Anne Applebaum's new book tells of an atrocity and cover-up that shape today's politics.
History is a battleground, perennially fought over, endlessly contested. Nowhere does this aphorism hold true more than in Russia. A majority of Russians recently voted Joseph Stalin the “most outstanding person” in world history (followed, naturally, by current President Vladimir Putin). No longer the monster of the gulags and purges that killed millions, Stalin now looms in the national consciousness as the giant who defeated the Nazis in World War II. Meanwhile, not only has Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized Ukraine’s eastern regions, its military adventurism has also extended to Syria. Putin, who once described the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century, looks determined to avenge the humiliations of Russia’s post-Soviet implosion. Integral to this endeavor is not just to flex the country’s geopolitical might in the present but to re-write its past.It is this point that makes the historiography of the USSR—a subject worthy of deep study in itself—so relevant today.
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I have written on the Russia/Ukraine situation on numerous occasions.
ReplyDeleteFollow this link and you will find some dozen or so posts.
https://theeveningchronicle.blogspot.com/search?q=Ukraine&m=0
Thanks.
DeleteEven people in the Ukraine tend to forget those famine years.
ReplyDeleteInsane.
DeleteTo which I ask, why did Ukraine declare their independence so quickly?
DeleteZinn history has been spread far and wide by the Marxist cadre and the go along to get along gang. indyjonesouthere
ReplyDeletehe go along to get along gang.
Delete:)
The late Clarence Carson in his work "Basic Communism" observed that of all the areas of the USSR, "the Ukraine was [the] hardest hit." He notes that the Marxists were basically an industrial workers party and "never had much use for farmers." Part of Stalin's "Five-Year Plans" was to move more farmers to cities to become industrial workers which was to be done via "starvation and persecution." Carson noted that the Ukraine became a object lesson for several reasons has it had the most fertile land in all the Soviet Union and because the region "had a long history of national aspirations." Carson then cites the main point of this "monstrous and barbaric effort to starve millions of people in cold blood" that the famine was engineered and was not at all a natural occurrence. Never, never underestimate the evil that man can do to man. There is also a further lesson: don't trust the MSM to tell you the truth. They didn't then and they don't now.
ReplyDeleteNever, never underestimate the evil that man can do to man.
DeleteIndeed and thanks.
Not only did Stalin destroy all the crops but he also took
ReplyDeleteall the seeds so the farmers could not replant - think
Monsanto. The seeds from gmo seeds cannot be reused.
That seed vault in Antarctica ain't sitting there for nothing.
I heard on the news that bunkers were big business now. One
knows something is coming and I am sure THEY will know in
advance.
he also took all the seeds
DeleteI remember that.
You know, the bunker at Greenbriar Hotel in W. Virginia has
ReplyDeletebeen reinstated as a bunker - closed off to outsiders.
Thanks and no I didn't. I went to the military school from 1959 until 1963 and it was common knowledge among the cadets that it existed, but somehow the press supposedly didn't find out until the early 1900's.
ReplyDelete