[ballenarosada]

This article makes no mention of the role the Wilson administration likely played in creating the famine to begin with. Following 1917, anglo-american support of fascist paramilitary groups in Russia led to the bloodiest civil war in history.

[HumanDrivenDev]

1. The famine occurred tens of thousands of kilometers from where US forces landed.

2. Fascism did not exist in 1917. The whites were extremely diverse, ranging from royalists to outright socialists.

3. The United States role in starting the Russian Civil war was minimal at beast. The main catalyst was the Bolshevik party seizing power a few months after losing the Russian Constituent Assembly election.

4. The Russian civil war likely had less deaths than the Chinese Civil War, and unquestionably less deaths than the Taiping Rebellion.

[adventured]

The articles makes no mention of it, because the famine was directly caused by Lenin's government forcibly removing farmers from their own land and taking state control of food production and distribution. The famine occured several years after the Russian civil war was already over.

The Wilson Administration played no role in making Lenin and the nascent Communist system seize control of farm land, intentionally starve millions of people to death by stealing their food, and seize control of most food production and distribution.

[Demiurge]

It was the Tsar who took control of the Russian farm yields in order to supply the WW1 army, with strong encouragement of the British/Entente.

[adventured]

It was directly caused by Lenin's prodrazvyorstka, and began formally in early 1919 and gradually spread to every form of food and food production over the following years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka

[Demiurge]

From the article you linked, "The term is commonly associated with war communism during the Russian Civil War when it was introduced by the Bolshevik government. However Bolsheviks borrowed the idea from the grain razvyorstka introduced in the Russian Empire during World War I, in 1916."

The point being made that this has something to do with Lenin and communism "directly" is ignoring the context. The context is that this famine, as well as the revolution were caused by the extreme failures of the Tsarist rule, compounded with the pawn role Russian Empire was given in the World War I. Russian Empire was used a supplier of the Entente in both grain, and ground forces.

You can perhaps blame Lenin for the famine, but Lenin has steered the country out of the World War, in which Russia would have been the loser, regardless of which side won.

[gandhium]

Lenin's prodrazvyorstka led to famine. Tsarist razvyorstka - didn't.

Major difference.

And why you think that Russia would have been the loser in WW1, is beyond me.

[Fins]

Fascist paramilitaries in 1917 is rather creative reinterpretation of history.

So is the idea that forces opposing the communist plague were any less legitimate than bolsheviks. Of all the participants in the civil war, bolsheviks were the least legitimate, anbd the most blood-thirsty.

[tpm]

The bloodiest civil war in history is probably the Taiping Rebellion.

[HumanDrivenDev]

You're absolutely correct, it's the Taiping Rebellion by a fairly wide margin.

[ericd]

It probably doesn't mention it because it's not true.

[nnq]

Wait, so somebody actively tried to kill the scourge of communism in it womb, and you say it like it's a bad thing?!

Maybe that civil war should've been bloodier, if only the other side could have won... it would have spared the rest of the world at least (hint: Eastern Europe) from the hideous ideology and politics that spread from Rusia and infested them and dragged them down for decades after decades.

[dang]

Please don't use this site for refighting old ideological battles, regardless of how right you are or feel. There's nothing more destructive of the intellectual curiosity that is HN's raison d'être.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nnq]

OK. Sorry. I said it in a very over the top and inflammatory way, in a sort of "ideological trolling" way. Anyway, thanks for the civil reply and for me still having an account :) I'll try to refrain from using HN when I'm too bored/annoyed to say anything of value and not too inflammatory.

[dang]

Thanks! Much appreciated.

[Svettie]

You can't really look at history in a compartmentalized manner like this, or rather, I guess I'm arguing that your "maybe" is closer to "probably not". If we're going to explore hypotheticals, it is very likely that without the harsh policies of forced industrialization in the USSR at the hands of Stalin that Russia would not have been in a position to resist Nazi Germany. Which would spell a worse fate for Eastern Europe at the hands of the Nazis (extermination, enslavement of the Slavic races, etc), not to mention a much bigger problem for the rest of the world in terms of dealing with Hitler.

