Comment on The Billionaires have spent a fortune making sure you hate Socialism.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 days agoSure, let’s copy and paste the 2 paragraphs, including the footnotes:
[a]Researchers who state that the famine was unintentional and did not aim at genocide still agree that the famine was not caused by natural crop failure, and so use words like “man-made famine” and “organised famine” to emphasize this fact.[1][2][3] Most researchers agree that the famine was caused by social factors and government policies.[4]
This states that, among western historians (who are the only ones Wikipedia references, curiously), there is no settled debate on whether it was intentional and thus genocide, or unintentional and due to mismanagement.
Moving forward, here are the paragraphs in the Wikipedia article:
The Holodomor, a 1932–1933 man-made famine,[a] killed 3.3–5 million ethnic Ukrainian people in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (as part of the Soviet Union),[5][6][7] included in a total of 5.5–8.7 million perished in the broader Soviet famine of 1930–1933.[8][9][10] At least 3.3 million ethnic Ukrainians died as a result of the famine in the USSR.[11] Scholars debate whether there was an intent to starve millions of Ukrainians to death or not.[12]
While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made,[a] the topic remains a significant issue in modern politics with historians disputing whether Soviet policies in the era constitute genocide. Specifically, scholarly debate of the question centres around whether or not the Holodomor was intentional and therefore constitutes a genocide under the Genocide Convention.[13] 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. Western historians hold varying views.[14] Most scholars who reject the argument that state policy in regard to the famine was genocidal do not absolve Joseph Stalin or the Soviet regime as a whole from guilt for the famine deaths and still view such policies as being ultimately criminal in nature.[15][16][17]
So, in total, Wikipedia does not consider the opinion of non-western scholars to be relevant in any manner, and of the relevant scholars Tauger is referenced as an authority on the matter. Wikipedia is already highly flawed by explicitly rejecting non-western scholars, but even Wikipedia’s flawed analysis does not line up with what you say, and in fact lines up with what I’ve said, which I will copy and paste yet again:
Even serious liberal scholars believe it to have been a combination of adverse weather conditions and mismanagement. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
[data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the ‘revolution from above,’ rather than of a ‘successful’ nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.
Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Comrade Kosior!
You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation in villages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?
Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.
Sincerely, J. Stalin
Evidence doesn’t point to deliberately killing some of the Soviet Union’s most loyal citizens in the breadbasket of the entire USSR, when they desperately needed to advance agricultural production (and did).
Tja@programming.dev 2 days ago
“My sources are legitimate and respected”
links to a source contradicting this statement
And you wonder why I accuse you of lying and your source of being a charlatan? Yes, Stalin defends Stalin, great evidence…