Landlord

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landlord 

 

Powerful landlord in chariot, Eastern Han 25–220 CE. Hebei, China

A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant (also a lessee or renter). When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner. The term landlady may be used for the female owners. The manager of a pub in the United Kingdom, strictly speaking a licensed victualler, is referred to as the landlord/landlady.

History

The concept of a landlord may be traced back to the feudal system of manoralism (seignorialism), where a landed estate is owned by a Lord of the Manor (mesne lords), usually members of the lower nobility which came to form the rank of knights in the high medieval period, holding their fief via subinfeudation, but in some cases the land may also be directly subject to a member of higher nobility, as in the royal domain directly owned by a king, or in the Holy Roman Empire imperial villages directly subject to the emperor. The medieval system ultimately continues the system of villas and latifundia (peasant-worked broad farmsteads) of the Roman Empire.

In modern times, "landlord" describes any individual, or entity such as a government body or an institution, providing housing for persons who do not own their own homes. They may be peripatetic, stationed on a secondment away from their home, not want the risk of a mortgage or negative equity, may be a group of co-occupiers unwilling to enter into the ties of co-ownership, or may be improving their credit rating or bank balance to obtain a better-terms future mortgage.

Owner and tenant responsibilities

A rental agreement, or lease, is the contract defining such terms as the price paid, penalties for late payments, the length of the rental or lease, and the amount of notice required before either the homeowner or tenant cancels the agreement. In general, responsibilities are given as follows: the homeowner is responsible for making repairs and performing property maintenance, and the tenant is responsible for keeping the property clean and safe.

Many owners hire a property management company to take care of all the details of renting their property out to a tenant. This usually includes advertising the property and showing it to prospective tenants, negotiating and preparing the written leases or license agreements, and then, once rented, collecting rent from the tenant and performing repairs as needed.

David Berry owned much of what is now known as his namesake town of Berry, and is well remembered by his tenants.

United States

In the United States, residential homeowner–tenant disputes are primarily governed by state law (not federal law) regarding property and contracts. State law and, in some places, city law or county law, sets the requirements for eviction of a tenant. Generally, there are a limited number of reasons for which a landlord or landlady can evict his or her tenant before the expiration of the tenancy, though at the end of the lease term the rental relationship can generally be terminated without giving any reason. Some cities, counties, and States have laws establishing the maximum rent a landlord can charge, known as rent control, or rent regulation, and related eviction. There is also an implied warranty of habitability, whereby a landlord must maintain safe, decent and habitable housing, meeting minimum safety requirements such as smoke detectors and a locking door. The most common disputes result from either the landlord's failure to provide services or the tenant's failure to pay rent—the former can also lead to the latter. The withholding of rent is justifiable cause for eviction, as often explained in the lease.

Canada

In Canada, residential homeowner–tenant disputes are primarily governed by provincial law (not federal law) regarding property and contracts. Provincial law sets the requirements for eviction of a tenant. Generally, there are a limited number of reasons for which a landlord can evict a tenant. Some provinces have laws establishing the maximum rent a landlord can charge, known as rent control, or rent regulation, and related eviction. There is also an implied warranty of habitability, whereby a landlord must maintain safe, decent and habitable housing, meeting minimum safety requirements.

United Kingdom

See also: English land law § Leases and licences, and Scots property law

Residential rental market (tenancies)

Private sector renting is largely governed by many of the Landlord and Tenant Acts, in particular the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 which sets bare minimum standards in tenants' rights against their landlords. Another key statute is the Housing Act 2004. Rents can be freely increased at the end of a usual six-month duration, on proper notice given to the tenant. A Possession Order under the most common type, the assured shorthold tenancy (AST) is usually obtainable after eight weeks/two months of unpaid rent, and at the court's discretion after serving the tenant with a Section 8 notice (under the Housing Act 1988 as amended) for a lesser period for all assured tenancies — and on other grounds which defer to the landlord's ownership of the property. If the tenancy is an AST then any possession order will not take effect until six months has passed into the initial tenancy. A tenancy of someone who has been in occupation since before 15 January 1989 usually, if not a shorthold from the outset following their inception from 1980 onwards, may be a "regulated tenancy" with many more rights, especially under the Rent Act 1977 and Protection from Eviction Act 1977, introduced by the Third Wilson ministry.

Each house in multiple occupation, a unit the law does not regard it as a single household having more than three tenants, is subject to enhanced regulations including the Housing Act 2004. A council-issued Licence to be a landlord of such a unit is always required in some local authorities (in others, limited to the larger statutory examples).

