Mr Books first installment about the Ukrainization of New Russia. Muh Holodomor.

Now that Mr Books old Laboratory has been destroyed and flooded with sunlight he now works in the morgue at Dr Livcis Institue doing book reviews. He appreciates re-stacks and should you see someone on the internet crying about the Holodomor or using it as a cudgel to shame Russians refer them to Mr Books work here.

Welcome to the first post of yet another exciting niche Substack blog! I assume that the first few of readers here at Dr Livcis Institute of East Slavic and Soviet Studies will be Stalkers who follow Rurik Skywalkers illustrious work at the Slavland Chronicles. Dr Livci collaborated with Rurik on a handful of book reviews for the Chronicles and the following post here was originally meant to be one those. Likely due to Livci and Mr Books appalling inability to edit their own writing and Rurik’s own extreme work load this essay sat in purgatory for many months. Mr Book has recently read the tome “The Battle for New Russia” by Alexander Shirokorad which thoroughly covers the Ukrainization of New Russia that took place during the Soviet Period. The Laboratory here in Dr Livcis Institute specializes in deconstructing and eviscerating for a Western English-speaking audience the libels hurled at Russians by all forms vermin whether NAFO, pseudo patriots and liberals from the former Eastern Bloc, ethnic coin clippers etc. Our first post covers a very different take on the Holodomor than Western dissident non liberals are accustomed to so I hope our first few readers find it engaging.

I wonder if essays like this are worth bothering with because I assume the English speaking audience for them is nonexistent and doing what seems like Soviet Apologetics is a very bad look for anyone trying to engage with Western rightwingers. In any case Mr Book went ahead did a review of 2 chapters from Alexander Shirokorads book Battle for New Russia. The purpose of these reviews is to cover how the Bolsheviks de-Russified Ukraine and unfortunately that requires covering the Holodomor which I will try to do here. Shirokorad is by education an engineer and comes from a family of engineers. He is also the author of lots of books and essays dealing with history, politics, and artillery related autism. I haven't read any of his work besides Battle for New Russia but the book left me with the impression that he is the type of Patriot who knows exactly what lines not to cross in order to stay at the outer fringes of respectability. He brings forth facts that official regime propagandist wouldn't like to be more widely discussed but when writing about Kerensky he stresses that he was a Mason (he really was) without stressing that he was also a neoconservative pornographer by ethnicity. You get the idea.

This first review is Alexanders take on the Holodomor with a few things I grabbed from Russian language internet that I found relevant to advancing a different take on that event than Western illiberal dissident types are accustomed to. The view Alexander and I are advancing is one you would hear from roughly 2/3rds of Russian Patriots and as we will see its very different than the standard Western Rightwing one. The standard Western Rightwing take is that either the Holodomor was committed by non Russians therefore Russians aren't guilty of it, or that Russians are guilty of it because today they don't disown the USSR hard enough and also the Russians worked with Jews to genocide Ukrainians specifically. None of these takes are close to reality for Patriotic Russians (or for me). The first point is true in that modern Russians aren't guilty of the Holodomor, but even this assumes that those events happened just like modern Ukrainians, liberal Russians, Kremlinites and well basically everyone except patriotic Russians and their fellow travelers like me say they did.

I read people like Paul Craig Roberts talking about how Kaganovich did the Holodomor and since he was Jewish that means Russians aren't guilty. Im genuinely glad Roberts has no animus towards Russians and I salute him for being one of the only big American commentators that has broken from the standard Zanon narrative in regard to Russia. But something Patriotic Russians know that Roberts doesn't is that Kaganovich couldn't have been in Ukraine to specifically wipe out the Ukrainian ethnos because he was there carrying out the Ukrainianization and de-Russification of Eastern and Central Ukraine. Modern Ukraine was born because of a process set in motion by Lenin and its first systematic implementer was Kaganovich. This is why Patriotic Russians, even those that loath the USSR roll their eyes at Ukrainians crying about the Soviet era. The Holodomor specifically is one of the cornerstones of Ukrainian identity nowadays and unfortunately Westerners who otherwise don't support Ukraine and are friendly to Russia validate this corner stone of the fake Ukrainian identity when they take it for granted that the sob story is generally true but it’s just not Russians fault specifically.

Shirokorad:

In 2003 the 70 year anniversary of the 1932-1933 famine was widely commemorated and with all the usual anti Soviet hysterics. That same year on the 22nd of October the US House of Representatives put forth a resolution which amongst other things read "that artificial famine was conceived and implemented as a premeditated act of terror and mass murder against the Ukrainian People" The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ukrainian representatives at the UN prepared а draft Resolution for the 58th session of the General Assembly of the UN to condemn the holdomor of 1932-1933 that took place in Ukraine. The General Assembly put forth a General Mutual Statement which read "In the Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victim to the cruel actions and politics of a totalitarian regime. The great hunger which took 7-10 million innocent lives in Ukraine constitutes a national tragedy of the Ukrainian People. We mark the 70 year anniversary of this Ukrainian tragedy, we honor the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs, and representatives of other Nations which died of famine in the Volga area, North Caucuses, Kazakhstan and other areas of the Soviet Union".

In that statement there isn't a word about any act of genocide but only a "national tragedy of the Ukrainian People". What’s the most striking is that Russia signed this document.

