After much deliberation, I decided to revisit “How Stalin starved Ukraine”, that double genocide peace by Vox

Luckily, much of the claims here can be debunked by this article of Mark Tauger on “Red Famine”

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169438

As you can see, citing Anne Applebaum isn’t a good start…

But let’s dig into the video’s points directly:

Self-reliance is a very important thing for every Ukrainian. And so having that piece of land, cultivating that land was something that was very important to so many. In fact, Ukraine was known for its farmland. With some of the world’s most fertile soil, the country was a huge grain producer especially in these regions.

Alright

When Stalin rose to power in the mid-1920s a distinctly Ukrainian culture and national identity were thriving. But by the late-1920s, he and other Soviet leaders feared it could bring on a Ukrainian revolution. They decided to crackdown on what they saw as an ideological threat to the Soviet regime and they began a widespread, violent purge of Ukrainian intellectuals along with priests, and religious structures.

I mean, coming from the Russian Civil War, having such remnants from Czarist Russia, regardless of their alliance with them, would be a huge risk factor and internal enemy towards the newly-formed nation…

That being said, I hope you Hexbears help me elaborate upon this point

To fund this project, Stalin turned to the “collectivization” of agriculture. Which meant consolidating individual farms across all of the Soviet Union into large, state run farms. If you combine, you know, 60, 70, 80 small farms into one big farm it’s easier to control it

And it’s more efficient for development and economic planning… it’s not just for political convenience of big brotherism

In Ukraine, the plan gave Stalin direct control over grain production which meant he could extract all of the crop to sell to the West as a way to fund Soviet industrialization.

Hexbears, if you can help, I remember there being a policy of accepting only grain trade from the USSR, by the Western powers, such as the U.S.A, can anyone provide a source on that…

By this policy of industrialization, by taking away everything that grew on the land. Stalin aimed to really destroy that connection between the land and life itself.

Wow, is Vox a neo-luddite? /s

Stalin found another way to attack them.

He launched a propaganda campaign to smear farmers. He labeled anyone resistant to collectivization, a “kulak”, a Russian term for a wealthy peasant and depicted them as greedy, exploiters, and enemies of the state. And sometimes, as literal parasites.

To show you how powerful these kulaks are, as to not dismiss them as pure Russian propaganda, here’s a quote from contemporary Professor Scuman

“Their [kulak] opposition took the initial form of slaughtering their cattle and horses in preference to having them collectivized. The result was a grievous blow to Soviet agriculture, for most of the cattle and horses were owned by the kulaks. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of horses in the USSR declined from almost 30,000,000 to less than 15,000,000; of horned cattle from 70,000,000 (including 31,000,0000 cows) to 38,000,000 (including 20,000,000 cows); of sheep and goats from 147,000,000 to 50,000,000; and of hogs from 20,000,000 to 12,000,000. Soviet rural economy had not recovered from this staggering loss by 1941. … Some [kulaks] murdered officials, set the torch to the property of the collectives, and even burned their own crops and seed grain. More refused to sow or reap, perhaps on the assumption that the authorities would make concessions and would in any case feed them.”

https://espressostalinist.com/2013/10/27/frederick-schuman-on-kulak-destruction-of-crops-and-livestock/

No matter how rich or poor, Stalin seized the belongings of the so-called “kulaks". He then exiled, imprisoned, or executed hundreds of thousands of them. And for the farmers who remained, he engineered a famine to starve them.

Yeah,

The Famine

In 1931, Stalin deliberately set quotas for grain production that were far beyond the capacity of farmers across the Soviet Union. When farmers failed to meet those quotas Stalin’s men swept their farms to confiscate all the grain they could find. Records show the Soviets took over 4 million tons of grain from Ukraine alone in 1932.

That same year, a new law punished anyone who took even a handful of grain or was caught hiding grain or bread — with 10 years in prison, or the death penalty.

Oh gosh, it’s big spoon time, anyways, on the 4.2 million tons of grain…

To quote Mark Tauger, for a longer story shortened:

Applebaum does cite correspondence between Stalin and Kaganovich in July 1932 about reducing Ukraine’s procurement plan, but she never states that they actually did reduce the plan (179) or how it would have changed the procurement plan.

The Soviet government thus reduced Ukraine’s procurements from kolkhozy and peasants in 1932 not by a begrudged 40 million puds, 656,000 tons, as Applebaum ambiguously implies, but from 434 million puds to 218 million puds, 7.1 million tons to 3.57 million tons, or approximately half. Even with the procurements required from state farms, the total procurement plan for Ukraine was reduced to 260 million puds, or 4.2 million tons, about one-third below the 1931 actual procurements.25 Although this evidence is in Applebaum’s sources, she misrepresented the second reduction, failed to explain the first, never mentioned the third, fourth, or the decree suspending procurements, and never stated the final procurement plan. And she criticized other scholars for cherry-picking (49-50)! Applebaum notes later that the regime reduced procurement for Ukraine from the 1933 harvest by 915,000 tons (284), yet she never explains that they cut procurements in 1932 four times as much. Even with that reduction, actual grain procurements for 1933, 6.2 million tons, were larger than those for 1932, 4.2 million tons. These data, in her sources, are central for understanding the famine, but she never cites them.26

Now remember this, when the narrator says w/ disgust how that Soviet gov’t took 4.2 million tons of grain… the Soviets were trying, ye b----…

Some party members sent Stalin letters about the growing crisis pleading for a change in policy. But instead, the government and the party actually doubled down. >Their commitment to collectivization made the famine deadly in many parts of the Soviet Union.

