do you think this piece stood the test of time or shall i banish it to the reddit dungeons forevermore

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[–] 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Just be glad they aren't walls of text.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 days ago (17 children)

    I'm ngl I thought the soviets kinda sucked at agriculture but tbh I don't know shit besides that Stalin's main ag guy was a Lamarckian crank someone pls educate me doggirl-tears

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  • [–] 37 points 2 days ago* (6 children)

    There's a lot of talk about Soviet agriculture being inefficient, and it's a partial truth stated as a fact when reality is a lot more nuanced: (EDIT: I'll repost this as an effortpost because it takes a while to do an analysis and comparison of Soviet vs USian agriculture)

    By the 1970s, the USSR and the USA were producing comparable amounts of grain, around 200 million tonnes of grain per year depending on the harvest (USSR a bit less, USA a bit more). In the USA, this was produced by an agricultural workforce of some 3-4 million workers, or about 4% of the labour force. In the USSR, this production was carried out by 27 million workers, or 25% of the labour force, data according to the official statistical bureaus of both countries. When this is discussed in western literature, it's attributed to "chronic inefficiencies in the Soviet agriculture" without any further analysis, but the lack of analysis hides the truth:

    Starting with the US: a very significant amount of the labor was unaccounted completely in the official statistics. In a family of 4, if the father worked the fields registered as an agricultor while his wife and children "helped" him, this was accounted only as one worker, where de-facto there were four workers. Additionally, a great share of the labor in US agriculture is performed by unregistered migrant workers who are paid under the table and don't count in official statistics.

    In contrast, the kolkhoz agricultural system in the USSR of collective agrarian ownership counted as employees all workers not only in the fields, but also workers such as cooks feeding the workers (unpaid female labor in the US by contrast), mechanics fixing the machinery (instead of outsourcing the process to urban factories), accountants... So how do we solve this accounting difference problem which seems so insurmountable? We could, for example, compare the total rural population in both countries, since rural life revolves around agriculture, especially so in the last century.

    The evolution of rural population in the USA and the USSR is as follows: from 1920 to 1970, the percentage of rural dwellers in the USA went from 49% to 26%; in the USSR it went from 82% to 38%. This already showcases the largest difference: the Soviet agriculture was still developing due to the later industrialization of the USA, and it was doing it QUICK, whereas by the 1970s the USA's rural population had already stabilized as a result of earlier industrialization. Additionally, this figure portrays how the difference in total agrarian labor wasn't as large, not a tenfold factor (mostly artificial due to comparison with entirely different accounting systems) but more like a 50% larger rural workforce in the USSR compared to the USA. Now, let's examine this difference:

    First and foremost, a huge factor is climate. The climate in the grain-growing steppes of the former USSR is much more unreliable, with shorter growing seasons, colder weather, and a larger variability in rainfall compared to the temperate grain-growing regions of the USA. Agricultural production varied much more wildly and unpredictably on a year-to-year basis in the USSR, which in the former Russian empire had led to massive famines which the Soviet society forever eliminated after the 1930s.

    Likely the other largest factor is the availability of services in rural areas. In the USSR, rural areas had incomparable access to healthcare, education, arts, culture and entertainment compared to the USA. Anyone who knows anything about US rural regions knows it's essentially devoid of any form of any of those services, whereas rural Soviets enjoyed access to them. For reference, in modern Russia they are constantly closing polyclinics, maternity wards, schools, and there is literally none of the entertainment or culture left, and my girlfriend tells me how in the village where she comes from, now the closest hospital is above an hour away by car where they used to have a polyclinic and maternity ward in the neighboring rural centre. It is simply incomprehensible to people like me from the capitalist west to imagine a rural life rich in arts, healthcare, education, culture, sports and entertainment. Practically every town with above a few thousand inhabitants had a "Дом культуры" (dom kultury, culture house) vibrant with poetry clubs, art classes, theater companies... Children also could enjoy an immense amount of positive activities by belonging to the communist youths of the pioneers and the komsomol, so they weren't isolated in their homes as American children are (even in cities). Which brings me to the last point:

    Since rural life in the USSR wasn't utter garbage, people didn't have such strong incentives to move to cities by the 1970s when the USSR had almost fully industrialized. When you were guaranteed your job at the kolkhoz with a decent wage regardless of crops that year, you had land to yourself to grow your own food, you had entertainment, art, culture and sports, and your children had education, fun activities, friends and healthcare, people could (and did) just stay in villages in the USSR. Farmers could work 8h and go to the dom kultur or to spend the evening with their children, unlike petit-bourgeois farmers in the west who simultaneously say it's the hardest job in the world (they do work 12h a day 7 days a week very often), while simultaneously taking that as something to be proud of and not as them exploiting themselves for a bigger wage next year.

    So yeah, did the USian agricultural worker produce more grain per year, and did a hectare of USian soil produce more grain per year, when compared to the USSR? Yes. Is this simply to be taken as a random fact proving the inefficiencies of Soviet economy? Absolutely fucking not, and I'd 1000% rather have lived as a Soviet agricultural worker in the 1970s than as a Yank landowner.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 day ago*

    lenin-pointing ⭐

    Anyone who knows anything about US rural regions knows it’s essentially devoid of any form of any of those services, whereas rural Soviets enjoyed access to them. For reference, in modern Russia they are constantly closing polyclinics, maternity wards, schools, and there is literally none of the entertainment or culture left, and my girlfriend tells me how in the village where she comes from, now the closest hospital is above an hour away by car where they used to have a polyclinic and maternity ward in the neighboring rural centre. It is simply incomprehensible to people like me from the capitalist west to imagine a rural life rich in arts, healthcare, education, culture, sports and entertainment.