Those who belong to the earths apex perpetual victim ethnicity are of course loathe to say any other ethnicity has suffered a genocide historically. So even if the Holodomor had been an attempt to wipe out Ukrainians it would be tough to get that recognized by the UN. However, Shirokorad expressing surprise that Russia would sign this is tongue in cheek. Later he expresses dismay that the Holodomor mythology is kept alive and well by Russia’s liberal urbanite class who are also very often apex parasites by ethnicity btw. The RF, especially in its younger days such as back in 2003 was enthusiastically anti Soviet but this has come back to haunt modern Russia. The RF validating the hysterics of people that will always hate Russia and who identify modern Russia with the USSR is pure mental retardation and stupid politics. Smart politics would simply be for the RF to demand that modern Latvians apologize for the Latvian rifles that saved the Bolshevik revolution. The RF should demand modern Ukrainians apologize for Brezhnev, Khrushchev, and hell why not Kaganovich and Trotsky. Instead, the RF to this day validates these bitching sessions from former Soviet Republics but there is no USSR anymore and the USSR isn't going to pay for these highly exaggerated grievances. Modern Russians will and that's exactly who all this nagging and bitching is targeted at therefore its retarded for the RF to validate it. If the Kremlin can't say "lol okay Taras we will apologize for the Holodomor as soon as you apologize for Brezhnev, Khrushchev, Kaganovich and Trotsky" than they should at least make an effort to set the record straight about the Holodomor but weaponized cold war anti Stalinism was the ideological dynamite used to demolish the USSR. Those who detonated the explosives are the people running modern Russia therefore any serious effort to push back against some of the more egregious myths about the USSR is not in their interests. BTW asking Ukrainians to apologize for Trotsky and Kaganovich is perfectly reasonable. If Russians born in Crimea are Ukrainians according to Ukrainian Nationalist than so are jews born in Kherson and Kiev. The Kremlins enthusiastic endorsement of the Holodomor mythology eventually led to this:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko November 2014:

The spiritual heirs of Kaganovich and Stalin are repeating the same criminal experiment on the temporarily occupied territories of the so called DNR and LNR. Depriving peaceful civilians of food like during the Holodomor. There is another analogy, the Leadership of Soviet Russia refused any aid to those starving in Ukraine. When Galicians sent food on rafts down the Zbruch and Bug rivers Soviet Border Guards shot Ukrainians trying to reach the food. Today when food riots take place in occupied Donbass terrorist shoot Ukrainian vehicles trying to deliver humanitarian aid.

Poroshenkos statement is a great example of what I was talking about above in regard to the RFs early enthusiastic anti Sovietism bearing bitter fruit. Poroshenko name drops Stalin and Kaganovich but also clearly associates the USSR with Russia. Just because the RF at the time didn't miss an opportunity to denounce the USSR doesn't mean Russians will be let off the hook. Furthermore, not pushing back against the more heinous myths associated with the Holodomor lead to nobody batting an eye when Poroshenko claimed Soviet Border Guards were shooting Ukrainians trying to reach food from Galician raft convoys.

Between 1932-33 in Ukraine lots of people did in fact starve to death. I’m not disputing that at all. But the numbers who died of malnutrition and starvation were essentially the same as in previous famines in the 1800s which weren’t infrequent. In Poland and Galicia which weren't under Soviet control intense famine took place as well in 1932-33....is that also the fault of "the leadership of Soviet Russia"? We will also go over how despite the civil war being long over that Ukraine was still a very violent place with various Nationalist types fighting the Soviet Authorities so it would be reasonable to say that Ukraine was gripped by a low intensity insurgency at a time when the whole region, not just the USSR was gripped by famine and the violence only added to the problem. Then we have to consider that the 1932-1933 famine took place against the background of Stalins industrialization/Collectivization plans that spelled the end of the Soviet New Economic Plan. As we will see, Soviet Jewry benefited enormously from the NEP which was championed by the USSRs top Shettel Capitalist with the very notable exception of Kaganovich. Ending the NEP liquidated the new Soviet emerging petty bourgeois in the cities which the Jews unsurprisingly utterly dominated as well as an emerging agricultural petty bourgeois in which they had very strong representation and which was rapidly growing as urban jews moved to the country side to become Kulaks...or more precisely rural grain hoarders. Yes you read that correctly, there were in fact Jewish Kulaks, Kulaks were by no means simply plucky successful "Ukrainian" peasants. That Russian (there were no Ukrainians at the time outside of Galicia which wasn’t part of the USSR) and Jewish Kulaks probably hated each other is neither here or there, the point is Soviet Policy in 1932-33 was about ending the NEP and rapid industrialization which extended to agriculture. This brought the "Stalinist" into conflict with the "Trotskyites" and despite the fact that Trotsky initially opposed the NEP the Trotskyites by the early 30s were those who wanted to continue on with the it. Thus, this whole Holodomor thing is also part of the Stalinist vs Trotskyite subject. In short, the Holodomor is a very nuanced subject and reducing it to Kaganovich and the "Soviet Russians" starving out "Ukrainians" specifically is to totally misrepresent and distort what actually took place. When we get to part 2 I will clearly show that years before the Holodomor started there was already a full on Ukrainianization/de-Russification project going on in Soviet Ukraine. The idea that a targeted genocide against Ukrainians was happening simultaneously with a Ukrainianization policy deserves to be critically examined.

Respected Readers even if your views on the Holodomor are already set in stone please stay with me a bit and at least get an idea of why many, many Russians disagree with you. You don't have to agree with them or me but if Slavlands lore and knowledge is one of your interests finding out what rightwing Russians and even normal Russian Patriots think about such an emotional and triggering topic should interest you.

Shirokorad:

So what really happened in 1932 and 33 in Ukraine? As with any other historical event it can't be properly understood outside of its historical context. Lets start with the fact that due to climatic conditions famine constantly appeared in Russia in cycles of 10or20 years.

From 1850-1854 famine struck 16 provinces of Russia. The next famine was from 1872-73. By the way famine didn't only take place in Russia. In Austrio Hungarian Galicia 1.5 million Ukrainians died of hunger according to Austrian member of parliament Stanislav Shepanovski. Only for some reason in there is no commemoration, memorials or monuments to this event in modern Ukraine.

The next years of famine in Russia were from 1891-92. Various sources claim between 700k to a few million people starved to death. According to official statistics 3.92% of the population of Russia died in 1892 and in 1894 3.27%.

As we can see between people simply starving to death and death associated with malnutrition famine was a serious problem in the Russian Empire. We are already beginning to see the vague contextual outlines of the Holodomor being formed.

The intelligentsia were outraged and energetically berated the Tsarist Government making various demands. Philosopher N.F. Fedorov blamed Western Influence amongst the Russian ruling class. Lev Tolstoy demanded to divide the land between peasant farmers and people of all professions and to make everyone practice agriculture.

Imo both Fedorov and Tolstoy were on to something.

Shirokorad:

But then came the much praised "Stolipin Reforms" and..... again famine.

