(Forgive me if this isn't the right community for this.)
So, yeah, my gf and I are presently having strained conversations with each other because we have differences of opinion over the Holodomor. I'm not denying the Ukrainian famine happened nor the number of deaths involved. We can set aside the historiography and the Kulak memes, but at the end of the day, I'm a monster because I'm somehow denying justice to the survivors because they call their experience a genocide and I'm more hesitant to do so. It's less about "who's right" or "what really happened" but more about the larger implications that come from genocide denial: she says if survivors say they experienced a genocide, it's important to acknowledge that. She's very uncomfortable that my sympathy to their suffering isn't enough. I'm somehow suggesting the survivors are bad faith actors or dupes (I don't think that's what I'm doing), and because the waters are so muddy on this issue (her words), I ought to consider the other side of the debate instead of reading the preface to Davies and Wheatcroft's The Years of Hunger (which she doesn't want to read).
I feel like even if I were to say "I admit there's a possibility the Holodomor was a genocide," I'd still find myself in the doghouse. This is an impasse we're going to have to navigate before our relationship can return to normal. While we're not big on labels, I'd say I lean more toward ML and she's more anarchist. Maybe that's part of our disagreement? No idea. I'm completely vexed and don't know how to move forward.
I can't imagine anyone's been in this exact position before, but maybe something similar? I wish I could compartmentalize it and move on, but I don't think she can. Any advice, comrades? How can I do justice to the famine survivors while not calling said famine a genocide?
Honestly, this the obvious coward's way out, but let's be real here for a minute: do any of us really need to waste time taking a bullet for Stalin's honor seventy years after he died, thirty years after the country he once led literally ceased to exist? Does that help build socialism? Does that help socialist movements in the global south? Does that bolster the domestic antiwar movement?
Take the L on this one, and see if you can't balance it out with a bit of IRL organizing instead.
I suspect I'll take the L on this one, which is fine if it means brokering peace. You're right, I'm not looking take a bullet for Stalin's honor. I'm just not thrilled by the idea that if a survivor says X, that gets accepted without question. She and I joke about Gusanos all the time but this hits different for her because the survivors invoke the term genocide.
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Relationships tend to require at least a little give and take, sometimes you need to let things go in situations like this or you'd just be fighting forever over unimportant shit that you slightly disagree on despite agreeing on the majority of stuff, just like leftist orgs.
The thing with gusanos is that the "horror" they describe is losing their property (as in they only had one place to live and/or workers gained control of businesses they worked at).
Sorry I'm not really familiar with the Holodomer. Was it the consensus among the majority of survivors that it was a genocide?
Also from your post:
This seems like a pretty reasonable line to draw, is not "suggesting the survivors are bad faith actors or dupes", and I think demonstrates that you're willing to "consider the other side of the debate". Why not just try it?
...yes? Absolutely yes. Whatever one's thoughts on Stalin's personal bigotries or excesses, his government led the USSR from the brink of collapse to a world superpower and saved Eurasia from a fascist takeover in the meantime. At its height, it was perhaps the most socially progressive society of the 20th century and led the way in the ongoing fight for the working class' liberation. We likely wouldn't have gotten the New Deal if it wasn't for Stalin.
Emphasizing this has to be a high rhetorical priority for any socialist in the imperial core. It has to be, because so much of our political culture is built around delegitimizing communism by pointing to SpOOkY sCArY StALiN and his gulags. We must push back against it if we ever want "The Left" in the imperial core to move past tepid socdem reformism.
I wonder if the american's left failure to do any that has any connection to do with the rabid anti-communism and rejection of any level headed and nuanced analysis of successfull revolutionary communist strategies and projects behind the vail of anti-communism . And if combating that IS a major step towards doing these stuff and requires arguing and debunking the historical narratives and lies against communism and communist projects .
On one hand, all of us should be persuading the people we know to move farther left. People generally give a shit about what their friends/families/SOs think, and that's the perfect situation for nudging people in the right direction one step at a time. And if we can't convince the people we know best to move farther left, who can we convince? Discussions about the USSR and other AES states are inevitable with this approach if only because they're the focus of so much anticommunist propaganda.
On the other hand, we should always bring the focus back to stuff that matters to people here and now, and we have to find ways of nudging people in the right direction without becoming That Guy Who Always Insists On Contentious Political Debates.
:stalin-shining: