Sunday, May 31, 2020
Russian state frame-up results in draconian prison sentences for left-wing youth
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| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/02/19/russ-f19.html |
The court found the seven men, aged 23 to 34, who were active in left-wing, anarchist and anti-fascist circles, guilty of having founded a terror organization, the “Network” (“Set”), as well as illegal weapon trafficking. The prosecution alleged that the “Network” had planned to unite Russian anarchists into “militant groups which aimed to violently overthrow the constitutional order” and to conquer power by force through attacks on state institutions.
The defendants were arrested in late 2017 and early 2018. Almost all initially signed confessions but later retracted them, claiming that they had been signed under torture and pressure by the FSB. They also reported that explosives and weapons were planted as evidence in their apartments. Their testimony about the torture and planted evidence was ignored by the court, and the confessions extracted through beatings and electro shocks were the main basis for their conviction. The court also relied on several anonymous witnesses.
The online platform Media Zona published parts of the testimony of Dmitry Pchelintsev, in May 2019, who was accused of having co-founded the “Network.” He described having been interrogated for days under torture, including electro shocks and severe beatings, without being able to speak to a lawyer. The officers also threatened to murder his wife. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has repeatedly refused to investigate the officers involved in the torture.
Pchelintsev recalled a conversation with one of the FSB investigators, Valery Tokarev, who said, “Look Dmitry, you started messing with the state, you opposed the state. We don’t like that and you will simply be ground into powder.” When Pchelintsev asked, “But what information is there, anyway, that I’m some kind of threat to society?” Tokarev responded that the reason was that they were convinced that he would join a revolution if it broke out.
According to a report by the liberal Novaya Gazeta, another defendant, Ilya Shakursky, had been approached by a local neo-Nazi with ties to the prosecution on the popular social media network Vkontakte a year before his arrest. Shakursky recalled that a certain “Vlad Dobrovolsky” had reached out to him on Vkontakte in the fall of 2016 and gave him “important information about a planned attack by neo-Nazis on an anti-fascist event. He said he gave me this information because he was personally offended by the Nazis in Penza. He also told me that some neo-Nazis have close ties to the department for the fight against extremism [of the Interior Ministry] which, in turn, do not hinder the organization of events by the neo-Nazis.”
Shakursky said, “He later told me that an extremist neo-Nazi organization is active in Siberia which aims to fight for the autonomy of Siberia. As a convinced anti-fascist, I considered it my duty to learn more about this organization in order to expose them through articles for the media. ... I met Vlad only a few times despite his constant requests for meetings. ...At our last meeting in the summer of 2017 he started to talk to me about his plans for radical action and that he wanted to make explosives. I considered him a crazy fanatic and stopped talking to him and ignored his calls.”
Dobrovolsky was later identified as Vlad Gres’ko, a student active in the local neo-Nazi scene. According to the Novaya Gazeta, Gres’ko and Tokarev, the same prosecutor who also tortured and threatened Pchelintsev, are members of the same sports club in Penza. Recordings of the conversations with “Vlad” made by Shakursky were confiscated by the FSB during their raid on his house and the prosecution and the court rejected making them available to the defense at trial.
Shakursky also told the Novaya Gazeta that he recognized a man in the detention center (SIZO), who had tried to provoke a fistfight with him on the streets after one of the meetings with “Vlad.” At the detention center, the man spoke to an investigation officer from the FSB, telling him that he wanted to “shoot the curs [shavka, a term used by Nazis for anti-fascists].” The same investigation officer tortured Pchelintsev and Shakursky and threatened the latter with rape.
So blatant was the state frame-up of these youth that even the business newspaper Vedomosti felt compelled to contrast it to the lack of any kind of prosecution of the far-right National Liberation Movement (NOD), which has ties to Evgeny Manyurov, who attacked the FSB’s headquarters last December, gunning down several people.
The “Network” case illustrates the extensive ties of the Russian state and political establishment to the violent far-right. Russian police are known to collaborate with far-right vigilante groups in hunting down immigrants and leading political parties such as the Stalinist Communist Party and to maintain ties to formally banned far-right organizations like the Movement against Illegal Migration. The Kremlin also cultivates ties to the far-right on an international level, including the Front National in France.
The verdict has prompted an outpouring of protest. On February 12, an open letter was published on the website scientific.ru, denouncing the case as “fabricated” and an “act of terror” against Russian citizens. As of this writing, the letter, which calls for the immediate revocation of the sentence, has been signed by over 2,700 academics and science journalists. On Monday, February 17, 13 independent book stores in nine cities stopped operation for a day in protest against the verdict.
Right-wing liberal opposition politician Alexei Navalny also denounced the sentence.
Navalny himself, however, has close ties to fascist forces in Russia. The Pabloite Russian Socialist Movement (RSM) has maintained complete silence on the case.
The “Network” case is a blatant state frame-up which is meant to send a message that any anti-capitalist and revolutionary movement will be met with the full force of the state. The sentencing of these youth takes place as the Russian government has robbed 800,000 people of their pensions on the basis of a pension reform that has been opposed by 90 percent of the population. Social inequality is at a record high, and real incomes have declined for five years in a row, with one in eight Russians now officially living on less than $150 a month.
The only official opposition to the Putin government currently comes from the right: the liberal opposition, led by Navalny, which is closely aligned with US imperialism, and its pseudo-left hangers-on. While Navalny has recently tried to tap in into the massive social discontent—and is massively promoted by the Western bourgeois press and liberal media in Russia—public opinion polls show that just a little over 2 percent of the population have confidence in him.
What the oligarchy as a whole fear above all is that the international reemergence of the class struggle will sooner rather than later spread to Russia through mass social protests and strikes outside the control of all the established political parties.
It is revealing that the Western bourgeois press, which is always eager to denounce the “authoritarian regime” in Russia when it targets its right-wing opponents in the oligarchy and upper middle class, has barely commented on the state frame-up of these left-wing youth. The New York Times only published a brief report by the Associated Press. There were almost no reports in the German media.
Underlying this silence is the fact that the same class and political dynamics that are behind the frame-up of these left-wing youth in Russia are also on stark display in the imperialist countries. The German state, in particular, has built and covered up for an extensive network of right-wing extremist terrorists that have targeted immigrants, left-wing political organizations and politicians, while the government and the secret service (Verfassungsschutz) systematically seek to suppress and criminalize any opposition to the far-right from the left.
Friday, May 29, 2020
Genetic study reveals 30% of white British DNA has German ancestry
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| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/18/genetic-study-30-percent-white-british-dna-german-ancestry |
The Romans, Vikings and Normans may have ruled or invaded the British for hundreds of years, but they left barely a trace on our DNA, the first detailed study of the genetics of British people has revealed.
