#holodomor cw

[jacensolodjo]

ID: picture of a list of the Jewish death toll broken down by country. The important information is Poland has a 2.93 million victim count while Ukraine tucked under the Soviet Union heading has 680,000.

Note: the text at the bottom left is for a different display.

Another shift working the Holocaust Museum another chance for me to take pictures to make a point.

Notice the death toll. I don't mean in total. I mean how many in each place. Poland is first. But look who is second. Ukraine.

680,000 Ukrainian Jews. And this is just official from the Holocaust. There are thousands more dead from pogroms and Soviet massacres.

Ukraine has been bled and bled again. Over and over. By both the Soviet Union and the Nazis. Whether for just the singular crime of being Ukrainian or for the double crime of Ukr and Jew. And make no mistake, there were literal plans in place by the Nazis for what to do with the Slavic peoples. Any and all Slavic peoples. It is why Operation Barbarossa went ahead. It is why Slavic folks were shot after they were used up. The best a Slavic person could hope for under nazi rule would have been slave. This is what the plans called for. Kill like 90% of the population and use the rest for slave labor.

So sure there were eastern European nazi collabs. But remember how many died. And how few actually collaborated once it became clear the nazis were not there to save people from communism despite their propaganda saying just that. (Also, people miss the fact that they called it Jew Bolshevism aka judeo-bolshevism. They blamed the Jews for communism which conflated jews with communism when in fact communism murdered a lot of Jews. And we see echoes of that now. Like. Y'all will literally sit there telling me anti communism is antisemitic. And not even seem to get you're regurgiating nazi propaganda but in diferent wrapping. There is nothing to be gained by equating jews with communism. I have met many jews who had family flee communism but i have not met a single jew that is vehemently pro communism. I'm not saying they don't exist, just that it is very rare. Because we all know exactly who communism harmed because in actuality communism could never play nice with Judaism. They do not mesh at all. We were all exposed to the 'russia/soviet union is a jewish utopia' thing but I promise that was incorrect. )

ID: pictures of multiple propaganda posters translated into Russian. Text on the top left says: Nazi propaganda posters meant to convince Europeans of the dangers of Jewish capitalist, communist, and masonic world conspiracy. End ID.

Related: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lost family in the Holocaust (a couple of great uncles i believe). He isn't alone. You will find the same story many places. And still we have people claiming ukrs are all nazis and Russia has the right of it. As if it didn't bleed Ukrainian jews as well. As if it isn't doing so right now. On every Shabbat, on every holiday, Ukrainian Jews have bled and/or died.

Semi related: just because a few Jews have played Nazis on screen (Taika Waititi, half the cast of Hogan's Heroes, Charlie Chaplin, a bunch of other folks too I'm sure) it doesn't mean it is somehow possible for a nazi to be a jew for real. And vice versa. We see this brought up so often and it makes my brain hurt. Like seriously your best defense when we say Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian Jew is that he is a nazi anyway? It is completely illogical. A jew can be self hating, but it is simply not possible for them to be a nazi. They can collaborate with nazis but at the end of the day they are the only people you can give collab credit to rather than just 'people who help nazis are nazis'. It is impossible no matter how self hating. Along with that you had a lot of people in ghettos who tried to save who they could by 'befriending' nazis. Technically collab, but not quite malicious. But at the end of the day a Jewish nazi cannot exist.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, proud Ukrainian Jew, cannot be a Nazi. Neither can the Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, who is also *gasp* Jewish (Shmyhal is a slavic form of 'ishmael/shmael' in fact). Literally the main reason people were unsure about Zelenskyy at first is they were afraid if he fucked up, he would be the cause for antisemitic pogroms in retaliation. (which is not the same as saying there's a bunch of Nazis in Ukraine. You don't have to be a nazi to be antisemitic and to blame Jews for shit.) No matter how you look at it, every explanation for the invasion and war are bunk. This one just makes my head hurt especially bad.

[underestimated-heroine]

no one loves an ostensible leftist who turns right around to essentially deny the Holodomor like this godforsaken website.

[greencheekconure27]

Hey guys a new free blocklist just dropped!This one is mostly neonazis and assorted far-right.

Link to the original post:

PS. I know reporting hate speech doesn't do much on Tumblr but I think we should try.

PPS.if anyone needs me to type out the urls tell me.

