Stalin's plan to Collectivize the Soviet Union was finally in full swing. Peasants everywhere were being forced to abandon their antiquated bucolic lifestyles and become modern proletarians on large agroindustrial farms. Marx’s dream of “labor armies” in the countryside was finally coming true. "The worker's paradise is upon us comrades!!" Well... not so fast. The pushback against this plan was widespread and determined... so much so that even Stalin had to publicly admit it simply wouldn't be possible to forcibly coerce 100 million people to voluntarily become cogs in the colossal wheel of Soviet socialism. It was time for plan B. ``What if we made it impossible for people NOT to join the collective farms? What if we taxed anyone that didn't give in so hard they would be begging for mercy?" As it turned out, plan B did work... sort of... but then a new problem arose. These farms were simply not producing enough food to go around. Socialism wasn't working. Uh oh… So did he back off? Try a different plan? You know that's not how Stalin rolls. It was full speed ahead. “Damn the torpedoes.” Millions of people might starve but it was all for a good cause right? The Soviet Union had to meet those export targets. They needed a lot of hard cash to build those shiny new factories and there was no other way to get it but by selling grain on the world market. If that meant people at home had to go hungry then so be it. “They should have worked harder,” he would say. Of course, the epicenter of this very predictable disaster would be Ukraine. Stalin had an almost pathological distrust for non Russian nationalities that refused to wholeheartedly submit to Soviet power. And of all the nationalities that had resisted his rule so far, none had been more troublesome than the Ukrainians. What he did there in the years 1932-3 has been declared a genocide by 16 countries (inluding the United States). The man who invented the word "genocide" even declared it a genocide. At the famine’s height, a territory the size of France, consisting of 30 million people would be hermetically sealed off from the outside world and its inhabitants left to die a slow, lingering death. Inside the death zone, to even grab a handful of grain from a field could get one executed or sent to the Gulag for a decade long sentence (which was just as good). Many would go insane. Others would become criminals. Some would even resort to cannibalism. No one who survived these years would ever be the same again. Stalin once said "It is ideas that matter, not the individual." Well how about 4 to 5 million individuals? How many eggs do you need to break to make this omelet? Seems like a lot of eggs to me. It would later be called "The Holodomor '' or "death by starvation," and increasingly, historians see it as a deliberate act of a totalitarian regime to break the will of an entire nation. If you want to know why the Ukrainian people of today would be willing to fight with such tenacity to defy the will of a dictator in Moscow, then look no further. After listening to this then you'll get it. Or don’t listen to it. Putin wouldn’t want you to anyways. You know… “fascist” propaganda and all.
Stalin's plan to Collectivize the Soviet Union was finally in full swing. Peasants everywhere were being forced to abandon their antiquated bucolic lifestyles and become modern proletarians on large agroindustrial farms. Marx’s dream of “labor armies” in the countryside was finally coming true. "The worker's paradise is upon us comrades!!" Well... not so fast. The pushback against this plan was widespread and determined... so much so that even Stalin had to publicly admit it simply wouldn't be possible to forcibly coerce 100 million people to voluntarily become cogs in the colossal wheel of Soviet socialism. It was time for plan B. ``What if we made it impossible for people NOT to join the collective farms? What if we taxed anyone that didn't give in so hard they would be begging for mercy?" As it turned out, plan B did work... sort of... but then a new problem arose. These farms were simply not producing enough food to go around. Socialism wasn't working. Uh oh… So did he back off? Try a different plan? You know that's not how Stalin rolls. It was full speed ahead. “Damn the torpedoes.” Millions of people might starve but it was all for a good cause right? The Soviet Union had to meet those export targets. They needed a lot of hard cash to build those shiny new factories and there was no other way to get it but by selling grain on the world market. If that meant people at home had to go hungry then so be it. “They should have worked harder,” he would say. Of course, the epicenter of this very predictable disaster would be Ukraine. Stalin had an almost pathological distrust for non Russian nationalities that refused to wholeheartedly submit to Soviet power. And of all the nationalities that had resisted his rule so far, none had been more troublesome than the Ukrainians. What he did there in the years 1932-3 has been declared a genocide by 16 countries (inluding the United States). The man who invented the word "genocide" even declared it a genocide. At the famine’s height, a territory the size of France, consisting of 30 million people would be hermetically sealed off from the outside world and its inhabitants left to die a slow, lingering death. Inside the death zone, to even grab a handful of grain from a field could get one executed or sent to the Gulag for a decade long sentence (which was just as good). Many would go insane. Others would become criminals. Some would even resort to cannibalism. No one who survived these years would ever be the same again. Stalin once said "It is ideas that matter, not the individual." Well how about 4 to 5 million individuals? How many eggs do you need to break to make this omelet? Seems like a lot of eggs to me. It would later be called "The Holodomor '' or "death by starvation," and increasingly, historians see it as a deliberate act of a totalitarian regime to break the will of an entire nation. If you want to know why the Ukrainian people of today would be willing to fight with such tenacity to defy the will of a dictator in Moscow, then look no further. After listening to this then you'll get it. Or don’t listen to it. Putin wouldn’t want you to anyways. You know… “fascist” propaganda and all.
