Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine

Now, this week’s book is somewhat topical…more an indication of how history repeats itself. In this case, I sincerely hope not, because Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum is history that should never be repeated anywhere.

The Holodomor, a mix word from Ukrainian holod meaning hunger and mor meaning extermination, actually has its origins in 1917, with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Prior to the fall of the Romanov empire, Ukraine was part of the Russian empire. When the Bolsheviks took out the Russian Imperial Family, Ukraine saw its chance for freedom and nationalism. Ukraine, prior to this brief blip in national history, had never been its own country, always belonging to one imperialism or another. But with the fall of the Romanov’s, this was their chance. And Ukraine took that chance and declared itself a country. And this was even working. Ukraine had been recognized as a sovereign state by several nations post World War One, which did NOT suit the Bolshevik’s plans for the breadbasket of Europe. The rich soil of Ukraine and comparatively mild weather means they basically have year long growing seasons, planting one type of crop for summer and one for winter. Essentially, large parts of industrial and urban Europe are and were dependent on Ukrainian grain exports to ensure that EUROPE doesn’t starve in lean times.

Starting with Lenin, Russia had big plans for Ukraine, which did not include Ukraine finding a sense of independence. And to that end, the Ukraine actually experienced a smaller famine in the 1920’s as Lenin and the burgeoning socialist party had demands for the crops of the Ukraine, coupled with naturally occurring drought and short harvests. So, all of this led to government assistance from various nations as this earlier famine became known and was publicized. Even the future president Herbert Hoover, who at the time was not president but was in a position to oversee foreign aid, sent help, under the requirement that everyone appearing in Ukraine to assist with famine relief would basically be guaranteed immunity from prosecution by the soviets. This was granted, and subsequently far fewer people died during this earlier famine.

And, recognizing that the Ukraine was united enough to nationalize and withdraw from the United Soviet Socialist States, Lenin at least backed off on the grain requisitions, enough that Ukraine recovered from this earlier famine after a season. And the next 12 years, Ukraine was slowly pulled into the soviet states. Now, Lenin died in 1924, and the nine years between his death and the start of the Holodomor was a power struggle between Trotsky and Stalin, with Trotsky ultimately being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Stalin, on having won that power struggle, immediately began pulling the Ukraine to the Soviet Union, starting with making the “kulaks” the enemy of the people. Kulak simply meant anyone who had a successful farm. As Henry Hazlitt said, “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.”

The kulak’s, having become quite successful, to the point of being able and in fact having to hire outside help to assist with the harvest and running of the farm, were despised by the socialists. Because anyone that shows capitalism works is automatically an enemy of the people in a socialist state. So, they started by rounding up the kulaks, declaring them the enemy of the people, and shipping them off to gulags in Russia. And, having destroyed the kulaks, they then proceeded to force collectivization onto the remaining Ukrainian farmers. And the methods used to do this were brutal theft of existing property and extremely high taxation for anyone who objected. And through these methods, Ukraine was slowly drained of her resources. To ensure compliance, Stalin set obscenely high grain requisitions, at least 1/3 higher than was actually produced. For example, he might demand Ukraine produce and ship 90 million tonnes of food, when the actual production of food was only 60 million tonnes. And Stalin demanded all of that 60 mil, even insisting on…. taxation…to make up the short fall.

And to enforce these draconian demands, he sent in good little members of the communist party to conduct searches of the peasants’ homes, to ensure they were not hiding any food stuffs that were required to be requisitioned. This included seed grain for the next years harvest. Everything was taken. Systematically. They’d break open walls to make sure no grain was hidden there, poke the topsoil for soft spots where a cache might be buried. By 1932, there was nothing left in Ukraine. Some tried to leave the collective farms and go to the city. At this point, Stalin implemented a passport system and if you were caught off your farm, at best, you could be returned to the farm. At worst, you could be sent to a gulag or executed for treason. Because to not be where the soviet state tells you to be is a crime.

Now, moving to the city…ANY city…was a good move for a Ukrainian peasant. Because if you could get to a city, and IF you could get hired at a factory, you were guaranteed rations cards. The rations were shit. But it would keep you alive. For those who could not make it out…the famine was a very real ordeal.

Spring and Summer of 1933 is when starvation truly set it. Usually, these times would offer hope, as new life starts to spring forth from the soil. There was no hope now. Because everyone in the country was starving, everyone was picking off new plant life as quickly as they could. Those on the farms were no better off. One might think they were. Farms are where the food was grown. But the food on the collective farms belonged to the state, not to those who grew it. And those doing the growing were prohibited from growing their own on small plots. All of the food belonged to the state. So, if you were caught picking off the early blooming wheat stalks, you could be shot on sight. If you were caught planting your own garden, they would confiscate the food, and kill you.

