or support a political agenda from actual scholarly research.

Earlier, Scott posted about the shabbiness of history books in stores. I think we are dealing with the death of history. Methodical research is no longer valued in writing, only political advocacy.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Morality is not a numbers game. If a driver has a stroke and plows a bus full of schoolchildren off a cliff, is he more evil than someone who drowns a puppy just for kicks? No. One was intentional, the other was a tragic accident.

[robertp6165]

Once you decide you can stop being hostile and just discuss, I will be glad to. .

I am not being hostile...sorry if you are taking it that way.

And listing the first two sites that come up in the google search "Ukrainian Genocide" is not providing "sources", it's providing links to nationalist propaganda..

Actually the internet search I used was "Ukrainian famine Stalin." I never said the Ukrainian famine was genocide, and did not use that term in my search. Genocide is defined as "The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group," and Stalin clearly did not intend that all of the Ukrainians die. He did intend to break the back of the resistance to his collectivization efforts and to break the back of Ukrainian nationalism, and used a politically inspired, artificially created famine to do so, but that is not genocide. But it is interesting that even using the relatively neutral terms I used in my search...NOT ONE SINGLE ARTICLE COMES UP WHICH DISPUTES THE ARGUMENT THAT THE UKRAINIAN FAMINE WAS MANUFACTURED BY THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT FOR POLITICAL REASONS. One would think that somebody, somewhere, would have posted one, if indeed there was any basis for arguing the contrary.

Give me a written order from Stalin to deliberately kill off millions of Ukrainians in a concerted effort at genocide, and I'll concede your point...

I'm sorry, but Stalin didn't work that way. From what I have read of the internal workings of Stalin's regime, orders like these were generally verbally communicated to Stalin's underlings (such as Beria), who then carried them out. By the way, there is no written order from Hitler ordering the mass extermination of Jews, either. But you have no problem accepting that this happened. Why the difference?

Even at the height of the Cold War the most die-hard anti-communists never claimed there was a Ukrainian Genocide. This is all part of the ever-growing genocide industry piggy-backing on the Holocaust, which was a REAL Genocide....The question is not whether or not there was a famine, it's whether or not Stalin deliberately killed millions of Ukrainians in a policy of genocide.

I never claimed that it was genocide. But it was a politically motivated mass murder via an artificially created famine. Even the book you cite (which I have read...) does not dispute this.

And I must say, "The truth is the truth, wherever it is printed." is an amazing statement. So who decides what the truth is? I always thought that having evidence to back up a position and a lack of evidence to disprove a position is what makes something true. That there is no documentary evidence whatsoever to support that Stalin deliberately orchestrated a Genocide is apparently irrevelant.

Again, I never claimed that Stalin orchestrated a genocide. But he did engage in politically motivated mass murder on a scale which has never been exceeded in human history. The "purposes" for which Hitler mass-murdered were certainly more evil. But which is really worse...a man who murders out of hatred, or a man who murders simply because human life has no meaning for him and his victims are simply "in the way?" The latter scares me a heck of a lot more than the former.

[Straha]

Rafi will be jealous that you're arguing with someone else besides him john so stop

[MerryPrankster]

"Rafi will be jealous that you're arguing with someone else besides him john so stop"

Heh, heh, heh

"If a driver has a stroke and plows a bus full of schoolchildren off a cliff, is he more evil than someone who drowns a puppy just for kicks? No. One was intentional, the other was a tragic accident"

That's a bad argument, since the terror-famine was not an accident.

[Straha]

instead of the eternal rafi-john armenian debate we could seeo nthe new forum a john-matt ukranian debate. I liked the armenian debates better.... I learened all I know about the armenian genocide form Rafi and John's flamewars ;)

[thearcticfalcon]

Two men who aren't on the list and probably should be: Idi Amin and Pol Pot.

It would be Saddam. He combines the ruthlessness and human detatchment of Stalin with the craziness of Pol Pot. So, despite the fact that his regime killed fewer people than Uncle Joe's, he would be it.

[Straha]

he's not on because saddam was small potatoes in terms of causalities compared to the rest

[thearcticfalcon]

he's not on because saddam was small potatoes in terms of causalities compared to the rest

Saddam's on the list.

As for the Stalin thing, didn't they deliberately close Ukranian borders to prevent aid from getting in?

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Wow, that's the same search I used - great minds?

Anyway, I believe in the Holocaust because there are mountains of documentary evidence and orders, not to mention careful ledgers of all the Jews murdered and their personal belongings, and also not to mention the sworn testimony of hundreds of senior Nazis after the war that confirm there was a "final solution" policy, plus, Hitler said he was going to do it over and over, starting with Mein Kampf. There is ZERO documentary evidence to support that Stalin created an artificial famine to kill off millions of Ukrainians. The whole Soviet Union was hit by famine, not just the Ukraine. There was not enough grain to feed everyone, period. An artifical faminine would require the government to hold back existing food supplies from a population to deliberately starve them when it could be avoided. What occured was a REAL famine, not an artifical one.

