Stalin's Enslavement of Rural Russia (full documentary)

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[Music] he had a withered arm webbed toes a pockmarked face and grew up hating he seized control of one of the world's largest nations and murdered 40 million of its inhabitants even after death he dominated the lives of his countrymen not until August 1991 did a determined Soviet people rise up and exercise his malignant influence the hands of this man were the bloodiest in history the man himself was the monstrous and inevitable product of the Communist Party and state founded in Russia in 1917 on the principle that the end justifies the means pitiless cunning and cynical he mocked the value of human life proclaiming that when one person dies it is a tragedy but when a million die it is a statistic never has one man held such absolute power over so many and used it with such extravagant brutality as Joseph Vissarionovich you gosh Willie the monster who named himself Stalin [Music] st. Petersburg the cradle of Russia's 1917 revolution here in a coup against the legitimate government the Bolsheviks seized power led by Vladimir Lenin they ignite a civil war that brings immense suffering and violent death to millions death itself becomes a triviality the country lies in ruins cities are rubble heaps ruled by rats and hunger only the military cemetery [Music] millions of peasants flee their homes and live rough starving they wander the countryside in search of food the peasants whose harvest has been seized by the contending armies now cannot feed themselves in 1921 a great famine sweeps the land despite government efforts thousands died daily of starvation the children suffer most their body is denied food turn inward and consume themselves abandoned there is no one to comfort them or mark their graves [Music] relief workers do their best but more than 5 million people starve to death the twelve months that follow entire regions are emptied of life in what seems an almost biblical apocalypse [Music] regardless the Bolsheviks continue to scour the land for anything edible Lenin names his genocidal policy war communism enter young Joseph Stalin who is given carte blanche to seize and distribute food in the South Stalin with his hungry army is headquartered in Zurich sin on the Volga in choosing Stalin for this job Lenin is doubtless influenced by Stalin's reputation as a ruthless enforcer Anton Antonov of CN Co historian and son of a famous Bolshevik spent 13 years in Stalin's prisons it was an abuse of power Stalin behaved like a dictator watching out for himself and his troops instead of shipping food to Moscow in Petrograd which were starving for example a single one of his divisions with the 4,600 men was given rations for 20,000 odd while the rest of Russia starved it was the behavior of the dictator meanwhile he ignored Lenin's urgent cables demanding that food supplies be shipped north he ignored it all and kept the largest part of the provisions for his own troops far more than needed but the farmers strike back at the predatory Bolsheviks with such violence but in the next two years 1800 revolts erupted the rebellion wasn't confined to isolated towns and cities it became general throughout a considerable part of Russia and the Ukraine the most formidable of those revolts broke out in the city of town it began in the summer of 1921 to crush it the Bolsheviks imposed a reign of terror throughout the Tambov region whole villages were destroyed I'm ashamed to say that my father's name and tone of a Saiyan cock is connected with it he was head of the extraordinary Commission tambóv many other dead and many the mourners the nation is shocked Lenin is thwarted it forces him to rethink his new economic policy until now all of the farmers grain had been confiscated Lenin's new plan allows them to keep 70 percent and sell it on the open market their own masters again the farmers go back to work with a will [Music] many party leaders oppose Lenin's plan calling it a betrayal of communism but Stalin stands by his patron Lenin Stalin's toadying - Lenin has already earned him the strategic post of party general secretary in less than two years the economy is booming formerly empty stores do a brisk business in products almost forgotten by consumers happy days are here again state-of-the-art agricultural equipment flows into the rural areas as farmer coops exchange their harvests for foreign-made goods newly imported cattle breeds come on the market Friesians from Germany and other breeds from France and England a prosperity spiral is set in motion as farmers trade up to the new technology and with it speedily increase their yields and their personal worth never has the Russian farmer enjoyed such good times Lenin dies and Stalin capitalizes on growing friction in the party over Lenin's new plan it results in party propaganda films which picture the newly prosperous farmers as decadent petit bourgeois and sex-crazed feminists a fungus attacking the thrifty and virtuous proletariat one that must be expunged [Music] a belligerent Stalin addresses a closed party session in October 1925 he declares war on Russia's farmers it is foolish to think a civil war has ended it has not stalin proclaims we must create another revolution a revolution from above confusion smites the party leaders what does he mean we should attack the source of our wealth but no word of this reaches the farmers their yield increases the economy flourishes and the farmers continue to bring their grain to the docks for shipment abroad grain as the Soviet Union's principal export is also its chief source of hard currency [Music] thanks to its farmers Russia is able to buy the machinery needed for rapid industrialization and for the first time in living memory enjoys the respectable economy whimsically the success of communism now depends on capitalism in 1927 to increase government cash