In what fairy tale does this guy live in… I repeat, read Mark Tauger’s History news critique on "Review of Anne Applebaum’s “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine” again

But when it came to Ukraine, Stalin’s need for the complete submission of its people compounded the effects of the famine.

Idk why she’s trying to psycho-analyze Stalin. It seems like they’re suggesting shit up to make up for the lack of recorded anti-Ukrainian feelings he has…

Remember this, because genocide requires intent on the perpetrator’s part and Stalin and his gov’t has no mens reas recorded in any personal diary or public document…

Farms in Ukraine and sometimes entire villages, were “blacklisted” for missing grain quotas, torn apart for food, and prohibited from receiving any supplies.

To quote Mark Tauger:

Yet her own sources show that in December, at the peak of the campaign, only some 400 kolkhozy were blacklisted, out of 23,270 kolkhozy in Ukraine.27 Her sources agree that blacklisting could not and did not stop trade

In January 1933, knowing Ukrainians were leaving in search of food, Stalin closed the borders of Ukraine and policed migration from Ukrainian villages to cities, too. In the coming months, tens of thousands of Ukrainian villagers were caught trying to flee and were sent back to their homes to starve. This was a targeted extermination of peasantry.

Well to quote Mark Tauger

The only figure I have seen is 219,460 people caught by mid-March, the great majority of whom were sent back to their villages.31 Even if twice as many were caught in this harsh policy, and all of them died of the famine, this would account only for a minority of famine deaths (see below). Applebaum also claims that “beyond Kharkiv where the Russian territory starts there was no hunger” (198). Yet archival sources show “there were massive cases of swelling from famine and death” in the Central Blackearth Oblast’, especially in southern parts across the border from Kharkiv.32

2nd, I’m pretty sure that, as one commentor noted, famine refugees could also put stress on a population center’s ability to sustain itself so it can understood

Finally, on the Resettlement of Ukraine and other parts of the USSR with Russians post-famine…

For me, it sounds very much like ethnic cleansing without further context as far as I’m concerned but can anyone clarify further why it isn’t?

The Cover Up

In Russia, Stalin carried out a massive disinformation campaign to cover up the famine he’d created. Throughout the crisis, he outright denied that a famine ever took place. He banned the Soviet press from reporting on the famine and banned foreign correspondents from even going to Ukraine. But, he strategically allowed language that would effectively downplay the Holodomor words like “food shortages” or “food supply problems”.

Seriously question tho, why did the Communists and Walter Durant seem to deny the famine, according to the video. It seems to me that they just disagreed its effect and its labeling as genocide…

I can understand external media blackout, though not internal media blackout, during the background of rising fascist powers like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan seeking out any weakness to exploit from the socialist gov’ts…

According to Hearst-aligned journalist, Gareth Jones, a communist official has denied it… can anyone explain this?

In response — Duranty, who had more influence than Jones, put out another article this time insisting that “Russians were hungry, but not starving".

Umm, ok?

The West didn’t want to get involved in Soviet politics.

Hahah, you say this as if the USSR wasn’t born just recently before an intervention by the ‘civilized’ nations, such as the U.S and the British Empire, and then promptly left sanctioned, unrecognized, and wrecked by the war…

Anyways, if you remember, in the book Fraud, Famine, and Fascism by Douglas Tottle, this media magnate before Rupert Murdoch, William Hearst, did spread the photos and tried to ring the bell to show that there’s genocide in that region, along with anti-Soviet Ukrainian nationalists

In more recent years, the Holodomor has been recognized by more than a dozen countries as a genocide.

Most of those are double-genocide supporters who’d beg at a 2nd opportunity to use fascist nationalists against their geopolitical opponents, for freedumbs…

It’s like what Michael Parenti said, even by their logic, how could there be any freedom in Eastern Europe pre-WWII, when most of their gov’ts are reactionary monarchies or dictatorships like the Sanatation Regime of Poland

Outside of controlling the media narrative Stalin destroyed archives and made sure death certificates didn’t use the word “starvation” as a cause of death. And then there was the case of the 1937 census whose findings showed a drop in the population of Ukraine. So, Stalin decided that he couldn’t allow this to be made public. The people who compiled the census most of them were arrested and some were even executed and the census never became public.

Clear, and direct citations sorely needed. On the other hand, could anyone refer to and debunk what they’re claiming here more thoroughly?

In fact Raphael Lemkin, the researcher who coined the term genocide applied it to Ukraine on the basis of four reasons:

The extermination of intellectuals.

The destruction of churches and priests

The starvation of farmers.

And the fragmentation of Ukrainian people through resettlement.

I’m pretty sure some of the specific victims you talk about here weren’t simple liberal opposition or mere peasants, as some of them have sabatoged, if not killed Soviet officials

Anyways, checking the U.N’s definition on genocide: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Elements of the crime

A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and

The last one is the my main reason of my argument why I don’t believe the famines of 1933-34 were specifically a Holodomor…

And that’s all folks… damn, I just wanted to get it out of my chest this night