And when starvation sets in, it follows a very set course. From the book “in the first phase, the body consumes its stores of glucose. Feelings of extreme hunger set in, along with constant thoughts of food. In the second phase, which can last for several weeks, the body begins to consume its own fats, and the organism weakens drastically. In the third phase, the body devours its own proteins, cannibalizing tissues and muscles. Eventually the skin becomes thin, the eyes become distended, the legs and belly swollen as extreme imbalances lead the body to retain water.”

This is universal. This process was described pretty much the same way in Mao’s Great Famine. This, I dare say, is why people are so keen on ketogenic diets. But if the above description does not make you leery of keto, consider this additional fact: your brain is about 60% fat. So first, all your glucose goes away. Yes, that would be the carbs that digest into glucose. But next your body consumes its fat…including the rather large part of your brain that is fat. Which means literally, the only thing you can think about, is food. If you don’t get food, your body will literally start to digest itself.

Survivors of the famine developed a survival trait wherein they might not even remember the famine itself. All they could remember was the crushing hunger. In some cases, this repression allowed them to forget some genuinely horrible things done in the name of survival, including cannibalism and necrophagy. What is the difference between those two? Cannibalism is when you kill someone specifically to consume their flesh. And there are documented stories of cannibalism. Those were generally prosecuted. Stories of parents killing their children just to have something to eat were horrifying to the neighborhood, and those people were caught fairly quickly. The sudden absence of children, even in the famine, was noticed and commented on. Less talked about was the necrophagy. This is when a person dies, and you figure…well…they’re dead anyway. They’ve already died, and I’m starving. This was far more common. And never talked about. Probably because the survivors forgot what they had to do to survive.

Those who were not eaten, served as a valuable lesson to the Ukrainians who might have still considered nationalization as an alternative to the Soviet Socialist State. Stories abound of parents allowing their children to starve to death, because they can always make more babies, but their spouse was irreplaceable. Children being told a parent had died only to have the kid say who cares, I’m hungry? When their legs were so swollen with oedema that movement hurt, the act of sitting could cause the skin to burst like overripe fruit. And if you were hungry enough, if you actually obtained food, the very act of eating it could cause your stomach to burst and instant death. And sometimes the fact that you were not dying was suspicious and could result in extra searches of your house and property.

Theft was common, and violent theft when it involved food was the norm. Frequently, the theft resulted in death by one or another party, for whom no one was ever tried. Who was left to try them? One woman, after watching her six children whither away to death, went insane and took all her clothes off, unbraided her hair, and told everyone that the “red broom” had taken her family away. Another woman, after walking all day to trade clothes for bread, returned home only to find the bread was nothing more than a crust stuffed with paper. She lost her mind and stabbed her son to death. For her it was better than watching her child suffer anymore.

Eventually, as more people died, the countryside became indifferent to their shared suffering. Food became so all consuming, that nothing else mattered, not even the suffering of others or yourself. Whole families died with no one left to bury them or even alert the authorities, such as they were, that bodies needed to be picked up for burial.

Now, quite clearly, not everyone died. Some must have lived for the story to have made it out of the soviet state…because it’s for damn sure the Russians didn’t want this news leaking out. So how did those who survived manage it? More often than not, they survived by retaining the family cow, and feeding the cow before anything. They would feed the cow thatching from the roof. So, they feed the cow. And cow produces calorie dense, fatty milk. This does not, in and of itself, comprise a full meal. But in times of starvation, it provided enough calories to fend off the worst privations of famine, allowing families to live. But those families were the ones lucky enough to be “blessed” by the communists. For anyone who’s cow was stolen by the state, there were other methods of survival.

Some survived by joining the activists’ brigades, those groups that went door to door searching for food that was being withheld by the farmers but really belonged to the soviet state. The activists were promised a portion of any food found, so this was a strong temptation. Others appealed to family outside of Ukraine to take them in, and if they could make there, would survive on the grace of family. Some survived using filler food…. rather than wheat flour, they would grind whatever they could find into ersatz flour and bake bread using that.

If you were lucky enough to live near a water source, you might be able to fish enough to keep yourself and your family alive. Some people ate whatever they could catch, including domesticated dogs and cats. Some harvested from the forests.

And some people refused to lose their souls to the soviet evil and would help their neighbors out however they could. They might adopt their neighbors’ children. Or provide part of their rations to those who could not find factory work. Some survived by trading everything they had to state stores, called Torgsin, which only traded in hard currency. So, if you had gold or silver jewelry, you could trade it for rations. Do note: the government printed rubles. But would only accept gold or silver in trade. Pay attention America: Our very own President has advised that food shortages are coming. And the dollar loses value every day.

Some faked membership in writer’s organizations or party membership clubs, sneaking in for food. The risk of being caught was worth the reward of food. Some survived by being dropped off at state run orphanages.