The author details how in 1911 due to extremely dry climatic conditions there were severe grain shortages all over Europe driving up prices. Russian enterprises and grain merchants took advantage of this and sold their grain harvest abroad. BTW Trotsky’s dad was a land owning grain merchant in Kherson. It can be reasonably assumed that the Bronstein family wasn't an exception and ethnic pornographers have been compounding the effects of famine in the Slavlands forever. In 1911 Russia even sold off a significant part of its strategic grain reserves to rake in profit from the sky high prices and it's hard to imagine a Government that cares about it's peasants doing that during a time of famine. Callous disregard for the lives of the citizenry didn't start with the Bolsheviks. In all about 53,4% of Russias grain was exported in 1911 and meanwhile according to official statistics 1, 613,000 people died of hunger.

Shirokorad goes on to detail how per square kilometer of agricultural land in the late imperial period Russia produced far less harvest than other European countries. Other than the black soil in Ukraine the soil in Russia isn't the richest but the difference in harvest was so stark that some of it really was down to poor agricultural practice. England which also doesn't have a great climate would on average harvest more than 4 times as much grain as Russia on a plot of the same size. None of this had been fixed in between the late Imperial Period and 1932 and due to the wars and revolution the problem had only been exacerbated. Please no bully dear readers, I just want you to understand that Stalins brutal, bloody approach to tackling this problem didn't come out of nowhere, it had nothing to with killing "Ukrainians" specifically but he would kill whoever was necessary to start getting proper grain harvest.

Shirokorad:

Climatic conditions played a role in the sowing season of 1932-33 which led to poor harvest. M. Tauger list a number of climatic factors which significantly lowered the harvest in the USSR, including Ukraine. Rust epidemic, fungal infections and ergot were all present.

Tauger:

In 1932 one of the worst recorded rust epidemics hit Eastern Europe. Starting in the Balkans there was a drastic rise in temperature and moisture which moved East into Ukraine as well as all Southern Regions of the USSR. In Germany summer storms in 1932 led not only to sowed wheat being beaten by hail, but also to large scale outbreaks of disease amongst plants including rust disease. In Eastern Prussia, Silesia, Bavaria and Pomerania wheat loss ranged from 40% to 80%. Analogous losses were experienced in Romania and Hungary.

More very important context when discussing the Holodomor. Shirokorad mentions that out of control prices on food products, including grain played no small part in the February 1917 Revolution that saw the Tsar toppled. This is where we start approaching very controversial territory for Western Right Wingers. I’ll just politely remind the readers that Shirokorad is not a liberal and he is simply expressing basic Russian Patriotic thought. In the next review about the de-Russification of Ukraine you will see plainly that he isn't even especially sympathetic to the USSR so please don’t bail to early.

Shirokorad:

Who arranged the famine at the end of 1916 and beginning of 1917? Maybe Lenin from Geneva and Stalin from Siberia? No, it was those strong kulaks speculating on prices who stabbed the army and the whole country in the back.

Guys this just is what it is. Yes the Bolsheviks were agitating against the Government, they were spreading demoralizing propaganda all over the front. The Bolshevik role in undermining the war effort was ruinous. But they were helped in no small part by the agricultural petty bourgeois, the kulaks who were demanding ridiculous prices for agricultural products. As I have already pointed out, a minority of this rural petty bourgeois class were jews like the family Trotsky came from. But nonetheless we need to just acknowledge that the image of the plucky, successful Russian kulak is not uniformly true. Rurik will confirm that new money Russians suck and thats exactly what the kulaks were in 1916. And it was precisely these kulaks, whether new money Russian or Jewish who benefited from the NEP that the Stalinist were fighting in Ukraine in 1932-33 against the backdrop of an already atrocious harvest season. You don't have to pick a side, most Russians don't feel strong about it one way or the other, just know what was actually going on.

Shirokorad:

Starting at the end of the 20s the Kulaks using the New Economic Plan started to push back against the Soviet Authorities. Even Modern Ukrainian sources agree that bread shortages in 1927 and 1928 were caused by peasants declining to sell bread to the Government for reduced prices. Soviet Authorities were demanding to pay as much as eight times lower than market prices leading peasants to use the bread as pig feed or simply letting it rot. In 1927 Soviet Authorities agreed to pay more for bread but within a year the situation repeated. Desiring higher prices on bread the peasants again started withholding. In January of 1928 128 million pounds less bread was delivered than the previous January. The failure of the government to procure grain constituted a serious threat to both internal and external Soviet politics.

To this day not even liberals claim that the USSR could have done without industrialization but none of them have offered an alternative model that would have allowed for the rapid industrialization that the country required.

Rhetorical question, could a strong Red Army have been created without industrialization? Maybe the far east at the end of the 30s could have been defended from Japanese encroachment without industrialization? After all the clashes at lake hassan and halin-gol weren't random skirmishes but testes of strength on the eve of a major war. Could the USSR have survived war against almost all of Europe in 1941-1945 without industrialization?

A bit to unpack there. First of all as surprising as it may be to some readers its true, when the New Economic Plan was in effect the emerging red petty bourgeois were perfectly fine with pushing back against the State. You might call this a good thing but just be aware that if you want to go that route that many of the USSRs top ethnic neo conservatives at the time like Buharin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev would have been happy to have you on the team. It was precisely when Stalin decided that the NEP had to go and the new petty bourgeois class smothered that he first started breaking with and purging a significant slice of Soviet Jewry.