Cw for severe antisemitism, holocaust denial, holodomor denial, etc etc.:

Just sayin' :

[manonamora-if-reviews]

The Whisperers by Milo van Mesdag

============= Links

Play the game (IFComp) See other reviews of the game

============= Synopsis

The year is 1938, two newcomers have just arrived at their new home: a communal apartment in Moscow, the beating heart of Soviet power. But what will they make of their new lives? And what will their neighbours make of them? The Whisperers is a story of love, revolution, belief, and the choices ordinary people make in extraordinary times. Or: the year is 1938 and you have arrived at your local soviet sponsored theatre, ready for a play lauded by the agents of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda as "the first truly socialist play", in which the audience, the people, decide the course of events. Or: The Whisperers is a script for an interactive play, loosely adapted into a piece of written interactive fiction (while also featuring an annotated version for the ease of use of prospective directors and actors).

============= Other Info

The Whisperers is a Twine(SugarCube) game, submitted to the 2023 Edition of the IFComp.

Status: Completed Genre: Historical

CW: Physical violence. Mention of executions. Mention of Holodomor (genocide by engineered famine)

============= Playthrough

Played: 7-Oct-2023 Playtime: around 1h Rating: - [IFComp vote] Thoughts: We all play a part...

============= Review

The Whisperers is an interactive game set in the late 30s Soviet block, where you are an audience member of an interactive "propagandist" play, of three "families" living inside a paper-thin-walled apartment. Throughout the story, you are asked for your opinion on how the play should continue. There are essentially 3-ish possible endings.

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

I personally hate plays where the audience needs to take an active part of the story, where immersion is broken because the audience must have a say. But as an interactive game, I've quite enjoyed it! The active participating is not only welcomed, but adds another layer of intrigue into the story (at least in this case). The awkwardness of waiting for the play to start again is not there, as the passage loads right after your choice is made.

As for the story, a morality take in two acts, it made me think of those typical contemporary French plays happening within an apartment, where miscommunication and personal drama becomes the crux of the issue. While it is not as vaudevillian, with the play set in Soviet Russia during Stalin's regime, it is nonetheless cynical in its treatment of its characters. No one is good, no one is bad, everyone is stuck in their own situation (and some are maybe a bit stupid*). *the characters felt at times a bit flat, or a bit preachy in how they discuss some topics.

If you take it at face value, it's a pretty neat experience; and if you look deeper into it, it shows off the extensive research on the setting and the length taken to portray its intricacies, the horrors, and the hopes. It felt a bit like a commentary of the period. The play is fairly fast paced, and doesn't overstay its welcome, ending just at the climax. The interactiveness of it is fun, with your choice mattering or being disregarded (depending on the mode played) -- it could have been fun to learn whether these choices affected your position. I found the hidden ending to be the most fun one.

But, I did have some issue with the formatting of the text itself. While I appreciated the inclusion of formatting options, with palette themes and text font/size*, it made it obvious when an aspect was not customised (link colour not contrasted enough, popup). But that's a detail compared to... *it might have fitted more inside a Setting popup, the buttons' colours were too eye-catching.

... the passages not looking like an actual script. From the blurb to the game itself, it was clear we were meant to look forward to a play on our screen. But the text is vaguely formatted like one: the Act is centred on the page, but not the scenes or the character's names; the actions or voice level* are made obvious in brackets, but end up feeling lost inside dialogue (especially in the Guide's and Sergei's monologues)... It might seem like a detail, but the essence of playwriting felt a bit lost because of it? *the whispering aspect kinda felt like an afterthought after the first scene? The voice level of the characters didn't seem to matter much in further conversations...

Visual friction aside, this was neat.

[drakonovisny]

For all people who keep glorifying the Soviet Union

[silver-and-ivory]

Really, conservatives are going to be discriminated against like communists used to? Good thing for them they control the presidency, congress, the supreme court (soon), most state legislatures, the military, most police forces, most wealth ...

Hi, anon!

I think there was a miscommunication somewhere; and it makes sense that there was information loss because my thoughts weren’t fully explained.

Let’s look back at what I wrote:

I think maybe conservative/anti-SJism/etc. is proceeding towards a similar position in liberal spaces and communities that Communism once had.

This is phrased fairly unclearly, and I understand why my message was not understood.

But to clarify:

(Sidenote: I meant when I said “conservative/anti-SJism/etc.” is not necessarily just Bible-toting homophobes, just as the category“Communist” wasn’t limited to hardcore Stalinists — though I do believe that both should be protected and have free speech to the same degree that everyone else does.

I am referring also to sj’s treatment of e.g. me, an extremely socially-liberal trans nonwhite with basically leftist politics. I have been accused of being privileged and therefore not experiencing any real oppression, and told that I don’t have to deal with microaggressions. This all for saying that it isn’t funny to joke about murdering all straight people, or that white people writing rap music wasn’t appropriative all the time.)