flow Stalin fiddles with grain prices and raises taxes it doesn't work the farmers Bork and refused to sell their grain now Stalin sets off on a whistle-stop campaign through the farming areas of the Soviet Union beginning with Siberia at each town and village he lashes out at the newly prosperous farmers the so called cool axe denouncing them as enemies of the people and demanding their arrest as criminals affording grain while millions of their countrymen starve the cool acts are traditional enemies of central authority the Tsar's have preyed on them for centuries and now Stalin returning to Moscow Stalin escalates his revolution from above we must not place our industry at the mercy of cool act caprices we must make sure that state operated farms provide a third of our yield Stalin's plan is to provoke an upheaval in the villages but will rip to shreds the fabric of rural Soviet life and deliver the cool acts up for slavery he redefines the word kulak to include all but the poorest of the poor frightened and confused the cool acts past the word among themselves to assemble in Moscow and request a hearing they pour in from all corners of the vast Soviet Union and get their hearing upon which Stalin declares them capitalists and enemies of the people but they tell each other we are the people Stalin's offensive is underway and now he displays his mastery of the political Arts beginning with the set up in the village of Ludo why these cool acts had sentence certain village layabouts to a flogging Stalin seizes the moment he orders an exhibition trial to be staged and the media to paint the lurid picture of cool acts grinding the faces of the poor the wretched cool acts get 10 years their farms are confiscated it is an ominous precedent now Stalin pleased with his phony trial ordered an all-out media assault cool acts are the stronghold of counter-revolution rise up in arms against the cool acts liquidate the cool act class use your fists against a Kulak fist Italians of Stalin's secret police the ogp you are now phased into the assault and the work begins thousands of Kulak families are rusted from their homes their land grain implements and livestock plundered the scavengers missed nothing every last kernel is gleamed and carted off in the search for contraband every home is ransacked [Music] this woman terrified of the OU GPU and painfully aware of the camera as concealed grain it will go hard with her man they will be marched off to prison or stood against a convenient wall meanwhile the poorest of the poor are recruited as informers roused the poor for the fight against cool acts we don't need cool acts and their farms as his press clamors for blood Stalin reveals his next move banishment in the Ukraine alone 33,000 kulak families are evicted and transported to far-off labor camps under the cold eye of the secret police they are taken to the nearest railway and loaded into cattle cars it is freezing and the cars are unheated there is no food no water it is the catastrophic event the tragic end for an entire people and their centuries old way of life [Music] desperate mothers wrap their babies in their own colors and throw them from the Train with a note helping some kind Samaritan will find them Stalin again turns up the heat he sets out to collectivise all folly by deadly force where necessary Russia's farms will become state-owned communes and the cool acts will work them under the lash factory workers twenty five thousand of them are enlisted as enforces they're given a pistol and a crash course in the forcible collectivization of farms Stalin's mouthpiece Lazar Kaganovich exhorts these so-called 25,000 us setting their goal at 100 percent collectivization out of fight against Kulik oppression how to make a handmade 200 eggs a year armed with conflicts and pistols burning with socialist idealism spurred on by slogans but 25,000 errs are sent off like heroes to war which indeed it would become [Music] even the engine of their train urges them to take agriculture by storm Nobel prize-winner Mihail sholokhov pictures the role of the 25,000 in his novel virgin soil upturned these scenes are from the film based on that night 25,000 there so Marco you're here for the cricket farm case I am pursuing the party line policy who acts must be liquidated as a class its burden joined the partisans honor to him for that but in becoming a Kulak he has turned out an enemy crush him for that no question about it who's for Borodin being decolonized write it write it at the point of a gun I write whatever you say as a young man Fyodor Smirnov lived through collectivization so a $25,000 came to our village of bonanza dressed out in a leather jacket with a revolver on a shoulder belt and all the farmers were gathered together and was stated that on the order of Stalin all of them should be recruited to the collective farms we were against collectivization at that time of the new economic policy we lived well in the village all the farmers refused well the chairman of the village council came to father and said you Peter you have much cattle you have to give me your bull and father says but I'm not selling my bull and the Chairman says you'll give it to me for nothing father was a simple man he showed him his fist in a joke the next day they told my father that all the farmers who would not join the collective will have everything taken away from them and you are a well of farmer and as a Kulak you're going to be decolonized so we are taking away everything you own and they drove us all out of the house all seven of us with nothing the homes of the evicted cool acts are thrown open for the informants to loot [Music] it is a drama as old as time for guiding the leopard to his prey the jackal gets the scraps the leopards are rewarded as well for his efforts on behalf of collectivization Soviet President Mikhail Kalinin gets a medal from Starling Kalinin once a