German Plans to Seize Food from the Soviet Union

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Darrin
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#16

Post by Darrin » 24 Dec 2002, 06:15

Darrin wrote:The sov lost roughly 26 mil civ assuming this is over 4 years and does not include the 2 years of prewar. While this number is large the number who died of something a kin to starvation and famine was probably very small.

Remeber 26 mil is the total civ deaths from all causes.

All figures are pulled from a hat some more so than others.

With a pop of almost 200 mil the sov could have easily lost 2 mil dead each year just from normal causes during peace time. That would equal 8 mil over 4 years.

The ger killed around 3.5 mil rus during the war now some of these might have been army but the vast majority where civ. Also the ger killed many communits, etc... perhaps as many as 2 mil civ in total for a combined toal of 5 mil civ jews and commies etc.

If the rus lost 2 mil in peactime a year it would not be unexpected if losses do to rus army activites and partisan warfare might have doubled this figur for 8 mil extra during the war. Not to mention civ deaths on the front line, rus camps, gulags est...

Scorthed earth there and back des many crops for perhaps 2 cycles. This temopary transitory problem would proably casue 4 mil dead all by itself.

If these numbers were accurate only 1 mil civ might have died due to starvation.

And the ger were not in occupation of the entrie area by themselves. Some other nations occuping the ares in the south with equal or greater reputations.

The ger army in rus was no more than 3 mil a tiny slice of rus pop off 200 mil.

Planned ger starvation seems to be much less of a probelm then the war in general. Any food the ger took for thier army and nation were probably minor contrubitors. Excpet during the first year when crops were des perhaps. The pesants had been use to the rus constant interfering not to mention weather. After decades they strored supplies and grew unaccouted crops. Any shortage of flour could be made up other crops. And in the rus occupied area they had acess to LL imports.

The fact that rus has the highest imbalance or shortage of males it is not due to high civ calalties. Which were more mixed but due to high mil cas which was almost entirly male.

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Re: German Plans to Seize Food from the Soviet Union

#17

Post by wildboar » 25 Dec 2002, 18:55

michael mills wrote

The Soviet leaders' anxiety to provide Germany with proofs of their goodwill was strikingly displayed, and on a lavish scale, in their trading arrangements. Since 10th January, 1941, the USSR and Germany had made a new agreement. There had been some difficulties at first, but they were soon smoothed out. After the beginning of March, 1941, the Russians became more conciliatory and delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of grain in advance of their contracts for September. They were less pressing for the goods Germany was to send in exchange and promised to supply during the following year five million tons of grain, which the Wehrmacht would not, therefore, have to go and find for itself in the Ukraine.
The interesting thing here is the five million tons of grain which the Soviet Union undertook to supply to Germany. That is double the normal annual export amount. How can that be explained
?

Another possibility is that surplus available for export was in fact only 2,5 million tons, but Stalin planned to extract another 2.5 million tons for delivery to Germany, regardless of the consequnences for his own people. In other words, Stalin planned to let some millions of his own people starve, in order to keep Germany happy. That is of course not an impossibility, given that in 1932-33, at a time of harvest failure, Stalin had seized food from Ukrainian and Caucasian peasants, causing mass starvation, in order to supply the cities where the supporters of the Bolshevik regime were concentrated.
Stalin's intension to sign pact with germany was to acquire german technology for soviet industry which had suffered during reign of terror launched by stalin.

Stalin once told visiting indian communist intlectual that he can keep belly of his own people half filled and keep supply commitment working as it was his only chance to catch with west.

had there been no barbossa stalin would had starved his own people but kept supply line to germans working.


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Oleg Grigoryev
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#18

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 25 Dec 2002, 22:57

A tremendous resistance developed. About a million of the so-called kulaks, some five million people counting their families, disappeared in the process, often having been sent to concentration camps in far-off Siberia or Central Asia. A frightful famine swept the Ukraine. […]
. To be sure, of 1,802,392 alleged kulaks and their relatives who had been banished in 1930-1931, only 1,317,022 were still living at their places of exile by January 1, 1932. (Many people escaped: their number is given as 207,010 only for the year of 1932.) But even if we put at hundreds of thousands the casualties of the most chaotic period of collectivization (deaths in exile, rather than from starvation in the 1932 famine), plus later victims of different categories for which we have no data, it is unlikely that “custodial mortality” figures of the 1930s would reach 2 million: a huge number of “excess deaths” but far below most prevailing estimates. Although the figures we can document for deaths related to Soviet penal policy are rough and inexact, the available sources provide a reliable order of magnitude, at least for the pre-war period.
Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years:A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence J. ARCH GETTY, GABOR T. RITTERSPORN, andVIKTOR N. ZEMSKOV
Sorry Scott, update your sources. Secondly it was not Ukrainian Famine - it struck all agricultural areas of USSR up to Southern Ural .
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#19

Post by Scott Smith » 26 Dec 2002, 07:11

oleg wrote:
Professor Riasanovsky wrote:A tremendous resistance developed. About a million of the so-called kulaks, some five million people counting their families, disappeared in the process, often having been sent to concentration camps in far-off Siberia or Central Asia. A frightful famine swept the Ukraine. […]
Sorry Scott, update your sources. Secondly it was not Ukrainian Famine - it struck all agricultural areas of USSR up to Southern Ural.
Of course it did. But it struck harder in ethnic areas of the Russian Empire that were squeezed the hardest to export foodstuffs and generate foreign exchange to finance Stalin's SIOC.

Stalin's policy was to 1) industrialize for future war with the West, a policy called Socialism In One Country, and further, 2) relocating heavy industry for strategic reasons to the Urals and Siberia as much as possible (or at least prepare for future relocation), and this entailed huge deportations of peasants from the land, not just to Gulags or the penal system, but to factories, and having the happy effect of crushing latent Ukrainian nationalism as a Red (Russian) Tsar keeping his disparate multiethnic empire together (a concern which Stalin felt very acutely being an ethnic Georgian himself), and this involved but was not limited to collectivization and a heavy hand laid against the "kulak class," and negative consequences attributed to "counterrevolutionary sabotage," and finally, 3) squeezing non-Russian provinces in the empire (such as Ukraine) the hardest, so that foreign exhange to finance SIOC could be generated from agricultural exports, which meant that climatic famine conditions hit THOSE provinces the hardest.