[Fins]

It is also quite possible that without USSR to run interference in Weimar, and Stalin's support for NSDAP, nazis might not have come to power, or would have fewer resources to work with.

It is also not a given that Russia would not have industrialized even by more reasonable means.

[rospaya]

Russia is in a geographical position where it will always have pretensions on Eastern Europe. Communism was a veneer for imperialism, and if it weren't for NATO and the EU, the same would happen today.

[chepaslaaa]

You realize that communism didn't drag Russia down but actually improved their quality of life from the reign of the Czars right? They were an unindustrialized starving shithole and became 2nd world power. Communism was far from perfect, but it was a step forward at least up until the mid 1950s.

[lootsauce]

"it was a step forward" that is no way to move forward. Setting aside political ideology it was one of the most murderous regiemes the planet has ever seen. For the tens of millions who it intentionally starved to death, worked to death in the gulag, or just summarily murdered it was certainly not better than living in an undeveloped shithole. For them its forward movement was only toward the grave.

Imagine all the good that might have been done by these millions if their human dignity were upheld and they were allowed to live. Perhaps one of them would have developed a great medical breakthrough. Imagine the inumerable works of art and music, theater that might have been made. Imagine the things they could have built and done to make the world a better place. If they had children and grand-children what of their potential contributions? Russia might actually have become the greatest world power.

[baursak]

> For the tens of millions who it intentionally starved to death, worked to death in the gulag, or just summarily murdered

Tens of millions? Intentionally starved? Citations needed, to say the least.

[lootsauce]

Fair enough, combined all purposive deaths, though hotly debated, per wikipedia under Stalin alone the number ranges from 8 to 61 million. So my tens of millions in that context is not out of line though safer to say millions. Either way its abhorrent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_...

[jlehman]

You cannot be serious.

Unindustrialized? Sure. Starving? You could add up the death counts of all known famines in Russia's pre-Bolshevik history and you end up with no more than half the amount dead in just the famine referenced in OP. And that's largely due to the policies implemented by Lenin[1] to ensure that food went primarily to supporters of the Bolsheviks.

How about the famine of 1932-1933[2][3] in which ~10 million (the number is disputed, but when it varies by millions, the point is made) died due to dekulakization[4], in which those farmers that had proved to be competent enough to gather some wealth after having been liberated by the Tsars a half-century earlier were brutally raped and murdered. Guess what happens when you kill all the competent farmers?

You've said that it was a "step forward at least up until the mid 1950's", meaning during Lenin and Stalin's reign? Do some damned reading[5] before you make claims like this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodrazvyorstka [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor [3] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4076244/Distressing-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

[Fins]

It is actually very questionable if communists did improve the quality of life for anyone other than themselves.

For tens of millions of Soviet citizens their life had improved straight into the afterlife.

[literallycancer]

Russia had an elected parliament since 1905.

>You realize that communism didn't drag Russia down but actually improved their quality of life from the reign of the Czars right?

Did it improve faster than it would have under democratic rule?

And then there is the whole business with making half of Europe a 'starving shithole'.

[nullymcnull]

I'm going to assume that you are just reaching out for counterfacts without being particularly well-versed on the history here, because the Russian Duma was, from inception to the revolution, a very bad joke. It was only barely tolerated by Nicholas, and dissolved for years at a time whenever it tried to compel the autocracy toward meaningful reforms. That parliament has a very great deal to do with why events took the radical course they did - it effectively discredited everyone who tried to work within the system.

[rospaya]

> Did it improve faster than it would have under democratic rule?

That wasn't an option for Russia at any point, as it isn't even today.

[nasredin]

It's sad. Russia only had less than a decade of somewhat democratic rule over the last... I don't even know... years.

[oh_sigh]

Things had been on the up and up for the commoners in Russia since ~1860s, and Nicholas II was a relatively fair minded ruler. His biggest flaw was a thirst to maintain power, even though he objectively was impressed with constitutional monarchy. If he had let Russia transition peacefully into that form of government, we could have avoided communism.

[obscurantist]

I'm taking none of your ancestors or grandparents lived during Stalin's reign?