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There is an attempt not on Quora but also on other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, to malign Nehru via misleading facts. BJP blaming today Nehru for everything wrong going on in our Country. BJP believes that if Sardar Patel was PM instead of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru then India will be more progressive and in the memory of him, Statue worth Rs 3000 crore unveiled in Gujarat but Party is hiding one fact that Sardar Patel banned RSS when Nathuram Godse killed Gandhi.Blaming Nehru for today's problem in India is like a person went to Airport to board a flight from Delhi to Mumbai to attend an important meeting unfortunately he missed the flight by few minutes and his Manager asked that person how you missed the flight as meeting is quite important. A person replied - Rajdhani Express derailed near Delhi. The same thing BJP doing today, the party is just deceiving billions of Indians in the name of Nehru, Congress etc.Let me answer in detail-November 14, 1889 - Jawahar Lal Nehru is born, first Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics- before and after Independence. Nehru remains the longest serving Prime Minister of India and his Public Sector led Economic model is fiercely debatable today. He sensibly dealt with challenge of transforming an old Civilization to a modern Nation state. If Nehru had been a different man, India would have been a different Country.What shaped Nehru’s youth?Jawaharlal Nehru, the son of the eminent lawyer-politician Motilal Nehru and Swarup Rani, was born in the midst of wealth on November 14, 1889 in the city of Allahabad, situated along the banks of the Ganges River (now in the state of Uttar Pradesh).Jawaharlal's childhood was secluded. He was the only child of his parents for eleven years, and spent his time mostly in the company of adults. The solitary life compelled him to develop a passion for reading which stayed with him till the end of his life.Training as a lawyer, Motilal had moved to Allahabad and developed a successful practice and had become active in India's largest political party, the Indian National Congress. Nehru and his sisters — Vijaya Lakshmi and Krishna — lived in a large mansion called "Anand Bhavan" and were raised with English customs, manners and dress. Theirs was a ‘typical Indian Victorian family’.After being tutored at home and attending some of the most modern schools in India, Nehru would travel to England at the age of 15 to attend the Harrow School. He would proceed to study natural sciences at the Trinity College before choosing to train as a barrister at the Middle Temple in London. Frequenting the theatres, museums and opera houses of London, he would spend his vacations travelling across Europe. Observers would later describe him as an elegant, charming young intellectual and socialite. Nehru would also participate actively in the political activities of the Indian student community, growing increasingly attracted to socialism and liberalism, which were beginning to influence the politics and economies of Europe.Upon his return to India, Nehru's marriage was arranged with Kamala Kaul. Married on February 8, 1916, Nehru age was 27 and his bride was 16 years old. The first few years of their marriage were hampered by the cultural gulf between the anglicized Nehru and Kamala, who observed Hindu traditions and focused on family affairs. The following year Kamala would give birth to their only child, their daughter Indira Priyadarshini.Having made few attempts to establish himself in a legal practice, Nehru was immediately attracted to Indian political life, which at the time was emerging from divisions over World War I. The moderate and extremist factions of the Congress had reunited in its 1916 session in Lucknow, and Indian politicians had demanded Home Rule and dominion status for India.Joining the Congress under the patronage of his father, Nehru grew increasingly disillusioned with the liberal and anglicized nature of Congress politicians, which included his father.Why did Nehru rise up the political ranks?Jawaharlal Nehru emerged as one of the key figures of the twentieth century. He dominated the Indian political scene as a relentless front rank freedom fighter till independence and as the first Prime Minister of free India left behind him not only certain achievements but also a legacy that continues to be celebrated and debated.Before Nehru became the master of India’s destiny, he was the disciple of the Great Soul of India.Nehru was very strongly attracted to Gandhi's philosophy and leadership. Gandhi had led a successful rebellion on behalf of indentured Indian workers while a lawyer in South Africa. Upon his return to India, Gandhi organized the peasants and farmers of Champaran and Kheda in successful rebellions against oppressive tax policies levied by the British.Gandhi espoused what he termed as satyagraha — mass civil disobedience governed by ahimsa, or complete non-violence. A forceful exponent of Indian self-reliance, Gandhi's success electrified Indians, who had been divided in their approach to contesting British rule. Having met Gandhi and learning of his ideas, Nehru would assist him during the Champaran agitation.Following Gandhi's example, Nehru and his family abandoned their Western-style clothes, possessions and wealthy lifestyle. Wearing clothes spun out of khadi, Nehru would emerge as one of the most energetic supporters of Gandhi. Under Gandhi's influence, Nehru began studying the Bhagavad Gita and would practice yoga throughout his life. He would increasingly look to Gandhi for advice and guidance in his personal life, and would spend a lot of time travelling and living with Gandhi.Nehru travelled across India delivering political speeches aimed at recruiting India's masses, especially its youth into the agitation launched in 1919 against the Rowlatt Acts and the Khilafat struggle. He spoke passionately and forcefully to encourage Hindu-Muslim unity, spread education and self-reliance and the need to eradicate social evils such as untouchability, poverty, ignorance, and unemployment.Emerging as a powerful orator and prominent organizer, Nehru became one of the most popular political leaders in northern India, especially with the people of the United Provinces, Bihar and the Central Provinces. His youth and passion for social justice and equality attracted India's Muslims, women and other minorities. Nehru's role grew especially important following the arrest of senior leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru's father, and he would also be imprisoned along with his mother and sisters for many months. Alarmed by growing violence in the conduct of mass agitations, Gandhi suspended the struggle after the killing of 22 state policemen by a mob at Chauri Chaura on February 4, 1922. This sudden move disillusioned some, including Nehru's father, Motilal, who would join the newly formed Swaraj Party in 1923.However, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and publicly supported him.A lull in nationalist activities enabled Nehru to turn his attention to social causes and local government. In 1924, he was elected president of the municipal corporation of Allahabad, serving as the city's chief executive for two years.Nehru would launch ambitious schemes to promote education, sanitation, expand water and electricity supply and reduce unemployment — his ideas and experience would prove valuable to him when he assumed charge of India's government in 1947. Achieving some success, Nehru was dissatisfied and angered by the obstruction of British officials and corruption amongst civil servants.He would resign from his position within two years. He would then spend the next two decades fighting for India’s independence so that he could one day get to do for the entire nation that he couldn’t do for Allahabad.When did Nehru become the first choice of Gandhi?Nehru attended not only the Socialist Congress at Brussels but also journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1927. It was in this period that he moved very close to socialism and even to Marxism and communism.He openly expressed in his speeches that evolution of communism was an inevitability. This view-point of Nehru was carried into the Congress fold. The first part of the thirties was a period of intense anxiety within the Congress organization. A large number of leaders thought that Nehru had become a communist and some of the industrialists openly challenged him.He and Subhash Chandra Bose had become the most prominent youth leaders, and both demanded the outright political independence of India. Nehru criticized the Nehru Report prepared by his father in 1928, which called for dominion status for India within the British Empire.The radicalism of Nehru and Bose would provoke intense debates during the 1928 Congress session in Guwahati. Arguing that India would deliver an ultimatum to the British and prepare for mass struggle, Nehru and Bose won the hearts of many young Indians. To resolve the issue, Gandhi said that the British would be given two years to grant India dominion status. If they did not, the Congress would launch a national struggle for full political independence. Nehru and Bose succeeded in reducing the statutory deadline to one year.The failure of talks with the British caused the December 1929 session in Lahore to be held in an atmosphere charged with anti-Empire sentiment. Preparing for the declaration of independence, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) elected Jawaharlal Nehru as Congress President at the encouragement of Gandhi. Favored by Gandhi for his charismatic appeal to India's masses, minorities, women and youth, the move nevertheless surprised many Congressmen and political observers. Many had demanded that Gandhi or the leader of the Bardoli Satyagraha, Vallabhbhai Patel, assume the presidency, especially as the leader of the Congress would the inaugurator of India's struggle for complete freedom. Nehru was seen by many as too inexperienced for the job of leading India's largest political organization.And then one of the defining moments of India’s freedom struggle arrived. On December 31, 1929 Nehru hoisted the flag of independence before a massive public gathering along the banks of the Ravi River. The Congress would promulgate the Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence) declaration on January 26, 1930. With the launching of Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha in 1930, Nehru travelled across Gujarat and other parts of the country participating and encouraging in the mass rebellion against the salt tax. Despite his father's death in 1931, Nehru and his family remained at the forefront of the struggle. Arrested with his wife and sisters, Nehru would be imprisoned for all but four months between 1931 