Holodomor explained: Why Stalin's collectivization failed

Holodomor explained: Why Stalin's collectivization failed | Vejas Liulevicius and Lex Fridman

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@LexClips Ай бұрын

Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qWLShXtqiM-psMk Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: lexfridman.com/sponsors/cv7962-sa See below for guest bio, links, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. *GUEST BIO:* Vejas Liulevicius is a historian specializing in Germany and Eastern Europe, who has lectured extensively on Marxism and the rise, the reign, and the fall of Communism. *CONTACT LEX:* *Feedback* - give feedback to Lex: lexfridman.com/survey *AMA* - submit questions, videos or call-in: lexfridman.com/ama *Hiring* - join our team: lexfridman.com/hiring *Other* - other ways to get in touch: lexfridman.com/contact *EPISODE LINKS:* Vejas's Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/vejas-gabriel-liulevicius Vejas's Books: amzn.to/4e3R1rz Vejas's Audible: adbl.co/4esRrHt *SPONSORS:* To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: *AG1:* All-in-one daily nutrition drinks. Go to lexfridman.com/s/ag1-cv7962-sa *BetterHelp:* Online therapy and counseling. Go to lexfridman.com/s/betterhelp-cv7962-sa *Notion:* Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to lexfridman.com/s/notion-cv7962-sa *LMNT:* Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to lexfridman.com/s/lmnt-cv7962-sa *Eight Sleep:* Temp-controlled smart mattress. Go to lexfridman.com/s/eight_sleep-cv7962-sa *PODCAST LINKS:* - Podcast Website: lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: kzbin.info *SOCIAL LINKS:* - X: x.com/lexfridman - Instagram: instagram.com/lexfridman - TikTok: tiktok.com/@lexfridman - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: facebook.com/lexfridman - Patreon: patreon.com/lexfridman - Telegram: t.me/lexfridman - Reddit: reddit.com/r/lexfridman

@EvilMAiq Ай бұрын

"I bet I can run a farm better than a farmer." - Distant bureaucrat

@DJWESG1 Ай бұрын

This one can be easily flipped upside down.

@tommyrq180 Ай бұрын

Lenin infamously said that one must crack eggs (mass death) to make omelettes (communist utopia). The problem was that whereas Russians are great at cracking eggs, it only led to more cracked eggs. There was never an omelette.

@me_need_reset Ай бұрын

Lenin and his ancestors really really hated the Germanic Kulaks. So when given the opportunity he genocided them of course. You can see the bloodlust today in his cousins.

@tommyrq180 Ай бұрын

@@me_need_reset Genocide was Lenin’s omelet. It’s a long Russian tradition. See, for example, the sad story of the Tatars. They, too, suffered a Bolshevik-incited mass starvation in 1921-22. “War Communism” was the slogan and it was simply a means for the Bolsheviks to retain power and control, ostensibly because the “new economic measures” required a constant state of war, mainly internally. The famine resulted from Soviet confiscation of grain and agricultural products with particular “attention” (genocidal) to ethnicities such as the Tatars and Kazakhs and Ukrainians. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks used the famine to kill and subjugate their internal enemies. On the other, it showed the utter failure of centralized planning. The government cannot manage something as complex as a national food system to actually feed the people, but it CAN use it as a mode of punishment and control. FWIW, the Bolsheviks learned about food confiscation from the czars who implemented a similar system during WWI. Like most authoritarians, they conducted a revolution to achieve utopia, instead only installing yet another authoritarian, genocidal regime. Cracked eggs only leads to more cracked eggs. No omelets for you, just for the ruling Bolsheviks, aka the vanguard of the proletariat.

@joshs.761 Ай бұрын

That was Mao’s quote, not Lenin’s

@tommyrq180 Ай бұрын

@@joshs.761 Two utopian mass murderers. Either way, it makes my point! Callous disregard for human life in the service of unattainable, utopian ends. Mainly a dodge. Mainly a justification for exerting the power to kill millions of humans. Humans with mothers, fathers, siblings, feelings.

