Guerrilla History - Communism - The Highest Stage of Ecology [Peacemongers]

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

This is a release from the terrific show Peacemongers (Fredshetsarna), a Swedish anti-imperialist podcast.  The episodes features Henry Hakamaki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro discussing their book translation of Communism - The Highest Stage of Ecology. Be sure to subscribe to their podcast and/or their YouTube!  Below are the shownotes from their episode posting: In this session of Peacemongers we had the honor of having Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro and Henry Hakamäki on, the translators of Guillaume Suing's "Communism, the highest state of ecology" from iskra books. We dive into the different parts of the book and a surrounding discussion about ecology, biology and socialism. We explore the ecological experiences of Cuba established in the 90's, the so-called "special period" after the overthrow of its ally and trading partner the Soviet Union. What contradictions there are within Cuba at that point and its conditions for realizing a transformation on a massive scale. We discuss the not so linear history of the Soviet Union through the lens of ecological development. A country often demonized as ecologically destructive in a totalizing manner, while the historical data throws a wrench in that narrative. The book also delves into a discussion about biology and genetics, how scientific theories are politicized in the polemic of the sides in the cold war and why the marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism is useful for understanding evolution and biology. On the topic of this book we discuss the relationship between imperialism and ecology, history and science. How research is weaponized, weather historical or scientific to fit the narrative of the vampire like beast of capitalism and fascism. This is a quite long, sometimes challenging subject we found very educational and interesting, we hope that you will too. A big thanks to our guests Salvatore and Henry for coming on. You can find the book at https://www.iskrabooks.org/communism-the-highest-stage-of-ecology This as well as many other fantastic books there are all available as PDF for free but we encourage you to support their work by buying some beautiful books. For swedes who are interested in iskra books, email bokkallarenorebro(AT)gmail.com for what you are looking for and I'll try to get it in my next order from iskra. Some references in the episode: Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro: Socialist states and the environment https://www.plutobooks.com/product/socialist-states-and-the-environment/ Davies & Wheatcroft The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933 Levins & Lewontin: The Dialectical biologist https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674202832 And in case you have lived in a cave, Henry Hakamäki is the cohost of Guerrilla History Podcast (https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/) with friend of the show Adnan Hussein where you can find 5+ years of top class counter-historical discussions from politicization of dinosaur fossils to war, decolonization to football. Follow us on UpScrolled: https://share.upscrolled.com/en/user/86bb8ed2-1df9-458f-914a-a301c955f940/ Or on instagram and twitter: https://www.instagram.com/fredshetsarna/ https://x.com/fredshetsarna Support the people of Palestine through the Sameer project: https://chuffed.org/project/149178-sameer-project-x-mass-displacement-campaign Or Lifeline for Gaza: https://lifeline4gaza.com/ /Peacemongers

Hello, guerrilla history listeners. This is co-host Henry. This week we have another very special release for you. It's an episode from another show hosted by a couple of great comrades in Sweden. The name of the show is, and I apologize to all listeners in Sweden, Fred Shetzarna, which translates as peacemongers in English. This is a show which is a little bit under a year old, but really has some terrific guests already. It is both in Swedish and in English. The majority of the episodes are in Swedish, but they do have quite a few English language episodes as well, the most recent of which I and my very frequent collaborator, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, are the guests on. So a little bit about Brett Shetana or peacemongers. As I said, it's a geopolitical show that's based in Sweden by a couple of great comrades. We have Mehmet and Eric hosting it. And you would certainly recognize a lot of the guests that they've had for their English language episodes, at least. Just to name a few of them, they've had Laura and Cody from the Good Shepherd Collective, who of course have been on guerrilla history.

They've had Jared Ware from Millennials Are Killing Capitalism, also guerrilla history guest. Aza Wynne Stanley, another guerrilla history guest. Let's see. They have a lot more, actually. They have Sina Rachmani, who has been a guerrilla history guest before and is the producer of Adnan's other show. they've also had Adnan as a guest before. So if you haven't checked out those episodes, you should definitely check them out.

The show is really great. I highly recommend subscribing to it. I will have their information linked in the show notes. So do check that out. They don't have any ways of supporting them in terms of Patreon or anything. So the way that you can support them is to help share their episodes or share this episode. Today we're going to be releasing their newest episode,

which is titled, Communism, the highest stage of ecology. So listeners, for those of you who are unaware, the most recent Iskra translation that has come out that I worked on with Salvatore was communism the highest stage of ecology, which is a book by French scholar, Guillaume Suing. It looks at agroecology in Cuba. It looks at the ecological transformation of the Soviet Union,

both during the Stalin period as well as the post-Stalin period, particularly the Hhrushchev era. It takes a look at dialectical materialism within science. It's really a fascinating book, and you probably could guess that it was a pretty fascinating book, because the conversation that we had with them about it was about two and a half hours long, and it definitely could have gone a lot longer.

So again, I'm going to have Fred Shetsarna, or peacemongers, linked in the show notes below. Do subscribe to them. Do share their episodes. I hope that you enjoy this conversation. I just want to also mention before we continue in that you can find the book that we discuss, communism, the highest age of ecology,

at iscrabbooks.org. A reminder that all Iskra books are available for free as PDFs, or you can buy a paperback or hardcover of this book. Of course, the most important thing for us is that you get the information into your hands regardless of your situation. So if you're only able to download the PDF, go ahead and do so. That's the most important thing for us. But do also keep in mind that

Iskra Books is a non-profit volunteer run communist publishing company. And as such, your book purchases are what allow Iskra books to continue making the books that they do. So if you find the work that Iskra does valuable, including this work, communism in the highest age of ecology, or all of the books that we've put out by people like Torkelowson, we have Lucerto translations, We have a lot of very interesting things coming out from Iskra. Do if you have the financial ability to go to Iskrabooks.org, check out the catalog, buy a book or two, request your local bookstores to stock Iskra books, call your local library and request that they stock some Iskra books in stock,

because all of those things do allow Iskra to continue running and doing the important work that Iskra does. But the most important thing, as we said, is to get the information into your hands, regardless of your situation. So even if you're just able to download the book, go to Iskriebooks.org, download it for free, read it, make use of the information, and do spread the word about it.

We think that it's a really important work. We would love more people to read it. And just as a final notice, if you're listening to this and you also have a show and would like to discuss communism the highest stage of ecology, you can get in touch with me. I know I'm not on social media,

really at all these days, but you can get in touch with me by emailing the garage. history email account. It's Gorilla HistoryPod at gmail.com. G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A HistoryPod at gmail.com. I am rather inundated with work these days. So as much as I would love to correspond with everybody who writes in, I just don't have the ability to do so right now. But if you are interested in talking about this book, I certainly will try to make time for that and can also connect you with Salvatore so we can have a great conversation about.

it. So with all of that being said, I'm going to shut up now and turn you over to peacemongers. I hope that you enjoy this conversation on communism, the highest stage of ecology. Hello everyone. Welcome to Fred Setsana or Peacemongers in English. Today we have a fantastic episode with Salvatore Engel de Maoro. Sorry, I had to write that down. And Henry Hakamaki and also Eric from our own pod. Salvatore, would you like to introduce yourself? Sure, and thank you very much for having me on, for invited me. I'm a faculty member at a university here, geographer,

and try as better as I can to contribute to understanding the relationship between socialism and environmental impacts. Thank you. And Henry, please go ahead. Who are you? So, I first want to echo Salvatore's appreciation for the invitation to come on to the show. It's a great pleasure. And I also just want to mention that while we had many people reach out to us that they

were interested in this book, this is the first media interview that we've done on it. So you have that honor. Or maybe we have the honor. In any case, I'm Henry. I am an educator. I'm based in Russia and have been for just under five years. Most people, if they know me, would probably know me as a result of either co-hosting guerrilla history podcast or through some of the work that I do with Iskra books, including

works with Salvatore, which I'm very pleased to be able to do. Awesome. Thank you. And welcome. So the title of the book was pedophilic cannibalism, the highest stage of capitalism, right? That was the... No, sorry. That was the working title.

I had to do it. Sorry. So, communism, the highest state of ecology is the book you translated together, right? So what is your relationship to... Sorry, how come you chose the book? Why did you translate specifically this book? And what relationship do you have to the subject itself? well it was rather fortuitous

I had written a similar book a bit different in some respects but a similar book I was working on it simultaneously unbeknownst to me that Guillem was already writing and had published his book by the time that I was finally getting a book contract to write mine and so when I knew of this book, I knew of Guillaume's book through Café Marxist,

which is I find one of the better YouTube presence, types of YouTube presence in French, in France anyway. And he was interviewed and he described his book and his findings, but I couldn't get hold of his book until after I published my own. So I cited him. And then he saw my book. And he contacts me and I couldn't be more pleased. So then I finally get around to getting a copy of the book and I discuss it with many folks because I was rather excited and then discuss it with Henry.

So we had already done a translation of Los Urdo together. And I thought, yeah, this book would be quite valuable in English language. I think a lot of English speakers would find this very useful. Sorry to jump in, but what's the thing? What was the title of your own book and the Los Sulae book you've translated together just so people know? Oh, sure. Yeah. So mine was social estates and the environment, lessons for eco-socialism,

and the Los Ruehle book was the one on Stalin. Black Messiah. Yeah, well, a critique of a black legend. As we translated, I think in hindsight maybe a, I don't know, it's a difficult thing to translate from the Italian and different denotations in the different languages. But yeah, those were the two books.

Yeah. Thank you. So this was rather fortuitous and I was very, I mean, it was great. It was the timing, I guess, the arrival of the book into my hands and so funny reading it instead of learning through, you know,

verbally present, for a verbal presentation. and then just a combination of having already been at work with Henry was basically the catalyst for this project. And relationship-wise, today I actually listened to that guerrilla history episode about your book, Salvatore, which was a great episode. We should definitely link to that episode, great episode. Thank you.

But did you know each other from before that episode, or was that the first sort of interaction you had? I can answer that. I had come across Salvatore's name previously through some papers that he had written, but I wasn't personally familiar with him. I did have a friendly relationship with Pluto Press at the time. And when I saw that Salvatore's book was coming out, I thought to myself, this has to be an episode for guerrilla history. And so I contacted Pluto and said, give me Salvatore's contact information. let's make sure that we get this done as quickly as possible.

And I got a copy of the book, which I brought to Russia with me. It's one of the few books that I brought in my first trip here with me. And yeah, loved the book and really look forward to the interview. And the interview went for, you know, you listen to it, almost three hours, very in-depth. It was one of my favorite interviews, to this day, one of my favorite interviews. And after that, Salvatore and I just started email. mailing back and forth about things that we talked about in the interview, other things beyond that. And so we developed a relationship after that point, to the point where eventually we got to

the Lesotho book where it was presented to me that we would have the opportunity to translate Stalin history and critique of a black legend through Iskra. And the folks at Iskra turned to me and they said, you know, Henry, you were one of the people that was pushing for getting this book translated through Isker. Why don't you just take it? And I thought to myself, well, I am not a native Italian speaker. So that's a terrible idea. But I do know a native Italian speaker that I'm on very friendly terms with.

