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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to get an emotional reaction out of bare numbers and facts. If you tell people "x million people starved to death in a famine", we all intellectually agree that it's horrible, but it doesn't seem shocking. If you tell people, "no seriously, here are some stories about people cannibalizing each other because they were starving from a famine", it gives you an emotional gut punch because you get a stronger grasp of the utter despair and suffering involved.

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Also sickening is the understanding that the massive horror of the famine (in large part a result of the policies of confiscation of goods) was seized upon as an opportunity to punish the suffering peasants and diminish the authority of the Orthodox Church. I'm troubled there wasn't there an ounce of humanity among leaders, those who would rather grab power than alleviate the suffering. But then, to admit the scale of the suffering and/or to ask for international aid is to admit that the central planning model is inefficient, and the embarrassment of the food aid provided by the United States must have deepened the insult to the (well fed) leadership. A disgusting low-point in human history, for certain.

The death of one is a tragedy, the death of a million a mere statistic.

It's not just a question of ego and power. It's fundamentally based in the ideological belief that the ends justify the means--though that belief is very useful for laundering motivations of ego and power into self-perceived righteousness.

These people didn't necessarily want to alleviate immediate material suffering in the here and now. They wanted to Achieve Communism, which would supposedly alleviate material suffering forever. If that meant tens of millions had to be sacrificed on that altar, so be it.

I believe the following quote (which is, supposedly, attributed to Stalin) exemplifies what you're saying: "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic".

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