As for the Google search, did you read all 10,400 results or just the top 100 or so? Google lists results by the volume of hits any site receives. Since a nationalist Ukrainian with an axe to grind is more likely to be looking for Ukrainian Genocide articles than your average American on his lunch break, the top sites in a google search are most likely to be political. Type the words "iraq genocide" into Google and you will get enormous loads of garbage; the second is an article on jewwatch.com, and most are about the US genocide occurring in Iraq tight now. Or try "bush genocide" - you will have to go through tens of thousands of results before you find anyone who disagrees that Bush is a genocidal madman.

There is a very great body of scholarly work that does not support that there was a deliberate policy of murder of Ukrainians, and almost everything written to the contrary was written very recently, since the standards of scholarship required by editors have fallen away to nothing.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

"Rafi will be jealous that you're arguing with someone else besides him john so stop"

Heh, heh, heh

"If a driver has a stroke and plows a bus full of schoolchildren off a cliff, is he more evil than someone who drowns a puppy just for kicks? No. One was intentional, the other was a tragic accident"

That's a bad argument, since the terror-famine was not an accident.

Yes it was.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Rafi will be jealous that you're arguing with someone else besides him john so stop

I don't want to make anyone jealous, so let's move on now to the so-called "Armenian Genocide".

[avoids flying beer bottles and rotten cabbage]

Oh, come on, it's just a joke! You know you laughed.

[Straha]

wait for Rafi to get online and argue with him I mean the armenian arguement is far more catchy than the ukrainina famine arguement

[MerryPrankster]

John,

All right, I did laugh.

[Straha]

now to get rafi in here both of you have to make long posts denouncing the existence of the armenian genocide.

[MerryPrankster]

"now to get rafi in here both of you have to make long posts denouncing the existence of the armenian genocide."

Never!!!

[Straha]

...dammit foiled again

[Wiggy]

The death toll of Stalin's regime might have been higher, but it was a longer period of time, and Hitler killed a greater number BY INTENT. Most of Stalin's deaths were regrettable side effects of necessary de-bourgeoisification.

Side effects of de-bourgeoisification!? C'mon. Stalin's intent was as clear as Hitler's. He starved the Ukraine and Baltic countires into submission and built the gulag as a machine to kill people. I don't think "side-effect" cuts it and he sure as hell didn't shuffle off this mortal coil expressing any regret. He got away with his murders by being on the winning side. Victors write the history books and all that.

"Necessary" is a whole separate can of worms.

I'll put your view down as "interesting".

[Mr.Bluenote]

Hm, Saddam might be small potatos (unless of course you happen to be a kurd, kuwaiti, swamp-arab, shiite or just an unlucky ordinary iraqi), but he was brutal beyond belief. And he didn't even have an excuse like trying to raise agricultural output or creating the perfect stat (be it some strange pre-cambodian wonderland or an aryan superman-land). So, I must admit I voted for old Saddam.

And why is Benito M on the list? Was he that nasty a guy? If he hadn't gotten himself into bed with Adolf then he might have ended up with a rather good reputation/image/what not, at least in Italy, I should think!

Best regards!


- Mr.Bluenote.

Honeste vivere, alterum non ladere, suum cuique tribuere!

[Wiggy]

Saddam Hussein, Santa Anna and Benito Mussolini are dilettantes compared to the rest of these guys and don't really belong on the same list.

Napoleon enlisted his victims in his army and then marched them off to war against another set of victims in pursuit of les glorieux. He's managed to escape enobled, with rather good press.

Kim Jong II stands a darn good chance of making the big leagues. So far he's more or less confined his murder and mayhem to his own nation/neighbourhood but shows every sign of being quite willing and able to inflict himself on a goodly portion of the world. That would move him right up the list.

Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge deserve to be on the list, but don't get top billing. I lump him in with Kim Jong II until KJ2 manages to distinguish himself further.

Hitler, Stalin and Mao are the top guys simply for the machinery of death and repression they each put in place. Hitler and Stalin stand out for the reach of their crimes and in that sense I think leave Mao behind.

What separates Stalin from the rest for me is sheer numbers, the lengthy term of his terror and the fact that he didn't really seem to distinguish between his own countrymen and people of other nations.

[Mr.Bluenote]

Can't really say I totally agree with you, Wiggy, but I do get your point though. I just think that people like Saddam, Idi Amin (He most certainly should have been on the list btw), Borkassa etc etc is at least as brutal as Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Hitler is pure evil, yes!Stalin is paranoid and merciless, si! Mao is, well, just another tyrant with a disregard for human life, no argument there! But them being the most brutal? Hm, I just don't know...

Best regards!

- Mr.Bluenote.

Honeste vivere, alterum non ladere, suum cuique tribuere!

[Wiggy]

[QUOTE=Mr.Bluenote]Can't really say I totally agree with you, Wiggy,

Would make for a dull thread!

[Mr.Bluenote] but I do get your point though. I just think that people like Saddam, Idi Amin (He most certainly should have been on the list btw), Borkassa etc etc

I think that's a telling point right there. If we each sit down and put on our thinking caps I'm sure we could each come up with a few more names. Idi Amin, Borkassa, Milosevic, the architects of apartheid, the guy in the news this week up on charges for Rwanda – and we haven't really reached back past Napoleon. What about Ghengis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, etc?

