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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.
Frankly I find these claims increasingly baffling. The "Soviets had actually perpetrated other acts of genocide on purpose"? Other acts of genocide? Where? When? Their "ideology explicitly allowed and endorsed mass murder for political purposes". Fair enough, there were cases where this applied. But against entire ethnic groups? Which is what genocide is? Also, the elimination of nationalism necessarily entails genocide now?
How ignorant are you in Soviet history? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Chechens_and_Ingush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Meskhetian_Turks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Kalmyks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation and others.
Dude, Gulag. Purges. I mean, they didn't exactly hide it.
Not necessarily, but the way Stalin did it - it frequently did. I mean, I understand that if you're completely ignorant of history, you find historical claims "baffling". But maybe you should fill up on that before arguing about it?
I’m still baffled. Deportation – to be more precise, the involuntary resettlement of a people – does not equal genocide. The Gulag system was set up not with the aim of mass murder but for the purpose of extracting important natural resources through forced labor. The majority of the victims of political purges were imprisoned or deported, not killed. I have to assume that you’re also aware of all this.
The way Stalin did it, it does. The aim was specifically to destroy the group of people and their way of life. If it didn't include murdering every single one of them personally (though of course nobody was concerned at all if any of them died) - it certainly did intend to destroy them as people.
It included mass murder as one of the intended effects. I mean, if after decades of starvation, hard work and inhuman suffering you manage to survive, fine, but if you don't, it's as good. Especially if they could get some work out of you before you croak. Of course, soviets also did outright mass murder too if they thought a specific group is too dangerous, but they were practical enough to consider working someone to death as better way of execution.
Nope, Gulag was a punishment mechanism. The fact that it also produced some resources was secondary - like, if we need repress millions of people, we better make some use of them. Of course, it also had a theoretical basis - since the bourgeois are evil and the workers are good, it is clear that more you work, the better you become. So if you engage in wrongthink, it is clear that's because not enough work. Also, if you are stuck cutting trees in Siberia, you surely won't be able to spread your wrongthink to others. The fact that the trees themsevles are also useful is good, but there are many other ways to cut trees, this one in particular had been chosen because they needed Gulag as part of the terror machine, to control the society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Scholars estimate the death toll of the Great Purge at 700,000 to 1.2 million.
That's only one episode of many. Really, where did you study history? Even Wokepedia is not trying to whitewash Stalin. Where do they teach that Soviet mass terror didn't happen?
As I was reading your argument I wasn't sure what it's reminding me of. Then it occurred to me: the Montana Meth Project memes.
This is not genocide. But under Stalin, it is.
This is not a tool of intended mass murder. But under Stalin, it is.
And so on. I mean...really?!
Your argument here seems to be "what you are saying is reminding me of a meme". I am not seeing it as a refutation of anything, sorry. By necessity, wide terms like "deportation" can encompass a myriad of scenarios, from enforcing immigration law to genocide. It is impossible and not meaningful to say "every deportation is genocide" or "none of the deportations are ever genocide". The case needs to be considered on specifics - who had been deported? Why? What was the goal of it? How the process were conducted? What was the result? If you consider all these, you will be able to see, that in case of Stalin's enthic cleansing deportations, the goal was mass removal of certain ethnicities from their traditional territories, in order to destroy their way of life and national identity and transform them into "soviet people of enthnic background", and the process had been conducted with maximal cruelty and resulted in massive casualties. An action like that, undertaken now by any Western power (the other powers of course get a pass because you can't blame the oppressed people for anything anytime) would be undoubtedly called a genocide.
I’m of the view that words have meaning and are, when possible, to be used accurately. Deportations are deportations, and genocides are genocides. There are multiple cases in history of groups of people getting transported before getting genocided, but that do not count as cases of deportation, because a deportation is a different act of the state with a different purpose. It’s also unfortunately true that ‘deportation’ is often the word used in the West for forced national resettlements under Stalin even though the Western definition of it is something entirely different (but also something unrelated to genocide).
They did the same thing to Russians as well, didn't they? The destruction of village communities and religious traditions, forced resettlement for the purpose of industrialization, collectivization, erasure of national heritage and the old culture - it was all done. (With the exceptions of funny Russian dresses, funny Russian music and traditional Russian dishes, of course.) We can't say that the Russians were doing this to the Ukrainians as a whole and other nationalities.
True, and some deportations are ways to execute genocide. Some are not. That's what I was trying to explain. You seem to focus on "well, akshually, you should use a different word" instead of focusing on the substance. The substance is that under Stalin, there were multiple cases there whole ethnic groups were rounded up and moved to remote areas, leading to the death of some of them and destruction of their traditional way of life for all of them, in the service of soviet national policy. Which specific words you use to describe it may be an entertaining academic exercise, but it doesn't change the substantial point. Which is - the soviet modus operandi included using mass casualty actions on entire ethnic groups to further their political goals.
That is a good point, that there is a way of defining Russian national identity which does not make the actions of soviets "Russian", and in fact, the Russian national identity, when defined in that way, suffered as much - maybe even more - than other national identities under soviet rule. For example, the White movement (not the skin-color Whites, but the Whites who were opposed to Blosheviks about 100 years ago, those Whites) would have a good claim on that identity, and some people are still keeping it. However, one must also realize this way of viewing Russian national identity is not only a minority view, but a tiny minority view, endorsed by no official institution and only by a tiny part of Russian population. For the official Russia, and for vast majority of it population, Russian Empire, USSR, and current RSFSR are largely the same, whether it concerns the culture, the official succession or the political goals. Average Russian is an imperial Russian, and he sees USSR national policy as a natural continuation of Russian Empire's national policy, and current Russia's policies as the natural continuation of those both. If for an average Lithuanian the soviet era was an era of occupation by foreign power, for average Russian - for almost every Russian, excluding a tiny minority I described above - the soviet era had been what "we" were doing, not what had been done "to us". It doesn't mean they would endorse everything that happened - surely, mistakes were made here and there - but it is still part of historical succession that most of Russians feel. For them, "the Soviets" doing something and "the Russians" doing something is virtually one and the same. The Westerners, in their common speech, follow the same pattern, USSR essentially had always been "the Russkies" - which could be attributed to ignorance, except that virtually nobody in Russia would object it either. For them, as for the Westerners, the Soviets are the Russkies. They assumed that identity and are completely comfortable with it - so there's no reason to deny them something that they believe to be true. Of course, as a logical consequence of it, that identity also includes shared responsibility for all the actions committed by the Soviets. You can't be proud of "our space program" without being also accountable for "our purges". Most normies, of course, are much more willing to talk about the former than the latter, but it comes as a package.
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