What was most recent nation to practice feudalism? Why haven't there been more populist revolutions to bring feudalism back? The only counter-revolutionary revolt to bring back feudalism that I'm aware of was the Revolt of Vendee after the French Revolution, but were there any others? I know that during the industrial revolution, most of the peasants had to be violently forced out of their farms and into the factories, so why didn't we see more revolts from the peasants to bring back feudalism?
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Feudalism is a made up word used by communists to try and slander our past, use Monarchism instead
Feudalism is very different from monarchism. The modern UK is monarchist, but it's sure as hell not feudalist.
There is no difference, feudalism is made up by communists
peasants didn't upwards of 50% income tax
you don't tax your mules or oxen.
40-50 percent taxes was actually normal for a peasant.
No it wasn't. Ten percent tops was, and it was purely for land rent. Few or most often no other taxes.
Nope, only the ninth or decima tax was 10%. You also had plot tax, the labor tax, the census and menura tax, and serious other miscellaneous taxes such as gate taxes and window taxes which would at up to 40-50% typically.
>1700's window tax
>medieval
1700’s England was monarchist.
"Monarchist" is not a system of government.
England in the 18th century was a constitutional monarchy. The king was the head of state but his power was very firmly checked by parliament. England had in fact just fought a civil war in the previous century that was in large part caused by conflict between the king and parliament, and parliament came out of it the undisputed victor. The only reason England continued to have a monarch after the civil war was because Parliament consented to it, and they only did because the monarch would be heavily constrained.
taxes weren't at all uniform
tax rates were as low as >1%, it just depended on the time and area you were in. Europe was highly decentralized at the time and it's stupid to claim everybody had the same tax rate
Taxes aren’t uniform in the modern world either and you can get taxes that are low
Taxes aren’t uniform in the modern world either and you can still achieve below 1% tax rates
Guy is a schizo shitposter trying to be like the GDP = tourism schizo. Just ignore him.
constitutional "monarchies" are democracies with elderly tabloid figures.
>Feudalism is a made up word used by communists to try and slander our past,
your past is that of feral donkeys and you are still donkeys just tamed and trained donkeys.
Okay commie
this is a photo taken ~1920 in Russia during a famine engineered by communists through systematic grain and seed confiscation to punish the peasants who didn't support them during the civil war
it was the worst famine in Russian history up till that point, dwarfing every crop failure suffered during the time of the Tsars combined
in short, this is what communism does and it's the attitude communists take
they want you dead, they want your history forgotten, and they laugh about it
>The Crushing of the Russian Revolution / by Emma Goldman
>Emma Goldman
I trust this source wholeheartedly. 🙂
Monarchism stands in direct opposition to feudalism you fricking idiot.
Feudalism is made up, it doesn't exist. It opposes nothing because it doesn't exist
Monarchism refers to the political structure governing the mercantilist centralized state that supplanted feudalism.
Feudalism IS Monarchism. Feudalism is a made up by communists to try and explain industrialization
"Monarchism" doesn't mean what you think it means. What you are meaning to talk about is monarchy. Monarchism is a school of political philosophy that arouse in the enlightenment era to describe the conservative political ideology that supported the monarchy, rather than democratic institutions.
So to be clear: "monarchism" is not a system of government. Monarchy is.
Aight, just saying that Feudalism is made up by communists to slander Monarchy
Here's wikishitia
>Too many models of feudalism used for comparisons, even by Marxists, are still either constructed on the 16th-century basis or incorporate what, in a Marxist view, must surely be superficial or irrelevant features from it. Even when one restricts oneself to Europe and to feudalism in its narrow sense it is extremely doubtful whether feudo-vassalic institutions formed a coherent bundle of institutions or concepts that were structurally separate from other institutions and concepts of the time.
Literally a made up concept by marxists to explain communist theory
Feudalism has nothing to do with monarchy though. Monarchy is in fact far older than feudalism in whatever form you want to talk about. The fact marxists misuse the term doesn't really matter, Marxists invented their own lexicon precisely because they find reality aggravating to deal with so it's best to just ignore them.
>Monarchy is in fact far older than feudalism
Because feudalism was made up in the 1860's
Actually the word dates back to the 1700s, since the first group of intellectuals to rail against the old regimes of the past were the Enlightenment philosophers, not Marxists.
