a more sort of decentralized or horizontal system should be able to better distribute food when a socialist project is still establishing itself and reorganizing or rebuilding its agriculture, right?
That’s definitely not a takeaway from the famine of '32-'33. It took months for a powerful central government to sort through the conflicting reports from local officials, get an accurate picture and mount an alleviation. I don’t think it’s possible that decentralised system would’ve grasped the extent or even the fact of a famine in a more timely manner.
Alright, “if you say so” is probably a bit dismissive of me. What I mean to say is that my impression is that decentralized systems are more flexible, but there’s probably some very obvious fact refuting this WRT the '30s famine, which is right behind me, isn’t it?
No obvious fact I’m afraid. It’s only meagre analysis. If some disaster befell random oblasts scattered across the Union it may be true that a decentralised system could deal with it better. I wouldn;t make that argument but I’m willing to hear one out. Famine-causing disasters on the other hand, namely floods and drought, occur in lumps, in this case a large swathe from Belarus to Kazakhstan.
Reading the correspondences in this matter, there seems to be nothing but confusion. Collective farms asking for seed, CPU members vaguely hinting at low sowing without ever explicitly saying there’s a famine to be alleviated and leadership of the Ukrainian SSR bemoaning the grain procurement demands of the CC of CPSU while working to over-export as late as December 1932. Kaganovich was sent to the Ukraine to sort out what was going on and it took him months to realise they were facing a famine and officials in Belarus were questioning the state of affairs since historically Ukraine had fed Belarus and not the other way around. I don’t really see any sort of decentralised system, be it at a soviet or oblast level, figuring out the situation to a significant degree, finding who might spare the grain and establishing the connection to get that grain over many hundreds of kilometres. I’ll hear out if you’ve got any ideas, but I just don’t find it realistic.
That’s definitely not a takeaway from the famine of '32-'33. It took months for a powerful central government to sort through the conflicting reports from local officials, get an accurate picture and mount an alleviation. I don’t think it’s possible that decentralised system would’ve grasped the extent or even the fact of a famine in a more timely manner.
If you say so.
Alright, “if you say so” is probably a bit dismissive of me. What I mean to say is that my impression is that decentralized systems are more flexible, but there’s probably some very obvious fact refuting this WRT the '30s famine, which is right behind me, isn’t it?
No obvious fact I’m afraid. It’s only meagre analysis. If some disaster befell random oblasts scattered across the Union it may be true that a decentralised system could deal with it better. I wouldn;t make that argument but I’m willing to hear one out. Famine-causing disasters on the other hand, namely floods and drought, occur in lumps, in this case a large swathe from Belarus to Kazakhstan.
Reading the correspondences in this matter, there seems to be nothing but confusion. Collective farms asking for seed, CPU members vaguely hinting at low sowing without ever explicitly saying there’s a famine to be alleviated and leadership of the Ukrainian SSR bemoaning the grain procurement demands of the CC of CPSU while working to over-export as late as December 1932. Kaganovich was sent to the Ukraine to sort out what was going on and it took him months to realise they were facing a famine and officials in Belarus were questioning the state of affairs since historically Ukraine had fed Belarus and not the other way around. I don’t really see any sort of decentralised system, be it at a soviet or oblast level, figuring out the situation to a significant degree, finding who might spare the grain and establishing the connection to get that grain over many hundreds of kilometres. I’ll hear out if you’ve got any ideas, but I just don’t find it realistic.
Understood, thank you.