@me_need_reset Ай бұрын

@@tommyrq180 it's weird that we keep hearing about how bad the fascists were, but the communist death toll was way worse. that guy Pol Pot didn't learn a single lesson from history

@MidnightAspec Ай бұрын

That term “the greater good”, I wonder where I first heard that one. 🤔

@jeffbrinkerhoff5121 Ай бұрын

It's what you tell the troops you're sending to the frontlines...

@ibnkhaldun7373 Ай бұрын

Stalin's collectivization did not fail. The purpose of collectivization was to commit a genocide. Given that millions of people perished Stalin archived his goal.

@qandak Ай бұрын

So, why the failure of collectivization in Middle Asia with the difference of 2y, when starvation killed as many as in Ukraine, was not a genocide, but especially the one in Ukraine was?

@ibnkhaldun7373 Ай бұрын

Can you please provide the data source confirming "difference of 2y" in Middle Asia ?,

@qandak Ай бұрын

@@ibnkhaldun7373 Search for "Soviet collectivization in Central Asia", the period is the same - 1930-1935, I didn't mean it was exact 2 years, it's just the biggest possible gap which might have occurred.

@hedge685 Ай бұрын

Marxism destroys talent (ie human capital) and human capital pursuing its varied interests is what leads to prosperity.

@cosmopolitanbay9508 Ай бұрын

He is right about the friction between peasants and the working class. Leftist ideology was supposed to unite them against a common enemy, but it somehow never quite happened that way.

@DJWESG1 Ай бұрын

To the underclass they are both one of the same enemy, they are the owners of capital, and the capitulaters of capital. The underclass sees everyone for who they really are, but it doesn't matter, because they have no power or purchase, their truth is never heard, and those who need to hear it will never listen, because they have both purchase and power.

@petercblank Ай бұрын

My wife’s grandmother walked across Ukraine with her father to escape the famines. Her (grandma’s) dad decided it was time to leave once his wife died and his neighbors started to cook and eat their dead children. Just… think about that for a second. The fact that it was man-made blows my mind…

@nichobarton Ай бұрын

This guy's analysis is sublime, elegant and nuanced

@ekekonoise Ай бұрын

What watch is liulevicju using?

@Phil-D83 Ай бұрын

It failed at increasing output, but allowed the state to exproproate the surplus and sell it abroad, to but machines.

@qandak Ай бұрын

Why the failure of collectivization in Middle Asia with the difference of 2 years, when starvation killed as many as in Ukraine, was not a genocide, but especially the one in Ukraine was?

@simaschmieliauskas4489 Ай бұрын

His name is lithuanian

@adambeckett5346 Ай бұрын

His name is Hank

@driftFD Ай бұрын

he's also jewish

@Woodsaras Ай бұрын

Nop @@adambeckett5346

@Woodsaras Ай бұрын

@@jasondickinson4132 really?

@cosmopolitanbay9508 Ай бұрын

G/Holodomor actually affected South Russia and Kazakhstan as well. In Ukraine, those policies were implemented by Ukranian communists, so it was not aimed at Ukraine in particular. Those were bad years for agriculture coupled with government failure to deal with it.

@DJWESG1 Ай бұрын

It also coincided with a viral pandemic that killed millions.

@ibnkhaldun7373 Ай бұрын

Can you name Ukrainian communists involved in collectivization implementation ? I can name non-Ukrainians : Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, Nikita Chrushev.

@baruchspinoza3106 Ай бұрын

What viral pandemic , @DJWESG1 ?

@DJWESG1 Ай бұрын

@@baruchspinoza3106 I'm not the expert, though I've read numerous times by various writers of all types that there was a pandemic that killed many many ppl , ppl already under extreme pressure in vulnerable conditions, a combination of factors that could only end badly.

@viktorkorol477 Ай бұрын

When you talk about South Russia you for some reason forgot to mention that Krasnodar and Stavropol regions were mainly populated by ethnic Ukrainians. So Holodomor in South Russia was aimed at Ukrainians too.