and 1935.Nehru was re-elected Congress President in 1936, and he presided over its session in Lucknow. Here he participated in a fierce debate with Gandhi, Patel and other Congress leaders over the adoption of socialism as the official goal of the party. Younger socialists such as Jaya Prakash Narayan, Mridula Sarabhai, Narendra Dev and Asoka Mehta began to see Nehru as leader of Congress socialists. Under their pressure, the Congress passed the Avadi Resolution proclaiming socialism as the model for India's future government.Meanwhile, Gandhi himself wrote a letter to Nehru expressing his fear that he was moving away from him on a different path – towards communism. But it wasn’t because of Gandhi that Nehru could resist the charm of communism. Hitler and Stalin took care of that.The socialist enthusiasm of Nehru wilted away because of certain developments, both world-wide and internal. In Europe the forces of fascism, embodied by German’s Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, grew more and more ominous. The socialist utopia of Karl Marx was clouded by the purges in the USSR and Stalin's inscrutable policies.Nehru was re-elected as President in 1937, and oversaw the Congress national campaign for the 1937 elections. Largely leaving political organization work to others, Nehru travelled the length and breadth of the country, exhorting the masses on behalf of the Congress, which would win an outright majority in the central and most of the provincial legislatures. Although he did not contest elections himself, Nehru was seen by the national media as the leader of the Congress.Torn between the freedom struggle and tending to his sick wife, Nehru would travel back and forth between India and Europe. Kamala Nehru died in 1938. Deeply saddened, Nehru nevertheless continued to maintain a hectic schedule. He would always wear a fresh rose in his coat for the remainder of his life to remember Kamala, who had also become a national heroine.By now India’s freedom seemed inevitableAt the outbreak of World War II, the Assemblies were informed that the Viceroy had unilaterally declared war on the Axis on behalf of India, without consulting the people's representatives. Outraged at the viceroy's arbitrary decision, all elected Congressmen resigned from their offices at the instigation of Subhash Bose and Nehru.But even as Bose would call for an outright revolt and would proceed to seek the aid of Nazi Germany and Japan, Nehru remained sympathetic to the British cause. He joined Maulana Azad, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari and Patel in offering Congress support for the war effort in return for a commitment from the British to grant independence after the war. In doing so, Nehru broke ranks with Gandhi, who had resisted supporting war and remained suspicious of the British.The failure of negotiations and Britain's refusal to concede independence outraged the nationalist movement. Gandhi and Patel called for an all-out rebellion, a demand that was opposed by Rajagopalachari and resisted by Nehru and Azad. After intensive debates and heated discussions, the Congress leaders called for the British to Quit India — to transfer power to Indian hands immediately or face a mass rebellion.Despite his skepticism and for his unflinching dedication to the Mahatma, Nehru travelled the country to exhort India's masses into rebellion. He was arrested with the entire Congress Working Committee on 9 August, 1942 and transported to a maximum security prison at a fort in Ahmednagar. Here he would remain incarcerated with his colleagues till June 1945.India's first prime ministerNehru and his colleagues had been released as the British Cabinet Mission arrived to propose plans for transfer of power. The Congress held a presidential election in the knowledge that its chosen leader would become India's head of government. Eleven Congress state units nominated Vallabhbhai Patel, while only the Working Committee suggested Nehru. Sensing that Nehru would not accept second place to Patel, Gandhi supported Nehru and asked Patel to withdraw, which he immediately did.Nehru's election surprised many Congressmen and continues to be a source of controversy in modern times. Nehru headed an interim government, which was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India as per a plan released by the British on June 3, 1947.He would take office as the Prime Minister of India on August 15, and delivered his inaugural address titled "A Tryst With Destiny." With that Nehru would take charge of India’s destiny for the next 17 years. Rabindranath Tagore in 1941 had asked, “The wheels of fate will someday compel the English to give up their Indian Empire. What kind of India will they leave behind, what stark misery? When the stream of their centuries’ administration runs dry at last, what a waste of mud and filth will they leave behind them?”It was now a matter of what kind of India did Nehru want to create.Where did Nehru take India towards?“Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, is dead. At 2 p.m. local time today 460,000,000 people in this country that has been forged on the anvil of this one man's dreams and conflicts were plunged into the nightmare world which they have, in the last decade, come to dread as the "after Nehru" era.” ~ The Guardian, 28 May 1964A major event such as this inevitably gives rise to “where were you?” questions. Where were you when Kennedy was assassinated? Where were you when Indira Gandhi was killed? Where were you when the World Trade Centre was brought down? The shock of the event magnifies the immediate around you and imprints it in your mind. But where was India when Nehru died?First, some context to the challenges Nehru faced in 1947.After independence in 1947, India was among the poorest countries in the world. Two centuries of plunder, neglect, and exploitation by the British, had left a country of over 300 million people destitute and lost. India’s entire infrastructure, it’s economy, it’s bureaucracy, it was all designed and built solely to serve the needs of British industry and further Britain’s interests.India had been drained of its resources and manpower, so that Britain could win wars on the European continent; the Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 3 million Indians during WW II because Winston Churchill did not wish to ‘waste’ grain on his Indian subjects when there were many Englishmen to feed. And as a final parting gift, the British co-engineered the Partition in 1947, leading to around 14 million refugees and mass killings all over the subcontinent.Half the population of India now lived below the poverty line, and over 80 percent of the people were illiterate. The country was famine-ridden and life expectancy was around 30 years. The per capita income, the agricultural output, and the food grains output had all been continuously shrinking for the previous three decades. Around 1700, the Mughal Empire produced one-third of the global GDP. For the Indian republic in 1947, this was less than 1 percent.Many Western pundits and leaders expected India to collapse. But India progressed. Nehru took care of that, one socialist policy at a time.There was every possibility that India would end up as just another post-independence basket case. However, as the world watched India, expecting it to fail, quite the opposite happened. When the 1950s rolled by, and consecutive 5-year plans were drawn up and executed, it came to the world’s attention that India was doing remarkably well.Percival Griffith, a former colonial administrator who was highly sceptical of India’s capabilities, wrote in 1957 that post-independence foodgrain production had been ‘spectacular,’ and that India was succeeding in doing what he himself had thought impossible. He noted that it was “impossible to travel round India without feeling that the country has entered a new, dynamic phase,” and that “the signs of a rise in the standard of living are unmistakable.”British economist Barbara Ward remarked in 1961 how in India a “process of continuous growth covers everything from Tata’s works at Jamshedpur, producing over half a million tons of steel a year, down to the villager selling his first mound of rice in the market.” Ward further wrote that “investment in all sectors, including agriculture, almost double between the first and second plans,” and that “the Indian record in both infrastructure and industry is one of substantial advance on a broad front, like the big push needed to achieve sustained growth.”From over 40 years of zero-percent growth between 1900 and 1947, India saw the economy grow to 4 percent annually until 1962, putting it ahead of China, Japan, and the UK.American political scientist Michael Brecher was quite clear in who the credit must go to: “Whatever progress has been achieved is primarily due to the efforts of the prime minister. Indeed he is the heart and soul and mind of India’s heroic struggle to raise the living standards of its 390 million people.”On gaining independence in 1947, rumor has it that Lord Mountbatten and the colonialists assured Nehru – in good zest - that he wouldn’t have to worry about uniting a heterogeneous nation like India under a single Republic because the nation would break into many states anyway. While credit has to be given to Sardar Patel in uniting India’s princely states, few at the time philosophically fathomed the challenges of binding a nation like India: how does a nation of over a billion people — or 17.5 percent of the world’s population, — home to every religion known to mankind, 4,600 castes and sub-castes, 22 major languages, 13 different scripts, and hundreds of dialects, continue to remain united?Of course it had to be NehruAs India lost the Mahatma in 1948, Nehru became responsible for continuing his legacy and creating the India they together had dreamed of. He ended up creating an India which he alone had dreamt of – but it was still a good version of the many possibilities that India offered in 1947.Nehru’s idea of India’s modern nationhood consisted of four key dimensions: democracy, secularism, socialism, and non-alignment. These dimensions came about through long discussions between Nehru and Gandhi, Nehru’s own experience in the independence movement, and his observations as he saw the world change and move into new, unknown territory. The British leaving him no tradition of good governance to fall back on, Nehru had to reinvent the art of Indian statesmanship in a new world order.Overnight, India had become the largest democracy in the world; the sheer size of its population gave it a voter-base larger than the entire populace of most other democracies. India’s democracy took ideas from both UK and US; India became a union of states with strong local government like the US, but with a parliamentary system like the UK.For Nehru, democracy was not just about the right to vote, but also having the economic means to leverage your democratic rights. Political democracy would be meaningless without economic democracy. Nehru was also a strong advocate for Panchayati Raj, the idea of self-governance for villages.Nehru’s idea of secularism was to be often tested during his premiership; with Partition and the creation of Pakistan, the idea of Muslim-Hindu cohabitation came under fire by both Muslims and Hindus. Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, believed that Muslims would never be safe as a minority in a Hindu-dominated India. On the other side, there were those who believed in Hindutva, the idea that India is first and foremost a Hindu nation and should be guided by Hindu principles. The creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan gave Hindutva new boon as its adherents now argued that, with the Muslims having their own state, Hindus were entitled to having India as their country. Nehru would have none of this and till his lasts days he fought for a secular India. When the Islamic minority had to be reassured that India would continue to be their home as well, Nehru stated in 1951: “If anyone raises his hand against another in the name of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, whether from inside the government or outside.”Nehru’s foreign policy for India was to be shaped by the idea of non-alignment. Over a hundred new countries would emerge from the ruins of European colonialism after WW II, and the two competing super powers — the US and the USSR — were both looking to expand their influence over these maiden nations. India was also courted, but Nehru rejected the false dichotomy of American capitalism and Russian communism. Instead, he chose the third path of non-alignment. Non-alignment was also a way for India to maintain its national sovereignty; having just thrown out the British, it seemed foolish to immediately become a vassal of a new foreign master. Furthermore, India’s choice to not align itself with either great power, but to always remain an advocate for non-violence and peaceful cooperation among nations, gave it a much larger voice in international politics than its economy or military strength really justified.India would become one of the leading nations of the Movement of Non-aligned Countries, a power bloc and a spiritual force in the United Nations of many newly-liberated countries.Who benefitted in the Nehruvian era?The mixed model was built on public sector-led growth with private participationNehru implemented his socialist vision by introducing a modified, "Indian" version of state planning and control over the economy. Creating the Planning Commission of India, Nehru drew up the first Five-Year Plan in 1951, which charted the government's investments in industries and agriculture.Increasing business and income taxes, Nehru envisaged a mixed economy in which the government would manage strategic industries such as mining, electricity and heavy industries, serving public interest and a check to private enterprise. Nehru pursued land redistribution and launched programs to build irrigation canals, dams and spread the use of fertilizers to increase agricultural production. He also pioneered a series of community development programs aimed at spreading diverse cottage industries and increasing efficiency into rural India. While encouraging the construction of large dams, irrigation works and the generation of hydroelectricity, Nehru also launched India's program to harness nuclear energy.For most of Nehru's term as prime minister, India would continue to face serious food shortages despite progress and increases in agricultural production. Nehru's industrial policies encouraged the growth of diverse manufacturing and heavy industries, yet state planning, controls and regulations impaired productivity, quality and profitability. Although the Indian economy enjoyed a steady rate of growth, chronic unemployment amidst entrenched poverty continued to plague the population.Investment in India’s futureJawaharlal Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India's children and youth, believing it essential for India's future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Management.Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrollment programs and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children in order to fight malnutrition. Adult education centres, vocational and technical schools were also organized for adults, especially in the rural areas.Under Nehru, the Indian Parliament enacted many changes to Hindu law to criminalize caste discrimination and increase the legal rights and social freedoms of women. A system of reservations in government services and educational institutions was created to eradicate the social inequalities and disadvantages faced by peoples of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.The big Chinese miscalculationIn the 1962 elections, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Opposition parties ranging from the right-wing Bharatiya Jana Sangh (which evolved into the Bharatiya Janta Party that leads India today) and Swatantra Party, socialists and the Communist Party of India performed well. In a matter of months, a Chinese invasion of northeastern India exposed the weaknesses of India's military as Chinese forces came as far as Assam.Nehru assumed that as former colonies India and China shared a sense of solidarity, as expressed in the phrase "Hindi-Chini bhai bhai" (Indians and Chinese are brothers). He was dedicated to the ideals of brotherhood and solidarity among developing nations, while China was dedicated to a realist vision of itself as the hegemon of Asia. Nehru did not believe that one fellow socialist country would attack another; and in any event, he felt secure behind the impregnable wall of ice that is the Himalayas.Both proved to be tragic miscalculations of China's determination and military capabilities. Nehru decided to adopt the policy of moving his territory forward, and refused to consider any negotiations China had to offer. As Nehru declared the intention to throw every Chinese out of the disputed areas, China made a preemptive attack on the Indian front. India was vanquished by the Chinese People's Liberation Army in a bitter and cold battle in the Northeast.Nehru was forced to sack the defence minister Krishna Menon and accept U.S. military aid. Nehru's health began declining steadily, and he was forced to spend months recuperating in Kashmir through 1963. Upon his return from Kashmir in May 1964, Nehru suffered a stroke and later a heart attack. He died on May 27, 1964. As per his wishes, Nehru was cremated as per Hindu rites at the Shantivana on the banks of the Yamuna River, witnessed by hundreds of thousands of mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds.How contested is Nehru’s legacy today?When a great man dies in office, there is often a tendency to measure his greatness by the scale of the ensuing alarm and uncertainty. This is a fallacious measure. Indeed, it is a mark of weakness, not of strength, if a national leader fails to bequeath a smoothly working structure of leadership to a clearly designated successor.Nehru failed to do this. If he had succeeded in doing it, both India and the rest of the world could have received the news of his death with calmer grief; and his greatness would have been not diminished but enhanced. As it is, the hasty induction of Gulzarilal Nanda, the home minister, as head of a caretaker government, was taken as signifying the beginning, not the outcome, of the battle of the succession.With the bountiful benefit of hindsight, Nehru is today criticized for establishing an era of socialist policies that created a burgeoning, inefficient bureaucracy (which inhibits India to this day) and curbed free enterprise and productivity while failing to significantly eliminate poverty, shortages and poor living conditions.Historians and Hindu nationalists also criticize Nehru for allegedly appeasing the Indian Muslim community at the expense of his own conviction in secularism. Nehru's declaratory ‘neutral’ foreign policy is criticized as hypocritical due to his affinity for the Soviet Union and other socialist states.He is also blamed for ignoring the needs of India's military services and failing to acknowledge the threat posed by the People's Republic of China and Pakistan. Many believe India would not have had as difficult a time in facing the challenges of the twenty-first century had Vallabhbhai Patel been Prime Minister and Nehru worked as External Affairs Minister, which was his forte.But, going back to 1947…There is no single explanation for what kept and still keeps India united, but much of modern India’s unity is indebted to Nehru. Most importantly, many colonized countries that attained freedom at the same time — none as vast and as complex as India — promptly became dictatorships, including Pakistan which soon passed into military hands. India defied its many western critics, proving under Nehru that it was not going to implode under the many pressures it faced at the time.Perhaps his shortcomings are compensated by his strong democratic principles, which set down such firm roots in post-1947 India that India's democracy has proved to be robust and solid in the face of emergencies, wars and other crises. Nehru laid the foundations of a vibrant democracy that India continues to celebrate today — the same democracy that made the electoral victory of Narendra Modi – a fierce Nehru critic - possible in 2014. While every general election in India can be regarded as the largest voting exercise in democracy, the 1951-52 elections saw universal suffrage at time when there were still nations in the “developed” west that hadn’t established voting rights for their women – Switzerland enacted universal suffrage at the national level in 1971.In practical terms, Nehru’s legacy extends to other features of India’s modern identity. English’s status as a national lingua-franca across the academic and the professional spheres in India is thanks to Nehru’s vision. Additionally, India’s world-class higher-educational institutes and the foundations of New Delhi’s space program were put in place due to his visionary foresight.Whatever his shortcomings may have been on foreign and economic affairs, India as it exists today could not have come about without Nehru. One cannot be simultaneously proud of India’s achievements after independence and ashamed of what Nehru did to the country in the most challenging years. They say if Nehru had been a different man, India would have been a different country. India, therefore, could have been Singapore. But Singapore isn’t the best example of a democratic state.“Pandit Nehru is invincible”.Footnotes :-https://www.history.com/topics/india/jawaharlal-nehruJawaharlal Nehru: a legacy revisited Jawaharlal Nehru: a legacy revisitedJawaharlal NehruWorld without NehruNehru’s Legacy, 51 Years After his DeathTryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru: Tryst with Destiny | Jawaharlal Nehru

