911 Why Lenin and Stalin were callous to the Famines in U.S.S.R., during their Reigns?

Lenin is regarded as the Greatest and the First Leader who had tried to implement the ideas of Marxism / Communism / Socialism, in a very large country of Continental Size like Russia (erstwhile Soviet Union- U.S.S.R. stretching from Riga to Vladivostoc). Stalin, is also regarded very highly in India, in spite of his dictatorial tendencies. Many parents in India, named their children as Stalin. For example, the name of the Leader of Opposition in Tamil Nadu Assembly, India, is 'Stalin'. What stuns me very much is, a study of the History of the Soviet Union of 1917-53, gives me an impression that both Lenin and Stalin were apparently callous to famines, and food shortages in Russia, and millions of people died during their Rule. The same was the position in the so called Communist Ruled 1959 China, of the Mao ze Dong fame. It is strange that in India, there are groups which advocate violent Revolutions and Upheavals in the name of "Maoism", and they call themselves 'Maoists'. Were all those famines, just exaggerations of bourgeoisie media propaganda machinery of Europe and America? It can't be 100%, though some exaggerations might have taken place.

To continue adding / deleting / modifying. This issue of the Failure of Communist Regimes in Russia and China, is a 10,000 page subject. सशेष. ఇంకా ఉంది. ఇది అంతం కాదు, ఆరంభమే.

864 (3 of 10 series) Review of Bolshevik Revolution 1917 to redesign True Complete Socialism

Readers may be aware that the Rulers of India 2016 act without much concern for the difficulties of the poor, promising heaven for them in the next birth. Traditionally, India had a separate Railway Budget, independent of the National General Budget. Railway Budget used to be prepared and presented by Union Railway Minister, whereas General Budget used to be prepared and presented by Union Finance Minister. In 2016, the Rulers have merged the Railway Budget into the General Budget. The General Budget is going to be presented within about a month.

Our Readers may be aware that Rulers of India right from 1991, irrespective of their party affiliations had/have/will have special love for the Corporate Pressure Groups like Assocham, CII, FICCI, etc. What they take pleasure to say to the Corporate Pressure Groups, they do not dare to say directly to the common people. The Rulers can see eye into the eyes of the Corporate Heads, but they can't and they do not wish to have an eye contact with the common people. For the same reason, a distance of at least 200/250 meters seems to be maintained between the dais and the common people in public meetings. Though the Rulers seem to make hearty contacts with the public, cracking jokes, waving hands in the sky, voice modulations, actual words are spoken to the sky, picked up and sieved by common people according to their own whims and fancies (It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.). Even Corporate Business Persons and Industrialists are not exempt from this trait. In one such Conference on Accounting Reforms in Railways organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Mr. Arun Jaitley, Union Finance Minister, now in charge of Railway Budget also, informed the CII on 20th Dec. 2016, that Railway Fares will undergo an upward revision.

Here is a news report: Click to go to http://www.financialexpress.com/budget/ahead-of-budget-2017-arun-jaitley-hints-indian-railways-fares-will-be-freed/481343/. Some jewels from his speech:--

"...Railways got caught in a battle where populism prevailed over performance.. For any commercial establishment to be run, the first essential principle is that consumers must pay for the services that they receive. ..."

"...The core competence of the railways is really to drive trains, to provide those services. Hospitality may not be the core competence of the railways and, therefore, what is not within its core competence, the principle of outsourcing — which is accepted world over — can be a logical addition to those activities of railways ..."

"...Power and highway sectors started doing well only after consumers paid for the services they got. ..."

"...The world over, only those services have succeeded where there is a financial model which says that consumers pay for what they receive. ..."

yb-a-donkey's observations

Okay, let at least the Corporate Bosses be happy, that there is going to be a surgical strike on the Railway Passengers, and that they (industrialists) can fly happily on some Jet Airlines or Indigo Airlines, and talk to one another face to face.

