[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred Bauder)

Wed Jun 2 17:20:06 UTC 2004

Re: "You stand convicted by your own words. This exerpt is an excellent 
example,
no famines, no mass murder, no gulag, no deportations. And most especially,
no failure to produce enough to adequately feed the Soviet people."

Fred,

Did you look at the title? The article is on the "economy of the Soviet 
Union," focusing on the Soviet Union right before its collapse, the Soviet 
Union of the 1980s-- not the Stalinist USSR of the 1930s. In addition, the 
article compares well to Encarta's entry in both tone and substance 
(http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553017_2/Union_of_Soviet_Socialist_Republics.html#s13).

Also note this except taken from the article: "As growth rates sank, supply 
shortages of food and consumer goods became
more and more widespread. Perhaps belatedly, calls for greater freedom for
managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining
influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and
1980s."

Again, note: "Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major 
factor explaining
the sector's poor performance. In the new state and collective farms,
outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account.
Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred
resentment and worker alienation across the countryside (although some
landless or poor peasants benefited from the process). The human toll was
catastrophic. In the collective farms, low labor productivity was a
consequence for decades to come."

BTW, an aunt of mine was murdered by the Stalinist USSR. Aside from her one 
surviving sibling, the rest of her family was murdered by Nazi Germany. I 
don't need some senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback lecturing me 
about totalitarianism.

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