I know very little about the famine and was wondering if this video misrepresents anything or leaves anything out?

  • AverageUlyanovFan@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Lots of unsupported lies, and a lot of pushing you towards questionable conclusions. I’ll just go over some of it (I’ll be linking sources in Russian from Soviet archives, use Google translate or just ping me if there’s some slang word it can’t handle):

    Stalin didn’t “label” the resistance as kulaks. A “kulak” (fist) is a peasant who has accumulated enough wealth that he can live off hired labor and/or loans, the mention of a term going up to XVII century, used among peasantry. Kulak was, therefore a bourgeoisie-lite, and needed to be eliminated (as a class, not physically). Modern anti-soviet propaganda often likes to paint them as just “good workers”, but it’s the ability to be a rentier that separated a “kulak” from majority of peasants.

    The kulaks therefore have been natural enemies of the Soviet state, and often endgaded in anti-government activity from food thievery to fucking murders (note that the state was expropriating their land which was in their private property, so it was very personal). Most of the kulaks imprisoned or executed had, therefore, violated the law and got convicted whereas the video makes it seem as if Stalin just said “yeah just murder a bunch of 'em for memes”. In fact Stalin has to push back against the lynching (https://istmat.org/node/44272)

    So, Stalin “engineered” a famine in 1931. He was so successful that the famine has spread further to Western Ukraine under Polish control the Soviets even considered helping (https://istmat.org/node/25247). He has put a quotas that some farmers couldn’t meet, opting to steal the grain and sell bread on black market later, or just out of anti-Soviet sentiment. The quotas

    The video is kind enough to say that in 1932 there have been harsh punishments implemented for anybody stealing the grain or caught hiding it. That is precisely to deter such instances because famine has already been in full swing. Of course one would never imagine the Soviet Union trying to help its citizens, because it’s a bloody dictatorship.

    The letter from G. Petrovsky can be found here: https://istmat.org/node/25536. It’s quite a lengthy letter that mentions various things including rampart bread price speculation. At this point we can see that USSR was already buying extra bread from Persia and tapping into grain reserves (https://istmat.org/node/25689). So the letter is taken fully out of context of quite intense crisis management.

    The borders were actually closed and there have been cordons installed to prevent migration. This was done because it’s easier to deliver emergency aid to people who aren’t wandering off somewhere delirious due to extreme starvation.

    Can’t be arsed to verify where the photos/videos of starving people are coming from. There’s a possibility they aren’t about USSR famine like it happened in back-then Ukraine’s Sevastopol own expo in 2009

    Next we have a confession from a grain thief while their village is dying? Nice.

    The study that’s shown in 10th minute is gorgeous. Just pause and read the first sentence of the abstract - it straight out says that it estimates lost births. I think that should be enough to say that it’s designed to inflate the number of deaths — and I’m not sure if they bothered to separate starvation deaths from all others.

    The censorship stuff seems like your run of the mill fearmongering that is used today for DPRK by people who often pretend on western media it’s worse than it actually is, and I’m way too tired at this point to argue.

    My personal trustworthiness rating: Goebbels would be proud/10.

    • Rafael_Luisi@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      Those “black book of communism” fucks literally use an propaganda made by goebbels himself that accused the soviets of killing thousands of polish people and just throwing the bodies on the german side of the frontier for some reason, with where “found” by the totally innocent german soldier. while at the same time there was an actual genocide happening on Poland that was being made by the nazis. Libs will use nazi propaganda without flinching if they are doing it to “own the commies”.

      • AverageUlyanovFan@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        I think that’s the result of biases and a primitive black and white morality people are indoctrinated into. Soviets were bad so everything that’s said against them must be true, sources be damned.

  • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Based on the source and video description, it’s about five percent accurate.

    There was a famine in Ukraine at that time and many people died, as was common leading up to that point in the tsarist and early soviet period.

    The USSR did what it could to get food to people, but the harvest was just bad and some former landlords who got their land collectivised and serfs freed may have had a little temper tantrum and destroyed some food.

    The Nazis and some Americans caught wind of this famine and played it up to make the Soviets and communists look bad. The myth has stuck with us to this day, now ninety years later.

    Here’s a good review/rebuttal to one of the commonly referenced books on the topic:

    https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169438

      • Rafael_Luisi@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        The video “debunking every anticommunist argument” also debunks the holodomor, its an very good video if you want an quick information.

  • Idliketothinkimsmart@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    Thorough debunking including stellar academic sources and documents with citations

    I’m not going to bother watching the video because it’ll be the same rehash of propaganda. There was indeed a famine, but it was by no means directed at the Ukranian people, the entire SU experienced it. The famine was caused by a set of issues ranging from poor weather conditions, failure to enforce crop rotation, deliberate sabotage, forced industrialization, and the fact that the SU was transitioning from a destructive tsarist system of rule.

    • jasoria@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      the video claims that:

      • “the entire SU experienced it” is a propaganda technique to hide the Holodomor.
      • It says that the 5 year plan and rapid industrlalization were part of the causes, but I guess it implies that that didn’t benefit the Ukrainians.
      • That the “deliberate sabotage” by Kulaks was another “propaganda technique” to paint every resistant farmer as an enemy of the state.

      I have to say, it makes sense if you buy the narrative of Stalin being against the Ukrainian cultural identity (the video also goes into that, and purges of Ukrainian intellectuals).

      Also they quote a person from a “Holodomor Study Center” or something like that. I didn’t know that was a thing.

      • loathesome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Apparently it is affiliated with the University of Alberta which is a terrible look for the university.

        Ukrainian anticommunists seem to hold a lot of influence in Canada. Their deputy PM is unapologetically the granddaughter of a Banderite. Now this university is giving them a great platform too.

      • AverageUlyanovFan@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        People dedicating their entire lives to perpetuate anticommunist lies instead of being life sentenced in a labor camp to do something useful for the society smh

  • Clawclock
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    2 years ago

    One of the authors of the original research that coined the term “holodomor” straight up admitted “yep, we made it up”.

    • Edwarder@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 years ago

      This is such a stupid “term”. Both Holod and Mor mean hunger. So it is something like “Faminohunger”

      • Clawclock
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        2 years ago

        Don’t know about Ukranian, in Russian “mor” means “pestilence”.

        • Edwarder@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 years ago

          Да я проебался чуть-чуть. Мор это эпидемия. Но “эпидемия голода” тоже долбоебизм полнейший. Очевидно, здесь имеется в виду выражение “морить голодом”. Только по-моему, это совсем не по-русски и не по-украински так пафосно называть вещи.

          • Kind_Stone@lemmygrad.ml
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            2 years ago

            Зато в пропаганду такая бурда вписывается отлично. Доказано на практике.