Kind of scary to think about, but there are a pile of these guys around. That part of the list you can make as big as you like. But I have to stand beside my original argument in picking Stalin, Hitler and Mao as the big three. All the other come across as "regional" players for me.

[Mr.Bluenote] is at least as brutal as Stalin, Hitler and Mao. Hitler is pure evil, yes! Stalin is paranoid and merciless, si! Mao is, well, just another tyrant with a disregard for human life, no argument there! But them being the most brutal? Hm, I just don't know...

Best regards!

- Mr.Bluenote.

Thanks for the reply.

Wiggy

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Stalin was a very bad man, and a real contender for worst dictator ever, and he certainly deliberately killed an astounding number of people, but he did NOT orchestrate a Ukrainian Genocide. I'm really surprised that all of you are buying into this. The famine in 1932-3 struck the whole Soviet Union and was the result of the failure of collectivization, not a plan to deliberately starve the Ukraine. None of you are producing any evidence whatsoever, just Stalin = bad, therefore, everything bad that ever happened in the Soviet Union = deliberate nastiness by Stalin. The internet has truly destroyed history.

Hitler loved animals, and Nazi Germany was the most progressive nation in history with regard to animal rights. I suppose some of you will claim that was a smokescreen so he could kill more Jews.

[Kuralyov]

Saddam Hussein, Santa Anna and Benito Mussolini are dilettantes compared to the rest of these guys and don't really belong on the same list.

Napoleon enlisted his victims in his army and then marched them off to war against another set of victims in pursuit of les glorieux. He's managed to escape enobled, with rather good press...

So let me get this straight...Napoleon, because he enlisted men into his army, deserves to be on this list, but brutal dictators who sent their citizens to concentration camps don't? Doesn't that mean that every leader who resorted to conscription should be up here? Where's Richard Nixon?

[Wiggy]

[Kuralyov]So let me get this straight...Napoleon, because he enlisted men into his army, deserves to be on this list, but brutal dictators who sent their citizens to concentration camps don't?

No, no, no. That's not straight. My mistake, I suppose, for using the phrase "don't really belong on the list". Every person listed is a worthy candidate. Given we're polling for Brutal Guy #1 I was basically sorting through the list – just ranking them all and outlining why Stalin got my vote. I'll try to be more precise with my language. ;) Let's try "belong down the list".

History's view of Napoleon always troubled me. He's so venerated in France, but deliberately ripped the rest of Europe to shreds. But apparently with some elan. Go figure. Brutal guy? Sure. Most brutal? Not even close.

If you pick up the news from Europe there is currently some sentiment in Italy for the rehabilitation of Mussolini along the lines of "He wasn't really a bad guy. He just had a few evil friends". So how brutal is that?

[Kuralyov]Doesn't that mean that every leader who resorted to conscription should be up here? Where's Richard Nixon?

No, not at all. The U.S. draft is a mechanism of a democratically elected government. They've done away with it, but still have the means to re-institute it at need. There has been some discussion along those lines in government given the demands placed on the US military by Afghanistan, Iraq, home defense, etc. It's clearly political dynamite and not to be taken lightly.

I would view overrunning a country and then impressing it's citizenry into your army to fight for you as rather different from conscription. More brutal somehow.

Note that it was LBJ, not Nixon who put the draft in place to support the American effort in VietNam.

[Ian the Admin]

I think you guys are talking past each other. "Genocide" refers to deliberately targeting a specific group because of their ethnicity, religion, etc. The Soviet Union rarely did this - they generally targeted people on political and economic grounds. So while Stalin's regime appears to have killed tens of millions of people, "genocide" is not the proper word for it (mass murder, butchery, and so forth are quite appropriate).

The Communist leadership was quite aware that their policies were causing mass death, but John is right that this wasn't in itself the goal. They would have been satisfied with their reorganization of society even if it hadn't killed many millions of people. But they were also fine with it actually killing millions of people, which it did. Essentially the lives of those standing in the way of their political and economic plans meant nothing to them. Wealthy farmers as a class (the Kulaks) were deliberately brutalized, their food stolen from them, and so forth in actions basically guaranteed to kill everyone. And both the leadership and the Communists on the ground knew very well that their actions, such as confiscating food from starving "disloyal" peasants, were resulting in mass murder. But most of the deaths weren't an end in themselves, most of the people starved because Stalin was reorganizing farming and it was deemed acceptable if lots of people starved in the process.

A similar thing happened in China with Mao's "Great leap forward" - there were a lot of deliberate killings of individuals but the really big numbers came from starvation.

This is fairly distinct from what happened under Hitler. The typical German citizen did pretty much fine under Hitler (compared to the typical Russian who had a much larger danger of being starved, or shot/imprisoned for disloyalty, under Stalin). His goal was to exterminate specific groups as an end in itself - get rid of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, and eventually as many "slavic untermenschen" as became necessary to clear out eastern Europe for German colonization.

Another example, sort of in-between, is the Japanese. They killed a tremendous number of people in Asia. But it wasn't due to Soviet-style indifference to life (Japanese weren't the targets), nor did they attempt genocide against other populations, Nazi-style. They were more the "brutal conqueror" type - in the progress of their military operations enemy combatants and civilians were treated with extreme harshness. Their military created a culture of contempt for other societies, and special contempt for anyone who surrendered.