With the quoted statement above, I meant to say that some aspects of how Communists were treated post-WWII feel eerily similar to the way conservative/general anti-sj/sj-critical people have been treated in colleges or activist/leftist type areas (such as my school). For example, Communist speakers were not allowed to speak on campus, some lost their teaching jobs, etc., etc., and I see this process repeating today with regards to people who are not sj in liberal spaces.

Of course, this is not equivalent in degree to discrimination against Communists, as you are correct to note. But it does seem relevant to what kind of norms I want to create in my own life and my own spaces.

I was surprised to realize that I had an immediate reaction to Communists being purged from colleges and activist groups. I do not like the idea of someone being shouted down and guilt-tripped and personally attacked, even if they believe that e.g. Stalin’s Holodomor never happened.

I think I want to establish some kind of meta-structure to decide what kind of ideological policing is not objectionable to me and how it would be done, and to somehow square this with competing access needs and things like safe spaces. But I’m not there yet; and I hope that knowledge of McCarthyism’s evils and so on could lend value to my theory.

Thank you for asking, and I like very much that people who disagree with me read my posts!

[gatheringbones]

It was thoroughly scrubbed and cleaned, all Communists, Komsomols and activists having been mobilized for the job. Furniture from the regional theater in Brovary was brought, and the clubrooms beautifully appointed with it. Curtains and drapes were brought from Kiev, also tablecloths. One wing was turned into a dining-hall, the tables of which were covered with new cloths and decorated with flowers. The regional telephone exchange, and the switchboard operator, were transferred from Brovary to the farm. Some steers and hogs were slaughtered to provide plenty of meat. A supply of beer was also brought in. All the corpses and starving peasants were removed from the highways in the surrounding countryside and the peasants were forbidden to leave their houses. A mass meeting of collective farm workers was called, and they were told that a motion picture would be made of collective farm life, and for this purpose this particular farm had been chosen by a film-unit from Odessa. Only those who were chosen to play in the picture would turn out for work, the rest of the members must stay home and not interfere. Those who were picked by a special committee were given new outfits brought from Kiev: shoes, socks, suits, hats, handkerchiefs…. The next day, when Herriot was due to arrive, now well-dressed workers were seated in the dining hall and served a hearty meal. They were eating huge chunks of meat, washing it down with beer or lemonade, and were making short work of it. The director, who was nervous, called upon the people to eat slowly, so that the honoured guest, Herriot, would see them at their tables. Just then a telephone message came from Kiev: “Visit cancelled, wind everything up.” Now another meeting was called. Shaparov thanked the workers for a good performance, and then Denisenko asked them to take off and return all of the clothes that had been issued to them, with the exception of socks and handkerchiefs. The people begged to be allowed to keep the clothes and shoes, promising to work and pay for them, but to no avail. Everything had to be given back and returned to Kiev, to the stores from which it had been borrowed.

Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest, describing the canceled visit of French radical leader Edouard Herriot to a Ukrainian village during the enforced famine.

[lena-kuragina]

Hey, I just wanted to come out here and say that Holodomor (the Ukrainian genocide) was specifically engineered to look like a famine, which was a mechanism that the soviet government used to deny its existence. There’s a post going around claiming that children were caged and gassed during it, and that is completely untrue.  

This is not meant to ‘compare’ atrocities and their devastating impact on different communities, just that distorting facts in order to further a comparison that is not there is extremely disrespectful. It’s also pretty gross to arbitrarily talk about major human rights issues that you know nothing about to make yourself seem woke lmao

[scrivenger-grimgar]

something especially interesting is a point i learned in my genocide studies class: Soviet Russia deliberately induced a famine in Ukraine because Ukrainians did not want to be communist. a lot of people died, an estimated 7-10 million, and the people and culture have never quite recovered. the event is known as the Holodomor genocide, and the Russians kept this from the public until the 90’s. it occurred in 1932-1933, but was only recognized as a genocide in 2003-2008, and those who commit genocide are very unlikely to face punishment.

[jacensolodjo]

Lmao so apparently even though the book isn’t out yet, people are posting ‘reviews’ for the Red Famine book. And I just...

“One reason for the controversy is that if either the Ukrainian or the peasant group were specifically targeted, the charge of genocide can be laid at Stalin’s door. The evidence is contradictory, however. Ukraine was far from being the only Soviet republic subjected to farm collectivization and it was not the only one to suffer severe shortage of food, or even a catastrophic death rate.”

