Talk:Holodomor genocide question/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Applebaum's book

The source (the Guardian article written by Fitzpatrick) says "Though sympathetic to the sentiments behind it, she [[Applebaum] ultimately doesn’t buy the Ukrainian argument that Holodomor was an act of genocide. " I do not see how it can be interpreted any differently than that Applabaum rejects the conclusion of a genocide. It might be indeed that Fitzpatrick misintepreted the book but then we have different sources (and not Facebook).--Ymblanter (talk) 16:17, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Looks like Fitzpatrick erred, misrepresenting the situation, because Applebaum causes a lot of irritation on the Russian end of the spectrum exactly because she "bought" it.--Lute88 (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/29/red-famine-stalin-war-on-ukraine-anne-applebaum-review --Lute88 (talk) 18:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I've added several refs apropos.--Lute88 (talk) 18:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I do not mind, but Fitzpatrick is not just someone from the street, but an academic who is more respected in the field than Applebaum and who has been there way longer. If she is universally accepted to be wrong, it is ok to write this with reliable sources, but I do not think it is ok just to replace rejected with accepted.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:53, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I absolutely think we should return Fitzpatrick's opinion, even if saying that she is saying smth else that other refs.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:55, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure it is worth it. It is one _erroneous_ minority opinion/review.--Lute88 (talk) 19:08, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I do not see why it is erroneous. It is written by an established expert, check the Wikipedia article on her. Even Applebaum is a journalist, not an academic, and definitely other refs are not written by academics. I do not see any issue. We clearly have a reliable source, even if others disagree with her conclusions.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:16, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Applebaum unequivocally says she believes it was genocide in an interview. Iryna Harpy has just dotted all the i's in the paragraph.--Galassi (talk) 19:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but where has anyone stated that Fitzpatrick is a 'respected' academic? She is understood to be a revisionist. While it is not appropriate (according to BLP) to go into her reputation thoroughly, her POV is a minority view therefore I understand it to be UNDUE. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 19:44, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, Sheila Fitzpatrick is a professor of history at the University of Sydney, and previously she was a professor at the University of Chicago, which is the top university in the world for humanities. In the article, she is described as the leader of the second generation of "revisionist historians", which, to my understanding, is not the same as being a revisionist. She specializes in Soviet history. OTOH, Anne Applebaum is a journalist and has a visiting appointment at the Londonm School of Economics, but not in history, but in journalism-related program.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:51, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Then I do not believe it deserves a separate subsection. Applebaum is not a reputable academic. If she arrived to conclusions which are different from the majority it would be worthwhile to mention. If she just repeats everybody else, based on her clearly anti-Russian background - she must just go to the general list. Remember it was me who added her at all.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:47, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually, I wasn't referring to Fitzpatrick's literary revisionism. She has been described as being stuck in the rut of Australian 'Labor Party' and 'Communist Party' adulation of the Soviet Union of the 50's (where the USSR could do no wrong). It's a convoluted history, but as blinded to the realities of Soviet 'communism' as conservative Western politics was bogged down in 'communist' evil hysteria. I think this article has seen more than its fair share of edit warring, and that consensus has been to focus on academics specifically. To be honest, I'd be in favour of eliminating Applebaum from the article, full stop. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:19, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

I would still mention her somewhere, after all, we do not have so many books about Holodomor, but not prominently and not as a separate section. (She is now misplaced anyway).--Ymblanter (talk) 20:31, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, it's a matter of finding the relevant section. It's still suffering from too many section headers, essentially due to the fact that each academic is treated as a separate entity. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:41, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Have we dispensed with the irrelevant and trivial Applebaum? If so, perhaps it's time to start looking at what Alexander Solzhenitsyn had to say on this topic. There's plenty of material, for instance Santamoly (talk) 05:43, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Solzhenitsyn actually believed that Ukrainians are Russians, so I am not sure how much he could contribute to this discussion.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:52, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

We decided to keep her out, why is she suddenly back?--Ymblanter (talk) 06:24, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

No reaction, removing.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:01, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Apologies for not chiming in earlier, Ymblanter. I was hospitalised recently (nothing terribly dramatic), and haven't had the energy to work on some of the meatier articles that attract hefty warring and attention. Agreed: Applebaum seems to have been put aside as a source for this article. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:26, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Us reverts

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holodomor_genocide_question&diff=864261922&oldid=862893536] RL/RFE may or may not be a reliable source, depending of what is in the ref, but at the very least the ref must be added to the article, which has not been done so far. I can not even do it myself, because Rl is blocked in China. For the rime being, the article fails WP:V, because some users perfer edit-warring to the compliance with policies.--Ymblanter (talk) 02:18, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[

Target: ucranians or farmers?

This article is almost all about the question if the "holodomor" was deliberate or not, and almost nothing about a question that is equally important - if it was deliberate, the intention was to kill Ukrainians, or it was to kill the supposedly anti-communist farmers who opposed the forced collectivization (independently of their ethnic origin)? Only is a genocide in the first case.--MiguelMadeira (talk) 12:09, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Outdated Map

The information shown on the map in "Other countries and international organizations" does not completely match the information shown below, the map was made in 2007, so would it not make sense for it to be removed? MJV479 (talk) 20:36, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Agree. I came here to say the same and found this comment above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2804:14C:6A:A73B:6C32:38B0:B2C7:F844 (talk) 22:38, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Dallin and others

Removed the section per WP:BOLD -- it's not a primary source. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 12:08, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Material moved to Holodomor in modern politics

Hello, I've moved the material in the section "positions of governments" to the article Holodomor in modern politics because most of the content here duplicates the content there, and it seems better to have two specific articles (one scholarly, one political) than one broad and one specific. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 23:46, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Stanislav Kulchytsky

Hello, Stanislav Kulchytsky has no Wikipedia page in any language. Why is his viewpoint notable enough to merit a quote when numerous academics with recent books on the subject don't even get a section? Per WP:BOLD I've removed it. If you disagree, please discuss. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 10:21, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Similarly, Yaroslav Bilinsky has no Wikipedia page in any language. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 14:15, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Reversed position on Kulchytsky -- described as "prominent" by Wheatcroft. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2019 (UTC)

Besides that, he has his own Wikipedia article: ru:Кульчицкий, Станислав Владиславович--Nicoljaus (talk) 07:15, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Yaroslav Bilinsky is "Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware, has taught Soviet and post-Soviet foreign policy. He is the author of The Second Soviet Republic: Ukraine after World War II and articles on Sovietology and post-Sovietology." [1] He looks rather competent scholar. A review of the above book says: "this rich and rewarding study will undoubtedly remain the definitive work on the Ukraine for a long time to come."[2]--Nicoljaus (talk) 07:50, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

What has happened to this article?

I seems to have done a 180 percent degree turn from being badly pro-Holodomor as genocide with WP:POV language bells on it to being anti-Holodomor as genocide with WP:POV language bells on it. Representation of the opinions of scholars in the area supposed to represent their entire thought processes, not just those that support the idea of genocide being ludicrous. Stanislav Kulchytsky, for example, is far more strident in his condemnation as not simply democide, but as a calculated genocide. Iryna Harpy (talk) 07:05, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Are any other editors still working on this article? Iryna Harpy (talk) 07:32, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The page was apparently re-written with edits like that, but unfortunately not improved. This needs to be fixed. My very best wishes (talk) 18:44, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

I fixed a few things. One needs a brief summary of views in the lead. My very best wishes (talk) 19:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

What I removed here were mostly extremely long quotations, without clear meaning. My very best wishes (talk) 20:45, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

