• yunah-knowles@lemmygrad.ml
    11·
    4 days ago

    repost but: my two kazakh friends repeat anti-soviet union talking points and say that famine was intentional (well one says it was just to send food to frontlines but still said ‘intentional’ suggesting malice, and was the one to use the word empire). how do u approach conversations like these when they have familial experiences that are very bad but also without validating perspective that this was intentional? didnt have sources + things that disprove common narrative off top of my head, but yeah

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      4 days ago

      “The Kazakh (and Ukrainian) bourgeoisie destroyed food production during the counter revolutionary war. “If I cant have it no one can.” Massive herds of cattle were slaughtered rather than being handed over to public ownership. That is a major part of why there was a famine. The famine was also world wide. In america the excess mortality rates among indigenous people during the great depression were twice as high as the average, excess mortality of African Americans was also much higher than the average, but nobody says it was an intentional act of genocide. The poorest people are harder hit by famine and the destruction of wealth in the form of cattle in Kazakhstan made the region significantly poorer than it had been.”

      "The USSR made tons of mistakes for sure, I assume overall they had good intentions but it is possible that certain people didn’t. One of the mistakes the USSR made was to support communists in places where the people were not yet ready for it. The USSR was shaped and molded by its material conditions and the war against fascism forced them to occupy territories that were fascist strongholds. It looks like imperialism at a quick glance but had they not acted the way they did fascism would have been left to flourish in eastern europe.