Colonial famines only explain the starting point. The real explanation is that the Global South largely stayed locked into capitalist extraction chains. Core economies required cheap labor and raw materials from the periphery. That structural position kept mortality high and blocked independent development. Socialist states broke that dependency. They redirected surplus into public health, housing, and food security. The outcomes of this are obvious, life expectancy doubled in a generation, infant mortality collapsed. The material basis improved because production answered human needs instead of profit margins. The idea of post soviet governments simply being confused and not knowing better is a nice fantasy but is completely detached from reality. The mortality spike was not administrative error. It was policy. Shock therapy dismantled central planning. State enterprises were liquidated. Housing guarantees were revoked. Social services were defunded. Mass unemployment followed overnight.

The new governments knew exactly what they were building. They replaced planned distribution with market extraction. The human toll was accepted as transition cost. Capitalism does not stumble into crisis. It manufactures crisis through deliberate dispossession.