While often disparaged these days, the US has long been one of the most charitable countries in the world both in terms of private citizen contributions and public government aid. Glad to see some of the good deeds finally being recognized!
The US has always been disparaged for policy missteps that have resulted in much destruction around the world. The only reason it seems more evident now is probably due to easy access to information through the internet and the ability to share "disparaging" viewpoints more widely.
Hmm, this article doesn't mention the allied invasion of russia (of which the US was a major part) that ended in 1920. Sure, the US was a great humanitarian but also contributed to their being a famine!
This really isn’t correct. The civil war - as well as the failure of agriculture during the great war was the primary mover. Us forces never moved inland from the ports that they were dropping supplies off of. It’s a common meme, but not much more. Other powers the Japanese and the British in particular did more.
The American aid was so effective that it propped up the Lenin regime, and got them through the last set of emergencies at the end of the Russian civil wars. It also made Hoover a household name back in the states.
Ironically the biggest force both for and against the Bolsheviks was the Germans. The bankrolled the communists - in a way that had direct echoes of present day - then supported the whites and then again signed a absurdly lucrative trade deal that saved Lenin’s ass.
And you don't mention that once the Bolsheviks won the civil war, that tens of millions of Russians were murdered, put in concentration camps, starved under communist rule.
edit: downvoters, feel free to correct what I'm saying if you can. I'm going by the factual history of what actually happened, what role the US actually played in the conflict (barely any), and the trivial scale of that role.
It's not mentioned because the US was not a major part of any invasion into Russia and did not contribute to the famine. Factually the US involvement in that conflict was something below trivial. Although feel free to explain how a couple hundred US soldiers contributed to the forced famine of a nation of tens of millions of people.
Then another famine was created to sell wheat to pay Americans for factories. It is usually shown as Ukrainian genocide, but when you look at absolute numbers, large areas of greater Russia and present-day Kazakhstan were affected to the same extent.
This article makes no mention of the role the Wilson administration likely played in creating the famine to begin with. Following 1917, anglo-american support of fascist paramilitary groups in Russia led to the bloodiest civil war in history.
1. The famine occurred tens of thousands of kilometers from where US forces landed.
2. Fascism did not exist in 1917. The whites were extremely diverse, ranging from royalists to outright socialists.
3. The United States role in starting the Russian Civil war was minimal at beast. The main catalyst was the Bolshevik party seizing power a few months after losing the Russian Constituent Assembly election.
4. The Russian civil war likely had less deaths than the Chinese Civil War, and unquestionably less deaths than the Taiping Rebellion.
The articles makes no mention of it, because the famine was directly caused by Lenin's government forcibly removing farmers from their own land and taking state control of food production and distribution. The famine occured several years after the Russian civil war was already over.
The Wilson Administration played no role in making Lenin and the nascent Communist system seize control of farm land, intentionally starve millions of people to death by stealing their food, and seize control of most food production and distribution.
Fascist paramilitaries in 1917 is rather creative reinterpretation of history.
So is the idea that forces opposing the communist plague were any less legitimate than bolsheviks. Of all the participants in the civil war, bolsheviks were the least legitimate, anbd the most blood-thirsty.
Wait, so somebody actively tried to kill the scourge of communism in it womb, and you say it like it's a bad thing?!
Maybe that civil war should've been bloodier, if only the other side could have won... it would have spared the rest of the world at least (hint: Eastern Europe) from the hideous ideology and politics that spread from Rusia and infested them and dragged them down for decades after decades.
In line with the same type of intentionally forgotten history, US investors and business persons built and provided a large portion of the Soviet industrial capabilities prior to WW2 [1], which the Soviets later pretended were their own accomplishments. It's a theme that repeats throughout all of Soviet history, where Communist propaganda collides with market economy prosperity, on up to the famous 1959 Kitchen debate between Nixon and Khrushchev [2], or Yeltsin's visit to the Texas supermarket [3].
Communism universally, completely failed at providing superior material prosperity, which was one of its most touted foundational claims. Worse, it failed at providing nearly any consistent materialism at all, as witnessed by the second great Soviet famine under Stalin in 1932-33 [4], in which millions of people perished.
Let's not have yet another battle about how bad communism was. On HN, generic tangents are always off topic because the discussions they produce are predictable. Ideological battle is the worst subtype of those.
I know the theme is adjacent to the article's material, but so are plenty of other things, some of which are specific rather than generic, and those are the ones that can seed good conversation. Who even knew this massive event had taken place? or that Herbert Hoover played a central role? I sure didn't.