You removed huge chunks of reliably sourced material. I reverted once only to have you undo it, but I will not revert again until I see what other editors here have to say about these deletions. My position is consensus should have been reached on talk before removing sourced materials.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 21:23, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Noted. Let's see what contributor who started this thread wants. I only wanted to help. If she thinks I did too much, she is welcome to revert or otherwise correct my edits. Actually, I did not remove a lot of sourced material; only a couple of things. I only removed some repeats and summarized what these sources actually say more briefly and precisely, merged two sections about the same books by same authors, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 22:01, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello, My very best wishes. No I've been through your edits on the two articles and agree with the reduction of POV language, and irrelevant opinions removed by you. I was more concerned with C.J. Griffin emergence from nowhere and reverting material you had changed. I was also talking about FuzzyCatPotato (an occasional blow-in from Rational Wiki, which is his personal project) and Guccisamsclub (who disappeared at the end of 2017 after edit warring in 3,333 edits as an WP:SPA), plus quite a number of unexplained, undiscussed changes by IPs. C.J. Griffin, it's applaudable that you were trying to maintain what stood as being apparently consensus by default, but there never actually was a consensus matching the true meaning of the word. I already had cancer, which is why I became too tired to keep up objections to Guccisamsclub aberration of an article (probably the most loaded version of the article we've ever had invoking any unknown academic's opinion so long as it tallied with his theory). There is still a clean-up needed. Unfortunately, it's a very specialised area of research which only seems to attract extreme views. I doubt there's a version to do justice to the subject. We've all been burnt out by AN/I's and ARBEE's, and I think I know how it's going to end up because history is always written by the winners. Until such a time, there's always room for improvement. Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if I came "out of nowhere". I have edited this article in the past, granted it has been some time. Nevertheless, I consider the recent edits by MVBW to be problematic, not only in the removal of vast amounts of material in an article which might benefit from elaboration by notable academics given the topic, but also edits which attribute the work of some historians erroneously to others. As an example of the latter, when Davies and Wheatcroft were merged into one section, the 2018 paper by Wheatcroft (25) and statements within were attributed to both historians, even though Davies did not contribute to the piece. Not only that, but it seems like some really good material from that article was removed which elaborated on Wheatcroft's position and would have given lay readers a better understanding of the issues and debate. There are also some minor punctuation errors. Bottom line is that the previous version of the page was superior to the one with capricious deletions and merging of materials in such a way that doesn't mach sources. In another example, Tauger is reduced to one sentence, and the more constructive criticism of his work by Wheatcroft et al was removed while the blatant ad hominem from Mace was allowed to stay, and he don't even critique the arguments put forth by the former but attacks him as someone not taken seriously by his peers (Marples statement isn't much better, basically a debatable assertion that famines are never "natural" occurrences.) And surprisingly, Solzhenitsyn disappeared altogether. These are just some quibbles I have with the edits made by MVBW.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 15:17, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Davies and Wheatcroft usually appear together because they have exactly same views and known by the same books which they co-authored together. Therefore, I merged the sections to avoid repeating the same twice. If they have different views about anything, then I agree their sections should be separated. So, what difference in their opinions should we note? And no, in all substantial cases like here, I did check the source to make a better and more brief summary. We do not need citation farm, although I do not mind briefly citing every person. For example, we can include back this quotation from article you talked about:

In his 2018 article, "The Turn Away from Economic Explanations for Soviet Famines", Wheatcroft writes:

We all agreed that Stalin’s policy was brutal and ruthless and that its cover up was criminal, but we do not believe that it was done on purpose to kill people and cannot therefore be described as murder or genocide. [....] Davies and I have (2004) produced the most detailed account of the grain crisis in these years, showing the uncertainties in the data and the mistakes carried out by a generally ill-informed, and excessively ambitious, government. The state showed no signs of a conscious attempt to kill lots of Ukrainians and belated attempts that sought to provide relief when it eventually saw the tragedy unfolding were evident. [....] But in the following ten years there has been a revival of the ‘man-made on purpose’ side. This reflects both a reduced interest in understanding the economic history, and increased attempts by the Ukrainian government to classify the ‘famine as a genocide’. It is time to return to paying more attention to economic explanations.

Note that Wheatcroft tells "Davis and I", so this is their common opinion, and using this ref in their common section is well justified. My very best wishes (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

But if you wish, we can go slowly. Which specific objections do you have to this edit and to this edit? My very best wishes (talk) 16:47, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I think the second one trims too much from the lede. Same goes for the other one on Ellman's position. In an article like this, which discusses a contested historial event, I think the more information that can be provided in the article, the better. Regarding Wheatcroft/Davies, I think the way the current version regarding these two historians is superior to your revision. I'd like others to give their imput on this. The quotes from Wheatcroft, such as the one you included above, should absolutely remain in the article, even if it is decided to combine Davies/Wheatcroft into one section. Honestly, I can live with merging the two so long as the content remains largely as it is for both, but I don't believe it is necessary. Regarding the recent deletion of Grover Furr from the article, I have mixed feelings on that. He is certainly controversial, but the section pertains to "non-scholars have gained notable attention". Furr is of course a scholar, but just not on this subject. And he as gained quite a bit of attention in terms of his positions on Stalin and the famines, so including him seems reasonable if it is put in proper context, that he has a strong bias in favor of the Soviet regime. That being said, if it is decided to remove him from the article I can live with that.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 00:40, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

I see your objections. If I have time, I will make changes slowly one by one, so you will have an opportunity to fix my edits if you disagree or think I removed too much. For example, with regards to the lead, if we agree it should be about Holodomor genocide question (the subject of this page) rather than about other famines, this should not be a problem. My very best wishes (talk) 23:44, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: @My very best wishes: hey! didn't see this for a few days. I have reverted several of the edits since I last edited this article, with explanations below:

• Introduction: fixed grammar, included mention of the overall Soviet famine and USSR mortality (important to mention that famine affected not just Ukraine), removed mention of 10 million deaths (not substantiated by any of the sources)
• Kazakhstan: moved mention to "See also" from introduction, since it's still a relevant article (famine in which USSR (non-)intervention may be a significant cause)
• Ireland: moved mention to "See also" from introduction, since it's still a relevant article (famine in which state (non-)intervention may be a significant cause)
• Ellman: This note -- interjected into another scholar's quote to contradict it -- would better be replaced with a relevant quote in Kotkin's section
• Snyder: Summarizing Snyder's statement is better than just raw quoting it
• Furr: re-added Grover Furr, as people often cite him without apparent knowledge that he is unqualified to speak on the subject (medieval English) or that he is frequently critiqued by other academics -- I shouldn't've mentioned Young as an academic, but it would be nice to have more criticism of Furr
• Solzhenitsyn: Context that Solzhenitsyn is increasingly pro-Russian seems relevant to evaluating his statements
• I think merging Wheatcroft and Davies might be reasonable as they frequently write together and generally share positions. However, the amount of content seems too much to fit under one subsection. This article would probably be better formatted as a series of subsections about specific claims -- eg, exports of grain, Ukrainian overrepresentation in the dead -- instead of a series of quotes.

FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 23:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@Volunteer Marek: re: these changes: I've argued for each one above. My main goal was to show the before/after for each specific edit. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 23:19, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@FuzzyCatPotato. I strongly disagree.

1. First of all this your edit is highly misleading. The Holodomor refers specifically to the famine at Ukraine (hence this is an Ukrainian word, etc.). Yes, it may (or may not) be viewed as part of the Soviet famine during same years, but this page is specifically about the Holodomor, not about the wider famine.
2. Secondly, the opinion by Furr (The "Holodomor" fiction was invented by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who found havens in Western Europe, Canada, and the USA after the war) is so fringe it does not belong here. Moreover, your summary is misleading " Grover Furr states that the Holodomor was not genocide." No, that is not what he said based on this citation. He said there was no any Holodomor at at all. This is Holodomor denial, but it does not belong even there.
3. The opinion by Solzenitsyn also does not belong here because: (a) he is not an expert on this subject, (b) he does not even provide any coherent argument, only cursing ("musty chauvinistic minds fiercely predisposed against the Moskals", etc.).
4. No, you incorrectly presented views by Ellman and Snyder. That is what Ellman actually claims in a conclusion of his article. Ellman tell that Stalin may or may not committed the genocide depending on the definition of the term. My very best wishes (talk) 00:42, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:

1. Lede: What does the lede gain from removing a mention of the broader Soviet famine? provide useful historical context
2. Non-scholars: "[Solzhenitsyn] is not an expert on this subject": Are you supporting a blanket removal of all non-scholars (Furr, Solzhenitsyn, Tottle)? Discussing frequently-mentioned non-scholars and their non-expertise seems important to understanding truth about the subject.
3. Furr: "Furr [...] is so fringe [he] does not belong here [....] He said there was no any Holodomor at at all": This clearly mischaracterizes Furr's views. Here's the article. Furr acknowledges a "very serious famine" but denies that it was "deliberate":

   There was a very serious famine in the USSR, including (but not limited to) the Ukrainian SSR, in 1932-33. But there has never been any evidence of a “Holodomor” or “deliberate famine,” and there is none today. The “Holodomor” fiction was invented in by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who found havens in Western Europe, Canada, and the USA after the war. An early account is Yurij Chumatskij, Why Is One Holocaust Worth More Than Others? published in Australia in 1986 by “Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” this work is an extended attack on “Jews” for being too pro-communist.

