• naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        Like personally? I often feel like attributing famines solely to one person is a bit messed up, although there are cases like Bengal where specific government individuals were enthusiastic .

        The party later distanced themselves from him somewhat, so presumably they thought his ideas could be improved on but I had thought a lot of china and USSR famines rested on really dumb ideas about industrial agriculture that were popular in many places + officials hiding bad numbers + desperate need to show immediate superiority of alledgedly better numbers + upheavals of massive civil was and ww2.

          • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            Realistically I’ll have to look into this before trusting a random comment and I probably wont because it’s half the world away from me and he’s dead anyway.

            I am sure there is some subtly in personal culpability though because between Mao and peasants killing birds was a whole bureaucracy that evidentally thought it was worth doing (and idk how much is slavish obedience/fear).

            Temujin personally killed a lot of people. Like personally ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and his overall campaign was ~10% of human population at the time an estimated 40 million, which seems to be comparable to famine figures even if we personally blame both of them. Dude was a certified maniac and I think that especially given the overall lower population at the time and deliberate murderous intentions stands as histories greatest monster and most murderous person.