Relitigating communism, on the other hand...not so much. Nearby generic themes trigger quick reactions because we all have many pre-existing associations to them. But for internet discussion, they are the black holes we need most to steer clear of.
You are taking this way too far as an argument. Russia at the time was miles and miles behind any Western nation in terms of development. They knew it, which is why they thought their revolution would fail unless Western nations, German workers in particular, would start their own revolution.
So they already started with a huge handicap - on top of that WWI and the civil war after the revolution, which was a fight tooth and nail, as bad as it gets, put them down even further.
So even if the "experiment" would have stopped right then and there and they would have switched to pure capitalism, what kind of development would you have expected?
This is not to take anything away from your mention of their propaganda efforts to appear a lot bigger than they are, but your argument leaves out some important "details".
[+] [-] johntiger1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
[+] [-] pm90|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] refurb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teej|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nraynaud|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InTheArena|8 years ago|reply
The American aid was so effective that it propped up the Lenin regime, and got them through the last set of emergencies at the end of the Russian civil wars. It also made Hoover a household name back in the states.
Ironically the biggest force both for and against the Bolsheviks was the Germans. The bankrolled the communists - in a way that had direct echoes of present day - then supported the whites and then again signed a absurdly lucrative trade deal that saved Lenin’s ass.
Source - Sean mcmeekin- the Russian revolution.
[+] [-] tetromino_|8 years ago|reply
Among the regions that were not affected were Arkhangelsk and the Far East - i.e. the regions where American forces had invaded/intervened.
[+] [-] Bizarro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
It's not mentioned because the US was not a major part of any invasion into Russia and did not contribute to the famine. Factually the US involvement in that conflict was something below trivial. Although feel free to explain how a couple hundred US soldiers contributed to the forced famine of a nation of tens of millions of people.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-day-that-th...
[+] [-] thriftwy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ballenarosada|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HumanDrivenDev|8 years ago|reply
2. Fascism did not exist in 1917. The whites were extremely diverse, ranging from royalists to outright socialists.
3. The United States role in starting the Russian Civil war was minimal at beast. The main catalyst was the Bolshevik party seizing power a few months after losing the Russian Constituent Assembly election.
4. The Russian civil war likely had less deaths than the Chinese Civil War, and unquestionably less deaths than the Taiping Rebellion.
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
The Wilson Administration played no role in making Lenin and the nascent Communist system seize control of farm land, intentionally starve millions of people to death by stealing their food, and seize control of most food production and distribution.
[+] [-] Fins|8 years ago|reply
So is the idea that forces opposing the communist plague were any less legitimate than bolsheviks. Of all the participants in the civil war, bolsheviks were the least legitimate, anbd the most blood-thirsty.
[+] [-] tpm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnq|8 years ago|reply
Maybe that civil war should've been bloodier, if only the other side could have won... it would have spared the rest of the world at least (hint: Eastern Europe) from the hideous ideology and politics that spread from Rusia and infested them and dragged them down for decades after decades.
[+] [-] adventured|8 years ago|reply
Communism universally, completely failed at providing superior material prosperity, which was one of its most touted foundational claims. Worse, it failed at providing nearly any consistent materialism at all, as witnessed by the second great Soviet famine under Stalin in 1932-33 [4], in which millions of people perished.
[1] http://www.americanheritage.com/content/how-america-helped-b...
[2] http://adst.org/2015/07/nixon-vs-khrushchev-the-1959-kitchen...
[3] https://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin...
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/re...
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
I know the theme is adjacent to the article's material, but so are plenty of other things, some of which are specific rather than generic, and those are the ones that can seed good conversation. Who even knew this massive event had taken place? or that Herbert Hoover played a central role? I sure didn't.
Relitigating communism, on the other hand...not so much. Nearby generic themes trigger quick reactions because we all have many pre-existing associations to them. But for internet discussion, they are the black holes we need most to steer clear of.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] ThrowMeDown01|8 years ago|reply
So they already started with a huge handicap - on top of that WWI and the civil war after the revolution, which was a fight tooth and nail, as bad as it gets, put them down even further.
So even if the "experiment" would have stopped right then and there and they would have switched to pure capitalism, what kind of development would you have expected?
This is not to take anything away from your mention of their propaganda efforts to appear a lot bigger than they are, but your argument leaves out some important "details".