June 26, 2017
MOSCOW — More Russians consider Joseph Stalin the “most outstanding person” in world history than any other leader, according to a poll released Monday. Tied for second in the same survey is the man who has done more than anyone to restore the notorious Soviet dictator's reputation, Russian President Vladimir Putin.
... Without prompting, 38 percent named Stalin, followed by Putin at 34 percent, in a tie with Alexander Pushkin, the renowned 19th-century poet often referred to as “the Shakespeare of Russia.”
. . .Stalin has actually slipped a few notches: He polled 42 percent in 2012. . . which has been conducted by Levada and its predecessors since 1989.
UN Compact 2018
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I know that we almost got a discussion going about this, but most of the Western propaganda about famines under Russian communism were originally made up as Nazi propaganda. The United States actually hired some of the Nazi propagandists after the war. Because, historically, so many officials in United States have had such a fear of communism, or even socialism since the 1800's, it was useful and necessary to make up lies about the so-called purposeful state-sponsored starvation(s) and accidental state-induced famines through errors. Once the propaganda had taken root, the next stage of propaganda was to pump up the number of victims by multiplying originally claimed numbers into the 1,000s, then 10,000s, then millions. For China, some "experts" have decided they can literally get away with making up numbers on the order of hundreds of millions.
Most Americans and other Westerners never think to question the propaganda. Most Westerners and even anti-communists in Russia since Yeltsin have been happy to go along with the old Nazi sponsored propaganda. It either fits a strongly-entrenched world view, or it helps to strengthen a grip on the current power structure.
Here is just an overview of what actually happened with reference to the "famines under communism."
RUSSIA
No one doubts that there were famines, it is a good part of what led to the 1917 revolution in the first place, because the wealth of the czars was compared with the induced shortages among the commoners. It was similar to the French revolution of the late 1780's/1790's when the Queen was supposed to have said "Let them eat cake." A good representation of the way that the governments "induced" such famines can be found especially in the last season of the PBS series "Poldark" set in the late 1700's and early 1800's. In that presentation, the starving miners and fishermen watched their landowners and merchants illegally sell local grain and food to places like Portugal. They were not punished for the illegal actions, but if a starving commoner rioted in response he could be executed by hanging. These conditions were similar to the conditions in czarist Russia.
So after communism in 1917, there were still terrible conditions, but the famines were finally ending under Lenin's "collectivization." Under Stalin, famines were completely eliminated after the 1933 famine. The only exception was the Nazi-induced famines from the willful German destruction of 27 million Russian lives along with their means of production brought back a famine that lasted even for a time after WW2. It's obviously ludicrous to try to blame the Nazi induced destruction on communism but, believe it or not, some "experts" have done this very thing.
CHINA
China, once a very poor country with a very high percentage of poverty, suffered famine especially in the 1960's. To an extent agricultural policy contributed. (e.g., the "Three Pests Campaign.") But some of these policies only lasted for a short period and were scrapped when found to be not working. But these mistakes weren't the explanation for the famines, nor for the high number of deaths. A full one-third of China's arable land was destroyed by droughts in the north. And for a while during this time, extreme flooding and storms hit the south. Entire rivers had dried up completely. India suffered a famine at the same time killing millions, but the propagandists care very little about the famine in India, because it can't be blamed on communism.
Currently, who would have thought that it would be communism in China that would make it a global economic competitor? Who would have thought that it would be communism in China that has created more economic stability, economic growth, more stable (and better) unemployment numbers, lower incarceration rates, with huge gains in bringing a higher percentage of people out of poverty. It's still a developing country, of course, and a lot is still left to the global market, making it sensitive to global problems. Yet, in a trade war between China and the US, the US is actually being hurt worse, so far.
Capitalism has made a lot of dumb decisions, too, with instability and crisis actually built into its economic foundations. We have been taught to see regular recessions, depressions, and even financial collapse of large parts of the economy as just "the old normal." Our economists try to present the rules of capitalism, and "free market" as stable. Someone showed me their notes from a recent class at Harvard taught by a presidential economics advisor where he showed a smooth graph of economic growth/strength/stability throughout American History. When asked about 2008, and 1929, and 1876, etc., he said "these are just anomalies that we can ignore for the purposes of understanding the foundations of our economic system." In fact, it's just the opposite: these so-called anomalies (crisis/corrections) are so much a part of the system, that we would be going through famines here and now if it weren't for a counteracting, bullying military and foreign policy program that can plunder other nations for "American interests."
I hope you'll understand that this is no defense of communism or any other form of human government. It's just that we have been led to believe a lot of what we believe because propaganda and lies are a very important part of the governmental apparatus. Communist governments must also lie about Western and capitalist powers, too.