Residential leasehold

Tenancies above a couple of years are normally called leases and tend to be lengthy; if more than seven years a new leasehold estate must be registered. These are governed by few of the above rules and are in longer examples deliberately more akin to full ownership than tenancies, in general. They seldom require a sizeable ground rent. The law has not regulated hefty break/resale charges nor does it prevent the sale of leasehold houses; in the 2010s certain of these proposals have been widely consulted upon and are being drafted. Broadly, legislation allows such lessees (tenants) to club together to gain the Right to Manage, and the right to buy the landlord's interest (to collectively enfranchise). It allows them individually to extend their leases for a new, smaller sum ("premium"), which if the tenants have enfranchised will not normally be demanded/recommended every 15–35 years. Notice requirements and forms tend to be strict. In smaller examples the tenant, depending on a simple mathematical division of the building, may be able to enfranchise individually. Statute of 1925 implies into nearly all leases (tenancies at low rent and at a premium (fine, initial large sum)) of property that they can be sold (by the lessee, assigned); reducing any restriction to one whereby the landlord may apply standard that is "reasonable" vetting, without causing major delay. This is often known as the "statutory qualified covenant on assignment/alienation".

In the overall diminishing domain of social housing, exceptionally, lessees widely acquire over time the Right to Buy for a fixed discount on the market price of the home.

Commercial (business) leases and tenancies

In commercial property much of the law, especially as to disputes and basic responsibilities, is based on freedom of contract of the common law including the implied terms of precedent decisions of wide-ranging case law such as the meaning of "good and substantial repair". Implied principles include "non-derogation from grant" and "quiet enjoyment". All businesses which are tenants (lessees) must decide whether to contract in or outside of Part II of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 which gives them "business security of tenure". If not, it generally applies by default. This "security of tenure" is expressly subject to common reasons and associated mechanisms for a landlord to obtain back the premises. If a landlord is selling a block and a qualifying tenant occupies more than 50%, the tenant should be given the right of first refusal at the asking price to buy the block. As in most jurisdictions the law on rigorous adherence to lease terms on unlawful subletting and assignment can be strictly enforced, resulting in financial and premises loss if broken. Failure to repay a rent demand, unlike residential, can result in direct landlord's repossession ("peaceable re-entry") through a commercial landlord's right to the use of "self-help" evictions. The taking of a tenant's goods without a court-issued warrant (flowing from a court order or outstanding tax demand) (distress) has been banned.

Slum landlord

See also: Rentier capitalism

Renters (tenants or other licensees) at the lowest end of the payment scale may be in social or economic difficulty and suffer significant social stigma as a consequence. Due to lack of alternative options, such renters are often the victims of unscrupulous owners of unsafe and decrepit properties who neglect their responsibility to maintain the property.

The terms "slumlord", "slum landlord", or "ghetto landlord" is used to describe landlords of large numbers of such properties, often holding a virtual local monopoly. Public improvement or major private investment can improve such areas. In extreme situations, government compulsory purchase powers in many countries enable slum clearance to replace or renovate the worst of neighbourhoods.

Examples:

• Peter Rachman was a landlord who operated in Notting Hill, London, in the 1950s and until his 1962 death. He became notorious for exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanism" entering the Oxford English Dictionary. His henchmen included Michael de Freitas (aka Michael X/Abdul Malik), who created a reputation as a black-power leader, and Johnny Edgecombe, who became a promoter of jazz and blues, which helped to keep him in the limelight.

Rental investment and basis

Incentives and disincentives

The incentive, certainly if not social housing, is to obtain a good rental yield (annual return on investment) and prospect of property price inflation. The disincentives are the locally varying duties of landlords in repair/maintenance and administration — and keynote risks (tenant disputes, damage, neglect, loss of rent, insurance inavailability/disputes, economic slump, increased rate of interest on any mortgage, and negative equity or loss of investment). Net income (yield) and capital growth from letting (renting out) particularly in leveraged buy to let, is subject to idiosyncratic risk, which is considered objectively intensified for a highly leveraged investor limited to a small number of similar profile homes, of narrow rental market appeal in areas lacking economic resilience.

Basis

Rental properties can be paid for by the tenant on whatever basis agreed between the landlord and the tenant — more frequently than weekly or less than yearly is almost unheard of — and which is always included in the lease agreement (preferably for both sides in writing). It should be one of the factors that a tenant considers before moving in.

Security for rent and extra fees

See also: Security deposit and Landlords' insurance

A landlord or its agent can decide to collect a security deposit (and/or in some jurisdictions such as parts of the US, a move-in/administration fee). A deterrent if high and a relative attractive if low in many markets for a tenant, it is rarely debated in pre-tenancy term negotiations. In some jurisdictions either or both are banned in the original sense. Instead a landlord's loss of rent/comprehensive damage insurance may be factored into the rent agreed and/or a special type of deposit, a regulated sum of money as a bond (protected security deposit) from the tenant held by a registered third party (such as certain realty agents) may be permissible. A deposit is normally by law to be offset against arrears (rent deficits) and damage by or failures to clean/repair by the tenant.