It is correct to say that "feudalism" was not a coherent system. Rather, it's a modern attempt to describe various medieval legal and social institutions which varied from place to place. The term being inherently political in nature, and relatively recent, doesn't negate the fact that it does describe something real, and that what it describes is not monarchy.
>the word dates back to the 1700s
Arguably not, even then if that's your claim it was specifically referring to practices carried out by the British, and not the whole of Europe or the worlds. Which is what that woman was getting at with the Marxists, even in its most distilled meaning feudalism most definitely is not a word to describe the whole of Europe, probably because it is only referring to how things happened in Britain.
Even then Feudalism was a blanket term for "weird fricking practices and terms we can't really explain logically or etymologically about medieval society"
>is not a word to describe the whole of Europe, probably because it is only referring to how things happened in Britain.
Well this is flat out untrue, because feudalism as it is commonly described mostly centers on France, not Britain, as the model for manorialism and the three orders of society. Britain in fact was only introduced to these things after the Norman-French invasion and conquest.
The terms they were using back them was "feudal system", feudalism again back then was a blanket term for the unexplained cultural bullshit surrounding medieval society, like the royalty getting to frick the women on their wedding night
I suppose a better term would have been absolutism, though this is of course what is commonly meant by the average internet reactionary when using the term monarchism.
youre thinking of absolutism (c.f. absolutist monarchy)
see french and russian history for further reading, F see me after class
Every single component of this post is individually wrong. It's incredible. It's not made up, communists don't use it that way, and monarchism is not synonymous with nor an alternative to feudalism
Fpbp
checked
You are moronic?
The "feudal system" describes ONLY the British crown supplanting customs in Britain, like when they took over Wales. Feudalism as described in 1773 meant specifically the customs the British used to supplant their new subject's old customs, customs dating back to the Gauls. Specifically the system put in place by King Edward I in the 13th century.
It has nothing to do with medieval society aside from that. Marxists and historians alike have lead the world astray using this word to describe the whole of medieval society. My theory is knowing that the customs set in place in the 13th century were particularly cruel Marxists have sought to paint medieval society across Europe in a negative light using this single point in English history as a starting point. Which would be typical of homosexuals like Marx and marxism being obsessed with changing language for their own benefit
commies real quiet after this post
Plenty of people did but none of them had the power to do anything about it. Tolkien for example was opposed to the industrial revolution and wrote a entire literary novel praising the old English world of small families ,farms, and the 'rightful English king'
Luddites have never won a single conflict against technological progress. I can't think of a single conflict where luddites won
Didn't Marx argue that Feudalism was superior to Capitalism in Das Kapital?
I don't know, he rarely calls things out. But he seems to think that Feudalism is a direct continuation into Capitalism as if they're almost one in the same thing. Slave ownership, Capitalism and Feudalism are all comparable in his mind. He does however say that the greed of the Capitalist is less than that of the Feudal lord. He viewed industrialization at the hands of the merchant class, it's fuel being serfs, as no different than trading one slave master for another. According to him the only reason industrialization happened was by being mean to serfs, that somehow punishing them and driving them from their land created capitalism. Which is kind of weird. Ultimately however the industrial takeover of Europe was somehow worse than all things historically abominable combined, probably because he was trying to sell the reader something, which he attributes to terrorism.
I think for Marx the only positive revolution is the one that promotes social productivity. For example, the capitalist revolution against feudalism is a positive revolution. North defeating South in the American Civil War is a positive revolution even though the true objective of the North wasn't necessarily for "moral" reasons to end slavery, and the process by which this revolution took place wasn't necessarily all "good" in that moral sense.
You can also see the transition from Roman slavery to the feudal manor economy in which the peasants worked for feudal lords by paying tax and obligating them with military duty in exchange for protection. So when the manor economy was rising up, as you can see, Roman slavery gradually went bankrupt and couldn't sustain itself. So historically, slavery was positive as a means of promoting productivity and civilizational development until the manor economy rose up. But again, we can see slavery being extended when the Western powers started to colonize the world, but that wouldn't last too long due to the industrialization that led to capitalism. If a worker can create more profit than a slave does, would you still prefer slavery? Of course not. And I think you still see some "modernized" feudal systems -- or modern systems that inherited feudal elements -- like Saudi Arabia because of its oil wealth, so it's like an artificially extended lifespan on the feudal elements in the society.
