I just discovered that Radical Reviewer believes the western account of the 1932 Ukranian famine, and I could not be more disappointed.

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

        she is listed as a Jewish-Lithuanian most places I read about her. She was taught within Prussian education system to hate Russia and admits in her anti-USSR screed that "My Russian at this time was halting"

        and I was more speaking about the Ukrainian Arshinov's hint of Russophobia in his writings, recall that I said I detected a HINT. Also Emma Goldman similarly takes quite a dismissive attitude toward Bolsheviks despite her also admitting they fed orphaned children & did much in the way toward righting the wrongs of the Tsarist period.

        Goldman literally admits to growing up hating Russia and Russian culture "Under the discipline of a Germanschool in Königsberg and the Prussian attitude toward everything Russian, I had grown up in the atmosphere of hatred to that country. I dreaded especially the terrible Nihilists who had killed Tsar Alexander II, so good and kind, as I had been taught. St. Petersburg was to me an evil thing"

        Though she admits to growing spiritually in later years, and through all her talks & history as an activist appears to take stands for these nations from a Western vantage, Emma just can't seem to hide her elitism & underhanded dismissal of USSR & Russian attempts to socially & economically & politically address its own issues

        "I began to suspect that the reason for much of the evil was also within Russia, not only outside of it.But then, I argued, police officials and detectives graft everywhere. That is the common disease ofthe breed. In Russia, where scarcity of food and three years of starvation must needs turn mostpeople into grafters, theft is inevitable."

        "After showing us about, Zorin invited us to the Smolny dining room. The meal consisted of goodsoup, meat and potatoes, bread and tea--rather a good meal in starving Russia, I thought. "

        I suspect she never really outgrew some of her kneejerk Russophobia from her childhood

        what's important today is how these historiographies are used to demonize USSR/communism generally and Russia specifically.

        Makhno is often lifted up by Ukrainian nationalist historians and his name invoked in their desperate attempts to demonize Soviet history.