4 ms·

> Most of those weren't built by starving people... Indeed, starving people don't make for good builders. Instead, the starving people were the peasants who h

> Most of those weren't built by starving people... Indeed, starving people don't make for good builders. Instead, the starving people were the peasants who had their produce expropriated, which was sold to acquire the imported materials and machinery that the soviets could not yet produce themselves. > ...and it's humiliating to the amazing architects and builders of these buildings to nullify their achievements like this. It isn't, unless they had any say in the matter and a view of the big picture, which they didn't, but if they did, all humiliation would be justified.

l332mn 6y ago
> Instead, the starving people were the peasants who had their produce expropriated, which was sold to acquire the imported materials and machinery that the soviets could not yet produce themselves. That's kind of misleading, given how the average USSR citizen had more food on their plate than even in the US https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-food/ https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-food/ ...are you thinking of the pre-WW2 famines?
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  You didn't even read the article you posted since it comes to the opposite conclusion > Was Soviet caloric intake higher than the US'? No. In saying this, I'm saying the FAO is wrong, and that Robert Allen, who based his calculations in FAO data (and used their multipliers), didn't notice. To say this, I had to go through a full literature review, and I come to this opinion. Before reading my post, you were totally justified in believing that caloric intake was higher.
  - l332mn 6y ago
    It doesn't support your statement that the USSR was a nation of starving peasants either way, which you were not justified in thinking before reading my post ;-)
- mopsi 6y ago
  > given how the average USSR citizen had more food on their plate than even in the US Utterly ridiculous nonsense. USSR's stats were fudged from the lowest state farm levels up to the highest corridors of the Kremlin. That's where the HBO Chernobyl series shines - it's a great example of how the whole system became detached from reality, fudging had become so widespread that nobody knew the truth anymore nor could tell facts apart from "propaganda numbers". Official statistics are a total trash and I see no way to reconstruct actual figures so long after the fact. Anyway, better ask someone who lived in the USSR how they felt when they first visited a standard supermarket in the West. I know a woman who had a mental breakdown on her first trip to Stockholm because she thought that stores stocked full of food were a CIA propaganda, and couldn't believe that she had been lied to all her life.
  - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
    They would have been shocked even more if they saw the slums of NY city. There was no such a thing in the Soviet Union.
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      Of course not, because people weren't allowed to move freely within the Soviet Union, but unsightly people could be freely moved by the authorities. Maybe we should ask some of these slum inhabitants if they'd prefer to be allocated a menial job, be deported, or keep living their lives in the slum.
      - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
        Really? What an odd claim. You were free to go anywhere in USSR. Where do you get that information?
        gridlockd 6y ago
        > You were free to go anywhere in USSR. No, you weren't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_kilometre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_kilometre

l332mn 6y ago

> Instead, the starving people were the peasants who had their produce expropriated, which was sold to acquire the imported materials and machinery that the soviets could not yet produce themselves. That's kind of misleading, given how the average USSR citizen had more food on their plate than even in the US https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-food/ https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-food/ ...are you thinking of the pre-WW2 famines?

NikolaeVarius 6y ago
You didn't even read the article you posted since it comes to the opposite conclusion > Was Soviet caloric intake higher than the US'? No. In saying this, I'm saying the FAO is wrong, and that Robert Allen, who based his calculations in FAO data (and used their multipliers), didn't notice. To say this, I had to go through a full literature review, and I come to this opinion. Before reading my post, you were totally justified in believing that caloric intake was higher.
- l332mn 6y ago
  It doesn't support your statement that the USSR was a nation of starving peasants either way, which you were not justified in thinking before reading my post ;-)
mopsi 6y ago
> given how the average USSR citizen had more food on their plate than even in the US Utterly ridiculous nonsense. USSR's stats were fudged from the lowest state farm levels up to the highest corridors of the Kremlin. That's where the HBO Chernobyl series shines - it's a great example of how the whole system became detached from reality, fudging had become so widespread that nobody knew the truth anymore nor could tell facts apart from "propaganda numbers". Official statistics are a total trash and I see no way to reconstruct actual figures so long after the fact. Anyway, better ask someone who lived in the USSR how they felt when they first visited a standard supermarket in the West. I know a woman who had a mental breakdown on her first trip to Stockholm because she thought that stores stocked full of food were a CIA propaganda, and couldn't believe that she had been lied to all her life.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  They would have been shocked even more if they saw the slums of NY city. There was no such a thing in the Soviet Union.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    Of course not, because people weren't allowed to move freely within the Soviet Union, but unsightly people could be freely moved by the authorities. Maybe we should ask some of these slum inhabitants if they'd prefer to be allocated a menial job, be deported, or keep living their lives in the slum.
    - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
      Really? What an odd claim. You were free to go anywhere in USSR. Where do you get that information?
      - gridlockd 6y ago
        > You were free to go anywhere in USSR. No, you weren't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_kilometre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_kilometre