Eventually, it's all about productivity. The more advanced the productivity is, the more humane the treatment for people would be. If you don't believe me, just dump 100 people on an island without any supplies to see how far "society" can last before they eat each other. It's very likely to see some kinda tribal economy emerge in this circumstance. This tells us that the primary objective of our society and government should always be developing productivity. Otherwise, it would always be the people who pay the highest price.
So Marx wasn't mad at technology existing, he was mad because he thought he could make a more efficient society than the English
>Monarchism
>Mon-arch = one ruler
That wasn't feudalism though, that was the late stage monarchies that appeared after the renaissance. Feudalism very much existed and it was when a variety of rulers existed within a tribal like confederacy beneath a high king.
You can serve a monarch and still serve a lord beneath him, which is what the middle ages was. I can't help but think this ambiguation is on purpose
>What was most recent nation to practice feudalism?
Tibet probably.
I think Ethiopia was still feudal up to late 19th century. Japan definitely was pre-Meiji
Modern Somalia practices feudalism to this day.
>What was most recent nation to practice feudalism?
Japan
>What was most recent nation to practice feudalism?
Probably Tibet?
They used to be a literal medieval peasanty-type nation up until I think 1960 when Communist China conquered/annexed them, overthrew the Dalai Lama, and made it 'better'/somewhat more livable. Mind you I say that as a comparative term. In this one specific situation it was better to be Red than even stupider, poorer, "life expectancy of 35", peasant.
From what I keep hearing on IQfy, medieval peasants actually have it better than modern capitalist wage workers, let alone communist dictatorships.
>medieval peasants actually have it better than modern capitalist wage workers, let alone communist dictatorships.
The homie in
is literally in CHAINS. Do you see any pictures of Soviet citizens in chains?
yeah in gulags
It's completely normal to abuse photos of punishments to show the "horrors" of a country they don't like.
Tibet was technically a Republic, but in practice was a Theocracy.
Its not a Feudal state at all. The Monasteries had land estates but it all belonged to the Faith, not to individual aristocrats.
>What was most recent nation to practice feudalism
Scotland. Not even memeing
Need more details regarding this.
>Why haven't there been more populist revolutions to bring feudalism back?
Because nobody liked Feudalism. Kings didn't like it because it crippled their power, the middle class didn't like it because it boxed them into basically only existing in cities. So 2 of the most major parties in a state were actively against it. By the time most people became middle class, there really is no reason for them to go back to a system which shafted them nor is there any reason for a powerful monarch to give up their power.
>Kings didn't like it because it crippled their power
As opposed to liberalism and communism.
You don't have to choose between Feudalism and modern systems of government. England in the 19th century wasn't Feudal and it wasn't either of what you listed.
>England in the 19th century wasn't Feudal
according to who
Are you really going to tell me that 19th century England was Feudal
so how did feudalism magically end again? I don't remember them talking about that
There were numerous factors at play, but most of it had to do with changes in monetary policy, international trade, declining profitability of the tenant farmer model, the age of exploration and the beginnings of colonialism, as well as the rise of the bourgeoisie, all of which led to a centralization of power.
so feudalism magically ended as soon as colonialism started?
No, it took several decades and numerous changes in the economic base and political structure.
right but ultimately the narrative is that for about 1000 years there was feudalism and then relatively suddenly in a few decades colonialism happened and miraculously feudalism stopped, right?
No, feudalism didn't really exist before the 9th century, and took various forms and would rise and decline during various times. It also again wasn't a miraculous shift, but a gradual process arising from changes in economic life and social composition, for which colonialism, an influx of gold and silver and changes in the balance of trade were major factors.
That's pretty wild honestly.
so you believe that increased trade made feudalism disappear?
It was certainly something that played a part.
Why not just call feudalism proto capitalism then like Marx
The Marxian understanding of feudalism, which happens to be largely correct, is that it was something that was supplanted by capitalism and very much distinct from it. You might be confusing feudalism for primitive accumulation, which is a concept from classical political economy that Marx saw as primarily driven by colonial expansion.