FANTASY OF TOTAL TRUE COMPLETE SOCIALISM, and A LOOK INTO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION + 74 YEARS OF USSR

In my donkey's day dreams, I think of total absolutely free public transport for all citizens.. Travellers need not purchase any Railway Tickets either paying cash NEW NOTES, or through some paytm or some other wallet. Then, Indian Citizens will be deprived of their gambling opportunities of winning Lucky Draws and Mega Draws promised by our Rulers.

Question: WAS THERE NO COMPLETELY FREE PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN THE DEFUNCT USSR?

I have been on a searching spree, for information on how the public transport system in 1918 Russia worked. As nobody could own any assets, at least theoretically, nobody could possess wallets and money, and if that assumption is correct, there should not have been any fares at all. On first-cum-first serve basis (subject to some exceptions for journeys on official duties of Government servants, and some similar other genuine travellers, who may have to be given some priority in boarding), anybody could board trains/ buses /trams and travel free. But, I am unable to trace any such evidence in early Soviet History right now.

Just before disintegration of USSR, i.e. 1991, Soviet Railways seem to have been subsidised to the extent of 70%. It implies that pre-1991 Passengers had to bear 30% fare. This does not seem to be reasonable. We may have to re-discuss this item after collecting more evidence.

2016 INDIAN RAILWAYS

Question: In India also, train-fares are heavily subsidised. Consequently tracks and rolling stock are poorly maintained, resulting in accidents

WHO SUBSIDISES WHOM?

GENERAL COMPARTMENTS OF EXPRESS TRAINS: Express Train bogeys, General Compartments are filled 4 times their full official capacity. That means 4 passengers get ZIPPED/COMPRESSED (like in a Computer Zip file) in one passenger's space. It implies that a passenger should pay only 25% fare, with 75% subsidisation.
PASSENGER TRAINS (Passenger, meaning = not Express. Slow moving. They stop everywhere). Sometimes they stop for several hours anywhere without any information on Public Address System, for giving way to Express Trains. In such situations, the foolish passenger who boarded a passenger train would not know whether he should go out and continue his journey by bus or not. The moment he leaves the Station after one hour wait, the train may start, as if something was pushing and rushing it from behind, with divine force.

A 33 km (20 mile). journey which takes about 40 mts. on buses, will take 1 hour to 2 hours on passenger trains. Those travellers who have urgent work use buses, resulting in low occupancy of passenger trains. If a laborer goes on a passenger train, for that day, he is likely to lose his one day wage. Railways use only their IDLE TIME on tracks, and some dilapidated bogeys which cannot be employed elsewhere, for the passenger trains. Things which would have remained idle & revenueless otherwise, will get some revenue for the Railways.

Passengers pay full fare, 75% in terms of their wasted time, and 25% in terms of actual fare = Total 100%. Hence, the element of subsidisation of passenger trains is imaginary, because on any route, Railways run only 2 or 3 PASSENGER trains per day, THAT TOO ONLY DURING DAY TIME. If they run PASSENGER TRAINS at a frequency of every 30 mts., the question of subsidisation may arise, depending on whether Road passengers shift to Passenger Trains or not. When road passengers shift to railways, train-occupancy ratios go up even for Passenger trains. Then we get the situation of 4 passengers crowding in 1 passengers space i.e. gets ZIPPED/COMPRESSED, as in Express Trains, discussed above.

Ques: ARE THERE NO OTHER WAYS/MEANS OF RAISING THE REVENUES OF RAILWAYS, WITHOUT RAISING FARES

THIS ANSWER APPLIES ONLY TO CAPITALIST SYSTEM. IT DOES NOT APPLY TO TRUE COMPLETE SOCIALISM.

Ans: This is a very very old hackneyed question, which every Railway Minister promises to implement, but NEVER IMPLEMENTS, for various reasons. Some solutions:--

1. Maximising advertisement revenues: Advertisements on laminated wall panels within the compartments. Advertisements on the exterior surfaces of bogeys. Permitting advertisement hoardings along side, parallel to railway tracks, both facing inward (towards tracks) and outward (towards roads). Advertisements on bridges.