Licensed victualler

Main article: Pub

In the United Kingdom the owner and/or manager of a pub (public house) is usually called the "landlord/landlady" or "publican", the latter properly the appellation of a Roman public contractor or tax farmer. In more formal situations, the term used is licensed victualler or simply "licensee". A female landlord can be called either a landlady or simply landlord.

The Licensed Trade Charity, formed in 2004 from the merger of the Society of Licensed Victuallers and Licensed Victualler's National Homes, exists to serve the retirement needs of Britain's pub landlords. The charity also runs three private schools in Ascot and Reading in Berkshire and Sayers Common in Sussex. As well as having normal full fee paying students, Licensed Victuallers' School in Ascot provides discounted education prices for the children of landlords and others in the catering industry.

Landlord associations

There are significant associations of landlords in various countries. These associations/societies provide support for their members in facing a range of issues by providing a means of mutual support, and also lobby relevant authorities and parliament with regard to the details and implementation of residential and some commercial tenancy legislation.

Australia

Numerous landlord associations exist in Australia. These associations need to be distinguished from the class of property owner associations that represent the 'big end of town' - the owners of major buildings and very large residential housing complexes, such as the Property Council of Australia.

• Property Owners Association of Australia (POAA)
• Property Owners Association of Victoria (POAVIC) 
• POAQ - Property Owners Association of Queensland 
• Property Owners Association of NSW 
• Property Owners Association of Western Australia 
• Landlords Association of South Australia 

United Kingdom

National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) has now formed from a merger of the two following organisations as of 31/3/2020:

• Residential Landlords Association (RLA)
• National Landlords Association (NLA)

Kulak

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak 

The requisition of grains from wealthy peasants (kulaks) during the forced collectivization in Timashyovsky District, Kuban, Soviet Union, 1933

 

Politics of the Soviet Union

Kulak (/ˈkuːlæk/; Russian: кула́к; plural: кулаки́, kulakí, 'fist' or 'tight-fisted'), also kurkul (Ukrainian: куркуль) or golchomag (Azerbaijani: qolçomaq, plural: qolçomaqlar), was the term which was used to describe peasants who owned over 8 acres (3.2 hectares) of land towards the end of the Russian Empire. In the early Soviet Union, particularly in Soviet Russia and Azerbaijan, kulak became a vague reference to property ownership among peasants who were considered hesitant allies of the Bolshevik Revolution. In Ukraine during 1930–1931, there also existed a term of pidkurkulnyk (almost wealthy peasant); these were considered "sub-kulaks".

Kulak originally referred to former peasants in the Russian Empire who became wealthier during the Stolypin reform of 1906 to 1914, which aimed to reduce radicalism amongst the peasantry and produce profit-minded, politically conservative farmers. During the Russian Revolution, kulak was used to chastise peasants who withheld grain from the Bolsheviks. According to Marxist–Leninist political theories of the early 20th century, the kulaks were considered class enemies of the poorer peasants. Vladimir Lenin described them as "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten themselves during famines", declaring revolution against them to liberate poor peasants, farm laborers, and proletariat (the much smaller class of urban and industrial workers).

During the first five-year plan, Joseph Stalin's all-out campaign to take land ownership and organisation away from the peasantry meant that, according to historian Robert Conquest, "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres [~2 ha] more than their neighbors" were labeled kulaks. In 1929, Soviet officials officially classified kulaks according to subjective criteria, such as the use of hired labour. Under dekulakization, government officials seized farms and killed most resisters, deported others to labor camps, and drove many others to migrate to the cities following the loss of their property to the collectives.

Definitions

Illustration of the three broad categories of peasants by Soviet magazine Prozhektor published by Nikolai Bukharin, an issue of 31 May 1926. Caption under illustration says: "We received interesting photos from Novokhopersky county, Voronezh Governorate which shows situation in modern village."

Soviet terminology divided the Russian peasants into three broad categories:

1. Bednyak, or poor peasants.
2. Serednyak, or mid-income peasants.
3. Kulak, the higher-income farmers who had larger farms.

In addition, they had a category of batrak, landless seasonal agricultural workers for hire.

The Stolypin reform created a new class of landowners by allowing peasants to acquire plots of land on credit from the large estate owners. They were to repay the credit (a kind of mortgage loan) from their farm earnings. By 1912, 16% of peasants (up from 11% in 1903) had relatively large endowments of over 8 acres (3.2 ha) per male family member (a threshold used in statistics to distinguish between middle-class and prosperous farmers, i.e. the kulaks). At that time, an average farmer's family had 6 to 10 children. The number of such farmers amounted to 20% of the rural population, producing almost 50% of marketable grain.