Imagine you lived in some sort of parallel universe where the Third Reich had won World War II. The war has been over a little under 10 years. Maybe there’s a Cold War but instead of the US and USSR its the US and Germany. Somehow they have nuclear weapons and so do we and its like the same sort of geopolitical stalemate. Now we all know about all the atrocities that they committed during this war right? Literally NO ONE and I mean NO ONE hasnt heard about the Holocaust. 6 million Jews were killed and they were just one of a number of groups that Hitler believed had to go. Now imagine you are a Jew and you live in Germany at this time. For whatever reason Hitler has decided that you and your family shouldn’t die after all. Maybe you have a skill the state needs. Imagine there are others like you and you live in a certain part of Germany set aside for Jews. The regime has decided to back down on a lot of the repression and you are almost like a normal German but not quite. There are some rules. You are NOT allowed to talk about the Holocaust. It did NOT happen. If anyone you knew or knew of died at the hands of the state during the war years it was because of something they did personally. They had collaborated with the Americans. They had plans to overthrow the government. They did die because of Nazi government action perhaps but that was all justified. Not only that in return for the gift of your German citizenship, imagine that you had to pledge allegiance to Hitler daily. In your home, your school, or place of work there were pictures of him. If you were caught saying one ill word about him or anything he did to you or anyone else??? Thats it. Deal is off. You will be arrested and thats the end of you. And this deal doesn't end with you. It goes for your kids.. And their kids for decades after you are dead. Imagine that over in America and countries allied with America there all sorts of intellectuals, students, media elites that publicly say that maybe the Holocaust DID happen but it was not nearly as bad as its hyped up by some people. “Look. Hitler was trying to make a better world. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.” How would that feel? You'd probably think you were going insane… and with good reason. You know what happened. You saw it with your own eyes. You actually spent time in Auschwitz. You could smell the smoke coming from the crematorium. What is wrong with all of these people? Surely the world has gone mad!! The story we will tell today is something sort of like that… you’ll see. It's that Holodomor… This time on Savage Continent.
Holodomor means “death by hunger” in Ukrainian. We don't usually think of hunger as a weapon but it certainly can be such. Hitler had a “hunger plan” where millions of eastern europeans would be systematically starved so Germans would have more food but he lost the war so it never really went into effect. There were other famines in the 20th century which were terrible astronomically so... I'm thinking of China but seldom does the leadership get blamed for mastermining it intentionally. Our story today is different. 16 countries recognize it as a “genocide.” The person who INVENTED the term “genocide” called it a genocide. But still, while there is an overall consensus, not everyone agrees. I don't want to get into the debate. Its strangely dehumanizing… Like these million people over here count because of this but not those guys… sorry. Try again later. We will just do the history and I’ll let you decide for yourselves.
Before we get going I would like to ask of you… whether this is your first time or if you have been listening for more than a few episodes. Please leave me a review. Its super easy. Just scroll down where all the show episodes are listed and hit the star button for me (preferably the 5). I know it sounds simple but less than half a percent of people who listen to the show bother to do it. It takes no more than a second and it helps a ton. And I mean that. It really takes a second. Just try it. If you have more time just write me a review. Of course we are on facebook. Twitter.. Stephen@savage continent. Of course please share this or any episode with anyone you think is into history or even what is going on right now with Ukraine (Who isn't following that). Thats the number one way these shows get out there. The podcasting space has been taken over by the corporate world in recent years and it is very hard for an individual unpaid content provider like yours truly to get decent exposure… but if everyone does just a little bit.. well … sometimes big things start small.
When we left we were discussing the way the Soviet Union under Stalin were implementing this plan. Stalin’s pet project of “Collectivization.” Make no mistake about it. He was staking his political future on this great throw of the dice. If it failed. He failed. And by the time you get to the early 1930’s he had rolled over enough of his opponents to know that if he fell he might fall hard. When a magnate falls in the Soviet Union.. It is a very very long way down.
Historian EH Carr once stated “More than any other man in history the life of Joseph Stalin illustrates the thesis that circumstances make the man.” Much later Stephen Kotkin would repeat this statement adding “Utterly, eternally wrong.”
We have talked about Stalin and his interpretation of Marx and Lenin. He was truly an ideologue. At a conference for school textbooks… yes school textbooks he said the following which totally sums him up perfectly.
“It is ideas that are important…. Not the individual.”
As luck would have it at the moment in 1938 Hitler was rolling into Czechoslovakia unchecked but that's a story for another day. Stalin would trade anything for the victory of Socialism. This is our morality turned on its head. To us in the west at least the individual is everything
But what makes stalin unique… very different from Lenin is that on the whole he was much more rigid in his thinking. Remember Lenin was willing to make some serious compromises when it came to what he felt socialism should stand for. The NEP was if nothing else a giant compromise with the demon of capitalism. But at the time at least it was a very smart move. Sometimes in war you must retreat. You need to give ground in order to prevail in the long run. With Stalin we will see none of that. Collectivization will go horribly wrong. The production quotas will not be met… Not on the assembly line.. Especially not in agriculture. But Stalin will decide to stay the course whatever the cost. Everything from 1928 on did not have to happen the way it did. Stalin would talk about he was a sort of “agent of history” but the Soviet Union could have gone a number of different ways. It did not have to morph into a ultra hard line totalitarian state but it did because the man in charge and the people around him chose a path and decided to stick to it. Consequences be damned.
The Soviet Union you could say was THE prototype totalitarian regime. The term is defined as
And thats exactly what we have going on in the Soviet Union at this point. Right here in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Now again.. We have all these preconceived notions of a “totalitarian state” but keep in mind in the time period we are talking about nothing like this has ever existed. Of course there have been regimes in which a single man holds absolute power. Imperial Rome comes to mind. Ancient Persia, Han China or countless other kingdoms and principalities where the buck stops with one man. But in the modern world?? No. Nothing like this. There’s this ancient Chinese saying: “Heaven is high and the Emperor is far far away.” It seems like a fairly forgettable observation until you really think about it. In pre modern times you might have an absolute ruler. No doubt about that. But that person’s ability to project power into the lives of everyday citizens would be very limited. The ruler of an empire was more of a concept to the average person than an actual living breathing human being. He might want things but his power had to flow through all these different channels that ultimately diluted his power. You felt his power through governors, lords or satraps… more likely their vassals. Policies took time. Even in Russia, the word of a czar might take over a year to reach the far flung corners of empire. Now however? In this new Soviet state? The will of the man in charge could be instantly projected everywhere and done so in an instant. When he wants arrests done they will happen that very night. When lists of enemies to be eliminated are drawn up everyone involved would know within hours. Even the lowliest of citizen saw his airbrushed image. They could read his actual speeches in state run papers the morning after they occurred. Or now… they could actually hear his voice. Don't underestimate that… in real time. Stalin was a living presence in the life of every man woman and child in this world. Stalin is the blueprint. He is the prototype. Every dictator that followed would be modeled after him.
