If you do the math, I'm sure it will add up for you..
Oh, and all this time I thought it was
I who had real quantitative evidence and Maretens/Tottle who were doing mere hand waving.
Now, just in non-partisan terms, if one group tries to take over another group, there will be "reactionary" elements to group who wants to keep their "way of life". So, sure maybe part of it was due to the lack of "food" for the animals, if you think about it realistic, you will come to the conclusion that to attack the new group trying to take over your resources, one is going to attack them in multiple ways, especially by reducing their food supply. Too bad for the reactionaries, by attacking the food supply, the "Soviet's" can't receive much food, but at the same time, it starves themselves.
I am well aware that opponents of the Soviet state engaged in sabotage. The problem is, we can't go from "they engaged in sabotage" to "sabotage destroyed x amount of things." this is what Martens' book does (and apparently the people he quotes).
`Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941.
If you think this shit meets any justifiable standards of scholarship, you're crazy.
We have quantitative evidence of the decline in fodder, of the increase in diseases among the animals, of declines in their weight. We hav official reports from the time strongly criticizing the awful conditions animals were kept in in collective farms. Further, perverse (unintended) material incentives to abandon livestock were built into governemnt policy to entice people to join collective farms. All the quantitative evidence of cattle slaughtering for ocunter-revolutionary reasons, while somewhat incomplete, points to a highly peripheral role.
Do you need me to explain this one? It seems as if many publishing’s about the man-made famine in Ukraine by Stalin, suggests that there actually WAS a drought which occurred in the Ukraine, resulting in widespread starvation.
And this is at best misleading. There were certain periods of drought, mixed with certain periods of high rainfall (although the fluctuations themselves likely had negative effects). Bad weather did play a role, but temperature probably had more to do with it than rainfall. It is funny how Martens thinks it gives credibility to those claims because they were made by nationalist historians who he thinks wouldn't have had an interest in lying. Not lying doesn't mean someone is accurate. Being correct requires much more than simply wanting to be correct.
Additionally, even though the govenrment had no control over the weather, they were utterly irresponsible to gamble on good weather in their agricultural plans.
`There is no doubt that the famine claimed many victims. I have no basis on which to estimate their number .... Probably most deaths in 1933 were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Waterborne diseases were frequent in Makeyevka; I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever.'
It is questionable if a substabtial portion of excess deaths can be attributed to epidemics. first off, please tell me you don't think that in famines most people die because they get so few calories their bodies simply shut down. Most deaths in famines are a result of pre-existing diseases having greater significance because of weakening immunity. Most deaths caused by these diseases will be a result of the famine, as well as an increased incidence of disease resulting from famine. But lets go ahead and see what happens if we assume diseases weren't a result of the famine. There were a total of 1,870,000 incidences of Typhus and typhoid fever combined in the entire USSR from 1931-33. Even assuming that 1)All these cases were in regions famine deaths were measured in 2)Everyone died from these diseases and 3)The incidences in the surrounding years were 0 so all deaths would be "Excesss," this would only be about 1/3 of the excess deaths. Of course, the real amount of excess deaths due to these diseases in those regions was much lower. Dysentery did not have an especially large significance, but most increases in it it were obviously a direct result of various problems with storing food in Soviet agriculture.
The last one is just logical. If there is going to be disorder, invariably, the social structures of society will decline, and any "productivity" will be harder to achieve, because organization of a society is not in place.
Partially true. However, much of the failure can be attributed to specific soviet policies that were not necessary for the new institutional forms, rather than simply being a result of institutional upheaval. It is also hard to be impressed by the bumbling way collectivization was carried out in the first place.
- By Potemkin
- By Puffer Fish