   In the same article, Furr discusses millions of famine deaths. Furr favorably cites a figure of 2.6 million deaths in an article which Davies and Wheatcroft critique as "too close to the recorded figure of excess deaths, which is about 2.4 million". This is well below the ~3 million lower bound usually given, but still comes from an academic source, and is clearly not a denial:

   Some Ukrainian nationalists cite figures of 7-10 million, in order to equal or surpass the six million of the Jewish Holocaust (cf. Chumatskij’s title “Why Is One Holocaust Worth More Than Others?”). The term “Holodomor” itself (“holod” = “hunger”, “mor” from Polish “mord” = “murder,” Ukrainian “morduvati” = “to murder) was deliberately coined to sound similar to “Holocaust.” The latest scholarly study of famine deaths is 2.6 million (Jacques Vallin, France Meslé, Serguei Adamets, and Serhii Pirozhkov, “A New Estimate of Ukrainian Population Losses during the Crises of the 1930s and 1940s,” Population Studies 56, 3 (2002): 249–64).

   Therefore, the description of "Furr states that the Holodomor was not genocide." is accurate.

4. Ellman: Your edit is a better description of Ellman's views, thanks. I have re-added it. However, removal of the specific claims Ellman makes -- eg, ban on migration from Ukraine -- reduces the utility of his quote.
5. Snyder: Specifically what is wrong with this summary of Snyder's views?

FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 16:41, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Point 1. It does not provide context but tells that the wider famine=Holodomor. This is wrong. Context can be provided in the body of the page.

Point 2. Please see WP:DUE. "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia". So yes, all of them should be excluded, although probably not because they are "non-scholar". I would not mind leaving Tottle because he is frequently noted in other sources on this subject unlike Furr. But it could be removed too

Point 3. He tells it was not "man-made", and he also tells The "Holodomor" fiction was invented by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators... This IS denial. But more important, this is simply undue (point 2).

Point 5. (Snyder) "refrained from using the term because it might confuse people". This is actually WP:OR, not clear if he means that. One should simply quote what he said. My very best wishes (talk) 19:34, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

But I agree with your last series of edits (after VM) and can try to fix something else if there are no objections. My very best wishes (talk) 23:52, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

@My very best wishes:

1. Lede: Does this revision make sufficiently clear that the wider famine != the Holodomor?
2. Non-scholars: The strongly anti-Holodomor-was-genocide views of Furr, Tottle, Solzhenitsyn fall under the second WP:DUE criterion:

   If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents

   The "Non-scholarly debate" section begins with "Despite lack of academic experience, the views of several non-scholars have gained notable attention" -- explicitly noting that they are a prominent minority. In general, Solzhenitsyn, Furr, and Tottle are prominent and they should be included. Perhaps they should not be quoted -- since their quotes hold no weight -- but they should be mentioned, to inform the reader that they exist but are not worth consideration.

3. Furr: You did not respond to my quotes of Furr. Repeating the contextless quote does not make it more important. He does not say "man-made" in that article. Furr clearly does not fall into Holodomor denial.
4. Snyder: I added more of Snyder's quote in the Q&A. Snyder states:

   Because there are people who hear the word "genocide" and they think it means the attempt to kill every man woman and child, and the Armenian genocide is closer to the Holocaust than most other cases, right, but it's not the same thing. So, I hesitate to use "genocide" because I think every time the word "genocide" is used it provokes misunderstanding.

   I summarize this as "refrained from using the term because it might confuse people". What part of this summary is WP:OR and not in the text itself?

FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 14:34, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree with your position on Furr. Perhaps he should be included with Tottle and Solzhenitsyn, but not quoted.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 14:45, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Views by a single person (like Furr or Solzhenitsyn) do not qualify as a "significant minority". If you think they do, please provide other sources claiming something similar. This possibly can be done for Solzhenitsyn, but hardly for Furr ("The "Holodomor" fiction was invented by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators..."). And his statement is clearly a denial. However, if their views to be included, they must be cited directly (just as all others), simply to clarify what their views actually are. One can not say it better than the author himself: "The "Holodomor" fiction was invented by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators...". Of course I personally disagree with such view, but this is an excellent statement of his position. My very best wishes (talk) 15:56, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Please do not try to editorialize the citation of Solzhenitsin if we want to include his views. According to citation (and his other comments published in other places), his views are the following: he believes the hunger was man-made and it was an genocide extermination of Ukrainians, Russians and others, but he disagree it was directed specifically to Ukrainians and therefore technically objects to using word "genocide" of Ukrainians. My very best wishes (talk) 16:52, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Iryna Harpy: Do you think Grover Furr should be included in the article?

@My very best wishes::

1. Solzhenitsyn: Specifically what is editorializing? Here is another revision, now mentioning "man-made". FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 03:41, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
2. Lemkin: Lemkin coined the term. Coining a term does not give one authority over whether it applies to a historical context -- particularly when Lemkin is a lawyer (not a historian) and died in 1959 (30+ years before the Soviet archives were released). Why should he receive priority? FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 03:41, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

• Solzhenitsyn - OK, your last version is better, no significant objections. Lemkin and others. We need to establish an order for including views by different authors. This can be either chronological order (based on date of the first cited publication by an author), or logical and chronological order. Logical means we combine together similar views by different authors. I think simply a chronological order would be easier. Would you agree to follow chronological order or suggest something else? But in any case, someone who first invented the term and more importantly, first applied the term to the subject should go first simply because he was the first, logically and chronologically. If he was right or wrong does not matter. As we can see, there are different views. Yes, someone who discovers new things always knows less than his followers. My very best wishes (talk) 14:14, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Serbyn quotation

Hi, anon with changing IP.[3][4][5][6]

The Serbyn quotation is about the Holodomor, in an article about Lemkin’s view of the Holodomor, on a website about the Holodomor. I find it hard to believe that you really think it is “irrelevant,” but please discuss this and stop reverting. —Michael Z. 04:04, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Anon continues reverting without discussing.[7] —Michael Z. 15:14, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It seems bizarre to have a non-scholarly section devoted to just one person. More importantly, though, we can't just dump him into a section with everyone else - every source for Solzhenitsyn was primary (if I read right, two opinion pieces by him and the transcripts of his speeches.) There's just no indication that his opinion on this is noteworthy enough to include when we're citing so many scholars via better sources. Furthermore, though we might include him if he was saying something unique that was clearly worth mentioning (though I'd want to see secondary sources demonstrating that), in this case he's not saying anything or making any arguments that aren't already on the page. The purpose of the page isn't to serve as a library of nose-counting, it's to broadly explain the topic. I think that more generally the massive wall of opinions by scholars is already too big - it doesn't seem like a useful way to approach the topic; it reads more like editors have been throwing scholars at each other to try and argue by proxy. It would be more useful to divide and structure scholarly opinions by the broad strands of scholarship on the topic, giving more weight to particularly widespread or prominent positions, but generally condensing people with similar takes. But at the very least we need a secondary source for including yet another opinion essentially identical to several higher-quality ones already there. --Aquillion (talk) 19:58, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Solzhenitsyn’s speech is not a footnoted scholarly work. He is mentioned in Applebaum 2017, but only in relating the history of glasnost, and not in reference to his opinion on the Holodomor. (Lemkin’s speech is arguably in a similar category, but in contrast to Solzhenitsyn he is the most important person in genocide studies, the speech was intended to become a chapter in his major book on genocide, and it has become very influential in Holodomor studies and referred to by scholarly and popular works.) —Michael Z. 20:19, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

No objections because S. is not an expert on this. My very best wishes (talk) 01:33, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Stanislav Kulchytsky

