this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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I bring up blacklisting because it is the clearest demonstration of intentionally starving people that comes to mind. Sure, Stalin wanted collectivization to go off without a hitch. Problem was, there was a hitch. So he decided it would happen anyway, starving people be damned. Imo good governments don't intentionally starve people in order to achieve their goals.
To me your argument boils down to "the ends justify the means."
Blacklisting was a punishment for intentionally sabotaging your crop yields and contributing to the famine, the goal wasn't to starve but to prevent further starvation by preventing subsistence farming in a time where many people were starving to death. Had they not done something to prevent Kulaks from intentionally starving the rest of the USSR becayse their semi-bourgeois ownership was threatened, many more people likely would have died. I can't say if Blacklisting was the correct means to deal with this issue, but once collectivization started, it couldn't be stopped, as the Kulaks were destroying their farms to retain ownership.
It's not that the ends justify means, it's that by not doing anything, the ends would have been far worse and many more would have starved. How would you suggest collectivization occur, if you were in Stalin's shoes, or Kosior? I personally am glad that I never have to make such decisions.