farmer himself accepts the medal in secret to avoid being seen as a traitor to his class for the remaining farmers anything is preferable to what they have witnessed many volunteer for the collectives surrendering cattle and implements home and land to the state Stalin himself conceives the scheme of subsidizing collective startup costs with the worldly goods Stalin takes pains to vaccinate the next generation of farmers with communist zeal Soviet teenagers are taught in school to place state loyalty above family ties as did a flick Morozov Pavlik Morozov a thirteen-year-old broke faith with his family and betrayed his father to the secret police for having Kulak sympathies he was killed by his outraged relatives his deed was made a shining example to communist youth Stalin's propaganda films paint a noble picture of the mission of the exiled farmers they are living in Siberia helping to build socialism what they are really building are camps which will ultimately make up the vast prison system known as the GU Black's barracks life is civilized and orderly says the propaganda film there is congenial cohabitation and creative play for children with ample time for relaxation in barracks 39 the young learn new skills in barracks 61 the political officer leads group discussion on the merits of socialism and after dinner there is musical entertainment a Russian joke tells of a gulag prisoner who writes his wife a long letter praising the extravagant delights of camp life he signs it love yuri PS they shot boris yesterday for complaining in spite of all gulag babies are born many of them soon to be orphaned Stalin calls 1929 the great turning point the year he broke the will of the farmers he sets new quotas for gulag arrests officialy 5% unofficially 20% and his eager 25,000 does get the message making good on Stalin's nudge-nudge wink-wink quota in the course of collectivization 12 million cool acts men women and children we'll be fed to the Gulag meat grinder the farmers in an agony of desperation burned their homes and slaughter their cattle rather than surrender them to the collectives in 1929 and 30 Russian farmers destroy a quarter of the nation's livestock and staged two thousand bloody revolts this for the brooding Stalin is his winter of discontent his patriarchal image as a nation's kindly thoughtful father so fastidious li maintained his fraying at the seams to reveal the snorting demon with him he must find scapegoats and blame them Stalin tried to avoid responsibility in March 1930 he wrote a demagogic article dizzy with success reprimanding the field agents for excessive zeal no blame for stalin the kremlin dictator pretended to a humane posture allowing some return to the principle of voluntary participation so stalin found a way to shift the blame but it was too late over 1 million farm families lost their livelihood and were deported most of them to siberia Boris Moiseev no your forgiveness proposal while rural officials try to rationalize the new policy to the suspicious and jittery farmers 8,000,000 Kulak families walk out of the connectives [Music] but Stalin again shifts his ground a revocation appears in Pravda it seems that the voluntary principle was an expedient not a policy change the farmers now understand too well they have lost thousands flee to the cities anything is better than the animal existence of the collectors but the cities close their doors a secret Stalin order denies employment to X farms they hide in the anonymous crowds but are hunted down today some of their identities have been published they came from all over the Soviet Union but had one thing in common or were executed in Moscow and secretly buried there [Music] nicolai brush oven KGB head of rehabilitation with the beginning of decolonization floods effects farmer streamed into Moscow that's why naturally in the early thirties there were so many people there who were formerly engaged in agriculture at the same time industrial construction developed in many cities including Moscow because of this there were a great many farmers looking for these building jobs after the Revolution and civil war a lot of farmers had already settled in towns and cities which explains why the majority of people they are where peasants most of the Dacula cost farmers who managed to escape from their places of Exile tried to get any job they could in order to be near their families and the very fact of being décolletage was irrefutable proof of being a counter-revolutionary here are some of those farmer faces perhaps moments before execution terrified but defiant [Music] Stalin tightens his stranglehold on the kolaks using the party the secret police even the Red Army he declares 1932 the year of total collectivization by December 20 million farm families will be forced into the collectives this summer the fields produce a good crop but the damage is done bitter and resentful the farmers dragged their feet and the crop is poorly harvested Stalin meanwhile is taking an ever larger share of the dwindling yield and exporting it for foreign credits as their portion shrinks farmer apathy grows now in a masterstroke of cynicism Stalin achieves two ends with a single move he will increase his export yield and in doing so will teach Soviet farmers a lesson they will never forget he will manufacture a famine his secret police pry into every corner of the Soviet Union for grain taking even the seed for next summer's crop Russia's farmlands become wastelands there is nothing left to eat but birds berries insects and one another as the famine grips service planet and those who can flee in search of food but Stalin traps the rest he throws Corden's of troops around the famine regions and starves the farm families to death deliberately methodically and effectively in this ukrainian village in one of the world's richest farming areas live darya stepanova of her family she alone survived the famine