Wit and Wisdom of Joe Stalin by Tom Reynolds
Joseph Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” He should know.
The Soviet famine of 1930–1933 impacted major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union(USSR). A major contributing factor to the famine was the soviet government’s First Five Year Plan. This plan was created by Joseph Stalin to improve the Soviet Union's industrial and agricultural policies. (It reversed a previous policy that had included free market and capitalism.)
As a part of the Soviet famine of 1930–1933. The Holodomor (to kill by starvation) was a Stalin-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. Some historians conclude that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin in order to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. (Why does that sound familiar?)
Estimates are that 5.7 to 8.7 million people died of famine across the Soviet Union.
Have you eaten? Feeling hungry? Think what it would be like to die of starvation. The famine’s victims might only have been a statistic to Stalin, but try to put the experience of starving to death on a personal level and it is no longer a statistic. Then try to imagine people starving to death because of a misguided government program that considers 8.7 million dead as collateral damage.
The lesson from history is that a government plan that was well intended (industrialize Russia) caused unbelievable hardship and death. Imagine that…a government plan failed. Can we see any modern equivalent like…say…the government’s plan to make electricity the prime if not the only energy source, under the guise of climate change necessity. What could go wrong?
And speaking of starvation, the antidote to starvation is food. Food grows on farms (a fact of which not everyone seems to be aware.) The European Union has decided that farms are bad for the environment!
The Nature Restoration Law was first introduced by the European Commission in June 2022. The bill allows for 30% of all former peatlands currently ‘exploited’ for agriculture to be restored and partially shifted to other use by the end of the decade, a figure rising to 70% by 2050.
Who knew farmers were ‘exploiting’ the ground?
Land currently used to grow food will no longer be used for that purpose.
What could go wrong?
Farmers in Ireland and the Netherlands are protesting.
But in the Netherlands’ defense, they are also trying to get their woke credentials stamped in other ways. The new Miss Universe Netherlands is a transgender man. Obviously, the judges were not interested in his nether regions.
Speaking of Stalin…
By 1936, Stalin's fear of losing his position drove him into authorizing the ‘Great Purge’ which was largely conducted by the NKVD (the secret police of the USSR). The NKVD removed* (see definition of removed in next paragraph) central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses. Eventually, the purges removed* the Red Army and military high command. Later the NKVD began targeting certain ethnic minorities for removal.*
In 1938, Stalin reversed his stance on the purges. He criticized the NKVD for carrying out *mass executions and subsequently executed Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov, who headed the NKVD during the purge years.
Scholars estimate the death toll for the Great Purge (1936–1938) to be roughly 700,000. The leadership of the USSR had been obliterated.
“Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.”
Apparently, the true history of socialism is not a required course for journalism, political science or PhD courses. Do journalists, political scientists and teachers expect that they will be the chosen few who lead the world into the new world order? Do they have any idea how journalists, teachers, and any others who competed for political leadership roles in socialist countries ended up under Stalin, Mao, Castro, where there was no Bill of Rights to protect them.
By the way, in a socialist country, all leadership roles are political. Except for the leaders of the revolutions. You know, people like Stalin, Mao and Castro.
Fortunately, reading about this history is a 1st Amendment right and nobody in the U S government would attempt to take our Free Speech right away from Americans.
Just like they would never take away the right to protect ourselves under the 2nd Amendment.
As Lenin so aptly put it, these supporters of socialism are just ‘useful idiots’ who will eventually be disposed of by the government when they are no longer useful or if they should mutter any ‘misinformation’ about the regime in charge.
