Fin vs History - Human Rights Are Red Tape | Stalin: Famine (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Stalin Eliminates Clarkson and sends Caleb to the Gulag   Stalin: Famine (Part 2) The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.   For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon patreon.com/fintaylor   This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at surfshark.com/fvh Chapters; 00:00 - Man-made Famine 06:01 - Manifesting Industrialisation 10:41 - Charlies Gulag 13:29 - U-grain? Ukraine 17:45 - eliminating Caleb and Clarkson 23:52 - Human life is too important 26:04 - Collectivisation 29:00 - We’ve over done it 34:48 - Everyone is Albert Fish 36:36 - Cheer up love 40:23 - What I don’t eat in a day 46:35 - Things can only get better Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to Finn versus history. Erasure Gold is here. Oh, you have to be made. It's only game. And it's part two of the Stalin story. Yeah. So we left off. Stalin had risen to power.

He had, he'd been by Lenin's side as he had a series of strokes. And thankfully, he'd got rid of Trotsky. Yeah. This is what I'd do to you, by the way. If you were ailing, I think I'd start in it. Do you think? Yeah, you'd be begging to make sure that I don't, you know, take over, but I'll be just, you know, you can't speak. You're Elvis on the toilet.

Yeah. But I can eat though. Well, I'm feeding you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I'm slagging a man. I'm ringing the bell, going, no, no, no, he's just going to make this point off. He's just going to rank chaty BT dictators. There's always going to be his ranking. He can't do this. I'm calling Amanda a cow. That's my job. But yeah, this is the famine episode. And I think in the kind of, in all seriousness, this is the famine episode. But what a you turn that was?

With the sort of naughty history, dictators is your sort of first step in. But then I think famines, it then goes genocide, then it goes famines for the kind of Wikipedia scrolls. Yeah. Would you find that for the long kind of male? A man made famine. A man made famine, sure. Yeah.

Maybe, yeah, natural ones less interesting. Yeah. But I guess, yeah, I'm just talking about those long scrolls when you first realize. Phoebe's just written never a woman made famine. This extremism's got to stop. Exactly. She's a terrorist. Extremism has to stop.

Yeah. Woman made famine. Exactly. Every night's a woman made famine. It's called girl dinner. Yeah. You don't fucking eat. We don't see gender.

Yes. No, it's never a woman made famine. But the whole reason it's a famine is that men are starving. Because men don't starve. They feed themselves because they're competent beings. Right. Women every day. Self famine.

It's a self-famining all the time. Autorotic self-famination. Exactly. Exactly. As we've said many times, the suffragettes, it was just trying, you have to eat something, otherwise you'll die. Yeah. Idiots. Anyway, the reason this is a catastrophe is because lots of Ukrainian men starve. Right. Right. That's why it's notable. But you're right. Famine is a big part of the... You've done a big Wikipedia scroll on famine, surely. Man-made famines. Yes. Yes. Famine as a tool. Yeah. Yeah. Naturally occurring famines I don't really care about. Right. You know, but of course, a man-made famine. But this is a lot to life. This is male true crime, I feel. This is like... This is the long, the stories of how it builds and stuff like that. It feels it hits all the beats, but just differently to Jeffrey Dahmer. It's just on a, on a big scale, you know? Yes, exactly.

Yeah. So by the end of the 20s, Stalin is kind of lord of all he surveys. Yeah. Now, he turns attention to what he sees as the inadequacies of the Soviet state. Now, this is an absolutely phenomenal period of growth for the Soviet Union. This is where Burnham is right now, basically. Yes, exactly. On the brink.

of a man-made famine, okay, which is why we have to act now and get rid of Burnham, okay? You thought trust was bad. Wait to this guy. Yeah.

He's going to turn everything into Greggs. Right. That's his, he wants to requisition Pratt and he wants to make it Gregs. Buckingham Palace is now Greggs. Is there nothing sacred? Yeah.

Pret's gone. Pret's the Ku Klux. Yeah. They killed the prect class. The preck class has been killed. That's me and you gone, yeah? And now everyone's just a Greg's shopper.

Yeah? They've had to collect. electrivized Pratt into one massive Pratt and they burn that. Anyway, so what Stalin will do over the course of this episode, can we just take morality out of it? No morality for this Ukraine famine episode. Allegedly. Right. What Stalin does is phenomenal in that he takes an essentially an agrarian, pretty much a feudal society. Incredibly backward society. Huge but backward. Yeah. Over the course of 12 years, right, he has made them an almost an atomic superpower. I mean, it is remarkable.

It's the fastest I sent you a chat jvety ranking. Yes, you did. It was a relevant one. It was one of the best rankings you've sent. Yeah. It was fastest industrializations of all time. And top was Stalin with this, which is the 12 years from 1928 to 1940s,

the quickest industrialization of all time. Of all time. How do you do that? We're going to find out. Yeah, well, it doesn't matter how he did it. The fact is he did it. And if you think about it, it ends in about 1940 just as Hitler invades Russia. Now, not only did he manage to do it in that extraordinary amount of time, if he hadn't

have done it in that time, would they be able to defeat the Nazis in Operation Barbarossa? Interesting. You know, so maybe it could be his biggest achievement seen by many is that he won the World War II. And a lot of people say, well, how much is that him? Was he really great leadership? He lost so many men. Is he actually a great leader? but the actual credit he should be given

is the fact that he industrialized so quickly that he made Russia be able to defend itself against another industrialized nation. Is the worse the better just the greater good? The Nazis were defeated, right? But for the price of the Russia stuff, right? And therefore it's the greater good. He's doing the greater good.

Whatever. Saying whatever. Saying whatever as if I just said that. You, you reacted at the end of that, how we react. You went, you said that and they went, oh, what are you saying? What fuck he's all about that? That's you. Bit weird.

You went, anyway, is that the greater good? Who the fuck was that? It was you. It was you. It came out of your face. You fucking idiot. Right. So.