It tells: "Stanislav Kulchytsky and Hennadiy Yefimenko state that the famine mostly harmed people based on rural status, not ethnicity... This becomes clear when comparing Kulchytsky's table on all-cause mortality by ethnicity and the 1926 population of the Ukrainian SSR in the 1926 Census": [A Table]. What? How on the Earth this table shows anything if it does not include any data about rural population? It shows only that the disproportionately affected were Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Moldavian populations. If so, that's fine, but the description must be consistent with the table. My very best wishes (talk) 01:33, 17 February 2021 (UTC) So I fixed it. My very best wishes (talk) 01:57, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Undo

@Lute88: This does not apply to WP:WEIGHT. Undo your edit. Gnosandes (talk) 14:31, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

@Gnosandes. Well, your edit is an interpretation of a single WP:PRIMARY source. If you want to include this new content (and you need a consensus for such inclusion), please quote directly here what exactly this author tells on the subject of this page. Then we can discuss. And speaking about "due weight", yes, the view about Holodomor being only a result of a drought is pretty much "fringe". Same about the view that there was no Holodomor as such, but there was only a famine on a much larger territory. My very best wishes (talk) 14:37, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Man-made in intro

I've removed "man-made" from the introduction, since this is a point of contention in the debate the article is summarizing. FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 13:06, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

For the record, it is not. Academic sources, including those that oppose the designation as genocide, agree that the deaths of millions were the result of choices made by Stalin. The genocide debate has been chiefly about his intended goals (and this is changing as secret archives have revealed evidence).

The notion that the famine was a result of failed harvest and could not have been avoided was briefly pushed in Soviet propaganda in the 1980s, after it could no longer deny that a famine took place, including through the book under Tottle’s byline. But it was the time of glasnost, and even the Soviets gave up this position almost immediately after asking their own researchers to investigate and openly report the truth. The Tottle book was delayed and soon retracted. Today this is a WP:fringe view, pushed for political reasons by you-know-who. There’s another article about that. —Michael Z. 16:51, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I do not believe most of what you said has any sort of scholarly concensus or backing. Many scholars, especially less politically motivated ones find a number of attributing factors to the famines within the USSR at that time both natural a man-made. This should be easily seen from the get go as only a small handful of countries recognize the "holodomor" as a man made genocide, while the majority do not. My main objection to your comments however is that even if you are very much in the "pro man made" camp, it would be un-academic, lazy, and misleading to say the death's of millions were all personally due to the choices of one man. The USSR and it's associated republics were all very complex systems with numerous political actors, millions of participants, and an untold amount of complexity. Boiling the entire system down to the actions of one person, even a person with a decent amount of influence, is about as ahistorical as it gets. Historians and academics have long since discarded the great man theories of history and we are better off following their example if we are to strive for any sort of reputability. Overall I would urge you and the community as a whole to strive for more discipline and nuance especially in sensitive and important topics such as these.

Nviz (talk) 06:25, 07 September 2021 (UTC)

This article needs updating with Dolot and Applebaum's views

I'm curious as to why both Miron Dolot and Anne Applebaum's views are not part of this article. I have not read their books but surely they must have views on this question having published books on this topic. Can the authors of this page please add their views or explain why they're not included? The Holodomor question has become elevated in today's conflict between Russia and the Ukraine even though, strangely, it's almost never mentioned by the press. Thank you, Integraldude (talk) 17:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Decent sources

The article lacks in many imp. sources esp. edited volumes. Hunger by Design: The Great Ukrainian Famine and Its Soviet Context (HUP, 2009) for one. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:39, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

If you're able to provide any more suggested sources, I'll look at finding them in the library and using them in the article. Cdjp1 (talk) 22:02, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Robert Conquest should fall under “Famine as crime but not genocide” section

Yes he wrote “Harvest of Sorrow” but as his entry already notes, he later recanted his claim that the famine was a genocide. This obviously should place him in the “Famine as crime but not genocide” section as that was his position after the opening of the Soviet archives. It makes no sense for him to be anywhere else. 2001:8A0:6A07:2200:291E:D5F1:C6A5:CC3D (talk) 04:31, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

"The Holodomor Genocide Question: How Wikipedia Lies to You"

This may be of interest to some editors here, and is why this article and Holodomor is receiving a bit of extra attention as of late: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kaaYvauNho. Endwise (talk) 03:31, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Most contributors to Wikipedia are from the English speaking world, or are English speakers individually. Specifically most contributors to political issues are even more so Anglo-centric, and consume English language literature and media. On most international issues, the English language version sees the most edits, the most discussion, often has the most content. So yeah, Wikipedia is largely informed by the English speaking consensus. Is this a surprise to anyone? Its not specific to this article, and its not a new development.

What is specific to this article is that as the Soviet archives opened, a lot of authors changed their views to better fit the new facts. However, the popular opinion didn't change, and their old, now outdated work is still being cited with the weight of their names and authority behind it. A bit like a news websites posting something wrong, and getting 500k views; then posting an edit/retracting, and the retraction getting only 20k views. 77.77.25.82 (talk) 09:45, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

If the deliberate killing of three million people can be called technically not genocide, then perhaps the word "genocide" needs to be redefined. Serendi^podous 18:07, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

You are quite adept with words - scholars disagree on the extent of deliberateness (if, at all) of the Soviet regime. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:29, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

For those of us who won’t watch the hour-and-a-half video that says we don’t know what yet, what is the gist, why do we care, and what are we supposed to do in response? Thanks. —Michael Z. 19:12, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

Basically some of the individuals used in the article to justify one side or the other aren't great examples as it's a single comment they made, when the area in question is out of their particular field of specialisation, some individuals used for one side have later changed views or made statements that are opposite to where they have been placed in article, and how at a couple of points the views of the individuals have been synthesised from disparate parts of the sources cited. As to why we care, from Endwise's comment, it seems that it's because we may see an influx of edits come in based on the video. Endwise does seem to have done the edits of the major suggestions of the video, they seem fair to me, and I have restored some parts that were removed in what I believe are more appropriate areas of the article. Cdjp1 (talk) 21:57, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

• We can't cite a youtube video by a non-expert. If you think the video identifies accurate issues, what I would suggest doing is pulling out the sources from the video, going over them to make sure they pass WP:RS, comparing what they say to what's already in article, and writing up something about any problems you find (it'll probably be easier if you go one by one on specific, identifiable errors, places, or statements where you feel the article goes awry from modern scholarship, or important / mainstream perspectives that are left out or given insufficient weight. And start with the body, not the lead, since WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY.) It's a lot of work but you're talking major changes to an article that many people will disagree with, so you have to be fastidious. --Aquillion (talk) 20:06, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

  I have had a look at a lot of what is mentioned in the video, and it has to be said it is almost all fair. The removal of Red Holocaust was absolutely necessary,(checked the source) as was shifting Conquest,(checked the source) the inclusion of the comment by Payaslian (checked the source) may be WP:UNDUE, its inclusion as first opinion in the lede is indisputably is undue. There probably needs to be some balance added to the voices stating genocide as well, critiques of the no-genocide camp are included in the article. Boynamedsue (talk) 13:56, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

  I don't think there was a call to cite the video by anyone, but as someone that has watched the video, I believe that there are things that are relevant for anyone who cares enough to edit this page and I encourage everyone to watch it. Egezort (talk) 14:33, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

There is an established scholarly consensus on this

Holodomor was genocide. Why are we allowing political agitprop to masquerade as encyclopedic content? 142.160.101.97 (talk) 01:47, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

All claims need corresponding reliable sources. If there are arguments for or against a position held by academics and experts printed in reliable sources, then they merit inclusion on Wikipedia, regardless of your personal views on the matter. aismallard (talk) 03:46, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

This comment is almost comedic. If there is a consenus that established in recent years, then that it is not genocide. And the purpose of this article is exactly to debate this question. --Sibajaleoaj (talk) 09:13, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

"See also" link inclusion

I'm concerned about the neutrality issue of linking "Mass killings under Communist regimes" in the see also section of the article (diff). It seems like it may lead the reader to draw a particular conclusion about the evidence presented in the article. aismallard (talk) 08:04, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

What does that mean? The artificial famine was a mass killing under a communist regime. It precisely applicable and in fact defining. —Michael Z. 23:21, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