And yet another example of hard-to-categorise mass murder in history was the Mongol horde. At times they contemplated genocide - mass extermination of farmers to make pastureland for their horses. But their bloodiest massacres occurred following the conquest of a city whose resistance had particularly angered them for some reason, and they might exterminate the entire populace. They also caused a lot of death through Soviet-style uncaring destruction - their conquest and mismanagement destroyed extensive irrigation systems in the Middle East, leading to huge numbers of deaths from starvation and privation. The Mongols killed a tremendous number of people, but rarely due to what we'd consider genocide. Even their deliberate mass killings of civilians usually were spur-of-the-moment things focusing on the population of a single city, whose neighbors would be completely spared if they surrendered without a fight.

"Genocide" is an overused label in the modern world, and the arguments over its improper application tend to simply confuse the tremendous evil and destruction of acts which cause tremendous deaths but don't happen to target a specific group.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Damned right the word 'genocide' is overused. :eek: I say no more.

Anyway, while I agree that millions of deaths were an acceptable sacrifice, it was not planned or desired. The Soviets were aware of demographics and the desirability of having a larger population than that of enemies, so there was no desire to uselessly throw away lives, and in any case, the Soviets did not introduce collectivization with the intent of failure! It was supposed to increase productivity and provide surpluses to pay for industrialization and to feed the growing number of factory workers. The paranoid nature of Stalin and the Soviet government in general interpreted the disruption and unrest caused by collectivization to be the work of Poland under Pilsudski and various other agents of imperialism. The failure of collectivization may have been catastrophic, and a historic human tragedy, but it was no genocide.

[Wiggy]

[Ian Montgomerie]I think you guys are talking past each other. "Genocide" refers to deliberately targeting a specific group because of their ethnicity, religion, etc.

I don't think it's a genocide issue. Brutality can encompass genocide. If the means to an end don't matter, that's brutality.

Brutal
Extremely ruthless or cruel.
Crude or unfeeling in manner or speech.
Harsh, unrelenting.

A number of valid points in your post. So sate my curiosity. Who's your most brutal dictator and why does he earn the prize?

[robertp6165]

There is ZERO documentary evidence to support that Stalin created an artificial famine to kill off millions of Ukrainians. The whole Soviet Union was hit by famine, not just the Ukraine. There was not enough grain to feed everyone, period. An artifical faminine would require the government to hold back existing food supplies from a population to deliberately starve them when it could be avoided. What occured was a REAL famine, not an artifical one.

Holding back the existing food supplies (and removal of food supplies) from the Ukraine in order to deliberately starve the population is exactly what Stalin did. The great thing (from Stalin's point of view) about this method, as opposed to what the Nazis did, is that you don't leave a lot of "documentary evidence" behind. There are, in the Soviet archives, orders which show that grain was ordered to be removed from the Ukraine. There are extant orders in the Archives which show that troops were stationed on the Ukrainian border to prevent food from getting in and people from getting out...which they DID NOT do in the rest of the country. There is plenty of eye-witness testimony which shows that the NKVD conducted searches of Ukrainian homes and farms to make sure that the food had in fact been removed. The fact that we don't have something from Stalin which says, "I order the intentional starvation of the Ukrainians" DOES NOT MEAN that there is no evidence to support that an intentional starvation occurred.

As for the Google search, did you read all 10,400 results or just the top 100 or so? Google lists results by the volume of hits any site receives. Since a nationalist Ukrainian with an axe to grind is more likely to be looking for Ukrainian Genocide articles than your average American on his lunch break, the top sites in a google search are most likely to be political. Type the words "iraq genocide" into Google and you will get enormous loads of garbage; the second is an article on jewwatch.com, and most are about the US genocide occurring in Iraq tight now. Or try "bush genocide" - you will have to go through tens of thousands of results before you find anyone who disagrees that Bush is a genocidal madman.

You spend a lot of time attacking me for citing internet articles. I only did this for the sake of convenience since I was not at home to pull books from my personal library, since the facts contained in the articles accords with the more scholarly sources I usually cite. The main source that I usually refer to in regard to the Ukrainian Famine is...

Conquest, Robert. The harvest of sorrow: Soviet collectivization and the terror-famine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986

Conquest notes that in an unprecedented move in the autumn of 1932, seed grain was removed from the Ukraine and put in storage in cities -- a move which Conquest suggests shows authorities were concerned at protecting seed grain from hungry peasants who surely would have eaten it had they access to it at the height of the famine. More ominously, Conquest reports that beyond merely withholding food aid from the Ukraine, the Soviets stationed troops on the Ukrainian-Russian border to ensure neither food nor people went in or out of the Ukraine during the famine (Russia was spared the worst of the famine). As Conquest writes,

"The essential point is that, in fact, clear orders existed to stop Ukrainian peasants entering Russia where food was available and, when they had succeeded in evading these blocks, to confiscate any food they were carrying when intercepted on their return. This can only have been a decree from the highest level and it can only have had one motive."

You may question the credentials of the writers of internet history, but Robert Conquest's credentials as a historian are pretty much impeccable.

There is a very great body of scholarly work that does not support that there was a deliberate policy of murder of Ukrainians, and almost everything written to the contrary was written very recently, since the standards of scholarship required by editors have fallen away to nothing.

