So, grain requisitions? I never denied that those happened, I denied that it was used as a tool to oppress farmers. You also keep conflating Kulaks and non-landowning peasants, which is bad analysis.
Considering the systemic and politically motivated oppression and political terror and taking all their food, leaving them to starve, torturing people on the suspicion of not giving all of their grain etc just “grain requisitions” is pretty wild.’
But for the promised quotes, this is the first I came accross from the book “Stalin - A New Biography of a Dictator” by Khlevniuk, Oleg V. (2015)
While the entire country suffered from famine and mass repression, Ukraine and the North Caucasus were the most affected.37 It was in these two important regions of the USSR where the policy of punishing grain requisitions and terror were most brutally applied. Two interrelated reasons explain Stalin’s focus on these areas. The first could be described as economic. Ukraine and the North Caucasus supplied as much as half of all grain collected by the state. But in 1932–1933 they turned over 40 percent less than the previous year. While this decline was partially compensated by Russian grain-producing areas, which despite going hungry had significantly overfulfilled their plans, they could not completely make up the shortfall. In 1932 the state collected almost 20 percent less grain than in 1931.38 These figures partially explain the demands Stalin placed on Ukraine and the North Caucasus. He wanted “his” grain and was infuriated that they were not providing it.
Second, Stalin saw the crisis of 1932 as the continuation of the war against the peasantry and as a means of consolidating the results of collectivization, and he had a point. In a letter to the Soviet writer Mikhail Sholokhov on 6 May 1933, he wrote: “The esteemed grain growers were in essence waging a ‘quiet’ war against Soviet power. A war by starvation.”39 He undoubtedly considered the peasantry of Ukraine and the North Caucasus to be at the forefront of this peasant army battling the Soviet government. These regions had always been hotbeds of anti-Soviet sentiment, and Ukraine had been at the forefront of the anti-kolkhoz movement in 1930. Repeated incidents of unrest flared up in both Ukraine and the North Caucasus in 1931–1932. A further cause for concern was Ukraine’s border with Poland. Stalin feared that Poland, in its hostility toward the USSR, could exploit the Ukrainian crisis.40 Overall, as Hiroaki Kuromiya points out, Stalin was suspicious of all peasants, but “Ukrainian peasants were doubly suspect both for being peasants and for being Ukrainian.”
By proclaiming grain collection to be a war, Stalin was untying his own hands and the hands of those carrying out his orders. The ideological basis for this war was the Stalinist myth that “food difficulties” resulted from acts of sabotage by “enemies” and “kulaks.” Any suggestion of a link between the crisis and government policy was categorically rejected. By blaming all food shortages on “enemies” and on the peasants themselves while also promoting the idea that the scale of the famine was being maliciously exaggerated, Stalin relieved himself and the central government of any obligation to help the hungry. A statement by the general secretary in February 1933 at a congress of kolkhoz shock workers shows the depth of his cynicism: “One of our achievements is that the vast masses of the poor peasants, who formerly lived in semi-starvation, have now, in the collective farms, become middle peasants, have attained material security.… It is an achievement such as has never been known in the world before, such as no other state in the world has yet made.”42 This statement came at a time when thousands were dying every day.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 11 months ago
By it being systemic policy, what do you mean it? What policy, specifically, and in what timeframe?
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
sopuli.xyz/post/36458404/20141296
sopuli.xyz/post/36458404/20149894
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 11 months ago
So, grain requisitions? I never denied that those happened, I denied that it was used as a tool to oppress farmers. You also keep conflating Kulaks and non-landowning peasants, which is bad analysis.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Considering the systemic and politically motivated oppression and political terror and taking all their food, leaving them to starve, torturing people on the suspicion of not giving all of their grain etc just “grain requisitions” is pretty wild.’
But for the promised quotes, this is the first I came accross from the book “Stalin - A New Biography of a Dictator” by Khlevniuk, Oleg V. (2015)
And so on.
It’s a good book and very approachable.