IN A LIGHTER VEINRailways have to learn, how to maximise advertisement revenues, from Indian TV Channels, particularly Regional Language TV Channels. 40% of viewing time on Indian TV Channels consists of advertisements. Only 60% time is used for viewing programs in a dis-joined manner (without continuity). For skipping advertisements on TV channels, we have to use 'remote(s)' like some typewriters or mobile phones.

2. Constructing rows of shops along the tracks, and leasing them out.

a) Facing the roads adjoining the Railway Tracks.
b) When two rows of shops face one another in the space between railway line and the public Road, a bazar can be created.
c) Creation of specilised bazars for heavy items unloaded from trains such as construction steel rods, cement, vegetables, food grains, feldspar chips, sand, timber, can be experimented with. This will also ease traffic on the streets of towns and cities. Warehouses can be built and leased out. Open spaces can also be leased out for storing bricks, cement, stones, ores, etc.

3. Erection of solar power panels parallel to the rail tracks, in at least four rows (one facing track at a distance, one on its reverse side, one facing adjoining road, one on its reverse side. Alternatively, sheds can be buit, using solar power panels for ceiling.

4. Wherever there are wider spaces belonging to Railways, they can be leased out for raising cattle fodder or for grazing cattle.

5. Wherever there are long vacant strips of land along side the railway lines on both sides, whereever technically feasible, long strips of cement based-walled water storage tanks can be built for collecting rain water. This water can be sold to Municipalities and Panchayats for purification and supply of drinking water.

To continue. सशेष. సశేషం.

863 Part 2/out of 10 series We need not celebrate OR mourn the Bolshevik Revolution. We have to analyse.

This is in continuation of our blog post No. 861 Click to go to 862.. Recapitulating: We found renowned Indian author Mr. Mohan Guruswamy, referring to his two visits to Vladivostok and Moscow, just before the disintegration of the erstwhile U.S.S.R. I have given a DeccanChronicle.com link for his article. He seems to have successfully forecast the crumbling of Soviet Union, and tried to convince the Indian Government about it. (Anyway, it is an internal affair of the U.S.S.R., and its constituent Republics, and India might not have had anything to do it,) even if the Government of India were to take the prediction of Mr. Mohan Guruswamy as ominous foreboding. Then we saw another link, to Spectator.co.uk., containing an article by Mr. Max Hasting, titled "The centenary of the Russian revolution should be mourned, not celebrated".

(ybrao-a-donkey's views): Though erstwhile U.S.S.R. might have deviated from the basic tenets of Communism / Marxism / Socialism, during its 74 years of existence, we cannot forget that U.S.S.R. had made some efforts to usher in to bring about some sort of equality, among its citizens. This is notwithstanding the probable fact that top leaders walowed in great comforts and luxuries, leaving the common people to undue hardships, a la their counterparts i.e. the top leaders of the Capitalist countries.

In post NO.552 Click to go to post No. 552, we found that Bolsheviks used Churches as World War II mortuary, and later as potato warehouse.

"...It was built at the spot where Tsar Alexander II, the man who sold Alaska to the United States, was mortally wounded in a grenade attack in 1881. The interior of the church is a virtual museum of mosaics with intricately wrought biblical themes. Closed down by the Bolsheviks for decades, the church was used as a mortuary during World War II and later as a warehouse for potatoes. Today it is more of a showpiece than a place of worship. ..."

We shall, now be back, to inadequate food, and housing in Russia, referred to by Shri Mohan Guruswamy. Here, we shall have to good links, so as to have a look into the community common living consisting of small individual apartments + common rooms towards kitchen, washing machines, toilets. What Shri Mohan Guruswamy discussed was the position of 1991, the year of Soviet Decomposition. We shall now see, links of 2015 and 2016.