So I kind of strong-armed Salvatore into doing that work with me. And yeah, we have been a very close friends. I think it's fair to say ever since then. We've done subsequent translation works. We have another one in the works. right now. And yeah, I think that I just also want to add a little bit about why this, this book, Communism, the highest stage of ecology, really caught my imagination when Salvatore brought it up. Because I know most people who listen to guerrilla history, the people who listened very early on probably

know my background, but people who have been listening for only the last couple of years probably don't know. Before I was in the field of education, I was a scientist myself. It was in the field of science anyway. I was still studying. But in any case, while I was studying viruses primarily, I did, of course, have a very keen interest and a deep interest on the questions of eco-socialism and the environment, which is how I came across Salvatore's name in the first place. So being able to, when Salvatore came to me after we did the Lesotho book and said, you know, Henry, I have this possible other book that we can work on from this French scholar, Giamsuing and it's a book on Soviet Union and Cuba and agroecology and all of these sorts of

I said, of course, sign me up. I'm more than happy to work on that. It's a topic I'm very interested in and I get to work with you again. So yeah, I didn't need a whole lot of convincing to sign up for that project. Excellent. I read this when I was in Cuba. So it was it was very good. I got to see the ecology in an organic farm. And I showed them the book and it was very interesting. Anyway, before we start, I also want to say that to all our Swedish listeners at least, that I happen to run a bookstore for my party branch.

and have imported books from Iskra, and I plan to do it soon again. So if they, you could email us at fretsatsatsana at gmail.com and just say, order these or just check them out. They are all free as PDF, so highly recommend. Anyway, we usually mostly talk about war and imperialism, resistance. So ecology is sort of out of our scope. But when we look at imperialism, both control of land and resources are very core components. And we can see like anti-ecological

warfare used by, for example, Monsanto, incorporating seeds and pesticides in Latin America, or use of Agent Orange in Vietnam or how important like food sovereignty is under sanctions. And on the resistance side of things in progressive movements are often split up between different questions or ideological battlegrounds whether it's workers' rights or peace, environment, etc.

And every issue is it in itself, like, fractured into different tendencies. So to situate this book, why is this book important to ecological discussions? And why should Marxists or peacemongers or guerrilla historians be in the forefront of ecological discussions? Ah, okay. I suppose I'll take this first. There are quite a few reasons, I suppose I can think of, and I'll try to articulate this as effectively as I can. This is important for ecological discussions because in environmentalist movements, in particular, there is a tendency to vilify socialist countries for their environmental record. But there's also a tendency in some parts of leftist circles too to do the same. And so empirically, this is incorrect, just on those terms.

But also, in terms of strategy, it's very short-sighted, because it then leaves avenues open politically for opportunism from the right. and it is not by accident that green parties gravitate very often to coalition work with even fascists or right-wing parties and of course we have the example of Germany in terms of imperialism you have the Greens being involved in the bombing of Yugoslavia for example in 98

so there's that there are multiple reasons I suppose why it would be very important from a point of view from environmentalist movements. And with respect to Marxists and peacemongers, who I hope and guerrilla historians, why is it important to be at the forefront

of ecological discussions? As far as I've come to understand the ecological issues, in terms of social struggles, it's not so much about environment as all. It's really about quality of life. life. And quality of life is a basic aspect of working class life. And in that respect, yes, I think it's necessary to be at the forefront for that reason alone. You know, if one

rereads or reads for the first time, angles the condition of the English working class, you know, those are environmental conditions. And I think that the task of any working class based party or movement should also be, among others, to fight for better quality of life conditions and to understand ecosystems and the environment in a much wider way than the bourgeoisie does, or have inculcated on us, which is a dichotomous view of nature in which we have the environment on the one hand and then we have society on the other or culture. And that view is what leads to bourgeois environmentalism, which has to be fought ideologically and in everyday social struggle to recognize that ecosystems are not something that we behold as a museum piece somewhere

outside, you know, away from us, but it's our everyday reality. And as such, it's of vital importance. I mean, I mean that literally of vital importance to a working class movement in that just things. So I'll add in my perspective on these questions and I'll take them in turn in the order that you ask them. So the first one was why is this book important to ecological discussions? And I'm going to first say this is an extremely important book for ecological discussions, but it's not only this book. It's other books like those that Salvatore continues to write. Salvatore has a couple of new books out recently, which we have to discuss sometimes soon, But this book and books like this are absolutely critical because they are what are going to be able to create the conditions where we can shatter the ideological stranglehold that capitalism has surrounding ecological discourses.

As of now, the dominant narrative is that ecology is a moral concern separate from politics or that it can be. be solved through market mechanisms and consumer choice, or now we also have these trends today of techno-optimism where, of course, technology is driving the ecological crisis in many ways, but we can also technology ourselves out of the ecological crisis. And if we just enable the technological corporations, the billionaires, the oligarchy, to create the technology that will get us out of this situation, well, surely they will, because they'll understand. understand the long-term impacts of the course that we're on right now. This is a fantasy.

This is a fantasy. Green capitalism is a fantasy. The narrative deliberately obscures the truth, which is that the unending, relentless drive for profit is the engine of planetary destruction. It is. We have to just be upfront about that. And this book, it brings up that there are two axes of analysis that we have to always keep in mind. And it goes back to the way that you ask the question in that your show focuses on war and imperialism. This is connected with it.

Yes, it's a book on ecology, but it is connected with it because we cannot ignore when the question is on ecology or the environment, class struggle and imperialism. We have to demonstrate with concrete historical examples that only when systems are in place that try to move beyond the profit motive, a socialist system based on planning, collective ownership, only these sorts of systems have the possibility of managing to integrate large scale, sustainable, ecological practices into development. So going back to my background of working with viruses, if you talk about ecology without talking about capitalism, it's like talking about a symptom or a disease, but refusing to name the pathogen and refusing to find ways that you can treat the pathogen. The disease that we're seeing is ecological destruction. The pathogen is capitalism. in order to treat that disease, we have to eliminate the pathogen. We have to dismantle capitalism, global capitalism, global imperialist capitalism.

So moving on as to why Marxists, I think you said, peace activists, guerrilla historians should be at the forefront of these ecological discussions. It's because the ecological crisis is the ultimate systemic crisis of capitalism and understanding systems is our purview. The capitalist don't understand systems, at least not beyond the way that focuses on how they can utilize the system to extract a profit. They don't think about the connections between non-profit-oriented aspects of the global system. That's our purview.

Peace activists understand that resource wars, climate refugees, imperialist scrambles, crambles for fossil fuels. I mean, look at what's happening in Venezuela today. You know, that's a very naked example of this imperialist scramble for fossil fuels. Although, as I mentioned recently on guerrilla history, if we just totalize it into being the resources, it misses the point that also there is setting examples against non-systemic actors. So those that are acting outside of the imperialist capitalist global system or trying to find. find alternative ways of operating. You have to beat them if you're the capitalists.

You have to condition other countries into understanding that negative impacts will happen to them if they try to act outside of what you're trying to impose upon them. But nevertheless, fossil fuels are a big aspect of that. Gorilla history, guerrilla historians, rather, we try to reclaim history from the powerful, the ones that typically have had the opportunity to write history. And to dig up the buried legacies of past struggles, as well as existing examples of socialist ecological practice like we see in this book by Gyom Suing, we have to not concede this ground on the ecological debate to liberal moralists or the green capitalists, corporate sustainability consultants, what happens. you. We have to be the ones who step up, understand the root causes, the historical struggles,

and the absolute necessity of a radical revolutionary transformation of society in order to move beyond this. That's our purview, and they are not going to do it for us. We must be on the forefront of this question. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I wanted to go through the book a little. It's got it's mainly three parts. With the first part being Cuba

or agroecology, but mainly focusing on Cuba. Also mentioning Burkina Faso and during Thomas Sankara, which is very fascinating as well. And during the period of

the USSR, in Cuba or when the USSR fell in 1991, Cuba faced like the special period and very unique circumstances. So how does ecology become a necessity

in the special period? And what can we learn about the Cuban process and prerequisite factors to ecological development such as education, worker power or self-determination, organizational structure, etc. Salvatore, do you want to take a crack at that first

or do you want me to say something? Either way, I mean, maybe I'll just say a few short things. It's, I have a feeling that Errol himself would actually be an even better place to answer that question because of having been there. I've never actually been to Cuba, although I've corresponded with a few Cuban scientists. I wish I could actually go there and witness in person how things have been achieved in spite of the blockade that is now what more than 65 years on.

And it's being undermined even further by this is kind of related to answering the question. It's being exacerbated by undermining the ability for energy provisioning by attacking the energy provisioning by attacking the. Venezuela, of course, and by the U.S. imperialists surrounding all these Pacific, I mean, Caribbean countries with the Navy, in any case, it's important to emphasize that the agricultural principles, and just in general, the environmental policies, that eventually enabled progress to be made since the early 90s in Cuba, long preceded the early 90s. I mean, there had to be an educational system that promoted certain kinds of scientific endeavors,

scientific research that laid the groundwork for being able to succeed in spite of adversity. in the 1990s and it's incredible what was achieved under such incredible hardship in order to just feed people. So that's one aspect. More specifically in terms of agroecology, that actually was already being developed in the 1980s at the very least. And that's also something that is oftentimes skipped or omitted, especially by detractors of the Cuban Revolution. You know, they'll just think, ah, it's just because of the end of the Soviet Union, that they had to scramble and find, you know, ways of practicing farming without using pesticides or agrochemicals as much. Well, is that, sorry, is that the definition of agriculture? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't, I presume that that would be a widely known understanding, and I should apologize.

For the people who've read the book, yes, absolutely, but not for our usual people. We're going to go, what now? Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you, Mehmet. So, I mean, agriculture can be defined in many ways, and there are attempts also by liberal elements to hijack it. So basically, it's something that's developed as a term in the 1970s, late 60s, and it has both technical and social aspects.

The technical aspect is to apply ecological. principles to farming so that you can avoid as much as possible agrochemical use, if not reduce them altogether. And it also includes irrigation systems, putting together different kinds of intercropping systems, meaning you put different kinds of plants together so that they can enhance each other's growth. But that takes reliance on two things. One is, of course, field experiments, the usual agronomic kind of study, but more importantly, a lot of the traditional knowledge systems that have already developed these techniques for thousands of years. And so it's also a process of recovery of existing knowledge systems that are being undermined.

And so agriculture in terms of the social aspect also includes promoting the Campesino, the peasant systems and the peasant knowledge systems. and the peasant knowledge systems that exist and also this is where you can have different kinds of agriculture. Some of it is more focused on small-scale peasant systems and that's what they really want to revive or promote and others see that you have to go a bit beyond that and see how you can coordinate these systems

at the national level or international scale. Like, for example, the movement of the Travagadores Sintera in Brazil, the MST, the landless workers movements who have been promoting agri-ecology exactly in that way. How do you coordinate across multiple scales so that you can promote, yes, this kind of farming that dispenses with agrochemicals and that focuses on intercropping and traditional knowledge systems while at the same time providing for reliable food sources beyond just a village where the food is produced?

So there's an aspect of food sovereignty as well that is implicit in agor ecology, right, in terms of laying the groundwork to have people who produce food not relying on large corporations and breaking free from that monopoly. So there's also that food sovereignty aspect. So the social and technical aspects. I hope that makes it more understandable. That was fantastic. So to go back.