But yes, the quickest is utilization of all time. Yeah. By quite a distance, actually. Well, the next quickers is South Korea. It's 30-odd years, really. Yeah. So 12 years, how do you turn the biggest country in the world to industrialize quicker than anyone's ever done before?

Surely it's an easy job. Surely, maybe it's just a good can-do attitude. I don't know. What would you say drives industrialization? What methods can you do? I guess it's having team spirit? You have to, there are some, right, you can't be too sensitive. Okay.

When you're industrializing at this scale. Okay. Okay, there's a lot of, you have to be... You have to reach targets. You have to reach targets. You have to set achievable goals and you have to reach them by any means necessary. It's important goal setting is an important way of being productive, right? Manifesting.

Cosmic ordering. Yes, okay. You know Noel Leibn's rights on his hand what he wants to happen in his life. Okay. It's called cosmic ordering. Right. And then it shall be so because he's written in his hands. Yes.

Okay. So, yeah, he's manifesting his visual... Vision boards. Vision boards. Lots of Pinterest boards in the Kremlin. So Stalin has a Pinterest board for his five years. plans and the mass industrialisation of the Soviet Union. And I guess that is that turning it steel production, you know, from from agrarian society,

I guess. Yeah. Is it on his vision board five million Ukrainians starving? I think that's, no, no, because that's not part of the plan. That's, you know, that's a necessary byproduct of industrialization. Yeah. As we will find when burn eradicates the preck class. Yeah.

And we're out all out on the street. He'll be like, well, it was just necessary to get to where inevitably the world is going, which is where everything is Gregs. And as you've said, which I think is an undeniable fact, any great achievement is done with some form of slavery. Any great industrial achievement.

HS2 is a great example of our lack of slavery. Red tape. This is what happens. You say like of slavery. I say red tape. Right. We can't enslave people.

Well, how am I meant to get anything done then? How am I meant to build fucking anything if you keep banning slavery? The truth is HsS2 is trying to do an infrastructure project with human rights. That's what happens. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So what, what do you want? Britain, what do you want? Do you want to get to Birmingham in 40 minutes or not? Yeah. Because there's a lot of people wearing land yards that aren't working. Yeah.

Right. And also, they're mobilised because they're on scooters. All right. And they've kind of got a digger arm exactly because they've got one crutch, right? So they're incredibly mobile land yard class. Devastating land yard class, right? The British.

Seaside cavalry. Requisition them, okay, and force them to dig with their crutches. I don't understand how you build it just. Also, they can stand. They can stand up. We know they can stand. Yeah, take the lanyard off and stand up, all right. They're just trying to get on benefits.

Yeah, of course they are. Of course they are. They're trying to climb up the ladder through their own. No one who's digging a pit actually has ADHD, right? Because you're not allowed to because you're digging. There was, interestingly, in the Holom, how do you pronounce it? Holodomor. Holodomor.

I'm going to say it wrong every time. Not cart door. That's very different. The opposite of the Hallodomor is the cart door. Show him the car door. Show him the Hologna Maw. I'm just saying there's no ADHD in the Holognawa door. Absolutely not.

Holognaudor. Just, yeah, we'll get to the Hologna Maw. But basically, Hologamo is the Ukrainian of famine. I looked into this on Chachivu Tee because I was interested about the linguistics and the etymology. You're a Gemini guy. I'm a Gemini guy. Be honest. And you don't like Chachiri T because you think they're feminine.

It's a gay woman. in Chachimita, whereas Gemini is a bloke. So, I asked Gemini about the etymology of the word holodomor, because I thought it's interesting that there's the Holodomor and the Holocaust. I thought, is there any kind of linguistic route? Hull.

Hull. Hull. Any holes are gone. Right? And it turns out it's a complete coincidence, but... He says as if that's like, turns out it's complete coincidence. All right.

Well, I thought, if you're interested, if you're interested, which I know our listeners are, holocaust is from the Greek, which means completely burnt. That's what it means. So like a ruined barbecue? Yeah. Okay.

You've holocausted that flank. Whereas the Holodomor means very hungry, I think. Really? It's completely starving. It's something like that. So basically the ideal barbecue is somewhere in between the Holodomor and the Holocaust. You can't have all your guests turn up

and there's no food. So you can't serve them something that's completely burnt. Right? So we're looking for a kind of middle area between the two. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm an amateur linguist and I'm just showing my working there. What's this, Charlie?

It better be quick. There's so much history to get through. It's me digging your trench. Why are you covered in poo? I should have only to ask that. I don't know how you wake up. To be fair, this is what a lot of the gulags are we doing in this period. Why are you in your own gulag in your spare time?

Are you in a gulag? Look at the trees. Where are you? Argentina. Play that again. Why are you in a self-imposed gulag in Argentina? It was horrible. What are you doing there?

I was doing it to volunteer for a little sort of rapy farm man. He had a really young girlfriend, then we had to leave. What is he going to do with that pit that you're doing? What was it? Did you not off? No, we got out of there. Was it weird? Yeah, it was a bit much.

Really? My friends were like, I want to stay. No, my friends all wanted to leave, and I was like, we have to stay. This is fucking insane. And then I got convinced that we had to leave. It was a bit much. There was bed bugs, there was like weird. How much stuff he's sitting on this?

This fucking archive of insanity. But it is relevant, to be fair, because this is what the gulags did look like. I know, but why is he doing that? What year is this? 2018. Well, 2018, he's in a gulag. So he would have been a good, he would have been a good digger, I think, Charlie. Yeah.

As a sort of just nameless, faceless guy to just dig a halt. Charlie is built for that sort of work. I don't know. Anyway, listen. So Stalin in 1928, he throws Lenin's new economic policy out the window and he says, we're going to have five year plans. Yeah. We're going to, in five years, I want to achieve this, right?

