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The Billionaires have spent a fortune making sure you hate Socialism. (lemmy.today)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/workreform@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (85 children)

Nah, I gave clear explanations, which you just handwaived. My order of operations starts with facts, and then this forms who I consider to be my geopolitical opponents. You gave no explanations for anything, just spouted terms as though the terms themselves stand alone.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (83 children)

    I already explained that the 1930s famine was caused by weather disaster combined with underdeveloped, feudal agriculture that managed to complete collectivization by the mid-1930s, which is why famine never happened again outside of wartime. I already explained that the ammunition used in Katyn was German manufactured, and the execution method common among the Nazis and unheard of among the Soviets. I'm aware that the Red Army intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as was their legal right to stop fascist counterrevolution. None of this has anything to do with allegations of genocide or settler-colonialism.

    It isn't that I need handholding, it's that you offer absolutely nothing but a hope that simply throwing buzzwords at someone that has done the due diligence of researching these topics as part of becoming a communist will mean anything to me. You need to actually present evidence, construct an argument, not entirely ignore factual information that goes against your fragile narrative. It's disappointing at minimum because the conversation can never go anywhere if you operate purely on reflex.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (81 children)

    1. Did the Soviet Union secretly have industrialized agriculture, complete with combine-harvestors used at a mass-scale, before 1930?

    2. The shell casings found in Katyn proved definitively that the mass execution could not have been carried out before 1941, as the ammo had manufacturing dates. This squarely puts the Soviets out of reasonable responsibility, but to add onto that, the ammo itself was German, and the execution method common among Nazis (shooting from behind into a ditch was common among Nazis and unheard of from the Red Army, who used traditional firing squad style executions).

    3. In both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, CIA-backed forces sought to increase ties with the IMF, overthrow socialism, and restore capitalism. These were not unified movements supported by the masses, but insurrectionary movements with support among the far-right domestically and imperialist bourgeoisie internationally. MI-6 armed Hungarian counterrevolutionaries, who set Nazis free from prison to aid in their efforts, who then went on to lynch Jews and communists in Hungary as widely reported even by the New York Times.

    This is all factual account, and simply labeling them as "lies" does not get us an ounce closer to the truth, it only reinforces how fragile your narrative is when you cannot meaningfully contest factual information accepted even by liberal historians, who work from the same basic set of facts to provide a more anti-communist version of history. They cannot directly state the absurd, like the idea that the USSR had developed agriculture in 1930, or that the shells found during an excavation of Katyn were manufactured in 1941.

    What is your goal, here? To legitimize your own views for an audience of nobody? To convince me of your views? Neither seems to be working for you.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (79 children)

    Did you forget where I linked liberal scholarly consensus? Here, let me restate my previous point. Even serious liberal scholars believe it to have been a combination of adverse weather conditions and mismanagement. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:

    [data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the 'revolution from above,' rather than of a 'successful' nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.

    Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:

    From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.

    Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.

    The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.

    Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN

    Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.

    There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].

    Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.

    Comrade Kosior!

    You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation in villages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?

    Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.

    Sincerely, J. Stalin

    Evidence doesn't point to deliberately killing some of the Soviet Union's most loyal citizens in the breadbasket of the entire USSR, when they desperately needed to advance agricultural production (and did).

    The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.

    "The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, "coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways."

    "But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing."

    "Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements' ...." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)

    "The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary."

    "A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:

    During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”

    Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."

    Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:

    Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about "democracy" or "freedom" is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.

    TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about "freedom" and "democracy," but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.

    Katyn gets pinned on the Soviets because Goebbels reported on it and it became a useful story, but the execution method was distinctly Nazi, ie killing men, women, and children from behind into mass graves. The ammunition was German-produced in 1941, and the rope used to bind the hands of the victims was German made. It was entirely characteristc of Nazi execution methods and with Nazi equipment.

    “Of 225 shells found in this grave, 205 are the German 1941 “Hasag” type, 17 are the German 1941 “Dürlach” type, 2 are of the unmarked 1930s Soviet type; and one is marked “B 1906.” Hence 98.67% of the shells are of 1941 German manufacture.”