About the Urban petty bourgeois produced by the NEP:

The owners, who used exclusively the labor of family members, had a separate socio-professional status than the amateur population. Among this category of entrepreneurs, Jews predominated in private printing establishments, textile, sewing, food processing, and hairdressing salons. They owned or leased 2,062 metalworking enterprises, and Ukrainians 2,590 from 6,093 operating in Ukraine; 1,724 woodworking enterprises from 5893, when Ukrainians owned 2,920, among the leather industry 3,598 and 6,262, respectively. So, if we take into account the materials of the statistical population census of 1926, then the definition of the "Ukrainian urban petty bourgeoisie", given then by A. Khomenko, appears only as a territorial and administrative one. Jewelry watch shops, engraving workshops, workshops for the repair of precious products also belonged mainly to Jewish owners. So, in the autumn of 1922, the list of "gold-silver industrialists" compiled by the staff of the People's Commissariat of Finance was dominated by Jews. They made up the absolute majority in similar institutions in Kharkov, Odessa, Kiev, Berdichev.

https://litbook.ru/article/4681/

Respected Readers the Holodomor was directly linked with Stalin ending "small family owned businesses" in the USSR. You can say that Stalin should have just left these businesses in place and targeted the Shettel Capitalist specifically and I would in theory agree with you 100% but as Shirokorad pointed out the USSR also had to very rapidly industrialize. Even if we all just go ahead and accept the theory that Stalin was only industrializing to attack Europe than what about the far east? Shirokorad correctly mentions that wars were also fought there in the late 1930s and they weren't wars of choice for the USSR. In any case I’m not arguing that Stalin or the USSR was based and red pilled, I’m strictly arguing that the conceptual framework that Westerns have of the Holodomor is all wrong.

If Jews unsurprisingly dominated the urban early red petty bourgeois than they also had a respectable presence amongst the rural one as well:

In 1929, the collectivization of Jewish farms began. Mostly poor people joined the newly formed collective farms in order to improve their situation and get out of poverty. They had previously united in partnerships for joint cultivation of the land, 'plowed together, sowed, harvested,' and therefore the transition to collective farm life did not seem at first an emergency measure. But wealthy farmers did not want to join collective farms' and they were driven by force or 'accused of kulakism,'Zionism,' "petty bourgeoisie"' and exiled to remote lands.

https://benjaminbelenky.medium.com/%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B4%D1%8C%D0%B1%D0%B0-%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%85-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B2-%D0%B8-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BE%D1%80-%D0%B2-%D1%83%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B5-1932-1933-%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2-6599a2ac3b42

Another example:

In 1922, Agro-Joint decided to create an exemplary Jewish settlement in the Crimea. Ten kilometers from Yevpatoria, they found an abandoned landowner's estate with two wells and dilapidated buildings; Jews came from Moscow' Odessa, Yevpatoria, Melitopol received loans and began building houses. Residents of two villages, Tatar and German, drove past Ikor on the road; they laughed at the new settlers and said: "You sow, and we will clean up." Agro-Joint allocated three tractors of the Waterboym brand, and they went to Yevpatoria to get them. The instructor explained' how to start a tractor 'ride it' and they set off. Two arrived safely in Ikor and turned off the engines'and the third forgot' how to stop' and spin in a circle for a long time' until the fuel ran out.

Wives and children began to come to the first settlers. They plowed the land together and sowed it together, and then they chose their plots by lot depending on the number of family members. My father got a loan, we bought two horses and two cows, raised a lot of poultry, and we didn't need to be taught hard work: we went out to the fields at first light and worked until dark. The farms grew; they produced livestock products in abundance, and therefore agreed with the health resorts of Yevpatoria to supply fresh milk, meat and eggs daily.

The settlers had money, and everyone could buy clothes and expand production; residents of German villages were amazed at how we farmed and combined labor with the ability to sell products. Shoikhet Shapiro came and built himself a house. A teacher, Joseph Isaakovich Henkin, arrived and opened a school in one of the sheds and told the villagers: building a school is a national matter. Everyone should work on the construction site for six days. And by the fall, the school was built.

The next year, the grain harvest turned out to be great. Everyone was provided with bread and grain for livestock, and part of the harvest was sold at the market and to the state

So relatives of Zelensky, Abramovich and Chubias got loans and preferable treatment under the early NEP and started buying out Crimean agricultural land and selling their goods on the market and to the state. Well we have already read about how frequently this early rural petty bourgeois withheld their goods from the market and the state to drive up prices. From the same article:

On the basis of our settlement, it was decided to create a collective farm "Ikor". Everyone had to hand over the horses' harness, all agricultural equipment and a cow. The inventory brought to one place was not greased, it stood in the rain and rusted all winter – it was painful to look at. There was no animal feed'they began to look for those responsible for the mass deaths of horses and cows' and veterinarians of Yevpatoria were judged as enemies of the people. They didn't pay anything for work on the collective farm, they wrote down workdays or "sticks" as they were popularly called. There was a famine in the country. The whole Poltava region filled the Crimea – unhappy, exhausted people. In 1932, we were very hungry; I often fainted at school – it was hunger fainting.

https://www.felixkandel.org/books/354.html

Okay guys let's read between the lines there a little bit because what the ethnic slumlord who wrote that article is talking about is going to be a recurring theme going forward. The Soviet Authorities unilaterally end the NEP and start force collectivizing agriculture. As was noted in the previous quote above it was actually the poorest of the poor peasants that were quickest to collectivize, they didn’t even have to be forced in all cases because they were often happy to be out from under the thumb of the red petty rural bourgeois. But the ethnic loan sharks I’m quoting immediately above were absolutely by no means poor. When the Soviet authorities force collectivized them we are to believe that the authorities let all their animals die and equipment go to waste on purpose. Does that sound right? The Shettel Capitalist Author implies that the Soviet Authorities killed the veterinarians for letting the animals die when actually it was the authorities who let them die on purpose because they were mean. What is more likely? That these petty bourgeois rural lights unto the world burnt their operation down instead of surrendering it, or the Soviet Authorities were sabotaging their own objectives on purpose? It’s important that we are talking specifically about money clippers by ethnicity here because this leaves us 3 options basically. The well poisoners are making this all up and claiming what happened to Ukrainians also happened to them when it didn't, this did happen but the ritual murderers let the animals die and equipment go to waste because they were pissed about losing the privileges they used to enjoy, the future furniture products are telling the truth and they suffered just like everyone else due to the Soviet Authorities sabotaging their own project out of pure meanness/incompetence.

Well IMO the second option seems the most likely and I think the reason only the veterinarians were shot is because of their ethnicity. That is they sabotaged the project out of spite at losing their privileges, and unlike say Russian Kulaks caught doing the same thing, which they often did the reason only a few of them were punished was because of ethnic privilege. I want to stress again I’m not specifically doing Soviet Apologetics here, I want Westerns who are only familiar with Ukrainian sob story version to see that the Holodomor is a much more complex topic than most of us think.