Everything is targets. Everything is called. Target is everything. It's the origin of the five year plan. Yes, that's what this means. It's what a five year plan is. What's another five year plan? Get marriage?

Yeah, no, it's not that. In five years, where I want to be. I want to be married with kids. Okay. That's on my vision board. Oh, you mean when people just use that? Yeah. Yeah, that's a Stalinism.

It's a Stalinist trope. Yeah. Targets. Planning. Right. wife at any cost. I will kill whoever it takes to get a wife. Two kids, a dog, and a

and a lovely car that I'm leasing. Yeah. Yeah. And a drive, so the insurance is cheaper. That's my five-year plan. Right. Yeah. And I will kill a million Ukrainians to make it happen. So the targets he sets of the five-year plans are deliberately insane. Because he's, as you said, a very backward country.

So in 29, he starts this new five-day working week called the Nebrika. Yeah. where different workers take their rest day at different times, so factories can continuously operate, but everyone hates it, so he abandons it. Now, the crux. That seems all right.

What do you mean everyone hates it and he abandons it? They don't know what's coming, though. Yeah, but that seems like weird. That seems reasonable. Everyone's like we don't like it. Oh, if you don't like it, then we'll start. I'm fine, right. There's no food.

Yeah, we'll fuck you then. You'd be hungry. Very reasonable from start. The problem is that in order to basically, like, fast forward, you know, all they have, is grain. That's the only thing they produce is grain. The breadbasket of Europe is Ukraine, which rhymes with grain. That's why it's called that. Yeah. You want grain? Ukraine. That's the

advertising for Ukraine. Ukraine. You grain? Anyway, so, all they have is grain. So that's all they have to sell. What Stalin wants is he wants machinery. He wants expertise. He thinks that, as we said in the last episode, Marxist physics or materialism or whatever fucking word Troopsky came up with is the end point is that everyone's in cities and the city a working class factory worker is the proletariat.

Marxists don't like peasants. It's the same with Mao, same with Lenin. So I don't come with Marxists. Because they view peasants as rural, small-minded and obsessed with owning land, right? Marxism is a theory that's written around the industrial politely. It's about factory workers.

Industry. Because they have the ability to become class conscious in a way that peasants can't. Because they're too disparate and stupid and thick. And you don't collectivise like you're doing a factory. And they're all just trying to own land and have a small holding. Have a nice life. Yes. And have holdings.

So that's why both Mao and Stalin with their kind of grain thing, part of it is to sort of get rid of peasants as a class. Exactly. So he thinks that everything will get us to when we're all in cities. so basically fuck the peasants fuck the countryside so he starts selling

to be fair yeah he sells grain in order did someone just fart did you just fart Charlie what was that noise I actually don't know I swear on the Bible

no that there's a notification I think okay well my house is notified maybe maybe there's a poo coming there's a poo coming your phone just got message

poo coming yeah yeah his ass just notified the room If you got a smart ass, you've got a link from your ass to your phone telling you when you're poo coming. Because your ass is so baggy, it doesn't register farts. You've got to have some notification that tells you. Right. Please.

Please, you've got a famine to get through. We've got a famine to get through. Can you stop farting? Right. So, Stalin's solution is to basically finance industrialization by selling out the farmers. Okay. So Clarkson would be livid. Clarkson would have a hate this.

episodes. Clarks and Caleb. This is the opposite of Clarks than this. Yeah. Yeah. But Caleb is a Kulak. Right. Yes, he is.

Right. So grain is taken to feed the workforce. And what he does is he buys the state requisitions the grain at artificially low prices. So the peasants don't have any food and they don't have the money for the food. And what he does is he feeds the workers with their state-sponsored grain meal. Yeah. That's all they get. bread, I guess.

What are they eating in Soviet? Yeah, what does the grain become? Does grain just become bread? Must do. Because it's all grain. So is that all just bread? Yeah, it must be. Because everything's about grain. Yeah, it is. It's not any other seeming food source. Like fish or cabbage. I know. Where's that? Great is good though.

Well, yeah, I know, but we just, it's this all about bread. Yes. Surely there's other stuff to. Most Soviet citizens alone, dark rye bread, potatoes and cabbage supplemented by cymbal porridge. Why is it not a potato famine? Like in Ireland. And in many ways, you're is Russia's island. It is in many ways. Yeah.

You know, the Ukrainians, Ukrainian comics don't need jokes. They're just charming, aren't they? So grain, basically, they also sell grain abroad

so that they can get hard foreign currency, which they can then purchase machine tools and industrial equipment. Basically, Dona looks at Britain and France. He's like, well,

they're industrialized. We need to get there. How they become industrialized that they've exploited their colonial empire. We don't have a cloning empire. We just have a massive country. So instead, he's treating his own country like Britain treats India.

That's the whole idea. He's treating the rest of Russia like the Brits treat India. Yeah. You know, giving them cricket, giving them railways. Yeah. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. So now, Stalin hates peasants, as you said, because he's a communist.

And so he wants to eliminate the peasantry. Yeah. which is not something you'll hear anyone run on now platform. I want to eliminate the peasantry. At Burnham's Labour Conference. Eliminate the peasantry. Eliminate, right. So these privately owned farms

are to be replaced by the collective farm. Yeah, okay. And again, this is not a kind of cool commune fucky thing. No, middle class people are called wet bark and stuff like that. Exactly. No, no, no. No deodorant. Well, there's no deodorant. Well, there's no deodorant, but that's not there's none of that. I recently went to a well. where there was no deodorant.

The whole thing ponged. That was the theme. An unofficial theme. Yeah. I can't go to... Subtext. Yeah. I'd argue it was quite bold the smell.

Anyway. So, peasants would be brought together into these large agricultural units whose production would be supervised by the state. And so machinery like tractors, etc., would replace the traditional methods. And so this was called a col-coz, was it? And the people, the class, were called the Kulax. Yeah. So what Stalin did was he says, right, this is the enemy of the state, the Kulaks, the...