2016: Click here to go to http://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/europe/020516/you-re-never-alone-russia-celebrates-its-soviet-era-communal-flats.html . The title of the article is "'You're never alone': Russia celebrates its Soviet era communal flats". The article starts with : "A communal flat or ‘kommunalka’ is a small dwelling shared by dozen or more residents." Date: 2nd May 2016. Probably, this might have been published as a sequel to the 2016 May Day, held on 1st May 2016.

Through further googling, I found the following link. click to go to http://holeinthedonut.com/2015/01/17/kommunalka-living-st-petersburg-russia. The title of the article is: 'Kommunalka Living in St. Petersburg, Russia – Throwback to an Earlier Era'. Date: January 17, 2015. This article is by Barbara Weibel. This article is lengthier than the DC article. It has a number of photos. This article has 19 comments. Most of the comments have expressed a surprise, that this type of 'living holes' still exist.

At the 'holeinthedonut.com' website, we can find a profile of Ms. Barbara Weibel. The site holeinthedonut.com is owned by Ms. Barbara Weibel. She is a TravelWriter. The 'About' page of the holeinthedonut website is quite informative. According to Click to go to study a profile of Ms. Baraba Weibel, Ms. Weibel's 'about' page is worth studying, from the point of view of 'Capitalism vs. Socialism' and probably integral part 'Individualism vs. Socialism'.

Here is a sample form the 'About' page of holeinthedonut of Ms. Barbara Weibel:

"... My name is Barbara Weibel and I’m the owner/editor of Hole in the Donut Cultural Travel. I’ve always envied people who love their jobs. Unlike those lucky souls, my various careers over the years (marketing, advertising, selling real estate, working in a retail store, owning a public relations firm, and selling snow cones in the largest water park in Puerto Rico, among others) were just means to an end – a way to earn money and have a comfortable lifestyle. I never loved what I did and I can’t really say I was ever really happy, but I plodded on because I was raised to be dependable, to always give 110%, and to work hard in order to be able to enjoy a comfortable retirement. All of which meant going to work every day, regardless of how much I despised my job. ..."

LIP SERVICE

What we fail to recognise is, Capitalism pays only a 'lip service' to individualism. In the eyes of Capitalism, an 'individual' does not exist. For Capitalism, all individuals are soul-less robots. For the Capitalism, all are ORGANISMS are (includes not only human laborers, but also, working animals like horses, oxen, camels, elephants, kites and vultures(!!!), sledge dogs, hunter dogs, cattle in the abattoirs, pigs, hens and ducks, etc.) all are just objects of business, and factors of production. If those organisms have to survive on this Earth, they must contribute some surplus / profit to the Enterprise Managers and Corporate Monsters. "Freedom of individual", which bourgeoisie economists profess and canvass, exists only in imagination. "Freedom of individual" is used as a stick to beat Socialism with stick, because individuals want a space of their own. Given a chance, it is true, that individuals do not want to share NOT ONLY THAT SPACE WHICH IS REQUIRED FOR THEIR SURVIVAL, BUT ALSO THE SPACE WHICH OTHERS NEED, BESIDE THEM. But, in reality, we have unlimited SPACE only in the sky, above ATMOSPHERE. On this earth, we do not have such unlimited spaces.

SHARING BECOMES INEVITABLE, WHEN RESOURCES SCARCE

Prima facie, it appears to me that Socialism will not impose, or aim to thrust, SHARING on individuals. Let us take Housing. In Capitalism, every individual has to build or buy his-her own home, using lucre made through beg-borrow-steal-rob-cheat-connive. If they are incapable of doing it, then they have to live in huts, or under flyovers, or in subways, or in parked vehicles outside the city. In Capitalist democracies, though Governments promise houses to poor, and allocate a few millions for building houses to poor in annual budgets, most of all such manoeuvres are token-ist to win some elections. There is no genuine intent.