1917–1918

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks considered only batraks and bednyaks as true allies of the Soviets and proletariat; serednyaks were considered unreliable, hesitating allies, and kulaks were identified as class enemies, with the term generally referring to "peasant producers who hired labourers or exploited their neighbours in some other way" according to historian Robert W. Davies. Robert Conquest argues that the definition of a kulak was later expanded to include those peasants who owned livestock; however, a middle peasant who did not hire laborers and was little engaged in trade "might yet (if he had a large family) hold three cows and two horses."

There were other measures that indicated the kulaks as not being especially prosperous. Both peasants and Soviet officials were uncertain as to who constituted a kulak; they often used the term to label anyone who had more property than was considered normal according to subjective criteria, and personal rivalries also played a part in the classification of people as enemies. Officials arbitrarily applied the definition and abused their power. Conquest wrote: "The land of the landlords had been spontaneously seized by the peasantry in 1917–18. A small class of richer peasants with around fifty to eighty acres [20 to 32 ha] had then been expropriated by the Bolsheviks. Thereafter a Marxist conception of class struggle led to an almost totally imaginary class categorization being inflicted in the villages, where peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres [about 2 ha] more than their neighbors were now being labeled 'kulaks,' and a class war against them was being declared."

In the summer of 1918, Moscow sent armed detachments to the villages and ordered them to seize grain. Peasant who resisted the seizures were labeled kulaks. According to Richard Pipes, "the Communists declared war on the rural population for two purposes: to forcibly extract food for growing industry (so called First five-year plan) in cities and the Red Army and insinuate their authority into the countryside, which remained largely unaffected by the Bolshevik coup." A large-scale revolt ensued, and it was during this period in August 1918 that Vladimir Lenin sent a directive known as Lenin's Hanging Order: "Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. ... Do it in such a way that for hundreds of versts [kilometers] around the people will see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks."

1930s

The average value of the goods which were confiscated from the kulaks during the policy of dekulakization (раскулачивание) at the beginning of the 1930s was only 170–400 rubles (US$90–210) per household. During the height of Collectivization in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, people who were identified as kulaks were subjected to deportation and extrajudicial punishments. They were frequently murdered in local campaigns of violence, while others were formally executed after they were convicted of being kulaks.

In May 1929, the Sovnarkom issued a decree which formalised the notion of 'kulak household' (кулацкое хозяйство), according to which any of the following criteria defined a person as a kulak:

• Use of hired labor.
• Ownership of a mill, a creamery (маслобойня, 'butter-making rig'), other processing equipment, or a complex machine with a motor.
• Systematic renting out of agricultural equipment or facilities.
• Involvement in trade, money-lending, commercial brokerage, or "other sources of non-labor income."

In 1930, this list was expanded so it could include people who were renting industrial plants, e.g. sawmills, or people who rented land to other farmers. At the same time, the ispolkoms (executive committees of local Soviets) of republics, oblasts, and krais were granted the right to add other criteria to the list so other people could be classified as kulaks, depending on local conditions.

Dekulakization

Main article: Dekulakization

In July 1929, official Soviet policy continued to state that the kulaks should not be terrorized and should be enlisted into the collective farms, but Stalin disagreed: "Now we have the opportunity to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate them as a class and replace their production with the production of kolkhozes and sovkhozes." A decree by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on 5 January 1930 was titled "On the pace of collectivization and state assistance to collective-farm construction." The official goal of "kulak liquidation" came without precise instructions, and encouraged local leaders to take radical action, which resulted in physical elimination. The campaign to "liquidate the kulaks as a class" constituted the main part of Stalin's social engineering policies in the early 1930s. Andrei Suslov argues that the seizure of peasants' property led directly to the destruction of an entire social group, that of the peasant‐owners.

On 30 January 1930, the Politburo approved the dissolving of the kulaks as a class. Three categories of kulaks were distinguished: kulaks who were supposed to be sent to the Gulags, kulaks who were supposed to be relocated to distant provinces, such as the north Urals and Kazakhstan, kulaks who were was supposed to be sent to other areas within their home provinces. The peasantry were required to relinquish their farm animals to government authorities. Many chose to slaughter their livestock rather than give them up to collective farms. In the first two months of 1930, peasants killed millions of cattle, horses, pigs, sheep and goats, with the meat and hides being consumed and bartered. For instance, the Soviet Party Congress reported in 1934 that 26.6 million head of cattle and 63.4 million sheep had been lost. In response to the widespread slaughter, the Sovnarkom issued decrees to prosecute "the malicious slaughtering of livestock" (хищнический убой скота). Stalin ordered severe measures to end kulak resistance. In 1930, he declared: "In order to oust the 'kulaks' as a class, the resistance of this class must be smashed in open battle and it must be deprived of the productive sources of its existence and development. ... That is a turn towards the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class."

