I hear people claim that famines in china and russia were completely out of the government's control and not the fault of the failure of communism. Is there any truth to this?
>>423487
No.
>>423487
Yes.
>>423488
The guy I was talking to said that China's famine was due to a drought in the 60s. Another guy said that the tech to circumvent this was widely available and China has no excuse for letting people starve like that.
>>423487
Maybe.
>>423487
The famines may not have been entirely the fault of the communists, but communism sure as shit didn't help.
Generally, the forced collectivization of farms tended to cut outputs and fuck everything up.
>>423487
What most people will tell you:
No
What smart people will tell you:
Their policies were directly responsible, so they bear the blame, so no, those arguments for their innocence are wrong.
What brainwashed communists will tell you:
It was all the filthy capitalists' fault for sending all that aid that we rejected. Of course they weren't at fault for famines caused by a forced transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one.
>>423499
China's famine was a direct result of forced collectivization, and policies encouraging overseeding in an effort to grow more rice per acre than other collectives. So literally 100% the fault of government policy.
Now for the real question, was it worth it? Chinas economy today is solid and they arent executing their own civilians for fun or to "hide secrets" any more.
Inb4 edgy answer saying its always worth it to kill gooks
>>423519
no
china's economy is going to horribly collapse in the future
so in the end it won't be worth it
>>423519
Depends how much you value human life, really.
Both Russia and China were primarily agrarian nations on the verge of industrialization when Communism took hold, and it seems like Communism traded lives for time to force them into the industrial age.
Strategically, it was a good decision, as it allowed them to catch up with the rest of the world and become major powers.
However, that's little solace to the literal millions of people who died as a result of the communist policies.
>>423487
The famine in China was made worse when Mao had the genius idea to get rid of all the "pests". He told villagers to chase sparrows until they landed from exhausting, and club them because Sparrows eat seeds.
Of course, the sparrows also fucking ate locusts and other pest insects and when the sparrow population plummeted, locusts were able to eviscerate crops.
>>423543
I remember reading that the had to import (russian?) sparrows en masse after that. I don't know if it's bullshit, but I believe it.
>>423487
Famines tend to occur in communist nations due to poor management, a need of supplying the state with adequate grain quotas, rebellion against collectivization, human capital flight, a need for more industrialization (great leap forward), and ethnic or political tension within a nation.
>>423487
The famine in China was a result of the local leaders of the farms lying about the productiion numbers to get higher positions, thus stepped up the amount of food taken from the farms. That and retarded theories about planting seeds, communal farming etc.
>>423487
Famines were common in Russia since medieval and until the 1930s. The lack of food in the 1980s was caused by the overall decay of Soviet system. And after the fall of Soviet economics in the 1989-1992 and privatisation many people couldn't adapt to the "free market"
>>423543
Seriously hard to believe if it wasn't such a tragedy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign
>>424834
Why you are forgot about the Europe? You should read Erich Maria Remarque novell called Three Comrades.
>>424860
>Three Comrades
Never read it, will try someday.
About Europe - I don't know enough to talk about famines in Europe
>>423487
In the case of China, the only thing the government did wrong was to not accept the one child policy when it was needed. Tens of millions of Chinamen died because of this.
I think there is a lesson to learn here, because Africa will get 4 billions people before 2100.
THe Holodomor, the famine (and persecution) in the Ukraine in the 1930s which killed 10 million people was deliberately done by the Bolsheviks.
The Chinese famine was poor planning and power play by Mao.
I tend not to think "Communism" and more "who is in power".
>>423487
They are the states fault, but those states were not communist.
>>425088
>deliberately
More like "ukranians trying to make themselves look like genocide victims".
>>425088
>deliberately
You will never find definitive evidence of that.
>Kazakhstan came off worse from the famine than the Ukraine
>bawww, the Ukrainian intellectuals!
>>423524
>china's economy is going to horribly collapse in the future
>so in the end it won't be worth it
ANY DAY NOW
famines cannot be achived without some human failure/inaction/action
t. gommie
>>423487
A) They collectivized farms, which is exactly the opposite of what you should do to improve crop yields.