So they're just successful farmers, Kool-L? Yes, they are. So they're all farmers is just the ones who have done well at all? They're doing well for themselves. Yeah. Right. If you want HS2 built, you have to just kill everyone in its path. Right.

Right, because they're doing well. They're doing well. Apart from the really thick ones who are doing terribly, they're brilliant. than the ones who have shown any initiative are stealing evil. Yeah, exactly. So, because what Stalin will ultimately do

is he'll make heroes out of people who just work. So the guy called, this is a bit later on in the 30s, the guy called Alexi Stacharnov who holds the record for the amount of coal mined in a single shift, 102 tons of coal in six hours,

which is 14 times his required quota. Is it kind of like laser tag when you go there and you're like trying to beat the high scores and stuff. It's kind of incentivised like that. Fucking how you should dominate Oxford. I've talked about it before. But Laser Quest, Oxford Gloucester Green.

Between the years of 2001 and about 2006. Prime Taylor. Absolute. It was a laser holocaust in there. Yeah. I was lining people up. Yeah. Get them in the laser showers.

But you were incentivised by the scoreboard, right? Yes. That was the targets and beating your own P.Bs. I've got to beat four and that's very farthest. It's just, it's fairest, a caravite. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, Alexi Stacanov basically becomes like a hero of the Soviet Union. And he starts this, or they start this propaganda movement called the Stacanovite movement,

which so you'd have Stokanovites in every industry. And they'd be getting medals and shit and they would be rewarded. But then they become a kind of like, new class, workman aristocracy. So they're then hated and resented and they get government favoritism. Yeah. Anyway. It's meant to encourage people to become as to cannabis. It doesn't really work.

Anyway, so the Kulax are the problem. As you say, there's just successful farmers. Caleb from Clarkson's farm must be liquidated. So they're rounded up and divided into categories. So the most dangerous, i.e., the people who are really good and just want to carry on. Just shot. Shot. Shoot Caleb.

Get rid of him. Some have their property confiscated and they get to Porta to Siberia. Others are just resettled into labor colonies. So between 1930 and 33, over two million people. people who are classed as Kuulaks are deported. Now 100,000 are sent to the gulags. The gulags basically become this, I mean, you'd say northern powerhouse. 100%. Because if the gulag is the communist concentration camp, at least it's productive, you know? It's much more productive than the...

Exactly. There's another goal to it. Sorry, have you seen the video of the almost certainly Jewish woman complaining about the prices in the cafe Ashwitz? Yes, I have. Of course we've been sent it. Yeah, I've been sent it. Don't worry. I'm across any of these things because I get sent. Anything like this comes up. I'll be sent it 15 times in my DMs. And it's terrific. I just want to say it's terrific. She can't even say the word Auschwitz and she's

complaining about the cost of a smoothie. Smoothie? Yeah. I don't think she should do smoothies out. I can understand how you tea and coffee, but smoothie? Blending a banana, Auschwitz. Yeah. So it's just a little jovial for, I think it should be a more austere cafe. Well, everything is tasteless, isn't it? No, rye bread and tea, I think you can... No, because otherwise it's like an interactive experience. Yeah, but you just don't want...

Sorry, have you closed, did you close that? Is that still opening, is it? Yeah. Smooth. Well, I guess, yeah. Big orange and green smooth. Sorry, are you saying... Tanga Weiss blaster outwards?

Are you saying the Nazis basically neutral-bulleted the Jews? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, in many ways. Yeah, I guess so. It's a bit tasteless. Anyway. Ice cream van. Yeah, there is an ice cream van.

I think vanilla. It's a hot. There's a heat wave. Yeah, I think just a small, simple. It shouldn't be many choices. Don't need like a huge. It shouldn't be an excellent cafe. It should just be functional, I believe.

There's a way around it. What you don't want is for people to go. On food tourism there. I'm going to the cafe. Yeah. Like the Alchitz is whatever. The cafe is awesome. Unbelievable.

This is my top tip. Top tip. Yeah. Yeah. Go to Auschwitz. Do it quickly. Yeah. You can do it.

You can do it in like an hour. What's eating with Todd? He's got his big pulled port burger. And the way the cheese felt, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can't have... Yeah, if I do top jaw and I say the cafe Auschwitz, best restaurant in the world, you know, it shouldn't be that. You're right, it shouldn't be that.

Anyway, if Stalin's watching this, he's like, can you not talk about my Auschwitz? This is my interview my episode. How are we still talking about Hitler? Because he had more star quality. Sorry. What about my Auschwitz? This whole episode's about my Auschwitz. Yeah, but people don't go and visit Gulags.

Do you know about the White Sea Canal project? So this is one of the more notorious ones, right? Yes, I've got two bears of pounds on. Please continue. Yeah. So this was like especially brutal where they've got this thing where you have targets, right? But because you're not getting fed, the weak you get, the more you get punished with higher, you get less food for how, if you don't reach targets.

Oh, right. So they're getting hungrier, so they're doing less work. and then they're getting punished by having less food because they're not hitting the target. It's your cycle. So the, so many people were dying in building this white sea canal

that they became part of the concrete. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the bones just become, so they literally just, yeah. But then they, don't they then start actively going great because we can cut down on materials

and so we'll just use the people building it? And it kind of, at enormous human cost, they finally made this canal, it's not even a good canal because it's not deep enough for proper ships to go through because the people digging it

are like not even giving proper and... Oh, it's like Charlie. It's like Charlie. So, yeah. Yeah. But this is the thing. You can get huge things done

if you think human life is expedient. Yes. This is another lesson of history. Yeah, exactly. And why do we keep having to learn it? Yeah. You know, there's a reason this country is flagging. But would you...

