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Hmm... I never thought of post-Stalin era as "cherri-picking," but since you brought that subject, let's look into it.
So Stalin was a ruler of the country roughly speaking from 1924 to 1953, so a bit less then 30 years, with all his "purges" famines and so, on, but let's look closer at the historic period Russia was going through while under his rule.
1924 - this is not even the end of the Civil war, which was devastating in every sense of the word for the country, ( not to mention that Russia didn't even recover from the first world war which took place only a decade earlier.)
"At the end of the Civil War the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more also died of widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.[66]
( If you read more on a subject, you'll notice that famine in Russia was taking place already in 1921, BEFORE Stalin became even a gen. sec. of the country.)
And as devastating as the consequences of the civil war were, if that was not enough, the next major blow came 15-16 years later, with beven more dire consequences - over 20 million dead and yet again a huge destruction in terms of economy -
"World War II left the Soviet Union, especially its western regions, in a catastrophic state of ruin. Some of the destruction was intentional; Stalin issued a ‘scorched earth’ policy to deprive the Germans of useable loot as they advanced on Moscow in 1941. The same earth was scorched again by the Germans as they retreated two years later. More than 1,700 towns and some 70,000 villages had been all but wiped off the map along with around 32,000 factories and 65,000 kilometres of railway track. There were no men, no working machinery and no livestock and the failure of the harvests led to devastating famine during the war but also in the years immediately after 1945."
So yes, these were the circumstances, the life in the country during Stalin's years.
Since it's obvious that these circumstance could not not to affect the quality of life in the Soviet Union, it doesn't make much sense to talk about post-Stalin's era as "cherry picking" in terms of OP's main question.
Assuming I've understood you correctly, not all the causes of suffering during Stalin's reign need to be attributable to Stalin himself for the criticism of cherry picking to be valid. Cherry picking simply refers to a type of skew or bias when making comparisons.
In this case, it doesn't concern the study of cause-and-effect in the topic, such as putting blame on any specific individual.
Assuming I've understood you correctly, not all the causes of suffering during Stalin's reign need to be attributable to Stalin himself for the criticism of cherry picking to be valid. Cherry picking simply refers to a type of skew or bias when making comparisons.
In this case, it doesn't concern the study of cause-and-effect in the topic, such as putting blame on any specific individual.
Well the subject of this thread is the lives of people in USSR vs North Korea.
So as far as people's lives go, it doesn't make much sense to judge USSR in this respect by the initial first 25 years of the regime, since these were exceptional circumstances and exceptional hardship, even without the added cruelty of the ruler, whose cruelty in many ways was instigated by all these hardships and often - by uncertainty of situation. But at the end, when Churchill said that "Stalin inherited Russia with a wooden plow and left it with an atomic bomb" it was true. So after the initial ( and very trying) stage, when the Soviet system was already firmly established, it easier to see in more objective manner, what it could and could not provide for its population.
Well the subject of this thread is the lives of people in USSR vs North Korea.
So as far as people's lives go, it doesn't make much sense to judge USSR in this respect by the initial first 25 years of the regime, since these were exceptional circumstances and exceptional hardship, even without the added cruelty of the ruler, whose cruelty in many ways was instigated by all these hardships and often - by uncertainty of situation. But at the end, when Churchill said that "Stalin inherited Russia with a wooden plow and left it with an atomic bomb" it was true. So after the initial ( and very trying) stage, when the Soviet system was already firmly established, it easier to see in more objective manner, what it could and could not provide for its population.
There may be two conditions in which you could try pleading some special exemption for the Stalin era:
1. If the quality of life during that period was not as horrendous as accruing evidence suggests.
2. If it was of a short enough duration that most who would live a reasonable lifespan would avoid it.
Unfortunately, in your ad hoc attempts to make your argument workable, you've only just gone out of your way to luridly exposit the horror, drought, famine, pestilence, war, economic collapse, infrastructural ruin, progroms and oppression of the Stalin era.
And that tacitly excludes the horrors inflicted by Stalin himself.
That, and the fact that it lasted for 25 years (out of the 70 that the USSR existed) makes it difficult to overlook as some kind of exceptional case. I don't think it'll be convincing to someone who's done their history homework on the subject.
1. How many of my people did North Korea kill? - 0.
2. How many of my people did the USSR kill? - many.
3. How much or our land did North Korea seize? - none.
4. How much of our land did the USSR seize? - 10%.
5. Did North Korea demand ridiculous war reparations? - no.
6. Did the USSR demand ridiculous war reparations? - yes.
There may be two conditions in which you could try pleading some special exemption for the Stalin era:t
1. If the quality of life during that period was not as horrendous as accruing evidence suggests.
2. If it was of a short enough duration that most who would live a reasonable lifespan would avoid it.
Unfortunately, in your ad hoc attempts to make your argument workable, you've only just gone out of your way to luridly exposit the horror, drought, famine, pestilence, war, economic collapse, infrastructural ruin, progroms and oppression of the Stalin era.
