• Ukrainians love Ukraine so much 10 million of them (1/5th) left since 1990.

    It’s such a serious country in fact that the current President is a humorist who played the role of President on TV before his election – perhaps as a trial for the job?

    Today, claiming to speak for all Ukrainians, the pro-NATO government is remembering a famine recognized as a genocide only by 16 countries, that happened almost 100 years ago and affected other populations in a country that does not exist any more. The name of this “genocide” was made up by neo nazis in the 1980s for its resemblance to the word Holocaust.

    • @k_o_t@lemmy.mlOP
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      12 years ago

      i’m not quite sure how the modern geolopolitics of ukraine, how long this happened and how many countries recognize it as genocide affect how it is/should be perceived… millions of people died and people commemorate those who died in those awful events…

      • @CriticalResist8@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        Ukraine is the main proponent of the genocide narrative. Without their efforts (helped by the US), people wouldn’t really care that much about this famine. Famines happened and still happen, this one was nothing special as far as famines are concerned. Ukrainians would remember it as a darker period and be grateful that they have food now (an argument demolishing the genocide narrative is the fact that it did not work, there were no further famines, and the population refilled without problems). Non-Ukrainians might think about it once in a while but wouldn’t really care all that much because there have been many other famines, in our own countries as well.

        There have been famines in China, there have been famines in Europe in the early 1800s at the latest… I’m talking about purely “natural” famines here (not helped by government inaction, but not caused by the government on purpose either). The 1933 famine is on the same level for me. Yes, I want everyone to have food. But no, I can’t bear the world’s problems on my shoulders. One thing at a time; and this was 100 years ago. It’s ancient news. Especially as the USSR doesn’t even exist anymore – not like the monarchy that caused the Irish famine is still alive and well today.

        But that’s not what anti-communist, pro-nato Ukraine wants you to think. If this was treated like other famines, it wouldn’t be politicised like this.

        edit: hit send too soon.

    • @gun@lemmy.ml
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      12 years ago

      There was a positive correlation between collectivization and crop output in Ukraine during this time, and the famine began before collectivization started. This discounts the idea that collectivization caused the famine. Instead, collectivization was introduced to help deal with the famine.

      Also, collectivization is not some communist ideal. It is a revolution in production that every modern country has undergone at some point in time. In America, farms are heavily collectivized with heavy subsidies from the US government. The chicken industry, for example, is an oligopoly of four major corporations.
      This mode of farming where everyone owns their own subsistence farm cannot support an urbanizing population. In early 1930s USSR, farming was still done with ox and plow. Individual farmers could not afford tractors and other equipment for their small plots of land. But with pooled resources, it is possible over larger tracts of land.

      • @southerntofu@lemmy.ml
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        02 years ago

        the famine began before collectivization started

        You’re rewriting history. Ukraine had soviets long before Stalin. In fact, it had reached such a level of collectivization/expropriation that Lenin/Trostky had to send the Red Army to massacre the population (and the anarchist uprising).

        You should do some reading about the Makhnovtchina and the anarchist communes of Ukraine.

        • You should do some reading about the Makhnovtchina

          Okay.

          • forced conscription & summary executions
          • Kontrrazvedka
          • “Alexander Skirda acknowledges: “The idyllic dream of ‘cooperative enterprise’ was to dissolve in discord and bitterness, or even in ‘dismal despair,’ with commune workers quitting one after another.””
          • “Volin, one of the leaders of the Makhnovists, explained that there developed “a kind of military clique or camarilla about Makhno. This clique sometimes made decisions and committed acts without taking account of the Council or of other institutions. It lost its sense of proportion, showed contempt towards all those who were outside it, and detached itself more and more from the mass of the combatants and the working population.””
          • “The Makhnovists never developed any serious working class following in the towns they occupied. Even most anarchist supporters of Makhno, including his close collaborator Arshinov, acknowledge this reality.”
          • “A greater source of discontent was that the Makhnovists refused to pay workers wages. In Ekaterinoslav Makhno insisted that the workers accept payment in kind and engage in barter with the peasants. Workers in Olexandrivske also demanded wages and as Malet puts it “were not very keen” on Makhno’s proposals “to restart production under their own control, and establish direct relations with the peasants””

          Oh :/

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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      12 years ago

      First of all, famines were common prior to the revolution and were in fact one of the major driving factors behind it, and it’s also worth noting that kulaks slaughtered livestock in protest against collectivization which played a major role in the famine.

      And here’s a paper that I recommend reading about the famine. USSR actually sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:

      While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine. A 25 February 1933 Central Committee decree allotted seed loans of 320,000 tons to Ukraine and 240,000 tons to the northern Caucasus. Seed loans were also made to the Lower Volga and may have been made to other regions as well. Kul’chyts’kyy cites Ukrainian party archives showing that total aid to Ukraine by April 1933 actually exceeded 560,000 tons, including more than 80,000 tons of food

      Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.

      Aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported during the same period. Total aid to famine regions was more than double exports for the first half of 1933.

      According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest

      It appears to have been another consequence of the low 1932 harvest that more aid was not provided: After the low 1931, 1934, and 1936 harvests procured grain was transferred back to peasants at the expense of exports.

      Tauger is not a communist, and ultimately this specific article takes the view that the low harvest was caused by collectivization (he factors in the natural causes of the famine in later articles, based on how he completely neglects to mention weather in this article at all its clear that his position shifted over the years). However, it’s clear that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.

      The famine of 1931-1933 was not limited to Ukraine, but also affected the Russian Central Black Earth region, Volga Valley, North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan. This map from page xxii in Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 will give some sense of the geographic extent of the famine. In fact, while most of the famine victims were in Ukraine (some 3.5 million out of a population of 33 million), some 5-7 million died from the famine across the Union, and Ukraine was not the worst hit republic in relative terms - that misfortune befell Kazakhstan (then the Kazakh ASSR), where some 1.2 to 1.4 million of the over 4 million ethnic Kazakh population died through “denomadization” and the resulting famine. At least ten million people across the Union suffered severe malnutrition and starvation without dying, and food was scarce even in major cities like Leningrad and Moscow (although on the other hand, they did not face mass mortality). Kotkin very clearly states: “there was no ‘Ukrainian’ famine; the famine was Soviet.”

      • @k_o_t@lemmy.mlOP
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        02 years ago

        Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.

        could you provide a source on that?

        like yeah, there was a lower harvest at the time, but the blame is still put on the ussr planners for overextracting food supplies from sovhozes as well as rejection of foreign aid

      • @southerntofu@lemmy.ml
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        02 years ago
        While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine.
        

        So they “tried” but without trying the actual way to reach the goal. Funny. Also very important to note that “the leadership” is precisely what caused the situation in the first place: the new red bourgeoisie in their palaces were eating more than comfortably while the common people were starving.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
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          12 years ago

          The only funny part here is that you evidently lack basic reading comprehension. The famine wasn’t just happening in Ukraine.