I guess we’ll ignore how even those who didn’t live in Ukraine were actually Ukrainian in other parts of the USSR ergo, yes, it actually was directly targeted at Ukrainians. Even if not, it still qualifies as genocide because people were targeted based on what they are. 

The evidence is not contradictory. Because you know what? Some people CAN be collateral damage during acts of genocide. And they WERE. Doesn’t mean genocide wasn’t what it was. If it was enacted with the intent on targeting Ukrainians the most then well what else would you call it besides genocide? 

“ It is obviously very important that the facts of that crime are known, not least because its existence was still denied at the time of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization and although its scale was admitted in Russia as a consequence of glasnost, many Russians persisted in refusing to acknowledge it as an act of genocide. The other side are not completely blameless either--”

“--some Ukrainians have tastelessly sought to brand the Holodomor as worse than the Holocaust and even exaggerated the number of victims to support their claims.”

where are these mythical Ukrainians making that statement. The closest I've seen are antisemites who are Holocaust deniers but recognize the Holodomor. Which is not the same thing as saying one is worse than the other. Hell, I've even seen people deny BOTH. But never 'this was worse' only mention of death tolls with comparisons to other atrocities including other communist atrocities. Where are these mythical Ukrainians just ‘exaggerating’ victim numbers? In what galaxy would anyone need to ‘exaggerate’ a death toll of millions when already a million is a million too many to be murdered just for being what they are? I think we all know that death tolls don't convince people of wrongdoing anyways so exaggerating any number is a waste of fucking time. The only reason the toll has wavered up and down is through new information being released from the archives and estimates being adjusted accordingly. As well as being at odds with the 'estimates' of death from the communists themselves.

[eldunea]

Why I Am EXTREMELY Against Zarkon Getting a Redemption Arc

[CW: Intense salt about Voltron and in-depth discussion of genocide.]

i’m gonna just put it right the fuck out here: LM and JDS had no idea what the FUCK they were doing and i have the numbers to prove it.

so they wanna tell kids to forgive a murderous genocidal tyrant. that’s bad enough. but it makes it even worse that the writers of the show didn’t seem to have any conception of the scope of the crimes they were committing. like……seriously. are they so stupid that they don’t even understand the monstrosity that zarkon has canonically done? let me break it down for you all exactly how bad an atrocity that we’re talking about.

the galra have either killed or enslaved every single sapient species they’ve conquered. this is CANON. 

the galra have conquered nearly the entire known universe. this is ALSO CANON.

with a track record like that, i’m going to give you an estimate of how many people zarkon killed or enslaved.

there are at least 100 billion planets in the milky way, 40 billion of which are habitable. there are at least 200 billion galaxies in the universe. let’s pick a real low number and assume each of the 200 billion galaxies in the universe have 10% of their habitable planets inhabited. this makes 4 billion inhabited planets per galaxy * 200 billion galaxies = 800 billion inhabited planets. now, since the galra have conquered almost the entire known universe, let’s say 90% of those inhabited planets have been colonized. that means 720 billion planets, or 7.2 x 10^11 planets, have been conquered.

now, populations vary based on planet to planet. with maxed out efficiency of resource use, some scientists think the earth is capable of carrying 10 billion people, which is probably the amount that other planets can carry and the amount that advanced alien civilizations would be able to approach but not exceed. many planets will have far less people, however, whether due to lower carrying capacity or due to the fact that those civilizations have technology equivalent to preindustrial humanity and thus factors like illness and starvation keep their population numbers low. so, in the end, it would probably average out to 5 billion (5 x 10^9) people per planet.

put that all together and you have 5 x 10^9 * 7.2 x 10^11. 

Conservatively, 3.6 x 10^21 or 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 people were killed or enslaved by the Galra.

that’s 3.6 sextillion people, exponentially more people than there have ever been humans alive on earth.

we cannot fathom it.

we can’t ask children to fathom it.

I don’t think LM and JDS even TRIED to understand that when they say a species has 1) conquered an entire universe and 2) enslaved and murdered every single sapient species within it, THIS IS THE HORROR THAT THEY ARE IMPLYING. THIS IS THE HORROR THEY WANT //CHILDREN// TO FORGIVE. 

because listen. when you say that genocide happened across the universe, the crimes perpetrated would INEVITABLY be on a scale beyond that of the holocaust. beyond that of the holodomor. beyond that of the cultural revolution. beyond what pol pot did to cambodia, beyond what happened in the rwandan genocide--beyond the death tolls of all of humanity’s atrocities throughout the entirety of human history PUT TOGETHER.

and to write that the person in charge of such unfathomable crimes should be forgiven?

should be redeemed?

should get to fight alongside the paladins he killed and tried to kill in some bullshit solidarity because he’s “sorry” and he “didn’t mean it” and he’s obviously a ~better person~ now so he can somehow get a ~second chance?~

i have nothing more to say in reply to that. 