And Stalin. Suspicious as he truly believed that his was a state threatened by the outside world. In the late 1920’s the only state that the Soviet Union could call an ally would be Mongolia. Their brand of Socialism was still abhorrent to just about every nation on Earth.. As we have seen the Soviets did not have a monopoly on the concept. Lenin was but one of many that interpreted Marx and Engles and Stalin had his own take on Lenin. Nonetheless the Soviet Union under Stalin would attempt to fashion itself as the “only” true socialist state. That made enemies of everyone else. He could have developed friendly relations with the Western Democracies but he chose not to. Instead they were deemed as imperialist, bourgeois or fascist, social fascist. He wanted to be prepared for war on a grand scale? Now would that be a war of defense or offense. Even now historians aren’t in agreement. They do agree that he believed war would come and the Soviet Union needed to be prepared. But it would be a modern war… a war fought on the assembly line more than anywhere else. An agrarian Soviet Union would never prevail. It had to industrialize fast. Peasants would have to become factory workers. What people did remain on the land would have to be more productive for 2 reasons. For one there would be less of them to go around. Secondly, the Soviet Union needed foreign capital and expertise for this industrialization to even get off the ground at all. Unfortunately all the Soviet Union really had to sell at this point was grain. So a lot of pressure would be on the agricultural space. What to do? Make the farms larger and more efficient. Make proletarians out of farmers. There would be a smaller number of “collective” farms but these farms would be more efficient… much more efficient with modern equipment. No more horse drawn plows. Nope we are in the 20th century now folks. Surely this plan would go off like gangbusters right??
Lets not get ahead of ourselves. People might need a little “persuasion.”
“When the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov fed a dog it salivated and the scientist rang a bell. After many repetitions the scientist stopped the feeding but continued the ringing and the animal salivated anyway. Pavlov had conditioned the dog to respond to the bell as if the sound were the smell and taste of food. The Soviet populace too had been conditioned. The bell sounded by the regime was capitalist encirclement and the peoples reflexive response was fear of foreign invasion and war.”
With this end in mind the plan to subjugate the peasantry would go forward. It could ot wait. And if a level of ruthlessness were required than so be it.
Reinforcers and Punishers would have to be employed but as mentioned before in a truly socialist state rewards and status are problematic. That leaves punishers. Introducing negative stimuli and withdrawing positive ones. He would start by removing those peasants that would be most likely to resist. A purge of the intelligentsia kicked it off. It was very public. There were show trials. The fiction of elaborate subversion conspiracies with the “fascist” west were laid out in the open. Than of course this is just the opening round. There would be another 10 years of this type of thing. The well off peasants… the “kulaks” got the boot.
So when we left off the plan for “dekulakizing” the peasantry was in full force.The wealthiest, most capable individuals in the agricultural space were written off as “class enemies” and either killed outright or exiled to the most remote regions of the USSR. This policy hit Ukraine the hardest.
A quick aside about the Soviets and the idea of race. As we have seen they do not see race in the same way the Nazis do…. This sort of hypercharged theory of Darwinian evolution. They don't like the idea of evolution. They believe people can be “conditioned” into the perfect Soviet man. But they would be considered racist by any contemporary standard. The Soviet Union was comprised of something like 100 nationalities… and each and every one of them was a potential threat.
Montefiore, Simon Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar p. 310
And of all those nationalities at this moment Ukraine was the biggest threat. It needed to be eliminated. It makes sense. They do not speak your language. They control a fertile territory that is vital to feeding the USSR. They are in a borderland area that abuts potentially hostile states like Poland, Austria, Romania or any of the other hostile western powers. And we will get into this later but what Stalin will do here need not be seen as wanton killing. It had a purpose…. But then it cannot be said that he didn’t know or that he couldn't have prevented it.
Conquest, Robert Harvest of Sorrow p. 4
Davies, Norman A History of Europe p. 964
So as we’ve seen a A purge began among Ukrainian intellectuals that would continue on an off until the great purge of 1937-8. But the big blow would begin in late 1929 and into 1930. This of course would be the collectivization of the Ukrainian peasantry. The word peasant doesn’t mean a lot to us today. In North America we have never had a class of people that could realistically be called peasants. When you think of the term “peasant” its easy to come up with images of the middle ages. With kings, lords and knights and the like. It may seem stereotypical but the image is not too far removed from reality… even in this time period. Peasants are closely related to serfs (surely your middle school history class is coming back to you). Serfs are tied to the land by law. They have more rights than chattel slaves but not that much. A peasant you might consider to be a serf that doesn't have the working feudal arrangement with a lord. Still he is a low level agricultural worker that in a de facto sense or in de jure sense is tied to the land. Since the 1500’s the common people of the Russian Empire were serfs for the most part. They were at the mercy of feudal aristocracy. In 1861 this will change. Serfs are technically liberated but they for the most part do not get the land ownership they want. Again we covered this in the last episode but these type of people just cannot be allowed to exist in their present form in the brave new world to come. As you can imagine these people had a traditional lifestyle and were not too keen on abandoning it all in favor of what was called “a second serfdom.” Most of us have no conception of what it is like to live in one place for you entire life and doing one thing. And for generations and generations before it was all the same. The average american spends only 16 years living in one house before moving. And the higher up the income chain you go the more moving happens. Still…. Imagine you and everyone in your town, you county, or your state had to move at one time into a collection of housing projects connected with a giant factory. That would be awful. You can imagine most of us would be freaking out. But in these traditional villages where the government really hadn’t tried altering a centuries old way of life?? It was bedlam. Stalin would say
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine p.114
As you might expect, an open rebellion broke out and it did so quickly. One of the first impositions the government made was the requisition of livestock. Often peasants would refuse to hand over their animals. Instead they killed them outright.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine p.141
This was disastrous. Check it out. Between 1928-32 half the cattle and horses in the USSR perished. The number of pigs went from 26 to 12 million. Sheep and goats went from 146 million to 50 million. The authorities… of course saw this as an act of sabotage against the state and deemed the participants “kulaks.” They would be deported or forced to endure cruel punishments. One guy who killed his cow had to walk through the village with its head tied around his neck. Talk arose of a “second serfdom”
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine p.143
This would often morph into a religious mania
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p.29
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine p.143-4
By the middle of 1930 it is clear that forced collectivization is pretty roundly rejected by the Ukrainian peasantry as it was elsewhere. The number of attacks on state agents skyrocketed. You’ll have a 5 day period in February where there are 18,000 arrests. The jails were overflowing and there was no sign of it stopping Moreover, if the policy failed it could prove to be a geopolitical liability.