@Berjozka Ай бұрын

5:02 Why would Stalin want to get rid of Ukranian identity, if he made it?? He has a title "Father of nations" for a reason - that is he was a chief of People's Commissar for Nations' Affairs of the first government of the RSFSR and than USSR. It was him who created Kazachstan, Kirgisistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Belorussia, Ukraine and Russia in borders we know today. Not only he was busy making new nations, he was also busy with languages and cultures of these new nations. The fact that countries of post-soviet space have stereotypes and traits we know is mainly his job. Damn, look at Karelia or Kirgiz SSRs history, if he wanted, he would destroy or make any nation he wished for. So 5:03 is very unclear to me.

@juriuslegenda Ай бұрын

stalin didnt create ukraine. ukraines identity existed before ussr. to be even more historically fair- kyiv is the motherland of ukrainians aka rus people. Moskovia Just took the name and history from kyyiv. today se still have rusyn minorities in europe who speak language closer to modern ukrainian, as prove that name rus was first given to people in modern ukraine.

@Berjozka Ай бұрын

@@juriuslegenda nations didnt exist before 19th century

@olbrue Ай бұрын

@@Berjozka Great question. Alas, they do not ask questions and can not elaborate

@IT-lz9qc 24 күн бұрын

@@juriuslegenda Slava Galicia

@Jonathan-l4s Ай бұрын

Lex, your intro to this historical event was dangerously flawed. You should know better.

@airborngrmp1 29 күн бұрын

Communism (the applied philosophy, rather than the political movement - which came afterwards) embraced sociopolitical radicalism as an end in itself. According to the Marxist interpretation of history, the world is headed towards a society that would render all (or substantially all) existing social paradigms as obsolete or redundant, and existing political structures would be unnecessary at best, counterproductive (counterrevolutionary) at worst. This leads communism to embrace radical social change, and to oppose incremental change - for starters, the end goal is classless utopia, so speed is a feature not a bug since the end goal is seen holistically and intrinsically as 'better' than all existing structures; following that is the belief that anyone opposing, or slowing the inevitable advance of progress is either directly or indirectly 'counter' or 'reactionary' to the grandest project in the history of humanity as a species (which is how a society found a way to make their own citizens...superfluous by category). This is how you end up with a society that creates two problems for every one problem it solves. Aside from the end goal being a fairy tale of a 19th Century European philosopher's idea of social perfection that has never existed in real life, there is no firm road map on how to get there, or know when you arrive, or even what it looks like to when you get close. The Party meant to implement such a project is a tightly regimented group of extreme revolutionary dreamers - existing in a repressive society that outlaws them, hence the regimentation and paranoia - that toppled a weak existing political structure, and now have a state to run and use as their laboratory for their stateless, classless Elysium; complete with the removal of all possible checks on political action and the only method for finding fault or failure was in self-criticism of individual Party members by the Party itself (which is a fancy way of describing 'purges' of committed Marxist-Leninists by other Marxist-Leninists that, of course, have nothing to do with personal ambitions or access to possibly the least limited power to exist since the ancient God-Kings of Mesopotamia and an entire state and party apparatus to use as one saw fit).

@smakota Ай бұрын

Some how this bot problem needs to be solved

@american1476 Ай бұрын

If they keep playing games like they did in Russia, the same thing will happen here that happened in Germany. What happened in Russia will happen never again.

@brankomcmxci Ай бұрын

Similar case happened with the sparrows in China, stupid experiments, 100 million dead because of reinventing the wheel.

@BennettKildigs Ай бұрын

Who’s they?

@american1476 Ай бұрын

@@BennettKildigs jews

@jasondickinson4132 Ай бұрын

What?

@DeathsInverse Ай бұрын

Bro what?