While it's clear the famine happened, whether or not it was intentional policy in service of genocidal intent is the concept being explored in this article. In the current lead, it discusses the topic as a matter debated between academics, and the rest of the article is laid out similarity, with sections for arguments for and against. You are certainly entitled to your particular view on the matter, but my concern is that listing an article titled "mass killing" is non-neutral because it influences the reader to lean towards a particular analysis of events. The term "killing" carries with it the implication of intentionality I'm not sure is appropriate for an article discussing said intentionality. aismallard (talk) 01:40, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

You misunderstand. The fact of mass killing is not debated. The debate was whether the mass killing was intended to commit genocide against Ukrainians. —Michael Z. 03:08, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

The phrase "Mass Killing" implies intent. Intent is a highly debated topic in this case. Denisnevsky (talk) 01:13, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree. I have removed this and the "Functionalism–intentionalism debate" articles from this section as they appear POV. QueenofBithynia (talk) 15:39, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Why? The question of intentionality is central to some of the arguments about genocide or not that have dominated Holodomor research for a decade or two. —Michael Z. 23:21, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't disagree with that, but this is making a direct link between the Holodomor and the Holocaust/Nazi Germany, which I think is too POV. QueenofBithynia (talk) 17:13, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Referring to an intentionality debate in a genocide from an article about a crime against humanity with a prominent intentionality debate is natural and potentially helpful. Not POV. Since there has been more and more accepted evidence of intentionality coming to light over the decades of this debate, isn’t it POV to remove the cross-reference? —Michael Z. 03:30, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

What accepted evidence are you referring to? Denisnevsky (talk) 01:14, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

"Main Article" Denial of Holodomor

The article Denial of Holodomor doesnt concern wether the Holodomor was caused by natural factors but wether it happened at all.

This makes it devoid of any real connection towards the subchapter, serving only to negatively influence the readers opinion of that what they read in the subchapter itself. 2A02:3035:C13:6E5D:743B:F9FF:FE9D:5DEE (talk) 07:02, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

this is not correct, denial of the holdomor also refers to denial of the fact that it was man-made, from the first line in that article:

"Denial of the Holodomor is the claim that the Holodomor, a large-scale, man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932–1933, did not occur" CASalt (talk) 19:17, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The authority on English-language bibliographical cataloguing defined Holodomor denial as “the diminution of the scale and significance of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 or the assertion that it did not occur.”[8] Some editors were unhappy with that definition for various reasons so it was cut, after multiple discussion in Talk:Denial of the Holodomor.

Denial and diminution, or diminishment, has included a variety of things, including assertions that it didn’t occur, that was natural, that it was unintentional, that the victims were responsible, that the people responsible weren’t responsible, that it was necessary, etc.

As an ongoing classic propaganda campaign by organized Soviet and Russian actors, it has included many of these at once, to make the truth appear to be difficult or impossible to know. —Michael Z. 15:11, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Simon Payaslian quote is unverifiable due to being a passing comment

Dr. Payaslian makes this comment that a consensus has formed among scholars around a list of events being classed as genocide and includes the Holodomor. This article does not go into detail about which scholars hold this consensus view surrounding the Holodomor in specific, although it does link to other scholars of genocide broadly. Dr. Payaslian himself does not seem to be a subject matter expert in the Holodomor. A quick Google Scholar search only finds another passing comment in a book review comparing the author's description of the Armenian Genocide to other 20th century genocides with the listed examples being the Holodomor and Holocaust. Those other scholars Dr. Payaslian recommends in the Oxford Bibliographies article might have something to say that would establish a consensus position among scholars, but his comment does not, by itself, establish that consensus.

According the Wikipedia guidelines, in general, a Wikipedia article should not rely on passing comments.

Bigfreakingkelleher (talk) 17:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

I totally agree that this passing mention is insufficient to establish scholarly consensus, especially on such a contentious topic. --QueenofBithynia (talk) 22:30, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

It is not a comment in passing (see WP:RSCONTEXT: “Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable; editors should cite sources focused on the topic at hand where possible.”). It is a direct, defining statement in the lead of an authoritative summary on the precise subject of “20th Century Genocides.” It is a secondary source, precisely what WP:RS asks for. It is not a research work with detailed references, and that is not required. Please establish consensus before removing it. —Michael Z. 23:17, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the comment is in passing and not worth it. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:41, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

A passing comment is something irrelevant to it's main subject matter, Wikipedia defines the following as a trivial mention ""Martin Walker's statement, in a newspaper article about Bill Clinton, that 'In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice' is plainly a trivial mention of that band.". In this case the "passing comment" is that the Holodomer is a genocide, which is plainly and directly related to the main subject matter of the source (20th century genocides). Why is this so hard to grasp? CASalt (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

You seem to have things mixed up. "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable;" clearly refers to the the principle topics of the publication being cited. For example, if you cite a passing comment about a famine in Ukraine, which contains no supporting evidence, in an article which is about the Armenian genocide (as is the case here), the citation is not valid. AjaxPdx (talk) 09:54, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The only person who seems to have things mixed up is you. The main topic of the article relates to 20th century genocides and genocide literature, the Armenian genocide is used a prominant example to support the general thesis and observations in the article. It is a means to an end. CASalt (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

“Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable". I'm deliberately highlighting this because many people seem to missing that in order for a comment to be classified as passing on wikipedia, the comment has to have no relation to the subject matter on the source.

Here the subject matter of the source is 20th century genocides, and the comment on the Holodomor is related to that, so there is no serious way of claiming it's a passing comment. Wikipedia's criterion for passing comments has nothing to do with thoroughness, and everything to do with whether the comment is related to the subject matter of the source. CASalt (talk) 17:49, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

The full passage you quoted says "principal topics of the publication". "The publication" in this case is Simon Payaslian himself, who has no expertise on the Holodomor (he mostly researches the Armenian genocide); he has not published any work or research on the Holodomor, it is just a passing comment he made when talking about other genocides that he never follows up. This is rather exactly what WP:RSCONTEXT is aiming to caution against. Endwise (talk) 03:17, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

The publication is Oxford and Payaslian is a historian. The claim your trying to make - to the extent you are trying to make on - is that Payaslian and Oxford are WP:UNRELIABLE and has nothing to do passing comments

WP:RSCONTEXT states "Information provided in passing by an otherwise reliable source that is not related to the principal topics of the publication may not be reliable", it is not conerned with the expertise of the author or publication making the claim. The only issue as far as the 'passing comments' doctrine is concerned with is whether the the subject of the source is related with the comment being used by wikipedia. This is undeniably the case here and anyone arguing otherwise is doing so in bad faith. Here the subject matter of the source is 20th century genocides and the comment relates to the purported consensus on a 20th century genocide. full stop. I'm not writing clearly enough for you, re-read User:Mzajac's comment CASalt (talk) 04:17, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

The problem is that the work cited has nothing to do with the holodomor, and the reference to the holodomor is made in passing without any argumentation or citation. This could be criticised on a number of grounds, including WP:UNRELIABLE, but WP:RSCONTEXT clearly applies as well under the definition you yourself have cited.

Oh and how many citations and argumentations are made for Getty's bald-face claim on the consensus classifying the Holodomor as being a result of bungling? You and some editors have very selective eyes I'm starting to notice.

But it's almost like in each cases the historians are the sources themselves. Claims about consensus on the Holodomor are also different than actual claims about the Holodomor because the only argumentation and citations that can be cited to support the former are pure numerical counts. CASalt (talk) 15:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Getty's citation is in the introduction, while Payaslian's is both in both the intro, and in the genocide section along with much better sources. It gives a false impression that he is just as reliable of a source as the others, which he isn't. Denisnevsky (talk) 01:09, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

"he only issue as far as the 'passing comments' doctrine is concerned with is whether the the subject of the source is related with the comment being used by wikipedia"

Indeed, and the subject of the article in question is primarily about the Armenian genocide, with little to no sourcing wrt the holodomor, which would be apparent if you had taken the time to read the article rather than just skimming the abstract. This is why WP:RSCONTEXT does in fact apply AjaxPdx (talk) 10:05, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

What a absurd thing to say, even if the article focuses discussion on the Armenian genocide as an example, it only does so in the context of supporting it's general claims and observations on genocide literature. The Armenian Genocide is not discussed in a vacuum. And a comment on the consensus of various genocides in the 20th century is not made in passing if is related to the principal topic of the article. The threshold for dismissing information in source as a passing comment is high, to circle back to earlier provided examples:

Martin Walker's statement, in a newspaper article about Bill Clinton, that 'In high school, he was part of a jazz band called Three Blind Mice' is plainly a trivial mention of that band.