Shirokorad:

It needs to be noted here that in supplying the means of mechanized agriculture Ukraine occupied 1st place in the USSR and was 5th in all of Europe because Ukraine had priority in receiving tractors and other items of use in mechanized agriculture as per instructions from the All Union Bolshevik Communist Party. Out of 102 Tractor Machine Stations organized in the USSR in 1929 34 were organized in Ukraine. In 1932 there were 445, and in 33 already 606 TMSs. In 1933 alone Ukrainian agriculture received 15,000 tractors, 25,000 combines and 5000 other heavy agricultural machines. No other Soviet Republic received this much equipment from the center.

Moscow sending all this stuff to Ukraine doesn't prove that Ukrainians weren't being starved on purpose but if a serious effort at raising agricultural yields was being attempted all this equipment would be necessary. The argument could be made that the grain was indeed being harvested but the authorities just weren’t sharing with Ukrainians. But this doesn't hold up well imo because a bunch of state run cafeterias offering very cheap or in some cases just free food were opened up in Ukraine between 1928-33. By 1933 in fact there were 5,327 such cafeterias in rural Ukraine and 9,305 in the urban centers.

I'm assuming the food consisted of a slice of bread, some vague meat broth and a humble helping of farsh and grecha but still if the idea was starving Ukrainians on purpose than opening these cafeterias seems odd..as does sending all the agricultural equipment.

Shirokorad:

Lets assume for a second that Stalin and the Politburo decided to conduct a "genocide of the Ukrainian People". To achieve that on that 6th of April 1931 they instruct the Peoples Commissar of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to carefully monitor the construction of 55 mass bread producers in Ukraine. Of these 31 should be in operation no later than the end of the year with the rest being finished by the end of 1932. A letter sent on the 25th of October 1931 from the Central Control committee of the USSR to the Central Control Committee of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic instructed the Ukrainian CCC focus especially on the construction of operations involving canned meat products.

It wasn't just bread production facilities, meat canners, and government cafeterias being built in Ukraine during the Holodomor either.

Shirokorad:

To top off all the bad deeds of the Moskals by 1932 the USSR had concentrated more health and vacation facilities in Ukraine than in any other region. For example "a report on the state of resorts in 1933 and the prospects for the development of the industry in the second five-year plan." In 1933, the number of beds for vacation months was 80,387, the number of sanatorium patients was 66,979 people and 12,373 people fixed according to the exchange rate. From the report, "a significant under-fulfillment of the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars is due to the fact that collective farm organizations did not fill the places allocated to them. Budget expensive on resorts in 1933 was 20, 258 million Rubles including 10, 275 on meals.

A Sanatory in Russia isn't an insane asylum, its basically a vacation/health resort. Now the number of available spots isn’t impressive in 1933 at under a 100,000 but the note indicates that the Soviet Authorities wanted to expand the project which they certainly did massively after WW2. Go ahead and look at photos of Stalin era vacation/health resorts and you will need to admit that they are if nothing else very nice facilities and wouldn't look out of place in the 3rd Reich. Also notice that a problem mentioned is that the collective farms weren't sending their employees on vacation so even the modest number of available spots weren't being filled. That implies corruption imo, basically local authorities running Ukraine at the time were embezzling and not wanting to vacation with the peasants. We will see later that they were not rewarded for this behavior and it cost some of them their lives. Anyway the very existence of this project and the complaints mentioned about the collective farms not sending people on vacation is just one more thing that doesn't fit into the narrative of a deliberate genocide of Ukrainians.

Just like Auschwitz had a swimming pool, an orchestra, a hospital etc during the Holodomor Ukraine had state run cafeterias feeding people for almost and sometimes literally for free, you had bread factories being built, meat canning plants, tons of modern agricultural equipment working the land, a vacation program in its infancy etc. We are told that the swimming pool and hospital at Auschwitz are there specifically to trick everyone into thinking that the camp wasn't a death camp. Or maybe the swimming pool and hospital were just for the Nazis. Whatever just don't believe the obvious evidence contradicting the mainstream narrative. Well maybe the cafeterias weren’t only to feed commissars and non Ukrainians. Maybe the tractors, bread producers, and meat canning plants weren’t built to benefit non Ukrainians specifically or maybe as window dressings to coverup the genocide of Ukrainians. Just saying. Rightwingers know that sure some jews did actually die at Auschwitz but not nearly as many as we are supposed to believe and not for the reasons we are supposed to think as the physical evidence indicates. Well, many Russians (there was no significant amount Ukrainians on the relevant territory we are discussing) did starve in 1931-1932 in Ukraine but not as many as we think by any means and not for the reasons claimed.

So if famine did kill quite a few Russians in Ukraine in 1932-33 what caused it exactly besides the weather and cycles of famine going back centuries which we have covered? Well we have already seen an example of Jewish Kulaks killing their own livestock and destroying their own farm equipment instead of handing it over to the state. Well okay they claim the authorities did this but if you believe the authorities did it I have a bridge to sell you and all that. Imagine someone's steals your stuff and than just breaks it on purpose just because. I guess that’s maybe happened somewhere sometime but usually when someone steals your stuff they intend on doing something with it. I used Shettel Capitalist in my first examples just to illustrate that there were Talmud Reading Kulaks resisting the Soviet Authorities and this issue can't be framed as simply them vs Amalek. Most kulaks of course were in fact Russian but most of them opted to do what the ritual sacrifice practitioners I quoted did. They destroyed their equipment, hid their grain and killed their live stock instead of hand it over. Imagine this repeated over and over during what was already a famine during a forced industrialization regime being overseen by indifferent/incompetent local authorities.

Shirokorad:

Even though kulaks only constituted 5-7% of the peasantry their influence was far greater than their numbers. Following the example of the kulaks and complying with their demands which were very often backed by force Peasants refused to hand over bread to the Government. For example Peasant P. Vasilevsko did not hand over a gram of bread to the bread government and hid his grain in a hole in which 2 tons were found.

