Xaris posted:

I just read Wikipedia and I’m thinkin of becoming a ‘getting really into holodomor guy’. I I just can’t abide how many people don’t know that it DEFINITELY happened.

any suggestions for becoming a holodomor guy

Xaris posted:

I just read Wikipedia and I’m thinkin of becoming a ‘getting really into holodomor guy’. I I just can’t abide how many people don’t know that it DEFINITELY happened.

any suggestions for becoming a holodomor guy

the bitcoin of weed posted:

did anyone ever count how many people died in the dust bowl/depression at large or does that not count as state murder because it didn't happen in a socialist nation

John Steinbeck posted:

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit–and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.

the bitcoin of weed posted:

did anyone ever count how many people died in the dust bowl/depression at large or does that not count as state murder because it didn't happen in a socialist nation

Xaris posted:

I just read Wikipedia and I’m thinkin of becoming a ‘getting really into holodomor guy’. I I just can’t abide how many people don’t know that it DEFINITELY happened.

any suggestions for becoming a holodomor guy

indigi posted:

I like Hitler

Ytlaya posted:

Uhh...are we just going to let this slide???

indigi posted:

I like Hitler

indigi posted:

I like Hitler

quote:

The agrarian historian Mark Tauger writes that the famines were not “fundamentally or exclusively” man-made. Both D&W and Tauger show how anti-communist writers underestimate the role of ecological factors in producing bad harvests and overlook the states use of famine relief

D&W not only rule out genocide, but also explicitly rule out the conscious intent to murder,which makes it fundamentally unlike the Indonesian massacres and other genocides or genocide-like events of deliberate, mass killing. In D&Ws words famine was “unexpected and undesirable”

ill-informed political decisions contributed to unintended consequences. Polices were made by men conditioned by a brutal civil war with little knowledge of agriculture reacting to difficult natural/climate circumstances at a tumultuous time of grave international uncertainty

Bilous seems to concede that it wasn’t genocide, but is still driven by the same intentionalist motivations as Ukrainian nationalists to discredit the Soviet project. He’s more interested in moral judgement and scapegoating than understanding history in an objective way

Many Ukrainian nationalists believe their historical trauma and victimhood gives them the right to falsify history, inflate death tolls, engage in holocaust revisionism (double genocide theory) and erase the suffering of ethnic minorities. It doesn’t.

Ukraine’s state-promoted narrative around these events have been criticized by historians for good reasons, as theyre bound up with these falsities/exaggerations. Its no surprise the left has taken issue with it. We shouldn’t settle for bad history that emboldens antisemitism

quote:

Bilous tries to obscure how [Davies & Wheatcroft's] book is generally lauded as an authoritative text in the field, and the most comprehensive work on the topic (see marples, moore, tauger). Like any landmark work, it has provoked responses, which vary in quality

Its odd that Bilous cites this criticism of D&W, because Tauger argues for lower harvest estimates! Bilous is citing evidence that contradicts his own position. Tauger's critique posits that the famine's causes were largely natural, which I agree with

Tauger did identify an error in Wheatcroft's calculations of the 1932 yields, which Wheatcroft acknowledged and corrected in the revised edition of his work. They agree on most aspects of this debate and both reject the flimsy intentionalist interpretations.

D&Ws book being the most comprehensive work on the topic is a widely held opinion in the field, noted by the scholar whose criticism Bilous cites (Tauger). Pretending otherwise is a dishonest attempt dismiss D&Ws acclaimed work, misleading those unfamiliar with the scholarship

Much of this "semi-peripheral" scholarship (Ie. Ukrainian) is faced with serious political pressures, as they are researching in a country in which denial of the famines as man-made is illegal. Other scholars are unburdened by this draconian constraint and inherent bias

That D&W quote is qualified by the following paragraph, where they describe the multi-causal, impersonal, complex. and unintended nature of the famine. I don't contest a degree of responsibility, the issue is intent

In my last thread I cited a paper where Wheatcroft rails against the way famine has been simplified as a mono-causal event in order to serve moralistic and political ends. Bilous selectively quotes Wheatcroft in order to misrepresent his nuanced views as something more simplistic

D&W have always been consistent that ill-informed policies made within the context of intransigent geopolitical and ecological constraints in part led to **unintended** consequences. Again, the reduction of these events to a state's singular mentality or plan is wrong.