Oh, thank you very much, my message. Thank you. I thank you for asking, and that's so important. My bloody academic work, you know, just I take for granted certain terms, you know, that's something I still have to kick the habit of. You need ignorant people like me to pull you back to the pedagogical side of things. So I'm happy to be the dummy one. So go ahead, please.

Sorry. If anyone is the dummy, this would be me for not recognizing that fact. But anyway, so the, The agricultural principles that were studied already by the 1980s, they were very important, they became very important in the 1990s with the reactionary coup that led to the destruction of the USSR. And so, as I was saying earlier, if it hadn't been since the Cuban Revolution,

the education program, the promotion of environmental or environmental principles, even though they may not have looked like they were being put into practice, but certainly the first thing that one has to, I guess this is going to be a theme that's going to run through maybe our entire discussion and maybe we'll come back to it repeatedly. But you have a situation of dependent development and underdevelopment, mass poverty, illiteracy, you know, healthcare doesn't exist.

you're like starting almost from scratch and under siege. So you have to develop industry. You have to develop all sorts of means in which you can just survive. And yet, even under such incredibly awful circumstances, laying the groundwork for understanding ourselves as parts of nature, not as separate, because that's a Marxist principle, and it was being applied. It's just that it could not be over there.

short term and this is something that Guillaume emphasizes over the short term you could not necessarily concretize an ecological perspective but as matters develop further one gains more sovereignty then other possibilities can be put in place and whenever the opportunities arise they will be put in place under a socialist system in Cuba the situation was such that they had to depend. It's an island. I just sometimes have to remind myself, it's like,

it is an island in which you cannot really grow cereal crops. You cannot, you know, produce the kind of food that most of us in the global north, but in many other parts of the world, will take for granted. There are limited areas of production

for agriculture, and so and then you have a history of slave plantation systems that have contributor to the destruction, of course, not just of ecosystems in terms of sugar-playing plantations, but the destruction of, or a very destructive kind of relations in society that also one has to still fight against, especially racism and machismo. So you're dealing with all these kinds of circumstances. How do you organize a farming system that is not only not dependent on agrochemicals, but also that is socially constructive? And all of these,

these were being tackled in different ways, but they were foiled by imperialist forces. Of course, you also have enemies from within, so I wouldn't want to discount that either, or internal contradictions to deal with. But again, you know, education systems, policies to change the way that people think about society as well, instead of a racialized kind of hierarchical system,

as people were taught from birth, you know, as something more egalitarian. And all of these kinds of struggles play into the development of farming systems that, I guess, you know, the fashionable term now is equitable, but basically, you know, redistributive. And that are focused on feeding people, not on profitability, to say the least. But not at the expense of people's health,

and also the health of ecosystems that goes with it. And in an island, the size of Cuba, you have to think even more about ecosystems and making sure that they're livable because there's not that much, I mean, literally there's not that much space. So I'll dig out that. Sorry to jump in.

You mentioned internal contradictions. I mean, we know the external contradictions. I mean, the empire versus the people or life in general. But the internal contradictions within Cuba, and then you mentioned also there were policy adjustments. Could you give some examples maybe? Because that sound very interesting. Sure.

That's a great question. I'll try to remember as many details as I can. But there was a... I mean, it was a... People can always go back to the book, definitely. But just to give some examples, if you may. Sure. Yeah, some of it is actually beyond what Guillaume wrote as well.

Because he does not deal with the internal contradictions. aspects, for example. I mean, there are several kinds of contradictions. Of course, they already alluded to sort of like having to develop under circumstances of siege and how that plays into what kind of ecological principle or even social or communist principles one can even apply, you know. But some of the contradictions internally early on, for example, were how do you maintain, it's not too different from a revolutionary Russia, you know,

It's like, how do you keep your technical experts without, you know, sort of having to pay them more or somehow like having more carrots for them than for others, you know? That's an internal contradiction. Another internal contradiction. And it's not something that goes away, I must say. And then there's also the other contradiction that is related to the siege, the military economic siege from the U.S. Empire. And that is, you have all sorts of incentives that are given by these imperialists. to have dissidents, their views be magnified way disproportionately. So that, you know, the 11th of July was at 2020.

I can't remember which year it was. You know, there's like minor, you know, a number of people, and it's blown out of proportion, and it sort of, it feeds into social tensions to create or widen existing contradictions between those who might be. be bearing a little bit more of the brunt of the blockade than others. And that exists. I mean, it's not something that one can sort of pretend away. And, you know, President Diascanel recognizes that.

You know, part of the contradictions you can see also when one of the ministers, you know, came out with an assorted statement about people who are houseless. And she was immediately criticized. But that is a sign of some of the contradictions, you know, even within the party that have to be fought. So I'm just touching on a few things. And another thing is contradiction between the, within the farming sector, more specifically, you know, the land reform issue. You know, at first, you know, wanted a land redistribution to all the peasants, you know, and so they finally could have land to farm on their own. And it's not too dissimilar

from the kind of contradiction that you see in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution. right? So, but then how do you coordinate all these, all these, um, um, peasant units, you know, all these agricultural units, you know, run by small peasants? And that's where, you know, they had this collectivization process that also ran afoul of many of the peasants themselves. So that creates a contradiction. But it's an important one, uh, to undergo because that's, um, you know, if one wants to make comparisons in Tanzania, they weren't successful in making their coordination effort and they fell apart with uh uh ujama movement you know as as well-meaning as it was and it also ran into some violent confrontations and but in kuba they were able to actually manage

those confrontations and uh and uh in a constructive manner so that you know most people became better off through the the socialization of farming than through the you know sort of the dispensation of land to small concerns, you know, small private peasant concerns. Anyway, so there's some examples. I hope that it wasn't too long. Thank you very much. Thanks so much. That was great. I can answer to the like Cuban situation as well as I know it, but to the ecology question that was really good. I mean, the land question is of course,

state ownership of land makes it possible to like allocate urban organic farms. I mean the organiponico I was to had started only half a hectare or one hectare and it's 10 times the size today. Eric, what is an organeponico? Oh, it's an organic farm. Thank you. Thank you, man. And the collective work structure, which they use, is also an important factor. And the education factor, the guy that showed us around was a metallurgic engineer by study.

And so they were very well educated. And I think that helped because they had to use so many creative solutions to like pest control or preparing the soils with the different worms and charcoal. And yeah, it was an advanced process really. I'm glad that you mentioned Just a tiny comment about the ingenuity and the creativity of the people under imperial siege Like that sort of reminded me of the engineers in the tunnels in Gaza That make crazy weaponry out of nothing almost Or the bombs that fell on them and that didn't explode and so forth

Anyways go ahead Henry No, it's on the same point, actually, of creativity and innovation. So I'm going to tie this in with a couple of other points that I would have said, although Salvatore really nailed that last answer, I must say. He took a lot of the things that I would have said, but he put them much more eloquently than I would have. But turning back to the special period for just a moment, it's important that everybody understand how brutal the special period was.

I mean, it's this unplanned, it's this unplanned event which causes an experiment that is imposed by an internal shock where overnight Cuba loses over 80% of its trade, imports of oil, chemical fertilizers. We've talked about, you know, they can only grow certain things on the island in the first place. And we'll talk in a little bit about what the situation was like fertilizer-wise before that time. But they lose their chemical fertilizers from the Soviet Union at that point as well. They lose food imports from the Soviet Union. You know, they lose over 80% of their trade overnight.

And at that moment, if you're somebody who's living in Cuba, you have two choices. Collapse or innovate. And of course, it's easier to innovate if you have a structure in place in terms of an educational structure in place where people are well educated. If you have a structure in place of health care, where people are able to be taken care of if they're sick or injured. But at this point, ecology became a necessity for survival as well. ecology itself.

However, and this, I think, is the critical socialist distinction. The response was not the chaotic devolution into peasant subsistence that, you know, you would have seen in a capitalist society where all of these things collapse overnight. Okay, well, back to peasantry, we go. Instead, we have a planned, scientific, mass mobilized conversion to agroecology. The state, while retaining control of the means of production and also creating and then maintaining this highly educated population, completely redirected resources and knowledge overnight, essentially, because they understood the criticality of this moment. It decentralized agriculture even more at that moment. It promoted these organoponicos, invested in renewable energy. we haven't talked about how advanced the Cuban push for renewable energy has been since the special period,

but it really is beyond what you would expect given the means that they have and given the constraints that are put upon them. The crisis is what forced the issue, but it was the socialist structure that allowed for a coherent, national, innovative response, successful response. ecology stopped being a choice for the people and it became the very material basis for continued national sovereignty and social development. Now, just one other point, I guess, before I turn it back over, which is that we have, I mentioned fertilizers and I know we talked a little bit about what it was like before the special period. So looking back just before that, the Cuban developmental model was different. Now, that's an obvious statement, right? Because we just talked about this forced innovation that pushed them towards agroecology. But the model was different fundamentally.

Being heavily integrated into the Soviet bloc, much of the developmental strategies mirrored the Khrushchev and post-Hruzschov shift towards chemicalized monoculture, agriculture, wasn't the model of sustainability. that we're talking about in this post-special period. That's not to say that it was, you know, these large plantation owners with sugar cane farms that we were seeing prior to the revolution, but that was still something that was being focused on for developmental model. But even then, and this is the critical point,

even then, the socialist foundations were being laid with universal education, a well-developed scientific infrastructure, a national health system. These were the human capital and the institutional prerequisites that enabled the ecological turn so rapidly later when it was imposed upon them. And it was what allowed for the innovation to come from the people as well as from the state in order to navigate this almost insurmountable challenge that almost no other country and world history has had to face that dramatic. of a cut in what was coming into it and what they were able to sell out of it. So the pre-1990s period shows that socialist development can have phases and less sustainable models.

It's not to say unsustainable models, but less sustainable models. Can, if the socialist structure is present, provide the material and intellectual basis for a later conscious shift towards sustainability, which is a shift that, let's just be frank, is completely impossible under a privatized, for-profit capitalist system. We wouldn't see that if it wasn't for the system that was in place in Cuba. Thank you. I mean, there's something that sort of pops in my head about this is that the caricature understanding of what socialism or a socialist state is, is like this caricaturized version of a super bureaucratic, super stale, very sort of heavy, clunky kind of thing.

But then you have this example of Cuba where, as you explained, like in a matter of overnight, they like had to change everything, but still sort of survive under the imperial siege. And they manage that. It's amazing. like both both the dynamism the innovation and as you mentioned that the sort of the stable foundations still in place untouched it's it's incredible actually so and so so diametrically opposite of what people would in the west the indoctrinated liberal mind would think about what socialism is yeah thanks you mentioned that it was

forced, they were forced to take this action. But I also believe that the ideological imperatives were there as well, even without the dire situation that they were in. I agree with you. I just want to underscore it. It was the impetus for that moment for it to happen, rather than it being the only reason that they did that. Yeah, you have sustainable thinking in other areas before.