As a patron member said to us as our cricket day out, no one wants to kill a million men anymore. No one wants to kill a million men anymore. No one wants to. And he's not wrong. He's not wrong. wrong. He wasn't wrong. Human life has become

too important. Yeah. Yeah. You've got air fryers. Exactly. You've got an air fry on a flat screen telly. You've said this. It's more valuable. It's more valuable. Yeah. So that's HsS2 isn't happening. Would you say, so Stalin's industrialization was broad scale of success. Huge success. Yeah. Yeah.

Which you cannot say for Mow's. Would you say that Mow? Yeah, again. So Stalin actually had a lot more success where Mow tries to copy him and instead he's just having the starving. Well, as we keep, as we said in the Pol Pot series, you know, it's Chinese Communist Whispers. Yes. Stalin, this is what it is.

Mao's like, yeah, I got an idea. By the time he gets to Pol Pot, it's just bowling, kill up all the glasses, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. And just start again. And he doesn't have, they're too, no one really understands, there's no movement for communism in Cambodia.

Yeah. Anyway. So, collectivization provokes this huge resistance, obviously. So Soviet activists from cities arrived in Ukrainian villages to enforce the policy because Ukraine, as you said, is the breadbasket of Europe. Yeah. And so peasants get summoned to face a Soviet official one-to-one,

and a pistol is placed on the table to basically say that if you join the collective farm, we won't shoot you. And so rather than surrender their property, peasants start destroying it. They slaughter They are annoying, I guess. They are annoying, I guess. Yeah. And also they slaughter their own livestock rather than hand it over to the collective farms, right? which between 1928 and 33, the first five-year plan, the number of cattle across the Soviet Union

halves, right? That's a holocaust. Yeah. That's, um, can we get the numbers up, please? How many cattle is that? Okay. Just as we must have made their name during the Napoleon's invasion of Russia. We must, moo their name.

I don't know what it would be. So Soviet representatives get beaten and driven out of villages, which then things start to ramp up, right? So they then sort of basically invade the peasantry fucking drops from 70 million castle to 38 million. Christ. Incredible. So basically, peasants, you're taking away any incentive for them to work, which is the great critique or the great capitalist critique of communism.

Is that if the state is telling you to do something for a quota and you don't get anything yourself, then you're like, I'm not fucking doing that. I mean, there is incentives. Yeah. If you don't hit them, you'll die. Yeah, but it's not, you know... I'll shoot you in the head if you don't do that. That's incentivising.

It is, but are you also inciting rebellion? I feel, ooh, I feel jeed up. You know what? You're really motivated me there. Yeah, I'm ready to go to work today. Can I have some bread? No. Okay.

I do need bread to work, though. Yeah. Hey, if you hit your targets, then you won't be in the canal today. Check obesity rates in Ukraine. Yep. In this period. Yep. We'd love to know.

Does Stalin? conquer obesity amongst his many triumphs. You would say that he does, actually. Yes, I would say so. One man's Holodomor is another man's Zen pic. Yeah. So, is everyone really, you know, like, there's hangar. You know you get hangary?

Yes, I think. Are they absolutely... I think it might be past hangary. Yeah. They might be really upset. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really honoid, actually. Really fucking annoyed.

Because when does hangar at end just leave and then you're just fucked? It's flivid. They're clivid. He's flivid. Yeah. And that's what the This one called the Holonimo. Yeah.

A lot of more of this. Yeah. Not more of this. Absolutely hick of it. Yeah, they're hick of it. I'm hick of it. I'm hick of it. They've had enough.

So, now Ukraine, there's a crisis in 1932, right, where the Soviet harvest in total was 40% below the previous year. Ukrainian harvest was 60% below. So, now, In this sort of context of selling grain for abroad to buy machinery. Yeah.

Ukrainians themselves cutting their own cows to shit. You know, they don't help themselves. Right. They burn their own farms. Right. Anyway, local Ukrainian communist officials are saying these targets are impossible. Mm-hmm. In June 32, a senior Bolshevik, I don't even know how I'm trying that.

H-R-Y-H-O-I-I. Horu-Badrovsky. Yeah. He writes to Stalin saying, we've greatly overdone it. His name sounds like a samurai committing Harry Kiri. Yeah, he does. He visited villages and finds that there's a considerable part of the countryside engulfed in famine.

What does he mean by we have greatly overdone it? Is that 3 million people have starved to death? We've fucked it. Yeah, we've greatly overdone it. Yeah, I think we've overdone it. We had good intentions, but we fuck this. Yeah. And so he appeals for urgent food relief, and Stalin refuses and said,

instead increases the quotas and made people personally responsible for meeting them. Tough on... The quarters of hunger. Tough on hunger. Tough on the causes of hunger. Yeah.

Yeah. Tough for the causes of hunger. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, but that's why I like about Stalin is everyone's like, they think that it's an ideological and they're like, oh, this hasn't worked.

Everyone's starved. And Stanley was like, you know what? That was my plan all along. That's when you realized that... Actually, it's gone exactly to plan. No, it's more just to like, yeah, yeah. don't care if they're starving, where are we going? Yeah.

It's not about the journey, it's about the destination. Yeah. Stop dithering about it. So it's the opposite of Miley Cyrus's the climb. Yeah. Her whole thing is it's not about how fast you get there. It's not about what's waiting under the side. It's the climb.

Whereas Stalin says it's not about the climb. No. It's not what's waiting on the side. Yeah. So Cyrus is actually a very anti-Salinist position. The real, the real victory is all the people that starved along the way. Yeah. If Miley Cyrus is in Stalin's Russia,

she would be executed for being anti-Salinist. Well, she's honest, she looks like a communist does nowadays. So, yeah. Do with that. Do with that what you want. The Great Decline in Communism, from Stalin to Miley Cyrus. So, listen, by the summer of 1932, peasants are too weak to work. Too weak or too stubborn?

Yeah. That's what Stalin says. Lazy. Yeah. Yeah. Can you not work? Yeah. Yeah.