In True Complete Socialism, though it may appear to be a fantasy, the expectation is that a Socialist State will strive to provide at least a sort of 'vanilla' shelters for all, free of cost, for life. Of course, inheritance should not be expected. In fact, it may be prudent for the Socialist State, to rotate housing quarters given free to its Citizens every three years or five years, so that they do not develop attachments and temptations (In Indian philosophy, this is called 'sangams' and 'mohams'). Indian philosophical thinking calls houses, moneys, wives, offsprings, vehicles etc. all as 'debts', and the relationships between the possessors and the objects as the relationship of debtor and creditor. The objects exist as long as the debt exists, and they go away, once the debt gets satisfied. Here is a relevant Sanskrit verse:

riNAnubandha rUpENA
paSu patni suta Alayaha
tad anubandham
pra Samam yAnti
kA tatra parivEdanA !

English gist: Cattle (paSu), patni (wife), suta (sons, daughters), Alaya (houses) are all 'rINAs' (debts). anu = favorable. bandham = band (Indo-European word). rUpENa = in the form of.

tat=that (Indo-European language). praSamam = gets pacified (probably Indo-European origin). yAnti = goes. kA=why, where. tatra = there. pari= a lot, substantial. vEdana = pain.

This ephemeral relationship between 'things' and an 'individual' is to be understood.

.

Another concept which is relevant is: 'jagat' (=this world). ja=What is born, what takes birth.(probably Indo-European language). ga=go (Indo-European). Jagat is something which comes and goes. It does not stay here. It is not 'eternal'. What is 'eternal', becomes 'sat or satyam' i.e. 'truth'.

Film Star and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu State in INdia, who passed away recently, apparently did not realise this ephemeral-ity. Consequently, she seems to have acquired huge wealth disproportionate to the known sources of her income. A case is pending against her in Supreme Court of India. Her dwelling is Poes Gardens in Chennai. She is reported to have recommended a SanD Mafia don for appointment to the richest Temple in India, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) Trust Board. She having gone to heaven/hell/nowhere, INTESTATE, those who remain on this earth are fighting for inheriting her wealth, and political mantel.

Similar is the case with Late Shri Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, Chief Minister of United Andhra Pradesh, who died in a plane crash in 2009. People believe that he accumulated a trillion Rupees (about $15 billion) through quid pro quo methods for his son, along with a palace called 'Lotus Pond'. His having gone to heaven/hell/nowhere, cases are pending in Indian courts.

So, the INDIVIDUALISTS need not shiver at the very idea of sharing some 'common space' for kitchens, washing machines, toilets, while they get small rooms as their personal space for beds, etc. What appears to me in the USSR effort of Kommunalka seems to be to provide some personal space + some shared space, to every individual citizen. I do not know whether there was NEAR-EQUALITY in allocating the living quarters, in the Soviet dispensations. It is always possible that good quarters are allocated to cronies, and dilapidated spaces are imposed on dumb citizens.

To my Indian eyes, the Kommunalka Apartments appeared quite decent. For us, we the Indians, we have Dharavi slum in Mumbai. All of our cities, both Metros, and the smaller cities have slums, in which people live in pitiable squalor. Besides, we have some millions of people living under trees, foot paths, cement pipes lying on road margins and in the adjacent fields.



To continue. सशेष. ఇంకా ఉంది.

862 (1st of 10 series) No need to celebrate or mourn Bolshevik Revolution in Russia,Oct. 1917. We need to analyse where we have gone wrong!

Once bitten, twice shy. Thus says the traditional English idiom. 100 years have passed since Bolshevik Revolution took place in Czarist Russia of 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution was violent, and in the upheaval, the last Tsar Emperor of Russia Nicholas II or Nikolai I, was killed by Bolshevik Troup led by Yakov Yurovsky. The advent of U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) took place, and Lenin became the undisputed Leader of the geographically the most expansive Nation of the World.