But also the factor that different farms don't compete against each other, makes them want to help each other with technical knowledge. And the farm I was at, they had like they were selling seeds to households in the area or helping them with the knowledge for like they said there were 2,000 households in the area that were growing their own food so they would be sort of like a hub for to help them or to give them seeds or soil or whatever and also the food

would go to schools and hospitals in the first hand. So it played a very social role in society and not much went to waste so to say. We could move on to

the second part, which is the Soviet Union and Henry you started talking about the Khrushchevite period, which is sort of what this book goes into. Like their change from the early Soviet Union to the new lands policy, which was done when Khrushchev became head of state. what is the new lands policy and what is what does the book say about ecological or sustainable ideas in the USSR and what happened to it I was basically you're happy to take this up okay I mean I can talk on it but I know that you have a lot to say on that I'll just start complaining later about through stuff it's what a small anecdote before Salvatore begins sorry for this interruption Salvatore. I share an office with a historian, professor of history. And we have conversations

pretty frequently. And he, there's a lot of things that we have very friendly conversations about, but ideologically he's very far away from me. So, you know, sometimes the conversations, they're all respectful. They're all friendly. But we do have quite a few disagreements. However, the Newlands policy, he's, I'm not going to say his name because, you know, saying what he said might get him in trouble. But he said when Krushchev proposed the new lands policy, he should have been shot. So this guy, and I'm not saying that this guy is like a revolutionary pro-Stalin guy by any means. He's not, he's not me in other words. But he and I agree on that to some extent. I might not put it

quite in those words, but he did. He said he should have been shot. So Salvatore, I'll turn it over to you now because otherwise I'll be on that sort of level. Yeah, I don't know. Shooting people is a bit too drastic for me, but I guess it depends on the circumstances. The first, I mean, I wanted to, before I engage with that question, you know, Errol, what you've witnessed and what you've related about Kuva is, is precious and it's fantastic. I hope you have the chance of spreading this knowledge that you've gained and experienced far and wide.

With respect to the USSR, let's see, there's so much, I guess, that one could talk about, I just want to make sure that I'm going to be focused because with respect to continuity in rupture

and what changed and what did not change, I think it's important to recognize the overall context as well before going any further. Khrushchev was part of the same administration that he lambasted with the so-called not-very-secret speech. And so that so-called speech, which was basically just a bunch of made-up things. or aggrandized things, was to signal a departure that was not really in existence. But, you know, so there is a lot more, I guess,

display than actuality. So some things remained in place and were continuous. But what did not continue was... I'm sorry to jump it, but a lot of our audience don't even know who, Khrushchev... came after or yeah exactly who he came after so it's like

sorry but people have like people don't know anything about Soviet here other than it was really bad or something like that so of course yeah yeah sorry yeah well if I no no please no nothing to apologize for indeed the reverse

taking much for granted so just the name Stalin already you know um will elicit very negative reactions thanks to what we've been taught, I guess, from an early age. I grew up in Italy, but then the US, you know, sort of made it even more, I guess, strident, you know, this treatment of the Stalin administration.

Because it wasn't an administration. It involved millions of people. That's one thing that I want to emphasize. Whenever one is talking about these Soviet governments, one has to understand them as collective entities. They're like involving millions of people working and struggling and, you know, with contradictions as well among themselves. And it's not a linear process. It's not monolithic. Just like any society. I feel compelled to say this stuff because that's exactly how the Soviet Union is depicted, even on the left oftentimes. And that has really to go. If one is serious about history, one then is serious about the social aspect of this.

is more complicated. But yes, so Hhrushchev was part of the Stalin administration. And so I think the wider context was that the attempt to display a rupture. There wasn't exactly a rupture with the entire infrastructure, the party work. And it wasn't like that at all. And there were also dissenters within the Hushchev administration, who certainly did not like the adventurism, if I would call it that way and I would, that was involved in that part of the administration headed by Husthov.

So with that in mind, one of the things that certainly was very constructive during the Svalian administration, and one could absolutely criticize a lot of what happened under the Sali administration, of course, including the hundreds of thousands of people being executed, for starters, and, you know, all that the forced labor and all that.

So we're just going to emphasize, you know, ecological aspects, but one shouldn't, you know, sort of be remiss about those other aspects as well. And there was a lot at stake during that time period, including the threat and then actualization of the Nazi invasion. So all of that has to be taken to consideration when considering environmental policy as well. So the aim of the Stalin administration to create a very ambitious and complex planning for the management of the resources, one of the main emphasis was a forestation or reforestation or reforestation, depending on which region when he's talking about.

And there was a huge success to the point that it reverberates even to these days in terms of the amount of forest coverage that otherwise would not have existed without that administrations. You know, the so-called great plan, the great plan for nature. I can't remember the exact title. For the transformation of nature. Thank you. Exactly.

You're welcome. The plan for the transformation of nature. And indeed it was. And what's interesting is that what usually gets forgotten, including by Western Marxists, which is very curious, is that the concept of transformation is a dialectical process, and that's how it was envisioned. You know, it's that whatever activities humans are involved in,

they're transforming the environment, and by doing that, they're transforming themselves. So this plan was a transformation of society as well as the ecosystems involved. And so in any case, it was the protection of soils, you know, from soil erosion, especially from wind erosion and also water erosion that was afforded by these very extensive, you know, shelter belts, meaning like large swaths of forested areas, strategically located so as to reduce wind damage to soils, also was abandoned. during the Khushchev administration. And that was quite damaging that abandonment, not just in terms of forest,

but also in terms of preventing or reducing soil degradation problems. There was also an aridification problem to be combated. One of the things that sometimes also is omitted, actually most times it's omitted, is a basic physical geography of the USSR. And, you know, if I'm a geographer, so I pay attention to these things, it's almost like a New York reaction. And, you know, one quickly realizes that much of the USSR is prone to drought

and that even though you have extensive, you know, so very fertile soils, those are grasslands that's kind of like the Great Plains in North America are very susceptible not only to drought, but to quick degradation once used. because the organic material has to be replaced. And this is one of the things that was being accomplished under the Salin Administration is the attentiveness to the organic matter in soil. And that soil was not being looked at as just sort of a nutrient supply for plants. But as a living body, it wasn't exactly stated that way,

but that's how it basically in practice it was understood. With different terminology that now we either mistake for something else so we would have to retranslate. So, Salvatore, was it like theoretically not 100% right, but in practice it worked? Yes, this is the irony. It's exactly a role. Yeah, it's spot on.

With respect to soil science, I think he was actually also theoretically correct. But the knowledge was not the level. that we have today, so that's, you know, so one can't fault a theoretical framework for it, because many developments have we've made since then. With respect, and I suppose we'll probably touch upon that later with respect of genetics and other kinds of fields of study, then, yes, one can, it's even more applicable what you're saying. You know, there are two aims, you know, for the great transformation, the plan. One was certainly environmental protection, but it was combined with raising the possibility of stability for the water systems,

the surface water systems that would then enable two things to be accomplished. One is hydroelectricity, you know, which you can't, you know, if you're going to have a lot of sedimentation rates in the basins behind the dams, you're not going to produce much electricity after, you know, a little while. But, you know, this is something that they needed to do because they didn't have that many sources of electricity. And, you know, unlike other parts of Europe or Asia. And compared to Asia, much more anyway. But the other aspect was with respect to irrigation.

And, you know, if you have aridification problems or, you know, droughts that come every couple of years or like maybe five, six years, you have to be able to retain that moisture. to have that water recharge of the groundwater and the aquifers. So that's another good reason to protect the forest and to expand them. But doing that, however, they're also increased biodiversity and also provided for, I guess now in hindsight, we would recognize the meteorological value of it, because if you have a lot more forests,

then you can have an improved hydrological cycling through the atmosphere. Okay, so those are aspects that were abandoned early on with the Hustjof administration, and that was quite a negative impact. Beside the fact of not going into lands that if you farm them, you're going to get into more trouble than it's worth, which is basically what happened with the new lands policy with Hushchev. What was the motivation?

I mean there were several I mean again it's like it's this attempt at rupture with the previous administration and to demonstrate that you could actually achieve things

more quickly more rapidly compared to the previous administration and also with respect to the rest of the world particularly with the United States Guillory makes the point that you know sort of this fixation with competition with the United States that is also behind this

I think it was, but maybe to a lesser extent that maybe it's made out to be. I think it was more like an attempt to consolidate legitimacy and through raising or having more success in producing more food than before. And it actually backfired. There's also the issue of the Arrow C, the big salt lake in Central Asia that gets more and more destroyed, you know, through irrigation systems that they are expanded under whose job, if I remember correctly, but they already pre-existed even the Russian Revolution. So that's another thing that sometimes

there's a mistaken view that looks at the Soviet Union as the culprit of the RLC destruction. Maybe we can touch upon that. But certainly the new lands policy did not improve. conditions with respect to the long-term fate of the RLC that was already getting damage through climate change, most of which came from Western or industrial countries. You know, the main culprits are there and they're not in the USSR, but they do have regional effects that are global in nature, even though they have different. kinds of outcomes depending on which region we're talking about. But in any case, the other aspect, which was a disconcertive kind of rupture,

was with the Zapovedniki. Zapovedniki were these natural preserves, these ecological preserves that were set up even before the Russian Revolution, but under like private toothalage, and there were just a handful of them. And they were completely contingent on what the aristocrats' whims were of the day. Under Liennian, then they have a statute, they're promoted, they are part of the state policies. They're integrated as priority. Even during the Civil War of the 1920s, this is the background to the Stalin administration,

not only continuing the same policy, but expanding the area and the numbers of Zappovedniki. Now, these Zappovendiki, for those who are not familiar with these, These are not just any ecological preserve. These are areas, and they can be very vast. They are set aside for scientific study and also to serve as an ecological model to understand what kind of human impacts, what reverberations there are of human impacts

in different kinds of biomes. And so you had every single biome of the USSR represented to the Zapovedniki. I mean, it's hard to exaggerate, you know, the value of these ecological preserves. that exist to this day thanks to those efforts. Under Khushchev, there was a diminution of the area of the ecological preserves, and also the number of them.

There was an incursion of logging into some of these ecological reserves to increase timber production. So there was quite a lot of damage. But I wouldn't say, again, this rupture, even just looking at the empirical data with respect to the extent of the extent of area of Zappovadniki and the number of Zappevnii. This picks up after Hustchov. Under Brezhnev, in particular, they're expanded again and to a level that was not even seen under Stalin. So, you know, one has to be very careful about saying, you know, revisionism brings this to that, well, it's a little bit more complicated as a story than that. And one has to look at the balance of

forces at any one time within the USSR and also with respect to what's going on, with U.S. imperialist activities against the U.S.S.S.R. which are constant, but also changing. And then, of course, the complex relationship with the People's Republic of China, the skirmishes of the late 60s and early 70s, you know, all of these things also have to be looked at in order to understand the environmental policies within the USSR. I'm not going to go in that direction. Guillaume does not go into that in the book. I try to do some of that myself, but it's probably not,

I know this one, there's interest we can talk about a little bit more, but that would take us to a very, very, very long conversation. So those are some of the aspects that, you know, that certainly changed with that revisioning from Kuzchof, but there are also many things that did not change

and that as a result of that were easily, or not so easily, but they were recoverable, and they were recovered under the later administrations. Yeah, I just have a couple of things to say here. Again, Salvatore, terrific answer. But about Zepa Vedniki, we still have them all over the place in Russia today. We've got a couple that are not that far away from where I am now.