Western journalists such as Pulitzer prize winner Walter Duranty, who were enamored with the great Bolshevist experiment, primarily stayed in their dachas drinking vodka and eating cavier and submitting press releases generated by the Soviet government itself instead of going out and documenting the famine. Duranty reported to the New York Times in August, 1933 that "any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." That's why the available sources on the Ukraine Famine are mostly anti-Soviet, Ukraininan nationalist, or even German/Nazi. According to Robert Conquest in The Great Terror, Duranty observed that "the future historian will probably accept the Stalinist version."

Ukrainian nationalism had to be crushed as it threated the very foundations of the empire itself, as Islam did decades later. Here's such a viewpoint on the famine:
Valentyn Moroz wrote: The Revolution of 1917 stimulated a powerful renaissance among the non-Russian nations' of the Russian empire and this process continued even after these peoples were militarily subdued by the Soviet Russian forces.

"Nationalism and Genocide: The Origin of the Artificial Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine," by Valentyn Moroz.
Andrew and Gordievsky wrote: The mayhem of collectivization, lower agricultural yields, sharply increased state procurements, drought and crop failure in 1932 combined to produce in 1932-33 the most terrible famine in history of twentieth-century Europe, in which perhaps as many as seven million died. A Party activist in the Ukraine, the center of the famine, later recalled how:
In the terrible spring of 1933 I saw people dying from hunger. I saw women and children with distended bellies, turning blue, still breathing but with vacant, lifeless eyes. And corpses--corpses in ragged sheepskin coats and cheap felt boots; corpses in peasant-huts, in the melting snow of the old Vologda, under the bridges of Kharkov.
But he did not lose his faith:
[...] For I was convinced that I was accomplishing the great and necessary transformation of the countryside, that their distress and suffering were the result of their ignorance or the machinations of the class enemy.

[Source given as Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow, p. 233.]
[...]
The OGPU's continuing ability to discover imaginary rural saboteurs helped to sustain the gigantic conspiracy theory that increasingly dominated Stalin's world view. Lazar Kaganovich, one of Stalin's most trusted henchmen and one of the few Politburo members to survive the purges, claimed that the kulaks who had survived the deportations, along with the White Guards and other counterrevolutionaries, had succeeded in "sabotaging the collection of grain deliveries and sowing."

[Emphases mine.]

Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story. Faber, NY: 1990; pp. 126-127. ISBN: 0060166053.
Gilbert and Large wrote: Socialism In One Country

Pursuit of the policy of "socialism in one country" [which replaced the Trotskyite doctrine of "permanent world revolution"] resulted in a major social upheaval accompanied by economic hardship and suffering. The golden age which theoretically was supposed to follow the defeat of capitalism seemed still far away, and the Bolshevik leaders were anxious to emphasize that a truly communist society could become reality only after the capitalist system had been overthrown all over the world; at that moment [however] they were at work to create a system of transition, a socialist society.

The underlying aim of "socialism in one country" was to transform Russia into a highly industrialized state, able to compete with more advanced countries such as Great Britain and the United States, and capable of putting up a good fight against aggression by capitalist nations. In Russia industrialization also involved a transformation of agriculture, which had to be more efficient, so that the increasing number of industrial workers in the cities could be fed and a surplus could be produced for export, which alone could provide needed foreign currency.

[...] When the government decided on collectivization, the kulaks regarded this policy as a direct attack on their property rights and on their very existence, and they resisted in all possible ways. [...] The government then decided to eliminate the kulaks as a class, and incited the poorer peasants against them, assisting this class warfare with police and military forces. The land owned by kulaks was confiscated; their houses were transformed into clubs and schools, and an estimated two-million were deported to remote areas, where they were used as forced labor. [...]

The years of the transformation into an industrial society have been called Russia's "iron age." In this brief period life in Russia was very different in spirit from what it had been for a brief time after the Bolsheviks came to power. Daring revolutionary intellectuals like Trotsky and Radek were now replaced by careful bureaucrats and technical experts.

[Emphases mine.]

Felix Gilbert with David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 1890 to the Present, (4th ed.). Norton, NY: 1991 (ca. 1970); pp. 227-229. ISBN: 0393960595.
Perhaps any complaints should be addressed to Professor Large at Montana State University.
:)

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#20

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 26 Dec 2002, 08:22

Of course it did. But it struck harder in ethnic areas of the Russian Empire that were squeezed the hardest to export foodstuffs and generate foreign exchange to finance Stalin's SIOC.
Just yesterday I run into demographic research which analyzed the effect s that famine had on Central Russian Agricultural Zone (Voronezh Region for instance ). There were bunch of original Soviet documents dealing with time in question. Many of them were local OGPU reports that described outright cannibalism. It does not get harder than this. There were also multiple letters from the local governments that begged Moscow for grain and general foodstuff help – does not seem too organized if you ask me. Althoughб obviously Stalin’s agricultural polices did had the major effect on the situation, but a case could be made that if it was not for the drought, hunger would not hit such a grotesque proportion. You do have a point in regards to grain export though. The problem for the Soviet State was that if it allowed for Kulaks to remain untouched – they would stave the cities instead, for, the prices they asked for their products were way over the mark that the central government could afford –try as hard as it might- and kulaks preferred do destroy corps and cattle rather that to sell them for lower price.
2) relocating heavy industry for strategic reasons to the Urals and Siberia as much as possible (or at least prepare for future relocation)
sorry have to disagree with this one. Soviet industrializing was conducted in such a manner that the factories, etc would be as close to the sources of raw materials as possible so that to minimize transportation cost. Evacuation of 1941 was an improvisation and only relatively successful as such . For instance most of Ammunition factories were not evacuated and lost to Germans.

and this entailed huge deportations of peasants from the land, not just to Gulags or the penal system, but to factories,
I don’t think you being entirely candid as for purpose of GULAG –it was specifically designed to provide cheap labor force for Soviet heavy industry. So dividing into “factories” and “GULAG” is not very meaningful. Secodly of what purpose possibly a peasant, who had never seen a machinery would serve at the factory.
and having the happy effect of crushing latent Ukrainian nationalism as a Red (Russian) Tsar keeping his disparate multiethnic empire together (a concern which Stalin felt very acutely being an ethnic Georgian himself), and this involved but was not limited to collectivization and a heavy hand laid against the "kulak class," and negative consequences attributed to "counterrevolutionary sabotage," and finally, 3) squeezing non-Russian provinces in the empire (such as Ukraine) the hardest, so that foreign exhange to finance SIOC could be generated from agricultural exports, which meant that climatic famine conditions hit THOSE provinces the hardest.
well Scott I think you are overstating the degree of latent Ukrainian nationalism – consider this -the biggest peasant revolt the Bolsheviks had to deal with was in Russia not in Ukraine - Antonov uprising. It was so bad that Tuchachevskiy had to restore to Chemical warfare to deal with it. Also percentage of ethnic Russians in GULAG never dropped bellow 58 percent while ethnic Ukrainians never reached 17% mark. Judging by this figures one can probably speculate of the Russian nationalism that was suppressed rather than Ukrainian.
Ukrainian nationalism had to be crushed as it threated the very foundations of the empire itself, as Islam did decades later.
Nationalism had to be crushed - Ukranian or whatever have you.

