The European Parliament passed a resolution that declared Holodomor — the starvation of millions of people in Ukraine in the 1930s under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin — a "genocide".
Again, maybe I’m insane, but it seems to me that no one denies that the tsarist era elite (particularly in Ukraine, which as a matter of policy was heavily Jewish) encouraged antisemitic violence as a way to redirect class resentment. The Russian state responded to all three Russian revolutions by encouraging pogroms against Jewish communities. There doesn’t seem to be any controversy at all around this idea, and it’s heavily documented.
Using racism to protect the elite and undermine solidarity is why racism exists. In Ukraine, just like every other place where most people are made to endure false scarcity, racism is an essential tool for preserving the social hierarchy. To anyone in the US or Europe this should be pretty obvious, but we have to pretend like this dynamic doesn’t apply to challenging the landlord class in post 1917 Ukraine.
This is all broad strokes, but it’s the only way I can make sense of history in this part of the world, and my theory seems to accommodate everything. I’m not a historian, but my family history is absolutely defined by antisemitic violence in Ukraine, and I’ve really worked to understand it.
Edit: I’m open to criticism on these ideas. Understanding the history of Jews in Ukraine is really important to me, so if there’s something flawed in the analytical lense I’m using, please let me know.
Edit 2: Wtf does this have to do with the famine? At a critical moment Kulaks trying to keep powet undermined what was already going to be a poor harvest. They had the option to leave peacefulky but didn’t. Some unknown but large number of people died. The reactionary/victim blaming view is that if the elites had never been challenged the famine would’ve never happened and the Jews will just have to continue to be killed. Don’t talk about it because you’re defending Stalin. This probably isnt really true because there were also climate factors that contributed to the famine. The correct view, which is the one I hold, is that the best chance to avoid a famine would’ve been for the agrarian landlords of Ukraine to kill themselves.
I really think you are on to something here. There has to be at least Soviet sources that documented the history of the Jewish people in Ukraine in the first couple decades after the revolution. So hard to get good info at the moment because anything that dares paint Ukrainians in a negative light gets buried.
There’s fascinating primary source documents, called yitzkor books. People wrote these as memorials to their villages (very often in Ukraine), giving personal and community histories, often including the holocaust and it’s aftermath. Some are boring. Some are harrowing. A lot are not translated to English, but some are. I love reading these. I’ve found some wild and illuminating tales, and at least what I’ve encountered has been universally pro soviet.
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Again, maybe I’m insane, but it seems to me that no one denies that the tsarist era elite (particularly in Ukraine, which as a matter of policy was heavily Jewish) encouraged antisemitic violence as a way to redirect class resentment. The Russian state responded to all three Russian revolutions by encouraging pogroms against Jewish communities. There doesn’t seem to be any controversy at all around this idea, and it’s heavily documented.
Using racism to protect the elite and undermine solidarity is why racism exists. In Ukraine, just like every other place where most people are made to endure false scarcity, racism is an essential tool for preserving the social hierarchy. To anyone in the US or Europe this should be pretty obvious, but we have to pretend like this dynamic doesn’t apply to challenging the landlord class in post 1917 Ukraine.
This is all broad strokes, but it’s the only way I can make sense of history in this part of the world, and my theory seems to accommodate everything. I’m not a historian, but my family history is absolutely defined by antisemitic violence in Ukraine, and I’ve really worked to understand it.
Edit: I’m open to criticism on these ideas. Understanding the history of Jews in Ukraine is really important to me, so if there’s something flawed in the analytical lense I’m using, please let me know.
Edit 2: Wtf does this have to do with the famine? At a critical moment Kulaks trying to keep powet undermined what was already going to be a poor harvest. They had the option to leave peacefulky but didn’t. Some unknown but large number of people died. The reactionary/victim blaming view is that if the elites had never been challenged the famine would’ve never happened and the Jews will just have to continue to be killed. Don’t talk about it because you’re defending Stalin. This probably isnt really true because there were also climate factors that contributed to the famine. The correct view, which is the one I hold, is that the best chance to avoid a famine would’ve been for the agrarian landlords of Ukraine to kill themselves.
I really think you are on to something here. There has to be at least Soviet sources that documented the history of the Jewish people in Ukraine in the first couple decades after the revolution. So hard to get good info at the moment because anything that dares paint Ukrainians in a negative light gets buried.
There’s fascinating primary source documents, called yitzkor books. People wrote these as memorials to their villages (very often in Ukraine), giving personal and community histories, often including the holocaust and it’s aftermath. Some are boring. Some are harrowing. A lot are not translated to English, but some are. I love reading these. I’ve found some wild and illuminating tales, and at least what I’ve encountered has been universally pro soviet.
Here’s a good source: https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/