Posted on 04/26/2008 11:27:15 PM PDT by Aristotelian
Ukraine's Pursuit of Genocide Designation Upsets Russians Who Say Others Died, Too
MOSCOW -- Relations between Russia and Ukraine, bedeviled by disputes over natural gas supplies and NATO expansion, have lately been roiled by one of the great tragedies of Soviet history: the famine of 1932-33, which left millions dead from starvation and related diseases.
Ukraine is seeking international recognition of the famine, which Ukrainians call Holodomor -- or death by hunger -- as an act of genocide.
When Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin forced peasants off their homesteads and into collective farms, special military units requisitioned grain and other food before sealing off parts of the countryside. Without food and unable to escape, millions perished.
Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, became "a vast death camp."
"There is now a wealth of historical material detailing the specific features of Stalin's forced collectivization and terror famine policies against Ukraine," Yushchenko wrote in the Wall Street Journal late last year. "Other parts of the Soviet Union suffered terribly as well. But in the minds of the Soviet leadership there was a dual purpose in persecuting and starving the Ukrainian peasantry. It was part of a campaign to crush Ukraine's national identity and its desire for self-determination."
There are no exact figures on how many died. Modern historians place the number between 2.5 million and 3.5 million. Yushchenko and others have said at least 10 million were killed.
But Russian politicians, historians and writers say Yushchenko and his allies are attempting to turn a Soviet crime that also killed Russians, Kazakhs and others into a uniquely Ukrainian trauma. They argue that the famine was the awful but collateral consequence of ruthless agricultural policies and the drive to industrialize, not a case of deliberate mass murder.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
When Walter Duranty left the Times and Russia in 1934, the paper said his twelve-year stint in Moscow had "perhaps been the most important assignment ever entrusted by a newspaper to a single correspondent over a considerable period of time."
A book on him was published in 1990: Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times's Man in Moscow by S.J. Taylor.
From the publisher: Short, unattractive, hobbling about Stalin's Moscow on a wooden leg, Walter Duranty was an unlikely candidate for the world's most famous foreign correspondent. Yet for almost twenty years his articles filled the front page of The New York Times with gripping coverage of the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. A witty, engaging, impish character with a flamboyant life-style, he was a Pulitzer Prize winner, the individual most credited with helping to win U.S. recognition for the Soviet regime, and the reporter who had predicted the success of the Bolshevik state when all others claimed it was doomed.
But, as S.J. Taylor reveals in this provocative biography, Walter Duranty played a key role in perpetrating some of the greatest lies history has ever known. Stalin's Apologist deftly unfolds the story of this accomplished but sordid and tragic life. Drawing on sources ranging from newspapers to private letters and journals to interviews with such figures as William Shirer and W. Averell Harriman, Taylor's vivid narrative unveils a figure driven by ambition, whose early success reporting on Bolshevik Russia--he was foremost in predicting Stalin's rise to power--established his international reputation, fed his overconfident contempt for his colleagues, and indeed led him to identify with the Soviet dictator.
Thus during the great Ukrainian famine of the early 1930s, which Stalin engineered to crush millions of peasants who resisted his policies, Duranty dismissed other correspondents' reports of mass starvation and, though secretly aware of the full scale of the horror, effectively reinforced the official cover-up of one of history's greatest man-made disasters.
Later, he took the rigged show trials of Stalin's Great Purges at face value, blithely accepting the guilt of the victims. He believed himself the leading expert on the Soviet Union, and his faith in his own insight drew him into a downward spiral of distortions and untruths, typified by his memorable excuse for Stalin's crimes, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
Taylor brilliantly captures the full range of Duranty's astonishing life, from his participation in the Satanic orgies of Aleister ("the Beast") Crowley, to his dramatic front-line reporting during World War I, to his epic womanizing and heavy drug and alcohol abuse. It is the bitter, ironic story of a man who had the rare opportunity to bring to light the suffering of the millions of Stalin's victims, but remained a prisoner of vanity, self-indulgence, and success.
***
Meanwhile, the board that administers the Pulitzer Prizes in 2003 decided not to revoke the prize awarded in 1932 to Walter Duranty of The New York Times for a series of articles about the Soviet Union that were later discredited as too credulous of Soviet propaganda.