The Revolution of 1917 stimulated a powerful renaissance among the non-Russian nations' of the Russian empire and this process continued even after these peoples were militarily subdued by the Soviet Russian forces.
well thank you for substituting you personal opinion with somebody else’s - I value them both equaly :). I think Scott your smart enough to realize that Soviet Russian forces – is an oxymoron. They are either Soviet or they are Russian. And if they are Soviet - that is a forces of the Soviet Union one probaly has to check for the nations that union consited at every given moment.
Andrew and Gordievsky wrote
considering the origin of Gordievskiy and that he relies on Conquest ,who by now is proven to pool much of his numbers out his -well- butt. I would take whatever they wrote with chunk of salt size of you beloved Arizona, Scott. :) I do agree though on most points with Gilbert and Large.

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#21

Post by Scott Smith » 26 Dec 2002, 10:40

oleg wrote:
Scott wrote:Of course it did. But it struck harder in ethnic areas of the Russian Empire that were squeezed the hardest to export foodstuffs and generate foreign exchange to finance Stalin's SIOC.
Just yesterday I run into demographic research which analyzed the effect s that famine had on Central Russian Agricultural Zone (Voronezh Region for instance ). There were bunch of original Soviet documents dealing with time in question. Many of them were local OGPU reports that described outright cannibalism. It does not get harder than this. There were also multiple letters from the local governments that begged Moscow for grain and general foodstuff help – does not seem too organized if you ask me. Althoughб obviously Stalin’s agricultural polices did had the major effect on the situation, but a case could be made that if it was not for the drought, hunger would not hit such a grotesque proportion. You do have a point in regards to grain export though. The problem for the Soviet State was that if it allowed for Kulaks to remain untouched – they would stave the cities instead, for, the prices they asked for their products were way over the mark that the central government could afford –try as hard as it might- and kulaks preferred do destroy corps and cattle rather that to sell them for lower price.
As per Viriato's point, I wasn't arguing that the famine was exclusively Ukrainian; that is just what it is called. But I think it hit ethnic regions harder because they were squeezed more. Also, cannibalism was treated as a "political crime" handled by the OGPU since it was not against the criminal code, so I'm not sure what can be derived from that.

If the policy of the Five Year Plan (completed in four) was industrial growth over agriculture, then it is obvious that the peasantry would suffer hardships unless they could get factory jobs in the city. (In depression or wartime occupation the opposite is the case because urban workers may be unemployed.) In the 1920s in the USA a similar demographic change from Country to City occured as diesel tractors replaced draft horses and family farmers; this is the theme of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath about the 1930s Dust Bowl and California migrant-workers. My Grandmother's family was one of these "Route 66ers," but in America, as Will Rogers once quipped, the poor have automobiles.
2) relocating heavy industry for strategic reasons to the Urals and Siberia as much as possible (or at least prepare for future relocation)
Sorry have to disagree with this one. Soviet industrializing was conducted in such a manner that the factories, etc would be as close to the sources of raw materials as possible so that to minimize transportation cost. Evacuation of 1941 was an improvisation and only relatively successful as such . For instance most of Ammunition factories were not evacuated and lost to Germans.
It was expected that in the next war the Western Russian provinces would be occupied as they had been in the Great War, and therefore SIOC had some serious strategic implications concerns. I agree that this was not perfectly implemented for economic reasons. But industrial relocation didn't come from scratch with the invasion in 1941. I agree that much more research needs to be done and that it should come from primary Soviet sources.
and this entailed huge deportations of peasants from the land, not just to Gulags or the penal system, but to factories,
I don’t think you being entirely candid as for purpose of GULAG –it was specifically designed to provide cheap labor force for Soviet heavy industry. So dividing into “factories” and “GULAG” is not very meaningful. Secodly of what purpose possibly a peasant, who had never seen a machinery would serve at the factory.
Being conscripted to work in an industrial village in the middle of nowhere may not be a Gulag exactly, but cheap labor is always useful and it was very expendable, like peasants traditionally were. The Soviets did promote technical educations for their new industrial serfs. Engineers were one of the few intellectual classes that were mostly not suppressed by the political police--as long as you met your quota.
and having the happy effect of crushing latent Ukrainian nationalism as a Red (Russian) Tsar keeping his disparate multiethnic empire together (a concern which Stalin felt very acutely being an ethnic Georgian himself), and this involved but was not limited to collectivization and a heavy hand laid against the "kulak class," and negative consequences attributed to "counterrevolutionary sabotage," and finally, 3) squeezing non-Russian provinces in the empire (such as Ukraine) the hardest, so that foreign exhange to finance SIOC could be generated from agricultural exports, which meant that climatic famine conditions hit THOSE provinces the hardest.
Well Scott I think you are overstating the degree of latent Ukrainian nationalism – consider this -the biggest peasant revolt the Bolsheviks had to deal with was in Russia not in Ukraine - Antonov uprising. It was so bad that Tuchachevskiy had to restore to Chemical warfare to deal with it. Also percentage of ethnic Russians in GULAG never dropped bellow 58 percent while ethnic Ukrainians never reached 17% mark. Judging by this figures one can probably speculate of the Russian nationalism that was suppressed rather than Ukrainian.
All nationalisms are suppressed by an imperial system, including the dominant one, but my point was not really to blow the horn of Ukrainian nationalism.
Ukrainian nationalism had to be crushed as it threated the very foundations of the empire itself, as Islam did decades later.
Nationalism had to be crushed - Ukranian or whatever have you.
I agree and that is why Islam is such a threat in border provinces, even today. In this sense Islam is a nationalistic force.
The Revolution of 1917 stimulated a powerful renaissance among the non-Russian nations' of the Russian empire and this process continued even after these peoples were militarily subdued by the Soviet Russian forces.
Well thank you for substituting you personal opinion with somebody else’s - I value them both equaly :). I think Scott your smart enough to realize that Soviet Russian forces – is an oxymoron. They are either Soviet or they are Russian. And if they are Soviet - that is a forces of the Soviet Union one probaly has to check for the nations that union consited at every given moment.
In my view the Soviet Union was a Red form of Petrine imperialism; it was the domination of a non-Russian empire by Mother Russia, but by the Party instead of the Tsars and the Petrine Intelligentsia. And yes, Russian nationalism itself would have to bend to the yoke of that continental Burden of Empire. The Western-orientation of Petrinism is one of the dominant internal cultural clashes in Russian history. It can be seen in the conflict of the Old Believers with the "Tsar of all the Russias," for example. The Bolshevik Revolution contained both anti-Petrine and Petrine elements.
Andrew and Gordievsky wrote
Considering the origin of Gordievskiy and that he relies on Conquest, who by now is proven to pool much of his numbers out his -well- butt. I would take whatever they wrote with chunk of salt size of you beloved Arizona, Scott. :) I do agree though on most points with Gilbert and Large.
Yes, but my salient points were not on numbers of victims, which I don't especially like to throw around much. I also wanted to insure that the bias was upfront and show that they were drawing on Conquest.
:)

