Thursday open thread: The Holodomor
Many of Vladimir Putin's apologists take his assertion that Ukraine is inseparable from Russia at face value. In that mythology, Ukraine is the "Little Russia" which has always been part of the Motherland, and should never have been allowed to leave it.
Obviously, as we've seen, Ukrainians have a far different opinion. Ukrainians are fighting against the Russian occupiers with a fervor which defies the logic that it's just a part of Russia.
During World War II, Ukrainian nationalists did make a pact with the devil in allying with the Nazis to throw off the Stalinist yoke. Of course, they were betrayed, because at the end of the day they were Slavic sub-humans to Hitler, just like the Russians and Poles; good for slave labor, and not much else.
But why did Ukraine side with Hitler against Stalin? The Holodomor.
When the Vladimir Lenin assumed power after the October Revolution, one of the first things which the new government did was enact land reform. Peasants were given the land on which they worked, expropriating the old landed class, which was either dead or in exile. This was one of the major promises of the revolution.
When Josef Stalin assumed power, he had a far different view of how economic life should be conducted in the USSR. Private property was anathema. Therefore, beginning in 1929, collectivization of Soviet farms began. Peasants lost their holdings, becoming nothing but workers on farms overseen by Soviet bureaucrats. The infamous "kulaks"—relatively well-off peasant landowners—were either sent to gulags or killed outright.
This forced collectivization was a disaster. Crop yields cratered, leading to famine. This famine is what Ukrainians call "the terror famine", or, Holodomor. Over three million Ukrainians died in the famine. Stalin's propaganda denied there was a famine; to prevent the spread of news, the government instituted restrictions on travel. Ukrainians were trapped, unable to leave their homes, left to starve. Eventually, crop yields increased. Of course, there were also far fewer mouths to feed.
The trauma of the famine lives to this day. Ukrainians call the Holodomor a genocide, while Russian apologists continue to take Stalin's line. This is just one of the bones of contention which make Ukrainians resist Russian attacks with such ferocity. They've been on the receiving end of them for hundreds of years, and have drawn the line in the sand.
Ukrainians are not being irrational in their opposition to Russia. Look at what's been happening the past couple of days: faced with a Ukrainian military which is fighting his decrepit army to a standstill, Putin has instead turned to terror attacks against the civilian population. Tank brigades are no longer his target, but maternity hospitals.
The past is not dead; it's not even past. That's something Putin apologists may want to consider.
This is your open thread.