Or won't you work? Yeah. It's the benefit system. It's the, it's benefit street. Can't cook, won't cook. Right? So on the, on 7th of August 32, He introduces the seven-eighth's decree,

which means any collective property, including food from a field, will result in 10 years imprisonment or execution. So if you take anything that's not yours for your own hunger, 10 years in a gulag. Or death. They also had these special steel poles. Do you know what these?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just dig to make sure people weren't hiding grain in the ground. It was like designed so they could find out. Which I think is a bad vibe. Do you know what I mean? I think just have one. Even to build one of those, it just doesn't, it feels like the vibes are really like,

there's not a lot of positive energy. Feels like overreach. Yeah, yeah. It just would make me feel a bit like, I don't know. So by the winter of 1932, famine is spreading across the Soviet Union and generations of Ukrainians would call it the Holodomor, right? Which means death by hunger or killing by starvation.

But this is completely hidden, and so it doesn't become international thing and it's hard to talk about, because the information is so. So let's talk about what starvation actually does to the body. Yeah. Okay. So at first, the body burns through every bit of glucose it has.

Everything's about hunger. All thoughts about food. At this point, this is just me when I wake up, right? As the reserves disappear, the body begins consuming stored fat. Now, I never got to that point in my life. You have to wait 20 minutes at least. I know, I just can't. I just can't.

I have to just muck-bang pastries downstairs before I get to 0.3. now once the fat is exhausted it starts consuming itself protein is stripped from muscle to keep the organs functioning the body becomes skeletal this is sleeping lunch this is yeah this is exactly this is me meat free mondays for me the body becomes skeletal and my legs and feet and abdomen swell because of the fluid my my skin becomes translucent rashes and lesions appear my immune system weakens dramatically right eventually the body can no longer sustain its basic functions but then i have a burger and it's fine. But these guys, sorry, these guys, their organs failed and they died. It's pretty horrendous stuff.

About one or two months after without food. So people are trying to escape Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people abandoning their villages. 100,000 people fled between December and February.

Right? So just in three months. Railway stations are filled with people looking for bread. They're bread mad. I mean, a lot of Russian history is about bread,

isn't it? Because there's the bed protest in 1917. I think calling them bread mad is a little. They are mad for bread. They are. They are. I'm pushing back on this.

They're the opposite of white women. They love bread. Yeah, fine. Yeah. Yeah, it feels, especially them trying to escape and being forced back. It feels real.

Because they're the bread basket. Yeah. And now they're just a basket. Yeah. Yeah. Right? The empty basket. They're an empty basket.

Yeah. And trucks are moving through the city's collecting corpses. Yeah. So. It's so fucking blit. There's not one nice thing that's happened here. It's, apart from that.

That one guy, what's his name? Stavanovich. Just the Canada by it. That's the only positive thing I've seen in this entire period. It is so great. No, no, no, no, no. No. What's the end point?

Right, exactly. You know, don't think about the now. Think about the future. Where are we going? Yeah. Yeah. What does a sunny getaway with Air Canada sound like? Sunny Jamaica moves to its own rhythm.

Rio comes alive long after the sun goes down. Philippines slows everything. down. And just when you think you've heard it all, there's sunny Lima. However you imagine your sunny escape, Air Canada can take you there. Book hot fairs and vacation packages today. Nice travels. People in Ukraine are eating moss, leaves, acorns and shoes. But in the 30s, they were doing this as well. They were boiling old bones in the hope of trying to get some kind of nourishment from them. They would boil belts and shoes. so they could chew leather.

By the spring of 33, there is cannibalism. People, right, this, people start accompanying their children to school because there is fears that they will be kidnapped and eaten. Yeah. You'd have to say, government isn't working. Yeah. When people are trying to protect their kids from being kidnapped in the way to school and Eaton.

What does even school look like? I don't know how much is getting done. Jamie School dinners? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think, it is Albert Fish. Everyone's Albert Fish.

Yeah, everyone's Albert Fish. It's a fishy in time. So Soviet authorities. Yeah, the Soviets would say it's barbaric and use it as racially profiling the Ukrainians like the Brits do with the Irish, saying like, look at these fucking savages eating their own,

which does feel a bit insult to injury, to be honest. Well, I mean, don't eat your neighbor's kids. Right, okay, fine. Now, the precise death toll remains contested. at least five million people died in the Soviet famine, but with Ukraine, they think about three million. 10% of the population disappears between 32 and 33, which is not as many cows.

So I think really the Hologda Moore should, you should take second place in the tragic, because the cows are the Holocaust. The holocaust is first. That's like that halakoust, man. Yeah, yeah. So. Oh, here we go.

The Hologda-Moo. The Hologda-Moo, Phoebe said. The Hologda-Moo. Pretty good. Yeah. The Holodomu. The Halodamu. While the countryside is starving, what's Stalin's home life like?

Yes. I enjoyed this bit of the story. Yeah. So obviously, senior communist officials have access to nice shops. And you're wearing one of your fanciest watches today. Fancy watch because it's a communist episode. And that is ultimately what happens every time communist happens is to go, oh yeah, nothing for you, but I'll have that.

I'll have that. I mean, he's got a lot of work to do, though. He doesn't need to be sharp. Oh, he's course. Your brain has to function. Yeah. You know, he's a stout guy. He probably needs about 3,000 calories a day.

Housing, Dachas, and Stalin's family lives within this world. Now, he married his second wife, Nadia, in 1918. She was 17 when they met, and he was nearly 40. Their daughter, Svetlana, is born in 1926. Now we will deal with her, because that's an amazing story on the Patreon. In the early 1930s, Stalin's marriage was quite volatile. Now, Nadia is disturbed by her husband's policies, right, but that's not your business. Yes.

That's work. Right. Okay. I feel like you're, you should, this isn't your. I don't want to take my work home with me. Yeah. And what I do, also, are you enjoying this, DACA? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like this all gets paid for? Yeah. Yeah.