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#22

Post by Darrin » 27 Dec 2002, 00:36

STRANGE HOW this doesn't accnowlege all those new relys and push them up top.

The 26 mil civ deaths that people were using may actually be 26 mil total deaths of whom almost 9 mil were army deaths. The number of civ who died from all cuases could be as low as 17 mil or over 4 mil each of 4 years. I'm not sure but I am sure oleg will correct me If I made a mistake. Also the current canadian death rate is slightly below 1%. A value this low would prduce 2 mil deaths if rus pop was 200 mil from natural causes. Or 8 mil over 4 years of peacetime... in canada in 2002 not rus in 41-45.

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#23

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 27 Dec 2002, 05:59

Darrin wrote:STRANGE HOW this doesn't accnowlege all those new relys and push them up top.

The 26 mil civ deaths that people were using may actually be 26 mil total deaths of whom almost 9 mil were army deaths. The number of civ who died from all cuases could be as low as 17 mil or over 4 mil each of 4 years. I'm not sure but I am sure oleg will correct me If I made a mistake. Also the current canadian death rate is slightly below 1%. A value this low would prduce 2 mil deaths if rus pop was 200 mil from natural causes. Or 8 mil over 4 years of peacetime... in canada in 2002 not rus in 41-45.

USSR population on 22 June 1941 -- 196.7
USSR population on 31 Dec 1945 -- 170.5
Of them, born before 22.06.41 -- 159.5
Total population loss -- 37.2
Children prematurely died during the war -- 1.3
Natural mortality est. from 1940 level -- 11.9
Total EXCESS population loss during the war -- 26.6

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#24

Post by Roberto » 29 Dec 2002, 14:22

Scott Smith wrote:
Roberto wrote:Smith and/or his guru Sanning, seem to know rather little about the background of Stalin’s forced famine in the Ukraine in 1932/33, which was mainly related to Stalin’s struggle against Ukrainian nationalism
Hmmm, where do I say that crushing Ukrainian nationalism was not a factor in the Ukrainian famine?
How about
Scott Smith wrote:The Soviet famine in the 1930s was largely confined to Ukraine as it was being squeezed as a virtual colony to increase agricultural exports to generate foreign currency and for Western technology to finance the Industrialization program of Stalin's Socialism In One Country.
Scott Smith wrote:The Red Tsar killed two birds with one stone through the famine. Non-Russian areas of the Soviet Empire (chiefly Ukraine) were squeezed to generate surplus agricultural exports in order to gain foreign exchange to finance the industrialization program of Stalin's Socialism In One Country.
Maybe so, but Bullock shows that Stalin's concern with Ukrainian nationalism was his main reason for implementing a starvation policy in 1932/33, and Smith's quote does little if anything to disprove this notion.

Nevertheless, it's nice to see Smith quote a work of historiography, for a change. Looks like when he's a bit removed from his "Revisionist" articles of faith, his reason doesn't wholly let him down.

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#25

Post by Roberto » 29 Dec 2002, 14:44

Darrin wrote:STRANGE HOW this doesn't accnowlege all those new relys and push them up top.

The 26 mil civ deaths that people were using may actually be 26 mil total deaths of whom almost 9 mil were army deaths.
If you count only those who were killed in battle or died of wounds or disease, nine million may be an accurate figure. Add another three million prisoners of war who perished in German captivity, and you got a more or less complete figure for Soviet military casualties.

As to civilian casualties, we have roughly two million Jews slain by Einsatzgruppen and other German formations, one million other civilians killed in anti-partisan fighting, and one million who starved to death during the siege of Leningrad. Then there are the civilians who died of starvation and hardship behind the front line, regarding whom the latest estimate I've seen is about seven million. And then we still have the civilians caught in the crossfire of the frontlines or killed by air bombing and strafing, which reached a high five-digit or even a six-digit number in Stalingrad alone.

So it seems quite reasonable to assume a total loss of life of 23-24 million due to causes related to Hitler's war of extermination against the Soviet Union.

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#26

Post by michael mills » 29 Dec 2002, 15:50

Roberto wrote:
Victor Kravchenko, an activist at the time who later escaped abroad, was told by Khatayevich, one of Stalin’s agents:

<<A ruthless struggle is going on between the peasantry and our regime. It&#8217;s a struggle to the death. This year was a test of our strength and their endurance. It took a famine to show them who is master here. It has cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay.>> [...]
How typical of Roberto not to tell us Khatayevich's full name (Mendel-Khatayevich) which identifies him as a non-Russian and a non-Ukrainian, in fact a member of the Tibetan Buddhist minority, an ethnic group heavily represented in the Bolshevik leadership and by whose cultural traditions the attitudes of that leadership were greatly influenced.