they took away everything we out first our cow which died because no one looked after it then they took away all the grain we had only our log cabin our izba left for my mother me and two sisters we didn't know what to do we couldn't even cry we had nothing to eat and mother began to swell from hunger when spring came I gathered some nettles and wheat and boiled them to use for food for my sisters and mother one day I was washing linen and my seven-year-old sister Anushka came up and said Dasha I'm going to drown myself without even looking up I said so drown yourself I couldn't imagine she was serious all of a sudden she jumped into the river and sank we had no strength to carry her to the cemetery when I brought bread for the first time my mother and sister began to cry give it to me give it to me but there was so little bread that I couldn't do it there was such hunger in our village that finally cannibalism developed some of the women bonded Pelagia Disgaea came choked entity Annika shook killed ate up their own children people dug up corpses and ate them on whitsunday of 1932 my little sister Marinka began to die she was only 6 years old and she was dying for 3 days she cried constantly begging us for something to eat then mother died of my relatives 16 people died all in all I didn't know how many died in our village until 1971 when I went back to visit I met a former activist collective farmer Alexander Punjabi that apart from those who had left the village or been exiled 1540 villagers died of hunger [Music] in the midst of famine Stalin's propaganda films show only happy farmers when rumors leak Stalin invites influential guests to inspect here George Bernard Shaw and Lady Astor then skillfully orchestrates their visits to the famine-stricken Regis sure and lady astor are expertly conned their visit has been carefully rehearsed and most of the happy farmers are cast from the ranks of Stalin's secret police back in England show exclaims famine certainly not the food was excellent abuse phenomenally nice sternum I'll tell you a story that shows Stalin's real attitude towards farmers I heard this from even Mihailovich gronski who was the editor of his VST and a close friend of Stalin's they were so close that Stalin gave him his home number in the Kremlin not many party people had that Kremlin number in the terrible year of 1933 grunts he was traveling with Stalin by tray they were crossing through the area where farmers were dying of starvation and grunts he summoned up the courage to say you know yourself Vissarionovich our farmers are dying here millions of them let them die Stalin replied they're just trying to sabotage us for Stalin the farmers were nothing but dead millions of deaths later Stalin has won his war against the Soviet farmers they are now harnessed to the collectors the ones fierce and independent farmers Russia's last holdouts against communism now drill meekly by the numbers they labor by the numbers their work is assigned in job Lots [Music] government bureaucracy takes charge of their lives inspectors nearly as numerous as workers scrutinize every move and finally the day's labor the results are recorded four points in this propaganda film every meal is a picnic my how delicious yes isn't it for children there is regimented pleasure for their parents the obligatory political sermon and the automated response Stalin at the height of the famine issues a cruel order the five storks law it prescribes death by firing squad or ten years imprisonment for stealing so little as five stalks of grain in the first year 50,000 are arrested 2,000 executed on a wintry day in Moscow a parade is staged to celebrate the success of collectivization the farmers are exhibited like roman captives a triumphant Stalin Basques in his achievement but his achievement would prove catastrophic the most crippling blow ever struck at communism for the Soviet Union would never recoup its former ability to put bread in the mouths of its people and 60 years later Stalin's achievement would become the undoing of his communist empire yet in defiance of reason he remains a god to many at this agricultural meeting Stalin leads his own applause the farmers who have met their master salute him historians believe that Stalin's motive for collectivizing was not entirely what it seemed as the arch bureaucrat Stalin may have reasoned wrongly that collectivization would bring with it certain efficiencies but most likely the motive within the motive was fear Stalin's fear the traditional Russian farming with its fierce independence of thought and action would one day threaten his omnipotence and therefore his most cherished ambition historical greatness his revolution from above would be seen as a revolution nobler even than Lenin's and history would enshrine him among the greatest leaders of all time [Music] a modern Caesar philosophy in his grandia on a collective farm in northern Russia Alexandre pica ever lived and worked her entire life we were a family of six three children father and brother and mother my mother died in the collectivization and my father died and we were left alone orphans for sixty years of work I have awards and commendations that's all I have left no money nothing so what I live alone I asked to live in the home for the age but when I went them and I saw it it was really horrible I couldn't do it I went away now I don't know where I'm going to end my days now I can barely walk God is my last hope [Music] [Music] [Music] years later Stalin admits to Winston Churchill that 10 million farmers died in the collectivization the actual number is 20 million by starvation execution and death in the camps [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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Length: 46min 41sec (2801 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2017

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