• Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com
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    17 hours ago

    “Holodomor” is just a scary word to refer to the 1931-1933 Soviet famine. Do you also use special scary words to describe capitalist-driven famines such as the Bengal Famine that the British created in India, or is it a privilege only reserved for the last serious non-war-made famine in the USSR?

    Famines, believe it or not, were commonplace in preindustrial Russian Empire, which had a terribly low life expectancy. Between 1917 (Bolshevik revolution) and 1941 (Soviet Union entering WW2) life expectancy rose from 30 years to about 41. The Socialist project in Eastern Europe made some mistakes, such as errors in the collectivization of 1929-1934 during the first 5-year plan that led to unexpected sabotage and failed crops, but ultimately these mistakes were more than compensated for through social policy, universal healthcare and education, and probably most importantly, enabling the industrialization of the Soviet Union that allowed for the mechanization of agriculture and the end of famines (which by itself saved millions of lives) and the win against the Nazis 10 years afterwards (which by itself saved tens of millions of lives from the planned genocide against the slavic peoples by the Nazis according to the Generalplan Ost. The Soviet project saved tens if not millions of lives from hunger, disease, exploitation, and worst of all, colonisation and extermination by Nazis.

    • LittleBorat3@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      No I am not defending some genocide that any non-communist nation has ever been responsible for. That’s how you seem to define capitalist driven. Check your cognitive biases there. I do not defend the British empire nor the Roman empire, nor the Ottoman empire nor the third Reich.

      About the dissolution of the USSR who’s fault is it that it happened how it did? How much mismanagement and corruption is inherent within the communist system? Modern day examples are pretty high on the corruption index.

      They mechanized and industrialized plus had health care. The rest of the world did that too.

      The times you are citing are also the most totalitarian under Stalin. With lots of purges etc. so not substantially better than living under the nazis. If you are starving, you are starving.