So it's easy for you to sit there and judge. Who's fucking paying for what you're wearing right now? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Do you not like the things I buy you? Yeah. Yeah.

So the tension start to build. Now at a Kremlin. Kremlin dinner in November 1932, right, Nadia makes an effort to dress nice for the occasion. Nice for once. Yeah. If Simon doesn't notice. He spends the evening drinking. Yeah, he's got, he's unwinding, right?

He's drinking. He's flirting with other people's wives, you know, because he's just being a bloke. Yeah. And that's what you're like about him. This is why I like this bit of the story. Yeah. Right. So Nadia's not drinking and he's like, go on, love, fuck it.

Come on. Have a drink. Come on. and she's being like sort of morose and so he starts flicking pieces of orange pill and cigarettes

at her to attract your attention I'm having a laugh or not is this a leisure or not it's a party yeah fucking cheer up love it might never happen yeah

anyway he goes hey you drink and she snaps back that her name was not hey and leaves the room and he's like fuck and I can't do anything

right yeah can't say anything I imagine the biggest eye roll of all time I imagine once she leaves

thank God she's gone absolutely black hole sucking all the energy out of the evening. Anyway, she then goes back to a room and shoot herself in the heart. Yeah. Attention seeking. I mean, honestly, Christ, you've got to take responsibility

for your own unhappiness. It can't be up to me. Yeah. He, while she's doing that, he's having an affair, but that's besides the point. He's playing grab-ass. Yeah, he's fucking someone in his DACA, but that's what it's for.

Anyway, he sees it as an act of betrayal and never visits her grave. Awesome. Yeah. Passive aggressive with his... don't-dead wife. Like that. Wife called itself,

well, fucking, you just, you think on it, you lie there. Yeah. So, supposedly,

he does take us quite hard, supposedly. But he takes it hard in a way, it's not feeling grief, it's feeling just, it's all betrayal. Yes. All his emotions of betrayal.

Yeah. Feeling betrayal is horrible, though. Because he's also, if you compare, he had his first wife, which was when he was 20 and she was 18.

I've got what her name was. I think she was Georgian, and he says that she was the only one who could soften him. And because obviously at every point he tries to, people try and blame a different thing as to why he ends up being the way he is.

When she died, he threw himself on her coffin. That's right. And had to be dragged away. So he views it as that was his true love and sort of never loved again. Yeah. Very much Casino, OJ's pool boy. Yeah. J's pool boy.

Right. OJ.'s pooh boy makes another appearance. Yeah. So, um, so this famine is going on. Yeah. And Stalin's official explanation is saying, well, this is all the Koolax fault there. get their hoarding grain and they're sabotage

and their collectivization. And so officials are forbidden from using the word famine. And so doctors are told not to record starvation as a cause of death. Stop famine. Yeah.

So... No, I'd say that anymore. No. In 37, there's a census and the population stands at around 8 million below the expected figure. Oh.

So Stalin suppresses the census and then punishes those who produced it. Yeah, it kills them. Yes. Kind of great. That's a great, another great styling move. I don't like those numbers.

Bang. Sam all of those. get to get rid of it get it up the pitch fuck it off so there are some journalists some foreign journalists that try and report

about the famine there's a guy called Walter Durante who had heard something was going on and so he's he's American that guy so he works in the New York Times

so he is publicly betraying the economic transformation as quite favorable and he downplays the reports of masturbation even though he knew the death toll was in the millions and had gone and seen it and stuff.

It's very much Tucker on Putin. Yeah. If you want to get the exclusive access, if you want the big interview, you've got to be positive. Pierce Morgan. Yeah. That's the way to do it.

You have to just kind of lie because then you get, he got a fucking two-hour sit down with Putin. He's not lying, though, is he? He's just not telling all of the truth. That's right. Because the economic transformation is remarkable. Yeah.

No, no, no. It is. It is. Yeah. GDP is great. growing. GDP per head? I guess the heads are... Well, yeah, because... No, it is growing because the heads are gone down. So it's a fracked...

The heads are falling off. Yeah, the heads are hungry and they're fallen off. But it doesn't matter. The GDP. You know, GDP at all cost, growth at all costs. Yes, it was very capitalist. Yeah, I mean, this is trust stuff. Yeah. You know, no one's prepared to kill a million million. So... Lessons of history. Look, if you want, if you want to get to Birmingham in 40 minutes, you know what you have to do. Yeah. Anyway. Um, now, there's a Welsh journalist called Gareth Jones. Um, probably

the Welsh just, I think everyone in Wales is called that at some point. If you look at the Welsh rugby team, they're all called Garth Jones. Yeah, the Welsh census is just Gareth Jones times three million. Yeah. Anyway, so he breaks the silence. He goes from Moscow towards Kharkiv, which is in Ukraine, isn't it? And so, rather than staying in the controlled world that was being shown to foreign correspondence, he gets off the train.

It takes the scenic route. Take scenic route. Walks the Ukrainian villages and he goes, fuck me, man. Jesus. Fucking hell. Jesus Christ. Here's what I don't eat in a day. gutted

wrong glass empty glass gutted double parked not parked at all not parked at all nothing's parked so he says

God famine Sandoro would be fascinated to see what happens to Sandra and a famine it would be fascinating to see what was Andrew in a famine yeah so basically he was on a he was on a train

and there's a communist saying to him There's no famine. So he flings across the bread into a spittoon, like a dish he spit in. And then a peasant runs up and eats it ravenously. He then throws a bit of orange peel into it. And again, the peasant just downs it. Yeah. Ukrainian eating with Todd.

Yeah. But also Ukrainian food is weird to Western eyes. So at this point, you're thinking, is this just... I did go to Ukraine. And the dish I had was, what's the cabbage suit called? the fucking borsh out of a cabbage. There was not even a... They just had a massive cabbage.

