Actually my understanding is that the kulaks were largely sent to gulags and the like where as entire regions of the ukraine and russia were systematically starved under the industrialization efforts. Most of those people weren't kulaks. Kulaks were essentially the economic upper crust of the peasant population.

And there might certainly be ethnic aspects to it as well but again I think that's down more to the circumstances that certain ethnicities inhabited the majority of the farmland where the crops were grown. Stalin himself wasn't even ethnically russian, he was from Georgia.

There were other ethnic persecutions as well such as against Catholics and poles but that largely comes down to a suspicion over where their true loyalty lies... A lot of the seeming nationalism the soviets displayed was strictly strategic and about wielding and preserving power imo.

Also from Wiki.

It's almost as if there are huge political biases that try to obscure facts to fit their agenda.

I also found out

So the meme is ****ing real. LMAO

But anyways, as far as I understand the grander famine was caused more by the drought than policy and people like to blame policy for political reasons. You know, we live in a country that literally installs dictators where ever any hint of socialism crops up and spreads the most anticommunist propaganda in the world. Of course there's going to be people that say it was collectivization that caused the famine but to me it seems obvious that collectivization doesn't cause a lack of resources especially when the USSR had to go to the US to save them from starvation.

And it's also obvious that deprioritizing Ukrainians when it came to feeding people was also intentional and any contention comes from the fact that the USSR tried to cover it up as much as possible.

And OH is not wrong when saying that it's mostly due to the fact that Ukraine wouldn't give up private ownership so Stalin was trying to make an example of them.

The initial cause of the famine was natural. Famines had been happening in that region periodically since long before 1917. It was the scale of the famine which was caused by policy.

You don't think collectivization leads to a lack of resources.... Well first of all the collectivization efforts were largely a failure. They expected to increase the crop u yields drastically and that didn't happen. They were going to use the surplus from the increased yields to export and use that money to buy machinery necessary for industrialization. Due to mitigating factors like the droughts as well as peasant resistance they actually saw a marked decrease in the crop yields. That didn't stop them from seizing said crops and exporting them any way in order to buy industrial machinery. If you don't see why that leads to more people starving then I dunno what to tell you pal. Additionally china had the largest famine in human history when they tried to mimick the soviet 5 year plan. Just a coincidence, I'm sure...

You're talking about peasants that had lived in small agrarian communities for centuries. Is it hard to understand why they weren't eager to hand over the food that kept them alive for the good of a state that didn't give two ****s whether they live or die?

Okay, that actually makes sense. And the Lenin quote about prioritizing industry over the peasants or what ever he said makes more sense. Which is ironically fairly antisocialist imo.

And no, I don't think collectivization on it's own leads to a lack of resources.

Not really. Never really defended what the USSR did to Ukraine. In fact I said it was bigoted.

Even then, it's not hard to understand why anybody wouldn't want to give up private ownership in the first place when all they've known revolves around that idea.

I don't really get it. How much of the manifesto did Lenin write? Because the manifesto very clearly states that capitalism is important when it comes to industrializing a country to the point where socialism is viable.

After China failed by making the same exact mistake even they said "we shouldn't have skipped capitalism" because they're Marxist. Lenin literally helped write the goddamn book they got that from. Is Lenin stupid or something?


Edit: There is literally only 3 things that The Communist Manifesto makes clear. 1) Capitalism is **** and we need a new revolution to save us from the oppression of capitalism. 2) But we actually needed capitalism to save us from feudalism and introduce industry to provide us with an abundance to make utopia viable. 3) Our revolution has to come from the proletariat because bourgeois socialism is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The USSR helped save the US from starvation? When? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying here?

Other way around lol.