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p.31-2
I love the title of the speech. “Dizzy with Success.” Such spin. Such chutzpah. Half the country is in open rebellion and “oh my. We have been doing so well here guys. Its going so well that we cant even handle ourselves.” Stalin never mentioned all the atrocities. Murders, beatings, children thrown outside without clothes. Folks just got a little carried away. Mistakes were made. And who made those mistakes?? Not stalin of course. It was his minions in the party.
Montefiore, Simon Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar p.54
Of course when the peasantry heard this they knew who to blame.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine p.148
The speech was meant to calm a volatile situation. It was supposed to be what we might call “negative reinforcement.” Taking away an adverse stimulus to elicit a desired bahavior. But it just proved to everyone that the regime was incompetent and worse yet impotent. There were 13,794 incidents of terror and 13,754 mass protests…. And the majority of this activity would be in Ukraine. The secret police would increasingly find evidence of Ukrainian Chauvinist, or Petlurite circles.. All with links to the fascist west. There would be more public trials. More “saboteurs” more “wreckers.” Now Stalin implemented his new plan. Maybe the peasants wouldn't allow themselves to be forced onto a collective farm. Fair enough… but what if we make it impossible for them NOT to join? What if we make the collective farm the only place they can even survive? Orders went out to requisition the seed grain from all peasants that did not join the collective farm. Now if you aren't a farmer this might not mean much to you but your “seed grain” is that little bit of grain you keep after every harvest that you use in order to plant the next harvest. Take that away and well… use your imagination. Peasants were heard to say “All the bread will be taken out of Ukraine and Ukraine will be left with nothing. Another said “They will take our last grain and leave the peasants starving.” Although the kulaks had been largely liquidated, anyone who refused faced dire repercussions.
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p.32-3
There will be brigades that go from village to village taking away the possibility of independence for the farmers. Many protested violently. Archival reports even have mobs of angry peasants shouting things like “We don't want leaders that rob peasants!! Or even “down with the communists.” In 343 Ukrainian villages peasants elected there own “starotsas” or village councils that would serve as an independent government explicitly anti communist. Many at that point fled to the west. Polish propaganda picked up on this. Stalin will be publicly denounced as a “hunger czar.” Of course in the mind of the regime this only solidified the fact that the were “counterrevolutionaries, anti soviet, and Petliurites' ' all along. In Moscow the Politburo decided to ratchet up the Collectivization goals. Instead of 70% of households in Collective farms they wanted 80% collectivized by December 1931. Peasants could remain on their own land but they would have to pay a tax to do so. This tax was paid in kind and often was much more than the farms had ever produced in total on the best of years. Reluctantly many either fled to the cities or did the one thing they dreaded most. Join a collective farm.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p.160
Ok then. Game over. Stalin 1 peasants 0. Well… not so fast. It quickly became apparent that these new collective farms were not all Stalin had anticipated. The modern equipment was in short supply or often didn’t work. Even if it did, these people didn't know how to maintain or even operate it. And of course you have the problem that people have no more incentive to work hard. People stole from collectives. Still… Stalin was convinced his scheme would pay off. He upped the export quota for 1931. Despite all the chaos, the 1930 harvest wasn't bad. The weather had been good.
But there was a problem. The stock market crash of 1929 had brought about a global slump in grain prices. They would have to export more. Stalin wrote in August of 1930:
“If we dont export 130-150 million poods (2.1-2.4 million tons) our currency situation may become desperate. Once again we must force the export of grain with all our strength.”
Then the harvest of 1930 happens and it goes slower than expected. Targets were missed. The Collective farms are not as “efficient” Stalin hoped they would be.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p.165
And nothing can be the fault of Stalin. That leaves the party officials in the grain growing areas and finally the people doing the actual farming. Who is gonna get blamed for this screw up… i wonder… So we get more denunciation. More show trials of select hire ups. One was of a Ukrainian agronomist named Stepan Cherniavsky. He and a group of associates were accused of deliberately sabotaging the harvest and spreading “counterrevolutionary ideas” in the countryside.
Still, once you get into 1931 it is clear that nothing seems to be working. At that point the regime starts to put the screws on these collective farms that aren’t meeting expectations. From here on out any farm that didn't meet its grain quota would have to repay outstanding loans, return tractors or farm equipment that had been “leased” from the state. They would have to surrender any money they had… even if the money was for seeds for the next year’s crop. No mercy. Farms that did not produce were “agents of the kulaks’ and the whole other constellation of internal “enemies” that had to be contended with. So sure enough… the harvest would come in short and the punishment… removal of stimulus– punishment would begin. Brigades went out through the countryside and took whatever they pleased. They went into the houses of guilty Collective farmers and took everything. Even food that the family planned on consuming themselves. They even broke the peasants means of preparing their food.
“The searches are usually conducted at night and they search fiercely, deadly seriously. There is a village on the border with Romania where not a single house has not had its stove destroyed.”
