Will this be like Stalin’s attempt to modify the diet of the Ukranians?
>>Will this be like Stalin’s attempt to modify the diet of the Ukranians?<<
I was laughing and having a good time with this thread until I got to your post.
That may well be frighteningly true.
Stalin’s big industrialization drive of 1929 had serious repercussions in the Soviet economy. When Stalin came into power, the Soviet economy depended heavily on agriculture. It was not yet industrialized and USSR was seen as a “backward” nation. Stalin believed he could change that image and bring the economy into tune with the ones of the Western world. He implemented a Five Year Plan, that to say the least, had very unrealistic expectations of the Soviet economy. Stalin’s plan, by 1933, had helped to drive the economy into famine.
Collectivization helped Stalin to achieve rapid industrialization but at the cost of one of its most vital sectors, agriculture. Instead of appeasing the peasants and giving them reasonable incentives to produce, he angered and demoralized them terrorizing them into submission. He killed the most efficient and productive peasants through his elimination of the kulak class, aggravating any chance of efficient productivity. Agriculture should not have been used as a means to an end but as an end in itself. Although industrialization was important to the Soviet Union, it should not have been created at the expense of its major food base. So even though Stalin made a great leap forward in the industrial sector, he took a thousand step backwards in agriculture.
http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/Economics/Economic_History/FSU/echist_fsu_greatleap.htm
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/lies.html
The famine claimed up to 10 million of Ukrainian lives as peasants’ food stocks were forcibly removed by the Soviet government through NKVD (predecessor of KGB) and secret police. Stalin had full knowledge of the destructive force of the famine. It was his war on the peasantry that began with collectivization and dekulakization and as an attempt to eradicate peasant culture in its entirety. Stalin well understood that no sane person would voluntarily give up all of their hard-earned property for the withering idea of ‘bright communist future’. Therefore, the famine’s purpose was to break the spirit of Ukrainian farmers - the land owners - by depriving them of private property and means of survival.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine