You get to feed your family during the famine, the Soviets don't have to abide any nasty implications about what is happening in their lands.

ah, but we do not have such bourgeois concepts of luxury in the USSR. that is why all our leaders have mansions on the Black Sea. for state purposes, you understand

After all, imports of luxury foods are what happens during times of prosperity.

lol

@Dinosorcerer, how would you have gotten food to them if you had relatives in the USSR?

I would try to get my relatives out if I could, but if they were in Ukraine, I'd be shit out of luck. curious that the Soviets were so keen to close the Ukrainian borders in particular, preventing travel as much as possible to even the other SSRs. a measure not enforced anywhere near as stringently anywhere else in the Union

a fun little excerpt of a letter from Hryhori Petrovsky, the head of the Soviet All-Ukrainian Executive Committee, to Stalin and Vyatcheslav Molotov with regards to the famine situation in Ukraine
"We knew beforehand that fulfilling state grain procurements in Ukraine would be difficult, but what I have seen in the countryside indicates that we have greatly overdone it, we tried too hard. I was in many raion villages and saw a considerable part of the countryside engulfed in famine. There aren’t many, but there are people swollen from starvation, mainly poor peasants and even middle class farmers. They’re eating food scraps from the bottom of the barrel, if any are available. During well-attended meetings in the villages, I am yelled at for nothing, old women cry and men sometimes do also. At times the criticism of the situation created goes very deep and wide: 'Why did they create an artificial famine? After all, we had a harvest. Why did they take away the sowing seeds? That did not happen even under the old regime. Why should Ukrainians make treacherous journeys for bread to non-grain producing areas? Why isn’t grain being brought here?' And so on."

* gets job at jewyork times

@ebowden I guess if I absolutely had to get food to any relatives, I would have done what Jones did, try and find a way to sneak into the country and get food to them that way. that would necessitate trying to get a position similar to Jones' like a correspondent so that the Soviet government would be more hesitant to abuse me. after all, the Soviets wanted to put on a good face to the world, and they rewarded loyal lapdogs like Duranty handsomely for what was essentially one step below state-sponsored propaganda. that would leave me with a moral dilemma however: do I go through the motions and write what they want me to write so that I can feed my family, keeping them healthy, but lying to the world; or tell the truth and only get one opportunity to give them food, dooming them to starvation and possibly death?

depends on how up the food chain you were..... i think it would be more reasonable to start a secret farm and feed your family that way

go to a town that out of the way and have the produces send to your family

at least long term wise other wise smuggling would be the best short term opt

What kind of food would you smuggle?

zero cal monsters DUH!

lol

but no it would makes sense to smuggle high calorie long term food

wine, honey , peanut butter, crackers

salted meats and such

You want the proper balance of nutrients.

Also, a variety in taste.

well their dieing and smuggling is a risk game

the cut off of goods could come at anytime

People have actually starved to death while food was plentiful because they just wouldn't eat the same thing every day.

And because it's smuggled, as you said, density is important.

^

waxed cheeses

big wheels

any kind of cured meat. peanut butter is a good idea, but then the partisans' dogs would find it

we would need food that doesn't smell and could be hidden inside unconventional places

that when you send them to the camp for not being a good anuff communist

You could also seal everything in oxidant washed metal foil to prevent scent getting out.

you abused the dogs that is abuse against the state

but my point is you'd have be like the cartels with that shit pay off the boarder guards or get ride of them

then you can run trucks of stuff not just small secret loads

Apparently I missed a commie trying to deny the Holodomor and saying life under Communism wasn't so bad.

@Thomas O'Malley but but it was not really communism

Richard Spencer also denies the Holodomor. Horseshoe theory confirmed?

does he now?

this I've not heard

naw horeshoe theory is bs