And just to underscore what these are, so whatever country you're in, surely you have something akin to a national park. and the national park and these nature reserves similar to national parks would be the highest level of protection of nature that you would have in your respective countries. The Zappa Vedniki are at a level higher than that. In almost all of them, you cannot enter them under any circumstances unless you are a scientist. So, for example, there's one that's not far away from Kazan, actually, which is where I used to live. I still live in Tatarstan, but opposite side of it now. there's one that's just outside of the city of Kazan.

It's close to this tourist attraction monastery complex. But there's a Zepavadnik that's right at the entrance there. You have to drive right past it to get to this tourist attraction monastery complex. I would say that it's less than every 50 meters. There's signs saying, do not enter. No walking, no bicycling, certainly no more. motor vehicles do not come in at the greatest 50 meters for the entire duration of that road's length along the Zapavadnik. And in addition, they have all kinds of security cameras on the trees that

are on the perimeter of the Zapavdnick to ensure that nobody will set foot in it unless they are an authorized person to do so. Now, there are some Zapavdnick, some of the Zapovednik, you can go in under some circumstances. So, for example, there is the largest swamp in the world is in western Siberia. And it's bigger than Switzerland, by the way. We're talking about a gigantic swamp. The whole thing is Zopovednik. There are restrictions on what you can do there, but you can do tourism there as long as you're

very, very careful because it is just this massive swamp. Largest carbon sink in the world, if I remember correctly. Salvatore, am I right on that? Yeah. The Vasugan Meyer. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest carbon sink in the world. In any case. I want to look this up now.

Oh, it's great. I would love to go there. Let's go there sometime together, Salvatore. In any case, most of the Zappa, Henry, we're happy to promote your podcast if you want to have that discussion with Salvatore. I'm kidding. I'm sure you don't need. But in any case, most of them you can't go into at all.

So, I mean, we are talking about an extremely high level of protection. Now, with that brief aside, and there's a lot of them all across Russia today, even. There's a couple of things also that I wanted to just bring up that were mentioned in that last discussion. One of them was this mention of the Stalin administration at the beginning. And since you said that your listeners may not be familiar with all of the contours of Soviet history, think it is worth mentioning this again. Now, when most of the listeners hear the name Stalin, they probably think totalitarian, authoritarian, one-man rule, he controls everything with an iron fist. Nobody gets to even say anything to him. This is the picture which is painted of him,

at least. I mean, it's not the fault of the listeners if they do have this conception in their mind. That is what's presented to them. However, let's refer to our friends at the CIA. for a moment, if we don't mind. I keep this saved on my phone for instances like this. So maybe the listeners don't believe Salvatore or I saying that the Stalin administration actually was an administration. There was many hundreds and hundreds of people who had significant amounts of persuasion within the administration, had decision-making power within the administration.

And of course, there was many millions of people who lent their legitimacy to the administration as well. Now, maybe the listeners don't believe us on that. Now, listeners, if you don't believe us, would you believe an internal memo at the center's, the central intelligence agency, the CIA of the United States? Because I have an internal memo from the CIA. This was published March 2nd, 1952. And it's, sorry, 53. That bit is smudged a little.

Okay. So again, keep in mind, internal memo. This is not meant for me and you. This is meant for CIA officers discussing with each other, which in my mind is a pretty good indication. It's what they're actually thinking at the time. It says, even in Stalin, I'm going to read this verbatim, by the way. Go ahead.

Even in Stalin's time, there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the communist power structure. Stalin, although holding white powers, was merely the captain of a team. And it seems obvious that Hhrushchev will be the new captain. However, it does not appear that any of the present leaders will rise to the stature of Lenin and Stalin so that it will be safer to assume that developments in Moscow will be

along the lines of what is called collective leadership, unless Western policies force the Soviets to streamline their power organization. The present situation is the most favorable from the point of view of upsetting the communist dictatorship since the death of Stalin. Now, I do find it also ironic that they say communist dictatorship right after they talk about, well, there's collective leadership and, you know, he's the leader of a team and they understand broad support from the masses. But, of course, this broad support from the masses and collective leadership is the definition of dictatorship, surely. Now, the CIA was saying this, and this is before this not so secret speech, which was also mentioned. And this not so secret speech, which is often called the secret speech, that's why we're making fun of this name, was at, Hhrushchev went forth before the Soviet Central Committee, and made this declaration of,

all of the wrongs that Stalin did. And supposedly it was supposed to be this internal discussion of the wrongs of the Stalin years. And Stalin in particular as an individual. But of course, somehow this information that Hhrushchev had presented made it into all of the press, including the Western press, amazing how that happened. This delegitimization of Stalin then made it possible for Hhrushchev to assert himself and to have this rupture with past policy.

Amazing how that happens, right? But in any case, I did want to just make note of the CIA's views on Stalin as well. Now, turning towards the actual content of the book and these policies that we've been talking about, I just want to underscore what Salvatori had already said. I'm not going to present anything new, but rather just to try to summarize it. So in this section of the book, which is focused on the USSR, we really look first at the early USSR period 1920s through early 1950s and saw that the USSR was an ecological pioneer. This is the point where they founded really the science of pedology.

And I know that we said that they didn't have the understanding that we have today of soils. But guess what? They were the world's leaders in pedology. Of course they didn't have the understanding that we have today, but there was not another country in the world that was anywhere near rivaling them in their rigor in studying soils and their understanding of soils given what was known at the time. Sorry, jump in again. The pathology is science of soils then. Yes, yes. So they established this network of natural reserves.

the Zappa Vedniki, and it's not only Zappa Vedniki that were expanded dramatically. There are many other types of reserves that were also established and expanded at that time, but the Zappa Vedniki really are remarkable listeners. If you haven't looked them up before, you really should look them up. They pioneered agroforestry, soil conservation technique, Salvatore did a wonderful job of explaining not only the how but the why of that. But that is a critical thing. and was absolutely essential for them to do under this great plan for the transformation of nature,

combating drought through these forest belts, rational water management, or at least an attempt at rational water management for really the first time. This was driven by a dialectical materialist understanding of nature and the human relation as both part of nature and that which relies on nature, and a commitment to a long-term planned development. So, when we turned to this question of what happened, that trajectory was ruptured. That was ruptured during the Hhrushchev period. Under Hustov, the USSR abandoned that path. Now, as Salvatore discussed, there were various reasons for that. Part of it was this attempt to catch up with American capitalist productivity. Some of it was because Hhrushchev was enamored in many ways with the

agricultural sector of the United States. I mean, just Google. I say this. It sounds flippant, but really just Google it sometime. Fruschov corn and go to Google images and you'll find a lot of, I know, it sounds like a joke. I'm really not joking. Google Shrewshov corn and go to Google Images and you will see when he took a tour of the United States. They brought him to these cornfields and the man looked like he saw love at first sight.

I mean, really. I don't want to know what he did with that cob of corn in the evening. But, you know, anything is possible. Like, really, you should see the look on his face. He was very corny. I mean, maybe this is a corny conversation in general, but, yeah. No, really, Google it listeners. But also, of course, part of it was an attempt at boosting productivity

and making the Soviet Union look like a leader globally in terms of agricultural productivity. And they did this through stripping back many of these efforts that were put in place under the great plan for the transformation of nature. They moved towards this chemicalization of agriculture, which we didn't get to talk very much about in the last answer. But there was a massive chemicalization of the agricultural industry, massive amounts of chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides that were used. Now, Salvatore is the soil scientist. I know I can speak on how these chemical fertilizers and pesticides while boosting productivity in the near term, in the short term, they fundamentally disrupt the balance within the soil.

And Salvatore, instead of me going into it, if Salvatore wants to discuss this after I finish, he should be the one who does because it's literally his field of study. But this change was a fundamental, ideological and political shift from a view where socialist development happens in harmony with and through the transformation of nature to this competition. It sounds like a capitalist style competition based on short-term, extractive yields, utilization of chemicals to ensure that we can boost productivity in the short-term,

long-term sustainability be darned, right? Salvatore mentioned some of the ecological catastrophes that come up during the late Soviet period. That's a long conversation. As he mentioned with regard to the Aero C, yeah, some of those processes started even during the Tsarist period. They started to ramp up in the early Soviet period. They really ramped up in the post-Stalin era.

And then the final collapse took place after the brink. breakup of the Soviet Union. It was not like the obviously occurring negative impacts on these natural phenomena like the Aero C were seen by the non-brutal non-communists that came in after the destruction of the Soviet Union and were reversed. No, those same processes were continued to be expanded that were forcing these degradation of large scales of nature, like, again, the Aero C, and it sped up until the Aero C was completely destroyed. I mean, completely destroyed. And that took place after the Soviet Union fell. So this is a long-term process. That one, it really would require quite a bit more discussion to get to any sort of

real understanding of what exactly, how exactly we should view the destruction of the Aero C. but suffice it to say for now that this narrow view that is often discussed of, while the Aral Sea was destroyed by the godless communists, so, you know, communism is therefore terrible for nature. This is not only overly simplistic, but also misses that this process began under, you know, proto-capitalism, feudalism of the Tsarist era, most backwards capitalist country in Europe.

and was accelerated and reached its conclusion in the shock doctrine era of hyper-capitalist post-Soviet Russia. If you don't at least take that into account, then yeah, you might believe what the propagandistic narrative around how communism has affected the AeroC is. But I think that that's a good point for me to end on here. I don't know, Salvatore, if you wanted to mention anything about chemicalization of agriculture, because it actually is a pretty, big part of the book and we haven't really talked about it much yet. Sure. I'll try to keep brief if that's okay. I mean, the emphasis is, thank you. Thank you very much, Eric. I mean, please stop me for you're getting too long. But, you know, you've touched upon this as well with respect to what you saw in Cuba. You know, if you don't, if you don't have the regeneration

of organic matter, that is highly problematic in terms of the long-term consequences. of soil, I guess one can call it soil health, meaning the biodiversity, the number of life forms in soils will be reduced. The biodiversity above ground can also be negatively affected and usually is, and of course the amount of productivity then becomes contingent on this import of nutrients called agrochemicals and so that's one aspect and you know earlier then then khrushchev

you know the the thought was about you know so focusing on the organic and structural aspects of a soil and to maintain it how do you maintain soil structure you need to have organic matter that is replaced every year and if you don't do that then the soil can be more easily eroded and degraded in other ways. And that, of course, will then undercut production of crops as well, eventually, unless you keep putting in agrochemicals and use herbicides and other kinds of chemicals to maintain a monocrop kind of, a single crop kind of production system. So that is a really unfortunate aspect and the long-term consequences.

