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Much of the blame has to go to Stalin and his fav scientist Trofim Lysenko.
And I highly recommend to listen Behind The Bastards episodes about Stalin. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=svw8DQpGjX0
Tracing it back, this is a problem with vanguardism and the cults of personality that the strategy cultivates. Government should not be structured in such a way that the pseudoscientific beliefs of a central authority figure can cause a nation-wide famine. Some other comments on this post which insist on blaming it on specific policies and not the political structure that enabled those policies to be implemented are just self-interestedly defending their marxist-leninist worldview from anarchist critique.
Not at all, it had more to do with material conditions and policy changes of the time: previous wars, undeveloped productive forces leading to very low productivity, forced collectivization leading to peasants mass slaughtering livestock and destroying grain in protest, etc.
Blaming it strictly on the form of government is pretty much anarchist ideological nonsense. This quote sums it up quite well IMO:
Everything sinister evoked by the single word “Stalinism” in the minds of most of our contemporaries - the appalling misery of Russia after 1920; the draconian labour laws imposed on it; the reign of the police and the practice of political assassination erected to a principle; the agrarian revolution “from above” of the years 1927-28 and its terrible consequences; “the Soviet Famine” of 1932; the mass repressions; the sinister farce of show trials and the delusional self-accusations of the victims; and above all the odious and unchanging litany of the victorious march of the USSR towards a liberating communism under the leadership of its great party and its beloved leader – all this, absolutely everything could have a simple explanation, one of truly magical convenience: State management, of course, or even, which amounts to the same thing: the uncontrolled reign of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But then, what about the fact that the revolution took place after the war, the weight of the Russian peasantry, the numerical weakness of the proletariat aggravated by the bloodletting of the civil war and by its lack of education, the low level of culture in general, the weight and the inertia of feudal traditions and gross brutality, the isolation of the proletarian Marxist party, international conditions, the barbaric statist tradition of Asian despotism, the demands of the political counter-revolution? These are mere trifles in the eyes of the self-managed socialists, mere trifles that do not explain a thousandth of what their two magic words say: “State management” or “uncontrolled bureaucracy” thanks to the insidious influence that the age-old poppycock of Proudhon and Bakunin exercises on them! How else did they think that, in the absence of “State management”, the oppressed can control anything before the terrible steamroller of capitalist accumulation and bourgeois domination?
From Revolution Summed Up, a good analysis of what exactly went wrong
Blaming it strictly on the form of government is pretty much anarchist ideological nonsense.
It had more to do with material conditions and policy changes of the time
So... then... if the policies had an effect on the famine, it was the form of government? I'm confused, were the politicians drafting policy not part of said government? Curious.
Form of government = how political authority is structured, how power is organized and managed, etc. For instance, monarchism, presidential/parliamentary republic, single-party state, etc. In this case it was more about the state management aspect of it
Policy = Decisions/rules/strategies that the government adopts and executes. This means stuff like tax policy, healthcare, the forced collectivization, etc.
Two different things
The types of policies that get implemented are determined by the form of government. Yes, they are separate things, but they are inextricably linked. The famine was the result of poor decision-making, and the form of government determines how decisions are made.
Yeah, it determines how decisions are made but not what decisions, as those are majorly determined by mode of production, class character of the state + it's interests, material conditions of the time, etc.
Does a form of government have influence? Maybe, but at best it's relatively minor compared to aforementioned factors. You can see this with bourgeois states of today, where many share the exact same form of government but have vastly different policies that are the result of historical conditions (i.e. compromises given to workers to avert revolutions for instance) and their level of wealth, but overall it's all done to preserve the power of capital and to further its interests as that is its class character.
Are you more of a libertarian communist?
No, just a communist who's most closely aligned with italian left communism
Can you explain why you support Italian left communism?