The peasants feared the Kulaks more than the authorities in short. People were starving next to holes containing thousands of pounds of bread. The choice was hide your bread and go on a hunger strike or go to the collective farm. But the thing is the Soviet Authorities weren’t the ones withholding bread actually, it was the kulaks/landowners. The bread that the Authorities had which came from the already collectivized farms was going to the cafeterias we already covered and the vacation facilities. It's not hard at all to sympathize with the kulaks and peasants of course but again....the USSR needed to industrialize, and they needed to do it very fast.

Shirokorad:

A memo from the information department of the Central Committee CP in Feb 1933 contained data about one Jakob Vlas, member of the village council of Vasilkovso Kharkov Oblast. Having at his use 4,45 acres for sewing he didn't turn over a single gram to the government. His children were reduced to begging and when his property was expropriated 1900 pounds of grain were found buried in a hole. Analogous situations were repeated all over the place. For example in the settlement of Alekseevka in Donestk Oblast the Kulak Nesheret Trofim died of hunger but authorities found a hole on his property filled with grain and corn, most of which was spoiled. In the settlement of Makarityono on the property of Simon Streltsov who was suffering from lack of nutrition was found 8 pounds of rye and 3.5 pounds of corn. On the farm of Urchenkov (presumably a man with a farm in that same town) who claimed to be dying of hunger was found 8 pounds of rye.

Im not going to go into much detail about the Petliurast in this article, we will cover them in more detail in the next one about the Ukrainianization of central and East Ukraine. For this article all that's really necessary to know is that Petliura was a very interesting and eclectic character and Ukrainian Nationalist. Cossack, Socialist, son of an Orthodox Priest, hardcore anti Russian and anti Tsarist who wrote anti Monarchy papers out of Lvov. He briefly headed the armed forces of a very short lived independent Ukraine during the Civil War but claiming this independent Ukraine controlled all of Ukraine would be an extreme exaggeration. Petliura eventually joined the Poles against the Bolshiveks and even though the Poles won that war Ukraine was still lost besides the far West. Petliuras biggest problem ended up being that the Bolsheviks were also very pro Ukrainian and anti Russian so most of his people went over to the reds. However, he still had ideological followers in Galicia and Polish intelligence sponsored his cadres that didn't just go over to Bolsheviks. These cadres would also play their part in the Holodomor. Remember respected readers that these Petliurast hated Russians and had no scruples about them starving. Like modern Banderist for example yes there was a hardcore group of them that were anti Jewish but they hated Russians just as much as Jews if not more. But again, this group was very small and the majority were happy to work with Jews if that meant they could lord over Russians hence most Petliurast ended up just becoming Bolsheviks eventually and served in the local cadres overseeing the de-Russification of Soviet Ukraine. Needless to say this included the forced collectivization project. But as for those that didn't...

Shirokorad:

Kulaks and groups of armed bandits headed by Petliurast forced peasants to kill cattle, chickens, swine and agricultural animals. They claimed they would kill anyone who agreed to go to the collective farms. Many Peasants believed them and complied.

This might sound like pure victim blaming and perhaps it is exaggerated but I will remind the reader that during WW1 the Kulaks played no small role in causing a run on bread and agricultural produce that led to the conditions which forced the Tsars abdication. Are Russias new money from the 1990s known for being unwilling to cooperate with foreigners in order to keep their wealth and status? If no than why would it be any different in the 1930s? If the Poles and Petliurast were promising the rural petty bourgeois that they could keep their newfound wealth if they resisted collectivization many of the Kulaks very well would have cooperated despite being Russian. After all, if collectivization had failed the USSR would have collapsed. Granted the Poles would have reneged on their promises but thats not important.

Shirokorad:

Uliana Efimova of Marchina Sumi Oblast recounted a story from 1932. An armed band led by a Petliurast arrived and tried to force her family to kill their pigs and cow. Considering these animals essential to their survival they refused and this time the band didn't follow through on their threats. The next time the band came they killed 2 pigs and took one for themselves. The cow was out to pasture and the band didn't bother to look for it. The bandits were caught and imprisoned but they appeared again in the town with the Germans in 1941 acting as part of the occupation authorities after being presumably being freed from prison.

The fact that these particular bandits cooperated with the Germans doesn't mean they were great people. It’s not like the German authorities didn’t come to the conclusion that Bandera himself was doing more harm than good and there are plenty of cases of German troops commenting on the utter barbarity of their Ukrainian and Baltic Auxiliaries. Also take note that the bandits/Petilurast weren't just executed when they were initially caught. Very odd, no? Actually no it's odd at all when you understand that the local authorities were pro Ukrainian and didn't kill their own as a rule but rather preferred to co-opt them. We are going to see tons of that in part 2.

Shirokorad:

In 1928 around 500 acts of terrorism were committed in Ukraine. Operational Order #2 13 February 1933 from the State Security Service of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic stated "organised sabotage of bread production facilities, autumn sowing, organised mass theft on state farms, the activities of Petliurast agents, especially on the right bank speak of an organised counter revolutionary underground associated with the Polish General Staff.

Its hard to take anything with the phrase "counter revolutionary underground" in it seriously I know but disregard that phrase and attempt to understand what is being said. Is it honestly that far fetched that Polish intelligence would use Ukrainian Nationalist to try and de-stabilize Ukraine during forced collectivization and a naturally occuring famine? The famine of course is not the fault of the Poles and Petliurast, but they are compounding an already bad situation.

So we have reoccurring famine due to climate, peasants getting robbed by both the Soviet Authorities and Ukrainian Nationalist sponsored by Poland, and many Kulaks undoubtedly deciding to bury their grain in the hopes of winning a hunger strike against the state. So just how many people really died of famine in Ukraine during the Holodomor? Western Cold War Sovietologist give numbers between 5.5 million to 15 million. Ukrainian media around the time of Maidan was claiming 25 million which is more than twice the population of Moscow today or not quite 3 times the entire population of Belarus.

Shirokorad quotes the official RF Government statistics in regards to deaths in Ukraine in 1932-1933.

Shirokorad:

In fact the statistics look like this. 668,000 people died in Ukraine in 1932, in 1933 1, 309,000. About 2 million in 2 years over all. If we exclude those from natural causes than around 640-650 thousand people died of famine.