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 169
As people got hungrier and hungrier they began killing whatever livestock they had. First whatever cows, pigs, goats or and the like. Then they began eating horses.. Finally family pets like dogs and cats began disappearing.
People began appealing to Stalin himself
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 171
And there are thousands of these letters in the archives… Stalin would read these. He would even write notes in the margins. People would write to Stalin like kids write to Santa Claus. Often he would respond.
And here is where all of this starts looking pretty irrational if you are in the Politburo or or even the local party elite. It was being openly reported in the Spring of 1932 that a 3rd of fields in Ukraine were even being planted at all. The people were already too exhausted by hunger to do the work they needed to grow the food the state needed. Even Ukrainian communists are beginning to send these planitive letters to Moscow asking for the regime to let up on these draconian quotas.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 173
Not only that but he openly refused any outside help to come to the areas afflicted by the famine. Enough people had fled into Western Europe to prompt organizations like the international red cross collected funds and food but it was all bluntly refused by the state.
Things were falling apart but there was no retreat
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 174 -5
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin 34-5
Stalin would say in another letter that Ukrainian officials were begging for bread from Moscow and “feigning sainthood” and that “Ukraine has been given more than enough.”
So as the situation grew increasingly critical in the summer of 1932 and the evidence for starvation is impossible to miss.. Especially for the obsessive Stalin.. You get this sort of “its your own fault” approach. This approach is followed even when it is clear that less grain on the net will be harvested if it was followed. And here is where the genocide argument starts to take shape. At this point the crisis could have been largely averted. But the grain quotas.. Although very slightly reduced are to remain in place. Not only that… but if you were desperate enough to sneak into a field to just grab some grain… just a handful for yourself or your starving family as was increasingly the case?? Guess what?? Now thats you guessed it… Article 58 “anti soviet agitation.” a political crime. The worst crime. Heresy. And how do we punish heretics?? Death of course…. Or 10 years in the Gulag… which in this time period was just as good. By 1933 the average mortality rate was 15%... so 10 years?? You do the math.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: 180-81
Montefiore, Simon Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar p.94
By the end of 1932 4,500 people had been executed for stealing handfuls of food. Over 100k went to the camps. But then that caused another problem. This Gulag system.. Which would be become every bit as iconic to the Soviet system as the Concentration camps of Nazi Germany were just getting going. There was no place to put all these petty grain thieves.. And many of them were women and small children. Think about it. Before this thing got going you've already stuffed the legal system full of “kulaks.” Not only that but people are now actually trying to get arrested because in their deluded starving minds they are starting to believe that their survival chances are better in a labor camp. Yikes.. How bad could it be?
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p.39-40
And still he tightened the screws. There will be special “toikas”... those infamous 3 man tribunals that had become synonymous with the revolutionary terror during the Civil War over a decade earlier. But they did not just go after common collective farm workers or even whatever collectivized village peasants remained.. No they went after communist collective farm managers and party activists that were responsible for … “sabotage.” In November of 1932 alone 1,623 kolkhoz managers were arrested. Over 30,000 more people would be deported from Ukraine by year’s end. Stalin would say that the famine was “a fairy tale” and he promulgated a theory that put everything together.
It went like this: resistance to socialism was increasing because the successes of socialism were becoming obvious. As this resistance became stronger so much be the ferocity with which it was fought. The enemies were craftier than before. One could never lose vigilance.
Montefiore, Simon Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar p.91
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p.41
For political reasons he again refused help for the outside world. Again he refused to send in aid. And its at this point at the end of 1932 that what is happening slips into a true genocide..
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p.42
The laws came thick and fast.
18th Nov Ukrainian peasants were forced to return “advances” in grain they had earned by meeting quotas (if they had done so). Even if these people had played by the rules and done their jobs.. Bye bye food.
20th of November: peasants that had actually met those targets now had to pay a special “meat tax” AND the grain quota on top. This took away any remaining livestock that could be eaten as well as placed an impossible grain tax they couldn't meet to being with. Oh this applied to horses that might be used for plowing if they already had taken back your tractor so you are screwed a bunch of different ways here.
28th of November: There’s a new “black list” now. From here on out there. If a collective farm fails to meet the grain quota for a given month they would be required to surrender 15 TIMES at amount immediately. Which of course was impossible. Moreover, no one was allowed to trade with a farm or village that had been black listed. No one was allowed to even help them. They became “zones of death” for all inside. No blacklisted village ever met the quota. You get blacklisted… its game over.
5th of December: Anyone who failed to participate in the grain collection.. For moral reasons or otherwise were deemed by definition “traitors to the state” to be punished under Article 58. Of course connections with fascism were always stressed.
21st of December: New requisition targets were proclaimed for 1933. These targets were to be met 100%. Local party leaders would be held personally responsible for any shortcoming.
22nd January: Convinced that refugees fleeing starvation in Ukraine were not hungry but instead engaged in a “counterrevolutionary plot” with Polish assistance Stalin closed off Ukraine from the outside world. Not just from other countries mind you… but from the rest of the Soviet Union. An internal passport system was rigorously enforced. Ukraine would become a vast death camp. A giant Auschwitz in the service of the Soviet motherland. By February 1933 over 190,000 peasants were arrested. Many of them wished they could go to the gulag no doubt. Instead they would be sent back a place far worse. Their own homes.
Clearly this is punishment. This is the withdrawl of stimulus to elicit a proper response. You would have to be a complete imbecile to not see what was going on here…. And Stalin was not a complete idiot. His own children.. His daughter noticed what was going on and talked about it to her friends, her mother and yes…. Her father. This would put stress on his already tense marriage.
