History is not some intellectual pursuit we analyze. It's a cudgel we use to reinforce the interests of the west

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/25/germany-set-to-declare-starvation-of-ukrainians-under-stalin-a-genocide-holomodor

  • Kieselguhr [none/use name]
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    edit-2
    2 years ago

    Even Stephen Kotkin (the lib), who is a highly esteemed academic historian (professor at Princeton), said it wasn't genocide in his Stalin biography. The only revisionism that's happening here is mainstream journos pretending that there is a consensus about calling it a genocide among academic historians.

    All of these actions were woefully insufficient for avoiding the mass starvation in the countryside caused by his policies, in the face of challenging natural conditions. Still, these actions do not indicate that he was trying to exterminate peasants or ethnic Ukrainians.

    Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 by Stephen Kotkin published in October 2017 by Penguin Random House

    Here's Mark Tauger's takedown of Applebaum's Holodomor book:

    Some might ask whether Applebaum’s writing is more accessible to “non-specialist” readers. There are many excellent writers among Slavic specialists, and a more accurate account could easily have been presented in clear and simple language. Applebaum’s writing does not “simplify” the truth, it obscures it, as discussed in this review. Red Famine thus does not fit well in the existing scholarly literature, even as “popular history.” Its interpretation resembles that of Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow, and it does use recent published sources that provide vivid descriptions of many people’s experiences in the famine. But it leaves out too much important information, has false claims on key points, and draws unjustified conclusions on important issues based on incomplete use of sources, making it not even close to the level of genuine scholarship, like Davies and Wheatcroft’s Years of Hunger. Red Famine is better characterized by a passage from Peter Kenez’s book on The Birth of the Propaganda State: “propaganda often means telling less than the truth, misleading people … manipulating and distorting information, lying” and addresses “audiences in simple language…”