4 ms·

The Holodomor and mass purges all occurred well before WW2 so there's no pass there for Soviet repression.

by dsq 1y ago

DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
The mass purges were deliberate, while the famine (polemically called the "Holodomor") was not. The famine was caused by Stalin's disastrous agricultural policy, but it wasn't a deliberate attempt to kill people.
- medbrane 1y ago
  >Broadly speaking, Russian historians are generally of the opinion that the Holodomor did not constitute a genocide. Among Ukrainian historians the general opinion is that it did constitute a genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question
- dsq 1y ago
  While I agree that one primary motive was to get more food, Communist atrocities generally start out with noble ideals, at least on paper. Pol Pot also intended to create an ideal society[1], at whatever cost. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion)
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    Pol Pot actually intended to kill huge numbers of people and wipe out the cities. He had his own crazy philosophy about a peasant Utopia that had nothing to do with Marxism at all. The Soviets wanted to increase agricultural yield, but the policies Stalin implemented caused the harvest in 1932 to fall by about 20%. In a country already just barely able to feed itself, that led to famine, not just in Ukraine but across the USSR.
- mopsi 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust, namely, that there is not a single piece of evidence showing that the highest level of the German government, in Hitler's person, ever ordered the extermination of Jews We literally have the minutes of the Wannsee conference, in which the Nazis decided to kill all Jews. The German state carried out a massive logistical operation of moving millions of people to specially built camps and gassing them to death. Comparing that to a famine is insane. You're drawing an equivalence between patently absurd, factually false denialism about the Holocaust on the one hand, and the dominant scholarly view that the Soviet famine of the early 1930s was not a deliberate attempt to kill Ukrainians on the other hand.
  - antifa 1y ago
    > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust No they don't, don't trivialize the Holocaust with shitty comparisons like this.
    - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
      Some of them do, but the difference is that their claim is complete and utter hogwash. On the other side, pretty much everyone accepts that there was a major famine in the USSR in the early 1930s, mostly caused by Stalin's collectivization policy. That's just a fact.
      - LtWorf 1y ago
        I mean Churchill caused a terrible famine in India, and there were similar in Ireland. Yet we only point the finger at Stalin for some reason.
  - kerkeslager 1y ago
    > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust What liars say is irrelevant to the truth. What Neo-Nazis say isn't relevant to this conversation and I'd rather not boost its signal in any way.

The Holodomor and mass purges all occurred well before WW2 so there's no pass there for Soviet repression.

by dsq 1y ago

The Holodomor and mass purges all occurred well before WW2 so there's no pass there for Soviet repression.

The mass purges were deliberate, while the famine (polemically called the "Holodomor") was not. The famine was caused by Stalin's disastrous agricultural policy, but it wasn't a deliberate attempt to kill people.

medbrane 1y ago
>Broadly speaking, Russian historians are generally of the opinion that the Holodomor did not constitute a genocide. Among Ukrainian historians the general opinion is that it did constitute a genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor_genocide_question
dsq 1y ago
While I agree that one primary motive was to get more food, Communist atrocities generally start out with noble ideals, at least on paper. Pol Pot also intended to create an ideal society[1], at whatever cost. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion)
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  Pol Pot actually intended to kill huge numbers of people and wipe out the cities. He had his own crazy philosophy about a peasant Utopia that had nothing to do with Marxism at all. The Soviets wanted to increase agricultural yield, but the policies Stalin implemented caused the harvest in 1932 to fall by about 20%. In a country already just barely able to feed itself, that led to famine, not just in Ukraine but across the USSR.
mopsi 1y ago
[flagged]
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust, namely, that there is not a single piece of evidence showing that the highest level of the German government, in Hitler's person, ever ordered the extermination of Jews We literally have the minutes of the Wannsee conference, in which the Nazis decided to kill all Jews. The German state carried out a massive logistical operation of moving millions of people to specially built camps and gassing them to death. Comparing that to a famine is insane. You're drawing an equivalence between patently absurd, factually false denialism about the Holocaust on the one hand, and the dominant scholarly view that the Soviet famine of the early 1930s was not a deliberate attempt to kill Ukrainians on the other hand.
- antifa 1y ago
  > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust No they don't, don't trivialize the Holocaust with shitty comparisons like this.
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    Some of them do, but the difference is that their claim is complete and utter hogwash. On the other side, pretty much everyone accepts that there was a major famine in the USSR in the early 1930s, mostly caused by Stalin's collectivization policy. That's just a fact.
    - LtWorf 1y ago
      I mean Churchill caused a terrible famine in India, and there were similar in Ireland. Yet we only point the finger at Stalin for some reason.
- kerkeslager 1y ago
  > Neo-Nazis argue the same about the Holocaust What liars say is irrelevant to the truth. What Neo-Nazis say isn't relevant to this conversation and I'd rather not boost its signal in any way.