The analysis shows that the Anglo-Saxons were the only conquering force, around 400-500 AD, to substantially alter the country’s genetic makeup, with most white British people now owing almost 30% of their DNA to the ancestors of modern-day Germans.
People living in southern and central England today typically share about 40% of their DNA with the French, 11% with the Danes and 9% with the Belgians, the study of more than 2,000 people found. The French contribution was not linked to the Norman invasion of 1066, however, but a previously unknown wave of migration to Britain some time after then end of the last Ice Age nearly 10,000 years ago.
Prof Peter Donnelly, director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, who co-led the research, said: “It has long been known that human populations differ genetically, but never before have we been able to observe such exquisite and fascinating detail.”
The study found that people’s ancestral contributions varied considerably across Britain, with people from areas of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland emerging as separate genetic clusters, providing a scientific basis to the idea of regional identity for the first time.
The population of the Orkney Isles was found to be the most genetically distinct, with 25% of DNA coming from Norwegian ancestors who invaded the islands in the 9th century.
The Welsh also showed striking differences to the rest of Britain, and scientists concluded that their DNA most closely resembles that of the earliest hunter-gatherers to have arrived when Britain became habitable again after the Ice Age.
Surprisingly, the study showed no genetic basis for a single “Celtic” group, with people living in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall being among the most different form each other genetically.
“The Celtic regions one might have expected to be genetically similar, but they’re among the most different in our study,” said Mark Robinson, an archaeologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and a co-author. “It’s stressing their genetic difference, it’s not saying there aren’t cultural similarities.”
The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, is the culmination of 20 years of work. Scientists began collecting DNA samples from people in Orkney in 1994 and gradually worked across most of the British Isles.
The participants were all white British, lived in rural areas and had four grandparents all born within 50 miles (80km) of each other. Since a quarter of our genome comes from each of our grandparents, the scientists were effectively obtaining a snapshot of British genetics at at the beginning of the 20th century.
Sir Walter Bodmer, of the University of Oxford, who conceived the study, said: “We’re reaching back in time to before most of the mixing of the population, which would fog history.”
The team also looked at data from 6,209 individuals from 10 European countries to reconstruct the contributions their ancestors made to the genetic makeup of the British.
The analysis shows that despite the momentous historical impact on British civilisation of the Roman, Viking and Norman invasions, none of these events did much to alter the basic biological makeup of people living here. The findings support records suggesting that few high ranking Roman officials settled in Britain and that they and their families remained largely segregated from the local Celts.
The Danish Vikings, who ruled over large swathes of Britain from 865AD, are known to have inter-married with locals, but the latest study shows that the conquering force, while powerful, must have comprised relatively few fighters.
“There were very large numbers of people - hundreds of thousands - in those parts of Britain, so to have a substantial impact on genetics there would have to be very large numbers of them,” said Robinson. “The fact that we don’t see that reflects the numbers rather than the relative allure or lack thereof of Scandinavian men to British women.”
The analysis also settles a long-running dispute about the nature of the Anglo-Saxon takeover of England following the collapse of the Roman empire. The replacement of the Celtic language by Anglo-Saxon and the complete shift towards North-West German farming and pottery styles has led some to suggest that local populations must have retreated to Wales or even been wiped out in a genocide.
“[Our results] suggest that at least 20% of the genetic makeup in this area is from Anglo-Saxon migrants, and that there was mixing,” said Robinson. “It is not genocide or complete disappearance of Britons.”
The authors suggest that DNA analysis should now be regarded as a powerful historical tool, sometimes providing more impartial information than traditional sources.
“Historical records, archeology, linguistics - all of those records tell us about the elites. It’s said that history is written by the winners,” said Donnelly. “Genetics complements that and is very different. It tells us what is happening to the masses... the ordinary folk.”
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
The Japanese Host Family From Hell | digitalmimi
My first video made during my semester abroad in Japan, in which I talk about my experience staying with (several) host families in Japan.
Monday, May 25, 2020
Film Score Monthly CD: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
https://www.filmscoremonthly.com/cds/detail.cfm/CDID/454/Star-Trek-III-The-Search-for-Spock/
When FSM released the long-awaited expanded edition of James Horner’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) in 2009, it didn’t take a Vulcan scientist to assume that the score’s companion piece, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), might also see the light of day. FSM delivers—thanks to the good graces of Paramount Pictures and Capitol Records.
James Horner’s Star Trek III continues his superlative work for the Final Frontier, with emotional developments of the B-theme (the “Enterprise theme”) and Spock’s theme from the earlier film, as well as exotic atmospheres for the all-important Vulcan mysticism that drives the story. The film’s villains, the Klingons, receive a new theme with exciting barbaric instrumentation. From the grand “space opera” setpieces (“Stealing the Enterprise,” “Bird of Prey Decloaks”) to intimate, spiritual moments (“The Mind-Meld,” “Returning to Vulcan”), Horner’s Star Trek III is one of the finest scores in the Star Trek canon.
The Star Trek III soundtrack has been available before but only in a 43-minute LP sequence. FSM’s 2CD set features two programs, both newly mastered from recording engineer Dan Wallin’s first-generation digital film mixes: Disc one features the complete score as intended for the film itself, including such long-desired cues as “Grissom Destroyed,” “A Fighting Chance to Live” (featuring the Enterprise’s self-destruct countdown and immolation in Genesis’s atmosphere) and “Genesis Destroyed.” In addition, previously unreleased film versions of cues such as “Klingons” and “Stealing the Enterprise” make their premiere, with differences that are subtle but noticeable to devoted fans. Disc two features a recreation (in better sound quality) of the familiar LP sequence—complete with Group 87’s pop version of “The Search for Spock.”
The 20-page booklet features liner notes by Jeff Bond and Lukas Kendall and colorful art direction by Joe Sikoryak. Climb the steps of Mount Seleya today!
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Webster Tarpley's Disinfo
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| https://bollyn.com/webster-tarpleys-disinfo |
Webster Tarpley spews his usual disinformation when he says that Al Qaida in Yemen is "a creation wholly of the U.S. intelligence agencies." Who exactly is Tarpley protecting with these lies and who is he really serving?