    Beautiful.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago

    US rural electrification wasn't even completed until the 1950s or something.

    My grandpap didn't grow up with a toilet.

    Even to this day, you go five minutes deep into the rural areas, you stop having cellular reception.

    Fucking bullshit!

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Thank you for the effortpost

    Starting with the US: a very significant amount of the labor was unaccounted completely in the official statistics. In a family of 4, if the father worked the fields registered as an agricultor while his wife and children "helped" him, this was accounted only as one worker, where de-facto there were four workers.

    This vibes with something I could never quite put words to, even in the modern day: if agricultural work is really so rare, why is it that SO many people I know worked on the farm when they were growing up? I'm sure there's some selection bias from living in a large midwest city. But those cities are filled with young people who grew up on a farm and spent their afternoons and weekends doing chores (e.g., actual farm work), and then got out of that lifestyle as soon as they could.

    First and foremost, a huge factor is climate. The climate in the grain-growing steppes of the former USSR is much more unreliable, with shorter growing seasons, colder weather, and a larger variability in rainfall compared to the temperate grain-growing regions of the USA.

    The USA has so much EZ-mode arable land, it always seems unfair to compare it's output to... anywhere else, really.

    It is simply incomprehensible to people like me from the capitalist west to imagine a rural life rich in arts, healthcare, education, culture, sports and entertainment. Practically every town with above a few thousand inhabitants had a "Дом культуры" (dom kultury, culture house) vibrant with poetry clubs, art classes, theater companies... Children also could enjoy an immense amount of positive activities by belonging to the communist youths of the pioneers and the komsomol, so they weren't isolated in their homes as American children are (even in cities)

    I'll have to read more about this, it seems like a good model for how to make rural life enriching. I think a lot of the reactionary attitudes we get from rural areas mainly come from how hollowed-out the society has become.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 days ago

    I'm glad it was useful for you!

    The USA has so much EZ-mode arable land, it always seems unfair to compare it's output to... anywhere else

    I'm pretty sure that industrialized India and Bangladesh could very well destroy the US, or I guess a lot of flatlands in China that are easily floodable regularly with monsoon season.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

    I really don't think it's a matter of "sucking" and more a matter of nazis destroying or damaging the vast majority of Soviet agricultural land

    It's a miracle bustbowl conditions didn't emerge after the war due to the overcapacity that the non-occupied arable land was subjected to

    Also agriculture in general sucked all over the world up to the 40s, 50s and early 60s, it wasn't until the early 70s that the silent Green Revolution revolutionized and TRULY industrialized agriculture in the breadbaskets of planet earth

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 2 days ago (6 children)

    im pretty sure lamarckian crank guy was during Kruzchevs administration, also the guy wasn't that influential on soviet agricutlture, also he was booted out pretty quickly

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Literally 0 for 3 on factual claims there my guy.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    therefore why i said "im pretty sure", its a load bearing addition to the sentence, now could you please educate me on what i got wrong since you're such an intelligent fellow

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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago* (3 children)

    Very Socratic last remark there.

    Lysenko was a soviet agronomist whose contributions include formally describing vernalization (and utilising vernalization deliberately on cereal plants).

    Vernalization is effect of cold on a plants flowering. Lysenko had through cold treatment managed to effect when and how a plant would grow. You can see how that is a cool thing that people in the soviet union would care a lot about.

    However lysenko came to use this and various other observations to build a framework of biology that was not true. He rejected mendelian inheritance and came to believe plants possessed a kind of primitive class consciousness and wouldn't compete for resources if they were of "the same class". This idea directly led soviet farmers to overplant crops too close and producing measurably lower yields for decades.

    Still, he was appointed to be a head of genetics at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in the year 1940. A post he held until 1965. Which meant his reign lasted 25 years from Stalin to Khruschchev.

    At his role he oversaw the systemic suppression of soviet biological research involving actual genetics and the imprisonment of scientists who did not agree with Lysenko. Which set back biological research.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago

    At least they were better than the liberal revolutions' tricolors, I bet if communism didn't do away with nations the next stage of society would have some pretty okay flag designs

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (5 children)

    Are you comparing the SSR flags to some unrealized ideal or to what the flags of those regions actually looked like before and after being part of the Union?

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    im not comparing them to anything? i just think the SSR flags aren't very good purely vexiologically speaking (mind you the main USSR flag is great and i agree that it is)

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    I like the SSR flags conceptually. The idea of some sort of style guide or generally required features for regional flags within a nation or union of nations. (I'm a little ashamed of this bit of "teen cringe" now as an adult, but I did design more than a couple communist flags in SSR style for various Western nations when I was like twelve, so I'm a little attached to the actual SSR flags...) Are they good vexillology? No, not really. But I see what the designers were trying to do, and I like the intentions, if not the results.


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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Their biggest flaw is how so many flags look alike so you have to memorise details like Estonia having spikier waves floating, while Latvia's are rounder and at the bottom. A lot of them use light blue and dark blue, which granted are distinct colours in Russian, but blue defacements make up 11 of the 15 flags! Positioning and proportions of the star and hamsic are also inconsistent in IRL flags compared to images online.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago*

    Indeed, those are all very good points. The exact unity that I like in them as Socialist Symbolism makes them bad flags, and if you are going to do this kind of unified design scheme, the least you can do is keep the parts meant to do that symbolic function actually consistent. An excellent idea and poor execution, IMO.

    But what do I know about flags? I'm just a crazy Soviet Bear who thinks the USSR flag belongs everywhere and makes a good blanket for my long winter nap.


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