Mr. Duranty's Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded for a series of 13 articles written in 1931, has become the subject of protests by Ukrainians and other groups angry over his failure to report the vast famine of 1932-33 in the Soviet Union.
The Pulitzer Prize Board's statement acknowledged that Mr. Duranty's prizewinning articles had fallen far short of ''today's standards for foreign reporting.'' But the board concluded after months of debate that there was ''no clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception'' by Mr. Duranty in the articles that won the prize.
''Revoking a prize 71 years after it was awarded under different circumstances, when all principals are dead and unable to respond, would be a momentous step and therefore would have to rise to that threshold,'' the statement added.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, said in a statement: ''We respect and commend the Pulitzer board for its decision on this complex and sensitive issue. All of us at The Times are fully aware of the many defects in Walter Duranty's journalism, as we have and will continue to acknowledge. We regret his lapses, and we join the Pulitzer board in extending sympathy to those who suffered as a result of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine.''
...
Yeah, media, especially pullitzer prize winning NYT (for hiding this horror from the west) try to downplay that number, which Stalin himself admitted was "tens of millions".
The is a CANADIAN MUSEUM OF GENOCIDE in Winnipeg Manitoba Canada. http://www.ucc.ca/Section_5/museum_of_genocide/ Lots of links and stories.
Thank you fellow Freeper. Thank you to the new media.
It’s a never ending saga. The MSM never owned up to
this debacle of the Duranty reports. New York Times
too arrogant to admit Duranty was nothing but a willing
sheep for the Soviets.
Fast forward to... 2008
The most recent example of the Duranty award goes to
Bill Moyers. A most useful idiot for B. Hussein Obama.
IOW we are sorry our Commie Comrade got caught in his lies and Stalinist propaganda. We will continue his fight even during massive layoffs at the Times and will continue to prop up Marxist Socialism in the 21st Century!
Harvest of Sorrow by Conquest.
Genocide? Hell yes.
Wait a minute, liberals like Whoopie have all said that Stalin was simply misunderstood. Which is it??
/vomit
This short story was up here at FR a few months ago. I found it to have a great sense of that time in Russian history. It’s grim stuff, but well worth the read.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1944750/posts
"...neither a sympathizer of Communism nor a friend
of the Russian people, but simply a corrupt individual who
made a living by lying...Russian emigres of every political
persuasion tried to inform Europeans and Americans...but
their influence was negligible because the outside world
saw them as poor losers."
The "Harvest of Sorrow" also mentioned the starvation of the Khazaks and the Cossacks along the Kuban river.
It is for those reasons I call it the terror famine of the 30s rather than just the Ukranian famine.
Russian Duma Distinguishes Between Hitler and Stalin
Russia’s lower house of parliament passed a resolution absolving former dictator Josef Stalin from a charge of genocide. The allegations of genocide stemmed from Stalin’s murder of the Kulaks during the 1930s.
“Hitler killed millions to promote his dream of fascist world conquest,” asserted Majority Leader, Lev Dupovich. “Stalin liquidated the enemies of Communism. It was a completely different thing.”
To further his argument, Dupovich pointed out that “Unlike Hitler’s victims Stalin’s were of more varied ethnic backgrounds. Stalin’s terror was more random. It didn’t matter what race or religion a person was. If Stalin felt you were a danger to the revolution he took measures to head off any trouble. So, as anyone can see, the term genocide is totally inappropriate.”
Dupovich complained that statistics indicating Stalin killed more (estimated 40 million) than Hitler (estimated 20 million) are “an unfair comparison.” “Hitler was in power for only 12 years,” Dupovich reminded. “Stalin ruled for nearly 30 years. So, the annual toll for Hitler was nearly 1.7 million, whereas for Stalin it was only 1.4 million. Stalin ought to get some credit for killing fewer than he could have, given his opportunity. He showed more forbearance than he had to.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
What I’ve read was that many Russians during Stalin’s time were more than willing to migrate to Siberia just to avoid the Russian authorities (it’s a bit hard to impose the police state out in the harsh conditions of eastern Siberia). That’s why cities like Khabarovsk and Vladivostok in eastern Siberia boomed.
A Democrat at work told me a few years back that Eastern Europe was “better off” under Communism. I’m half Ukrainian and I should have punched him out.
I had a Sunday School teacher who said the same thing at one time,
More of that lovely Soviet history.
I'm thinking -- whiskey foxtrot tango...
then again, nothing surprises me these days... Even Jimmy Carter got one!
Holy cow, they tried to exonerate him by putting out THAT tripe?
It's not bizarre. Every genocide is mass murder, but not every mass murder is genocide. For mass murder to be genocide, it has to destroy an ethnic group AS SUCH.
The fact is, Holomodor did happened and millions of Ukrainians did die. But blaming Holodomor on Russians is a stretch of historical facts. From the inception, Soviet government was anti-Russian and dis proportionally few Russians were part of Politburo prior to 1941. And it was not Russians who planned and committed mass murder in Ukraine. Stalin and Lazer Kaganovich, the man responsible for the mass murder were not Russians. Why Ukrainians blame Russians is beyond me. It is an insult to all Communist victims. Ukrainians were not the only ones.
It's not bizarre. Every genocide is mass murder, but not every mass murder is genocide. For mass murder to be genocide, it has to destroy an ethnic group AS SUCH.
The fact is, Holomodor did happened and millions of Ukrainians did die. But blaming Holodomor on Russians is a stretch of historical facts. From the inception, Soviet government was anti-Russian and few if any Russians were part of Politburo prior to 1941. And it was not Russians who planned and committed mass murder in Ukraine. Stalin and Lazer Kaganovich, the man responsible for the mass murder were not Russians. Why Ukrainians blame Russians is beyond me. It is an insult to all Communist victims. They were not the only ones.
Actually, I believe there is a scholarly account at the site of the Univ.of Hawaii, IIRC. The discourse puts the number of dead Ukrainian kulaks at between 7 and 12 million, and the culprit was not so simple as mass starvation due to access to the lands.
I speak fairly competent Russian, and have been in Russia four times, totalling about 115 days’ time. During those visits, I have had occasion to talk with numerous Ukrainians who were forcibly relocated, deliberately separated from their families, studiously orphaned, etc...
Their stories would turn anyone’s head - or stomach, for that matter. About the only thing lacking were gas chambers, ovens and acid vats.
Detachments of Red Army soldiers would ride into remote villages, round up all the folk from the village and surrounding countryside in the town square, and line them up at gunpoint.
Sometimes they would shoot slightly more than half of all of them, sometimes simply all the men and boys over age 13 (more or less).
Inevitably, the soldiers would often “have their way” with most/all the women and the girls who even looked to be of childbearing age.
The food stores would be spoiled - squash and vegetables trampled into the dirt and mud under horses’ hooves, the grain dumped into the rivers or streams, until there was just enough food for those left alive to subsist through the winter.
They would be tersely reminded that they were each the property of the state(not their own person) and the state had the power to give anything to them, or take awayeverything from them.
Even after that, efforts were made to cover it all up. Of these detachments of soldiers, few survived their next “assignment”. One out of every so many was allowed to live - ever in mortal fear for his life should he whisper a word. But some of them beat the odds and outlived their masters and oppressors
This was all at the command of Stalin, of course. Stalin was a native of Georgia, and had a well known dislike/hatred for Ukrainians, though he coveted their fertile lands to provide for the planned Soviet empire and fuel its expansion.
Ukrainians even today, return the favor. Almost to a person, they absolutely loathe Stalin and have some colourful epithets for him.
They knew genocide when they saw it - which explains why they (mistakenly) initially greeted Nazi forces as “liberators”.
These facts somehow made it through a morass of paperwork without sufficient “vetting” to prevent large parts of the truth coming in front of Western eyes, which - along with the Venona papers, put the scope of the Soviets’ “Evil Empire” (aptly named) into sharper focus.
As Stalin famously said (roughly), “One, or ten or a hundred dead is a tragedy; thousands of dead - a statistic.”
A.A.C.
Correct. It wasn’t genocide. It was Communist democide - killing for ideology instead of DNA.
“Unlike Hitler’s victims Stalin’s were of more varied ethnic backgrounds. Stalin’s terror was more random...”
Great! An equal opportunity mass murderer vs. a racist mass murderer.
I guess that means Pol Pot also did not commit genocide either, and neither did Mao Tse-Tung. Commies can’t commit genocide because they are never racist.
The Russians who defend Stalin are unpatriotic scum.
These Russians haven't learned a thing. They are still covering for that mass murderer Stalin. Those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Russians are repeating them.
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