Mendel-Khatayevich and his co-ethnic Veger were appointed by their co-ethnic Kaganovich to run Ukraine after he had had purged the ethnic Ukrainian administration headed by Kossior. Kaganovich was born in Ukraine, being a member of the large Tibetan Buddhist minority in that land, and spoke the Ukrainian language, but, in accordance with the traditional outlook of his ethnic group, had no sympathy with the Ukrainian people, regarding them as benighted, drunken boors (the word used in the Tibetan Buddhist language was "poyer").

The appointment first of Kaganovich and then of Mendel-Khatayevich and Veger to keep Ukraine in order during the food crisis that was then building up is significant. Because of their ethnic and cultural background, they could be relied on to have no solidarity with the Ukrainian peasantry, and to continue to extract food surpluses from Ukraine in order to feed the urban population (both in Ukraine and in other areas of the Soviet Union) regardless of the disastrous effects on the food-producers themselves. It is evident that Mendel-Khatayevich and Veger favoured their co-ethnics in the distribution of the available food; although at least half of the Tibetan Buddhist minority in the Soviet Union lived in Ukraine, demographic data show no decrease in their number during the famine years, by contrast with the decline in the number of ethnic Ukrainians.

But, pace Roberto, the famine of 1932-33 should not be interpreted as an attack specifically on the Ukrainian people. Rather it was part of the war that the Bolshevik regime had been waging on the peasantry ever since it came to power, the purpose of which was to reduce it to a class of serfs from whom a food surplus could be extracted to feed the urban population, the basis of Bolshevik power. The Bolshevik war on the peasantry, which was waged with particular savagery in the early 20s (eg the Tambov uprising in Great Russia), although it was to some extent based on objective reality, had its ideological origins in the cultural background of the many Tibetan Buddhists in the Bolshevik regime, with its traditional contempt for peasants, the "hewers of wood and drawers of water". That traditional Tibetan Buddhist view of the peasantry was absorbed by Bolsheviks of other ethnic origin, including ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, who could otherwise have been expected to have a residual affection for the peasantry, from which they themselves were no more than one or two generations distant. Tuchachevskii, for example, of impeccable Great Russian ethnicity, made his name as a butcher on a massive scale of rebellious peasants, including by the use of poison gas (his killing by Stalin was no more than an act of poetic justice; he was far more effective as a slayer of peasants than as a leader of armies).

Anyway, this discussion has gone well off the topic, which was German plans to extract food from the occupied areas of the Soviet Union.

Getting back to that topic, I would like to comment on two points made by Roberto, who has suddenly become an expert on agriculture. The first is his rather creative accounting, based on extrapolating from the food needs of the city of Leningrad, which enabled to arrive at a population of close to 30 million that would be subject to starvation.

That creative accounting might have been meaningful if Leningrad had been the centre of an area with a large population, all fed with imports from the food-surplus areas to the south. However, Leningrad, the earlier St Petersburg, was not a "natural" city, the organic centre of a region; rather it was an artificial creation, founded as a "window on the Baltic" in a sparsely populated area. The whole area of North Russia, the region between Moscow and the then Leningrad, is still a sparsely populated area. Therefore, even though the large population of the city of Leningrad itself lived on food imports, it is quite possible that the sparse population of the areas of North Russia occupied by the German Army could have subsisted on locally grown potatoes and other vegetables which can grow under the climatic and soil conditions of those areas.

As for other industrial cities to which food was no longer to be imported, they were mainly in the south, in the food-surplus area, eg the Donbass. The other main industrial area was in the Urals, was never captured by the Germans, and was fed from the food-surplus area in Western Siberia. Furthermore, a large part of the urban population of the areas occupied by Germany was evacuated prior to the German arrival, thereby reducing the food consumption of most of the occupied cities. (By contrast, the population of Leningrad was not evacuated to anywhere near the same extent, hence the untypical level of starvation in that city).

Roberto has made the mistake of not seeing the Soviet wood for the Leningrad trees. In other words, by concentrating on the example of Leningrad he has lost sight of the big picture and drawn incorrect conclusions. Viriato has already demonstrated Roberto's failure to understand the aggregate statistics. In brief, the amount of food that Germany planned to extract from the Soviet Union, amounted to some 10% of total production, and four times the normal level of exports, or double the amount that the Soviet Union had contracted to export to Germany in 1941. While such extraction would have resulted in large-scale food-shortages in the occupied areas, such shortages would not have sufficed to starve to death more than 15% of the entire Soviet population. Furthermore, the Germans never succeeded in extracting the planned quantity of food from the occupied Soviet Union; they got more food from France, without causing starvation there.

On the second point, I asked for the source of the figure of 30 million supposedly condemned to death by starvation under the so-called "Hunger Plan". Roberto replied that he thought that it was mentioned by Goering in a talk with Ciano, but he does produce a record of that conversation; rather he relies on a throw-away line delivered by Peter Longerich in the course of a statement made by him in the context of the Irving court action. I'm still waiting for the source. And even if Goering pulled some figure off the top of his head, that does not prove that there was an actual plan to starve a target figure of 30 million.

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#27

Post by Darrin » 29 Dec 2002, 16:16

oleg wrote:
Darrin wrote:STRANGE HOW this doesn't accnowlege all those new relys and push them up top.

The 26 mil civ deaths that people were using may actually be 26 mil total deaths of whom almost 9 mil were army deaths. The number of civ who died from all cuases could be as low as 17 mil or over 4 mil each of 4 years. I'm not sure but I am sure oleg will correct me If I made a mistake. Also the current canadian death rate is slightly below 1%. A value this low would prduce 2 mil deaths if rus pop was 200 mil from natural causes. Or 8 mil over 4 years of peacetime... in canada in 2002 not rus in 41-45.

USSR population on 22 June 1941 -- 196.7
USSR population on 31 Dec 1945 -- 170.5
Of them, born before 22.06.41 -- 159.5
Total population loss -- 37.2
Children prematurely died during the war -- 1.3
Natural mortality est. from 1940 level -- 11.9
Total EXCESS population loss during the war -- 26.6

Your 26 mil does not include normal mortaliy but does include all the army deaths. Which may have been as high as 12 mil in total so 14-15 mil excess civ deaths over 4years. A High number of them due to jew and communist execution and front line combat for 3+ years in civilian territories. Plus partisan warfare both in occupied rus and against rus itelf. I would be suprised if the total number who died each year of anything approaching starvation was 1m mil a year.