Human impact

From 1929–1933, the grain quotas were artificially heightened. Peasants attempted to hide the grain and bury it. According to historian Robert Conquest, every brigade was equipped with a long iron bar which it would use to probe the ground for grain caches and peasants who did not show signs of starvation were especially suspected of hiding food. Conquest states: "When the snow melted true starvation began. People had swollen faces and legs and stomachs. They could not contain their urine... And now they ate anything at all. They caught mice, rats, sparrows, ants, earthworms. They ground up bones into flour, and did the same with leather and shoe soles ... ."

The party activists who helped the State Political Directorate (the secret police) with arrests and deportations were, in the words of Vasily Grossman, "all people who knew one another well, and knew their victims, but in carrying out this task they became dazed, stupefied." Grossman commented: "They would threaten people with guns, as if they were under a spell, calling small children 'kulak bastards,' screaming 'bloodsuckers!' ... They had sold themselves on the idea that so-called 'kulaks' were pariahs, untouchables, vermin. They would not sit down at a 'parasite's' table; the 'kulak' child was loathsome, the young 'kulak' girl was lower than a louse." Party activists brutalizing the starving villagers fell into cognitive dissonance, rationalizing their actions through ideology. Lev Kopelev, who later became a Soviet dissident, explained: "It was excruciating to see and hear all of this. And even worse to take part in it. ... And I persuaded myself, explained to myself. I mustn't give in to debilitating pity. We were realizing historical necessity. We were performing our revolutionary duty. We were obtaining grain for the socialist fatherland. For the Five-Year Plan."

Death tolls

Stalin issued an order for the kulaks "to be liquidated as a class"; according to Roman Serbyn, this was the main cause of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and was a genocide, while other scholars disagree and propose more than one cause. This famine has complicated attempts to identify the number of deaths arising from the executions of kulaks. A wide range of death tolls has been suggested, from as many as six million as suggested by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, to the much lower number of 700,000 as estimated by Soviet sources. According to data from the Soviet archives, which were only published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931. Books which are based on these sources have stated that 1,317,022 people reached the final destinations. The fate of the remaining 486,370 people cannot be verified. Deportations continued on a smaller scale after 1931. The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who died in labor colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521. Former kulaks and their families made up the majority of the victims of the Great Purge of the late 1930s, with 669,929 people arrested and 376,202 people executed.

Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin 

 

"Wall of sorrow" at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow, 19 November 1988

 

Exhumed mass grave of the Vinnytsia massacre

Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991 such as statements from emigres and other informants, whereas a minority of authors and journalists maintain that "statistics can never fully describe what happened".

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher. After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag, some 390,000 deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s, with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories. According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility. The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.

Events

Passers-by and the corpse of a starved man on a street in Kharkiv, 1932

Gulag

Main article: Gulag

According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union, including entire nationalities in several cases.

According to a 1993 study of recently declassified archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag (not including labor colonies) from 1934 to 1953 (there was no archival data for the period 1919–1934). More recent archival figures for the deaths in the Gulag, labor colonies and prisons combined for 1931–1953 were 1.713 million. According to historian Michael Ellman, non-state estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher because historians such as Robert Conquest took into account the likelihood of unreliable record keeping. According to author Anne Applebaum, it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death.

OGPU chiefs responsible for construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal were Naftaly Frenkel (far right) and Matvei Berman (front, second from right), also head of the Gulag from 1932–1939

Golfo Alexopoulos, history professor at the University of South Florida, believes that at least 6 million people died as a result of their detention in the gulags. This estimate is disputed by other scholars, with critics such as J. Hardy stating that the evidence Alexopoulos used is indirect and misinterpreted. Historian Dan Healey argues that the estimate has obvious methodological difficulties.

Citing materials pre-1991, author John G. Heidenrich estimates the number of deaths at 12 million. His book is not primarily about estimating deaths from repressive policies in the Soviet Union, and he appears to have relied on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's political and literary work The Gulag Archipelago, which historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft explains was not intended as a historical fact but as a challenge to Soviet authorities after their years of secrecy.

According to estimates based on data from Soviet archives post-1991, there were around 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953. The tentative historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died as a result of their incarceration.

Soviet famine of 1932–1933

Main articles: Holodomor genocide question and Soviet famine of 1932–1933

 

Soviet famine of 1932–1933, with areas where the effects of famine were most severe shaded

The deaths of 5.7 to perhaps 7.0 million people in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and Soviet collectivization of agriculture are included among the victims of repression during the period of Stalin by some historians. This categorization is controversial, as historians differ as to whether the famine in Ukraine was created as a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks and others was an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization, or was primarily a result of natural factors.