Stablecoins — cryptocurrencies that are increasingly gaining traction — are much more fixed than normal cryptocurrencies.This is because their values are pegged to other assets such as the US dollar or gold.As a result, stablecoins enjoy the many benefits of being a cryptocurrency (transparency, security, privacy, etc.) without the extreme volatility that comes with most other types of digital coins.Stablecoins were created to be used the way cryptocurrencies were intended — as a simplistic, stabilized, scalable, and secure means for transactions. After all, most businesses, understandably, aren’t interested in accepting a currency like bitcoin that might tank in value the very next day.Recently, there has been a so-called “stablecoin invasion.” At least 57 stablecoins have been released or are in development globally, according to a recent report. In addition, the Paxos Standard (PAX) and Gemini Dollar (GUSD) are two USD-backed stablescoins that have been approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services.In this explainer, we dive into stablecoins, from what they are to why they’re emerging as a potential disruptor across the crypto space. We analyze the different types of stablecoins, as well as their applications and limitations.What are stablecoins?Today, there are 180 currencies across the world that are recognized by the United Nations, from the US dollar to the European Euro to the Japanese Yen, and more.Across global economies, these currencies are often used to buy goods and services. Despite inflation, fluctuating exchange rates, and other factors, the value of most of these currencies is subject to very little change on a day-to-day basis.This allows several economies to rely on the use of these government-issued currencies to operate. In other words, you can buy a loaf of bread from your favorite baker and pay $3.50 for it today knowing that it’s highly unlikely that it would drastically drop to 99 cents tomorrow.Stablecoins — in the form of digital money — aim to mimic traditional, stable currencies.In general, a stablecoin is a cryptocurrency that is collateralized to the value of an underlying asset. What that underlying asset may be varies from coin to coin, which we’ll dive into later in this piece.Many stablecoins are pegged at a 1:1 ratio with certain fiat currencies, such as the US dollar or the Euro, which can be traded on exchanges. Other stablecoins can be pegged to other kinds of assets, such as precious metals like gold, or even to other cryptocurrencies.Why use stablecoins?Stablecoins are not subject to the extreme price volatility that other cryptocurrencies are affected by.In 2010, for example, a programmer purchased pizza for 10,000 bitcoin (~$30). Earlier this year, that same order cost $82M — all as a result of bitcoin’s drastic change in price.As a result, some businesses are skeptical of crypto as a valid means of payment. Microsoft, for example, first started accepting bitcoin as a payment in 2014, only to put a temporary halt on it earlier this year due to volatility. While other businesses are beginning to accept crypto, from Overstock to Shopify, widespread adoption is still far away.Stablecoins on the other hand, leverage the benefits of cryptocurrencies — such as transparency, security, immutability, digital wallets, fast transactions, low fees, and privacy — without losing the guarantees of trust and stability that come with using fiat currency (like the US dollar or Euro).They have the potential to bring benefits to a plethora of industries and individuals that need to make international payments quickly and securely, from migrant workers that need to send money back to their families, to big businesses looking for a cheaper and more efficient way to provide payments to overseas suppliers.In both scenarios, people need not worry about sending a speculative asset that could suddenly decrease in value, much like bitcoin, which saw a ~60% drop since January of this year.People in underbanked communities, for example, can transact using this form of digital currency, especially if they live in areas where economic uncertainty is a regular concern. This technology allows for the use of a global currency that is, in theory, not subject to localized laws and conditions.Stablecoins also present major advantages across the financial services ecosystem as a whole.By enabling a decentralized system that is secure and stable, everything from cross-border lending to financial planning could benefit. With decentralized lending, for example, stablecoins could help ensure a reliable environment for P2P transactions to take place without needing to use a volatile a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to transact.Broadly, this could transform those involved with applications across the cryptocurrency space, such as traders, investors, and blockchain-based businesses.They could provide crypto holders, for example, with a safe haven in the event of a market crash, as they can move their funds from highly volatile cryptocurrencies into stablecoins — in a matter of minutes — without having to move their capital back into fiat (many cryptocurrency exchanges do not allow fiat on the platform, or will take a large fee from the transfer into fiat).There are several emerging use cases, but before diving further, we need to understand the different types of stablecoins.Types of stablecoinsThere are 4 main categories that stablecoins can fall into.FIAT-COLLATERALIZED STABLECOINSThe most common type of stablecoins are collateralized, or backed, by fiat currency like USD, EUR, or GBP.Fiat-backed stablecoins are backed at a 1:1 ratio, meaning 1 stablecoin is equal to 1 unit of currency (like a dollar). So for each stablecoin that exists, there is real fiat currency being held in a bank account to back it up.When someone wants to redeem cash with their coins, the entity that manages the stablecoin will take out the amount of fiat from their reserve and it will be sent to the person’s bank account. The equivalent stablecoins are then destroyed or taken out of circulation.Fiat-collateralized stablecoins are the simplest structure a stablecoin can have, and simplicity has big advantages. It’s easy to understand for anyone new to cryptocurrencies, which can allow for more widespread adoption of this new technology.As long as the economy of the country a stablecoin is pegged to stays stable, it is guaranteed that the value of the coin will not fluctuate either. This means even if the entire cryptocurrency economy collapsed and Bitcoin went down to $0, it would not affect a fiat-backed stablecoin at all.Types of fiat-collaterized stablecoinsThe most popular stablecoin is Tether (USDT), which is currently the 9th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and has the highest daily trading volumes of any cryptocurrency, just after Bitcoin.Tether, however, has been surrounded by plenty of controversy lately. Suspicions have arisen that Tether has issued more USDT than is actually backed by its USD reserves, as the company has yet to agree to release a transparent audit.For this reason, many new fiat-collateralized stablecoins have risen up in attempt to take Tether’s place.One such example is TrueUSD (TUSD), which is the second most popular stablecoin currently, also backed 1:1 to USD. TrueUSD actually never touches your funds — instead it enables users to exchange USD directly with an escrow account, allowing complete legal protection for token holders and guarantees their TUSD is actually backed by USD.There’s a plethora of other fiat-collateralized stablecoins out there. In the UK, the London Block Exchange released LBXPeg, the first cryptocurrency to be tied to the value of GBP. There’s even a stablecoin in Mongolia called Candy, which is backed by the Mongolian tugrik.Earlier this year, crypto finance company Circle announced the release of its USD Coin (USDC), backed by the US dollar. USDC is accepted across various exchanges, including Coinbase, Poloniex, and Bit-Z.Two USD-backed stablecoins have been approved and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services — further proof this stablecoin invasion beginning to take off. The Paxos Standard (PAX) and the Gemini Dollar (GUSD) became the world’s first regulated cryptocurrencies in September, 2018.COMMODITY-COLLATERALIZED STABLECOINSCommodity-collateralized stablecoins are backed by other kinds of interchangeable assets, such as precious metals. The most common commodity to be collateralized is gold — however, there are also stablecoins backed by oil, real estate, and baskets of various precious metals.Holders of commodity-backed stablecoins essentially hold a tangible asset that has real value — something most cryptocurrencies do not have. These commodities even have the potential to appreciate in value over time, which gives increased incentive for people to hold and use these coins.In the case of commodity-collateralized stablecoins, anyone in the world could conceivably invest in precious metals like gold, or even real estate in Switzerland. These kinds of assets have generally only been reserved for the wealthy, but stablecoins open up new possibilities of investments to average individuals globally.Digix Gold (DGX), for example, is an ERC-20 token (built on the Ethereum network) backed by physical gold, where 1 DGX represents 1 gram of gold. This gold is stored in a vault in Singapore and gets audited every 3 months to ensure transparency. The creators of DGX claim they have “democratized access to gold.” DGX holders may even redeem the physical bars of gold — they just have to go to the vault in Singapore to do so.Tiberius Coin (TCX) is backed by not one commodity, but by a combination of 7 precious metals commonly used in technology hardware. The idea is that as these metals are increasingly used to make technology such as solar panels and electric cars, TCX coins will go up in value.SwissRealCoin (SRC) is another example, which is backed by a portfolio of Swiss real estate. Token holders can even democratically vote on the investment choices.CRYPTO-COLLATERALIZED STABLECOINSThese are stablecoins backed by other cryptocurrencies.This allows crypto-backed stablecoins to be much more decentralized than their fiat-backed counterparts, since everything is conducted on the blockchain.To reduce price volatility risks, these stablecoins are often over-collateralized so they can absorb price fluctuations in the collateral.For example, to get $500 worth of stablecoins, you would need to deposit $1,000 worth of Ether (ETH). In this scenario, the stablecoins are now 200% collateralized, and can withstand a price drop, let’s say, of 25%. This would still mean the $500 