>Stalin's inability to put food on tables = cause for USSR's failure
I need to clarify something on this point. Stalin's famine was deliberately engineered to kill Ukrainians.
It was not a failure of central economic planning, but actually, shockingly, a triumph.
Stalin confiscated Ukrainian citizens' guns and land, and forced them to work 180 days per year on centrally planned crop attempts. The product of their labor- grain- was then placed on a train and sold abroad at bargain prices. This money was then directed back to Moscow only, and the Ukrainians were left to starve.
I am against central planning. I am against totalitarianism. But the Holodomor was no accident of central planning.
This is pretty much how the Irish potato famine happened, too - they grew enough food, it was just exported - along with the wealth it generated.
The English justified it by invoking the divine right of the free market.
In the Soviet Union's case the money derived from exporting the grain abroad supposed to be to help industrialize - which it did.
It's a bit hazy whether or not it was deliberately engineered to kill off the Ukrainians. It hit every grain producing area of the Soviet Union - it just hit Ukraine the hardest.
Stalin may have simply been indifferent to their plight rather than actively trying to kill them.
Thank you so much for your comment! I agree that the Great Famine in Ireland was also man-made. It was not a divine and natural condition that Ireland grew potatoes- rather the English and Protestant Aristocracy used Irish land to graze cattle for beef exports to English markets. Potatoes were the wage for those Irish who toiled the land.
Once the famine killed the potato crop, as it had 6 times before in the 1700s and 1800s, the English deliberately blocked grain imports and relief efforts for the Irish Catholics. It would be intellectually lazy to suggest that this was not a terror famine- the English government greatly desired to see 2 million Irish starve or emigrate abroad. The English only wanted Irish land for grazing, not Irish labor or Irish voters to contend with.
However I must insist that the famine in Ukraine was man made. Stalin deliberately, once again, blockaded Ukraine from sea and land. Shipments of grain left Ukraine- shipments of food into Ukraine were blocked. Moscow deliberately engineered news and propaganda to convince the Ukrainians that there was not a famine in Ukraine, and that in fact there was a famine in Germany and the USA instead! This is all documented on film.
In Ukraine, Moscow would feed a horse before it fed a Ukrainian. One horse carriage operator told the local Western journalist, "Moscow gives us the grain to feed the horses. We need the horses to cart away the dead from the streets before anyone sees."
The English, who were ruling Ireland at the time, who gave most of that land to absentee landlords, justified perpetuating the famine by invoking the divine right of the free market:
"Laissez-faire, the reigning economic orthodoxy of the day, held that there should be as little government interference with the economy as possible. Under this doctrine, stopping the export of Irish grain was an unacceptable policy alternative, and it was therefore firmly rejected in London."
I honestly don't see much difference between Ireland and the Holodomor except size. Both famines were caused by foreign occupiers exporting food during a period of bad harvest.
Is there anything analogous to potato-driven growth & potato blight in Ukraine?
I thought the two stories were completely different because of this. Ireland had a spectacular mono-crop boom, followed by a crash, and I think it's uncontroversial that this was triggered by a disease, whatever the view of the response. I don't know of any similar boom in the Ukraine prior to the famine, nor any trigger besides what the guys with guns in Moscow wanted done.
I need to clarify something on this point. Stalin's famine was deliberately engineered to kill Ukrainians.
It was not a failure of central economic planning, but actually, shockingly, a triumph.
Stalin confiscated Ukrainian citizens' guns and land, and forced them to work 180 days per year on centrally planned crop attempts. The product of their labor- grain- was then placed on a train and sold abroad at bargain prices. This money was then directed back to Moscow only, and the Ukrainians were left to starve.
I am against central planning. I am against totalitarianism. But the Holodomor was no accident of central planning.
Shockingly, it was the desired outcome.