I happen to know something about Webster Tarpley, having been part of the same four-man panel during Jimmy Walter's 9-11 Truth Tour in Europe in the summer of 2005. During the tour Tarpley put the blame for 9-11 on a nebulous group that he never actually identified but one would infer was tied to NATO and the CIA. Tarpley, like all the other panelists on the tour, never mentioned any Israeli or Zionist role in 9-11. My speech, on the other hand, focused on the real evidence that 9-11 was an Israeli false-flag terror atrocity designed to start the "War on Terror" and change the face of America. Finally, in Rome, in the presence of journalist Maurizio Blondet and others, I asked Mr. Tarpley why he insisted on blaming nebulous U.S. entities, without providing any evidence, while avoiding the real evidence of Israeli/Mossad involvement in the terror attacks of 9-11?
In the RT video about Al Qaida in Yemen, Mr. Tarpley provides the same faulty logic and avoids any mention of Israeli intelligence, which has carried out large-scale operations in Yemen since 1949.
Here are the relevant quotes from Tarpley on RT television:
"Al Qaida, of course, is functioning, as always, as the CIA Arab-Islamic legion." (Note the use of affirmative phrases to bolster his lie.)
"Al Qaida in the Arab Peninsula is a creation wholly of the U.S. intelligence agencies."
[The Christmas bomber Abdul Mutallab] is a "protected patsy", according to Tarpley, "an asset controlled by U.S. intelligence."
Webster Tarpley and his wife, the former Leah J. Peltier, live in the Washington, D.C. area. Leah is 17 years younger than Webster and reportedly a high school drop-out who only obtained a college degree in 2009. She has been with Tarpley since his days with the Lyndon LaRouche movement in the early 1990s. Her lack of real estate expertise or education notwithstanding, Leah is the Executive Vice President of Operations at the Washington D.C. office for the privately-owned Cresa Partners LLC, where she has worked only since 2007.
Leah Tarpley works under Gene S. Sachs, a "managing principal" and member of the board of directors of the Boston-based company. Leah is not the only Tarpley working for Mr. Sachs. Chloe Tarpley is also listed as an administrator in his firm. Chloe, who has only worked for Cresa Partners since May of 2008, is Webster Tarpley's daughter. Her biological father is Joseph Peltier, who said that her mother was a high school drop-out who got involved with Tarpley through the Larouche movement.
It is interesting to note that the Tarpley women work for the preferred agent of one of the world's largest defense contractors. Mr. Sachs' biggest client is BAE Systems North America. Sachs has completed more than 275 assignments for BAE in twenty states of the United States in the past five years. BAE Systems is the world's third largest defense contractor and Britain's leading aerospace/defense company.
In the company's own words:
BAE Systems Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of BAE Systems plc, an international company engaged in the development, delivery and support of advanced defense and aerospace systems in the air, on land, at sea and in space. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, BAE Systems, Inc. employs some 45,000 employees in the US, UK, Sweden, Israel and South Africa generating annual sales in excess of $10 billion. BAE Systems Inc. consists of three operating groups that provide support and service solutions for current and future defense, intelligence, and civilian systems; design, develop and manufacture a wide range of electronic systems and subsystems for both military and commercial applications; and design, develop, produce, and provide service support of armored combat vehicles, artillery systems and intelligent munitions.
Sachs has been the preferred real estate provider for BAE Systems NA since 2000 and manages some 18.5 million square feet of property for the sprawling British defense contractor. He is also the Treasurer of CresaPartners in Washington, according to Hoover's, so with two members of the Tarpley family working in his office, we can see that Mr. Sachs has a significant influence over the income flow for the Tarpley household.
If Mr. Tarpley has any solid evidence that Al Qaida in Yemen is, in fact, "a creation wholly of U.S. intelligence agencies" he should bring this information to the attention of the U.S. government and Leon E. Panetta, the Director of the CIA. Mr. Tarpley should explain who controls Al Qaida in Yemen, which he says is "functioning, as always, as the CIA Arab-Islamic legion." Pray tell Mr. Tarpley, which part of the CIA is running Al Qaida in Yemen? Is it under the direction of Mr. Panetta or is it a rogue outfit of the agency?
Mr. Tarpley should be asked if the CIA was running Al Qaida in Yemen when the USS Cole was bombed in 2000, an attack that killed 17 sailors and wounded 39 others. Perhaps Mr. Tarpley can explain the logic of why the CIA would attack a U.S. Navy ship in Yemen.
Tarpley mentions that the Christmas bomber Abdul Mutallab flew through Amsterdam but he doesn't mention the conspicuous fact that security for both Schiphol Airport and Delta Airlines is provided by the Mossad-run company, International Consultants on Targeted Security -- the same company that provided passenger screening services at the crucial airports on 9-11.
So who is Webster Tarpley really serving with his disinformation?
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
The “Holodomor” and the Film “Bitter Harvest” are Fascist Lies
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| https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/03/the-holodomor-and-the-film-bitter-harvest-are-fascist-lies/ |
The Ukrainian nationalist film “Bitter Harvest” propagates lies invented by Ukrainian nationalists. In his review Louis Proyect propagates these lies.
Proyect cites Jeff Coplon’s 1988 Village Voice article “In Search of a Soviet Holocaust: A 55-Year-Old Famine Feeds the Right.” In it Coplon shows that the leading “mainstream” anticommunist Western experts on Soviet history rejected any notion of a deliberate famine aimed at Ukrainians. They still reject it. Proyect fails to mention this fact.
There was a very serious famine in the USSR, including (but not limited to) the Ukrainian SSR, in 1932-33. But there has never been any evidence of a “Holodomor” or “deliberate famine,” and there is none today.
The “Holodomor” fiction was invented in by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who found havens in Western Europe, Canada, and the USA after the war. An early account is Yurij Chumatskij, Why Is One Holocaust Worth More Than Others? published in Australia in 1986 by “Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” this work is an extended attack on “Jews” for being too pro-communist.
Proyect’s review perpetuates the following falsehoods about the Soviet collectivization of agriculture and the famine of 1932-33:
* That in the main the peasants resisted collectivization because it was a “second serfdom.”
* That the famine was caused by forced collectivization. In reality the famine had environmental causes.
* That “Stalin” – the Soviet leadership – deliberately created the famine.
* That it was aimed at destroying Ukrainian nationalism.
* That “Stalin” (the Soviet government) “stopped the policy of “Ukrainization,” the promotion of a policy to encourage Ukrainian language and culture.
None of these claims are true. None are supported by evidence. They are simply asserted by Ukrainian nationalist sources for the purpose of ideological justification of their alliance with the Nazis and participation in the Jewish Holocaust, the genocide of Ukrainian Poles (the Volhynian massacres of 1943-44) and the murder of Jews, communists, and many Ukrainian peasants after the war.
Their ultimate purpose is to equate communism with Nazism (communism is outlawed in today’s “democratic Ukraine”); the USSR with Nazi Germany; and Stalin with Hitler.