Articles and books on this subject which were NOT written recently suffer from two problems....1) Many, if not most, of them were written by historians or journalists who were either outright Marxists or by non-Marxist "progressives" who were sympathetic to socialism, both of whom were concerned with hiding the atrocities committed in Soviet Russia; 2) Their writers did not have access to the Soviet archives and to historical resources in the Ukraine itself, which modern historians have.

[Wiggy]

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]Anyway, while I agree that millions of deaths were an acceptable sacrifice

Wow. Okay. You get my vote for most brutal guy in the thread.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]it was not planned or desired.

I have a hard time imagining Stalin pacing around in a circle, wringing his hands and saying, "Oops."

I guess I'm real glad I don't live in a proletarian paradise.

[robertp6165]

Damned right the word 'genocide' is overused. I say no more.

Nobody is using that word but you, John. You are making a "straw man" argument...

Anyway, while I agree that millions of deaths were an acceptable sacrifice, it was not planned or desired.

I sincerely hope you meant that millions of deaths were an UN-acceptable sacrifice. Whether it was planned and desired I have answered elsewhere.

[MerryPrankster]

The first National Geographic I ever read was the one headlined with "Broken Empire" and had articles on post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. The one on Ukraine describes how they took ALL the food out of Ukraine (even seed corn and what have you), "sealed the districts, and let the people starve." The article described people eating tree bark and "it was like the Black Death passed through our village."

I'm sure the article is available online somewhere.

[MerryPrankster]

A Russian girl in my World History class in high school nearly started crying talking about how evil Stalin was and described how he "took all the food out of Ukraine" and how the people starved.

[Namor]

Anyway, I believe in the Holocaust because there are mountains of documentary evidence and orders, not to mention careful ledgers of all the Jews murdered and their personal belongings, and also not to mention the sworn testimony of hundreds of senior Nazis after the war that confirm there was a "final solution" policy, plus, Hitler said he was going to do it over and over, starting with Mein Kampf. There is ZERO documentary evidence to support that Stalin created an artificial famine to kill off millions of Ukrainians.

The whole Soviet Union was hit by famine, not just the Ukraine. There was not enough grain to feed everyone, period. An artifical faminine would require the government to hold back existing food supplies from a population to deliberately starve them when it could be avoided. What occured was a REAL famine, not an artifical one.

First of all, Nazi Germany was very efficient about keeping records of everything, while Soviet Union was much more disorganised. Secondly, Germany was conquered by Allies therefore Allies had the ACCESS to all German records. Only people who had access to real Soviet Documents are loyal party members and they aren't going to share it.

Soviet government DID hold back the food. While Ukraine was starving, Stalin was exporting grain to pay for industrialization. And that is not the most shocking thing about it. Soviet government posted armed guards outside warehouses with rotting grain while peasants were starving outside in the village That last piece of information I did not get from internet or some book. It came from my grandfather's mouth.
I'm Ukrainian myself and my family comes from a small village in Eastrn Ukraine about 100 miles from Dniepr and my grandfather used to tell me stories of how life was back than. He also fought in WW2 and was captured by Germans and sent to Germany as slave labor but he jumped off the train in Poland near Warshaw and traveled back to Eastern Ukraine by foot through occupied territory. Even though he hated Nazis, he hated Soviet Union too and him and his partisan friends occasionally fought Red Army too. It is not a very publicized fact but many Ukrainian partisans fought Red Army as well as Nazi Germany. Many people in Ukraine had similar feelings back than. Fighting did not stop in Ukraine untill several years after official end of WW2. Even when I was growing up, my grandfather disliked Soviet Union. I may not believe Internet but I do believe my grandfather.

[Max Sinister]

If you want to measure brutality in % of killed people, general Lopez from Paraguay would be faaar on top of your list. During the war of 1865-1870, five sixths of the population died, and only one twentieth of the survivors were males older than 15.

And if Hitler / the Nazis had ruled for such a long time like the Commies (70 years in Russia, 40 in Eastern Europe, more than 50 in China) and such a big population (1 billion in China, 200+ million in the Sovjet union, maybe 100 million in other countries), we'd have many more victims. Hitler wanted Lebensraum for Germany in the East, which meant that he'd have to remove the Slavs from there. If the Nazis had won the war, today there wouldn't be "only" the genocide of the Jews, but also of the Poles, the Russians, the Ukrainians... In the book "If Hitler had won the war - the plans of the Nazis after the Endsieg" by Ralph Giordano I read a number of about 30 million Slavs they planned to kill (not counting those who'd be sent via the border to Siberia or those who wouldn't be born at all 'cause Hitler planned to sterilize millions of Slavs, too).

And if you're counting the victims in Russia and China, you maybe should deduct a bit 'cause I would bet that under a prolonged Czarist / Guomindang government there'd be many victims too (from hunger, diseases, poorness, the Ochrana, antisemite pogroms...), since at least every second czar wasn't what I'd call competent and the Guomindang government was quite corrupt.

That's why I'm feeling a bit puzzled about the fact that Stalin almost got twice the votes Hitler got.

[MerryPrankster]

"And if you're counting the victims in Russia and China, you maybe should deduct a bit"

Why?