Bilous cites [Michael Ellman's work], whose arguments around Soviet intentionality crumble under scrutiny. D&W's response shows how Ellman astonishingly provides next to no evidence to substantiate his specific claim that the leadership had intent to deliberately starve

Ellman is eager to describe the state's sinister ambitions, but then struggles to present any concrete evidence substantiating the claim. This is a persistent problem for intentionalists who largely lack concrete archival evidence for their claims

Although, contra Bilous, it is worth noting that even Ellman doesn't see the Soviet state as specifically targeting Ukrainians, stating "The notion that Ukraine was uniquely victimised by Soviet famines is just a nationalist fantasy."

Bilous then cites Danilov, a historian whose zealous Trotskyist ideological beliefs played a role in him fudging data and seriously confusing the debates around the alleged intentionality of the famines. Very embarrassing stuff.

Bilous implies there was no food aid given in 1933. This is false. The Soviets issued substantial food aid in 1933. This is what I mean by anti-communists either over-looking famine relief or attempting to downplay it for ideological reasons

The notion of sending famine relief to a population that you are purposely trying to starve is frankly an incoherent position. Over the duration of the famine, they sent millions of tonnes of aid. This doesn't absolve mistakes made, but clearly discredits famine as a willful act

Bilous himself reveals uncertainty in connecting the Ukrainian national question to the famines, because it has proven a speculative endeavor that has not produced *any* concrete evidence demonstrating Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian nation.

...

Since the evidence clearly discredits the Soviet famine as a genocide, Bilous shifts the terrain in an attempt to discredit the concept of genocide itself. Basically, "if we can't have it, no one should,"

Genocide is a useful term. It captures historically distinct acts of barbarity predicated on the *purposeful* destruction of particular racial groups. To discard the term is to de-emphasize the uniqueness of the holocaust and colonial genocide ie intentional racial extermination

Bilous preferred term is "crime against humanity" which, by the way, can apparently be worse than a genocide and the holocaust. Ukrainian scholar Lubomyr Luciuk described the famine as "a crime against humanity arguably without parallel in European history."

These morally-charged terms without clear definitions or criteria are useful for ideologues because they are conducive to making (dishonest) comparisons with the holocaust and colonial genocide, despite the unintended famine being fundamentally unlike these phenomena

Ultimately, "scholarship" that uses blame, scapegoating, hyperbole, and moral outrage in lieu of rigorous economic history and social scientific explanation is not worthwhile history. But they're not interested in history as it actually happened

some plague rats posted:

I ain't reading all that but I assume it confirms that the holodomor definitely happened

gradenko_2000 posted:

some twitter guy posted:

By the way, to call their book “the most detailed research” is to reproduce the superiority of Western academics to (semi-)peripheral scholars. I think the left should undermine these academic hierarchies.

gradenko_2000 posted:

If the rendition of aid to famine-afflicted areas disproves the Holodomor as an intentional genocide, then COVID policy conversely proves that it is one

gradenko_2000 posted:

If the rendition of aid to famine-afflicted areas disproves the Holodomor as an intentional genocide, then COVID policy conversely proves that it is one

Xaris posted:

That's right. That's the double genocide theory.

gradenko_2000 posted:

If the rendition of aid to famine-afflicted areas disproves the Holodomor as an intentional genocide, then COVID policy conversely proves that it is one

Weka posted:

I don't think giving aids to Ukrainians exculpates Stalin (the Georgian Hitler).

Dixon Chisholm posted:

The Georgian Hitler is the top heel in the Dirty Souf Wrestling promotion.

fart simpson posted:

if anyones looking for a new genocide to deny

https://twitter.com/NafeezAhmed/sta...ingawful.com%2F

fart simpson posted:

if anyones looking for a new genocide to deny

https://twitter.com/NafeezAhmed/sta...ingawful.com%2F

Red and Black posted:

This is actually the second genocide China is responsible for. The first being the genocide of COVID-19 for the first 3 years of the Pandemic