These numbers probably sound shockingly low to anyone that really thinks Stalin was running a campaign to specifically murder Ukrainians but those numbers dont seem out of place if one imagines that what was actually going on was a badly/brutally run collectivization campaign in the middle of a natural famine and low intensity insurgency. Its probably worth mentioning that in 1935 Stalin banned abortion in the USSR and that ban applied to Ukrainians, so if there was indeed a murder campaign against Ukrainians going on 2 years earlier than Stalin did a very drastic 180.

To back up why these numbers are credible IMO here is an excerpt from another Russian source breaking them down.

PHD in history professor Stanislav Kulchinsky:

We used to date the famine to two years - 1932-1933. From the demographic statistics data, it can be concluded that the famine of 1932 killed 144 thousand people in Ukraine. This famine was the result of grain procurements from the 1931 harvest and stopped in the summer of 1932, that is, with a new harvest. The famine of 1933 was the result of grain procurements from the 1932 harvest. For the first time, these grain procurements were accompanied by the confiscation of non-grain food stocks in the absence of grain. The excess of mortality over fertility as a result of this began in the Ukrainian villages already in October 1932. The apogee of the Holodomor occurred in June 1933, when statistical agencies recorded mortality in the villages ten times higher than natural (we now know that in fact no more than half of the deaths were registered). An analysis of statistical data shows that in 1933, 300,238 thousand people died of hunger.

In addition to direct losses from hunger, that is, the death of people, there are indirect losses - a drop in the birth rate. Indeed, if the natural population growth decreased from 662 thousand in 1927 to 97 thousand in 1933 (excluding those who died of hunger) and 88 thousand in 1934, then shouldn't these indirect losses be included in the consequences of the Holodomor?

If the direct losses in 1932 amounted to 144 thousand, then the total, including the unborn, is determined by the figure of 443 thousand people. Direct and indirect losses in 1932-1933, together with the demographic echo of 1934, amount to 400,649 thousand people. This data should be taken into account when considering the demographic consequences of the Holodomor.

However, if we talk about the death of people from starvation in Ukraine in 1933, we should name only one figure - 300,238 people. Or, taking into account the inaccuracy of statistics, the figures range from 3 to 3.5 million people

https://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2003/0101/analit01.php

His numbers line up with Shirokorads as for figuring out just how many individuals directly died of starvation. Lots of people will site numbers of 3-5 million if they want to at least keep some credibility but still keep the general Holodomor as a deliberate and planned genocide narrative alive. They will take the demographic decline indirectly caused by the famine and project this loss as part of the overall death toll. Im not against this approach in principle but it's a tricky game. For example if you use this method to prove Stalin deliberately genocided the Ukrainians its childs play to prove Yeltsin and Putin committed a genocide against the Russian people that makes Stalin look like an incompetent amateur using the same methods. Furthermore I can prove that the leaders of free Ukraine since 1991 can teach Stalin a thing or 2 about genociding Ukrainians. Context is absolutely everything respected readers. If population drops caused by state policy are the measure of genocide than the leadership of “free” Ukraine is far more guilty than Stalin. It's not even close.

The wilder claims made by Ukrainian media and some Western cold warriors about tens of millions are simply impossible to take seriously because they imply many, many tens of millions of Ukrainians living in Ukraine to begin with back in the early Soviet Union. In 1926 for example the entire population of the USSR was 147 million with 31,195,000 being Ukrainian. Of these, 23 million actually lived in Ukraine. So Ukrainian media would have us believe literally every Ukrainian in Ukraine was starved and than some. If the high end Western Cold Warrior numbers are true than after the holdomor only 8 million Ukrainians were left alive in Ukraine but Ukraine still had a population of well over 32 million. This just doesn't check out because there was no mass migration of Russians or anyone else into Ukraine after the Holodomor to replace all these Ukrainians.

I truly have no particular interest in white knighting for the USSR. The Bolshivek program of de-Russification of Ukraine is what outrages me for real though, not the Holodomor. This isn't to say the Bolsheviks didn't kill many, many Russians in Ukraine in 1932-1933. The Soviet Ukrainian authorities approached collectivization incompetently and constantly falsified data about agricultural production and death rates in the Ukrainian Socialist Republic. The thing is though Moscow did not reward them for this. As a matter of fact the heads of the Ukrainian SSR were shot for their false reports to Moscow.

For example here is s telegram sent from Stanislav Kosier the head of the Ukrainian SSR to Stalin in April of 1932:

"We have individual cases and even individual villages that are starving, but this is only the result of local bungling, excesses, especially with regard to collective farms. Any talk of "famine" in Ukraine should be categorically discarded. The serious assistance that has been provided to Ukraine gives us the opportunity to eliminate all such talk"

Begs the question of why Kosier sent Stalin such a letter if the plan was to starve Ukrainians. If on the other hand Kosier was trying to cover his ass this letter fits. Stalin about Kosier and his number 2 man Chubar in a letter to Kaganovich in July 1932

Pay serious attention to Ukraine. Chubar, with his corruption and opportunistic gut, and Kosior, with his rotten diplomacy (in relation to the Central Committee of the CPSU) and criminally frivolous attitude to business, will ruin Ukraine in the end. These comrades are not capable of leading the current Ukraine. I got the impression (perhaps even a conviction) that both Chubar and Kosior would have to be removed from Ukraine. It's possible that I'm wrong. But you have the opportunity to check this case at the conference

Were these letters from Kosier to Stalin and Stalin to Kaganovich just tricks to make people not believe in the Cold War/Ukrainian version of the Holodomor? Or are they exactly what they look like? Why would Kosier be downplaying the famine problem if famine was the whole objective? Why would Stalin think these people weren't capable of leading Ukraine if the point was to starve Ukrainians? When Stalin complains of corruption what does he mean? Does he mean Kosier and Chubar were to corrupt and frivolous to kill more Ukrainians or that they were botching collectivization with their corruption and frivolousness?