"And if you're counting the victims in Russia and China, you maybe should deduct a bit 'cause I would bet that under a prolonged Czarist / Guomindang government there'd be many victims too (from hunger, diseases, poorness, the Ochrana, antisemite pogroms...), since at least every second czar wasn't what I'd call competent and the Guomindang government was quite corrupt."

The Czar fell to democratic socialists under Kerensky (who was in turn ousted by the Bolsheviks). Pogroms, the Okhrana, etc. are a non-issue, since Kerensky didn't have any of those. I read when Kerensky assumed power, the secret files of the Okrana were opened up and revealed to the public (just as, after Communists fell in 1991, the secret files of the KGB were revealed).

Besides, the WORST pogroms in the history of Russia were during the Civil War in Ukraine (the Cossacks bear most of the onus, though the Whites and Bolsheviks have their share of Jewish blood on their hands); those killed between 500,000 and 1.5 million people. Stalin killed between 20 and 40 million. The difference of scale is staggering.

The Kuomintang seem to have done a good long-term job with Taiwan, even though during their period of rule in China they were crass to a massive extent (and may have killed up to 10 million people, largely through brutal treatment of military conscripts). Perhaps the shock of losing 90% of their country forced them to tighten up a bit.

Despising Communism doesn't indicate a preference for monarchism, corrupt pseudo-republicanism, or Nazism.

"If you want to measure brutality in % of killed people, general Lopez from Paraguay would be faaar on top of your list. During the war of 1865-1870, five sixths of the population died, and only one twentieth of the survivors were males older than 15"

I've never heard of him; maybe I'll take a Latin American history course next semester. He doesn't sound like a very nice guy, though. Could you describe him more?

I think we're going by absolute #s here, though Santa Anna ended up on the list somehow.

[tom]

I picked Hitler because, AFAIK, he is the only one who targeted significant populations for TOTAL annihilation just because they were that population, even if a member was enthusiastically supportive of him (not that many were, but you get the idea).

[zoomar]

Ian, thank for you excellent discussion about the differences between genocide and other types of mass murder, with which I completely agree. In fact, as you describe it, perhaps the Japanese Imperial Army might be a better candidate for sheer "brutality" than either Uncle Joe or Adolf (although there may have been some genocidal aspects to the Japanese treatment of the Chinese, I don't know). I guess a lot of this is terminlogical, but I would still argue that Stalin and/or Mao's regimes' approach to social engineering qualifies better for "brutality", exactly because these leaders considered the deaths of millions a negligible side effect of their economic policies. Crude brutality (the Commies) is one thing, deliberate genocide (Hitler) is a lot worse. But its all bad, and none of it can or should be be excused.

[Max Sinister]

About the Guomindang in Taiwan: Taiwan was a dictature or at least an almost-one-party state for many decades, and they received massive amounts of money from the west (esp. the US), since they were an important ally. I don't know whether they'd done that good in a united China if the US hadn't found it that necessary to support them.

About Lopez: he came to power after his father had died (who seemed to be quite competent for a dictator). Lopez wanted to enlarge his empire, and when Brazil tried to install a pro-Brazil government in Uruguay, he attacked them. But the Brazilians managed to make Uruguay stay on their side, and Lopez himself angered off the Argentinians too (which was absolutely unnecessary).

The rest of information - I don't know how reliable it is, I only found one book where it's written in (and it's not a real history book either), but here it is:

- He let his soldiers train that hard for the war, that many died before the war because of this.
- He made one in three soldiers an "internal security" man. They were advised to shoot any of their men (including officers) who they thought might defect during a battle. The soldiers were more afraid of their fellow than of the enemy.
- He tortured his own mother
- He demanded from his cardinals that they'd make him a saint of the church, and when they didn't want, he shot them all.

Sounds unbelievable, but at least I'm sure about the numbers (five sixths of the pop!), and that won't come from nothing...

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Very funny, but I'M not saying it was acceptable, I'm saying it was VIEWED by STALIN as acceptable.

And Robert, the Genocide comment was more of a joke related to past debates about a different event that we will not mention here, but in any case, it is claimed in all the sources you guys have been mentioning as a genocide, so it is not a straw man.

Here is a SCHOLARLY article with ACTUAL DATA in it to support a viewpoint:

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/leninist-international/1999-April/003573.html

Rather than just taking what happened and assigning motives to people without any evidence, which passes for history these days.

[Mr.Bluenote]

Hmm, that’s a rather interessting homepage you found, Pasha. But the writer concludes that Stalin is responsible for the famine: “These findings do not, of course, free Stalin from responsibility for the famine.” So even those marxist* whose scolary abilities and virtues you so praise, Pasha, is aware that Uncle Joe is in the end the man to blame for the ukrainian famine.

Btw I find it highly suspect that you critise others for using dubious material and then yourself uncritically use a merry band of sworn communist as a reference!

Regards!

- Mr. Bluenote.

Honeste vivere, alterum non ladere, suum cuique tribuere!

*) And yes, they are marxist/leninist/what not, since it is clearly stated on their homepage: “This is an open, militant, non-sectarian mailing list initiated by Mark Jones (British) and currently moderated by Yoshie Furuhashi (from Japan) and Macdonald Stainsby (Canada). Its political orientation
is Marxist and its inspiration is the life, work and writings of V I Lenin.”