    All of this is factually backed up, and acknowledged by western sources. Your insistence on rejecting facts in favor of feel-good fiction is how MAGA responds to uncomfortable truths. Again, what's the point?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (77 children)

    I do understand what consensus means. Mark Tauger, for example, is seen as the world's foremost expert on the 1930s famine among liberal scholars, and is far from a communist. The duma does not actually back up what you believe. You really have nothing to go off of, do you? This is just MAGA-tier fact denial, it's pure reflex.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (75 children)

    I cited multiple sources, and you seem to only be responding to one of my points when I responded to the entirety of yours. You also seem to have your talking points confused, because the Russian Duma does not say that the 1930s famine was a genocide:

    The Russian Federation officially says that the Holodomor is not a genocide.[99] The State Duma passed a resolution in 2008 stating that the Holodomor should not be considered genocide, stating in part: "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were millions of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country."[100] The Russian government condemned the Soviet regime's "disregard for the lives of people in the attainment of economic and political goals", along with "any attempts to revive totalitarian regimes that disregard the rights and lives of citizens in former Soviet states", while stating that "there is no historic evidence that the famine was organized on ethnic grounds."[101]

    Per Wikipedia. The right-wing post-soviet government declared it a problem of mismanagement to discredit socialism as socialism is still popular in Russia and would hurt their present capitalist class, but were insistent even then not to call it a genocide, because there's no evidence. Even Kotkin admits that it wasn't intentional nor engineered. You have no proof nor any idea what you're talking about, again, it's all reflex from you. It's just MAGA on your part. Again, what's the point? To convince me? Never going to happen with this level of "argument." To convince others? Nobody else is here agreeing with you.

    Since you seem to want direct sources, here's a link to 3 PDFs of Tauger's work, and you can check historians like Grover Furr's work on the 1930s famine as well. I simply went with Tauger because he is more accepted among liberal historians as the foremost expert, but if we reference explicitly communist historians there are far more.

    For example, Chinese scholars like Li Yan and Shen Lihua both affirm Tauger's point, that there was no deliberate famine, but instead that it was a combination of weather disaster, sabotage, and mismanagement. None of this points to genocide or settler-colonialism, in fact the Soviet government was overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine throughout its existence and treated it like the poster child of soviet socialism.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (73 children)

    You really don't have any clue what you're talking about, do you? You were the one that brought up the Duma, I referenced actual scholars, including firmly anti-communist scholars like Kotkin. Truth doesn't matter to you in the slightest, just using historic tragedy to bat for billionaires and a predatory system of capitalism. You aren't even trying to convince anyone, so why bother?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 child)

    To be clear, Wikipedia isn't my source, it's a link to essentially the western liberal bible affirming that my sources are legitimate scholars respected in their field. My sources are Mark Tauger, Grover Furr, Kotkin, Li Yan, and Shen Lihua. Still, let's copy and paste the 2 paragraphs, including the footnotes:

    [a]Researchers who state that the famine was unintentional and did not aim at genocide still agree that the famine was not caused by natural crop failure, and so use words like "man-made famine" and "organised famine" to emphasize this fact.[1][2][3] Most researchers agree that the famine was caused by social factors and government policies.[4]

    This states that, among western historians (who are the only ones Wikipedia references, curiously), there is no settled debate on whether it was intentional and thus genocide, or unintentional and due to mismanagement.