Collectivization of Agriculture – The Reality
Russia and Ukraine had suffered serious famines every few years for more than a millennium. A famine accompanied the 1917 revolution, growing more serious in 1918-1920. Another serious famine, misnamed the “Volga famine,” struck from 1920-21. There were famines in 1924 and again in 1928-29, this last especially severe in the Ukrainian SSR. All these famines had environmental causes. The medieval strip-farming method of peasant agriculture made efficient agriculture impossible and famines inevitable.
Soviet leaders, Stalin among them, decided that the only solution was to reorganize agriculture on the basis of large factory-type farms like some in the American Midwest, which were deliberately adopted as models. When sovkhozy or “Soviet farms” appeared to work well the Soviet leadership made the decision to collectivize agriculture.
Contrary to anticommunist propaganda, most peasants accepted collectivization. Resistance was modest; acts of outright rebellion rare. By 1932 Soviet agriculture, including in the Ukrainian SSR, was largely collectivized.
In 1932 Soviet agriculture was hit with a combination of environmental catastrophes: drought in some areas; too much rain in others; attacks of rust and smut (fungal diseases); and infestations of insects and mice. Weeding was neglected as peasants grew weaker, further reducing production.
The reaction of the Soviet government changed as the scope of the crop failure became clearer during the Fall and Winter of 1932. Believing at first that mismanagement and sabotage were leading causes of a poor harvest, the government removed many Party and collective farm leaders (there is no evidence that any were “executed” like Mykola in the film.) In early February 1933 the Soviet government began to provide massive grain aid to famine areas.
The Soviet government also organized raids on peasant farms to confiscate excess grain in order to feed the cities, which did not produce their own food. Also, to curb profiteering; in a famine grain could be resold for inflated prices. Under famine conditions a free market in grain could not be permitted unless the poor were to be left to starve, as had been the practice under the Tsars.
The Soviet government organized political departments (politotdely) to help peasants in agricultural work. Tauger concludes: “The fact that the 1933 harvest was so much larger than those of 1931-1932 means that the politotdely around the country similarly helped farms work better.” (Modernization, 100)
The good harvest of 1933 was brought in by a considerably smaller population, since many had died during the famine, others were sick or weakened, and still others had fled to other regions or to the cities. This reflects the fact that the famine was caused not by collectivization, government interference, or peasant resistance but by environmental causes no longer present in 1933.
Collectivization of agriculture was a true reform, a breakthrough in revolutionizing Soviet agriculture. There were still years of poor harvests — the climate of the USSR did not change. But, thanks to collectivization, there was only one more devastating famine in the USSR, that of 1946-1947. The most recent student of this famine, Stephen Wheatcroft, concludes that this famine was caused by environmental conditions and by the disruptions of the war.
Proyect’s False Claims
Proyect uncritically repeats the self-serving Ukrainian fascist version of history without qualification.
* There was no “Stalinist killing machine.”
* Committed Party officials were not “purged and executed.”
* “Millions of Ukrainians” were not “forced into state farms and collectives.” Tauger concludes that most peasants accepted the collective farms and worked well in them.
* Proyect accepts the Ukrainian nationalist claim of “3-5 million premature deaths.” This is false.
Some Ukrainian nationalists cite figures of 7-10 million, in order to equal or surpass the six million of the Jewish Holocaust (cf. Chumatskij’s title “Why Is One Holocaust Worth More Than Others?”). The term “Holodomor” itself (“holod” = “hunger”, “mor” from Polish “mord” = “murder,” Ukrainian “morduvati” = “to murder) was deliberately coined to sound similar to “Holocaust.”
The latest scholarly study of famine deaths is 2.6 million (Jacques Vallin, France Meslé, Serguei Adamets, and Serhii Pirozhkov, “A New Estimate of Ukrainian Population Losses during the Crises of the 1930s and 1940s,” Population Studies 56, 3 (2002): 249–64).
* Jeff Coplon is not a “Canadian trade unionist” but a New-York based journalist and writer, The late Douglas Tottle’s book Fraud, Famine and Fascism, a reasonable response to Robert Conquest’s fraudulent Harvest of Sorrow, was written (as was Conquest’s book) before the flood of primary sources from former Soviet archives released since the end of the USSR in 1991 and so is seriously out of date.
* Walter Duranty’s statement about “omelets” and “eggs” was not said “in defense of Stalin” as Proyect claims but in criticism of Soviet government policy:
But — to put it brutally — you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and the Bolshevist leaders are just as indifferent to the casualties that may be involved in their drive toward socialization as any General during the World War who ordered a costly attack in order to show his superiors that he and his division possessed the proper soldierly spirit. In fact, the Bolsheviki are more indifferent because they are animated by fanatical conviction. (The New York Times March 31, 1933)
Evidently Proyect simply copied this canard from some Ukrainian nationalist source. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
* Andrea Graziosi, whom Proyect quotes, is not a scholar of Soviet agriculture or the 1932-33 famine but an ideological anticommunist who assents to any and all anti-Soviet falsehoods. The article Proyect quotes is from Harvard Ukrainian Studies, a journal devoid of objective research, financed and edited by Ukrainian nationalists.
* Proyect refers to “two secret decrees” of December 1932 by the Soviet Politburo that he has clearly not read. These stopped “Ukrainization” outside the Ukrainian SSR. Within the Ukrainian SSR “Ukrainization” continued unabated. It did not “come to an end” as Proyect claims.
* Proyect cites no evidence of a Soviet “policy of physically destroying the Ukrainian nation, especially its intelligentsia” because there was no such policy.
A Triumph of Socialism
The Soviet collectivization of agriculture is one of the greatest feats of social reform of the 20th century, if not the greatest of all, ranking with the “Green Revolution,” “miracle rice,” and the water-control undertakings in China and the USA. If Nobel Prizes were awarded for communist achievements, Soviet collectivization would be a top contender.
The historical truth about the Soviet Union is unpalatable not only to Nazi collaborators but to anticommunists of all stripes. Many who consider themselves to be on the Left, such as Social-Democrats and Trotskyists, repeat the lies of the overt fascists and the openly pro-capitalist writers. Objective scholars of Soviet history like Tauger, determined to tell the truth even when that truth is unpopular, are far too rare and often drowned out by the chorus of anticommunist falsifiers.