Montifiore, Simon Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar p. 89-91
And right as this is going down something happens very personal to the dictator that by all accounts changed him forever… and not for the better. His wife Nadia shoots herself and there is a lot of evidence that she did so in large part because of what her husband was doing in Ukraine although being married to you know…. Stalin……hough it has never been proven. She shot herself in the heart.. So they told everyone it was heart failure. That makes sense I guess. Stalin was shaken by the event. He talks openly about stepping down from power but no one wants to raise their hand in that board meeting. I mean would you. “Yeah Stalin. Maybe you shouldn't be supreme leader.” LOL. This would be a recurring theme. According to Stephen Kotkin Stalin would tender his resignation no less than 6 times up to this point. And although certainly a lot of people would like to see the old man off who would put their neck on the line? No one right? I mean yeah you have Trotsky way off in the West somewhere denouncing him but who cares about him anymore? And of course a bunch of nobodies from whatever existed of the far left that had not aligned with the Comintern but these were but voices crying in the wilderness
Actually, in all this giant mess there were a precious few voices within the Soviet Union even at this time that were willing to acknowledge the fact that the dictator was driving the Soviet Union off a cliff. And when you hear about how it went for them that question “why didn't people stand up to this guy?” Well this should answer that for you. Martemyan Ryutin was one of what were called the “Old Bolsheviks.” People from the original revolution. Its funny how at this point they are like ancient relics of a bygone era.. Even though that era was like 15 years ago. I mean think about it. Imagine if the US congress had eliminated everyone that had served under the bush or… no Obama administration… There are still some Trump people around but they are feeling the heat. Or how about this…You ever been at a job where you know the company has been around for awhile but the management is like “look at all the new faces here… so great to see!!” And then you think to yourself oh crap.. What have I gotten myself into.” Well… by 1932 it seems that most of the original people that Stalin had worked alongside. The people who had sacrificed.. The people who had mortgaged their own morality in the service of the perfect Marxist world?? Well they were actually secret agents of the imperialist west, bourgeois nationalists, fascists, or whatever else… its a giant grab bag here. Most of these guys were executed, imprisoned, or in exile. By 1938 they would all be gone for the most part. Picture Jesus killing off all the 12 disciples and keeping the one fill in.. Mattias and saying.. Hey.. Brother.. You are a good party man and a good worker. Yeah. Its sort of like that. Nuts… So Rytin had allied with some of the people Stalin had beefs with over the years and had since fallen out of favor in the party. Some of the more concervative members like Nicholai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov to name a few. He had been ejected from the party for 4 months in 1930 but then was allowed back. He formed a clandestine group known as the “Union of Marxist Leninists” which opposed some of Stalin’s heavy handed policies… especially what was going on with Collectivization. He published a 200 page pamphlet and was able to circulate it among the top brass.
Kotkin, Stephen Stalin: Waiting For Hitler p.104-5
So what happened to this brave man and anyone who dared to support him? No public trial. He gets grilled by the secret police and off to the labor camp. He was executed in January of 1937. His family would be imprisoned as well… just to be safe…
Even when the boss who had already murdered so many was a personal wreck everyone felt so much pity for him. Poor Stalin. He had been flicking cigarette butts just a few hours earlier at her!! What a loss. What a loss.
Stalin would say of Nadya “She left me like and enemy.” or even “she crippled me.” He wasn’t a womanizer. He certainly had cheated on her but not as flagrantly as most other 20th century dictators would their wives or even as much as the potentates that surrounded him. I kind of want to believe that somehow when she died he turned into the super villain he would become later but maybe that narrative is just a little too satisfying. Stalin comes across as either a self absorbed person or a die hard idealounge. Either way he had little room for the sort of sentimentality that healthy marriage or even family life would demand. Still those close to him say he was not the same afterwards
Montefiore, Simon Stalin The Court of the Red Tsar p. 112
Back in Ukraine things got worse and worse. When you look at mortality statistics this is when 75% of the deaths would occur… and that doesn’t count all the people who would be so weakened that they would die in the years immediately following.
As planned from the beginning party activists descended on Ukraine with ruthless abandon. Their job was to take everything… and when I say everything I mean everything.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p.223
I kid you not there was actually a hunt for dogs and cats.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine p.224
Many towns would post lookouts on a high place somewhere. If any smoke was spotted coming from a chimney they would go to that house and demand to know what was being cooked. If there was any food at all it would be taken away unless it was soup which would just be dumped on the ground. They brought special purpose built rods for finding hidden grain and became adept at figuring where desperate peasants might hide it.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 226-7
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin p. 46-7
This is the point in the story where it goes from a story about a lot of starving people and government repression to a post-apocalyptic movie… or even an episode of the walking dead. When you read about it you think to yourself… surely this has happened before in human history… but it must have belonged to some ancient famine when it just didn't rain for years on end or there were like plagues of locusts or something. You never think scenes like this could happen in a modern society in a year where the weather was alright. Globally in 1933 there was a glut in the grain market. In the US the government was actually PAYING farmers not to grow crops there was so much. You can still see documentary footage of milk being intentionally dumped on the ground because of the overabundance. This is happening in the middle of that. How do you explain it?? A mistake? Mismanagement? Some people still want to believe that narrative. Call this a genocide they get very testy. Of course they keep posters of Lenin around and they like to talk about capitalist exploitation… Marc Tauber will have you believe it was all field mice dear friends.. Field mice… Well. This is the part of the story were people really start getting desperate. They stop behaving like people. They are more like life forms. I can kind of imagine what it would be like to be arrested and shipped to a concentration camp. I can even imagine what it would be like to be sentenced to death. To be shot or to even gassed. This however.. Is something different entirely. Picture your neighborhood. Everything is the same. Your neighbors, family, friends… All the things you are used to… But picture the fridge, the cabinets and grocery stores completely empty. You and everyone you know is getting painfully thin. Their eyes are sunken. Picture your child as a stick figure. Your baby wont stop crying. You are desperate enough to mow the lawn and eat the grass clippings. You are desperate enough to dig in the garden to eat worms. You will eat spiders, bugs… anything. Then someone dies.. Your next door neighbor just falls down next to his car and he’s dead. What do you do? Your kid is days away from death and you know it. What do you do with the body?? This is what daily life was like not in that one little town in a disaster movie. This is what life was like in a nation of over 30 million people. And you know how people are. You have good people. You have some bad people. And you have a lot of good people that might not be so good if they were put in a very desperate situation. When you read these stories thats the feel you get. And they are truly remarkable.
