There’s a huge difference between “the famine never happened” and “The widespread crop failures caused famines in some regions due to ineffective policies, bad estimates grain production, and local conflict”.
The former is just as wildly ahistorical as the “Stalin did holodomer because he was evil” that’s taught in schools.
While that might work for someone whose only interest in the event is demonizing (or eulogizing) the USSR, if you actually want to know how and why things happened, a deeper understanding is necessary.
It certainly true that “Stalin did holodomer because he was evil” would be a stupid thing to say. Good thing very few people are actually saying that then.
The actual point is that when the crop failures started happening Stalin decided to make sure it disproportionately hurt non-Russians, especially Ukrainians. Whether that’s technically genocide or not depends how severe it was and what else they were doing to try to Russify the area at the time, but frankly, if we’re talking about the subtleties of the definition of genocide I hope we can agree that whether it crosses that threshold or not what happened was not okay.
Stalin decided to make sure it disproportionately hurt non-Russians, especially Ukrainians
You know Stalin was a Georgian right?
I hope we can agree that whether it crosses that threshold or not what happened was not okay.
Yes, of course. But there’s not much to learn if you think it was intentionally targeting Ukrainians because Stalin just hated Ukrainians and loved Russians so much.
If you want unambiguous cases of famine being used as a tool for genocide, Churchill’s Bengali famine is right there. Late Victorian Holocausts is an excellent read that covers equally severe, but lesser known ones from the 1800s and early 1900s. CW: Descriptions and quotes from people documenting severe famines.
If you want to talk about Stalin’s failures, the Japanese internment and and ethnic transportations during WWII are right there, as are the actions that lead to the sino-soviet conflict (not that China’s foreign policy in the aftermath was at all reasonable), insufficient support for Korea, etc don’t require making shit up.
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia is also a great read for understanding what and how a lot of the terror attributed to Stalin or communism in the west actually happened.
Yes, as a matter of fact I did know that Stalin was Georgian. So? He didn’t care about that. He wanted the Soviet Union to be easier to rule, and right or wrong he thought making it less ethnically diverse would help with that goal. He didn’t want the USSR to become more Russian out of some kind of ethnic superiority garbage like the funny mustache guy from around the same time. He wanted it to further cement his control. That was pretty much the primary motivation for everything he did. Motivation isn’t really the issue with that kind of thing though, is it?
He wanted the Soviet Union to be easier to rule, and right or wrong he thought making it less ethnically diverse would help with that goal.
That logic might work for recognized ethnicities that didn’t have their own SSR within the USSR after the 1924 constitution changed the right of self-determination from applying to recognized ethnicities to SSRs, but Ukraine had it’s own SSR and the right to secede under all their constitutions. If Stalin wanted to reduce the number of ethnicities, he’d target ones that couldn’t unilaterally secede.
There’s a huge difference between “the famine never happened” and “The widespread crop failures caused famines in some regions due to ineffective policies, bad estimates grain production, and local conflict”.
The former is just as wildly ahistorical as the “Stalin did holodomer because he was evil” that’s taught in schools.
While that might work for someone whose only interest in the event is demonizing (or eulogizing) the USSR, if you actually want to know how and why things happened, a deeper understanding is necessary.
It certainly true that “Stalin did holodomer because he was evil” would be a stupid thing to say. Good thing very few people are actually saying that then.
The actual point is that when the crop failures started happening Stalin decided to make sure it disproportionately hurt non-Russians, especially Ukrainians. Whether that’s technically genocide or not depends how severe it was and what else they were doing to try to Russify the area at the time, but frankly, if we’re talking about the subtleties of the definition of genocide I hope we can agree that whether it crosses that threshold or not what happened was not okay.
You know Stalin was a Georgian right?
Yes, of course. But there’s not much to learn if you think it was intentionally targeting Ukrainians because Stalin just hated Ukrainians and loved Russians so much.
If you want unambiguous cases of famine being used as a tool for genocide, Churchill’s Bengali famine is right there. Late Victorian Holocausts is an excellent read that covers equally severe, but lesser known ones from the 1800s and early 1900s. CW: Descriptions and quotes from people documenting severe famines.
If you want to talk about Stalin’s failures, the Japanese internment and and ethnic transportations during WWII are right there, as are the actions that lead to the sino-soviet conflict (not that China’s foreign policy in the aftermath was at all reasonable), insufficient support for Korea, etc don’t require making shit up.
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia is also a great read for understanding what and how a lot of the terror attributed to Stalin or communism in the west actually happened.
Yes, as a matter of fact I did know that Stalin was Georgian. So? He didn’t care about that. He wanted the Soviet Union to be easier to rule, and right or wrong he thought making it less ethnically diverse would help with that goal. He didn’t want the USSR to become more Russian out of some kind of ethnic superiority garbage like the funny mustache guy from around the same time. He wanted it to further cement his control. That was pretty much the primary motivation for everything he did. Motivation isn’t really the issue with that kind of thing though, is it?
That logic might work for recognized ethnicities that didn’t have their own SSR within the USSR after the 1924 constitution changed the right of self-determination from applying to recognized ethnicities to SSRs, but Ukraine had it’s own SSR and the right to secede under all their constitutions. If Stalin wanted to reduce the number of ethnicities, he’d target ones that couldn’t unilaterally secede.