Judicial executions

Main article: Great Purge

According to official figures there were 777,975 judicial executions for political charges from 1929–53, including 681,692 in 1937–1938, the years of the Great Purge. Unofficial estimates estimate a total number of Stalinism repression deaths in 1937–38 at 950,000–1,200,000.

Soviet famine of 1946–1947

Main article: Soviet famine of 1946–47

The last major famine to hit the Soviet Union began in July 1946, reached its peak in February–August 1947 and then quickly diminished in intensity, although there were still some famine deaths in 1948. Economist Michael Ellman states that the hands of the state could have fed all those who died of starvation. He argues that had the policies of the Soviet regime been different, there might have been no famine at all or a much smaller one. Ellman claims that the famine resulted in an estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives lost in addition to secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.

Population transfer by the Soviet Union

Romanian refugees after the 1940 Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina

Deportation of kulaks

Main article: Dekulakization

Large numbers of kulaks regardless of their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931, and 1,317,022 reached the destination. Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. Data from the Soviet archives indicates 2.4 million kulaks were deported from 1930–1934. The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521. Popular history author Simon Sebag Montefiore estimated that 15 million kulaks and their families were deported by 1937; during the deportation, many people died, but the full number is not known.

Forced settlements in the Soviet Union of 1939–1953

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union

 

Funeral of the deported Crimean Tatars in Krasnovishersk, late 1944

According to Russian historian Pavel Polian, 5.870 million persons were deported to forced settlements from 1920–1952, including 3.125 million from 1939–1952. Those ethnic minorities considered a threat to Soviet security in 1939–52 were forcibly deported to Special Settlements run by the NKVD. Poles, Ukrainians from western regions, Soviet Germans, Balts, and Estonians peoples from the Caucasus and Crimea were the primary victims of this policy. Data from the Soviet archives list 309,521 deaths in the Special Settlements from 1941–48 and 73,454 in 1949–50. According to Polian these people were not allowed to return to their home regions until after the death of Stalin, the exception being Soviet Germans who were not allowed to return to the Volga region of the Soviet Union. According to Soviet archives, the heaviest mortality rate was documented in people from the Northern Caucasus (the Chechens, Ingush) with 144,704 deaths, or 24.7% of the entire deported population, as well as 44,125 deaths from Crimea, or a 19.3% mortality rate.

Katyn massacre

Main article: Katyn massacre

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000.

Total number of victims

Victims of NKVD prisoner massacres in Lviv

 

The memorial wall with the names of Stalin's victims, at the Butovo firing range outside Moscow

Writing in Slavic Review, demographers Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver maintained that limited census data make a precise death count impossible. Instead, they offer a probable range of 3.2 to 5.5 million excess deaths for the entire Soviet Union from 1926 to 1939, a period that covers collectivization, the civil war in the countryside, the purges of the late 1930s and major epidemics of typhus and malaria.

Some historians claim that the death toll was around 20 million, a figure based on Conquest's book The Great Terror (1968), with some estimates relying in part on demographic losses such as Conquest's. In 2001, American historian Richard Pipes argued that the population had decreased by 9 to 10 million people from the 1932 to 1939 censuses. In 2003, British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suggested that Stalin was ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million people. In 2006, political scientist Rudolph Rummel wrote that the earlier higher victim total estimates are correct, although he included those killed by the government of the Soviet Union in other Eastern European countries as well. In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Conquest stated that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, at least 15 million people were killed "by the whole range of Soviet regime's terrors." According to Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver, historians such as Robert Conquest made the most primitive of errors. They asserted that these Cold Warriors overestimated fertility rates and underrated the impact of assimilation, through which many Ukrainians were redesignated as Russians in the 1939 census, confusing population deficits, which included unborn children, with excess deaths.

Historians such as J. Arch Getty, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, and others, insist that the opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by the revisionist school. In 2011, after assessing twenty years of historical research in Eastern European archives, American historian Timothy D. Snyder stated that Stalin deliberately killed about 6 million, which rise to 9 million if foreseeable deaths arising from policies are taken into account.

Some historians believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete. In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Canadian historian Robert Gellately and Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed. Conversely, Wheatcroft states that prior to the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge." British historian Michael Ellman argues that mass deaths from famines should be placed in a different category than the repression victims, mentioning that throughout Russian history famines and droughts have been a common occurrence, including the Russian famine of 1921–22, which occurred before Stalin came to power. He also states that famines were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as China, India, Ireland, and Russia. Ellman compared the behaviour of the Stalinist regime vis-à-vis the Holodomor to that of the British government (towards Ireland and India) and the G8 in contemporary times. According to Ellman, the G8 "are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths" and Stalin's "behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Ben Kiernan, an American academic and historian, described Stalin's era as "by far the bloodiest of Soviet or even Russian history".