This of course doesn't mean Stalin and Kaganovich were good. It does however strongly imply that the cold war/Ukrainian version of the Holodomor that most rightwingers hold via never having heard the Russian take isn't entirely true. In part 2 we are going to see that Stalin went full on with the de-Russification/ukrainiazation of what today geographically corresponds to Ukraine specifically to win over Ukrainian Nationalist and split them from Poland and he largely succeeded. Chubar himself was a Bolshevik from the start but his Bolshevism as is very common was based not so much on justice for the peasants and workers so much as on banal anti Russian sentiment. Following from that he wasn't concerned with starving locals whom as far as he was concerned weren't Ukrainians anyway. So we have a situation where Stalin is demanding to turn Russians into Ukrainians and the local chinovniks are just happy to rob and starve Russians.

Shirokorad:

After having conducted a long and detailed investigation from 1935-1939 in which hundreds of investigators participated those guilty of embezzlement and overseeing artificial hunger in Ukraine were identified and punished. In 1939 the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine S.V. Kosier and Representative of the Soviet Peoples Commissar of Ukraine V.J. Chubar were sentenced and shot.

FYI Kosier was a Pole and Chubar was apparently a Ukrainian. One last thing I would like to bring to the attention of readers who have stayed with me so far is what was going in countries neighbouring Ukraine at the time.

Shirokorad:

The Polish newspaper New Time reported 1932 that 88.6% of the population of the Hutsul region was experiencing hunger. In March 40 settlements in Kosivsko, 12 settlements in Naddvirnysk and 10 in Kolominsk saw cases of starvation. The Paper mentioned that "People are swelling up with hunger all over the place and dieing along the way. Especially thick with hunger are the settlements of Perehredn Staromy Gvizdtsi, and Ostrovi. Along with hunger quickly spreads typhus and tuberculosis”.

The Lvov Gazette reported that "in the Carpathians Ukrainians were living by a thin thread. In Kalushki province there are settlements where whole families are starving to death. After the Polish Authorities forbid logging in a year of bad harvest the locals have absolutely no means sustainment. The Government offers no assistance and whole families are dying out".

Reminder respected readers that Poroshenko claimed that during this exact same time period that people from Lvov were sending raft convoys of food to their Ukrainian brothers in Soviet Occupied Ukraine.

The Polish Gazette reported that from 20-27 June there were massive anti Government demonstrations of hungry Polish peasants that were put down by Police and Local Landlords.

The Kulaks in Poland weren't much different than their Russian counter parts.

According to the Polish Gazette again in April of 1933 in Lodzi alone 60,000 workers went on strike due to malnourishment.

The leftists newspaper "strength" reported that in "Zudinski Vole peasants brought their 18 year old son to the market and put him up for sale hoping to use the income to save the rest of the family from famine. A Kulak agreed to buy him for 50 zlotis but under an onslaught from enraged peasants he was forced to flee.

In an essay titled "death is the king of Hutsul Region" the American Newspaper "Ukrainian News" reported on the 16 April 1932 "more and more details of the famine that has taken hold in dozens of settlements in the mountainous territory of Western Ukraine are coming to light. Entire families lie in their homes swollen with hunger. In settlement after settlement wander crowds of frozen hungry locals begging for bread and potatoes. The young and old die with spotted typhus"

In the Publication "15 thousand Carpathian Children are threatened with famine" on the 3 of April 1932 it was stated "2 days ago opposition Deputies stated that 15 thousand Children were threatened with starvation in the Carpathians. German and English journalist who recently visited this Chekoslovakian Province confirm that the population lives in an unbearable condition of poverty and hunger"

A New York Times correspondent reported the following from a conversation with Carpathian Resident Ivan Kurtyak. "Journalist can't describe a fraction of the poverty and deprivation. In the mountains there are lots of settlements were children live off a tiny portion of raw oats and half rotten potatoes. The Kulaks pigs are fed better than our children. In general since fall nobody has seen a piece of bread. The result is a frightening spread of tuberculosis as well as malnutrition. In most settlement at night there are no lights and the trains pass through the dead country sadly..as if through a graveyard.

Shirokorad asks:

And this famine in Western Ukraine, did Stalin also arrange it? Did Joseph Vissarionovich call up Pilsudski and demand to know why he wasn't genociding the population of Western Ukraine fast enough?

Hoping that my efforts with this article will change any significant number of minds in regard to the standard Holodomor narrative is probably way to ambitious because the traditional take is almost just as important for Western Rightwingers as it is for Ukrainian Nationalist. I almost didnt bother with writing this up for that very reason but my next article about the de-Russification of Ukraine can't be made sense of outside the context of this one. After all Ukrainianization of traditionally Russian Regions makes no sense whatsoever if the Holodomor was a plot to genocide Ukrainians specifically. Even if you disagree with the Russians can you really clarify why there was severe famine in Western Ukraine and Poland proper during the Holodomor? Why did Stalin shoot the local authorities in charge of Ukraine during the Holodomor? Was it "because Stalin shot everyone for no reason" or was it because they botched collectivization leading to more famine and less grain than Moscow wanted? Why was Moscow sending so much agriculture equipment to Ukraine? Why the rapid expansion of government cafeterias and vacation resorts? What about the fact that the kulaks and Petlurast who hadn't gone over to the commies were fighting a low intensity insurgency against the central authorities in partnership with the Poles? And what about how if Moscow hadnt liquidated this new red petty bourgeois class of which the Kulaks were part that the Soviet Union would have perished and probably lost the far east to the Japanese with in a few years? And what about how this new petty bourgeois class of which the Kulaks were part was dominated by Jews in the cities and had fair Jewish representation in the countryside? The JQ angle here is by no means clear cut. And what about how the numbers themselves aren't born out by statistics and the outrageous Ukrainian and Cold War CIA numbers all rely on "trust me bro"? The claim is by no means whatsoever that Stalin and the USSR are therefore good. The claim is Ukraine was a Soviet project that I will get into much more in the next installment and the basic facts presented here bear that out imo. Stalin viewed the whole affair as breaking eggs to make an omelette and he sent lots of eggs and cooking equipment as it where. The people who messed up his omelette were shot.

I know this is a triggering topic for Rightwingers and I sincerely thank everyone who gives my/the Russian take on the holdomor a fair hearing.