worth of stablecoins are collaterized by $750 worth of ETH.And if the price of the underlying cryptocurrency drops low enough, the stablecoins will automatically be liquidated.Crypto-collateralized stablecoins are decentralized, allowing processes to be even more trustless, secure, and completely transparent. There is no single entity controlling your funds. Additionally, they are often backed by multiple cryptocurrencies in order to distribute risk.They also enjoy far more liquidity, meaning they can be quickly and cheaply converted into their underlying asset.Crypto-backed stablecoins are the most complex form of stablecoin, which means they have not gained as much traction yet as they continue to work out their kinks.The most popular and promising example of a crypto-collateralized stablecoin is Dai.Created by MakerDAO, Dai is a stablecoin that has a face-value pegged to USD, but is actually backed by ETH that is locked up in smart contracts.NON-COLLATERALIZED STABLECOINSNon-collateralized stablecoins are not backed by anything, which might seem contradictory given what stablecoins are.The US dollar used to be backed by gold, but that ended decades ago, and dollars are still perfectly stable because people believe in their value. The same idea can apply to non-collateralized stablecoins.These types of coins use an algorithmically governed approach to control the stablecoin supply. This is a model known as seignorage shares.As demand increases, new stablecoins are created to reduce the price back to the normal level. If the coin is trading too low, then coins on the market are bought up to reduce the circulating supply. In theory, prices of these stablecoins would remain stable as they are driven by market supply and demand.This is the most decentralized and independent form of stablecoin, as it isn’t collateralized to any other asset. This means even if the US dollar and the entire crypto market crashes, this form of stablecoin would survive and stay stable.However, non-collateralized stablecoins require continual growth to be successful. In the event of a crash, there is no collateral to liquidate the coin back into, and everyone’s money would be lost.One such example of a non-collatorialized stablecoin is Basis, which algorithmically adjusts supply in order to keep its prices stable. It refers to itself as “a stable cryptocurrency with an algorithmic central bank.”Real-world applicationsAlthough still in its early stages, stablecoins have many potential real-world uses. Here are just a few examples.A day-to-day currencyStablecoins could be used just like any other currency for mainstream commerce, but with the added benefits of being a digital currency that’s legally backed and secure.We may finally be able to pull out our smartphone and use a digital wallet to pay for our morning coffee with cryptocurrency like many crypto-enthusiasts have dreamed of.Stablecoins are also especially beneficial for overseas payments, since there doesn’t have to be any conversion of different fiat currencies. A person in India could receive USD-backed stablecoins without converting them into rupees and losing a massive percentage to fees.Streamlining recurring and P2P paymentsStablecoins also allow the use of smart financial contracts that can be enforceable over time.Smart contracts are self-executing contracts that exist on a blockchain network, without requiring any third party or central authority to enact it. These automatic transactions are traceable, transparent, and irreversible, making them ideal for salary and loan payments, rent payments, and subscriptions.An employer can set up a smart contract that automatically transfers stablecoins to their employees at the end of each month, for example. This is especially beneficial for businesses that have employees all over the world, as it reduces the exorbitant fees and days long process of transferring and exchanging fiat currency from, say, a bank account in New York to a Chinese bank account.Using stablecoins, this process could take mere minutes and require just a small fraction of the usual transaction fees.In another scenario, a smart contract could be set up between a landlord and her tenant to automatically transfer payment for rent on the first of each month, without worrying about high fluctuations in price like you would with non-stable cryptocurrencies.The same idea can apply for automatic payments of loans (ie. with decentralized lending), monthly subscriptions such as gym memberships, or even recurring donations to nonprofit organizations.Fast and affordable remittances for migrant workersStablecoins have the potential to change millions of families’ lives in developing countries as well.In today’s world, migrant workers have to send remittances through businesses like Western Union to get money back to their families and loved ones. This is a slow and costly process, where families end up losing a big chunk of their funds to high fees.Cryptocurrency offers a solution to this problem, with fast transactions and low fees, but there’s still the problem that a cryptocurrency like bitcoin could drop in value by 20% in just one day.Stablecoins, however, could provide a better alternative. Workers and their families across the globe could use digital wallets to receive stablecoins from anywhere in the world almost instantly — with low fees, and without price volatility.Seeing how global remittances totaled $613B in 2017 alone, this is a massive use case for stablecoins.Protection from local currency crashesIn the event of a fiat currency crashing in value, local citizens could exchange their crashing currency for USD-backed, EUR-backed, or even gold-backed stablecoins quickly before they lose even more of their savings, thus protecting them from further drops in value.Take, for example, the hyperinflation that is currently occurring in Venezuela. On average, prices of goods have been doubling every few weeks.The IMF predicts that by the end of 2018, the inflation rate will reach 1,000,000%. Most Venezuelans can no longer afford food because their savings have become increasingly worthless and continue to drop in value by the day.Stablecoins could offer a viable solution to people going through such crises by allowing them to quickly exchange their dropping currency holdings into a stable currency, thus protecting them from further drops in value.Improved cryptocurrency exchangesVery few cryptocurrency exchanges out there currently support fiat currencies due to strict regulations. But the use of stablecoins allow exchanges to get around this problem and offer crypto-fiat trading pairs, by simply using a USD-backed stablecoin instead of actual dollars.This will greatly help in the adoption of cryptocurrency trading as a whole, as it makes the process of joining and obtaining cryptocurrency easier for newcomers, as they can continue to think in terms of dollars or euros, instead of in constantly-fluctuating bitcoin values.It will also reduce bitcoin’s massive influence over the market, as currently most exchanges require traders to hold BTC before they can exchange it for other types of crypto.LimitationsWhile stablecoins present many advantages, they also have their limitations.The aforementioned Tether provides an example of how a stablecoin can go wrong. Fiat-backed stablecoins are centralized, meaning they are run by a single entity. This requires trust that this entity is actually backing up their stablecoins with real fiat.Since Tether has yet to ever provide a transparent audit to its reserve, a lot of people suspect Tether is only holding a fraction of the USD it claims to have. As a result, Tether’s market cap has dropped more than $1B in October 2018 alone.To solve this trust problem, stablecoins should provide regular audits from third parties to ensure transparency. This will help ensure that they are trustworthy and can help keep their reputation high.Fiat-backed stablecoins are also constrained by all of the regulations that come with fiat currency, compromising the efficiency of the conversion process. This means they have less liquidity than regular cryptocurrencies.This is especially true for commodity-backed stablecoins. If you ever wanted to get your real bars of gold, for example, it could take months and an expensive trip to the vault.Moreover, there’s always the risk that the underlying asset crashes in value.Think about Black Wednesday in the UK, or the 1998 Ruble crisis that occurred in Russia. If such an event occurs to the fiat a stablecoin is pegged to, it would be disastrous for that stablecoin as well.Crypto-backed stablecoins also come with their own set of issues.Being pegged to other cryptocurrencies make them much more vulnerable to price instability in comparison to fiat- or commodity-backed stablecoins.They are tied to the health of a particular cryptocurrency (or combination of cryptocurrencies), which means if that crypto takes a deep nose dive, the stablecoin ultimately will as well. In the event of a price crash, they will be auto-liquidated into the underlying crypto asset, where they are no longer stable at all.This is another disadvantage to crypto-collateralized stablecoins: they’re difficult to understand and are the most complex form of stablecoins, which introduces much higher risk of things going wrong in the complicated processes.Looking aheadCryptocurrencies are still in their infancy, and this is even more true with stablecoins. This new form of digital currency is still taking form and has a long way to go before potentially reaching maturity.While it is impossible to predict what the future has in store in the constantly changing world of blockchain, stablecoins could help bring cryptocurrencies as a whole to the mainstream.Each form of stablecoin comes with its own unique set of benefits and drawbacks, and none of them are perfect. Yet the value and stability they could provide to businesses and individuals globally — by enabling universal access to established national currencies — could be disruptive.But, it’s still too early to determine success, and the many emerging stablecoins out there will have to experiment with these new concepts to see what works and what doesn’t.Source

