Holodomor week has concluded in my history class and I figured I would write about everything that was said and has happened. This wont just be about the class material but other things said to us in and out of class. Everything that happens in this class seems interconnected to me, even emails about events being held at the school feel very much related (and this is self admitted by my professor). I highly suggest you stick around and read this whole post, because it’s not just the course materials that are a problem, but the institution and professor as a whole.

Day 2 of what I am calling “holodomor week” happened the same day I received that god awful email from my professor (he actually sent it after class so it felt almost targeted since I was not behaving as I usually do, maybe he noticed). While the first class of the week played out the Bolshevik revolution and Soviet stuff in a more generalized sense (here’s the post about it if your curious) this class dove “deep” into the famine itself. And by “deep” I mean it sarcastically because this lecture did not, in fact, wade into darker, more nuanced, waters.

He begins the class saying Stalin targeted ethnic minorities that he suspected to be traitors (pro-German and/or anti-Russian). He goes on to cite Timothy Snyder who said that the most persecuted European minority at the time were Soviet Poles. My professor then calls Stalin anti-polish and talks about the ethnic cleansing campaigns of the 1930s. He admits that there was a famine across the Soviet Union but it hit Ukraine especially hard. My professor asks if the holodomor was intentionally called that so it could sound more like holocaust, he directs this question at the one Ukrainian girl in class. She said that it was a coincidence. Fun Fact, he directs his questions at the Ukrainian girl a lot during this class, treating her like an absolute authority.

He talks about how there are still debates on whether the holodomor was a genocide or not. The west says yes, but Russia says no. He pokes fun at this, because obviously Russia would deny it as a genocide because they don’t want to be prosecuted. He then says that Putin is trying to erase Ukrainian identity as a whole.

A quote from Norman Naimark was shown:

The Ukrainian killer famine should be considered an act of genocide. There is enough evidence—if not overwhelming evidence-to indicate that Stalin and his lieutenants knew that the widespread famine in the USSR in 1932-33 hit Ukraine particularly hard, and that they were ready to see millions of Ukrainian peasants die as a result. They made no efforts to provide relief; they prevented the peasants from seeking food themselves in the cities or elsewhere in the USSR; and they refused to relax restrictions on grain deliveries until it was too late. Stalin’s hostility to the Ukrainians and their attempts to maintain their form of “home rule” as well as his anger that Ukrainian peasants resisted collectiviation fueled the killer famine.

My professor then says that the first half of the quote was indisputable. He then shows a quote from Stephen Kotkin who says the famine was not intentional:

“There is no question of Stalin’s responsibility for the famine” and "many deaths could have been prevented if not for the insufficient and counterproductive Soviet measures, but “there is no evidence for Stalin’s intention to kill the Ukrainians deliberately… the Holodomor was a foreseeable byproduct of the collectivization campaign that Stalin forcibly imposed, but not an intentional murder.”

My professor says that the famine was man-made and that the soviets knowingly put into place policies that would cause the famine. That is indisputable. Stalin knew the famine was starting and intentionally seized crops for the cities and to send overseas. He then played a video from this website for the class: http://sharethestory.ca/index.html

The specific video he showed was “Halyna’s story” for those curious. After the video ended I could hear people crying. A girl spoke up (she does that a lot in this class) that her grandmother is Estonian and had a very similar story, so the video is accurate. He then says that it’s been 80 years but the emotions are still so raw.

So why was this woman persecuted, he asks the class. Some of the answers given were because she and her family did not collectivize but also because of some unknown sin (i think this last comment was alluding to her possibly being persecuted because she’s Ukrainian); because Ukraine is very agricultural; kulaks and Ukrainian were conflated; and the last reason was Ukraine identified with feudalism and the Soviet Union wanted to get rid of feudalism.

Raphael Lemkin, the guy who coined the term genocide, says the holodomor was genocide (I am so disappointed in you, Lemkin, I thought you were cool). What a bummer. A girl spoke up saying she was, at first, not sure if the famine was an actual genocide but now she’s convinced it was because even though the Soviets said they wanted to end the church itself, they actually only wanted to replace the Ukrainian church with a Russian one, so like a form of imperialism I guess. My professor then said that Stalin only really tolerated the Russian Orthodox Church, not really supporting it. The Ukrainian girl said that the Soviet Union wanted a rootless people, to create a new man, the soviet man, a human that is loyal to the state and if culture gets in the way of that then the culture is to be liquidated. My professor jokes that maybe this was a genocide against everyone.