It's one of the only currents that has read and follows the traditions of Marx/Engels/Lenin, and thus recognizes that the source of capitalism and its class relations, imperialism, exploitation, etc stem from generalized commodity production and puts emphasis on it, recognizes just how important internationalism is in taking down a global system and rejects the concept of AES ('actually existing socialism' so Stalinist and later USSR + all modern day 'socialist' states) as being fundamentally flawed, it's relatively unique position towards tactics such as activism/terrorism/popular fronts/trade unionism and how revolution would be achieved compared to other currents and so on.
There's many more reasons, but in short its because their positions and critiques are the most theoretically sound in my opinion.
If you read theory it's all justifiable, you have to read history :)
Would you say the reason for those famines is because Stalin bureaucratized the Communist Party? What do you think would've prevented the famines?
The Soviets were at the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" part of communism the whole time, except instead of the proletariat there was an inner circle commanding a giant bureaucracy filled with people who were not chosen because they were good at their jobs but because they ticked ideological boxes. The collective farming system was also implemented without studying what the communities were already doing by people who didn't know how to farm and only cared about looking ideologically correct to their superiors. Hence failed crops and ideologically based taxes that literally took more than what was produced. Authoritarian regimes, especially total dictatorships, are usually quite ineffective at governing or providing for the general welfare outside of the few places where a command economy actually is a workable solution.
It's funny but almost the same could be said about Franco's dictatorship and the famine years after the war.
Authoritarians really suck at running countries! Something about an individual or small group with no expertise and a violent hatred of constructive criticism making arbitrary decisions doesn't seem to work out.
What do you think the USSR should've had and done instead of a command economy?
I don't like command economies but they can work. The USSR made the mistake of basing a lot of their government, academia, and economy principally on ideological purity. For example the collective farms should have taken decades to implement with regional studies, test farms, and slow conversion of the existing farming infrastructure to collective farms. Move fast and break things does not work in agriculture and other critical infrastructure. If the Soviets (especially during Stalin's time) had done their command economy differently they probably would have had a lot less famines early on.
Study the situation and talk with the experts in before doing anything. The two main things no dictator wants to do because "I'm the man".
Tons of reasons. Famines were occurring way before the USSR, in the 1890s there was a huge famine in Ukraine and Russia that killed about a million people, and several other smaller regional famines until the Revolution.
During the collectivization a lot of regions slaughtered livestock, destroyed crops and equipment as protest... pikachu face when they realized they just destroyed their food and means of producing it... but was that practice all so widespread to justify all famines? There was poor resource management and planning as well until they managed to industrialize (and stuff like exporting food while people were starving), as long with natural causes.... I'm in no way sharp enough to discuss this right now, almost 20 years since I left college and this is a subject I care very little at the moment. But that book I recommended is a start.
There was poor resource management and planning as well until they managed to industrialize (and stuff like exporting food while people were starving), as long with natural causes…
Would you blame the bureaucratization of the CPSU for mismanagement? Also, would other forms such as De Leonism or council communism prevent these famines?
this is a subject I care very little at the moment
My only argument on all of this is really ignore theory, theory is a shower argument, you have to read historians.
Are you more of a libertarian socialist than Marxist-Leninist?
Not to answer for them but DBZer0 is an explicitly anarchist server, in my experience most users fall into the bottom left side of the political compass.
Does DBZer0 allow other forms of communism like De Leonism, council communism, syndicalism, non-anarchist libertarian socialism/Marxism and left communism?
Of course! Look at the sidebar though it is explicitly anarchist. I'm not an admin or mod, just some asshole, personally if someone is not an authoritarian and is anti capitalist we have a lot of common interests but have some ideological differences that can wait until fucking literal fascism and other forms of authoritarianism and done and dusted.
Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes for example
Is it available in a .pdf?
What if I DON'T have time to read it?
Then go slow, you can take years to ready a book, if you really want to. There's no time limit, unless you could die soon, but I hope thats not the case.
15mins a week spent reading is better than zero, take your time!
What about audiobooks?
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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