The fact of the matter is that even if the article was exclusively focused on the Armenian genocide as you claim (which it very much is not), it still would not meet the threshold of 'passing comment', which is high. CASalt (talk) 15:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The article is largely, almost entirely, about the Armenian genocide. If the article contains a substantive analysis of the Holodomor, not a passing comment and with actual historical evidence, then you can cite it and maybe Payaslian can be included in the article. Otherwise his comments are trivial and in passing and not suited for citation in this article. AjaxPdx (talk) 20:03, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Apparently not only does the article discuss genocides in general, it has a whole section on the Holodomor. In which case the argument started over a literal misconception (because only the first two sections: the intro and the armenian genocide were free) See comment from Michael Z. In which case, to surmise, Simon Payaslian's conclusion on the consensus is definitely not a passing comment by any stretch of the word. Hopefully everyone can agree to this now and put this mess to bed. CASalt (talk) 23:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh and AjaxPdx, a reminder on WP:SOCKPUPPETRY. CASalt (talk) 16:24, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

WP:SOCKPUPPETRY has no relevance to my use of Wikipedia and my edits and I find your accusations to be of bad faith. AjaxPdx (talk) 20:05, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The article is not “primarily about the Armenian genocide.” It is about and titled “20th Century Genocides.” At the bottom it says “Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.” The non-subscribr view gives us access to only the first two sections, but you can see in the in this article sidebar[9] that it is an overview with sections entitled “Introduction,” “General Overviews,” “Herero, 1904–1907,” “The Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923,” “The Holodomor, 1932–1933,” “The Jewish Holocaust, 1938–1945,” “Bangladesh, 1971,” “Cambodia, 1975–1979,” “East Timor, 1975–1999,” “Bosnia, 1991–1995,” “Rwanda, 1994,” and “Prevention of Genocide.” —Michael Z. 20:37, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for settling this. CASalt (talk) 00:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

References

My university has the paper available in person and I'll try to check it out in the next few days to see what the content of the Holodomor section actually is. I am aware of Payaslian's work and he's not a Soviet Studies scholar or Slavicist but a scholar of the Caucuses and, to a lesser extent, Iran. I'm not a regular contributor to Wikipedia so I don't know much about editing protocol, but I TA a course on Ukraine and could add a the opinions of a few more leading scholars (Fitzpatrick and Applebaum come to mind primarily) if that would be useful. I'd presumably add it here first for consideration? Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 11:43, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Instead of waiting until I could go look at the paper in person I was able to contact a friend who had digital institutional access and now have a PDF of the article in question. It turns out that it is not actually an article, but simply a bibliographical reference with a small summary per topic. Feel free to contact me for access to confirm the contents. I'll quote the whole entry for the Holodomor below:

″The Holodomor, 1932–1933 The Holodomor (Ukrainian: “killing by starvation”) was Stalin’s genocidal policy against the people of Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933. Among the reasons for the famine, Conquest 1986 stresses the Marxist ideology of class conflict and the brutal methods employed by the Bolshevik regime to Sovietize the nationalities. The new Soviet person was expected to transcend his or her national identity, embrace Sovietization, and serve Soviet society as a member of the proletariat to counter the ubiquitous threat of capitalist exploiters. Oleskiw 1983, Conquest 1986, and Graziosi 2009 agree that Stalin pressed forward with rapid industrialization and relied on agricultural collectivization to finance industrialization, a policy that required brutal measures to force the peasantry to fulfill their quotas. Conquest 1986 and Graziosi 2009 offer systematic analyses of the famine. Dolot 1985 demonstrates the human sacrifices demanded by the regime to achieve its budgetary objectives according to state plans. The papers presented in Hryn 2008 analyze the Ukrainian famine in the broader context of Soviet economic difficulties as the Moscow government pursued rapid industrialization at the expense of the agricultural sector. Conquest 1986 and Graziosi 2009 discuss the Marxist-Bolshevik intellectuals’ arrogant attitude toward the peasantry; such intellectuals deemed Ukrainian opposition a capitalist, kulak threat to the proletarian priorities. The conflict between Moscow and Ukraine proved catastrophic for the latter. The Stalinist leaders in Moscow and their followers in Ukraine sought to deal a fatal blow to Ukrainian nationalism by controlling agricultural production in the republic and exportation of grain—a policy that resulted in the death of between four and ten million Ukrainians. The famine therefore is often referred to as a man-made famine designed as a campaign to eradicate Ukrainian nationalism that included “dekulakization,” collectivization, the kolkhoz system, exorbitant taxes on agricultural production, and—particularly after the summer of 1932—other, excessively repressive measures.

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

A comprehensive study of the Holodomor, with a detailed analysis of Stalin’s policy of famine as rooted in the widespread Marxist- Bolshevik intellectual antipathy toward the peasantry, Ukraine’s agricultural production, and Moscow’s policy of intentionally destroying the Ukrainian economy as an antinational measure. According to Conquest’s calculations, seven million died as a result of the 1932– 1933 famine: five million in Ukraine, one million in the North Caucasus, and one million “elsewhere” (p. 306).

Dolot, Miron. Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. New York: Norton, 1985. Offers a firsthand account of the hardship experienced by Ukrainians as a result of the famine. Maintains that Stalin and the Soviet government in Moscow were hostile toward Ukrainian peasants.

Graziosi, Andrea. Stalinism, Collectivization and the Great Famine. Holodomor. Cambridge, MA: Ukrainian Studies Fund, 2009. Addresses the controversy concerning interpretations of the Ukrainian famine in 1932–1933 and contends that the Holodomor constitutes genocide. The ideology of the Bolshevik leaders and their brutal approach in dealing with peasants led to deterioration in state–peasant relations, which the Stalinist regime used to destroy the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

Hryn, Halyna, ed. Hunger by Design: The Great Ukrainian Famine and Its Soviet Context. Papers presented at the symposium “The Ukrainian Terror-Famine of 1932–1933: Revisiting the Issues and the Scholarship Twenty Years after the HURI Famine Project,” 20 October 2003. Harvard Papers in Ukrainian Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Contributors place the Holodomor not only in the broader context of the economic crisis in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and the Urals, but also in the context of genocide scholarship. Applying the genocide convention, the book concludes that the Holodomor was genocide.

Oleskiw, Stephen. The Agony of a Nation: The Great Man-Made Famine in Ukraine, 1932–1933. London: National Committee to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Artificial Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933, 1983. Provides a brief history of the Soviet Ukraine and identifies various ideological, social, and economic reasons for the famine. Above all, the Stalinist regime was determined to eradicate Ukrainian national identity.″

---

A quick run down on what I was able to find out about the sources:

Conquest: He famously changed his mind about the Holodomor being intentional after being confronted by the archival data released shortly after his book.

Miron Dolot: This is a pseudonym of Simon Starow, a professor of Ukrainian language who is not a Historian. This source is a memoir

Graziosi: I wasn't aware of this name, but he is a real historian from the Harvard HURI. I could not find a copy of this text to learn whether he thinks the Holodomor is genocide. The source in question is not published by an academic press, but by a Ukrainian NGO.

Hryn: A colleague of Graziosi at HURI and a Professor of Ukrainian language. She does not appear to have a degree in History.

Oleskiw: I am unable to find ANYTHING out about this guy and he doesn't turn up in any academic databases. His book is described in library entries at being 72 pages long and illustrated so it probably is not a scholarly work. The publisher seems to be a very partisan source, and the book is published prior to the opening of the Soviet archives to historians.

---

My conclusions: Two people were cited who are actually historians. One does not support the claim that the Holodomor was genocide and the other is from HURI, an institution known for being partisan on this very topic. One work does apparently try to actually address the topic of Holodomor as genocide, but the author does not appear to be a Historian. If Payaslian has knowledge of a consensus among scholars he has not provided that information in this bibliography.