In 1991, when Gorbachev was at the helm of U.S.S.R., it broke into splinters. About the 74 years existence (1917 to 1991) of U.S.S.R., superficially as a Communist / Socialist Nation, there are divergent opinions. According to the Capitalist Press, Communism was a total failure. According to them, it is beyond redemption. They say that, we, should now, mourn, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Communism. Lenin might have implemented his brand of Communism, rather boorishly and with procacity. It may be true, that erstwhile USSR went through harrowing and gruesome tales of mass-killings, ferocious persecution, in the hands of succeeding cruel dictators. Their oppression might have, really been brutal.

Here is a link to one article in Spectator.co.u.k., titled: "The centenary of the Russian revolution should be mourned, not celebrated"., dated 10th Dec. 2016, by Max Hastings Click to go to http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-centenary-of-the-russian-revolution-should-be-mourned-not-celebrated/. The article has collected all the negative sides of the Soviety History 1917-2017. In reality, Soviet Communism might not have been so sepulchral dark and despicable with ghastly shrieks and charnel smells. We shall have a sample from this article:

"...In the West, the gullibility of the Webbs, Bernard Shaw and the rest of the ‘true believers’ was fed by a desperation to suppose the Soviet example viable. ‘Looking around us at our own hells,’ wrote the historian Philip Toynbee, who became a communist at Cambridge, ‘we had to invent an earthly paradise somewhere else’. As late as 1945, the leftist publisher Victor Gollancz brought posterity’s contempt upon himself by declining to publish Animal Farm, George Orwell’s great satire on Bolshevism. ..."

"...President Putin has made unlawful all published mention of the unspeakable cruelties the Soviet regime inflicted on its own citizens — shooting an estimated 300,000 soldiers for alleged desertion or cowardice — in order to prevail. Antony Beevor’s books, and for that matter my own, are nowadays banned because they describe the Red Army’s 1945 campaign of rape and pillage in Germany. ..."

The defunct Soviet Union might not have been either a paradise or, - a hell as is made out now, from hindsight.

Capitalist writers forget the hells created by Imperialism, Colonialism, and Corporate Multi Nationalism. Of course, two wrongs may not make one 'right'. Like slow poison, industrial and agricultural exploitation too took its toll, making people undeclared slaves, before the pulpit of "CASH".

INDIAN WRITER SHRI MOHAN GURUSWAMY, in DECCAN CHRONICLE.COM.

Here is a link to the renowned Indian Writer's article, Shri Mohan Guruswamy, in DeccanChronicle.Com, dated 24th Dec. 2016, when the whole world was celebrating Christmas. Click to go to http://www.deccanchronicle.com/opinion/op-ed/241216/will-russian-spring-return.html. The title of the article is Will the Russian Spring return?

Every sentence written by Shri Guruswamy is worth discussing and analysing. To start with we shall take one paragraph:

The second time I stayed in a small Moscow apartment belonging to an old Russian widow, who for a small dollar price agreed to part with her state-allotted home for a few days. The flat, a few kilometres away from the Indian embassy at Ulitza Obhuka, was as tiny as they come. The bedroom had enough place for just a single bed. The living room was of the same size and had a sofa-cum-bed. The kitchen was tiny and bare. The bathroom was not much bigger than a train toilet. Food was not available for love or money but there was a lot of love available for food or money. In the small store that stood outside the Indian embassy the shelves were bare, as were the shelves in Moscow’s famous GUM store facing the Kremlin. I wanted to experience typical Russian life and got plenty of it. The ruble was officially on par with the US dollar, but on the street the dollar fetched a dozen rubles at least. And for a carton of Marlboro cigarettes (then $8 in Delhi’s duty-free) cabbies would drive you all over Moscow for as long as one wanted. Such was the plight of the other superpower.

yb-a-donkey's observations

With due respect to Shri Mohan Guruswamy, who says "Will the Russian Spring return?", we can also say "Will the American Spring return? Will the British / French / German / Italian / Portuguese / Spanish Springs return?

To continue. सशेष. ఇంకా ఉంది.