this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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You're conflating disparate factors. Ukraine was the breadbasket of the USSR, that doesn't mean there was a targeted famine towards them.
Kulaks were a group of bourgeois farmers that opposed collectivization. Many of these Kulaks burned their own crops and killed their livestock to avoid handing it over to the Red Army and the Communists.
The famine in Ukraine and parts of Russia was a separate but linked matter. The Kulak resistance to collectivization was multiplied by drought, flood, and pests, making an already low harvest spiral into crisis. The idea that it was an intentional famine and therefore a genocide actually originated in Volkischer Beobatcher, a Nazi news outlet, before spreading to the west. It isn't "genocide apologia," it was a horrible tragedy caused by a combination of human and environmental factors.
The formatting is admittedly not the most readable, but this is the best article I have seen on the topic.
Which part do you disagree with? This isn't genocide denial, not even western historians believe the USSR's 1930s famine was genocide. Please explain what you mean, before resorting to libel.
While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made,[10][11] it remains in dispute whether the Holodomor was directed at Ukrainians and whether it constitutes a genocide, the point of contention being the absence of attested documents explicitly ordering the starvation of any area in the Soviet Union.[12] Some historians conclude that the famine was deliberately engineered by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.[c] Others suggest that the famine was primarily the consequence of rapid Soviet industrialisation and collectivization of agriculture. A middle position, held for example by historian Andrea Graziosi, is that the initial causes of the famine were an unintentional byproduct of the process of collectivization but once it set in, starvation was selectively weaponized and the famine was "instrumentalized" and amplified against Ukrainians as a means to punish Ukrainians for resisting Soviet policies and to suppress their nationalist sentiments.[13]
Straight from Wikipedia, are you accusing them of genocide denial too? Archival evidence points to the second, it was a consequence of collectivization and the reaction against collectivization, combined with natural factors.
Mind sharing evidence? The USSR tried to collectivize the bourgeois farms run by the Kulaks, yes, they didn't try to starve anyone intentionally.
There was resistance from the Bourgeoisie, yes. The Kulaks resisted, often violently, in the middle of drought, flood, and pestilent famine.
I did not once undermine this. I, in fact, directed you to a wikipedia article affirming what I had said. Are you calling Wikipedia genocide deniers too?
Mind sharing a source? Western media tended to share the German narrative, the aforementioned origin of the "genocide" stance on the famine coming from the Nazi press was repeated in Britain and other western countries.
Interesting, didn't know about that. Didn't say anything about the USSR forcing it on him, though, nor did it seem to outweigh the west's spread of the Nazis take on the famine.
Circling back, my stance is
In the early 1930s, the USSR tried to collectivize agriculture from the bourgeois Kulaks, who were not at all an ethnic group
At the same time, there was drought, flooding, and pests which lowered harvest yields
The Kulaks resisted collectivization, burning their crops and killing their livestock rather than handing it over to the Communists
The Red Army retailiated violently against these Kulaks
The Nazi Press spread stories about it being an intentional famine amounting to targeted genocide, rather than a humanitarian tragedy
The West tended to favor the Nazi's story
Outside of WWII, this was the last major famine in the USSR, as collectivization ultimately allowed for industrialized farming. Even if the collectivization process was botched and should have happened after industrialized private farming was mastered, it ultimately ended famines after the tragic famine.
Which of these 7 points do you disagree with? All are supported by the Holodomor Wikipedia Article, so if you do disagree you can help edit the article on Wikipedia if you have evidence.