Like I said, of course the conditions of the working class was something that initially spurred interest in studying capitalism, but mature Marxism to a large degree does away with sentiment and posits capital as an automatic subject and history as parametric, rather than the mechanistic vision of Hegelianism.
>feudalism for primitive accumulation
Yes precisely, Marx claimed all of Europe's wealth was given to them in this period of switching from feudalism to capitalism
>history as parametric
Right, so in order for his theory to work Feudalism has to exist in relative uniformity across Europe and give way to the accumulation of capital and the beginnings of Capitalism in a relatively short time span. Because if Capitalism was to say, develop independently during this supposed period of Feudalism (pre colonialism) then he has no answer to how Europe suddenly developed.
>Yes precisely, Marx claimed all of Europe's wealth was given to them in this period of switching from feudalism to capitalism
This is a largely uncontroversial statement.
>Right, so in order for his theory to work Feudalism has to exist in relative uniformity across Europe and give way to the accumulation of capital and the beginnings of Capitalism in a relatively short time span.
Not really, of course there will be different rates of development and specifics to the development of capitalism, but ultimately it became the dominant mode of production in all Europe.
>Because if Capitalism was to say, develop independently during this supposed period of Feudalism (pre colonialism) then he has no answer to how Europe suddenly developed.
I'm really not sure what you mean here. Capitalism is a distinctly Western European phenomenon and developed from feudal society.
>I'm really not sure what you mean here.
Capitalism existed before colonialism which means an independent development of technology and "capital" during the so called "feudal" phase of European History. Marx shirked any possibility of the spontaneous development of Capitalism outside of colonialism or conquest. Which is also why feudalism is viewed in such a negative light because it's "backwards and undeveloped" from the Marxist point of view.
But in reality the middle ages are the reason Europe succeeded in the first place and get unjustly shit on
>Capitalism existed before colonialism which means an independent development of technology and "capital" during the so called "feudal" phase of European History.
I'm not quite sure what you are basing this on. Surely you could make a strong argument for a Mediterranean model of proto-capitalism originating in mercantile city states, but ultimately this was replaced by the more influential Atlantic model.
>Which is also why feudalism is viewed in such a negative light because it's "backwards and undeveloped" from the Marxist point of view.
I don't think this is an accurate understanding of it, feudalism is simply different and failed to resist the influence of the emerging bourgeoisie.
>feudalism is viewed in such a negative light because it's "backwards and undeveloped" from the Marxist point of view.
>feudalism is simply different and failed
Great we agree.
If you want to see it as a simple issue of good and bad that's your pejorative. I prefer seeing it as something that existed for as long as it made sense to do so, but could no longer be maintained as a result of conflicting interests and changing circumstances within society.
It's not really an issue of good or bad to me, I'm looking at Marx's motivations and thus pointing out the fallacies surrounding the modern pop history understanding of the middle ages, which I believe to be flawed because its from a Marxist understanding that the middle ages were backwards
It didn't magically end. England since its founding was already more centralized than other European Kingdoms and over the course of the 14-15th centuries, serfdom became defunct, the power of non-Earl or Duke lords was destroyed, the Parliament became more powerful and the middle class became larger and more powerful.
so from a marxist point of view was that good or bad
I don't care nor do I know.
Marx thought it was a bad thing because he sees everything he hated in feudalism concentrated in "capitalism" which is every after the middle ages. Which directly leads into "colonialism" which is where Europe got all its wealth. Thus Feudalism is the origin story for Marxist belief
Even though certainly the deplorable conditions of the working classes was a major initial motivator for Marx and Engels, their mature theory carefully avoids moral sentiment and attempts to provide analysis on the basis of tendencies in society that spurred change from one circumstance to another.
arguably Marx's entire theory is a moral argument since it's the critique of capitalism which Marx viewed as immoral. This is why feudalism is so interesting because its modern definition is pretty much from the Marxist perspective, an anti capitalist anti western perspective. Which confuses people
Literally anyone that knows what feudalism is.
Ah yes, the populist out cry for a return to landless serfdom.... why aren't more people clamoring to never own land or have wealth again? A true mystery.