But despite that, I did want to add that then saw conservation came back under Brezhnev. And ironically, through exchange with Canadian scientists and policymakers, of all things, they were learning from each other. It wasn't one way, processed by any means. Because one of the things that is also sometimes forgotten, including within soil science circles, is that even the classification of soils was at first derived from the, the Russian classification system and the Soviet classification system. So that's how important Soviet soil science has been to,

not just to the US, but to the world, I mean, in terms of developing the understanding of soils. In any case, all of that is not erased by a single administration at all. And that's, you know, there's a long tradition of soil science in the Soviet Union, and it's maintained. And then when policies are changed, it doesn't take much for them to return to the fore. in constructive ways as they did eventually. But the agorchemical aspect component continued through the 80s

for similar reasons as I guess under Khrushchev. But there was also an expansion, an introduction expansion of organic farming that oftentimes is not discussed. It also happened, especially by the 1980s in the USSR. And there's also one other. aspect that sometimes is forsaken, oftentimes it is, until it's realized that it's of crucial importance to people's lives, and that is the organic, basically fundamentally, by default organic production systems that occur in the small plots at the household level,

which is actually how the majority of Russians survived the onslaught of privatization and and hunger, widespread hunger that was inflicted on the population in the 1990s was exactly through that, through that Soviet system that would kind of combine like biochemical intensive agriculture with, basically by default organic methods at the household level in terms of producing food that was part of household consumption. So I'll lend it with that. Thank you both. That was a lot to digest. I'm glad we have it recorded.

But a lot of great points. In Sweden we have a lot of these issues with soil erosion, with two big fields and not enough trees surrounding them, especially in certain areas. I remember my laundry became brown after a windy day on the flatlands because of the naked soil and hard winds just blowing it out to the lake and great

I have a little tangent but I recently saw a mini documentary about architecture in the Soviet Union and this episode was on the revisionist period and one thing that struck me was before

the revisionist period there was this optimal city size that was 50,000 to 1 million and if it was smaller than 50,000 they would develop the city because then they could have like schools enough or in hospital or culture. It was deemed too small to have essential stuff.

And over a million it would be overcrowded. And so they would put industry somewhere else or, yeah, move it to smaller places. So this to me is also a proof of, sustainable thinking. And after the cruise shift time, this idea was abandoned

as well as the architecture of socialist realism was abandoned. So this led to I mean, the second chapter is to me

a counter history. And many of the things that we hear about the Soviet Union is taken from a small part or a small part in time and then projected over the 70 years of its history, which then really paints a false picture. But you mentioned dialectical material, materialism, Henry, which is also the philosophy of Marxism, Leninism. So we could move on to the third chapter, which is, let me see, it's called dialectical

materialism, break or boost for agrobiology. It's a bit nerdy. but I read it as a polemic between two schools like a Western school and an Eastern school so to say within evolution theory and this polemic is then exacerbated by other factors like I mentioned the West versus the East capitalist or communist or bourgeois philosophy versus dialects and so they've become very politicized and become representations of the ideological battle in the Cold War.

So we start to miss the science of it all. Can you in layman's terms explain this third part? I just have to break a little, for just a little less than a minute, I'll be right back. sorry, I'm mute myself. No problem. Henry, maybe you could talk about this part a bit. Okay, I can try. So, as you said, part three is pretty nerdy. It's much nerdyer than the other parts of the book.

And I think that saying that it is a polemic in many ways is also quite accurate for what it is. So part three really is asking the question, what is the best way to understand life and evolution using the contrast of these two views, which you know, you were kind of talking about as well. There's the standard Western genetics-based view, which had dominated at that time, continues to dominate today, and which also saw life as a sort of computer program, genes. It's just these letters, they're fixed, they're passed down. The only way that they change is random accidents, which mutations.

And everything that we need to know about life on Earth is completely coded into these letters, which we can then, if we have the ability to sequence them, we can look at them. Now, of course, they didn't know that sequencing was, going to be possible at that time. They didn't know what the structure of DNA was like at that time. But this idea of Mendelian genetics, inheritability through genes, was present. Then there was the Soviet-Miturinian view, which is often associated with this character, which I'm sure we're going to talk about quite a bit, Trophim Lysenko,

which argued that organisms interact deeply with their environment, that these interactions can lead to inherited changes. Lisenko at the time, so again, he was associated with this latter view that this interaction with the environment can influence the way that genes then are expressed. And I say expressed, of course, they didn't know. about gene expression at the time, but again, I don't want to get too nerdy here. I know I studied genetics. That was one of the fields that I was working in, so I don't want to get like way deep into the weeds here. But, okay, I mean expressed, not in the genetic sense, but expressed as

and shown. So at, after Lisenko's time and up to today, Lisenko is rejected as a pseudoscientist, completely. He took these ideas of Lamarck, which, if the listeners don't remember Lamarck from high school biology classes, he was the guy who said that, you know, over the course of a generation, an organism can gain some adaptations in itself because it has the necessity to. So the classic example is you take a giraffe, giraffe has a short neck, trees are tall, giraffe keeps stretching its neck every day to try to reach the leaves. And over time, its neck is going to get longer and longer.

And then, you know, it's offspring are also going to have more. longer necks. That's the oversimplification also of the Lamarckian view, but this is how the Micharinian view is also usually viewed by people in the West, although there is a distinction between the two. Again, I don't want to get too deep into the weeds on this specific point because I know that it's not the point of our conversation today, but do understand that the idea of the Micharinian view, the Soviet view, associated it with this Lamarckian view, but there is a distinction between the two in reality. But Lisenko was rejected as a pseudoscientist who believed in these neo-Lamarckian ideas.

However, as Swing argues in Chapter 3, and as more and more people are coming to recognize today, and sadly, there is an ideological component as to why people aren't able to easily see that this is the case. but more and more people are seeing that this new science of epigenetics. Now, I should probably pause for a moment and explain what epigenetics is for the listeners who haven't studied genetics. So when you did study genetics in school, they told you, you know, you have these four bases on your DNA, AT, C, G, these group into three bases that are genes. they code for different things. Some of them don't code for anything, but most of them code for proteins

and what genes you have, tell what proteins are going to be produced and those proteins then make you. This is the view that they give you in school. All right. In the last, I guess at this point, it's about 30 years, really.

There has been an understanding that that is not the entirety of the story. these genes can be differentially expressed. Now, when I say expressed, I am talking in genetic terms. So what I mean by that is not every gene is expressed all the time, which is to say, and I'm going to simplify it as much as possible. Not every gene works all the time. Not every gene makes its protein that it codes for all the time.

It doesn't make it in every situation. Different factors may play into whether it's doing that or not doing that. there may be times in your life where that gene is expressing, and there are times in your life where it's not expressing. Now, of course, not all genes do this, but there are genes that are differentially expressed. The epigenome is this concept of the things that are associated with your genetic code, which are not the genetic code itself. The things that control what is being expressed, what's not being expressed, how we study this will help us understand why two people who have the same, obviously they can't be exactly the same, but they have two sections of their genome that are

quite similar, why these people will have different outcomes in life if one is a smoker and one is not, if one lives in a cold climate, one lives in a hot climate. There are differences. Why is that? We can't see it in the genes themselves. and that's this idea of epigenetics, that the environment causes this differential expression of the genes that you do have. So it's not to say that the genes don't do it, the thing that they're doing.

It's that the environment can play a factor. And so in this way, if we understand epigenetics and my oversimplified explanation probably was incoherence, so do feel free to, you know, have me clarify anything because No, it's great. That was my attempt to simplify it as much as possible. Okay. Because what I'm fishing for is sort of the genetics and biology has been politicized and weaponized through history from all different sides, really. So having an understanding or you can explain.

explain as much as you need to just so we can get to this politicization or weaponization. Can I just add the... And the question is... Can I just add the... So the other sort of end of the spectrum could probably be...

I mean, I know very little of this, but the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins, like the sort of the neoliberal end of things. If we sort of connect biology and politics that way, maybe, that's the other example. That's... prevalent in the West still.

Yeah. Or the fascist one where they would use genetic explanations for why some are better than others. Absolutely. And we see that today. I mean, people do that today. Heck, if we're looking at current events, we just saw an email between Jeffrey Epstein and Noam Chomsky where he said that it's genetically proven that African people of African origin, whether they're in Africa, whether they're African American, whatever.

They have a genetic disadvantage when it comes to intellect. Wait, he who? You have to explain. Epstein said this to Chomsky. And Chomsky, in his response, it was part of, of a longer email. Chomsky was telling Epstein that his ideas were quite interesting, but it is notable that he didn't try to refute what he said. He didn't agree, but he also didn't try to refute it. Again, I'm just telling listeners to Google things. I saw this in the, in, I've been looking at some

of the documents through some channels that I'm on. And of course, when you see Jeffrey Epstein, Noam Chomsky, you read what the correspondence was between them. And not one. stood out where Epstein was telling Chomsky that, yeah, these African people of African origin, they have this genetic disadvantage intellectually. And Chomsky does not just tell him, okay, let's take a step back here for a second. But anyway, I don't want to get too sidetracked with current events and, you know, Noam Chomsky. But in any case, to get back to the point I was trying to make when I got a little bit sidetracked with the epigenetics talk. If we understand that the study of epigenetics, which is broadly accepted, I mean,

everybody accepts that epigenetics is a thing. We're not talking that this is only socialist scientists in China who are believing in epigenetics. No, the Western scientists are at the forefront of the study of epigenetics. Epigenetics tells us the environment plays a factor in gene expression. And in this way, we can understand that even though he didn't understand epigenetics as such, Lysenko was partially, and in many ways importantly, correct, the environment can cause heritable changes. And I'm going, I forget to, forgot to mention your epigenome also can be passed on to your children. A smoker who is affecting their epigenome, that epigenome, that epigenome, that epigenome, parts of it get passed on to the children as well.

So even if the child never smokes, they would have these epigenetic changes, at least some of them, that had been committed by the parent. We have this whole sins of the father idea. Turns out epigenetics says that there's actually something to that, at least when it comes to, you know, vices in your life. I mean, to connect. I have another very, sorry, one example that I think would be very interesting for you. I had a friend in my undergrad who was doing research that was not focused on epigenetics, but it was totally connected with epigenetics. She was a, she was at the public health program, nursing and public health program at the

university and a Palestinian American. And I was in the honors college in my undergrad university, and in the honors college, we all have to do undergraduate research. And her research was extremely interesting. I would love to know if it's ever been published anywhere or if it was only presented at our university's conference. Because what she looked at was, and it's a very specific thing, but you'll see why it's connected. The age of menarchy in conflict zones. So, menarchy is the age, it's the time of the first period for a girl when they start to menstruate.

And so the age of menarchy would be the age where they have. their first period. And she looked at what that age was in different places around the world and factored in things like socioeconomic status. She factored in things like family history. And then she crucially looked at whether or not that place was in an area of conflict. And of course, one of the big areas that she was looking at was Palestine. And what she finds is that the age of menarchy was dramatically changed in,

in young girls who hadn't yet reached that age where they had experienced monarchy and were living in a time of conflict or starvation or something along those lines. They would then have a disrupted age of monarchy. But here's the interesting part. Their children also had disrupted ages of monarchy, even if their children were born in a time that was at peace and there was no food deprivation, their daughters would have a disrupted age of monarchy. Now, she was not in the field where she was studying epigenetics, so she may not have known the why the children of people who grew up in a conflict area were having this disruption as well. But epigenetics is almost certainly the overriding factor here, if not the only one. There can be many environmental factors at play

but epigenetics certainly is a large factor here. That's something that we wouldn't have understood in the past, before the study of epigenetics, but it is directly related with how genes are expressed because that is something that is coded in your genes and is affected by your environment. I know you had a question, Mehmet. I'll stop here for a moment.

