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[+] 29 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • [+] -10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Then why did the Soviets kill so fucking many people? And don't get me started on our old friend Mao Zedong. The pursuit of socialist ideals under vanguard parties has caused enough mass murder across enough regimes that it's part of what you sign up for under authoritarian communism.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    The 1930s famine was a combination of dramatic weather problems in pre-industrial agriculture, kulak's killing their livestock and burning their grain in order to resist collectivization, and mismanagement. The Communist Party of Ukraine hid how bad the famine was getting from the politburo, which made the problems even worse as it delayed aid. It wasn't intentional, and after the 1930s famine the USSR was food secure outside of World War II, when the Nazis took Ukraine (the USSR's breadbasket) and intentionally attacked farmland.

    Mao faced similar issues with famine, large-scale weather problems coupled with mismanagement. Neither famine was intentional, so framing it as "mass murder" erases that once both countries industrialized, life expectancy doubled as compared to pre-famine, pre-socialist conditions. Famine was just incredibly common before industrializing farming, and the communists, when in power, provided high quality healthcare and land redistributiob, education, etc.

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