>why haven't there been populist movements to bring it back
probably because only the most deluded of morons who fall for pro feudal memes want it back, most would rather have the option to be able to move up in society instead of always being in the same place, along with a political system that isn't just nobles bickering with each other
>The last remnants of this class still survive today in remote rural villages of southern England. As recently as 1985, two tenant-laborers named Jack and Roy French were suddenly thrust into the national limelight by the death of their landlord. They lived in the Cotswold village of Great Tew (Oxfordshire), in old stone cottages without electricity or water, and were tenants of a local squire named Major Eustace Robb. The death of Major Robb caused a furious controversy in the West Oxfordshire District Council about the disposition of the cottages and occupants.
Khmer Rouge
>Why haven't there been more populist revolutions to bring feudalism back?
Almost no one is this moronic
>populist
>feudalism
this is why I come here
Well you keep hearing about how feudal serfs only had to work 120 days a year and lived very nice peaceful lives and you can't help but wonder why the hell people wouldn't fight for that lifestyle after it was taken away from them.
thats because the tards who spout that shit never account for the fact farmers were usually exempt from it, or the multiple peasant uprisings that happened over shit tier conditions that were crushed simply because a knight easily shits on untrained peasants
Dunking on peasants was far more common before the middle ages. That's more of an Empire thing and why most of the world never made it past neolithic tier societies. Thanks to the middle ages the highly decentralized christian fiefs were subject to massive competition from theirs neighbors. Meaning if a lord wanted his house to last more than a generation he had to be nice to the peasants that lived in his fief. Otherwise the peasants could go to his competitor's fief and make them more powerful
It was only in Europe where kings and lords realized that killing peasants was a bad thing
>Well you keep hearing about how feudal serfs only had to work 120 days a year
Only you ever say this
He's right..in some places it was as little as 30 to pay the land rent.
>so why didn't we see more revolts from the peasants to bring back feudalism?
It takes true effort to come up with something this moronic.
>>so why didn't we see more revolts from the slaves to bring back chattel slavery?
I will pretend this is an elaberate shitpost, for it would be too pessimistic to believe that this guy is real.
>What was most recent nation to practice feudalism?
Probably some Latin American country where local peasants depend on a strongman Caudillo for protection in exchange for giving him labour or money
>What was most recent nation to practice feudalism
Somalia
> Why haven't there been more populist revolutions to bring feudalism back?
Because over decades feudals have merged with capitalists. And because capitalists needed more proletariat to work on their land and factories
>Vendee
More like it was reaction to the revolutionary policy
Grain requisition and export – not drought and poor harvest – were the real causes of the first great famine in Soviet Ukraine which occurred in 1921-1923. This is borne out by Western and Soviet documents alike.
The famine was concentrated in the rich grain-growing provinces of southern Ukraine, an area inhabited by about a third of the republic’s 26 million citizens. It affected both the rural and the urban population. Most of the victims were Ukrainians; national minorities like Germans, israelites and Russians also suffered. Between the fall of 1921 and the spring of 1923, 1.5 million to 2 million people died of starvation and due to accompanying epidemics.
Saving this population would have required no more than half a million tons of grain or equivalent foodstuffs per year. During the two years of the famine, the Bolshevik government took from Ukrainian peasants many times that amount. Most of the confiscated grain was shipped abroad: the first year to Russia, and the second to Russia and the West. Ukraine was also obliged to send additional “voluntary” famine relief to the Volga, and to feed some 2 million people who came from Russia as refugees, soldiers and administrators.
At the time of the famine, many witnesses recorded the tragedy, and some of them even hinted at its criminal nature. But the passage of time dulled the memory of succeeding generations, and subsequent publications dealing with Ukraine and the Soviet Union said little of substance about this particular disaster. More surprisingly, the Ukrainian community itself has preserved but a vague memory of these events. Today most Ukrainians would be hard-pressed to explain why the famine had broken out, why it lasted so long and what was done to overcome it.
In 1921, and again in 1922, southern Ukraine was subjected to a terrible drought. Harvests fell to between 10 and 25 percent of the normal crop yield, and in some cases the crop failure was complete. In spite of this, Ukraine as a whole had enough food to feed every one of its inhabitants. The crops in the northern part of the country generally were good, and there were still some reserves from previous years. To overcome the crisis in Ukraine it would have been sufficient to prevent grain from leaving the country and to organize food distribution in the south. Had the Soviet government- of Ukraine taken these steps – simple measures which any national government worthy of the name would not hesitate to take – there would have been no famine at all.