[zoomar]

This is starting to sound lke an argument over how many brutal dictators can stand on the head of a pin

BTW, the answer is 12

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

You are splitting hairs and misrepresenting me just to be contentious. Of course Stalin is responsible for the famine, nobody has ever argued otherwise, ever. The point is that it was the result of the failure of collectivization to increase agricultural productivity that caused the famine, not a deliberate attempt to starve the Ukrainians. This constant victim-centered b.s. that makes everything some vile conspiracy to oppress or kill huge populations just out of sheer evil is just plain tiresome. Somtimes tragedy is the result of miscalculation and government incompetence, not demonic malice.

That Stalin was a monstrous brute does not change the fact that he was also the ruler of the USSR and viewed it's well-being as his responsibility. He may have taken an "you have to break eggs to make an omlette" approach to rulership, but he was not a mindless sociopath interested only in oppression and murder, nor was Hitler.

He had to include in his calculations Polish designs on Soviet territory, the threat of the West, the recent Japanese occupation of Manchuria, and the need to maintain stores to support the military in case the USSR was attacked. It's easy to claim he ordered a genocide, or mass starvation, or whatever you want to call it, but there is no evidence of this. All I'm hearing are anecdotal stories about Ukrainian grandmothers who remember great hunger and baby-eating. Great, every society on the planet can do that, including the US in the Depression.

Governments, lacking the ability to foretell the future, don't always prepare for disasters, especially when they occur contrary to what the projections were showing. Yes, the Soviets exported enough grain to feed a lot of people that year, but the amount was less than a third of normal, and much of it was already in transit by the time the magnitude of the disaster was apparent, which BTW, local authorities were not anxious to publicize, given Stalin's patience for failure. You all seem to have this impression that Stalin was sitting in some huge computerized control room with instant accurate information and could just push a button marked "halt the massive machinery of agricultural production spanning 1/6th of the entire planet and reroute everything instantaneously in such a way as to deliberately starve Ukraine". This is all typical conspriacy thoery.

[Wiggy]

[QUOTE=Abdul Hadi Pasha]You are splitting hairs and misrepresenting me just to be contentious. Of course Stalin is responsible for the famine, nobody has ever argued otherwise, ever. The point is that it was the result of the failure of collectivization to increase agricultural productivity that caused the famine, not a deliberate attempt to starve the Ukrainians. This constant victim-centered b.s. that makes everything some vile conspiracy to oppress or kill huge populations just out of sheer evil is just plain tiresome. Somtimes tragedy is the result of miscalculation and government incompetence, not demonic malice.

I think you've side-stepped Stalin's motives. His object was political control. Power. Collectivization is a manifestation of that. To reduce Stalin's actions to a "miscalculation" is disingenious.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by
the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win.

Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto

You think maybe Stalin skipped or misinterpreted this part of the book?

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

[QUOTE=Abdul Hadi Pasha]You are splitting hairs and misrepresenting me just to be contentious. Of course Stalin is responsible for the famine, nobody has ever argued otherwise, ever. The point is that it was the result of the failure of collectivization to increase agricultural productivity that caused the famine, not a deliberate attempt to starve the Ukrainians. This constant victim-centered b.s. that makes everything some vile conspiracy to oppress or kill huge populations just out of sheer evil is just plain tiresome. Somtimes tragedy is the result of miscalculation and government incompetence, not demonic malice.

I think you've side-stepped Stalin's motives. His object was political control. Power. Collectivization is a manifestation of that. To reduce Stalin's actions to a "miscalculation" is disingenious.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by
the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win.

Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto

You think maybe Stalin skipped or misinterpreted this part of the book?

What does that have to do with anything? If anything that quote supports my argument. Ukrainian farmers were hardly a ruling class, and if the proletarians have nothing to lose, then surely their lives are safe.

The aim of collectivization was to increase productivity, which the Soviets assumed would happen because a collective would have the resources to obtain the latest machinery, whereas an individual farmer would not. increased productivity would provide a larger surplus which could be used to finance industrialization, and since fewer farmers would produce more crops, there would be more manpower available for the rapidly growing industrial sector. Greater industrial power and prosperity would make the USSR more powerful, and thus Stalin more powerful, and would make the USSR more formidable in world affairs, able to resist aggression, and able to launch aggression if desired.

Collectivization was a total disaster, because farmers were not as motivated to work for a state collective as they had been on their own property, since working hard provided no real additional compensation, and the disruptions caused by the process of collectivization and the different methods neccessary to farm a collective caused a drastic drop in productivity, which of course caused a drastic drop of agricultural output, causing a severe famine.

If Stalin was only interested in political control, a five year old child could have given him a more efficient way of obtaining it. Besides, he already had total political control; how much more can you have than total?

And don't you think it's a bit naive to assume that Stalin only had one motive in life, or that you have special insight into what that is?

[Wiggy]

Sorry. Can't accept that Stalin "accidently" killed millions in a botched attempt to make things better.