Number of deaths of people by Stalinism, 1924–1953 (*excluding killings outside of Soviet borders)

Event	Est. number of deaths
Dekulakization	530,000–600,000
Great Purge	779,000–1,200,000
Gulag	1,500,000–1,713,000
Soviet deportations	450,000–566,000
Katyn massacre	22,000
Holodomor	2,500,000–4,000,000
Kazakh famine of 1932–33	1,450,000
Total	~7,231,000–9,551,000

California genocide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide 

California genocide
Part of the California Indian Wars
"Protecting The Settlers", illustration by J. R. Browne for his work The Indians Of California, 1864
Location	California
Date	1846–1873
Target	Indigenous Californians
Attack type	Genocide, ethnic cleansing, human hunting, slavery, rape, Indian removal
Deaths	9,492 to 16,094 (Madley) Other estimates: 4,500–100,000
Injured	10,000 to 27,000 taken as forced laborers by white settlers; 4,000 to 7,000 of them children.
Perpetrators	United States Army, California State Militia, American settlers, settlers of Mexican, Spanish and other European descent

The California genocide was the killing of thousands of indigenous peoples of California by United States government agents and private citizens in the 19th century. It began following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, and the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush, which accelerated the decline of the indigenous population of California. Between 1846 and 1873, it is estimated that non-Indians killed between 9,492 and 16,094 California Natives. Hundreds to thousands were additionally starved or worked to death. Acts of enslavement, kidnapping, rape, child separation and displacement were widespread. These acts were encouraged, tolerated, and carried out by state authorities and militias.

The 1925 book Handbook of the Indians of California estimated that the indigenous population of California decreased from perhaps as many as 150,000 in 1848 to 30,000 in 1870 and fell further to 16,000 in 1900. The decline was caused by disease, starvation, killings, and massacres. California Natives, particularly during the Gold Rush, were targeted in killings. Between 10,000 and 27,000 were also taken as forced labor by settlers. The state of California used its institutions to favor white settlers' rights over indigenous rights, dispossessing natives.

Since the 2000s several American academics and activist organizations, both Native American and European American, have characterized the period immediately following the U.S. Conquest of California as one in which the state and federal governments waged genocide against the Native Americans in the territory. In 2019, California's governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide and called for a research group to be formed to better understand the topic and inform future generations.

Background

Indigenous peoples

Indigenous ethnic and (inset) linguistic groups of California prior to European arrival.

Prior to Spanish arrival, California was home to an indigenous population thought to have been as high as 300,000. The largest group were the Chumash people, with a population around 10,000. The region was highly diverse, with numerous distinct languages spoken. While there was great diversity in the area, archeological findings show little evidence of intertribal conflicts.

The various tribal groups appear to have adapted to particular areas and territories. According to journalist Nathan Gilles, because of traditions practiced by the Native people of Northern California, they were able to “manage the threat of wildfires and cultivate traditional plants”. For example, traditional use of fire by the California and Pacific Northwest Tribes, allowed them to “cultivate plants and fungi” that “adapted to regular burning. The list runs from fiber sources, such as bear-grass and willow, to foodstuffs, such as berries, mushrooms, and acorns from oak trees that once made up sprawling orchards”. Because of traditional practices of Native Californian tribes, they were able to support habitats and climates that would then support an abundance of wildlife, including rabbits, deer, varieties of fish, fruit, roots, and acorns. The natives largely followed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, moving around their area through the seasons as different types of food were available.

The Native people of California, according to sociologist and environmental studies Professor Kari Norgaard, were “hunting and fishing for their food, weaving baskets using traditional techniques” and “carrying out important ceremonies to keep the world intact”. It was also recorded that the Indigenous people in California and across the continent had, and continue to, use “fire to enhance specific plant species, optimize hunting conditions, maintain open travel routes, and generally support the flourishing of the species upon which they depend, according to scholars like the United States Forest Service ecologist and Karuk descendent Frank Lake”.

Contact

California was one of the last regions in the Americas to be colonized. Spanish missionaries, led by Franciscan administrator Junípero Serra and military forces under the command of Gaspar de Portolá, did not reach this area until 1769. The mission was intended to spread the Christian faith among the region's Native peoples and establish and expand the reach of the Spanish Empire. The Spanish built San Diego de Alcalá, the first of 21 missions, at what developed as present-day San Diego in the southern part of the state along the Pacific. Military outposts were constructed alongside the missions to house the soldiers sent to protect the missionaries.

Spanish and Mexican rule were devastating for native populations. “As the missions grew, California’s native population of Indians began a catastrophic decline.” Gregory Orfalea estimates that pre-contact population was reduced by 33% during the Spanish and Mexican regimes. Most of the deaths stemmed from imported diseases and the disruption of traditional ways of life, but violence was common, and some historians have charged that life in the missions was close to slavery. However, according to George Tinker, a Native Scholar, “The Native American population of coastal population was reduced by some 90 percent during seventy years under the sole proprietorship of Serra’s mission system”.

