I know this seems like an obvious attempt to start a struggle session, but I promise I’m asking in a good faith attempt to learn:) y’all are way smarter and better read than any group I’ve ever been a part of before tbh
I’m listening to the rev left Stalin episode and they’re discussing the holodomor. Clearly a lot of what I thought I knew is capitalist propaganda. However, there also seems to be a possible motivation here to gloss over some of the bad elements of the USSR? I also feel slight alarm bells going off at some parts but idk why really, probably bc it brings up feelings associated w Holocaust denial, even though I know they’re v different issues.
I’m kinda new to the left so I don’t feel like I have the knowledge or the critical thinking skills to tackle this issue on my own.
It seems to boil down to: did the holodomor happen? If yes, was it intentional? If no, was it avoidable?
I’m sure this discussion has happened before so feel free to just link me to stuff haha. Insight appreciated!
I'm not super familiar with the specific situation so I'll defer to others in this thread, but I'd still like to add my two cents - few (if any, even) famines in history were truly caused by nature. Farmers are smart, and tend to have diverse income streams and food sources, if something incredibly crazy happens one year that kills off all the crops, they can still rely on food stores and livestock to survive. Look at any famine and you'll generally find a war, aristocracy/landlords keeping people impoverished, mismanagement, or other human causes. It's only when people are already dirt poor that things like a drought will lead to starvation.
A great example of this is the Irish potato famine. It's true that the failure of the potato crop was a natural occurrence. It's also true that food was being exported to England during the famine to pay the English landlords who had decided they owned everything. Nature makes an extremely convenient scapegoat because (what should be) small problems occur all the time, and it is often the case (as with the potato famine) that those with the power to set the narrative are also the ones with the power to have prevented it, and thus have every reason to deflect blame onto the weather.
As for which humans were at fault in this specific situation, I don't know enough to say, but I find emizeko's narrative credible. All landlords are bastards, after all, and farms are much less efficient when the farm is owned by a landlord because the farmer does not receive the benefit of labor spent improving the land and nurturing the soil. But I'm skeptical of any narrative that attributes the primary cause to the weather, for the above reasons.
I'm sure some people will disagree with me, but I believe it's important to say clearly that nature is not the enemy, because of how often it is used to deflect blame. When r/neoliberal tries to justify sweatshops, for example, their argument depends upon the assumption that the natural state of humanity is so abysmal and miserable that sweatshops are an improvement. Making it seem like the world is just naturally awful is a very useful piece of propaganda for the people who are making the world so awful, not just because it deflects blame but also because it serves as a boogeyman - "If we change anything, then we disrupt the delicate balance by which we've escaped the horrible clutches of nature where everyone dies at 40 and you starve every time it doesn't rain."