B) They subscribed to an absurd Lamarckian idea of breeding.
C) They made famines worse by using famine as a political tool to starve people not inline with party policy.
The first point is a direct result of communism but the other two points aren't inherently entwined with communism.
>>423487
Absolutely not.
The striking thing about China's famine is that every single region was affected. Every single one. That is NOT what happens when a famine occurs "naturally". Usually a single region is struck.
The fact that starvation was widespread over the whole continent, and that it was all the more severe in the provinces which had higher degrees of collectivization, points to the fact that the famine was entirely the fault of communist policies.
>>425224
>You will never find definitive evidence of that.
The USSR archives have been open since the 1990s you know....
Proof of one of the chief failures of communism on a large scale
You absolutely cannot micromanage a large nation effectively from your stupid little administrative office and your "big ideas"
Communism is fantasy for every domain outside of small villages
>>425709
Droughts can affect entire agricultural zones, brutha. If your most productive areas are hit and you don't have the capital to import food from abroad then you are SOL.
>>425715
And yet people haven't found definitive evidence of it.
>>425750
If only there were an economic model to have that capital on hand in times of necessity
Famines in this day and age are almost always a result of poor government policy. The only question is whether it comes down to negligence or malice.
e.g
Russia and China: negligence
Ukraine and Ireland: malice
>>423487
>completely out of the government's control
That depends entirely on what you mean. Do you mean that the famines were created by natural conditions? This is true. Do you mean that agricultural policy didn't have any influence on the conditions? This is false in two opposing ways.
Drought, flooding, and other natural conditions and unnatural conditions (namely the preceding wars, in the Soviet case) resulted in original famine conditions. This is supported by Tauger in the Soviet case and Hinton in the Chinese case (Tauger is especially despised but, unfortunately for some, his findings are factual). But a few key errors led to worsened conditions in both Soviet and Chinese farmlands: Lysenkoism for the former and the Five Pests campaign for the latter. Something to keep in mind here is that both of these are definite errors in hind-sight but that, of course, is 20/20. Lysenkoism was a theory that favored Lamarckism over Mendel, which we at least now know is a big no-no (and to be fair it wasn't necessarily popular then, but the promises of it were significant) and the Five Pests campaign sought to bolster crop production by removing very real pests that did affect crops, but by removing the sparrows (iirc) they eliminated the predators that killed worse insect pests.
The second way it's false is that despite these initial negative impacts and famine conditions, inevitably Soviet and Revolutionary Chinese practices resulted in much better agricultural practices than previous systems. The Soviet case was much worse than the Chinese because it had social as well as bureaucratic conditions that prevented starvation measures (again, war conditions pretty much depleting reserves, but also non-compliant parties that sabotaged production, and a lack of decentralization that made breadbaskets like the Ukraine specialize in crop production for all the other areas, which made the aid to these areas that Stalin personally ordered more complex). 1/2
>>425784
If only. Autarky can be a bitch.
>>425795
2/2
The Chinese famine also had a political problems, namely the Sino-Soviet split preceding it demanded a higher than normal export of crop (debt) to the Soviets so China could maintain in-fact independence. However, the collectivization of Chinese farmlands had better practices (thanks in large part to learning from Soviet error) and was organized by decentralized communes that owned their crop (you can argue this isn't necessarily the case but that's quibbling). In short, Chinese peasants were able to maintain stores of crop for themselves and distribute them equally. Despite the 500 gorillion dead mean, very few deaths (in proportion to population) were attributable to starvation in the Three Bad Years. Hunger abounded, for sure, but starvation was a rarity. This rustles the reactionary but it's a fact, and the cold war numbers in fact originate from people that weren't there, or were there but were disaffected expats that intentionally lied about what was happening to gain favor. The fact is that under communists, China and the Soviets didn't have famines again, and with China that's amazing because it's especially known for its constant famines.
>in before "le commie shill" or whatever
>>423487
In china they denied the people from rural areas access to food they had produced in the first place in order to feed the people in the cities.