It makes me angry beyond words.

[ofalsehoods]

[cw: irl genocide mention]

don’t ever talk to lotor about the holocaust, or the holodomor, or china’s great famine. he had known about earth for thousands of years before these things happened, he just so happened to not be in the area while totalitarian dictators were a thing, and learning about it made him feel as though he could have done something to stop it. he honestly partially blames himself for the deaths of these millions of people and even though he knows it’s “““““not as bad””””” as what the galra have done, he still feels saddened that it happened and that as someone who has saved billions of lives he could have changed things for the better. he especially feels as though he could have done something about hitler; the german dictator’s similarity to his father makes lotor hate him more than any other human.

[jacensolodjo]

It was literally called the hunger plan by Nazi Germany. It had very explicit language about pre meditated famine and genocide. The breadbasket of europe was considered too prosperous, too well fed. It literally said millions should die or be deported. It said that. Not that it could result. But that it should. And anyone who starved was only trying to destabilize the economy. I can't imagine going thru holodomor, and even for a while wanting Germany to invade because maybe Germany would help. Or at least poland. But no. Germany does invade but only restarts the holodomor process. The fear is unimaginable. Literally I can't even begin to process this.

[jacensolodjo]

I’m in actual, real tears about this excerpt from Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin:

“For both Hitler and Stalin, Ukraine was more than a source of food. It was the place that would enable them to break the rules of traditional economics, rescue their countries from poverty and isolation, and remake the continent in their own image. Their programs and their power all depended upon their control of Ukraine’s fertile soil and its millions of agricultural laborers. In 1933, Ukrainians would died in the millions, in the greatest artificial famine in the history of the world. This was the beginning of the special history of Ukraine, but not the end. In 1941 Hitler would seize Ukraine from Stalin, and attempt to realize his own colonial vision beginning with the shooting of Jews and the starvation of Soviet prisoners of war. The Stalinists colonized their own country, and the Nazis colonized occupied Soviet Ukraine: and the inhabitants of Ukraine suffered and suffered. During the years that both Stalin and Hitler were in power, more people were killed in Ukraine than anywhere else in the bloodlands, or in Europe, or in the world.“

It’s a miracle any of us survived at all. This is why I get so angry though. This is why I won’t stop talking about what is happening in eastern europe. This is why I’m not letting people forget. This is why I’m pointing out the alarming repeat of events. If I can’t forget, neither should anyone else be able to. But this is why my battle cry is that my ancestors survived the bloodlands, so I will survive this. 

This book, along with Bitter Harvest, is all I’ve ever wanted. I wish I had found this book sooner, it came out in 2012. 

There are apparently anecdotes and survivors’ accounts in here too and i’m gonna be a mess trying to read them. I’ve read others about the Holodomor before and pretty much cried for three days straight.

[silver-and-ivory]

This phenomenon is clearly and definitely not limited to white boys, nor is it any better coming from e.g. a transfeminine indigenous Latina.

People who have escaped communist hellholes: It’s fucked up, I don’t even know where my family is.

19 year old woke tumblr white boy: yeah but :/

[jacensolodjo]

If the famine weren’t man made why would it be so damn suspicious for someone to actually not be dead yet from hunger after all their food had been taken, often being done so in the middle of the night and yanked out of bed?

If the famine weren’t man made why would you toss out the contents of a pot of fucking soup? Wouldn’t you wish for those people to eat whatever the fuck they managed to find to make? 

If the famine weren’t targeted and man made why would you, at the same time, decide to destroy any ability for people to know of any famine-induced illnesses (usually from dead bodies)? Why would you simultaneously make it illegal for people to speak their own damn native language to pass on information necessary to survive? Why would you destroy their books, their pamphlets, their schools, their churches? All places that could coordinate food relief were taken out of commission. 

If the famine weren’t targeted and man made why would you then prevent people from traveling to find food? Would you not wish them luck on this endeavor? Disease control doesn’t fit.

Weaken them with hunger, destroy their literature, outlaw their language. That is how you commit genocide. Not just of the people, but of the culture. 

The Holodomor was genocide.