MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • Look up the work of Mark Tauger. He is an economic historian who specializes in the period.

    He describes the worst human-driven cause of the famine being the mass slaughter of livestock, cattle but also very importantly mass slaughter of horses used for meat and labor, by kulaks and Ukrainian nationalists.

    He also describes the relief efforts made by the Soviets, especially once the higher leadership in Moscow began taking a more active role as the crisis deepened.












  • I think as a broadly applicable rule, the slower this conflict burns the better it is for Russia.

    That’s not the same as saying the longer it burns since I think Russia has more interest in a permanent settlement than a continued war, but the slower it burns means cheaper for Russia in terms of western support fading away and Russian advantages in manufacturing of munitions being maximized.

    I don’t see any reason for Putin to engage in a risky big arrow push at any stage of this war. He tried it at the beginning and got burned, since then it’s been favorable attrition warfare. Why would this strategy change?



  • I don’t think what you’re saying is wrong, it’s more that I think it’s too convoluted.

    Something like 75% of the worlds oil is in the Caspian basin and this explains most of the past 30 years of US war.

    I think Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Crimea, Syria, it’s about that oil and the countries in proximity to it.

    This stuff about “finance capital vs industrial capital” I dunno, it’s not wrong I just think it’s a bit too abstract high concept.

    Edit: I can’t reply because the thread is locked but I was speaking too loosely. Basically I mean that general part of the world, the Arabian peninsula, the Fertile Crescent, the Caspian Sea, the various Stan’s.

    It was inaccurate of me to refer to the whole area as the Caspian basin.



  • The reasoning NAFO types engage in is that western weapons are exceptional and remarkable such that only a small number of them can counter much larger Russian forces.

    “Wunderwaffen” is the term for this reasoning.

    The more cynical view, our side of things basically, is that the west is only providing enough to keep Ukraine in the fight but not enough to win because the west benefits more from this conflict dragging out than it benefits from any peace settlement.

    Ukrainian victory is not plausible without western forces actually deploying, and since the west is not actually willing to bleed for Ukraine, the objective of the west is to prolong this conflict for as long as possible in order to make Russia bleed as much as possible.

    The mask slips pretty frequently as US senators or EU presidents boast about how “cheap” this war is because “it’s not US soldiers dying.”

    The concept is known as a bleeding sore. The west wants to engage Russia in as expensive a conflict as possible in order to force Russia to expend blood and treasure in Ukraine, with the rationale being this makes Russia weaker in the medium term future.

    Secondarily and specifically for the benefit of the USA, it forced europe to cut economic ties with Russia and broke apart the growing links between Germany and Russia which ensures Europe remains firmly under US vassalage. The loss of very cheap energy imports from Russia also dramatically undermines European manufacturing which rather directly benefits US manufacturing since the US is also pushing the EU into a trade war with China.