No, I was just actually going to give an example of how starvation in Palestine, the starvation siege is affecting future generations, and there has been articles about that, and that's also an example of vagueness, but you're already talking about that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this was a very hyper-specific example where she was looking at the age of monarchy because it was what her research was on specifically, but there's numerous impacts that, as you said, have been published on in terms of physiological impacts of

starvation, physiological impacts of simply living in a conflict area, and, those things are not all, but many of them can be passed down through these epigenetic changes, which are passed on to the next generation. So environment can cause these heritable changes affecting how genes are expressed without changing the genetic code. So the part here argues that the dialectical materialist method, seeing everything is an interaction, motion, contradiction, is a better tool for biology than the mechanistic, rigid view of traditional genetics, which has been held by the West since Mendel's time, and even into the era where we understand that epigenetics is a thing, is still utilized to discredit

Lysenko, discredit Soviet genetic science, because of the ideological. aspect of it. They understand that epigenetics is a thing, but they still utilize this mechanistic understanding of traditional genetics, which they know is not the case anymore. They still utilize this argument against

Lisenko specifically Soviet science more generally because of the ideological component. So understanding this helps us understand ecology as a dynamic system. It helps us understand genetics as a dynamic system. It's not a machine. Right. Beautiful.

I mean, science is always somehow politicized or how we understand what gets funded and what doesn't get funded, what get published and what doesn't. So politics have a huge role in that. I remember a guerrilla history episode where you talk about the political economy of dinosaur fossils. it was very interesting. I'm glad I'm glad you listened to that one. Yes. So, but yeah. Welcome to Nerdauer.

Sorry. Yeah. There's one small point I forgot to mention, if you don't mind. Please. I sound, I'm sure in my last answer sounded like I was trying to totally vindicate Lysenko. That is not what I was trying to do. So Lysenko did make, and it's, worth mentioning. Lisenko did make many mistakes. His knee-jerk, dogmatic rejection of Western genetics

was a mistake. Now, did he come to a valid understanding of how things actually worked in effect? Well, in many ways, yes, but it was a mistake to discard many of the views of Western genetics. his personal role was problematic. But his intuition had merit. And so I don't want to make it sound like Lisenko is completely vindicated. We need to go back and study Lysenko's writings and teachings to have a better understanding of how science works. Lysenko was looking at this from an ideological lens as well. he was looking at it in terms of Mendelian Morganist genetics is bourgeois fatalistic, disconnected from agriculture because of the ideological component.

Now, his reason for that is wrong, but his understanding that there is an environmental factor at play, his intuition of that is correct. So we're not exonerating everything that we did. We're not saying that he was absolutely correct. But this, on the other hand, absolute dismissal of him as a complete pseudoscientist without any merit is also absolutely incorrect. Yeah, I don't read the third chapter as a reclamation of everything, Lysenko, but it's more a reclaim of dialectical materialism within scientific understanding, which it's very interesting. but English is not my first language, so it's a bit difficult. But thank you a lot for that explanation. I hope it was coherent.

It was great. Do you have anything, Mehmet, other we should ask, or Salvatore, do you want to add anything to this third part? Let's begin with that. Sure. Sorry, go ahead. Let's just begin with that. Sure, okay. Well, I mean, the thorough treatment given by Henry is fantastic.

And so there's very little, I guess, to add to that perhaps. What I would like to make sure that people understand is that in so-called democracies, you have scientists who get marginalized, even arrested for what they study. So, you know, that's something. And you alluded to the funding aspects of the systematic ways in which certain kinds of research questions are not even asked. And then certain kinds of questions which are completely irrelevant to anything even remotely constructive, socially like IQ are promoted and funded, you know. And then you also have all those researchers who, who are very active in the weapons industry,

in the chemicals industry, to have more chemicals that are otherwise not very useful, but they're very useful for making profits. So all of this also needs to be considered. And Lysenko is touted as a big example of the evils of socialism, but actually it's just one example and it's rare. Whereas in capitalism, it's an everyday occurrence. This is something that oftentimes, you know,

gets lost. Okay, so having said that, contextualizing it, I would highly recommend, because dialectical materialism is not a very straightforward kind of conceptualization or framework of analysis, you know, and how that even relates to the work in the biophysical sciences. It's something that I've pondered over and have written about for a while. And it's not exactly

systematically discussed in Guillaume's book although he does quite a lot of that and he does more in this book that he just came out that I had I had the privilege of receiving from Guillaume but it's only in French so far

which is escaping progress So this is also a rather thorough overview of a lot of the, of a lot of kinds of approaches, frameworks out there, there are bourgeois and character, and they're attempting to replace a Marxist worldview. And so seeing how those kinds of frameworks falter in many ways and how a dialectical materialist view is very important to maintain and to apply to things like the concept of transhumanism,

gender, biodiversity, artificial intelligence, climate change and all that. So he goes much more thoroughly into that. In 1985, there was a book that really eventually was extremely influential for me, and that was the dialectical biologist

by Richard Levins and Richard Lewantin. I would highly recommend people reading it because maybe to give a brief rundown They go through, it's not actually a completely cohesive book. They're really like a bunch of essays of publications through the late 70s, early 80s. Richard Lewompton, I believe, was a geneticist by training. I'm trying to remember. And Richard Levins was a biologist, but also rather well versed in agricultural aspects and breeding and things like that.

So he often went to Cuba, by the way, Richard Levins. And their understanding in terms of how to apply dialectical materialism to, let's say, biology, I guess it's kind of purposed into what we're talking about. And basically is, and they also have a chapter on Lysenko that I also highly recommend, you know, aside from Guillaume. And Guillaume also in his latest book that I showed you just now, also goes into Lysenko much more thoroughly as well. It's a really great treatment as well there in terms of how to understand what happened during that time period and contextualizing it in a wider set of social conditions.

But with respect to the dialectical biologists, it's, you know, dialectical materialism is really important. I think it was already touched upon by Henry in different ways, you know, when explaining genetics. But you have co-determination. Like, it's not like a one-we. process. You know, when organisms exist, they also change the environment in which they're in, and then the changed environment changes the organisms. Epigenetics is one way of understanding this in some respects. There's also a tendency in a lot of science to be reductionistic to look at the, you know, what happens in society as being reducible to genes, which is what,

you know, what was being responded against, you know, by Marxist during the 1930s, 40s and 50s. We know what that leads to. It's direct relation to Nazism, right? So there's a reason why, you know, that kind of genetics is so dangerous ideologically, but also in terms of medical practice and malpractice. And so to view instead, you know, genes as part of a wider whole and the processes of how genes form and how they express themselves as having mechanisms that are rather different from like how people interact with each other or how insects intersections are. Those are different kinds of levels of analysis that are not reducible one to the other. You cannot apply the same principles of particle physics

to how an ecosystem works. You know, Podolinski, one of the reasons why angles and Marx did not really care for his theory about the energetics of labor time is because it was reductionistic. It reduced you know labor time to just a bunch of energy exchange. It doesn't work that way. It's not a thermodynamic principle alone, although thermodynamics are involved and genes are involved and all that, but they cannot be, you know, our labor time and social relations cannot be reduced to those things. And likewise, we cannot reduce particle physics to social arrangements either, you know, vice versa. You know, social processes are very different from particle physics. So that's just to give some concrete

examples about the problems with bourgeois kinds of thinking and not dialectical materialist thinking. And also rejecting the notion that science is outside of the society in which it's developed. And that's also what's important about dialectical materialism, is to understand science as always part of the predominant kinds of social relations in a society. And so it influences the rest of society as well as the rest of society influencing it, in everyday practice, what kind of questions are raised, what kind of research is pursued, etc. So those are some ways in which I remember from the dialectical biologists,

and in part what Guillon also goes through is how to relate dialectical materialism to biology, to genetics in particular, to environmental science and so on. I hope that's clear. I hope that's useful. That was fantastic. As an intervention. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, I've been meaning to get that book for my brother who's studying biology, so to get him into the right track. But this book was also meant as a present for him, but I ended up reading it instead. You can always be gifted to him afterwards. Eric, Eric eats the books he reads. We'll give you another copy.

I actually have a, I don't know, a sidetrack kind of question. But, okay, so we talked about Soviet, right, quite a lot in this episode. And we talked about sort of, I don't know, droughts, famines and the like. I'm pretty sure some people, not everyone, but some people will think, oh, but Holodomor. And I know, Henry, you've talked about it somewhere else. So can you just, I'm putting you on the spot, I'm sorry. But, I mean, you don't have to go, you don't have to run through like a 30 minute explanation, but just a summary and where people can find more about it. Because, I mean, it's actual, like, it's very, people talk about it still in a very specific way.

So I think it will be good to just put a pointer there as well. Yeah. So, yeah, slightly putting me on the spot. Not that I can't speak on it, but, you know, it's one of those topics. So the so-called Hlodomar. And I say so-called not because there wasn't a famine, but I find the usage of a Ukrainian word

when Kazakhstan was hit much harder to be strange in the first place. We could just say the great famine of, you know, 31, 32. So there is this conception of the famine that took place as being a constructed famine in order to disproportionately hurt, certain nations, and I mean nations and peoples, within the Soviet Union more than others, with, of course, the group, like I said, that is the most vocal about it being the Ukrainians,

but the Kazakhs were hit much harder in that time. But the idea was that this was a constructed famine. It was an intentional famine, as it's often put. There are no documents that show that there was any intentionality with it. it's important to understand that drought and famine are things that happen and happened for centuries before that time. And when I say they happened, I don't mean like every hundred years there was a great famine. As Salvatore mentioned earlier, there was large droughts and famines that would occur every five

or six years. It was a cycle. Now, what I think might be an interesting point for the listening. is these famines and droughts were occurring every five or six years for centuries. But guess when the last one was? It was the one of 1931, 1932. There was no large-scale famine. There were, of course, small-scale famines.

There were, of course, droughts that took place afterwards where the food supply was disrupted in some ways. But if we're talking about large-scale famine at the scale that we had seen not only in 31-30, but also every five or six years preceding that, there was not one at that scale that has occurred since then. That doesn't mean that there wasn't food shortages. Of course, there was, you know, massive food shortages just after the fall of the Soviet Union as well. But in terms of that cyclical famine, that was it.

That was it. Now, were there mistakes that were made? Certainly there was mistakes that were made. if you look in the documents from the archives of the Soviet Union, you will find them saying as much internally that there was mistakes being made in terms of acts that they were trying to carry out to ameliorate the impacts of the famine, to ameliorate the famine writ large. There were mistakes. They admitted it to each other. They knew that there was mistakes. But in terms of intentionality, there never was any.

There's no documents that claim any sort of intentionality. There was no documents that show that there was any intentionality of the famine in general, of harming people disproportionately relative to other people. There was no intentionality in the archives. And furthermore, there have been some very analytical books which have come out in recent years, and I'm drawing a blank on the name of the author, which I know Salvatore is going to come up with. There was two authors who put together a book that was a study of this period, and I am drawing a blank on the names of these two authors. Do you know who I'm talking about? about off the top of, off the top of your head, Silvatory?