@gbickell Ай бұрын

Pre-USSR there were regular famines across the Russian empire and thanks to modernisation and collectivisation famines did not return. The formation of large farms means savings in scale - just look at western agriculture then and now. The fact that peasants are generally reactionary is well documented - look at the rural communities in Germany after WWI who supported the Junkers and the church and resisted change. They were a solid base of support for the Nazi party. Industrialisation was an essential goal to produce an economy that was able to provide for the population and modernise the USSR. It was that surge towards modernity that raised the standards of living for millions and helped defeat the Nazis. Were there mistakes? Absolutely. Was the famine a deliberate policy? Most likely not. Too many folk pushing the genocide narrative fail to mention the fact that famine affected more than just the Ukraine at that time or the environmental factors leading to a poor harvest. Want to know more of why violence was such a feature of the state? Read up on Mosse's brutalisation theory.

@ryanhughes1101 Ай бұрын

Except it’s an easily debunked argument by reference to other cultures of similar makeup that modernized just fine without communist dictates.

@jokester3076 Ай бұрын

Modern imperial Russia had two recorded famines the worse happening under Nicholas II reign, it was caused by extreme weather destroying and damaging seedlings after planting season. The bolsheviks railed on the tsar for his handling of the Black Earth Famine only to do worse themselves years later. The contributing factor was that the emancipated peasants were still using medieval farming equipment and techniques which left them unprepared to protect their crops from the elements, the railway networks weren’t completed or were obstructed and so remote communities couldn’t receive aid in a timely fashion.

@guyfnord7743 Ай бұрын

You lie. While there were famines before the establishment of the USSR in 1922 (such as the Great Famine of 1891-1892 and the Famine of 1901-1902) they paled in comparison to the Holodomor engineered by the Soviets. 1891-1892 half a million died to famines. When Stalin put his boot on the necks of the people, 66 million people (mostly Christians) were murdered. It was deliberate. Stalin often gloried in the people he had murdered. Stalin wrote: "Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem." "We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?" "I don't want to be a hero; I want to be a killer." "Revolutions are not made; they are caused." "The more we execute, the more order we will have." "I have signed more death sentences than any other leader in history." "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." He was a monster and Communism is the instrument of mass death and destruction which only sociopaths and the ignorant appreciate. I bet you're a Mao fan as well.

@freeloader247 Ай бұрын

Exactly! Pre revolution Russia was a drow back archaic state. Revolution was a bless for Russian peasants. Nobility not so much

@gbickell Ай бұрын

@@guyfnord7743 by end of 1930 the population of the USSR was 160 million. You say Stalin killed 66 million. Are you sure about that? Also, what does being 'mostly Christian' have to do with anything. Almost everyone was a Christian at that time. What I take exception to is misrepresentation and cant. Your comments ignore the complexity of the situation and show your infantile appreciation of history, society and politics. Your stupid comment about being a Mao fan is just more evidence of your childish nature.

@4grammaton Ай бұрын

The literature has never argued that collectivisation failed. Agricultural yields skyrocketed in the 1930s after the famine, and the population of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, etc boomed as well (debunking the "genocide" claim"). What has been argued is that the social cost of the famine outweighed its economic success (which is up for debate but nevertheless a claim based on sound premises). This guy is utterly clueless, or deliberately misleading.

@tommyrq180 Ай бұрын

The SOVIET literature. Big difference between that and what an objective, empirically minded researcher understands it. Mass targeted starvation was, as it turns out, hard to hide for all but the dead, coerced, true believers and fellow travelers.

@4grammaton Ай бұрын

@@tommyrq180 No, I'm talking about Western literature. Soviet literature didn't mention a famine at all.

@wslrichards Ай бұрын

So... propaganda? @@4grammaton

@tommyrq180 Ай бұрын

@@4grammaton I read extensively in Russian and Eastern European political economy and international relations and found ZERO “literature” arguing that collectivization worked, or that ag yields “skyrocketed” or that Ukrainian population “boomed.” It’s laughable on so many levels. But this is YT so the trolls are out. Your definition of “social cost” would be millions starved through policy alone, which is very, very hard to do. Genghis Khan couldn’t do that with arms but the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China did it simply through collectivization. Lots of eggs cracked, no omelets. So you’ve identified yourself. Social cost, indeed… 😢

@janibeg3247 Ай бұрын

Millions died in the Ukraine of starvation