At the time his power was not absolute. Stalin had to outmaneuver a number of other possible successors to Lenin. He had to bring the Ukraine and other parts of the new country to heel. He purged the Communist Party in the mid-30's, purged the officer corps in the late 30's and was warming up to another set of purges when he died. He did whatever he needed to do to stay in power.

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Sorry. Can't accept that Stalin "accidently" killed millions in a botched attempt to make things better.

At the time his power was not absolute. Stalin had to outmaneuver a number of other possible successors to Lenin. He had to bring the Ukraine and other parts of the new country to heel. He purged the Communist Party in the mid-30's, purged the officer corps in the late 30's and was warming up to another set of purges when he died. He did whatever he needed to do to stay in power.

Then try providing evidence instead of just "feeling" that everything Stalin did was deliberately evil. Or explain HOW starving people increased his power. Normally, famines are the best possible way to get kicked OUT of power, not the other way round.

And I'm curious who you think was a particular threat to Stalin in 1932. And as for "absolute", neither Stalin's power nor anyone else's in the entire history of the human race has ever been "absolute" or anything close to that.

[Namor]

Then try providing evidence instead of just "feeling" that everything Stalin did was deliberately evil. Or explain HOW starving people increased his power. Normally, famines are the best possible way to get kicked OUT of power, not the other way round.

Starving people increases your power if your government(USSR) fought those same people in a Civil War just a decade ago. Ukrainians were biggest minority in USSR. During Russian Civil War, Ukraine declared independance and many people supported it. There was considerable fighting in Ukraine and Southern Russia. Those regions were very warm towards White forces. Ukraine and Southern Russia have long Cossack tradition and although there weren't many Cossacks at that time, people had more free spirit. They were more likely to rise up in revolt if you mistreated them. Stalin wasn't stupid, he was from Georgia himself, so he knew that people from that whole Southern region of USSR are more rebellion prone. Now, when you collectivise many peasants into one tightly controlled Kolhoz, you reduce the risks of rebellion. If you starve them enough, you ELIMINATE all risk of rebellion. All of Soviet Union was collectivized but Southern part suffered the most. Coincidence or not? Knowing Stalin's maniacal desire for power and incredible paranoya putting 2 and 2 together is easy. Now that I explained to you how starving Ukraine and Southern Russia made Stalin more powerful, mind to explain why Stalin did following things in order to "increase food production"?
1. Sealing off Ukraine from the rest of the world.
2. Posting armed soldiers on the borders order to stop anybody going IN or out.
3. Confiscating, not collecting, PERSONAL grain of tghe peasants. How would that help collectivisation proces?

[Derek Jackson]

There is very little doubt that millions died as a result of Stalin's economic policies. However many states that were NOT dictatorships caused millions of deaths.

The poor handling to famines in British India and British Ireland in the 19th century come to mind, there was also a famine in Bengal in 1943 worsened by our (I am a Brit) administration.

It is, in my opinion, at least as reasonable to blame Hitler for ALL the deaths in WW2 in Europe.

Then there is this key difference. Stalin was willing to murder millions to achieve his politica objectives.


For Hitler murdering millions WAS his political objective.

Also there is very little doubt that Mao was responsible for more deaths than Stalin- but of course he held sway over more people

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

"All of Soviet Union was collectivized but Southern part suffered the most. Coincidence or not?"

Yes, coincidence. The Southernmost part, especially the Ukraine, was the most highly agricultural, therefore it suffered the most from collectivization. It's really very simple, I don't know why nobody can grasp this.

People were not free to move in and out of different parts of the Soviet Union, nor in and out of the Soviet Union, ever. It was not limited to the famine, and in any case, if people had been allowed to run around in large numbers looking for food, the samine would have become far worse.

Give me ONE other example of starving people as an effective tool to prevent rebellion. This is the OPPOSITE of what you should do. The revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848 were caused by famine; the French Revolution was sparked by famine. The triumph of Islam was caused by famine. Almost every rebellion that has ever occurred in the entire history of humanuty was caused by famine. To claim that Stalin would starve people to prevent famine is calling him an idiot. Stalin was not an idiot. The famine was not limited to the Ukraine, it struck the entire Soviet Union.

If he is to blame, it is for keeping it secret from the West, which could have sent aid; this is typical Soviet paranoia, not a conspiracy to destroy the Ukraine.

In case you are not familiar with Soviet history, the Civil War was not limited to the Ukraine, and every part of the USSR had declared independence at some point after the revolution. The strongest foes of the Reds were in Russia, not the Ukraine.

[MerryPrankster]

John,

Marshal Deniken, one of the White generals, recruited and allied with several powerful Cossack warlords in the Ukraine. The last anti-Communist gov'ts in the USSR to fall were the Trans-Caucasian ones--Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The famine occurred in the North Caucasus as well.

Actually, Stalin did seek aid from the West; an observer from the time reported ships from Germany carrying aid grain were landing in the USSR at the same time that ships carrying grain for sale elsewhere in Europe were leaving the USSR.

On the matter of rebellions, units of the Red Army in Ukraine DID rebel; they were apparently defeated quickly, b/c I've only heard a little bit about them (all I can remember is "21st"--unsure if it's 21st division or brigade or what).

[HelloLegend]

Mao coined the phrase in China...

"He isn't human. Do as you wish..."