Michael Malice

So they came in what became known as the Haldimor.

And Ed Applebaum, who's a great historian, who unfortunately I disagree with a lot in contemporary politics, but who's done so much great work.

about the Soviet Union that I pretty much give her a blank check and whatever she wants to say nowadays.

She wrote a great book about this called Red Famine.

And these activists descended on these villages like locusts and their job was to requisition as much food as possible.

And they would come back at all hours of the night to make sure you weren't hiding food.

And this is what was so pernicious about it.

Your own body would betray you.

They could look at you and see that you're not losing weight.

You've got those chubby cheeks.

That means you have food and that's the government's food.

That is the food of the people.

And if you are keeping food for yourself, you are stealing from the people.

You're an enemy of the people and you deserve whatever comes to you.

And it got to a point where they're eating, they didn't have grain to plant for the next harvest.

And what was even sicker is, you know, one of the big criticisms of communists, of the Tsar, was his internal passport system, that I can't go where I want within Russia, the Russian Empire, without permission.

Stalin reintroduced this.

So if your village was targeted, you can't leave.

Now, some people got away.

They tried to get to the cities and so on and so forth, but you get to the city and you're starving.