Then of course if we want to discuss the validity of the rus cencus when the pre war cencus and its main administrators were squased. Then no census is taken to be eaxct on the such an such a day after wards. Its an estimate or approximation. Then even if the census numbers were rock hard just substracting end and beg do not account for such things as emmagration etc... I'm sure during 4 years of war many rus may have tried to escape to more peaceful places like trukey, iran. etc... Although it does seem to account for new pop growth during this period in your calculation.

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Roberto
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#28

Post by Roberto » 29 Dec 2002, 17:09

michael mills wrote:Roberto wrote:
Victor Kravchenko, an activist at the time who later escaped abroad, was told by Khatayevich, one of Stalin&#8217;s agents:

<<A ruthless struggle is going on between the peasantry and our regime. It&#8217;s a struggle to the death. This year was a test of our strength and their endurance. It took a famine to show them who is master here. It has cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay.>> [...]
How typical of Roberto not to tell us Khatayevich's full name (Mendel-Khatayevich) which identifies him as a non-Russian and a non-Ukrainian, in fact a member of the Tibetan Buddhist minority, an ethnic group heavily represented in the Bolshevik leadership and by whose cultural traditions the attitudes of that leadership were greatly influenced.
How typical it is of a gibbering anti-Semitic moron like Mills to make a big bloody fuss about a certain personage's Jewish ethnicity, which I could not possibly have known about (not being as widely read as the dissident researcher and expert from Australia, I ran across the fellow's name for the first time in Bullock's book) and wouldn't have attributed any significance to if I had known.

In the rest of his post, our deplorable expert seems to be making a big deal about why my calculation of the possible effects of the Nazi Hungerplan, based on the food consumption of Leningrad, is supposed to be wrong.

Let us see:
michael mills wrote:Getting back to that topic, I would like to comment on two points made by Roberto, who has suddenly become an expert on agriculture. The first is his rather creative accounting, based on extrapolating from the food needs of the city of Leningrad, which enabled to arrive at a population of close to 30 million that would be subject to starvation.
The statement was the following:
Roberto wrote:
viriato wrote:Roberto I have to disagree with the numbers you stated in your previous post:
...this means that the non-delivery of 5 to 10 million tons of grain to the “forest zone including the industrial centers and Petersburg” would have left between 18 and 36 million people without food supplies.
If the USSR produced 100 million tons of grain per year and was able to both export a little part of it (2,5million tons) and still feed the population in peace time having some 190 million inhabitants, it would mean that you would need half a million tons to feed each million inhabitants (97.5/190). As so the 5 to 10 million tons of grain would feed from 10 to 20 million inhabitants and not the 18 to 36 million we can read in your statement.
Correct, assuming that the population and production figures are accurate and that all grain not exported was distributed to the population (i.e. none stored by the state as a reserve).

My attempt to reconstruct the calculations of Göring, Backe et al, as I pointed out, was based on a German document according to which 700,000 tons would be needed to feed the population of Leningrad, which I estimated at 2,500,000 on the basis of the data in Salisbury's The 900 Days.

According to this book, page 449, the daily flour ration in Leningrad up to 11 September 1941 was 2,100 tons for 2,500,000 people - which would make 756,000 tons a year or 0.3 tons per person per year. Starvation level was reached, and people started dying like flies, when the daily ration dropped to 510 tons per day, by the end of November 1941.

Which means that, for starvation to come about, food supplies didn't have to be cut by 100 %, but "only" by 75 %.

Which in turn means that the amount you would have to consider are 5,000,000 tons ./. 0,75 = 6,666,667 tons to 10,000,000 tons ./. 0,75 = 13,333,333 tons, corresponding to ca. 13 - 26 million people in the food deficit zone.

By my calculation based on Salisbury's Leningrad figures, on the other hand, the same amounts of flour would correspond to between 22 million and 44 million people, who would be reduced to starvation level if their food supplies were cut by 75 %, i.e. by 5 million or 10 million tons per annum, respectively.
michael mills wrote:That creative accounting might have been meaningful if Leningrad had been the centre of an area with a large population, all fed with imports from the food-surplus areas to the south. However, Leningrad, the earlier St Petersburg, was not a "natural" city, the organic centre of a region; rather it was an artificial creation, founded as a "window on the Baltic" in a sparsely populated area. The whole area of North Russia, the region between Moscow and the then Leningrad, is still a sparsely populated area. Therefore, even though the large population of the city of Leningrad itself lived on food imports, it is quite possible that the sparse population of the areas of North Russia occupied by the German Army could have subsisted on locally grown potatoes and other vegetables which can grow under the climatic and soil conditions of those areas.
Ah, it is "quite possible" - a favorite phrase of Michael Mills.

Especially when he has no evidence to demonstrate what he would badly like to believe in.

Or are there any figures he can show us, like I have done?

Considering what Mills thinks to have been "quite possible", those German planners must have been over-pessimistic (or shall we say "over-optimistic"?) in their assessment of the possibilities of the population of what they called the "forest zone including the industrial centers and Petersburg" subsisting "on locally grown potatoes and other vegetables which can grow under the climatic and soil conditions of those areas", for in their quoted memorandum of 23.05.1941 they wrote (my translation):
[...]There is no German interest in maintaining the productive capacity of these regions, also in what concerns the supplies of the troops stationed there. […] The population of these regions, especially the population of the cities, will have to anticipate a famine of the greatest dimensions.[my emphasis] The issue will be to redirect the population to the Siberian areas. As railway transportation is out of the question, this problem will also be an extremely difficult one. […]
From all this there follows that the German administration in these regions may well attempt to milder the consequences of the famine that will doubtlessly occur and accelerate the naturalization process. It can be attempted to cultivate there areas more extensively in the sense of an extension of the area for cultivating potatoes and other high yield fruits important for consume. This will not stop the famine, however. Many tens of millions of people will become superfluous in this area and will die or have to emigrate to Siberia.[my emphasis] Attempts to save the population from starvation death by using excesses from the black earth zone can only be made at the expense of the supply of Europe. They hinder Germany’s capacity to hold out in the war, they hinder the blockade resistance of Germany and Europe. This must be absolutely clear.[…]
michael mills wrote:As for other industrial cities to which food was no longer to be imported, they were mainly in the south, in the food-surplus area, eg the Donbass. The other main industrial area was in the Urals, was never captured by the Germans, and was fed from the food-surplus area in Western Siberia. Furthermore, a large part of the urban population of the areas occupied by Germany was evacuated prior to the German arrival, thereby reducing the food consumption of most of the occupied cities. (By contrast, the population of Leningrad was not evacuated to anywhere near the same extent, hence the untypical level of starvation in that city).
More general considerations, and again no figures.

