Russia: Famine not genocide

Russia: Famine that killed millions not genocide

Russia issued a DVD and a thick book of historical documents on Wednesday to dispute claims that the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s amounted to genocide.

Russian archivists and historians pressed the Kremlin's case that the Stalin-era famine — which killed millions of people — was a common tragedy across Soviet farmlands, countering efforts by Ukraine's pro-Western president to convince the world that Ukrainians were targeted for starvation.

"Not a single document exists that even indirectly shows that the strategy and tactics chosen for Ukraine differed from those applied to other regions, not to mention tactics or strategy with the aim of genocide," said Vladimir Kozlov, head of Russia's Federal Archive Agency.

He said the famine was a direct result of Josef Stalin's brutal collectivization campaign and the widespread confiscation of grain that was exported to secure equipment needed for the Soviet dictator's frenetic industrialization drive.

 

This was not genocide, the world has not recognized it as such for this reason.

 

Well, it took 110 years to condemn the Turkish killing a million Armenians to call it a genocide. In a way Stalin who killed millions of Russians in working camps might be an accident. Just read how many died doing the Stalin water channel. It just happened. "Sorry".

 

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin goes into all of that .....but the book has its bias .....Stalin wanted to change the way farming/etc was accomplished ....a lot of the farmers ''rebelled''' in various ways ....I read it about 2 years ago, but I think it said stuff like Stalin/etc cracked down on those who did not ''obey'' the Party's regulations.....so, it's more complicated than saying they directly committed genocide....some of the farmers ''sabotaged'' the farms/farming/etc..sold off their livestock/etc......some were murdered/etc ....
...however--IMO, it does not fit the definition of genocide..

 

Thanx for the answer. Anyway, if millions die of famine in One country alone does that not sound fishy to you?

 

Some old threads: unfortunately the net sites do not work anymore...

Diary that helped expose Stalin's famine displayed - Yahoo! News

The diaries of a British reporter who risked his reputation to expose the horrors of Stalin's murderous famine in Ukraine were put on public display for the first time Friday.

Welsh journalist Gareth Jones sneaked into Ukraine in March of 1933, at the height of a famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Millions of people starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock as part of a campaign to force peasants into collective farms.

Jones' reporting was one of the first attempts to bring the disaster to the world's attention.

"Famine Grips Russia — Millions Dying" read the front page of the New York Evening Post on March 29, 1933. "Famine on a colossal scale, impending death of millions from hunger, murderous terror ... this is the summary of Mr. Jones's firsthand observations," the paper said.

 

Holodomor | Facts, Definition, & Death Toll

Holodomor, man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. It was part of a broader Soviet famine (1931–34) that also caused mass starvation in the grain-growing regions of Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan. The Ukrainian famine, however, was made deadlier by a series of political decrees and decisions that were aimed mostly or only at Ukraine. In acknowledgement of its scale, the famine of 1932–33 is often called the Holodomor, a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor).

By early 2019, 16 countries as well as the Vatican had recognized the Holodomor as a genocide, and both houses of the United States Congress had passed resolutions declaring that “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933.”

 

85 Years Later, Ukraine Marks Famine That Killed Millions (Published 2018)

Ukrainian historians argue that the famine was a genocide orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, then head of the Soviet Union, to crush Ukrainian aspirations for independence. While the famine of 1932 and 1933 brought on by the forced collectivization of farms undeniably affected other parts of the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, entire villages were cut off and their inhabitants left to starve.

“The specific policies implemented in Ukraine were known to be lethal,” Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian and the author of a book about the period, “Bloodlands,” said in an interview. “Soviet documents make it clear that Ukrainians were to be blamed for the disaster of collectivization and that death was to be deliberately concentrated in Ukraine.”

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Oct 5, 2018

U.S. Senate Says Stalin 'Committed Genocide' In Famine-Hit Ukraine

The U.S. Senate has adopted a resolution recognizing that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin committed genocide against the Ukrainian people in the early 1930s, when millions died in a horrific famine known as the Holodomor.