I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts on this new information on the paper. Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 12:49, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Please define and support “seems to be very partisan”/“known for being partisan.” Seems to boil down to “everybody knows I’m right so they’re wrong.” —Michael Z. 16:49, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Several academics at HURI are known for political activism in the field and for choosing to publish a large proportion of their work outside of peer-reviewed academic channels, often through NGOs that some of these scholars are also either employees or executives of. Some of the academics I mentioned below, like Jean-Paul Himka, are also political activists for left-wing politics and against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so it's not like I'm arguing that makes them inherently unworthy of being cited.

Regarding Oleksiw being a partisan source: His book appears to be a non-academic book (maybe a children's picture book?) published by the "National Committee to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Artificial Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933". The only references I can find to an author of the same name is a Traditionalist Catholic hagiography of a leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church who was a Nazi collaborator and later was held prisoner by the Stalinist Soviet Union. Whether or not this is the same guy, the publisher of the book seems to be a political organization and therefore a partisan source. Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 21:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Your comment highlights a few things:

1. The quote is most definitely not a passing comment. This entire section was predicated on the misconception that Payaslian's comment on the Holodomor was a complete off-the-hand remark in a paper that otherwise exclusively focuses on the Armenian Genocide. What you posted completely clarifies that is not close to true, again making this discussion moot.

2. You criticize Payaslian for not providing sources that a consensus has developed re the holodomor, however what sources does J. Arch Getty provide for his claim that a consensus has developed that the Holodomor was the result rigidity and not genocidal intent? It's almost like in both cases, the historians serve as the sources themselves. And the only type of 'supporting evidence' they could even provide would a pure numerical count of studies falling in the 'genococide' vs 'non-genocide' camps, which neither do (and which seems borderline impossible).

3. both of their viewpoints are qualified per RSCONTEXT by including their names before their claims. I.e, "According to historian Simon Payaslian...", "whereas historian J. Arch Getty states....". In conclusion this is undoubtedly not a passing comment, and there are frankly zero valid grounds under enwiki policy to even argue Payaslian's exclusion. Both viewpoints must be represented duly here, and they are accordingly. CASalt (talk) 17:00, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Getty does cite one name, Nicholas Werth, but from what I can tell Werth has since changed his opinion once again. Speaking as someone who is far from an expert on Wikipedia policies, but who is at least collaterally part of the field, I'd be inclined to say neither quote should be included, or at least they should be relegated to sections expressing their individual opinions. Getty has published material on Holodomor while Payaslian has not, but both references are largely unsourced comments that are tangential to the matter at hand.

Two annotated bibliographies on the topic of genocide released by Oxford Bibliographies in the years since the one in question also fail to repeat Payaslian's assertion. One does include Conquest's work with an annotation saying that it was a great contribution to the discussion of whether or not Holodomor is genocide, while the other does not mention Holodomor at all.

Getty's comment is in an entirely non-academic source in a discussion of The Black Book of Communism and how it had been discredited. It's also a 22-year-old interview and other scholars as well as Getty himself have written on the topic in the years since. Getty does have a much more recent paper where he does not speak so categorically, and instead complains about a new revival of the old genocide thesis by a vocal minority that rejects archival evidence in favor of eye-witness testimony of survivors.

In place of Getty's off-hand comment we might be better off with something like the contribution of Andreas Kappeler (Who is a specialist on Ukraine, while Getty has mostly published on the Great Terror) in Laboratory of Transnational History: Ukraine and Recent Ukrainian Historiography. On P. 59 we read:

"The famine was officially designated a genocide of the Ukrainian people and sometimes termed the Ukrainian Holocaust.26 The implicit contention that Ukrainians had been victims of a genocide in the 1930s—one that was equated with the Nazi extermination of the Jews—is not only a major element in Ukrain�ian national martyrology but may also be interpreted as a response to allegations of a so-called perennial Ukrainian anti-Semitism and of Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The identification of the Holodomor with the Holocaust has, however, been rejected by most non-Ukrainian historians.27"

Citation 27: "See the divergent interpretations of Stanislav Kulchytsky, Yuri Shapoval, Gerhard Simon and Valerii Vasil´ev published recently in Vernichtung durch Hunger. Der Holodomor in der Ukraine und der UdSSR, eds. Rudolf A. Mark and Gerhard Simon, Osteuropa 54, no. 12 (2004). See also the recent book by Johan Dietsch, Making Sense of Suffering: Holocaust and Holodomor in Ukrainian Historical Culture (Lund, 2006), and S.V. Kul´chyts´kyi, “Holo - domor 1932–1933 rr.: mekhanizmy stalins´koho teroru,” Ukraïns´kyi isto�rychnyi zhurnal, 2007, no. 4: 4–26."

This alternative also contextualizes the debate as one where there is polarization between Ukrainian and the majority of non-Ukrainian scholars rather than talking abstractly about consensus. The main drawback is that the source is newer than Getty's, but is still over a decade old.

Other opinions if we want to be more representative of the terrain of the debate. Just an overview for now but I can easily get citations:

John-Paul Himka, Ukrainian-American/Canadian historian of Ukraine: Holodomor Stalinist crime and not genocide. Genocide claims the tool of far-right political groups.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, Australian historian and expert on Soviet peasants: Stalin wanted to squeeze the peasants, not kill Ukrainians.

Anne Applebaum, American journalist and historian, best-selling author of [Red Famine]: Debate over genocide terminology irrelevant, massive crime morally equivalent to genocide regardless of intent.

Nicolas Werth, French historian: Believes Stalin deliberately targeted Ukrainians but no consensus established.

Efraim Zuroff, Historian and Nazi Hunter, head of Simon Wiesenthal Center Jerusalem: "Holodomor definitely not a genocide." Collectivization had many victims, didn't target Ukrainians. Claims campaign by Ukrainian government is an attempt to absolve Ukrainians for responsibility for the Holocaust by blaming it on Jewish Communists. (This was in an interview with media and not a paper)

Per Anders Rudling Swedish expert on nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe: No evidence of intent in Holodomor, Genocide claims sometimes related to Holocaust denial.

As for people more within field who claim that there is a consensus for the Genocide thesis. I'm not aware of any who claim this directly even though Synder consistently claims that the evidence itself does prove the thesis. Someone might try looking at a few of the Ukrainian scholars mentioned by Kappeler in his citation. Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 23:23, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Which two other bibliographies released “in the years since”? The one in question says “LAST REVIEWED: 11 JANUARY 2021 / LAST MODIFIED: 27 FEBRUARY 2019.”[10]  —Michael Z. 16:46, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The bibliography the Payaslian citation is from was released in 2012. Two others were released with overlap but not identical topics later in 2012, and in 2016. One is simply called "Genocide" and one is "Genocide, Politicide, and Mass Atrocities Against Civilian Populations". Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 21:12, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

It says 2019 when I look at it. I linked and copy-pasted the update notice from it above, so I don’t know what else I can do to convince you to look again. —Michael Z. 21:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm going off the citation information provided by the publisher themselves which is what would be used in an academic work if we were to cite the document. (Though this isn't a document you would cite in a paper anyway). I've never previously had to reference these types of online bibliographies so I don't know how they update their documents and if this actually involves substantial alterations or not. I do note that they do recommend their latest bibliography on genocide in their special posting about the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Spotlight: 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine - obo (oxfordbibliographies.com)

This one does not call Holodomor a genocide, but includes one source on Holodomor, a paper by Graziosi available here: The Soviet 1931–1933 Famines and the Ukrainian Holodomor: Is a New Interpretation Possible, and What Would Its Consequences Be? | Andrea Graziosi - Academia.edu

Graziosi's paper is interesting in that it tries to split the difference between the mainstream and the genocide position by saying that, of course the famine was not intentional and it is not genocide under the legal definition, nor was it a targeting of Ukrainians to destroy the Ukrainian nation, but that once the accidental famine was in swing that Stalin intentionally used it as an opportunity to crack down on peasant resistance, which also meant cracking down on Ukrainians. I think he's playing fast and loose with the order of events here and ending with special pleading, but it's notably different from what he now argues in his non-peer reviewed privately published books. Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 02:37, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

The citation information provided by the publisher at the top of the current version of the Payaslian “20th Century Genocides” article says “updated 2019.” I have no idea what you’re referring to.

The “Spotlight: 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine” doesn’t directly refer to the Holodomor, so it doesn’t call it anything. It does imply by its link that genocide is one of the major themes in the 2022 invasion.

