So was the Holodomor real?

[Anakin McFly]

I assumed it was, but apparently people are saying it's a Nazi myth. ?

[Boomer]

I think the people who would deny the Holodomor fall in to the same category of crackpot that would deny the Holocaust, but do you have sources saying it's a myth? I'd like to see their reasoning.

[Derived Absurdity]

From what I can tell, the basic idea is real, just wildly exaggerated. There was a huge famine in parts of the Soviet Union in the early 30s that killed millions of people. "The Holodomor" refers only to the Ukrainian portion of the famine, which makes it somewhat misleading; it affected multiple other regions and nationalities. Outside of that, there's still debate as to whether it was "deliberately engineered" by the Politburo to break the peasantry, whether it was the unintended result of Soviet grain seizures and collectivization policies, or whether it was entirely the result of weather patterns, diseases in wheat crops, and other external patterns. There's no historical "consensus" on the subject from what I can tell; the only major figure saying the latter is Mark Tauger and the only major people saying the first are Ukrainian nationalists and propagandists like Robert Conquest. Most positions seem to fall on the side of it being unintended, but that may be overstating it.

[Boomer]

Per Wikipedia there are 15 or 16 countries that recognize the Holodomor as genocide and both the European Parliament and UN general assembly recognize it as a deliberate crime against humanity.

Saying only Ukrainian Nationalists and propagandists are the major parties that believe the Holodomor was intentional seems *a bit* of a stretch.

[Derived Absurdity]

Well, I think it can still be "unintended" and still qualify as a crime against humanity.

I was talking primarily about historians and researchers, not governing bodies, but point taken. From what I can tell (again... I'm not exactly a historian), among historians the Holodomor being a genocide is somewhat of a fringe position. Or at the very least, it's an open and contentious debate; it's not settled like the Holocaust. On the other side the truly fringe positions are that it wasn't man-made at all, but even then the primary proponent of that, Mark Tauger, is still considered a respected historian; he hasn't been banished and shunned like David Irving. My point is that no one seems to know anything about it; the only thing anyone can really agree on is that a famine happened.

So since there is no consensus among actual researchers on whether it was a genocide, The European Parliament, the UN general assembly, and any other body that proclaims it as a genocide is partaking in propaganda (for political purposes), so I consider them propagandists.

[Anakin McFly]

Huh, okay. Thanks for the info! Denying that it was an intentional genocide makes a bit more sense than denying that there was a famine at all, which is what I thought people meant when they called it a myth.

[Derived Absurdity]

What spurred the question?

[Anakin McFly]

I saw this tweet:
https://tinyurl.com/l2ca6ws

(it's the activist I was talking to a while back about communism. I'm still unsettled by our discussion and I went twitter stalking.)

So this was the first time I heard that believing it was real apparently makes you a Nazi sympathiser, and I wondered what that was about.

[Derived Absurdity]

My guess is that she gets that from the fact that the Nazis originally used it as anti-Soviet propaganda and a justification for their invasion. I think it may have been the Nazis who primarily originated the idea that it was a deliberately engineered famine, and it was taken up by other anti-communists.

[Boomer]

FWIW from what I'm reading the question of the Holodomor being a genocide seems to be centered on a semantics argument around the technical definition of genocide. There seems to be a preponderance of scholars accepting Stalin's regime put in place policies and practices that specifically targeted the Ukrainian people and compounded the effects of the famine, whether this all amounted to genocide seems to be where there is disagreement.

See the subsection in this wiki titled "Scholarly Debate" for details:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodom ... e_question

[Boomer]

Also, that tweet chain is really bizarre, kind of gross, IMO.

"I talked to someone who had concerns on a potential ethnic genocide. What a Nazi, am I right?! LMAO!!!"

[Anakin McFly]

I have a lot of mixed feelings about them (non-binary person), whom I'm only this invested in because we have a lot of mutual friends on Facebook, including people I respect a lot. They often raise a lot of good and insightful critique regarding racial issues in particular, and once schooled me on a thing where I admit I was wrong and probably deserved it. But at the same time, they were disproportionately hostile to me. I don't want to tone-police people who are offended about things and are probably tired of dealing with the same crap again, but it was the kind of invective people usually reserve for alt-right trolls, even after I admitted I was wrong and apologised and engaged them with the specific intention to learn more about their position rather than to argue.

I later found out from Facebook that they have BPD, which might explain some of that, but there's still the nagging feeling that maybe I said something really hurtful and just wasn't aware. tbh I'm scared of them to the point I'm nervous they might find this thread. But part of me also hates that I'm feeling this way about someone almost a decade younger than me.

[Derived Absurdity]

She seems like a tankie, "bizarre and kind of gross" is their MO.

That "scholarly debate" section seems blatantly biased and cherry picks a handful of historians who espouse one point of view. Wikipedia is known for that kind of thing when dealing with highly politicized topics. If I looked for half an hour I can also find a handful of reputable historians who give the opposite view.

[Boomer]

She seems like a tankie, "bizarre and kind of gross" is their MO.

That "scholarly debate" section seems blatantly biased and cherry picks a handful of historians who espouse one point of view. Wikipedia is known for that kind of thing when dealing with highly politicized topics. If I looked for half an hour I can also find a handful of reputable historians who give the opposite view.

I had never heard the term tankie before, thanks for that.

Also curious what you mean here by "the opposite view"? Like as in Ukrainians weren't specifically targeted, or that there are scholars who believe that there was no famine?

[the_dork_lord]

There is Holodomor denial out there but it's actually rare. A more common theory -- even among many, many mainstream historians -- is that the traditional view of the Holodomor as a planned famine at the hands of the Soviet government is false, and that it was really a product of nature, well-intentioned but poor decision-making, or a combination of both. People who advocate this theory are often called Holodomor deniers in order to dismiss them as crackpots.

I don't have a firm position on the causes of the Holodomor, though the planned famine theory seems unlikely to me.

[the_dork_lord]

Also, tankies gonna tank. Let them be.

[Boomer]

There is Holodomor denial out there but it's actually rare. A more common theory -- even among many, many mainstream historians -- is that the traditional view of the Holodomor as a planned famine at the hands of the Soviet government is false, and that it was really a product of nature, well-intentioned but poor decision-making, or a combination of both. People who advocate this theory are often called Holodomor deniers in order to dismiss them as crackpots.

I don't have a firm position on the causes of the Holodomor, though the planned famine theory seems unlikely to me.

I don't think it was a "planned famine" by any stretch. That said, I feel a naturally poor harvest was greatly exacerbated by de-kulakization and collectivization, and policies were put into effect that targeted Ukraine more harshly than other regions.