Now, unlike the famine of the early 20’s, this one was almost entirely hidden. News DID get out. Some by family members who lived in Poland or Germany. Some news by an enterprising young reporter from Wales, Gareth Jones, who was in Moscow seeking an interview with Stalin. I don’t remember if he got the interview. But while there, he expressed a desire to see the Ukraine, which was approved, and he was given travel pass to Kiev on a state sanctioned tour. Only, he didn’t follow the state sanctioned route, jumping off the train about 40 miles outside of Kiev and walking the countryside, with a backpack of food he shared with who he could. And he wrote one hell of an article, which is printed in the book, and was originally published by The Evening Standard. A rebuttal piece was immediately published by Stalin’s New York Times butt buddy Walter Duranty…I gotta say, historically, the New York Times has a lot of historical evil to answer for. New York Times should maybe just be shut down…or maybe relegated to the tabloids section, along with the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News.

Unfortunately for Ukraine and posterity, around this time a rising young star in Germany named Adolf Hitler, had the nations of the world in a panic over what he would do next. Consequently, the nations of the world didn’t want to know what was going on in the Soviet State. And so, they ignored Jones’s writing and took Duranty’s to heart. And the Holodomor was largely ignored and then forgotten.  

Stalin, in a moment of sadism marked by a life of such, determined to run a census after 1933. I think he wanted to prove that communism was so great, the people were thriving. Instead, the numbers showed a decline in population in the Ukraine by 4.5 million. Note, we do not know if that is how many actually died. Around the time the famine started, Ukraine’s population was about 31 million. Approximately 13 percent of the population vanished between 1931 and 1934, which gives us a closer estimate of 3.9 million excess deaths, meaning beyond what might be accounted for in old age or accident. 3.9 million dead of hunger. And this still only remains an estimate. We will probably never know the true number.

Summer of 1933 Stalin eased the restrictions and grain requirements, and Ukraine slowly began to recover. Effectively, the famine was over. How this happened and why this happened, as the author Anne Applebaum lays out, was entirely political. Stalin did not want Ukraine nationalizing and possibly resisting communism. He wasn’t sure the communist party in Ukraine had complete control. So, he ensured complete control with draconian food requisitions and harsh penalties for dissent. And to drive his message home, he starved an entire nation nearly to death. Applebaum lays out a very clear and concise case on how this was a manmade famine, vs a natural one. A natural famine would be one that occurs as a result of drought affecting harvest, or wildfires burning down the crops. Manmade is the result of Stalin stealing every bite of food and shipping it outside Ukraine. Of the food that stayed in Ukraine, 80% went to the cities, where only 40% of the population lived. And those were horribly cowed by the Communist Party, scared to say boo lest they lose their ration cards. Now, what does this 90-year-old catastrophe have to do with current events?

With the emptying of the Ukrainian farmlands to death, there was a lot of prime pasture left, with no one to farm it. The Gulags, needing to make room for new prisoners, were slowly emptied with forced relocation. To Ukraine. I’m not sure if ALL the Russian settlers were Gulag expatriates, or if some were volunteer resettlers. Regardless, there was a massive influx of Russian immigrants to the farmlands of Ukraine. Many of whom stayed after the fall of the wall and the collapse of the Soviet state. It would not take a determined Putin, inheritor of Stalin’s estate, very long to locate one or even several, that said they missed Russia, and wanted Russia to take charge again, providing Putin all the justification he needs, in his mind, to roll tanks into a sovereign nation.

Add in to this a fun little quirk of history and the human brain. Over the last 90 years, the Holodomor has become horribly politicized. So that basically, if you acknowledge it happened, then at best you are falling prey to right wing propaganda and at worst, you are a literal Nazi. And if you DON’T believe it happened, then you are a far left communist wackadoo. No joke. The tragedy that is the Holodomor is nothing more than a political talking point for career congress critters. And I gotta wonder how much of THAT rhetoric is feeding the current conflict? Because I have already heard that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is a Nazi…this despite the fact he’s Jewish. I mean, I suppose it’s not IMPOSSIBLE…decidedly far fetched that he would hold both ideologies, Judaism and Nazism, in his heart. But not, strictly speaking impossible. Maybe he’s one of those self-hating Jews….

Not even sure if Putin remains a communist or even believes in communism over capitalism. Pretty sure he just likes power, and communism remains a quick way to ensure that power…if you’re the one on top to start with. Getting to the top from the bottom is a real bitch. Doable, but a bitch. Much easier to do as a communist than a capitalist though. Capitalism requires you to not only work for a living, but to actually provide some value through your work to the people around you. Communism just requires you to hate the man who is better off than you. Hatred is easy. Providing value that someone is willing to pay you for is way harder.

And as the author of last week’s book said, there’s nothing like having failed in the grubby business of business to make someone anticapitalist, and fancy himself culturally superior for it.

If you needed further proof that your government is trying to kill you, check out Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum. This book was excellent. This falls under the heading of books I liked for being well written and providing an excellent knowledge base of a little talked about historical moment, but I can’t say I liked it because, well, if you LIKE the fact the government can force you to starve for death because you don’t think they should be stealing the fruits of your labor, then you are probably one of those far left whackadoos who think the Holodomor didn’t happen. But if you want to know more about it, then this was an excellent resource.

This book was originally reviewed on May 15, 2022 on YouTube, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.