As to the evacuation of the population of Leningrad,
Harrison E. Salisbury ([i]The 900 Days[/i], pages 242 and following) wrote:[…]Evacuation from Leningrad had been on-again off-again. For the most part it involved children, first sent to the nearby countryside and then re-evacuated to the Urals and other distant areas. To organize the exodus, a special department had been created by the Leningrad Soviet. Up to the eleventh of August it sent out of Leningrad 467,648 persons. But that figure had been largely nullified by the inward flow of refugees from the Baltic states. On August 10 it was decided to send another 400,000 women and children out of the city. The figure was upped to 700,000 only four days later. In reality, nothing like these numbers were evacuated. When the circle closed, 216,000 persons had been processed but not evacuated. The railroads were not able to handle the volume. They were being heavily bombed. For instance, on August 15 105 German bombers attacked the Chudovo railroad station, and on August 18 they damaged the Volkhov River bridge on the Leningrad-Moscow line, tying up traffic.[…]
As to what, by stark contrast to the horror of Leningrad, the “typical” starvation level in a German-occupied Soviet city was like,
Alexander Werth ([i]Russia at War 1941-1945[/i], 2000 Caroll & Graf Publishers New York, pages 607/608) wrote:

There had been 900.000 people in Kharkov before the war, but when the war spread to Ukraine, and the refugees started pouring in from the west, this figure swelled to 1,200,000 to 1,300,000. Later, in October 1941, with the Germans approaching, the evacuation of Kharkov began in real earnest. Most of the larger plants were more or less successfully evacuated, among them the great Tractor Plant, with nearly all its workers. By the time the Germans came, some 700,000 people had left the city. Now there were only 350,000. What had happened to the rest?
According to the Russian authorities, the disappearance of half the population of October 1941 is accounted for as follows: it has been established that 120,000 people, mostly young people, had been deported as slaves to Germany; some 70,000 or 80,000 had died of hunger, cold and privation, especially during the terrible winter of 1941-2; some 30,000 had been killed by the Germans, among them some 16,000 Jews (men, women and children) who had remained behind in Kharkov; the rest had fled to the villages. Various checks I made in the next days suggested that the figure for deaths from hunger, et cetera, was slightly, but not greatly, exaggerated; so too was the figure for non-Jews shot, but the figure for the Jews was correct. On the other hand, the figure for slave-labor deportations was, if anything, an underestimate.


What relevance the considerations of Mr. Mills are supposed to have, anyway, to the contents of a plan drafted before the war that - as one of the "leftist" historians Mills keeps gibbering about pointed out - could never be executed in practice in the form originally foreseen, will probably remain the mystery of this forum's most distinguished "Revisionist" mind.
michael mills wrote:Roberto has made the mistake of not seeing the Soviet wood for the Leningrad trees. In other words, by concentrating on the example of Leningrad he has lost sight of the big picture and drawn incorrect conclusions.
Isn’t it funny to hear that from someone whose only support for the contention that my conclusions are “incorrect” are what he considers “quite possible”?
michael mills wrote:Viriato has already demonstrated Roberto's failure to understand the aggregate statistics.
And I have pointed out what consideration is missing in Viriato's calculations.

In case Mills hasn't noticed, I would have no problem with Viriato's calculation being right and mine being wrong.

What I have a problem with are the moronic insults of a rat-like character who doesn't even provide figures in support of his contentions.
michael mills wrote:In brief, the amount of food that Germany planned to extract from the Soviet Union, amounted to some 10% of total production, and four times the normal level of exports, or double the amount that the Soviet Union had contracted to export to Germany in 1941. While such extraction would have resulted in large-scale food-shortages in the occupied areas, such shortages would not have sufficed to starve to death more than 15% of the entire Soviet population.
Yeah, maybe the number of starvation deaths would not have been around thirty million.

Maybe it would "only" have been between 13 million and twice as many, according to Viriato's calculations as corrected by myself.

Or maybe "only" between 10 and 20 million people would have starved to death, according to Viriato's original calculations, if the Hungerplan could have been carried out as planned (which, as "leftist" historian Christian Gerlach pointed out, revealed itself to be impossible within three months after the outbreak of the war, prompting the planners to switch over to more limited and thus feasible killing programs, like the starvation of the "non-working" Soviet prisoners of war and the mass slaughter of the Jewish population).

Big deal, given that the Hungerplan, if carried out as planned, would have been mass murder on a rarely equaled scale even if the Nazi planners had been too "pessimistic", as Mills contends - just like its eventual "redux" versions were.

Which in turn means that Mills' verbosity again tells us a lot about the small and miserable mind of Mills himself, and little else.
michael mills wrote:Furthemore, the Germans never succeeded in extracting the planned quantity of food from the occupied Soviet Union; they got more food from France, without causing starvation there.
Well, in the Soviet Union the German exploitation did cause starvation, whether or not it satisfied the German needs.

As to whether what the Germans eventually got out of the Soviet Union lived up to their expectations or not, and despite the utter irrelevance thereof to the sinister and criminal nature of the German plan and its execution, I would like to see some figures from a reliable source in support of this contention.
michael mills wrote:On the second point, I asked for the source of the figure of 30 million supposedly condemned to death by starvation under the so-called "Hunger Plan". Roberto replied that he thought that it was mentioned by Goering in a talk with Ciano, but he does produce a record of that conversation; rather he relies on a throw-away line delivered by Peter Longerich in the course of a statement made by him in the context of the Irving court action. I'm still waiting for the source.
Don't wait, Mills.

Ask your friend Longerich, who will surely be glad to help you with the source.

You're not trying to tell us he sucked Göring's statement to Ciano out of his thumb, are you?
michael mills’ cherished friend Peter Longerich wrote:[…]Thus Göring indicated to the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, in November 1941 that in the course of the year "20-30 million persons will die in Russia of hunger".
Source of quote:

http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/e ... /pl202.asp

The complete text of the statement can probably be found on page 374 of the diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, 1939-1943, published in Bern in 1946 (entry of 25.11.1941), which Christian Gerlach gives as one of the sources for Göring’s mocking statements about the dying of the Soviet prisoners of war (Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, page 41).