The reaction of the Soviet authorities to the famine in Russia stood in marked contrast to their inaction in response to the Ukrainian tragedy. In the RSFSR, the famine had broken out somewhat earlier than in Ukraine and eventually affected about three times as many people; the final toll was about twice as heavy. After a brief attempt to hide this catastrophe, which the Bolsheviks feared would be interpreted as a failure of their rule, Moscow launched an elaborate famine relief campaign. In July 1921, the famine regions in Russia were declared a disaster zone and were exempted from food taxation. Food and money collection was organized for them in the Soviet republics, and help was sought also from the West. The Volga famine zone included many nationalities, but aid seems to have been concentrated in the ethnically Russian areas. During the second year of the famine, Western agencies noticed that the majority of the starving population consisted of national minorities (Tatars, Germans, etc.)
Throughout the whole period, the starving areas of Ukraine continued to be taxed, and forced to provide ‘voluntary” aid for Russia. This amounted to criminal behavior on the part of the Bolshevik authorities and astounded foreign observers.
“Up to the time the ARA began its activities (January 1922),” wrote H. H. Fisher, a former ARA worker, “neither the central government at Moscow nor the Ukrainian at Kharkiv had made any serious move to relieve the famine in the south [i.e., Ukraine]. In fact, the only relief activity which went on in Ukraine, from the summer of 1921 to the spring of 1922, was the collection, for shipment to the distant Volga, of foodstuffs, for lack of which people along the Black Sea were dying.”
“…not before the 11th of January of this year,” wrote Quisling in the March 1922 report quoted above, “could the gubernia of Donets stop their obligatory relief work for the Volga district and begin to take care with all their forces of their own famine problem, at a time when already more than every 10th person in the Donets was without bread. In the beginning on March of this year, you could still see, in the famine stricken gubernia of Mykolayiv, placards with: ‘Working masses of Mykolayiv, to the rescue of the starving Volga district!’ The gubernia of Mykolayiv itself had at the same time 700,000 starving people, about half the population.”
It was only in the beginning of 1922 that the Kharkiv government made a half-hearted effort to organize famine relief for the starving Ukrainian population. Meager financial aid was allocated to the Sovietized Ukrainian Red Cross and the recently formed Pomhol (Famine Relief Committee). These organizations could not help even 10 percent of the starving Ukrainian population, as their main duty continued to be famine relief for Russia. Starving Ukrainians had to look for help elsewhere than to “their own” government. This aid eventually came from the West.
The most significant aid, by virtue of its size and quality, was that provided by the American Relief Administration, headed by Herbert Hoover, secretary of commerce in the Harding administration. At the height of its activities, in the summer of 1922, ARA fed 10 million people in the RSFSR and another 2 million in Ukraine. It also provided medical supplies and clothing.
The Soviet authorities begged the West to send aid to Russia, but interfered with its delivery to Ukraine, at least at first. Although as early as August 1921, the West knew from Soviet sources about the catastrophic conditions in Ukraine, Soviet representatives either denied that there was starvation in the country or played down its importance. Moscow insisted that all aid go to the Volga and assured the West that Ukraine could take care of itself and even help Russia. Not being eager to assume more financial burdens, the West found it convenient to ignore the Ukrainian disaster, even if it meant letting the country starve.
The situation improved at the end of the year when the American israeli community decided to send massive help to starving brethren in the Soviet republics. The American israeli Joint Distribution Committee put pressure on the ARA to organize distribution centers in Ukraine for the food parcels sent by American israelites to their friends and relatives living there. The “Joint” (as it was commonly known) also wanted the ARA to investigate the famine situation in Ukraine, since it was getting alarming news from Ukrainian israelitery. The ARA succeeded in persuading the Soviets to allow a delegation to visit Ukraine in December of 1921. The result was the Hutchinson-Golder report and a separate agreement signed by the ARA and Soviet Ukraine, which led to the extension of American aid to Ukraine.