They cut it open. They liked doing that. In Lithuania, I had bread soup and a loaf of bread. Yeah. And I was like, this is... I also was in Kiev. I thought I was ordering eggs, but it was actually a mistranslation,

and I ate testicles. So, it's the sort of... I mean, it's a famine... Famine cuisine. Whenever you're trying this sort of stuff, it's... You know, part of the reason maybe British cuisine is less exciting,

quite bland, Hammonds here in recent history. I'd say Irish cuisine's not that interesting. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Let's like that. Let's not, you know.

Come on guys. You didn't even fucking get like fucking chamey. You guys are like a fucking test kitchen. Look at Chinese cuisine. It's phenomenal after the Great leap forward. Yeah. Testicles are kind of eggs, but like boy eggs. And that's probably what the link was.

Kind of boy eggs. Etymologically. Yeah. Yeah. They're the inverse of an egg, really. They're not the other. opposite of an egg. To the inverse of an egg.

Are they not? Well, I don't think you can destroy an egg with a testicle if that's what you mean. No, but you can complete one. Anyway, so, John, Gareth Jones holds a press conference in Berlin and tells the world that millions are starving and also they're eating boy eggs over there. It's disgusting. And Durante fucking says that Jones is exaggerating and does not understand the reality of Soviet development, which is interesting. So even when it's out in the open, Durante's like, yeah, but

guys... And he's New York Times, they're like, well, I trust him. And so Durante had a better reputation. So his version of events kind of wins. Now, later, while working on Mongolia, he's kidnapped and murdered age 29, which some attribute to Stalin and Soviet intelligence. Why is he on Mongolia in 1935? Yeah. What are you doing there? Yeah. Looking for trouble. So the famine deepens, and this becomes part of a wider campaign to force the countryside into submission. And so churches are closed. Ukrainian folk music is banned.

Yeah, because it's a symbol of nationalism. Culturally associated with the Ukrainian peasantry is suppressed. Ethnic Russians are moved into depopulated areas of Ukraine and given farms. Similar to Ireland, Northern Ireland, wouldn't you say? Yes, the plantations. But also, this is why, this is the start of the tensions and why Ukraine has such a large ethnic Russian population, which Putin is now seizing as causes belly. Anyway, the famine kind of ends in 33 when they realize they can eat other stuff apart from cabbage or whatever.

And food grain starts coming back. And to be fair to Stalin, he has largely achieved his objectives. The five-year plan was a success. Yeah. All right. He's broken peasant resistance. And he has control of agricultural production. And, you know, Magnetagorsk?

Do you know about Magnetagos? No. This insane city that he builds, this like sort of is a bit like Port Talbot. Where is it? it's in somewhere in Russia yeah it's a mad monumental Stalinist architecture yeah is it real

yeah it's a city that basically all of them it's produces steel is it still functioning this is all questions for Charlie who's just staring at the screen like it's a plastic bag in American beauty larger steel producer

and a global whereabouts is it it's still actively it remains a major it's in no but I mean the banks the Euro River okay right interesting

yeah so he builds that and it's like when's the Trans-Liberian Railway built because my dad's new wife's dad helped build that in Siberia so what era is that? Your grandpa-in-law? My grandpa-in-law. Your step-grandfather. My step-grand. I guess is that true? Is that, is it genuinely my step-granddad? She's your step-mom. Yeah. And it's her dad. Yeah. So my step-granddad. No, you're step-great-granddad. My step-granddad. Or is it her dad? Her dad. Her dad. Ste-granddad. Yeah, your step-granddad. Damn. I got a step-granddad called Patricia.

Step Grandin, I get stuck a washing machine. Don't give the fuck about Patricia. I'm not going to lie. I think he was probably a step great granddad. Because it was, it was night. I bet it was step great granddad. Yeah, it was step great granddad. Yeah, it was step great granddad.

Yeah, it was stuck in washing machine is a really, really bad film. It's just sad. Get stuck in the train tracks. The Transylberian Railway. I don't rate that old man out of that washing machine. Takes no time, though. He's trying to wake up. What do you mean takes no time?

It'll take no time to get him out there. That's all my putty. Okay. Yeah, it's true. This, okay, the harvest improves in 33 as well. So, you know, things can only get better. Yeah. Is that sort of stuff?

And, you know, yes, millions are dead, displaced and have been deported, but this is the price of progress. Yeah. Okay. This is where we get the quote from Stalin. His most famous quote, The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million.

is a statistic. Spitting bars. Yeah? He said this is a churchill, I think. Yeah. Shrugged. Yeah. Because once you've killed one,

you know, it's about the end goal. Yeah. It's about HS2. So, uh, Stalin has broken the back of the Ukrainians. Their backs have been blown out. The backs, they've blown out the backs of the red basket.

And the tension is now turning towards the Communist Party itself and the people closest to him. In our next episode, we will explore. Say it with me, brothers, the Great Terror. Because that wasn't a great terror in any way. No. But now we're actually going to go into something terrible.

The assassination of that prick, Trotsky. Yeah. And the Nazi Soviet Pact. Oh, God. And Barbarossa. Oh, fuck, I'm going to bust. Yeah. Right?

That's already on the Patreon, along with the entirety of this four-part series. Three pounds a month. Join us. Yeah? Instant access. Yeah. Yeah. Come everywhere

with the patron, right? That's it for this episode. We'll see you next time for one of the biggest episodes to date. It doesn't get bigger than this. Stalin.

It's the Great Terror. It's Hitler, it's Stalin. Yeah, it's Operation Barbarossa. It's Ronaldo and Messi playing on the same team. But the Al-Classico, you know, key era. It is Al-Clasco.

It's potentially our biggest ever episode. No. Could be. Why would you say that? Well, I probably probably isn't. It's part three of those. Yeah, but what happens in it? There's a lot going on in part three.

Yeah, I'm excited. We'll see you there. Goodbye. Bye. We're some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money.

Learn more at Bloomberg.com.