Yeah, I'm drawing a blank as well. Jay Ash Gessie was involved, by the way, in that study. There was a, I think it was a monograph issue of contemporary history, but I'm trying to. It was, it was part of a series. They had a series of, like, I don't remember, 11 books that came out on the Soviet Union. If you can find it later, we can definitely put it on the description later. One volume of it was entirely devoted. And I mean, it's an extremely analytical work that is looking at were the causes of the famine manmade?

And the answer is not more than any of the previous famines. If anything, most of the things that had been done, which caused previous famines to happen when they did, had been eliminated at that point. The natural, the situation climatically at that moment was terrible. There was mistakes that were made, but in terms of precipitating it, no. In terms of response, were there mistakes? Yes. In terms of intentionality? No.

They went through documents. They went through climatic data. They went through the documents of the dead. and they found mistakes, they found no intention, they found no man-made component to this. So when we see continued claims after very analytical works that have been put out that refute this conception of an intentional man-made famine that is targeting certain people, we know that that's ideological. Because even extremely conservative scumption.

of the Soviet Union, the conservative scholars who are respected for their analytical rigor also concede that it was not a man-made intentional famine that targeted certain peoples. For example, Conquest, Robert Conquest. Conservative scholar of the Soviet Union, he is not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination. He would, you know, he's dead, but he would come out of the grave and kill himself and fall back into it if you called him a socialist. You know, he's that kind of guy. But he is a very rigorous scholar. I mean, we can disagree with him and we do ideologically, but he is a rigorous scholar in terms of digging up the documents,

in terms of having an analytical framework that he carries out. And he found the same that it wasn't an intentional famine, that there were mistakes, but it wasn't. an intentional famine. So, you know, I'm kind of going to keep beating that drum that when we look at it, we have to look at it not only in terms of in isolation, what was done that precipitated it. Well, climate was one. They didn't really have control over that. And there were mistakes that were made, but mistakes that were understandable and that there was justifications given for. There was no intentionality. That's if we look at that famine in isolation, but also taking a longer deray. view of what the situation historically was like vis-a-vis drought, vis-a-vis famine,

and understanding that this is something that had happened cyclically on a very regular basis throughout history in these exact regions, and that it ended, again, in large part, with a few exceptions here and there where there was smaller scale droughts and famines. But that cyclical nature was disrupted and broken at that point. why is that not something which is discussed when it comes up to this conversation as well? So, you know, there's a lot of things that should be talked about, but really the basic notion is that if you hear that narrative that it was an intentional genocide through famine, nobody that's actually serious about the scholarship, whether they're socialist or not,

actually has any belief in that. And so you shouldn't either. Sadly enough, I've seen this repeated in. pro-Palestine circles. Oh, the genocide. So Holodomor is also a genocide. Do not deny it, whatever. But besides that, so can we

safely say that it can't be used as an argument or as an evidence against the Soviet ecology that, oh, see, but it failed because Holodomor. Well, it'd be interesting to use it that way, since

there are plenty of occasions in so many countries where you have very deadly famines that have occurred. Of course, there's a 1944 famine that was actually induced by the British in India and also in Ireland. So should we say that any sort of ecology that comes out of Britain is suspect, you know, and of course to be completely not taken seriously, we should say the same thing about US-imposed famines on Native Americans over and over again, which were actually induced famines to kill them off. Like, for example, with the destruction of the buffalo in the Great Plains,

that was a policy of destroying the food base to annihilate Native Americans. So should we say that any sort of ecology that comes out of the United States, any sort of, you know, science that comes out of the United States is to be dismissed. So, I mean, there's that, that's one way of, you know, thinking about it. It's really kind of picking and choosing, being very selective with respect to evidence. But the other thing, yeah, it's to contextualize. and Henry was, you know, getting at that. I just reminded myself of Davies and Weecroft and their book, the years of hunger.

That's the book that I was talking about, Davis and Weakroft. I put that in the chat. So, yeah. And that's a really important book. It's coming out of not just one or a couple of historians, but there are quite a number of historians to look at all the empirical evidence. You know, to claim that it was a genocidal act, and to put it with the Palestinian cause,

is frankly, it's beyond the pale as far as, but I see it in my own college as well, people, you know, making those claims. I would say, well, yeah, okay, so we have, if you want to make that analogy, well, why don't you do it with the United States? Because that's the perpetrator over and over again in so many societies. Well, then, you know, whoever, you know,

the Germans should make the, you know, should also be shamed equally for their system because of the Nama and using basically aridlands as and then talk about drought conditions but you know basically chasing people away from their food source to kill them off so there are many ways i guess of of struggling against this kind of false analogy and but even on its own merits if one looks at the Holodoma, even on its own terms. One has to explain how is it possible that not only that, yes, there are millions of Ukrainians who died and millions of Ukrainian communists who died of hunger.

And how does that explain? And how is it explained also the fact that you had many Ukrainians who complied with the requisition of food? And how can you explain that you had also millions of Russians who were affected and many of them died, not only the Kazakh, but also the Russians themselves. And then how do you explain the fact that Khushov as a Ukrainian, you know, even came to power if you had a racist institution that tries to annihilate Ukrainians? You know, there are just so many things that just cannot be explained through that kind of discourse, even on its own terms. So that's one other way

in which one could take it. But frankly, it's just to make of a tragedy, something that is useful for Ukrainian Nazis is so despicable. Because that's basically what, that was a propaganda that was started. I don't know if you know the history of that kind of claim. But it comes out of the ultra-nationalist Ukrainians, you know, the ones that allied with the Nazis. That's where that discourse starts. That's where the propaganda starts from. And then it's taken up, you know, by these people who obviously don't know even their own history, if they're Ukrainian.

if they're taking this up as a gold standard of sorts. But again, this is not, because this will quickly degenerate into name-calling, because it is not to suggest that the Stalin administration acted properly. It is to say, no, they acted most improperly. There was also a near civil war because you're basically dealing with trying to have people fed while you had a lot of peasants who wanted to keep the food and the profits to themselves. So that's an actual struggle. So there was a lot of improper way, a lot of mistakes,

but I would say sometimes just straightforward wrong policy for that time period. One could also argue that. But then one would also have to understand that you had 10 years of basically civil war, world war. You had a destroyed infrastructure. And so you were always going to be very vulnerable to even the slightest kind of drought conditions. in those kinds of situations, in which many countries to this day have that problem. Once the Soviet Union industrialized, you have no more famines.

How is that possible? Right? How is it possible that basically, really, the last, I guess one could call the famine was in the 40s, but that was induced by the Nazi invasion. I basically destroyed the food base of hundreds of millions of people, literally. And, you know, but one would have to explain. If the Soviet Union was so evil, how is it possible that there were no famines after that? For the first time in Russian history, no famines, ever again.

That already is a testament to the Soviet policy being correct in itself. So in any case, one could argue many different ways. But it is upsetting to see that analogy being made against an actual genocide on Palestinians. And that's most offensive. I've used absolutely. And it's again, I want to say the name of that book again for the listeners. So

it was part of a seven-part series. The title of the series in case anyone is interested is the industrialization of Soviet Russia and it's R.W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft is the authors of it. This book that Salvatore and I are talking about

is volume five, the industrialization of Soviet Russia, the years of hunger, Soviet agriculture in 1931 to 1933. So if you're interested in this question in particular, that is the book to look for. We'll have that in the description. Definitely. Great.

Thank you. And I'm sorry about the curveball, but it's just, it popped in my head. Oh, I'm happy to talk about anything. That's fine. Yeah, thanks. I mean, history is being weaponized as propaganda, and it's very important that we're very particular about what we are talking about. So it doesn't get this sweeping claims that the whole of Soviet Union or everything about this,

everything about that. And we are specific when we're trying to refute these claims or have an honest discussion about history, or even ecology or science, and we know that they can be weaponized, and that is very important to have with you. Thank you, Henry, and thank you, Salvatore. This was very interesting,

and I hope a lot of people find it interesting, and they get the book. Is there anything you'd like to add as a sort of ending note, what do you want people to do with this knowledge or in general around these issues? I think that getting involved in these sorts of discussions is what

we want people to do, but also just as a note for the listeners who may not be familiar with Iskra Books. You did mention earlier that all of Iskra Books's books are available for free as PDFs. You can download those at Iskrabooks.org.

However, I will also just mention that Iskra is a volunteer-run nonprofit publishing company that publishes radical communist texts, including the one that we talked about today. So if you have the financial ability to do so, purchasing the book allows Iskra to continue making new books. If you don't have the financial means, of course, download the PDF, getting the knowledge out there is, of course, the primary thing that we try to do. but if you do have the ability to purchase the book, you can do that through Isker Books.org or through our friend's bookshop in Sweden.

Exactly. You're located in Sweden. I see a few more in his hands right now. Nice. I will definitely email. I will definitely email Fredetana at gmail.com. I didn't know that Eric had this going, so I will definitely. get something from him.

Salvatore, go ahead. From my end, yeah, sure. I mean, if one is a practicing scientist, you know, I would highly recommend that in terms of understanding what one contributes to in terms of wider society, but also in terms of an anti-imperialist struggle. You know, from theoretical physics all the way to, you know, microbiology and whatever else,

that this reading could be useful in terms of understanding the wider context into which one is placed and what one is contributing to. And also to think about the importance of joining an organization in order to fight against and struggle against ideologically as well as, you know, in terms of building movements, struggling against a bourgeois conception of nature. which is also a basis for imperialism in many ways. Because you have the sort of environmentalism that is talking about weaponization

that historically has been used in order to commit genocide on Native Americans to establish national parks. For instance, notions of population growth as the main source of environmental destruction, which is not. And that's a code word for annihilating racially minoritized people. So there's a lot of imperialism that is inbuilt in a certain kind of environmental movement that does not take up communism as what they should be championing. So for those reasons, I think those connections are very important.

For those who are impassioned by environmental issues, they should certainly be aware of these connections. And other than that, I can't think. Thank you, Eric and Mehmet, enough for your generosity for inviting us and for your fantastic conversation and excellent pointed questions and sharp analyses yourselves. And the other thing I want to add is Palestine Horrah, because we're still in that struggle, we still have to defeat the Zionist entity and we're not going to defeat it by the fake environmentalism of the Israeli state at the expense of the Palestinians in Adipha and

Azah and the destruction of the environment. peoples in Palestine. So Palestine, Harrah. Thank you. Thank you very much. This was an amazing episode for us. And I've learned so much. You both are extremely

great teachers. So thank you very much for being what you are. Very educational. I mean, I will definitely listen to this again and again. I'm sure others will take you a while to listen again and again. This was a long one.

I do listen in 2 plus X. Okay, okay. Not you do. You do speak very fast. So anyways. I wish I had that skill man. It's a wonderful skill to have to be able to listen at two times to speak. It takes time.

It takes time to save time, I guess. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you want to add? Yes. For our listeners, donate to Palestine through Samir Project or Lifeline for Gaza. And look at the description. We'll find a lot of good stuff there. Exactly.

Buy books for Eric. Yeah, do that. I will. All right. Thank you very much, Henry. Thank you, Salvatore. This was excellent. My pleasure.

Thank you. Thank you. Take care. See you soon. Take care.