Sources: Mark Tauger’s research, especially “Modernization in Soviet Agriculture” (2006); “Stalin, Soviet Agriculture, and Collectivization” (2006); and “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” (2005), all available on the Internet. More of Tauger’s articles are available at this page: https://www.newcoldwar.org/archive-of-writings-of-professor-mark-tauger-on-the-famine-scourges-of-the-early-years-of-the-soviet-union/
See also Chapter I of my book Blood Lies; The Evidence that Every Accusation against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union in Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands Is False (New York: Red Star Press, 2013), at http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/furr_bloodliesch1.pdf
On the 1946-47 famine see Stephen G. Wheatcroft, “The Soviet Famine of 1946–1947, the Weather and Human Agency in Historical Perspective.” Europe-Asia Studies, 64:6, 987-1005.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Wealth and poverty in modern Russia
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| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/03/russ-m11.html |
Government propaganda has sought to attribute the spread of protests to problems in the implementation of the new laws on social security benefits, while insisting the laws themselves are necessary and inevitable. However, protests by pensioners are only the tip of the iceberg. The underlying cause of growing discontent is the enormous degree of social inequality that has resulted from the introduction of capitalism in the former Soviet Union.
In his New Year speech, President Vladimir Putin maintained that the social situation of most Russians had improved over the previous year. Just a few days later, however, the outbreak of protests indicated what broad sections of the population thought about this question.
Even a cursory examination of the social situation in modern Russia reveals a deeply divided society. An array of statistics documents the reality of two different worlds that hardly come into contact with one another. One—the world of wealth and luxury—is inhabited by an insignificant minority. The other—the world of social decline and an arduous struggle for life’s necessities—is inhabited by millions upon millions.
Figures showing the distribution of wealth reveal the glaring nature of this social polarisation. According to government data, the incomes of the very richest members of Russian society are 15 times those of the poorest—one of the highest levels of social inequality to be found among the world’s leading countries. In Moscow, this difference is 53-fold.
Below the poverty line
According to figures published by the World Bank at the end of last year, 20 percent of the Russian population lives below the poverty line, which is defined as a monthly income of 1,000 roubles (less than 30 euros, or $38).
The great majority of Russian families are teetering on the edge of poverty. The World Bank has calculated that an average decrease in income of 10 percent would produce a 50 percent rise in the poverty rate. The majority of the poor in Russia are to be found among working families headed by adults with average technical professional training, and in families with children.
Most of the poor workers are employed in the public sector, including teachers, physicians and low-ranking civil servants. The occupations with the lowest incomes—including those employed in the health services, such as nurses and medics—are of great social importance. The poor living conditions of those employed in these sectors contribute to a decline in the structures upon which a functioning society is based.
The well-off receive greater privileges and benefits than the poor or the near-poor. The World Bank writes that medium-level social allowances (with the exception of those for children) paid to the relatively rich exceed those received by poorer social layers.
Russia’s National Statistics Office officially classifies a total of 31 million people (22 percent of the population) as poor. Other surveys, however, place the poverty rate at 40 percent or higher.
The All-Russian Centre for Living Standards published the following figures for the varying degrees of poverty:
At the end of 2003, average monthly income was calculated at 2,121 roubles (60 euros/$77 a month), with those who are employed receiving 2,300 roubles (65 euros/$83) and pensioners receiving 1,600 roubles (45 euros/$58). Those whose income falls below these levels are defined as poor. A second category, those who are badly off, includes families where per-capita income lies between 2,121 and 4,400 roubles (60-126 euros/$77-$161). A significant section of the population can be found in these two categories.
The Centre for Living Standards regards the “middle layers” as households with a per-capita monthly income of between 4,400 roubles and 15,000 roubles (126-430 euros/$161-$550). By Western standards, this level of income would represent poverty.
Pensioners and young people constitute the poorest sections of Russian society. The Social Opinions Fund has found that practically no young people (just 1 percent) are saving for their old age. Two thirds of young people who were asked said they could not afford to buy anything. Young people living in the countryside or in small cities are at greatest risk of being poor. In contrast to Western countries, where poverty is often concentrated in the large cities, the poor are more frequently found in Russia’s villages and towns.
Families with children are exposed to the constant danger of poverty, particularly those with two, three or more children.
Children from families with low incomes have substantially decreased chances of going on to gain an apprenticeship after graduating high school. Only 15 percent of children from poor families go to the more specialised technical colleges and universities. A low level of education is an important factor in the persistence of poverty.
The poor are more frequently ill or succumb to alcohol. The incidence of tuberculosis in Russia is 10 times higher than in Europe.
Scientists have calculated that since the beginning of the 1990s, some 8 million Russians have died prematurely. The mortality rate has risen one-and-a-half times over the same period. In 2003, it reached a high point at 16.4 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants.
The average Russian man can presently expect to live only to 58. That means married women, on average, are widowed for 15 years. This is due both to women’s greater life expectancy and to the younger age at which women marry.
Despite the adversities of everyday life in the Soviet Union, for most people the social situation was substantially better than that which exists in contemporary Russia. Today, the minimum wage covers only 27 percent of what is needed to sustain an adult of working age; the child benefit covers just 3 percent of necessary expenditure for a child; and the minimum pension covers only 46 percent of the minimum expenditure of a pensioner.
In the Soviet Union, the minimum wage amounted to one-and-a-half times the minimum required consumption. Russia’s minimum wage would have to be trebled to cover the minimum level of consumption.
A serious struggle against poverty is impossible without a real reform of the educational system and health service. Both would have to be made accessible to broad layers of the population. However, the tendency is in the opposite direction.
For increasing numbers of Russians, it is becoming clear that further capitalist “reforms” will not improve their situation.
The wealthy end of the spectrum
Then there is the other Russia. It finds its personification in figures like Roman Abramovich, governor of the remote region of Chukotka (just across the Bering Strait from Alaska) and owner of a controlling interest in the Russian oil giant Sibneft. He is considered the richest man in Britain, where he now resides. Two years ago, he acquired the English soccer club Chelsea for an astronomical sum.
Russia is ranked third in the world for the number of billionaires, and thirteenth for having the largest enterprises.
Taken as a whole, the fortunes of Russia’s billionaires amount to nearly half as much as the total value of the largest Russian enterprises. By comparison, in the US, this sum amounts to 6 percent.
The greatest part of shareholdings in the largest Russian enterprises can be found in the hands of this tiny social layer. According to the World Bank, in 2003, the 23 largest business groups account for 57 percent of all of Russia’s industrial production.
Forbes magazine has calculated that, measured against the economic output of the country ($458 billion), there are more billionaires in Russia (36) than anywhere else in the world. The total assets of these 36 richest Russians amounts to $110 billion—24 percent of the country’s economic output.
Most of the Russian billionaires and multimillionaires control raw materials and their associated industries. According to Forbes, this applies to 66 of the 100 richest Russians. The 34 others have gained their wealth from new business fields—above all, telecommunications, construction, food production and retail trade.
