Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
If a state (that is, an institute that has protecting ppl's safety and their private property as one of its main purposes) instead robs people's houses and steals everything from them, even food, then you can certainly blame such a state for anything that those actions might possibly result in. If the majority of people in the area became victims of starvation because their food had been stolen from them --- it does look like a deliberately triggered starvation.
My father is native Ukrainian from South Russian Belgorod region. He was born in 1931, his parents were just simple peasants so he is one of those who survived the "starvation". Of course, he was too young to remember this time in detail but he talked with his parents, and he doesn't agree with your estimate of those events.
On the other hand, talking about protecting of people's private property, I would recommend to you to read the Constitution of Russian Federation. It says that in our country all type of property are equally respected. That means, that if the state has a duty to protect private property, it also has the same responsibility towards all other types of property - municipal, state, social, join-stock and so on. During the Soviet period of history a great industry was built in the Soviet Union - thousands of plants and factories. All this assets didn't belong to a certain person or a group of people - they were in a socialist property - the property of all Soviet people. So, how could it happen that all this property suddenly became a property of certain oligarchs in the 1990s when the liberal capitalist reforms started in the country approved by the Western politicians? Do you know what results these brought to Russian people? I'll tell you: deindustrialisation, impoverishment, social inequality, criminalization, corruption, decline in life expectancy, decline of birth-rate, terrorism ans so on. All this I saw in plenty an example with my own eyes. Have you ever worked without getting paid for three and more months when the inflation rate was more than 30%? I did. Have you ever received you wage not in money but in some natural goods, as, for example, sausage? I did.
So don't tell me about the great liberal values and the bad life in the Soviet Union.
Life in the Soviet Union was not easy, but there was a positive dynamic almost during the whole Soviet period. People always new, that to-day we maybe don't live very good, but to-morrow it will be better, and it really would happen.