In the summer of 1922, the Soviet delegation to the Hague Economic Conference shocked the world with an announcement that the Soviet republics intended to resume grain exports. It was then of public notoriety that because of the persistence of drought, the reduction in the number of cattle and a further shrinkage of cultivated land, Ukraine and Russia would need further aid in the 1922-1923 agricultural year. Any export of foodstuffs ... condemn more people to starvation.
But Lenin’s government had decided on a policy of industrial reconstruction, and for this it needed capital. This capital would have to come from the West and could be gotten in one of two ways: loans or grain sales. At first the Communists wanted to negotiate a loan, and the reference to grain export was a sort of blackmail whereby the Soviets were holding their own citizens hostage to Western generocity. When the Western countries, as a result of Moscow’s refusal to honor debts incurred by the pre-revolutionary government, declined to even consider new loans, the Kremlin decided to go through with the exports.
Western relief agencies protested against the export of grain, pointing to the fact that the Soviet republics would need all the foodstuffs they could gather, since the famine would resume after the brief summer hiatus. The Soviets responded by officially declaring that the famine was over and replacing the Pomhol with Naslidhol (Aftermath of Famine). ... euphemistic title for the new committee was to camouflage the reality of the famine, but at the same time to allow the West to continue its aid. Thus, while people continued to starve, while some help was mustered in the West, the Soviets resumed the export of Ukrainian grain. In January 1923, Odessans could witness the bizarre spectacle of the SS Manitowac discharging a cargo of ARA relief supplies in their port while alongside it the SS Vladimir was simultaneously loading a cargo of Ukrainian grain bound for Hamburg.
This criminal activity of the Soviet authorities sparked protests and violent reaction on the part of the civilian population in Ukraine and in Russia. Railway workers, assigned to trains transporting grain to the Ukrainian ports of Odessa, Mykolayiv and Kherson, as well as workers on Russian lines (some grain was shipped through the Baltic ports) went on strike. Grain trains were blown up by peasant and partisan bands. In April 1922, a grain elevator in Mykolayiv, containing some 10,000 tons of grain destined for export, was set on fire. Soviet criminal policies drove the population to desperate acts.
At a plenary session of the Central Committee in Moscow, on November 15, 1922, Romanchuk, a delegate from the Mykolayiv workers, condemned the party’s decision to export Ukrainian grain:
“Perhaps in Moscow, where one is well-fed, one can elaborate export projects. In the Kherson region, once rich but now starving, not only is it impossible to speak about such things seriously but, I would add, it is dangerous to mention them to peasants and especially workers. (…) It is from the south that the grain will leave; it will precisely pass through the country where 4 million people are starving and will probably not be able to survive until spring.”
Romanchuk witnessed the destruction of grain collected from the people. “With tears in my eyes, I saw heaps of rotting grain around which comrade soldiers of the Red Army were keeping guard, absolutely uselessly, since instead of grain there was only manure.”
The opposition generated within the Soviet republics had no more success in stopping grain exports than the protests from without. Ukrainian grain was sold to Germany, France, Finland and other Western European countries. The Bolshevik, a Communist Party paper in Kiev, could brag on February 28, 1923, that 16,000 tons of Ukrainian grain had just arrived in Hamburg, and a week later inform its readers of deaths from hunger in Mykolayiv.
Man – not nature – was the cause of the first mass starvation in Soviet Ukraine. In this respect, the Ukrainian famine of 1921-1923 was very different from the contemporaneous Russian famine, but quite akin to the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933. Since starvation in Ukraine was the result of a policy of plunder by Lenin’s government, the responsibility lies with the Soviet state.
Moscow’s treatment of Ukraine at the time of the famine was-that of an imperial government with regard to a rebellious colony. By removing grain from starving Ukraine, the Bolsheviks accomplished several objectives at once: Ukrainian grain helped nourish hungry Russia; it provided a marketable commodity easily exchanged for hard currency in the West; finally, and not insignificantly, it physically weakened Ukrainian opposition to Russian domination. Bullets can miss their target; famines – never.
The famine of 1921-1923 can be regarded as the final blow to the Ukrainian national liberation movement launched in 1917. The Ukrainian national revival in the Soviet Union of the 1920s was to be primarily cultural. Armed struggle for Ukrainian independence became, at least for the time being, a thing of the past.
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