The Graziosi article says “I believe that the answer to our question, ‘Was the Holodomor a genocide?’ cannot but be positive.” He unequivocally states it was genocide.

None of this supports your initial assertions. —Michael Z. 14:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

He does not do so "unequivocally". He argues that it was not an intentional destruction of the Ukrainian people, but that it should be called a genocide anyway because of the claimed disproportionate number of Ukrainian victims, and because Stalinist policies of Russification otherwise targeted Ukrainians. The way that the article is currently constructed the academics cited are being categorized based on whether they think there was *intent*. By the standards of the current article he'd actually be in the "not genocide" camp, even though he actually does call it genocide. This actually brings up a point that might be relevant to the article though. Since so many of the scholars who hold to the genocide hypothesis define genocide differently from other scholars, should we actually have a section on the fact that different definitions are being used by different sets of scholars?

Getting back to the original topic of this thread: The digression on the Oxford bibliographies has got pretty off topic, and I'd like to ask again. Is there any good reason we should keep Payaslian and Getty as the main academics consulted in the first paragraph when there are in-subject experts who could be cited instead? Getty's quote should also be questioned considering its age, that he has since stated something somewhat different, and that he's not as involved in the subject as many of his colleagues. (Though he has published on Ukraine, while Payaslian has not) Why these two random citations?

"Was there also a Ukrainian genocide? The answer seems to be no if one thinks of a famine conceived by the regime, or— this being even more untenable—by Russia, to destroy the Ukrainian people.

It is equally no if one adopts a restrictive definition of genocide as the planned will to exterminate all the members of a religious or ethnic group, in which case only the Holocaust would qualify. In 1948, however, even the rather strict UN definition of genocide listed among possible genocidal acts, side by side with “killing members of the group, and causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” “deliberately inflicting on members of the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (emphasis mine). Not long before, Raphael Lemkin, the inventor of the term, had noted that, “generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation…It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups.”33 Based on Lemkin’s definition—if one thinks of the substantial difference in mortality rates in different republics; adds to the millions of Ukrainian victims, including the ones from Kuban, the millions of Ukrainians forcibly Russified after December 1932, as well as the scores of thousands of peasants who met a similar fate after evading the police roadblocks and taking refuge in the Russian republic; keeps in mind that one is therefore dealing with the loss of approximately 20 to 30 percent of the Ukrainian ethnic population; remembers that such a loss was caused by the decision, unquestionably a subjective act, to use the Famine in an anti-Ukrainian sense on the basis of the “national interpretation” Stalin developed in the second half of 1932; reckons that without such a decision the death count would have been at the most in the hundreds of thousands (that is, less than in 1921–1922); and finally, if one adds to all of the above the destruction of large part of the republic’s Ukrainian political and cultural elite, from village teachers to national leaders—I believe that the answer to our question, “Was the Holodomor a genocide?” cannot but be positive." Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 03:58, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Viktor Kondrashin

Hi, everyone. As far as I understand, Ukrainian researchers who affirm Holodomor as a crime/genocide or deny its artificial nature are omitted as a part of suffered nation. Then why is Viktor Kondrashin opinion present? He has his own Russian agenda to deny genocide. I believe his opinion should be deleted for now. Brunei (talk) 17:21, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Which Ukrainian researchers are omitted? The Holodomor is generally accepted as an artificial famine and a crime, widely accepted as a subject of genocide studies, and to a degree legimately considered an actual genocide, so no one should be omitted for arguing these things. And certainly no researcher should be omitted for their nationality or citizenship. (I am not arguing either way about Kondrashin.) —Michael Z. 20:12, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Kristen Ghodsee

Kristen Ghodsee has written on this issue, I feel adding a section on her views is appropriate. I'm writing here before I sit down and write such a section to see if anyone is opposed to it, or if they have any particular suggestions regarding her work. KetchupSalt (talk) 12:52, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Romania

Romania's recognition of the Holodomor took the the form of a political resolution voted by the country's parliament. The full text of the resolution is available here: [11]. It recognizes the "deliberate, artificial famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine" as a "crime against the Ukrainian people and against Humanity". At no point does the resolution use the term "genocide". MP Nicolae Miroslav Petreţchi, who initiated the resolution, stated in his speech that the name (i.e. "Holodomor") "reflected, etymologically, the dimensions of genocide: famine and mass killing." Other MPs also used the term "genocide" in their speeches, but, bottom line, the resolution they voted on does not use it. Therefore, strictly speaking, the article and the map are inaccurate. Plinul cel tanar (talk) 09:21, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

"Recognition of Holodomor by country" Contains Typos

Pays ayant reconnu le Holodomor comme génocide, en 2022

This image contains typos. It says "Countries taht recognize the Holodor as a genocide though the European parliment", but I think the author intended to say "Countries that recognize the Holodomor as a genocide through the European parliment". "Holodomor" has been misspelled twice. Athimanshu (talk) 00:23, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Uploaded corrected map Cdjp1 (talk) 11:35, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Lemkin

Why is Rafael Lemkin listed in the "Publications after the dissolution of the USSR" section? He died not long after WWII. Underfell Flowey (talk) 05:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Good question. The document this covers was the basis for a speech he gave in c. 1953, but remained unpublished until his archives were organized after his death, I think, in Holodomor Studies v 1, 2009. I have seen academic articles write of the “rediscovery” of Lemkin on the genocide in Ukraine which he defined as larger than just the Holodomor.

So it may be arguable where to place it in the article.  —Michael Z. 18:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Secondary sources

Most of this article is based on primary sources. What criteria is used for inclusion of an expert's view? Shouldn't we use secondary sources too to show that the names this article is organised around represent the most significant, noteworthy viewpoints? BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Andriewsky 2015[12] gives a recent historiography of the Holodomor, and in connection to the genocide debate names Volodymyr Viatrovych, James Mace, Valerii Soldatenko, Roman Serbyn, Rafael Lemkin, Myroslava Antonovych, Bohdan Klid, Alexander Motyl, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Mark von Hagen, Michael A. McDonnell, A. Dirk Moses, Stanislav Kulʼchytsʼkyi, Iurii Shapoval, Valerii Vasylʼiev, Vladyslav Verstiuk, Volodymyr Vasylenko, Nicolas Werth, Oleh Volovyna/Oleh Wolowyna, Andrea Graziosi, H. Kasʼianov/Georgiy Kasianov, V. Kharchenko, Dmytro Viedienieiev. Many other scholars are mentioned in the article and may have written on the specific subject as well.  —Michael Z. 18:18, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Some of the reference materials from the historians mentioned in Andriewsky, 2015: Soldatenko, Valerii (2012). Trahediia trydtsiatʹ tretʹoho: notatky na istoriohrafichnomu zrizi Трагедия тридцать третьего: нотаткы на историохрафичному зризи [Tragedy of the Thirty-third: notes on the historiographical section]. Natsionalʹna ta istorychna pam"iatʹ: zbirnyk naukovykh pratsʹ. (National and historical memory: collection of scientific works.) (in Ukrainian). Kyiv: Ukrainsʹkyi instytut natsionalʹnoi pam"iati., Bohdan, Klid; Motyl, Alexander J., eds. (2012). The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Toronto: CIUS Press., Antonovych, Myroslava (2012). "Holodomor 1932-1933 rokiv v Ukraini v konteksti radiansʹkoho henotsydu proty ukrainsʹkoi natsii.". In Vasylenko, Volodomyr; Antonovych, Myroslava (eds.). Holodomor 1932-1933 rokiv v Ukraini iak zlochyn henotsydu zhidno z mizhnarodnym pravom Голодомор 1932-1933 років в Україні як злочин геноциду згідно з міжнародним правом [The Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as a crime of genocide under international law] (in Ukrainian). Kyiv: Kyievo-Mohyliansʹka akademiia. {{cite book}}: Invalid |script-chapter=: missing title part (help) --Cdjp1 (talk) 11:42, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

This article really needs more meta analysis and less false balancey laundry lists of authors positions—blindlynx 20:16, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

This article discusses a question if Holodomor was a genocide. The whole issue of the Contemporary History journal (Contemporary European History, 27, 3 (2018)) is devoted to the results of the round table, which was devoted to Holodomor. I think, before moving further, it is highly desirable to read these articles. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:19, 3 April 2023 (UTC)