Michael Malice

the idea of Ukraine being an independent nation within its own identity.

And, you know, he had this kind of liquidation of the kulaks, you know, very famously, which thankfully is much more discussed now than it was maybe when you and I were kids.

And a kulak is,

The real meaning or the literal meaning is kind of this wealthy landowner, right?

But very quickly, it's kind of like it becomes outgroup.

So, you know, there was a big incentive to call someone you didn't like a kulak and then good luck to you because now the eyes of the state are on you and you have to prove that, you know, you didn't hire people, you didn't have four cows or how many acres or so and so forth.

They took a huge...

percentage of the population, the kulaks, and they just deported them.

These are lands that they had for generations and they just spread them throughout broader Russia.

Many of them never made it.

Many of them were killed.

This was by design.

And also you're poor because he's rich.

That's a big part of it.

So while this was going on and food was becoming a problem because you had poor weather conditions,

There was a campaign about, oh, the reason you're hungry is because the kulaks are hoarding all the grain.

And if you're somewhere else in the Soviet Union, how are you supposed to know any better?

Because you're being told every year the crops are bumper crop, bumper crop, bumper crop, and now there's no food, there's no bread.

And so, you see, we produced all this bread.

It's not getting to you because the kulaks are hoarding the grain.