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.No, it's probably the largest certified fake news in human history.By communism I allow myself to understand Marxism Leninism.Marxism-Leninism is the practical application of Marxism to the modern world. It’s the adaptation of Marxism by the writings and theories of Vladimir Lenin. It’s a universally applicable ideology and is by far the most widespread and historically significant version of Marxism. It involves:VanguardismOne-party stateCritique of ImperialismDemocratic CentralismAbolition of private propertyDictatorship of the proletariatBut where does this meaningless number come from?From the black book of communism, which attributes these deaths to communism:65 million” in the People's Republic of China“20 million” in the Soviet Union“2 million” in Cambodia“2 million” in North Korea“1.7 million” in Ethiopia“1.5 million” in Afghanistan“1 million” in the Eastern Bloc“1 million” in Vietnam“150,000” in Latin America“10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international Communist movement and Communist parties not in power"What's the problem?The problem is that the book, in addition to contradicting itself, also considers deaths in the war.The author had this huge obsession with reaching 100 million, so after shooting completely random numbers, he added 5 million deaths to reach 100 million.Moreover, the Black Book of Communism is considered by many historical propaganda.Whereas chapters of the book, where it describes the events in separate Communist states, were highly praised, some generalizations made by Courtois in the introduction to the book became a subject of criticism both on scholarly and political grounds. Moreover, two of the book's main contributors—Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin—as well as Karel Bartosek publicly disassociated themselves from Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Werth and Margolin felt Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship"and faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries. They also argued that based on the results of their studies, one can tentatively estimate the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million. In particular, Margolin, who authored the Black Book's chapter on Vietnam, clarified "that he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam.” Historians Jean-Jacques Becker and J. Arch Getty have criticized Courtois for failing to draw a distinction between victims of neglect and famine and victims of "intentional murder". Economic historian Michael Ellman has argued that the book's estimate of "at least 500,000" deaths during the Soviet famine of 1946–1947 "is formulated in an extremely conservative way, since the actual number of victims was much larger", with 1,000,000–1,500,000 excess deaths. Regarding these questions, historian Alexander Dallin has argued that moral, legal, or political judgments hardly depend on the number of victims. Many observers have rejected Courtois's numerical and moral comparison of Communism to Nazism in the introduction. According to Werth, there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and Communism, saying: "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union". He further told Le Monde: "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious". In a critical review, historian Amir Weiner wrote: "When Stalin's successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution". Historian Ronald Suny remarked that Courtois' comparison of 100 million victims of Communism to 25 million victims of Nazism "[leaves out] out most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible". A report by the Wiesel Commission criticized the comparison of Gulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims as an attempt to trivialize the Holocaust. Historian Peter Kenez criticized the chapter written by Nicolas Werth: "Werth can also be an extremely careless historian. He gives the number of Bolsheviks in October 1917 as 2,000, which is a ridiculous underestimate. He quotes from a letter of Lenin to Alexander Shliapnikov and gives the date as 17 October 1917; the letter could hardly have originated at that time, since in it Lenin talks about the need to defeat the Tsarist government, and turn the war into a civil conflict. He gives credit to the Austro-Hungarian rather than the German army for the conquest of Poland in 1915. He describes the Provisional Government as 'elected'. He incorrectly writes that the peasant rebels during the civil war did more harm to the Reds than to the Whites, and so on". Historian Mark Tauger challenged the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was largely artificial and genocidal. According to journalist Gilles Perrault, the books ignores the effect of international factors, including military interventions, on the communist experience. Social critic Noam Chomsky has criticized the book and its reception as one-sided by outlining economist Amartya Sen's research on hunger. While India's democratic institutions prevented famines, its excess of mortality over China—potentially attributable to the latter's more equal distribution of medical and other resources—was nonetheless close to 4 million per year for non-famine years. Chomsky argued that "supposing we now apply the methodology of the Black Book" to India, "the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of [...] Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone". Le Siècle des Communismes, a collective work of twenty academics, was a response to both François Furet's Le passé d'une Illusion and Courtois's The Black Book of Communism. It broke Communism down into series of discrete movements, with mixed positive and negative results. The Black Book of Communism prompted the publication of several other "black books" which argued that similar chronicles of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of colonialism and capitalismDebunking: “Communism killed more people than naziism!”USSRStalin was hit hard by anti-communist propaganda, especially by Robert Conquest, a British "historian" who was paid by the British Information Research Department (IRD) to create false propaganda.Robert Conquest dies – but his lies live on!But how many people really killed Stalin?About 1 million.death toll 2.pdfIt seems like a lot if we don't consider the fact that most of these people weren't innocent.HolodomorThe Holodomor was not caused by Stalin, that is a lie created by Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich propaganda minister.“It is a matter of some significance that Cardinal Innitzer’s allegations of famine-genocide were widely promoted throughout the 1930s, not only by Hitler’s chief propagandist Goebbels, but also by American Fascists as well.It will be recalled that Hearst kicked off his famine campaign with a radio broadcast based mainly on material from Cardinal Innitzer’s “aid committee.” In Organized Anti-Semitism in America, the 1941 book exposing Nazi groups and activities in the pre-war United States, Donald Strong notes that American fascist leader Father Coughlin used Nazi propaganda material extensively. This included Nazi charges of “atrocities by Jew Communists” and verbatim portions of a Goebbels speech referring to Innitzer’s “appeal of July 1934, that millions of people were dying of hunger throughout the Soviet Union.”-Tottle, Douglas -Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Toronto: Progress Books,1987, p. 49-51Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on HolodomorHolodomor was caused by the Kulakis, the climate, the Golden Blockade (western economic block) and various diseases.“During the 1932 harvest season Soviet agriculture experienced a crisis. Natural disasters, especially plant diseases spread and intensified by wet weather in mid-1932, drastically reduced crop yields. OGPU reports, anecdotal as they are, indicate widespread peasant opposition to the kolkhoz system.These documents contain numerous reports of kolkhozniki, faced with starvation, mismanagement and abuse by kolkhoz officials and others, and desperate conditions: dying horses, idle tractors, infested crops, and incitement by itinerant people. Peasants’ responses varied: some applied to withdraw from their farms, some left for paid work outside, some worked sloppily, intentionally leaving grain on the fields while harvesting to glean later for themselves.”-Tauger, Mark. “Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation.” In Rural Adaptation in Russia by Stephen Wegren, Routledge, New York, NY, 2005, Chapter 3, p. 81.Stalin needed to industrialize the USSR as fast as possible to be ready for a potential war, but had to import the necessary materials from the west. (WWII) The west imposed a "golden blockade" on the USSR, whereby the Western powers refused to accept gold as payment for industrial equipment they delivered to Russia. They demanded that the Soviet government pay for the equipment in timber, oil and grain. These sanctions were not removed the following years, and was a major reason as to the extremity of the Famine. The leadership of the USSR was forced to play by the wests rules.In April 17, 1933, the British government declared an embargo on up to 80% of USSR’s exports.During this time, the Great Depression began. In the US ,in response to the overproduction of grain, in particular, the government destroyed grain in large quantities, and immediately took grain from the USSR in payment for its machines instead of gold, oil and other much more necessary raw materials. Roosevelt, continued the policy of destroying agricultural products and reducing crop areas in order to raise prices to lower the severity of the depression:“Probably most deaths in 1933 were due to epidemics of typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Waterborne diseases were frequent in Makeyevka; I narrowly survived an attack of typhus fever. “- Blumenfeld, Hans. Life Begins at 65. Montreal, Canada: Harvest House, c1987, p. 153“Their (kulak) opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000.Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941. […] Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.”- Russia Since 1917, Four Decades Of Soviet Politics by Frederick L. SchumanHere you can see Russian peasants who find wheat stolen from kulaki.But who were the Kulakis?The Kulaki were a peasant class born in 1906 due to the agrarian reform of Petr Stolypin.A horrendous reform, which did nothing but increase the gap between rich and poor.The Kulaks rebelled against collectivization with violence, the same collectivization that brought Russia out of thisto this.AMERICAN AND SOVIET CITIZENS EAT ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT OF FOOD EACH DAY BUTFor more information, I recommend reading the books of Mark B Tauger, a historian specializing in famine.https://newcoldwar.org/wp-conten...https://www.newcoldwar.org/wp-co...The Great Famine-Genocide in Soviet Ukraine (Holodomor)I would also recommend Dougles Tottle's book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism which also exposes the origins of the famine-genocide myth that is now propogated by many Nazis.Stalin, due to the Western economic blockade, had to remove Ukraine from large amounts to help the worst affected territories.Agricultural Adjustment Act - WikipediaHowever Stalin helped Ukraine.