I know this seems like an obvious attempt to start a struggle session, but I promise I’m asking in a good faith attempt to learn:) y’all are way smarter and better read than any group I’ve ever been a part of before tbh
I’m listening to the rev left Stalin episode and they’re discussing the holodomor. Clearly a lot of what I thought I knew is capitalist propaganda. However, there also seems to be a possible motivation here to gloss over some of the bad elements of the USSR? I also feel slight alarm bells going off at some parts but idk why really, probably bc it brings up feelings associated w Holocaust denial, even though I know they’re v different issues.
I’m kinda new to the left so I don’t feel like I have the knowledge or the critical thinking skills to tackle this issue on my own.
It seems to boil down to: did the holodomor happen? If yes, was it intentional? If no, was it avoidable?
I’m sure this discussion has happened before so feel free to just link me to stuff haha. Insight appreciated!
This doesn't answer the question, but imo, whether or not the Holodomor happened and how is not a relevant question to ask (except out of curiosity), and that's true no matter what your position is on it.
What are the actual ideological consequences? Everyone agrees that, had it been a state-organized genocide, that would be extremely bad and morally wrong. If there were a significant amount of people going around saying "the Holodomor happened and was a purposeful genocide and I think that was a good thing" then it would be highly relevant because those people would be fucking nuts and would need to be addressed in some way.
So if it's just the facts at issue, then you could use it as an argument for or against the USSR's governmental structure; it would be a reason to oppose that kind of organization, the logic being a government that allows that sort of thing is a bad idea. In that case, though, basically everyone agrees that the state could have orchestrated such a genocide if it for some reason wanted to; this isn't unique to the Soviet Union, plenty of states with all sorts of different organizational structures have committed terrible atrocities. So if someone is trying to make the (bad) argument "Soviet-style government enabled the Holodomor and is therefore bad," whether or not it actually happened and was a genocide is paradoxically not relevant here either.
Ultimately the reason people care so much about it is to either make the point "USSR good" or "USSR bad" which I see as pointless and more of an aesthetic thing than something with actual consequences in the real world. As a leftist I'm not really invested in whether people have an overall positive impression of the USSR, I'm invested in determining which of their practices were good and which were bad and learning lessons that can actually be applied in the future instead of LARPing that it's 90 years ago.
It's true that people use it to propagandize against socialism, but even then, it seems better to point out that socialism isn't inherently tied to the actions of socialist states, or states that claimed to be socialist, than to get into arguments over what those actions were.