Under the UN genocide convention you cannot commit genocide against a class, that is because when the convention was being created the USSR vetoed class as a target. The girl with the Estonian grandma piped up again saying that she was researching the USSR and the UN and said that it was the one country that did the most vetos because had they not vetoed anything then they would have been implicated in many crimes.

He made a comment about the famine invigorating nationalism (i did wonder if this was directed at me). He then shows a quote from Stalin that proponents of the famine being a genocide use as proof:

”The main thing is now Ukraine. Matters in Ukraine are now extremely bad. Bad from the standpoint of the Party line. Kosior… Chubar…(and) Redens [Ukrainian Bolshevik leaders]…lack the energy to direct the struggle with the counterrevolution in such a big and unique republic as Ukraine. If we do not now correct the situation in Ukraine, we could lose Ukraine. Consider that Pulsudski [a Polish leader who wanted to create an independent Ukraine aligned with Poland]…is not daydreaming, and his agents in Ukraine are much stronger than Redens or Kosior imagine. Also consider that within the Ukrainian Communist Party (500,000 members, ha, ha) there are not a few (yes, not a few!) rotten elements that are conscious or unconscious Petliura [Ukrainian nationalist who fought for an independent Ukraine during Russian Civil War] adherents and in the final analysis agents of Pilsudski. If the situation gets any worse, these elements won’t hesitate to open a front within (and outside) the Party, against the Party… Set yourself the task of turning Ukraine in the shortest possible time into a fortress of the USSR, into the most inalienable republic. Don’t worry about money for this purpose.”

He brings up Stalin’s 1932 order against Ukraine and the NKVD blacklist. He said that the soviets had a stockpile to feed the Ukrainians but chose not to. He then mentioned Stalin’s secret decree called “Preventing the mass exodus of peasants who are starving.” What does this mean? I have no fucking clue. He also did not go into details about it.

Intent vs Outcome: students argued that the intent doesn’t matter as the outcome was the same, what happened in the Congo and this famine are similar. There was not enough food in the Nazi camps so the prisoners hoarded food and fought each other over it, there wasn’t enough food in Ukraine so people hid it from each other. I guess both are the same. He then conflated Israeli nationalism and Ukrainian nationalism, that what happened to the Jews fuels Israel and what happened with the famine fuels Ukraine. And I guess thats just a-okay.

Day 3, aka the final day. In my opinion this day was way more of a shit show even though the main topic wasn’t the holodomor, why? You’re about to find out, don’t worry. For this day we had to read a chapter from Mike Davis’ Late Victorian Holocausts. The Chapter we were assigned was “Victoria’s Ghosts” and it is all about the 1876-1878 Indian Famine.

He began our class by saying this week is all about famine and how it may intersect with genocide. So I am sure a lot of you are familiar with this famine, is coincides with the global El Niño that caused other famines too. 10 million Indians died from this famine. He said it was called the largest tragedy at the time. But was it a natural disaster or man-made?

There was a monsoon failure which led to a drought. Crop yields did decrease but there was still enough food to feed everyone, there was also lots of money too. But even so food was being shipped out not kept, food was going to everyone else except the hungry. He said something about failures in mechanism of supply. It happened because of policy failures, but there were also Indian “kulaks.” The policies in place were those to starve people. Why were the British exporting? Well, the small government let the market make the decisions, who ever can pay more gets the grain. So capitalism is the problem, glad we agree (he did not say that, thats all me baby). Theres also this thing called cash crops, where agriculture was a taken up by opium and grain for the global market rather than to feed those who are starving, you can’t eat opium. There was also deindustrialization of India, the British wanted to flood the market with cheaper English goods and Bengal industries got wiped out. The market economy replaced the moral economy, a Marxist economist came up with the term “moral economy,” he said their name but it was hard to make out. Revenue collection, taxes from India were not really being used properly, they went towards railroads, camps, etc. He then says that weather was more of a factor in this famine than in Ukraine but it was still man-made. Famine is a tool for genocide, for example many Holocaust victims died of famine as it was used by the Nazis to kill off those who were not sent to gas chambers. A girl brings up Ukraine again saying that before she was iffy if it was a genocide but now she’s convinced because the Soviets were actively repressing and replacing Ukrainian culture with Russians.

This part is incredibly weird and quite insulting: he goes on to say that Mike Davis is a Marxist and asks us to picture what he might look like, repeating that this man is a Marxist scholar. Then a photo of him is shown and everyone (except me) laughs. The girl with the Estonian grandma said he looks like someone’s peepaw. What the fuck is going on? Why would he do this? He literally didn’t do this with anyone else we’ve studied in class so why with Davis? We all know why… He then reads off a quote from Davis from I think the first pages of the book:

“In her somberly measured reflections, Reading the Holocaust, Inga Glendinnen ventures this opinion about the slaughter of innocents: 'If we grant that ‘Holocaust’, the total consumption of offerings by fire, is sinisterly appropriate for the murder of those millions who found their only graves in the air, it is equally appropriate for the victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden.” Without using her capitalization (which implies too complete an equation between the Shoah and other carnages), it is the burden of this book to show that imperial policies towards starving subjects were often the moral equivalents of bombs dropped from 18000 feet. The contemporary photographs used in this book are thus intended as accusations not illustrations."

So basically, Mike Davis is using the word holocaust to make a connection between what happened to the victims of the (upper case) Holocaust to what happened in India in the late 18 hundreds. With this quote he is trying to be provocative (profs’ words, not mine), it is well written but polemic to get people to think. He then says he’s not entirely comfortable with everything he’s said in class (as in what he lectured and read off to us), why? Is it uncomfortable to hear the thoughts of a Marxist?

He then asks us if we thought this book belonged on our syllabus. So students piped up here and there; within the authoritarian context they compared Stalin and Viceroy: Stalin had his quote about how western countries industrialized due to exploiting their colonies but the USSR had no colonies to exploit, so it would treat its country side like colonies. Britain exploited the shit out of India, so I guess they’re both the same because both did colonialism.

What about capitalism vs communism? A girl said they become the same thing in terms of whatever goes along with their ideology (money vs the revolution). Both ideologies saw people as disposable. In the USSR, Marx was right and because of that anything is justified to reach a communist utopia. If it takes a famine then so be it. He then says that Marx was help up as almost like a biblical figure in the Soviet Union. Adam Smith was held with the same regard in the west, so I guess they are the same. The ends justify the means. Both ideologies are not applied consistently, work camps established in India go against their philosophy or “small government.” Both lack empathy, the British pushed famine refugees away and Stalin did the same apparently. Racism was a factor for the British but it wasn’t really talked about when it came to the Soviet famine.

We then talked about the banality of evil with a guy named Richard Temple. This wasn’t discussed too much so we will move on.

The holodomor and this famine are both obsessed with ideas: liquidation of the rich was compared to the elimination of the poor… what? How the fuck is that comparable in any way? The systems put in place targeted and affected Indians, not white settlers. Both famines claim higher ideological goals but warped it. Both Soviets and the British had food but exported it rather than feed those who needed it. My professor then makes a comment that he hopes this reading (of Mike Davis) doesn’t turn us into communists because of everything communism has done… fuck you, dude! He goes on to finish the lecture saying that the two famines are very different still because there was no monsoon failure in Ukraine, so he doesn’t like to compare them too closely. If you opposed policy in the Soviet Union you got sent to the gulag, if you opposed policy of the British nothing would really happen to you. This last part was very weird to hear, it was almost as if he was downplaying what happened in India, because Ukraine had it so much worse. At least in India there was the weather aspect but Ukraine was entirely man-made. What a situation sentiment to have, at least be consistent with your shit ideology.

Even though the lecture ended, the day did not. I exited the class, absolutely disgusted with what I had to listen to, and went straight to the library. During my time doing work I saw I had an email from my history professor, this time it wasn’t directed at me but the whole class. In this email he alerts us to some events: a student in our class is going to give a “talk” comparing Nazi germany and North Korea with regards to sexual violence and concentration camps, he is encouraging us to attend this dumbass presentation as it relates to the class material. The other event is about a film screening of 20 Days in Mariupol that is gang to happen soon, he says the movie is “sadly” relevant to our class. He then ends the email telling us to enjoy the weather over the weekend since our class is so depressing.

Have any of you watched that movie? Is it worth it? I will not be attending that student’s talk. She is incredibly annoying and I’m not about to learn about the DPRK from some white girl that has never been there who wants to compare it to Nazi fucking Germany. Womp Womp. Also I have class during her little event so thankfully I’ve got a great excuse not to attend.

That’s all from me. Sometimes I feel like I’m being personally targeted now but I’m probably just being paranoid, it’s an institutional problem not just a professor thing. I will be having paper consultations soon and I am staying firm on my topic being about the Donbas, no matter what he or the head of the Ukrainian “club” think about it. I will not be bullied into submission.