№ 144. Decree of Politburo of the CC VCP(b) [Central Committee of the All‐Russian Communist Party] concerning foodstuff aid to the Ukrainian S.S.R. of June 16, 1932:a) To release to the Ukraine 2,000 tons of oats for food needs from the unused seed reserves;b) to release to the Ukraine ∼3,600,000 ℔ of corn for food of that released for sowing for the Odessa oblast' but not used for that purpose;c) to release ∼2,520,000 ℔ of grain for collective farms in the sugar‐beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;d) to release ∼8,280,000 ℔ of grain for collective farms in the sugar‐beet regions of the Ukrainian S.S.R. for food needs;e) to require comrade Chubar' to personally verify the fulfilling of the released grain for the sugar‐beet Soviet and collective farms, that it be used strictly for this purpose;f) to release ∼900,000 ℔ of grain for the sugar‐beet Soviet farms of the Central Black Earth Region for food needs in connection with the gathering of the harvest, first requiring comrade Vareikis to personally verify that the grain released is used for the assigned purpose;g) by the present decision to consider the question of food aid to sugar‐beet producing Soviet and collective farms closed.-Голод в СССР: 1929-июль 1932Голод в СССР: 1929-июль 1932“The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.”-Joseph Stalin - From the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.“In view of the importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched Russian archives for evidence of Soviet planned and actual grain stocks in the early 1930s. Our main sources were the Politburo protocols, including the (“special files,” the highest secrecy level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag, of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Komzag at that time.We have not obtained access to the Politburo working papers in the Presidential Archive, to the files of the committee on reserves or to the relevant files in military archives. But we have found enough information to be confident that this very a high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that Stalin did not have under his control huge amounts of grain, which could easily have been used to eliminate the famine.”-Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933 by R. W. Davies, M. B. Tauger, S.G. Wheatcroft.Slavic Review, Volume 54, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 642-657.Soviet archives also show that Holodomor was natural.“Recent evidence has indicated that part of the cause of the famine was an exceptionally low harvest in 1932, much lower than incorrect Soviet methods of calculation had suggested. The documents included here or published elsewhere do not yet support the claim that the famine was deliberately produced by confiscating the harvest, or that it was directed especially against the peasants of the Ukraine.-Koenker and Bachman, Eds. Revelations from the Russian Archives. Washington: Library of Congress, 1997, p. 401Here is a quote from the preface of R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft's collaborative work The Years of Hunger Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933"In our own work we, like V. P. Kozlov, have found no evidence that the Soviet authorities undertook a programme of genocide against Ukraine.It is also certain that the statements by Ukrainian politicians and publicists about the deaths from famine in Ukraine aregreatly exaggerated. A prominent Ukrainian historian, Stanislas Kul’chitskii, estimated deaths from famine in Ukraine at 3–3.5 million and Ukrainian demographers estimate that excess deaths in Ukraine in the whole period 1926–39 (most of them during the famine) amounted to 3 1⁄2million."Thesis also confirmed by the journalist Anna Louise Strong, who worked in Russia and China.Q: “Is it true that during 1932-33 several million people were allowed to starve to death in the Ukraine and North Caucasus because they were politically hostile to the Soviets?”A: “Not true. I visited several places in those regions during that period. There was a serious grain shortage in the 1932 harvest due chiefly to inefficiencies of the organizational period of the new large-scale mechanized farming among peasants unaccustomed to machines. To this was added sabotage by dispossessed kulaks, the leaving of the farms by 11 million workers who went to new industries, the cumulative effect of the world crisis in depressing the value of Soviet farm exports, and a drought in five basic grain regions in 1931.The harvest of 1932 was better than that of 1931 but was not all gathered; on account of overoptimistic promises from rural districts, Moscow discovered the actual situation only in December when a considerable amount of grain was under snow.”-Anna Louise Strong - Searching Out the Soviets. New Republic: August 7, 1935, p. 356Anna about the harvest of 1933.“The conquest of bread was achieved that summer, a victory snatched from a great disaster. The 1933 harvest surpassed that of 1930, which till then had held the record. This time, the new record was made not by a burst of half-organized enthusiasm, but by growing efficiency and permanent organization … This nationwide cooperation beat the 1934 drought, securing a total crop for the USSR equal to the all-time high of 1933.”-Anna Louise Strong- The Stalin Era. New York: Mainstream, 1956, p. 44-45That's why the victims of Holodomor should not be counted.And the Soviets managed to put things right a year later, this to give you an idea of the strength of the USSR.This newspaper was published by Hearst as part of his deal with Goebbels to promote the Nazis. Hearst was also a Nazi supporter. The photos were found to be from other famines, one of them 10 years earlier. The “reporting” was fabrication. Other reporters that actually looked into it report that while there was a famine it was not intentional.“The CIA believed that Ukrainian nationalism could be used as an efficient cold war weapon.While the Ukrainian nationalists provided Washington with valuable information about its Cold War rivals, the CIA in return was placing the nationalist veterans into positions of influence and authority, helping them to create semi-academic institutions or academic positions in existing universities.By using these formal and informal academic networks, the Ukrainian nationalists had been disseminating anti-Russian propaganda, creating myths and re-writing history at the same time whitewashing the wartime crimes of OUN-UPA.“In 1987 the film “Harvest of Despair” was made. It was the beginning of the ‘Holodomor’ movement. The film was entirely funded by Ukrainian nationalists, mainly in Canada. A Canadian scholar, Douglas Tottle, exposed the fact that the film took photographs from the 1921-22 ‘Volga famine’ and used them to illustrate the 1932-33 famine. Tottle later wrote a book, ‘Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard,‘ about the phony ‘Holodomor’ issue,”Professor Furr elaborated. “https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/khrushchev-lied.pdf“In the last 15 years or so an enormous amount of new material on Stalin … has become available from Russian archives. I should make clear that as a historian I have a strong orientation to telling the truth about the past, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable the conclusions may be. … I don’t think there is a dilemma: you just tell the truth as you see it.(“Stalin’s Wars”, FPM February 12, 2007. At http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/35... )The Soviets managed to put things right a year later, this to give you an idea of the strength of the USSR.Maybe many of you want to attack me by saying that other historians say otherwise, well they are wrong.Apart from the fact that many of those who say that the Holodomor was a famine are not even historians but professors of economics, so I wouldn't trust that much.Many others, however, were bribed, one of them being Robert Conquest, who was paid by the British Informatio Research Department (IRD) to create anti-communist propaganda.Many others, however, are contradictory, like Stephen Koktin, who said that the famine was caused by Stalin but the deaths were not intentional.As anyone can understand this sentence it doesn't make much sense.He then says he has the documents confirming Stalin's involvement in the famine, which is absolutely false as I have already shown.The only thing Stalin did was to remove some wheat from Ukraine, that's true, I don't deny it, there are many people who say they saw the men of the NKVD take away some wheat.Too bad they didn't do it to eliminate 7 million people, but to save Russia from the Golden Blockade.As I have already explained, the USSR suffered a huge economic blockade, and if it had not paid a much greater famine would have erupted.And as I have already shown Stalin ordered to help Ukraine, those are his words, not those of a historian.When there are the archives themselves that confirm the theses there is no more to discuss, period.GulagStalin did not create the Gulag, they also existed during the Russian Empire under the name of Katorga.Katorga - WikipediaThey were created by Tsar Alessio.I'll tell you one thing right away, don't take Gulag Archipelago seriously, that book is simply propaganda.The Gulag Archipelago shouldn’t be taken seriouslyAccording to Solzhenitsyn's wife, the book was simple folklore.“In her 1974 memoir, Sanya: My Life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”…, she wrote that she was ”perplexed” that the West had accepted ”The Gulag Archipelago” as ”the solemn, ultimate truth,” saying its significance had been ”overestimated and wrongly appraised.”Pointing out that the book’s subtitle is ”An Experiment in Literary Investigation,” she said that her husband did not regard the work as ”historical research, or scientific research.”She contended that it was, rather, a collection of ”camp folklore,” containing ”raw material” which her husband was planning to use in his future productions.”Natalya Reshetovskaya, 84, Is Dead; Solzhenitsyn's Wife Questioned 'Gulag'The Truth about the Soviet Gulag – Surprisingly Revealed by the CIAAccording to historians J. Arch Getty, Gabor T Rittersporn and Viktor Zemskov the victims of the gulags were around 1,053,829.http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY...number of gulag.pdfHowever, this number also takes into account the sentences not carried out and, according to the historian Austin Murphy, the victims were about 160,000.