The incomes of the top managers are also incomparably greater than those of the ordinary citizen or pensioner. Gaseta.ru cites data showing they receive annually between $1 million and $3 million.
The president of Lukoil gets $1.5 million. If the business achieves certain goals, he enjoys a bonus of $2.2 million. The vice president gets $800,000 annually, with up to $1.1 million in bonuses. The picture was the same at Yukos, until it was liquidated by the state.
In large-scale enterprises like the United Mechanical Engineering Works and the Tyumen oil company, basic executive salaries amount to $500,000 and more. Oleg Deripaska, the boss of the Basis Element aluminium producer, paid taxes of $294 million in 2001 on his income in the Siberian Republic of Khakassia. His pay constituted 10 percent of the total income of the republic.
The “new Russians,” as they are sometimes called, often live abroad, where they can be found in the most expensive hotels, clubs and restaurants. They possess racehorses, yachts and mansions. Practically every billionaire has his own yacht and airplane. They particularly enjoy buying expensive antiques and jewelery, as well as purchasing real estate in the most expensive areas of Europe’s capitals. A special attraction for them is London.
Russians constitute a third of all foreign investors on the London property market. Over the past 10 years, the number of British visas given to Russians has increased eightfold. Of 250,000 Russians living in London, 700 are multimillionaires.
New Year celebrations are the high point of profligate consumption for the Russian nouveaux riches. The International Herald Tribune reported recently that some 20,000 Russians “wallowed in luxury, ate, drank and went shopping” in the elite boutiques of the ski resort of Courchevel, which lies in a snow-covered corner of the French Alps. In this spa resort can be found four-star hotels like Les Grandes Alpes, where a room costs between 550 and 1,250 euros ($704 and $1,600) per night. In the hotel restaurant, one can drink wines for a mere 1,750 euros ($2,239) a bottle. A new suite opened in the hotel Byblos des Neiges recently that measures 220 square metres and costs 6,500 euros ($8,318) a night.
The International Herald Tribune writes that Russian ski teachers are being employed to cope with the wave of Russian tourists in Courchevel, where Russian advertisements can be seen everywhere. “This is wonderful business for us,” explained the owner of one local four-star hotel.
This is the reality behind the invocations of “national unity” proclaimed by the Putin government. It is no wonder that ordinary Russians increasingly demonstrate their discontent and protest against the worsening of their situation. These protests will inevitably continue and intensify under conditions in which the government lacks any solution for Russia’s mounting social problems.
Friday, May 15, 2020
2010 | Reelviews Movie Reviews
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| https://www.reelviews.net/reelviews/2010 |
As 2001 was Kubrick's child, so 2010 belongs to Hyams, who took on four key duties: screenwriter (basing his script on Arthur C. Clarke's novel), director, producer, and cinematographer. (For those keeping count, that's one more hat than Kubrick wore.) Comparisons, however unfair, are inevitable. It's impossible to craft a follow-up to one of the cinema's most thought-provoking and impressive motion pictures without generating a litany of comments and criticisms. Based on published interviews with Hyams at the time of 2010's release, he was well aware of the potential quagmire he had entered into, but his appreciation for the original was such that his greatest desire was for the sequel to do Kubrick's film justice.
One question that arises is whether or not it is better to have seen 2001 before viewing 2010. For most two-part stories, this isn't an issue, but this is not an ordinary situation. Those who have not seen 2001 will come to 2010 will some background deficiencies, but they will also not have any preconceived notions about style and tone. My guess is that these uninitiated viewers may appreciate 2010 more than stalwart 2001 aficionados because they will accept the second feature on its own terms. Kubrick's shadow looms large over 2010 and the movie often seems to be struggling to escape from underneath it. The hypnotic quality that characterized 2001 is not present here; 2010 is a relatively straightforward space adventure story that extends the storyline but nothing more.
2010 picks up nine years after 2001. In the interim, not much has changed. The Discovery is still out near Jupiter - a cold, silent tomb for the disconnected HAL 9000 as it circles the planet in a slowly decaying orbit. The moon monolith has been brought from the lunar surface to Earth, but scientists are no closer to unlocking its secrets than they were a decade earlier. Meanwhile, both the Soviet Union and the United States are planning manned missions to Jupiter with the intention of exploring the monolith out there. The Russians' space ship will be ready earlier, so it makes sense for a few Americans to be on board so that Discovery's records and memory banks can be accessed. But tensions are high between the two superpowers as a crisis off the coast of South America escalates to where it could be the precursor to World War III.
Through a feat of diplomatic wizardry, politicians from both sides agree to allow three American scientists on board the Soviet space craft Leonov. Joining the Russian crew are Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider), the former head of the space agency who blames himself for the Discovery debacle; Walter Curnow (John Lithgow), the engineer who designed Disovery; and Dr. Chandra (Bob Balaban), the creator of HAL. The commander of the Leonov, Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren), is a stern, no-nonsense woman who is initially hostile to Floyd and his associates. However, in a time-honored tradition, as the Americans and Soviets work together to solve the mysteries of the outer Solar System, they form friendships and bonds of trust - even as the political situation between the two nations worsens.
During the course of the film, the solution to the riddle of the monolith is unveiled (although the aliens who created it remain an invisible presence). We learn its purpose and understand how this ties into the prehistoric version on Earth and the one on the moon. HAL is re-activated and rehabilitated, and we are given a somewhat unconvincing explanation about what precipitated his breakdown. (Conflicting orders caused him to turn paranoid and determine that the mission could be carried out without any human involvement.) Everyone is suspicious of HAL once Chandra turns him on again, but the computer proves to be helpful and self-sacrificing. Since HAL's demise in 2001 represented that film's emotional pinnacle, it's nice to see the artificial intelligence get a second chance. Astronaut Dave Bowman (once again played by Keir Dullea), now a ghostly mouthpiece for the aliens, makes a cameo appearance - more, I suspect, out of a need to solidify the connection between 2001 and 2010 than out of any plot necessity. The message he delivers is important, but it could have easily been conveyed in another manner.
2010 ties up a number of loose threads, but it doesn't resolve everything. The nature of the "star child" is untouched. And it's still not clear how much responsibility Floyd bears for HAL's psychosis. Despite the character's protestations of innocence in 2010, there is evidence in 2001 that he may have known more than he's letting on. 2010 doesn't ask many new questions - it's not that kind of movie - and the film ends with a straightforward, in-your-face moral. Oddly, the message of peace in 2010's closing moments contradicts something from 2001, where the influence of the monolith leads man to his first act of overt violence.