>Cindy Fan 2008 "china on the move"
It's about the 户口-system, quite interesting stuff actually. Made me hate commies even more
>>425750
>Droughts can affect entire agricultural zones
The entirety of China is not a single agricultural zone you fucking moron. It's a huge continent. Please point to me a single famine in european history which spanned from Ireland to Russia, from northern Norway to Sicily. I'll be waiting.
>>425848
Holy shit, take it down a notch, buddy.
See those red areas? If they get hit by drought then poor countries are in for a world of hurt. China isn't just some sprawling homogeneous farm stretching from one edge of the country to the other. Like most other countries it has prime agricultural land and below average agricultural land.
>>425848
>China is a continent
>buying the liberal memes that communists magically control weather
>actually thinking China had modern agricultural science prior to communist revolution
>>425869
>Holy shit, take it down a notch, buddy.
I can't, your stupidity angers me.
By the way, you didn't answer my question. You say that famines which hit hard a specific area can have a bad effect, and that is true. But what you're purposefully ignoring is that the chinese famine didn't hit only a particular area, it hit EVERY SINGLE CHINESE REGION you fucking moron.
You know why for instance famine hit Tibet? Because the Mao and his gang of idiots over in Peking decided that it was a good idea to plant wheat over there, although it had a survival chance of approximately 0% due to the harsh tibetan climate.
>>425876
>>China is a continent
It's bigger than europe
>>buying the liberal memes that communists magically control weather
>believing the communist propaganda that "bad weather" caused 60 million people to perish.
>>actually thinking China had modern agricultural science prior to communist revolution
Where did I ever claim that? And what would that claim have to do with anything?
Anyways, it's telling that China when it was still a feudal shithole didn't have famines as bad as under communism...
>>425876
>communists magically control weather
>liberal memes
topkek, that's not a "liberal meme", that's Lysenko tier pseudo-scientific retardedness.
>>423487
I don't know much about the Russian Famines, but Mao went full retard.
If you kill 60 million rice farming peasants out of fear they would revolt against you, of course you're going to get famine.
>>425912
Europe doesn't have just few river valleys feeding the entire region like China does.
Famine is always a mix of climatic factors and poor policy. I'm just saying that entire regions can experience bad harvests. Look at the dustbowl in America. Had America been a dictatorial autarky then the government would have used the food shortage to starve out people not inline with party policy like what has happened in the USSR, China, and North Korea.
Have you had your coffee today?
>>423512
a lot was also because of initial success in some of the projects, the communes that oversaw the project kept bloating up the success they were having, which caused it becoming worse then it could have been.
>>425936
well technically Mao didn't mean to kill the 30 million in the great leap, and the deaths of the cultural revolution was a side effect of Mao's hope of ridding China of it's traditional way of thinking, deaths was just a side effect. The only time CCP killed because of fear of revolts was in 89.
>>425973
>well technically Mao didn't mean to kill the 30 million in the great leap, and the deaths of the cultural revolution was a side effect of Mao's hope of ridding China of it's traditional way of thinking, deaths was just a side effect.
>IT'S JUST A SIDE EFFECT, BRO!
How exactly do you killing 60 million BY ACCIDENT? Holy shit please tell me you're just joking, please.
Communism and socialism are very dangerous.
The Russian and Chinese famines happened because of communism and socialism.
>>426065
My point was that Mao didn't wish to kill of the people, because he thought they would revolt, it was a side effect because Mao was too hasty in his industrialization of China and letting the red guards go out of control.
>>423487
Communists was gud boys they dindu nuffin
>>426065
Killing all the sparrows.
Having farmers forge steel in their back yard.
>>426101
There was even reports of cannibalism in some provinces.
>>425784
If only.
Capital is usually in very short supply in capitalism during something like a drought. State intervention is usually required.
>>425936
That's not what happened.
>>426065
Because 60 million didn't die, Chang.
>>425938
Sometimes it's pure climate. Hindsight is 20/20 and a policy that may have been fine in normal weather appears stupid in a drought. That doesn't make policy at fault.
>>425938
>the government would have used the food shortage to starve out people not inline with party policy like what has happened in the USSR, China, and North Korea.
But that's not what happened in any of those cases. Just because you don't like commies doesn't mean you can attribute maliciousness to them when there's no proof of it.