According to journalist Ed Castillo, Serra spread the Christian faith among the Native population in a destructive way that caused their population to decline rapidly while he was in power. Castillo writes that “The Franciscans took it upon themselves to brutalize the Indians, and to rejoice in their death…They simply wanted the souls of these Indians, so they baptized them, and when they died, from disease or beatings...they were going to heaven, which was a cause of celebration”. According Castillo, the Native American population were forced to abandon their “sustainable and complex civilization” as well as “their beliefs, their faith, and their way of life”.

California statehood and genocide

Following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, and the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush in 1849, California state and federal authorities incited, aided, and financed the violence against the Native Americans. The California Natives were also sometimes contemptuously referred to as "Diggers", for their practice of digging up roots to eat. On January 6, 1851, at his State of the State address to the California Senate, 1st Governor Peter Burnett said: "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert." During the California genocide, reports of the decimation of Native Americans in California were made to the rest of the United States and internationally.

The California Act for the Government and Protection of Indians was enacted in 1850 (amended 1860, repealed 1863). This law provided for "apprenticing" or indenturing Indian children to Whites, and also punished "vagrant" Indians by "hiring" them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail. This legalized a form of slavery in California. White settlers took 10,000 to 27,000 California Native Americans as forced laborers, including 4,000 to 7,000 children.

A notable early eyewitness testimony and account: "The Indians of California" 1864, is from John Ross Browne, Customs official and Inspector of Indian Affairs on the Pacific Coast. He systematically described the fraud, corruption, land theft, slavery, rape, and massacre perpetrated on a substantial portion of the aboriginal population. This was confirmed by a contemporary, Superintendent Dorcas J. Spencer.

Violence Statistics

By one estimate, at least 4,500 Californian Indians were killed between 1849 and 1870. Contemporary historian Benjamin Madley has documented the numbers of Californian Indians killed between 1846 and 1873; he estimates that during this period at least 9,492 to 16,092 Californian Indians were killed by non-Indians. Most of the deaths took place in what he defined as more than 370 massacres (defined as the "intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants, including women, children, and prisoners, whether in the context of a battle or otherwise").

The Native American activist and former Sonoma State University Professor Ed Castillo was asked by The State of California's Native American Heritage Commission to write the state's official history of the genocide; he wrote that "well-armed death squads combined with the widespread random killing of Indians by individual miners resulted in the death of 100,000 Indians in [1848 and 1849]."

List of recorded massacres

[[DJS -- see Wiki article for full table list. ]]

Population decline

Further information: Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas

 

Estimated native California population based on Handbook of the Indians of California (1925) (Cook 1978)

Legacy

Land Theft and Value

According to M. Kat Anderson, an ecologist and lecturer at University of California, Davis, and Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist and research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, after decades of being disconnected from the land and their culture, due to Spanish and U.S. colonial violence, Native peoples are slowly starting to be able to practice traditions that enhance the environment around them, by directly taking care of the land. Anderson and Keeley write, “The outcomes that indigenous people were aiming for when burning chaparral, such as increased water flow, enhanced wildlife habitat, and the maintenance of many kinds of flowering plants and animals, are congruent and dovetail with the values that public land agencies, non-profit organizations, and private landowners wish to preserve and enhance through wildland management”. Through these returned practices, they are able to commit and practice their culture, while also helping the other people in the area that will benefit from the ecological differences.

Call for tribunals

Native American scholar Gerald Vizenor has argued in the early 21st century for universities to be authorized to assemble tribunals to investigate these events. He notes that United States federal law contains no statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. He says:

Genocide tribunals would provide venues of judicial reason and equity that reveal continental ethnic cleansing, mass murder, torture, and religious persecution, past and present, and would justly expose, in the context of legal competition for evidence, the inciters, falsifiers, and deniers of genocide and state crimes against Native American Indians. Genocide tribunals would surely enhance the moot court programs in law schools and provide more serious consideration of human rights and international criminal cases by substantive testimony, motivated historical depositions, documentary evidence, contentious narratives, and ethical accountability.

Vizenor believes that, in accordance with international law, the universities of South Dakota, Minnesota, and California Berkeley ought to establish tribunals to hear evidence and adjudicate crimes against humanity alleged to have taken place in their individual states. Attorney Lindsay Glauner has also argued for such tribunals.

Apology by California's governor

In a speech before representatives of Native American peoples in June, 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom apologized for the genocide. Newsom said, "That’s what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books." After hearing testimony, a Truth and Healing Council will clarify the historical record on the relationship between the state and California Native Americans.