“Like the myths of millions of executions, the fairy tales that Stalin had tens of millions of people arrested and permanently thrown into prison or labor camps to die in the 1930-1953 interval (Conquest, 1990) appear to be untrue.In particular, the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year, (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1990s (Catalinotto, 1998a) and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population.It should also be noted that the annual death rate for the Soviet interned population was about 4%, which incorporates the effect of prisoner executions. Excluding the desperate World War II years, the death rate in the Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps was only 2.5%, which is even below that of the average "free" citizen in capitalist Russia under the czar in peacetime in 1913 (Wheatcroft, 1993).This finding is not very surprising, given that about 1/3 of the confined people were not even required to work (Bacon, 1994), and given that the maximum work week was 84 hours in even the harshest Soviet labor camps during the most desperate wartime years (Rummel, 1990). The latter maximum (and unusual) work week actually compares favorably to the 100-hour work weeks that existed even for "free" 6-year old children during peacetime in the capitalist industrial revolution (Marx and Engels, 1988b), although it may seem high compared to the 7-hour day worked by the typical Soviet citizen under Stalin (Davies, 1997).In addition, it should also be mentioned that most of the arrests under Stalin were motivated by an attempt to stamp out civil crimes such as banditry, theft, misuse of public office for personal gain, smuggling, and swindles, with less than 10% of the arrests during Stalin's rule being for political reasons or secret police matters (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). The Soviet archives reveal a great deal more political dissent permitted in Stalin's Soviet Union (including a widespread amount of criticism of individual government policies and local leaders) than is normally perceived in the West (Davies, 1997). Given that the regular police, the political or secret police, prison guards, some national guard troops, and firefighters (who were in the same ministry as the police) comprised scarcely 0.2% of the Soviet population under Stalin (Thurston, 1996), severe repression would have been impossible even if the Soviet Union had wanted to exercise it. In comparison, the USA today has many times more police as a percentage of the population (about 1%, not to mention prison guards, national guard troops, and firefighters included in the numbers used to compute the far smaller 0.2% ratio for the Soviet Union)."-Austin Murphy: ‘The Triumph of Evil. Chapter 1, pg 78–79In the gulags most of the criminals were not political opponents, but very normal criminals.Source: CIA “Forced Labor Camps in the USSR: Transfer of Prisoners between Camps”Here you can read American propaganda about gulags.http://gulaghistory.org/nps/down...Among other things, the Gulag were not extermination camps, but prison camps.The penal system administered by the NKVD (Peoples' Commissariat of Internal Affairs) in the 1930s had several components: prisons, labor camps, and labor colonies, as well as "special settlements" and various types of non-custodial supervision. Generally speaking, the first stop for an arrested person was a prison, where an investigation and interrogation led to conviction or, more rarely, release. After sentencing, most victims were sent to: one of the labor camps or colonies to serve their terms. In December 1940, the jails of the USSR had a theoretical prescribed capacity of 234,000, although they then held twice that number. Considering this-and comparing the levels of prison populations given in the Appendixes for the 1930s and 1940s one can assume that the size of the prison system was probably not much different in the 1930s.Second, we find a system of labor camps. These were the terrible “hard regime” camps populated by dangerous common criminals, those important politicals the regime consigned to severe punishment, and, as a rule, by other people sentenced to more than three years of detention. On March 1, 1940, at the end of the Great Purges, there were 53 corrective labor camps (ispravitel’no-trudovye lageri: ITL) of the GULAG system holding some 1.3 million inmates. Most of the data cited in this article bear on the GULAG camps, some of which had a multitude of subdivisions spreading over vast territories and holding large numbers of people. BAMLAG, the largest camp in the period under review, held more than 260,000 inmates at the beginning of 1939, and SEVVOSTLAG (the notorious Kolyma complex) some 138,000.Third came a network of 425 “corrective labor colonies” of varying types. These colonies were meant to confine prisoners serving short sentences, but this rule varied with time. The majority of these colonies were organized to produce for the economy and housed some 315,000 persons in 1940. They were nevertheless under the control of the NKVD and were managed-like the rest of the colony network-by its regional administrations. Additionally, there were 90 children’s homes under the auspices of the NKVD.Fourth, there was the network of “special resettlements.” In the 1930s, these areas were populated largely by peasant families deported from the central districts as “kulaks” (well-to-do peasants) during the forced collectivization of the early 1930s. Few victims of the Great Purges of 1936-1939 were so exiled or put under other forms of non-custodial supervision: in 1937-1938, only 2.1 percent of all those sentenced on charges investigated by the political police fell into this category. This is why we will not treat exile extensively below.Finally, there was a system of non-custodial “corrective work” (ispravitel’no-trudovye raboty), which included various penalties and fines. These were quite common throughout the 1930s-they constituted 48 percent of all court sentences in 1935-and the numbers of such convictions grew under the several laws on labor discipline passed on the eve of the war. Typically, such offenders were condemned to up to one year at “corrective labor,” the penalty consisting of work at the usual place of one’s employment, with up to 25 percent reduction of wage and loss of credit for this work toward the length of service that gave the right to social benefits (specific allocations, vacation, pension). More than 1.7 million persons received such a sentence in the course of 1940 and almost all of them worked in their usual jobs without deprivation of freedom. As with resettlements, this correctional system largely falls outside the scope of the Great Terror.Taken from this article which everyone should read if they want to know more about the Soviet Penal system.Great PurgesThe purges were not made to eliminate dissidents, but to save Russia from sexists, tsarists, Nazis etc.The workers themselves voted to condemn people, not the government.Stalin was a person with pure ideals, he was in fact against anti-Semitism and racism.“National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism.Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.”-Joseph Stalin“Still others think that war should be organised by a "superior race," say, the German "race," against an "inferior race," primarily against the Slavs; that only such a war can provide a way out of the situation, for it is the mission of the "superior race" to render the "inferior race" fruitful and to rule over it. Let us assume that this queer theory, which is as far removed from science as the sky from the earth, let us assume that this queer theory is put into practice. What may be the result of that? It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races.It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today. (Thunderous applause.) But what was the upshot of this? The upshot was that the non-Romans, i.e., all the "barbarians," united against the common enemy and brought Rome down with a crash.The question arises: What guarantee is there that the claims of the representatives of the "superior race" of today will not lead to the same lamentable results? What guarantee is there that the fascist literary politicians in Berlin will be more fortunate than the old and experienced conquerors in Rome? Would it not be more correct to assume that the opposite will be the case?”-Joseph StalinStalin was not a dictator, he was simply the secretary general of the CPSU and could be removed from the party.Nicolò Piva's answer to Was Joseph Stalin above the law?ChinaMao did not kill 65 million people.Monthly Review | Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?Reassessing the Great Leap ForwardApart from the fact that the Great Leap Forward was a natural famine (which did not kill 65 million people but 15 million, as the Chinese government of Deng Xiaoping and historian Leslie Holmes testify).This is nonsense invented by Dikotter which was highly criticized."Dikötter looks at China under Communist rule in a narrow vacuum, thus dispensing with the inconvenient fact that famine in this part of the world has been a recurring phenomenon, which Mao did not invent or even magnify."-Aaron LeonardPeople ignore the fact that China suffered terrible catastrophes at that time, about 100 million acres became unusable and in 1961 many typhoons hit southern China.China has a great history of famines, and it was Mao who ended this bad story.1810181118461849-of which 45 million died.1850–1873 - 20–30 million1876–1879 - 9.5–13 million1907, 1911 - 25 million1920–1921 - 500,001928–1930 - 3 million1936–1937 - 5 million1942–1943 - 2–3 millionMao increased life expectancy and decreased annual deaths.If you want to know more about Mao's reforms, I recommend Comrade Alexander Finnegan's answer.Alexander Finnegan's answer to What were some of Mao's best ideas?Godfree Roberts Archive - The Unz ReviewNicolò Piva's answer to What did the Great Leap Forward accomplish?CambodiaPol Pot, he was not a communist, he was just a madman.Pol Pot, unlike other leaders like Mao Zedong, was not a patriot, but a nationalist, and nationalism is incumbent on communism.Nicolò Piva's answer to What does nationalism mean?Patriotism is the love of one's homeland, nationalism is the holding of one's superior homeland.And since communism wants a society without a state, the two values are incompatible.Marx in his writings speaks of what is called proto-communism, that is, the period in which countries and money did not exist, in practice the Paleolithic period.What did that Pol Pot genius do?He attempted to deindustrialize the nation, so as to return to proto-communism lol.As to be able to see clearly this was not good.By the way the Khmer Rouge was founded by the USA.FRONTLINE/WORLD . Cambodia - Pol Pot's Shadow . Chronicle of Survival . 1980-1991: Back to square oneNorth KoreaThe deaths attributed to North Korea come from the Korean War, so the concept itself is wrong.Then it is wrong to say that those deaths were caused by North Korea as it was the US that gave Syngman Rhee a leading role.EthiopiaIt was practically a fascist dictatorship.VietnamSame speech as in North Korea.Those are the deaths from the war, caused inter alia by the USA.I will not speak of Latin America because I admit that I am totally ignorant of the matter.ConclusionCommunism did not kill 100 million people, but around 8/9 million.