So by the beginning of 1933 Stalin has determined to see this policy in Ukraine through. His belief in Capitalist encirclement and achieving Socialism in one country trumped all else.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: 241-2
And again this is all while life is kind of going on the way it normally has always gone.. Just minus the food. There are stories of children sitting in school… a whole class and one just drops dead. Right in class. Kids are outside playing and one just falls over dead. Unfortunately it was the young that were the first to go. There are pictures of people walking to work… just minding their business… not even stopping to look at the body of some guy that you and I would take for a passed out drunk. No. Thats just a person that died of hunger… another one. People would very often go mental
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: 244-5
People would start to behave in ways towards others in ways unimaginable in normal life. People turned into murderers
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: 248-9
And then an odd thing happens…. A lot of people just go into this eerie fatalistic state that is just so otherworldly. As if the moral and physical exhaustion is so great that they have come to the conclusion that they just couldn’t go on.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 251
People write about how at some point funerals just sort of stop. People no longer have the strength to mourn. They've just grown accustomed to it.
Bodies just start piling up like… garbage in the street or snow that has to be cleared. Wolves.. Previously almost never seen, they started entering towns to eat the corpses. Well someone has to clear the bodies right? When everyone is at death’s door this is easier said than done. Often gravediggers would be paid by the body and survivors report that that's how they survived the famine since they were often paid in bread. They would walk around the neighborhood and if ravens or vultures were circling or if a house gave off an all too familiar stench then these were promising signs. It was just like that image everyone had about Europe in the Black death… with the guy in the cart “bring out your dead!!” Not everyone was operating above board though. Very often if a person was near death but not quite there yet the burial team would pull the victim close to the door so that when they finally died they would only have to lug the body so far. Sometimes however something more sinister happened.
Applebaum, Anne Red Famine: p. 255-6
And well… with all these dead bodies around and all these starving people around… well I think you see where this is headed. Cannibalism was not unknown in the Ukraine or even in the Soviet Union at large. There were instances of it in Czarist times and most recently during the 1921-3 famine. But at no time was it ever as widespread and at times endemic as it was now. The reports come in from all over the territory. There was a black market in human meat and there is evidence that human flesh was sold to the state to meet these infamous “meat quotas.”
Snyder, Timothy The Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalinr p. 49-51
Cannibalism was never accepted and it was always a capital offense but the frequency of it and the almost normalization of it frightened people at the time. Secret police reports talk about it even becoming a “habit” with some people
Applebaum, Anne: Red Famine p.256-8
How does a society ever go back to normal after that? There are stories of a woman who’s cow was stolen and eaten by a neighbor. When she found out she went to his house and gouged out his eyes with a garden rake. People doing some of the most insane things you have ever heard of. One thing that did not happen? Suicide. Bizarre irony. If ever there was a time when people should want to and have every reason to kill themselves it was now but no… maybe its that “will to live. I don't know. The state capitalized on the desperation of the people though. They created this dark way for people to survive…. If they had valuables to sell. You see over the years people had stashed away little bits of gold and silver. Usually these were family heirlooms that went back to czarist times. A wedding ring here. A medal someones great grandfather had earned there. Maybe a coin or two. People held on to this stuff for sentimental reasons but also because one never knew what would go on with the ruble. I mean if you lived through the hyperinflation of the early 1920’s you would understand. Well the USSR…. Perpetually short of hard assets had creative ways to make up the shortfall. You get these little stores opening up in famine areas called Torgsin shops. But these were different. Picture a pawn shop where the items on display were all loaves of bread or canned food or whatever. You go in with your gold and silver and you come away with enough food to hopefully stay alive for a few days. What choice is there? There would be1500 of these little stores. As you might imagine people got taken advantage of quite often.
Applebaum, Anne: Red Famine p. 275
So how did this all end? By the summer of 1933 it was clear… even to Stalin that the situation in Ukraine was beyond critical. It was catastrophic. If he allowed things to persist in this way there would be no harvest because there would be no one left to do the harvesting. The sources from the time are in agreement. This was the reason the famine ended. It wasn't because he had a change of heart or had some sort of… “Oh my God, what have we done?” moment. He let up on the grain quotas for Ukraine. In his benevolence.. The all knowing father in Moscow had mercy on his children. The quota was reduced by 500k tons for 1933 and 1934 was thrown in for good measure. Such magnanimity. Did he ever once visit the afflicted areas? Need you ask? Of course not. And it gets better.. Stalin would “loan” seeds as well as food! Yay!!
True. Overall output cratered. In 1931 overall exports were 5.2 million tons. In 1933 you are looking at 1.6 million tons. And it was even lower in ‘34 at 1.4 million. The 1933 harvest would be an abject failure but… there would be no trouble from Ukraine on that level straight through until the demise of the USSR in 1991. It had been absorbed into the Soviet Union. The dog would come back from obedience school. It had been conditioned. Another reason for the letup was the fact that the Russians being brought in to replace the dead Ukrainian collective farmers were having a hard time adapting to farming Ukrainian steppe lands. The climate was different. The soil was different. You cant just plop people down in a totally unfamiliar environment and expect them to thrive.
What Stalin had effectively done though was demonstrate that he could force his will on the nation and do so with impunity. Resistance had been crushed. Whereas before there was criticism now? Adulation. You are looking at 4 or 5 million deaths in Ukraine. Over the rest of the USSR you can tack on a few more.. And that's not counting dekulakization. Still look at how people are falling over themselves to praise the dear leader.
Check out the head of the head of the Ukrainian Communist party Pavel Postishev just brown noses. This would be at the “congress of victors” in 1934. He starts the speech by taking personal responsibility for “gross errors and blunders” without ever mentioning the famine and then blames everything on nationalism, counterrevolutionaries and “invisible foreign forces.”
