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Except that whatever things Blue Tribe did, they still did not graduate - at least in the US - to actually engineering a nationwide famine that cost millions of lives, with the explicit purpose of subjugating Red Tribe. Shit like that tends to be remembered.
To interpret the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 as a) artificially engineered (i.e. done on purpose) b) by 'the' Russians against 'the' Ukrainians c) with genocidal intent, as if this was self-evidently the one and true possible interpretation is a clear case of consensus-building. I'm pretty sure you yourself are aware as well that all three arguments are questionable at best.
Unless, you know, it actually was a) artificially engineered and b) by 'the' Russians against 'the' Ukrainians (more precisely, of course, by Soviets - which weren't all ethnically Russian, of course) and c) with genocidal intent. Given as Soviets had actually perpetrated other acts of genocide on purpose, for political aims, and their ideology explicitly allowed and endorsed mass murder for political purposes, and their official position had been that any "nationalism" has to be completely eliminated (which they consistently did in all "national republics" - every single nationalist movement had been brutally repressed) - it looks like duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, so it's not a big stretch to argue it is a duck.
You can question it all you like, but as I noted above, there is very good evidence pointing to it. I am not saying questioning this evidence makes you literally Hitler, I am saying if you have equally strong opposite evidence, you are welcome to propose it. Or you are welcome to just say "I just don't believe it, whatever is the evidence", that's always an option. I know one thing - dismissing all that by just saying "oh, it's consensus-building, therefore you are wrong" is not an argument.
The section on
Discrimination and persecution of Ukrainiansin the wikipedia link certainly doesn't provide strong evidence; it shows strongly contested disagreement. If you're referring to your first paragraph, that seems to boil down to 'the Soviets were open to genocide and didn't like countries with strong national identities, so obviously the famine in Ukraine was a deliberate genocide' which seems pretty circumstantial.If it were the only evidence, sure. But there's plenty of other evidence to the deliberate character of food confiscation, and to extreme hostility with which Soviets viewed the kulak class. Of course, to properly consider all that evidence, one would need to write a series of books - and there are many books on the subject, of course. I have neither ability nor desire to TLDR them all here, I am just saying this is a well-supported position, and dismissing it with a formula like "oh, that's consensus-building, therefore all that pile of evidence worth nothing" is not proper discussion of the subject.
I checked Wokepedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor and it says "Olga Andriewsky writes that scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made.[46] The term "man-made" is, however, questioned by historians such as R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, according to whom those who use this term "underestimate the role of ... natural causes",[47] though they agree that the Holodomor was largely a result of Stalin's economic policies.". Now, I have very low opinion about the veracity of any Wokepedia claim on any politically charged subject, and again, seriously evaluating such claims would take much more than I am willing to give, but in short, virtually everybody agrees Stalin did it. Now, imagine - Stalin comes out and says "we will destroy kulaks, if necessary - we will kill them all". Stalin then does things. Kulaks are destroyed, many of them dead. Many other people are dead to. We can establish the causal link between Stalin's actions and the deaths. Now, you tell me that we should seriously consider maybe it all happened on accident? That somehow he only wanted to build communism, and accidentally took all food from them and accidentally they died because they had no food? I don't know, to me it doesn't pass the smell test.
If you’re saying the soviets were mass-murderers with a yen for collective guilt, I agree with you. Likewise I agree that the famines were broadly Stalin’s fault.
But how does the Soviet desire to kill wealthy landowning peasants, or the role of Soviet economics in the famine more generally, support the specific claim that the Soviets deliberately engineered famine specifically in Ukraine in a genocidal attempt to wipe out the Ukrainian national identity?
You say that loads of evidence for that specific claim exists but in the nicest possible way you haven’t actually provided any of it. My (very half-assed) investigation (the specific Section about Ukraine that I mentioned) seemed to indicate that it’s a controversial claim that’s being actively debated by academics.
EDIT: the links from your other post re: deportations are to some extent the kind of thing that I was looking for. At the very least the Soviet Union regularly conducted mass operations to dissolve certain nationalities and ethnicities within the broader USSR, often resulting in mass casualties. I’m not sure that the famine in Ukraine was part of that - the deportations have a much more specific and direct character - and I would generally incline to the view that the famine resulted from a combination of the Soviet hatred of successful farmers + total disdain for learning how farming actually works + total lack of concern about whether the Ukrainians (or anyone else) lived or died. But I’m much more open to the possibility.
They did not engineer famine only in Ukraine. The famine had been widespread. But in Ukraine, both the food production and the opposition to soviet takeover had been based on wealthy landowning peasants. So destroying them as a power was a necessity, which inevitably led to more severe and comprehensive famine than in other parts. The soviets were not intending to let the kulak class survive, and if it meant millions of Ukrainians would not survive either, so be it. Wiping out national identity had been the official policy everywhere - everywhere any sense of national identity beyond funny ethnic dresses and composing odes to Stalin in national language had been brutally repressed. Not everywhere it had been done by the means of famine - it's just the conditions in Ukraine specifically made it a convenient way to go: soviets needed food, soviets needed to destroy the kulaks, soviets needed to get rid of any nationalism-inclined groups - in Ukraine, destroying the wealthy landowning peasants achieved all of those. I do not claim if there were a way to achieve the same without the famine and the way to achieve that with famine the soviets would insist "no, we want the famine, it's famine or no go" - maybe if they found the other way, they'd use that. I am just saying that was the way they actually used.
Everything is a controversial claim debated by academics. That's what they do their whole life, they debate. If you want evidence, just read that debate and you'd get plenty. I am paid for doing other things, so redoing the work of the academics to reproduce it here would be a prohibitive cost for me with zero gain. I mean, just following the links in Wokepedia in the Holodomor article would get you plenty of evidence.
Partially. In the case of Ukraine, deportations did happen, but it was not feasible, as it was with, say, Crimean Tatars, to just round up most of the Ukrainians and send them to Siberia. Ukraine is too big and there are too many of them. However, you could subjugate them by ruining their economic basis - the same wealthy landowning peasants. Then their alternative would be submit to the soviets or die horribly. After millions died horribly, the rest submitted.
Plus the exotic food and drinks. You forgot about that part. But yeah, it's perverse! Surely we'll never see democratic, enlightened Western nations display such a callous attitude towards cultural minorities. That'd be a scandal!
Not sure what you mean here, maybe speaking your point plainly would help.
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