On page 16 of the same book,
Gerlach wrote:[...]Eine lineare Senkung des sowjetischen Konsumniveaus nach einem Einmarsch schien den deutschen Agrarexperten nicht erfolgversprechend, weil dann Schwarzhandel und Selbstversorgung der Bevölkerung nicht kontrollierbar seien. Deshalb müsse man die “Zuschußgebiete” innerhalb der UdSSR abriegeln und damit den Hungertod von “zig Millionen Menschen” – man prognostizierte etwa 30 Millionen Tote – herbeiführen. Dieser bis dahin beispiellose Plan zielte einerseits gegen die Bevölkerung der “Waldzone” (Nord-, Mittel- und mit Einschränkungen Weißrußland), andererseits gegen die Einwohner der Städte im europäischen Teil der UdSSR.[...]
My translation:
[...]A linear reduction of the Soviet consume level after the invasion would not be successful in the opinion of the German agrarian experts, for it would be impossible to control black market trading and food procurement by the population Thus it was considered necessary to seal off the “food-importing areas” within the USSR and thus to cause the death by starvation of “umpteen million people” – 30 million dead were predicted[my emphasis]. This hitherto unparalleled plan was directed against the population of the “forest zone” (northern and central Russia and, with restrictions, Belorussia) on the one hand and against the inhabitants of the cities in the European part of the USSR on the other.[...]
Gerlach (as Mills, who is familiar with the cited work, well knows) gives as his sources the already quoted memorandum of 23.05.1941 by the “Agriculture Group” of the “Economy Staff East” and a file note by General Thomas of the Wirtschaftsrüstungsamt (Industrial Armament Department) about a meeting with the secretaries of state regarding Barbarossa on 02.05.1941, IMT Volume 31, page 84. The protocol of this meeting contains the following statements, transcribed in the catalogue of the current Wehrmacht War Crimes Exhibition:
[…]1.) Der Krieg ist nur weiterzuführen, wenn die gesamte Wehrmacht im 3. Kriegsjahr aus Rußland ernährt wird.
2.) Hierbei werden zweifellos zig Millionen Menschen verhungern, wenn von uns das für uns Notwendige aus dem Lande herausgeholt wird.
3.) Am wichtigsten ist die Bergung und Abtransport von Ölsaaten, Ölkuchen, dann erst Getreide. Das vorhandene Fett und Fleisch wird voraussichtlich die Truppe verbrauchen.[…]
My translation:
[…]1.) The war can only be continued if the whole Wehrmacht is fed out of Russia in the 3rd war year.
2.) Due to this umpteen million people will doubtlessly starve to death when we take what is necessary for us out of the land.[my emphasis]
3.) Most important is the collection and shipment of oil seeds and oil cake, only thereafter of grain. The available fat and meat will presumably be consumed by the troops.[…]
michael mills wrote:And even if Goering pulled some figure off the top of his head,
He will hardly have “pulled some figure off the top of his head”, considering the backup he had from his economic planning staff, see the quoted protocols of 02.05.1941 and 23.05.1941.
michael mills wrote:that does not prove that there was an actual plan to starve a target figure of 30 million.
Where did I say anything here about such a "target figure"?

What the documents show is that Germans planned to exploit the resources of the Soviet Union expecting that this exploitation would lead millions of people to die of starvation.

Whether the forecast was "umpteen million", "many tens of millions" or "20 to 30 million", the fact that the Nazis launched a war also for the purpose of ruthless exploitation expecting that this would lead many millions of people to die miserably illustrates their contempt for human life and the monstrously criminal nature of their attitudes, just as Mills' dishonest bickering illustrates what kind of a fellow Mills is.

The greatest weakness of "Revisionist" apologists of the Nazi system, as I like to say, is that they can't help being themselves and endorsing the merciless, criminal attitudes of Hitler's regime.

This observation certainly fits Michael Mills like a glove.
Last edited by Roberto on 30 Dec 2002, 22:48, edited 1 time in total.

viriato
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#29

Post by viriato » 29 Dec 2002, 17:34

Oleg wrote:
USSR population on 22 June 1941 -- 196.7
USSR population on 31 Dec 1945 -- 170.5
Of them, born before 22.06.41 -- 159.5
Total population loss -- 37.2
Children prematurely died during the war -- 1.3
Natural mortality est. from 1940 level -- 11.9
Total EXCESS population loss during the war -- 26.6
Just a few questions regarding your statistics:

1-How many of the total population loss were due to the repression inside the USSR (Gulag)?

2-How many were those who could emigrate towards other countries during that period?

3-How many were those who have being former POW's, members/auxiliares of the German army and former workers in Germany and died

a)in Germany due to allied bombing?
b)fighting against the USSR?
c)after their being handed over by the western allies to the USSR?

4-How many were those who were killed for direct involvement in guerrilla warfare against the USSR in the Baltics and Ukraine?

5-How many were those (both civilian and military) who were killed by the NKVD for "lack" of fighting spirit? And those killed for collaboration?

6-How many were those killed during the attacks on villages due to the scorch-earth policy of the USSR?

7-How many were those killed because they belonged to "untrustful" peoples, namely, Koreans, Germans, Greeks, Poles, Kalmyks, Balkars, Karatchais, Chechens, Ingush and crimean Tatars?

8-How many were those killed during the first occupation in 1939-1940-1941 of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, western Belarus, western Ukraine and Bessarabia/northern Bukovina?

9-How many were those who were killed during the depopulation of the western territories during the 1941 and 1942 retreat?

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Scott Smith
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#30

Post by Scott Smith » 29 Dec 2002, 17:59

Roberto wrote:Maybe so, but Bullock shows that Stalin's concern with Ukrainian nationalism was his main reason for implementing a starvation policy in 1932/33, and Smith's quote does little if anything to disprove this notion.
Roberto's guru Bullock is not an economic historian. If he was, perhaps a different perspective would have been treated. I gave the economic motivation for Stalin squeezing the non-Russian provinces of the empire, and that was to finance SIOC industrialization by generating foreign exchange with agricultural surpluses, during a period of overall agricultural shortfall, a simple point which does not contradict, indeed embellishes, that the Soviet Empire was also fighting a class-war and a war against centrifugal nationalisms, especial Ukrainian. Roberto seems unwilling to admit that Stalin had been preparing for Total War long before 1941.
:)

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