A few of the casting choices are worth exploring. Obviously it's nice to see Keir Dullea and hear Douglas Rain again. These two actors give 2010 the feeling of being in familiar territory. Roy Scheider has replaced William Sylvester in the lead role; Sylvester may have been the right age for the character in 2001, but he was too old (and probably too obscure) to re-create the part 16 years later. Scheider's low-key but authoritative approach works for this script. The character is suposedly the same, but there's little synergy between the two interpretations. John Lithgow, representing another name for the marquee, successfully keeps his manic tendencies in check. Helen Mirren would have been better if she hadn't been required to sport a ridiculous Russian accent (one that makes her sound like Natasha from "Rocky & Bullwinkle"). And, for those who like trivia, Candice Bergen has small speaking part as SAL 9000 (HAL's "sister"), although she uses the alias "Olga Mallsnerd" in the end credits.
Most of the space sequences are effective. While the Kubrick's lethargic pace has been replaced with something more energetic, 2010 doesn't speed along. There's a lot of exposition, which means lengthy passages of dialogue, some of which are clever. (I liked Curnow's observation that, while in space, he misses the color green. With no plant life in space or on the ship, there's no green.) The visual effects are as good as, although not noticeably better than, those used in 2001. Perhaps the most impressive task of the special effects team was to re-create the Discovery much as it appeared in the earlier film.
In terms of sound and music, Hyams' approach is completely different from Kubrick's. No longer is space a soundless vacuum. Now, we can hear engines and other assorted noises. (Although Hyams gets around the thorny issue of whether we hear an explosion by staying within the confines of the Leonov when it happens.) And, with the exception of Richard Strauss' "Also Spoke Zarathustra", which plays over the opening and closing credits, Hyams relies upon an original score for 2010 rather than adopting Kubrick's approach of applying classical music. (This is probably a good move; anything else would have seemed like a copy.)
2010's biggest misstep is the Cold War backdrop (an element that was not contained in Clarke's novel). An attempt by Hyams to make the film relevant to audiences viewing it 1984, the U.S./Soviet tensions circa 2010 now seem ill-conceived and out-of-place, especially considering that the USSR no longer exists. Granted, Hyams can't be blamed for his inability to see into the future, but the movie's reliance upon "current events" dates 2010 in a way that was never the case for 2001. It's also a pretty tired plot element that has been done better elsewhere. Consider James Cameron's The Abyss, which also employed alien intervention to urge peace between nations - that's a case where the message folds nicely into the overall storyline, rather than seeming tacked-on, as it does in 2010.
Now that enough time has elapsed since the release of 2010 for outraged 2001 fans to calm down, it can be seen that, while there was no decisive creative reason for Hyams' sequel to exist, it's not a bad movie. The features form two largely independent aspects of the same story. Kubrick uses science fiction as a gateway to mystical meditation; Hyams uses it conventionally. Each picture is capable of being viewed separately (enough background is given during the opening sequence of 2010 to elminate the most obvious sources of confusion), although I'm not certain why anyone today would be interested in watching 2010 without having previously seen its more famous predecessor. (Incidentally, I expect interest in 2010 to increase early next year, after 2001 is re-released in theaters to celebrate real-time having caught up with the title.) For those who prefer a "double feature" approach, 2010 continues 2001 without ruining it. The greatest danger faced by filmmakers helming a sequel is that a bad installment will in some way sour the experience of watching the previous movie. This does not happen here. Almost paradoxically, 2010 may be unnecessary, but it is nevertheless a worthwhile effort.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Arabian Oryx Sanctuary
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| http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/654/ |
The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary is an area
within the Central Desert and Coastal Hills biogeographical regions of
Oman. Seasonal fogs and dews support a unique desert ecosystem whose
diverse flora includes several endemic plants. Its rare fauna includes
the first free-ranging herd of Arabian oryx since the global extinction
of the species in the wild in 1972 and its reintroduction here in 1982.
The only wild breeding sites in Arabia of the endangered houbara
bustard, a species of wader, are also to be found, as well as Nubian
ibex, Arabian wolves, honey badgers, caracals and the largest wild
population of Arabian gazelle.
The World Heritage Committee deleted the property because of Oman's decision to reduce the size of the protected area by 90%, in contravention of the Operational Guidelines of the Convention. This was seen by the Committee as destroying the outstanding universal value of the site which was inscribed in 1994.
In 1996, the population of the Arabian Oryx in the site, was at 450 but it has since dwindled to 65 with only about four breeding pairs making its future viability uncertain. This decline is due to poaching and habitat degradation.
After extensive consultation with the State Party, the Committee felt that the unilateral reduction in the size of the Sanctuary and plans to proceed with hydrocarbon prospection would destroy the value and integrity of the property, which is also home to other endangered species including, the Arabian Gazelle and houbara bustard.
Monday, May 11, 2020
Soviet and Russian Inequality: Was the Soviet System Pro–Poor?
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| https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/soviet_and_russian/ |
To situate the subject briefly, Cold War scholarship has left us a substantial literature on income inequality under communism. Bergson (1944), Yanowitch (1963), Wiles and Markowski (1971), Pryor (1972), Wiles (1974, 1975), Wädekin (1975), Chapman (1977), McAuley (1977), and Matthews (1978), each made valiant attempts, sometimes extending to piecemeal comparisons over countries and over time. “Considering the obscure data with which they had to work,” a survey by Schroeder (1983) remarked, “Western investigators display a large degree of agreement.” Measured by the decile ratio, the distribution of official incomes in the Soviet Union was becoming more equal over time and was substantially more equal than in the developed market economies then available as comparators. Schroeder noted, however, that Western researchers could not access data on the Soviet distribution of illegal incomes, or on privileged distribution of goods and services including accommodation and health care.
More recently, Lindert and Nafziger (2014) made an advance in another direction, examining inequality in Russia before and after the Soviet era. They concluded that pre-tax income inequality in 1997, although likely understated by official reports, was greater than in 1904.
Finally, a new paper by Allen and Khaustova (2017) examines Russian real wages in the long run. This paper does not address income inequality directly but allows inferences to be drawn from comparing real wages and productivity in industry. They find that real wages stagnated from the 1860s to 1913 (in St Petersburg, the capital, and Kursk, a provincial centre) or showed modest gains (in Moscow) but lagged everywhere behind productivity, suggesting a movement from wages to profits and income from wealth. After the troubled wartime and revolutionary period, the 1920s brought large real wage gains. These were short-lived, evaporating in the famine-led inflation of the early 1930s.