Applebaum, Anne: Red Famine p. 285
There you have it. It was all our fault comrade Stalin… we promise to try harder… What was that line… “Thank you sir… may I have another!!!” Needless to say it was not legal to speak of the famine at all in the USSR until the late 1980’s. That would be “anti soviet agitation” or “fake news.” or “misinformation.” Only instead of getting you banned from Twitter or getting a strike on Facebook. You would be tossed in a labor camp.. Along with your family. Cant be too sure you know. And trust me this DID happen.
Now you ask yourself “surely people noticed this outside the Soviet Union. Surely there were sanctions. Surely it was all over CNN.” No. Not so much. You see this was the Great Depression. There were plenty of people that were a little down on capitalism. Not only that but the Nazis were just starting to make some waves over in Germany and although they had a few supporters here and there, outside of Germany and maybe Italy?? They were not so popular. People just wanted to like this wonderful experiment in social justice going on in Russia. In the halls of power not so much. They had a fix on Stalin there… but in the media?? He had a lot of allies. Sure Stalin might be a little rough around the edges… but the workers paradise is right around the corner!!! And there was no bigger ally than New York Times reporter Walter Duranty. He famously brushed off the millions of deaths with the famous phrase “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.” Yes.. that's where that comes from. He was the Times reporter in Moscow. He was allowed personal access to Stalin (a huge deal btw). The price?? He basically was expected to write nothing but fluff pieces for the progressive NYT readership back home. And you can still read his stuff. Articles are right there. You can google them. Its kind of like when Dennis Rodman visits North Korea and wouldn't you know it? Kim Jung Un isn't so bad. He's just a little misunderstood. Now the Soviet Union is a closed place. You can't just poke your dirty capitalist fingers around without special permission. Well a Welsh reporter named Gareth Jones did just that. He sneaks onto a train to Kharkiv from Moscow and jumps off 40 miles away. From then on he decided to walk… Just following the train tracks to Kharkiv. This was in March 1933… Right when the famine was reaching its climax.
Applebaum, Anne: Red Famine 313-14
Well. He makes it to Kharkiv and eventually out of the USSR and he goes public with what he saw. Right to the Associated Press. At first it makes a big splash. There were rumors about what was going on in the Ukraine but the Soviet government categorically denied everything. Plus… Around the world there was too much production. Like I said earlier in the US farmers were being paid NOT to grow. Titles like “Famine Grips Russia, Millions Dying, Russian Famine as Great as Starvation of 1921, and Famine Rules Russia” appeared in newspapers all over the world. Well… how do you think the big media of his day responded? Pulitzer Prize right? New CNN special contributor Gareth Jones right??? Nope. The “Independent Fact Checkers” swatted him down with impunity. The Soviet Press accused him of outright lying but that we can expect. The western media savaged him. The chief accuser?? You guessed it?? Walter Duranty. In a New York Times article entitled “Russians Hungry But Not Starving” he would write:
Applebaum, Anne: Red Famine p.317
And that was it.. Duranty had like a million Twitter followers and Jones had like 200. And oh lord thank God there was no Twitter then or Poor Gareth Jones would get buried under so many snarky tweets that it would be centuries before archeologists would unearth his remains. But it gets better. Duranty would win a Pulitzer Prize for HIS reporting on Collectivization and the famine and it would be his fluff pieces that finally convinced the Roosevelt administration to finally grant formal recognition to Stalin’s USSR. All the way through WWII you would have people like Joseph Davies representing the US in Moscow. He would actually watch the show trials during Stalin’s Purges and he would talk about how they were such great examples of revolutionary justice and how the cases were “air tight.” There would actually be a movie made on this. Its on Youtube “Mission to Moscow.” Hollywood depicts Stalin as the kindliest old man you ever saw. He will visit a factory and comment on how “yeah i saw a guy turn a wrench the wrong way.” Molotov’s wife is like a fashion designer. The movie was so ridiculous that they wouldn't allow it to be seen in the Soviet Union because its depictions of the place were so rose colored they were afraid the Russian people would think it was a comedy. Swear to God. So theres this OTHER movie that comes out during the war called “The North Star.” In this movie you have this Idyllic Ukrainian village. It looks like it could in that one part of Disney World where they have they have part where theres all these stereotypical versions of all these countries. In one part they sing a song that goes “sing me not of other towns, towns that twinkle and shine, excuse me… but there’s no village like mine!!” And there are so many songs about how happy everyone is… then…. Gasp.. NAZIS!! And of course even though its 1943 they are all stock characters from a Queintin Tarantino movie. You Know… the Hugo Boss uniforms. Captain has a monocle. The works… These Nazis went as far as to kidnap the town’s children and use their blood for transfusions.. So they are literally blood suckers. Well wouldn't you know it. The young people of the town join the resistance… because of course. And it goes on from there. Watching it you have absolutely no clue that a single bad thing happened in these peoples lives up till now. No “oh yeah. Remember that time Stalin forced half of our town to starve to death and Aunt Sally got caught boiling uncle Frank’s liver to stay alive??? Oh good times. Good times. Yeah none of that.
Thats kind of the way this story goes though. It got shoved under the rug. You couldn’t talk about it. Well almost… You see when the Germans did invade in 1941 they made a big deal out of the famine. They dug up the mass graves to show everyone. They opened the churches that had been shuttered so memorial services could finally occur. Thats all well and good but the problem was that when the Germans eventually lost the war anyone that talked about the famine was labeled….. Wait for it …. A Fascist!!! Obviously… and yes… even today there are lots and lots of people in Russia and even here in the West that still use that same line. Putin announced that Ukraine even now is controlled by a secret Cabal of Hiter worshippers and that he’s coming to denazify the country. Bless him. Russia still denies any of this had ever occurred and if you dear friend believe anything I have told you today… well then you too are a Fascist. Well. that's all for today. See you next time on Savage Continent!