    Moving forward, here are the paragraphs in the Wikipedia article:

    The Holodomor, a 1932–1933 man-made famine,[a] killed 3.3–5 million ethnic Ukrainian people in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (as part of the Soviet Union),[5][6][7] included in a total of 5.5–8.7 million perished in the broader Soviet famine of 1930–1933.[8][9][10] At least 3.3 million ethnic Ukrainians died as a result of the famine in the USSR.[11] Scholars debate whether there was an intent to starve millions of Ukrainians to death or not.[12]

    While scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made,[a] the topic remains a significant issue in modern politics with historians disputing whether Soviet policies in the era constitute genocide. Specifically, scholarly debate of the question centres around whether or not the Holodomor was intentional and therefore constitutes a genocide under the Genocide Convention.[13] Broadly speaking, Russian historians are generally of the opinion that the Holodomor did not constitute a genocide. Among Ukrainian historians the general opinion is that it did constitute a genocide. Western historians hold varying views.[14] Most scholars who reject the argument that state policy in regard to the famine was genocidal do not absolve Joseph Stalin or the Soviet regime as a whole from guilt for the famine deaths and still view such policies as being ultimately criminal in nature.[15][16][17]

    So, in total, Wikipedia does not consider the opinion of non-western scholars to be relevant in any manner, and of the relevant scholars Tauger is referenced as an authority on the matter. Wikipedia is already highly flawed by explicitly rejecting non-western scholars, but even Wikipedia's flawed analysis does not line up with what you say, and in fact lines up with what I've said, which I will copy and paste yet again:

    Even serious liberal scholars believe it to have been a combination of adverse weather conditions and mismanagement. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:

    [data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the 'revolution from above,' rather than of a 'successful' nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.

    Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:

    From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.

    Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.

    The Political Bureau believes that shortage of seed grain in Ukraine is many times worse than what was described in comrade Kosior’s telegram; therefore, the Political Bureau recommends the Central Committee of the Communist party of Ukraine to take all measures within its reach to prevent the threat of failing to sow [field crops] in Ukraine.

    Signed: Secretary of the Central Committee – J. STALIN

    Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.

    There are also isolated cases of starvation, and even whole villages [starving]; however, this is only the result of bungling on the local level, deviations [from the party line], especially in regard of kolkhozes. All rumours about “famine” in Ukraine must be unconditionally rejected. The crucial help that was provided for Ukraine will give us the opportunity to eradicate all such outbreaks [of starvation].

    Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.

    Comrade Kosior!

    You must read attached summaries. Judging by this information, it looks like the Soviet authority has ceased to exist in some areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Can this be true? Is the situation in villages in Ukraine this bad? Where are the operatives of the OGPU [Joint Main Political Directorate], what are they doing?

    Could you verify this information and inform the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party about taken measures.

    Sincerely, J. Stalin

    Evidence doesn't point to deliberately killing some of the Soviet Union's most loyal citizens in the breadbasket of the entire USSR, when they desperately needed to advance agricultural production (and did).

    All in all, you have no idea what you're talking about and cannot keep your talking points straight.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Your talking points are clear, but they are wrong. As I already linked:

    Since you seem to want direct sources, here's a link to 3 PDFs of Tauger's work, and you can check historians like Grover Furr's work on the 1930s famine as well. I simply went with Tauger because he is more accepted among liberal historians as the foremost expert, but if we reference explicitly communist historians there are far more.

    For example, Chinese scholars like Li Yan and Shen Lihua both affirm Tauger's point, that there was no deliberate famine, but instead that it was a combination of weather disaster, sabotage, and mismanagement. None of this points to genocide or settler-colonialism, in fact the Soviet government was overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine throughout its existence and treated it like the poster child of soviet socialism.

    Tauger's work is referenced in the scholarly section of Wikipedia's entry on the question of the 1930s famine being genocide. I also linked other historians like Grover Furr, as well as non-western historians that are less likely to be well-known enough for Wikipedia.

    This is just for the 1930s soviet famine, I gave far more references for Katyn, for the counterrevolutions in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and more. You fixate on a single well-respected source and refuse to engage, again, this is no different from MAGA.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    You should in fact reread this thread. I referenced Chinese scholars, anticommunist western scholars like Kotkin, and more. The archival evidence of Stalin being unaware of the famine isn't Stalin making shit up after the fact, it's a documented instance of the Central Committee being kept in the dark by the Ukrainian Communists and needing to deal with the consequences.

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