And that tacitly excludes the horrors inflicted by Stalin himself.
That, and the fact that it lasted for 25 years (out of the 70 that the USSR existed) makes it difficult to overlook as some kind of exceptional case. I don't think it'll be convincing to someone who's done their history homework on the subject.
Who is Palash Ghosh? And what's the "history homework on the subject?" Did you really do it, or do you prefer to keep on repeating some never proven "estimates" that sound impressive but unrealistic, since if they were true, the S.U would have simply collapsed demographically, after additional 20+ million deaths ( that were confirmed) during the WWII.
So... instead of all those "estimates" during Soviet era when no one knew anything for sure, I'd prefer to rely more on the actual opened archives in post-Soviet era of the nineties.
Besides, it's not about "exemption" for Stalin's era - it's rather a note that the life in the USSR as a whole can't be judged on the basis of those particular years only, since this would be echoing judgment of the US based solely on the years of the Great Depression. This years should be taken in consideration, but put in a broader context of other historical periods as well.
1. How many of my people did North Korea kill? - 0.
2. How many of my people did the USSR kill? - many.
3. How much or our land did North Korea seize? - none.
4. How much of our land did the USSR seize? - 10%.
5. Did North Korea demand ridiculous war reparations? - no.
6. Did the USSR demand ridiculous war reparations? - yes.
My answer is obvious.
Ariete, it's not a thread about Finland you know...
Who is Palash Ghosh? And what's the "history homework on the subject?" Did you really do it, or do you prefer to keep on repeating some never proven "estimates" that sound impressive but unrealistic, since if they were true, the S.U would have simply collapsed demographically, after additional 20+ million deaths ( that were confirmed) during the WWII.
So... instead of all those "estimates" during Soviet era when no one knew anything for sure, I'd prefer to rely more on the actual opened archives in post-Soviet era of the nineties.
Besides, it's not about "exemption" for Stalin's era - it's rather a note that the life in the USSR as a whole can't be judged on the basis of those particular years only, since this would be echoing judgment of the US based solely on the years of the Great Depression. This years should be taken in consideration, but put in a broader context of other historical periods as well.
Your comparison might work if the Great Depression lasted for over a third of the history of the USA.
Palash Ghosh is simply the article author. Even if it was acceptable to argue ad hominem against the authorship of the article, it's the sources he uses you should be arguing against, not him:
Your comparison might work if the Great Depression lasted for over a third of the history of the USA.
My comparison works, since the whole history of the Soviet Union is much shorter than the history of the US. You can't judge the whole picture basing your judgment on one particular period.
Quote:
Palash Ghosh is simply the article author. Even if it was acceptable to argue ad hominem against the authorship of the article, it's the sources he uses you should be arguing against, not him:
They do use archival data as well, note this for example, but within a more rigorous meta-analytic framework.
Applying mathematical techniques to Soviet demographic statistics, the author estimates that Stalinist repression and World War II combined caused between 43 and 52 million deaths. Separate chapters are included on population losses during the "class elimination" period of 1929-1936; male mortality in peacetime, 1926-1940 and 1950-1954, as well as the prison death rate, 1950-1954; the natural death rate during 1927-1940 and losses from repression and the Soviet-Finnish war, 1939-1940; birth rates and death rates from unnatural causes, 1929-1936; war casualties and losses due to privations during World War II; and probable population developments between 1926 and 1950 without repression and World War II.
But official Soviet statistics couldn't be trusted either, so as I've said it was all a guessing game, until the archives have been opened.
My comparison works, since the whole history of the Soviet Union is much shorter than the history of the US. You can't judge the whole picture basing your judgment on one particular period.
Surely, for your comparison to work, the history of the US needs to be shorter than that of the USSR, not the other way round.
Quote:
But official Soviet statistics couldn't be trusted either, so as I've said it was all a guessing game, until the archives have been opened.
Presumably that's why they use meta-analysis.
We can only argue from the best available evidence. If you are arguing that no reliable study of the topic is possible at all, then short of special pleading or an argument from ignorance, we have no substantive foundation to compare life under both regimes.
Last edited by CTDominion; 09-16-2016 at 04:40 PM..
North Korea, the USSR was a power in its own right and had plenty of achievements to its credits, North Korea is terrible all around.
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And what's the "history homework on the subject?" Did you really do it, or do you prefer to keep on repeating some never proven "estimates" that sound impressive but unrealistic, since if they were true, the S.U would have simply collapsed demographically, after additional 20+ million deaths ( that were confirmed) during the WWII.