Novokmet and co-authors (NPZ) are the first to have tried to measure wealth and income inequality in Russia over the whole twentieth century. And, as many readers will be aware, their paper is part of a much larger collaborative project, the World Inequality Lab and the associated World Wealth and Income Database, one that aims to measure inequality in many countries over hundreds of years.
According to NPZ, the share of the top 10 per cent in pre-tax income distributed to adults in Russia was 47 per cent in 1905. The share fell to 22 per cent in 1928, increased modestly to 26 per cent by 1956, and began to fall gently back again, reached a low of 21 per cent in 1980. (The Soviet-era years observed are 1928, 1956, and then roughly every second, third, or fourth year to 1988, when annual observations begin.) By 1996 the top 10-per-cent share had returned to the 1905 level and remained in that vicinity through 2016. NPZ comment: “our benchmark estimates suggest that inequality levels in Tsarist and post-Soviet Russia are roughly comparable. Very top income shares seem if anything somewhat larger in post-Soviet Russia.”
Measured by the top 10-percent income share, Russia today appears in the World Inequality Lab database in the same inequality band as the United States and China. Income inequality is reported as greater in a few countries: Turkey, India, South Africa, and Brazil. All north and west European countries that are represented in the database are more equal than Russia. But all are smaller than Russia in population, and a larger population will always tend to show greater inequality, because unequal economic outcomes are promoted by heterogeneity of all kinds, and heterogeneity is inevitably increasing in population size.
In its time the Soviet Union, in contrast, was apparently one of the most equal countries in the world. This is particularly striking, considering the large size of the Soviet population, 288 million by 1991. Other countries in the WID dataset with top 10-percent shares of 26 per cent or below at any time from 1917 to 1991 are few, and they are also much smaller in population: Australia, Denmark, Mauritius, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Taiwan. Of all these countries, only Italy’s population had reached 57 million by 1991, and Taiwan’s 20 million.
These results are broadly consistent with the earlier research described above. They confirm that income inequality in Russia after the Soviet era was comparable to before the Revolution, if not greater; that the distribution of Soviet official incomes was markedly more equal than in most market economies at the time and today, and in Russia beforehand and today; and that, within the Soviet era, inequality followed a modest Kuznets curve, rising, then falling.
Seen in this light, Soviet institutions and policies appear distinctly pro-poor. Before we take that as settled, however, there are three issues that point the other way.
First, in the Soviet era the poor might have gained relatively, but the chief factor in this was impoverishment of the rich. What the rich lost was not transferred to the poor, or was given only temporarily before the state grabbed it back, as clearly implied by Allen and Khaustova (2017). NPZ measure inequality by shares of income distributed to adults. In the Soviet era, the share of income not distributed to adults, but retained by the state, became unusually large. As a first approximation, household consumption fell from around 80 per cent of GDP in 1913 to around 50 per cent in 1940 and through the postwar period. By implication, what the rich lost was diverted into government administration and investment and defence projects; it was not passed on to the lower income strata. If there was an initial transfer to the poor, it was confined to the 1920s, and was then cancelled in the Great Breakthrough of Stalinist collectivization and industrialization.
Second, the Soviet state did not take only from the rich. It took also from the poor, including the poorest. This applied particularly in the years from 1928 to 1956, a period for which the NPZ dataset has only gaps. While I cannot find full explanation on this point, the NPZ dataset (like most Cold-War scholarship) seems to rely on reports of the distribution of official wage earnings to capture Soviet-era inequality. Wage earnings accounted for less than one third of Soviet household incomes in 1928, just over 60 per cent in 1937, and nearly 70 per cent in 1956 (Kashin and Mikov 2004: 17, 23, 34). The largest category of households excluded from reports of wage earnings were collective farmers – the great majority of Soviet farm workers – who received an uncertain dividend, not a wage. If that is the case here, then the rural poor are left out of account. (Forced labourers are also left out. There were millions of these from the 1930s to the 1950s. But they are a small omission compared with many tens of millions of collective farmers.)
Narrative accounts of rural food shortages and periodic famines indicate that rural poverty contributed substantially to Soviet-era inequality before the 1950s (e.g. Davies and Wheatcroft 2004). After that time, the compensation of collective farmers moved gradually, but never completely, towards public-sector standards.
Finally, as NPZ acknowledge, under Soviet arrangements, persistent shortages and privileged distribution decoupled consumption inequality from income inequality. In the Soviet Union everyone had an income, but not everyone could spend it on the same terms. A privileged class of insiders – the party elite and the employees of key production and service establishments – who had access to relatively high-quality goods and services at prices fixed below the market-clearing level without waiting. Others had limited access to staple goods and services, for which they either waited in line or paid a higher, sometimes illegal price. As long as the poor had money they could not spend, or faced higher prices to spend it, it is possible and even likely that consumption was distributed more unequally than income. This contrasts with the pattern that has been found to prevail in market economies, where consumption inequality is generally less than income inequality. But comprehensive data on Soviet consumption inequality would seem far more difficult to come by than income data, so this may well remain a conjecture.
Consumption inequality was important not only for ex post evaluation of economic welfare under Soviet arrangements. It was of central importance to the political economy of the time. During the 1930s, as Paul Gregory (2004: 76-109) has noted, Stalin received regular reports of discontent and falling effort among the workers in the provinces and intervened from time to time to improve their condition. When he did so, he did not order their wages to be raised because, in a supply-constrained economy, this would only have lengthened local queues. Rather, he ordered consumer goods in short supply to be redirected to the towns and factories where dissatisfaction was rising, so that the workers could more easily spend their wages.
The existence of unofficial incomes in the Soviet era only adds complexity to the problem. We guess that unofficial incomes were substantial but of time-varying size. Anecdotes on who received them are plentiful. The Soviet central bank compiled annual estimates of their aggregate size (Kashin and Mikov 2004), but we continue to lack (and may never find) data on their distribution. Thus, it is impossible to say whether their net effect was to increase or reduce the extent of inequality of different kinds.
To summarize, the extent to which Soviet institutions favoured the poorest in society is easily overstated. The impact of the Bolshevik Revolution was to flatten the distribution of wages. On that official measure income inequality fell sharply. But non-wage earnings were likely distributed more unequally than wages. Unofficial incomes also mattered; how they mattered is unclear. Consumption inequality mattered too, and arguably mattered more than income inequality. Most likely, consumption inequality did not fall to the same extent. Whereas consumption inequality in market economies is relatively stable, it is possible that Soviet consumption inequality was volatile, spiking in particular years of crisis.
Any judgement on new work must be preliminary, but my thoughts so far are as follows. NPZ (2017) is a substantial contribution. It is not the first word on the subject, and it will not be the last word either. It turns a new page and sets a new challenge.
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