The U.S. government has not recognized the Ukrainian famine as a "genocide," instead labeling it as a "criminal act of the Stalinist regime" against the people of Ukraine.
The White House, under pressure from Turkey, has stopped short of using the word "genocide" to describe the Ottoman-era massacre.

 

While Ukrainians were dying, the Soviet state extracted 4,270,000 tons of grain from Ukraine in 1932, enough to feed at least 12 million people for an entire year. Soviet records show that in January of 1933, there were enough grain reserves in the USSR to feed well over 10 million people. The government could have organized famine relief and could have accepted help from outside of the USSR. Moscow rejected foreign aid and denounced those who offered it, instead exporting Ukraine's grain and other foodstuffs abroad for cash.

Most historians, who have studied this period in Ukrainian history, have concluded that the Famine was deliberate and linked to a broader Soviet policy to subjugate the Ukrainian people. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of Soviet government archives (including archives of the security services), researchers have been able to demonstrate that Soviet authorities undertook measures specifically in Ukraine with the knowledge that the result would be the deaths of millions of Ukrainians by starvation.

Holodomor

 

......from my understanding, and from the book, the Russians were not comparable at all in farming/farm equipment/etc as the US was.....so, if the food system breaks down, you will have a lot of starvation ....plus Russia didn't have the modern infrastructure/communication/etc like you do today, that would help alleviate any break down in the food system
...you say millions, but Russia did have a larger population than a lot of countries, so millions to Russia might not be ''much''' as it would be in a less populated country
...looks like millions dying of famine was not uncommon
China--15 to 55 million dead--1959-1961:
List of famines in China - Wikipedia
Famine in India - Wikipedia

 

..especially with no modern roads/etc or things like refrigerated trucks/etc, it's easy to see how many could die from not getting enough food, back then

 

Check please the figures in my last posting on the Reserves.

 

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....this is like I said, they [ the farmers ] ''sabotaged'' their output
..it says had grain to feed 10 million--what was the population of the Ukraine? says here over 30 million..how many died?
Demographics of Ukraine - Wikipedia
...yes, that's all in the book I mentioned....

...this was 1930s Russia.....a lot of poor people....no supermarkets on every street ...etc .....so, with Stalin instituting the collectivization, there is going to be upheaval/problems/etc

...also it says famine = shortage? but then it says not a shortage--the grain was not given out to the Ukrainians --which is it?

....well, that area went through a long period of HELL--first, this Stalin crap, then the Germans, then the Russians reconquered it---''famine/war/etc--a lot of it = hell on earth

 

IMO, I still don't think it ranks as a genocide

 

It seems to me to come down to a mixture of Intent, Results and Perception.

Intent. Did Stalin intend to stare large numbers of people, probably not. Dead people can't farm or be productive, yet Stalin was determined to bring the Ukraine into line and raise capitol to modernize/industrialize, results be damned.

Results. Collectivization did result in large numbers of deaths and upended the long accepted rules that governed life in the Ukraine. Communistic promised land and bread to the ordinary Russian, expecting it to come from the large holdings of the aristocracy, not from the middle class.

Perception. To the people of Ukraine, watching everything they built, way of life and people around them go hungry and die because of a edict from a autocrat hundreds of miles away could only be seen as a direct assault on them.

 

Stalin did intend to liquidate the Kulaks, and if others perished as a result, so be it - collateral damage.

They had already done that, and it did not work out as expected. The Kulaks were the middle class farmers, who had a bit more than their neighbors(about 4-8 acres more), so they became the new State enemy.

 

If your people suffered the most, you probably would.

 

You might want to read the book again.

"Sabotage" is not what the book says the farmers did, but what Stalin & his cronies/enforcers laid part of the blame on. Further, the book gives no examples of actual "sabotage", but several examples of Stalin & his cronies/enforcers blaming shortfalls on "sabotage".

The livestock were killed(most likely for food) or taken by the State. Stalin & his cronies/enforcers also blamed them for killing off the cats, dogs, and birds...well, when you are starving anything that can be caught, can be eaten.

 

no, I do not need to read it again

 

ok...............???? hahahhahahah whatever that means
..it's undeniably very questionable if it is genocide per the definition ....and belasar post explains it