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NYT Propagandizes False Ukrainian History
The New York Times claims that the Ukraine Separatists Rewrite History of 1930s Famine. A headline nearer to the historic truth would be "NYT Propagandizes False Ukrainian History" or "Ukraine Separatists Correct Rewritten History of 1930s Famine".
An excerpt from the piece says:
Traditionally, Ukrainian historians have characterized the famine as a genocide, the direct result of Stalin’s forced collectivization and the Soviet government’s requisitioning of grain for export abroad, leaving Ukraine short — and its borders sealed shut. Since Ukraine gained independence, that is what its students have been taught.
But that is not what students in southeastern Ukraine are learning this year. Instead, under orders from the newly installed separatist governments, they are getting the sanitized Russian version, in which the famine was an unavoidable tragedy that befell the entire Soviet Union.
West-Ukrainians have claimed that the famine caused by the Soviet government under Stalin was a unique genocide targeted against ethnic Ukrainians. They often use this claim to demonize Russians. But that claim is ahistoric and false.
The famine happened in all agricultural areas of the Soviet Union. The Volga region of Russia was just as much effected as the Ukraine region But the most hurt area was Kazakhstan:
Kazakhs were most severely affected by the Soviet famine in terms of percentage of people who died (approximately 38%). Around 1.5 million people died in Kazakhstan of whom 1.3 million where ethnic Kazakhs.
Even the Ukrainians who claim that the famine was a special anti-Ukrainian genocide concede that point. In a 2009 piece on the issue the NYT quoted a Ukrainian professor who propagandizes the genocide myth:
“If in other regions, people were hungry and died from famine, then here people were killed by hunger,” Professor Kulchytsky said. “That is the absolute difference.”
So being "killed by hunger" in Ukraine and "died from famine" in the Volga region and Kazakhstan is an "absolute difference"? The cause as well as the outcome seem to be the same to me. What else but some national genocide myth making could create an "absolute difference" in that.
The reasons for the famine are also multiple and not caused by a Stalin order or intent to "kill the Ukrainians":
[In 1927 Stalin warned] party congress delegates of an impending capitalist encirclement, he stressed that survival and development could only occur by pursuing the rapid development of heavy industry.
…
Shifting from Lenin's New Economic Policy or NEP, the first Five-Year Plan established central planning as the basis of economic decision-making, stressing rapid, heavy industrialization. It began the rapid process of transforming a largely agrarian nation consisting of peasants into an industrial superpower. In effect, the initial goals were laying the foundations for future exponential economic growth.
…
In November 1928 the Central Committee decided to implement forced collectivization of the peasant farmers. This marked the end of the NEP, which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the open market. Grain requisitioning intensified and peasants were forced to give up their private plots of land and property, to work for collective farms, and to sell their produce to the state for a low price set by the state.
Given the goals of the first Five Year Plan, the state sought increased political control of agriculture, hoping to feed the rapidly growing urban areas and to export grain, a source of foreign currency needed to import technologies necessary for heavy industrialization.
The plan of rapid industrialization was largely successful. Iron and coal production exploded. New industries grew with newly imported modern machines. The agricultural development was more difficult. The forced collectivization of peasant farmers and the exceeding central demands to deliver their products to the cities and for export led to a sharp drop in agricultural productivity and output. The small land landowners boycotted the collectivization which was then brutally enforced. Only in the early 1940s did the agricultural production again reach the level of the early 1930s.
The separatist governments in east-Ukraine have this right. The famine was the heavy price paid for the fast industrialization of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The main agricultural regions were hit hardest while areas with coal and iron ore and the cities developed the most.
But only the successful industrialization in the 1930s enabled the Soviet Union to withstand the German onslaught in the following decade. Without Stalin's foresight and brutal industrialization the Soviet Union would not have been able to later out-produce the well industrialized Germany in weapons and ammunition. It would have lost the war against the Nazis. Even as it won the war it cost the Soviet Union about five times the casualties of the 1930s famine.
But the fact that the Soviet Union did not lose that war against Nazi-Germany may be the real reason why today's Ukrainian "nationalists" are sad about the issue.
@Demian
Demian, some info on what I mentioned earlier.
In the book ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa und der russische Historikerstreit'(“Operation Barbarossa and the Russian Historians’ Dispute”),
German historian Wolfgang Strauss examines the work of Russian historians,mostly made possible after the fall of the USSR and the partial opening of many formerly sealed soviet archives.
There are still hundreds of thousands of sealed archives.
He writes that one of the earliest Russian revisionists of World War II history was Pyotr Grigorenko, a Soviet Army Major General and highly decorated war veteran who taught at the Frunze Military Academy.
In 1967, Strauss relates, he was the first leading Soviet figure to advance the revisionist arguments, which became well known during the
1980s and 1990s, on Stalin’s preparations for aggressive war against Germany. In an article submitted to a major Soviet journal(but rejected, and later published abroad), Grigorenko pointed out that Soviet military forces vastly outnumbered German forces in 1941.
Just prior to the German attack on June 22, 1941, more than half of the Soviet forces were in the area near and west of Bialystok, that is,in an area deep in Polish occupied territory. “This deployment could only be justified” wrote Grigorenko, “if these troops were deploying
for a surprise offensive. In the event of an enemy attack these troops would soon be encircled.”
An incomplete list of recent Russian historians who have come to the conclusion that Stalin was preparing to launch a major offensive against Germany in the summer of 41 but was beat to it by Hitler;
Viktor Suvorov(aka Vladimir Bogdanovich Resun), historian and archivist Mikhail Meltiukhov,
V. A. Nevezhin, V. D. Danilov,Igor Bunich, Russian historian I. V. Pavlova, V. L. Doroshenko, M.Solonin, etc.
Meltiukhov(associated with the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Documentation and Archival Science, published ‘Upushchennyy shans Stalina ‘(“Stalin’s Lost Opportunity”).), who, with his experience in documentation and archival science and his easier access to Soviet-era records, has provided a lot of documentation for Suvorov’s theses.
Two Russian anthologies, both issued in 1995, were examined by Strauss: “Did Stalin Make Preparations for an Offensive War Against Hitler?,” and “September 1, 1939-May 9, 1945:
50th Anniversary of the Defeat of Fascist Germany.”[Gotovil li Stalin nastupatel’nuyu voynu protiv Gitlera (“Did Stalin Make Preparations for an Offensive War Against Hitler?,” by Grigoriy Bordyugov and Vladimir Nevezhin (Moscow: AIRO XX, 1995), and, 1 sentyabrya 1939-9 maya 1945:
Pyatidesyatiletiye razgroma fashistkoy Germanii v Kontekste Nachala Vtoroy Mirovoy Voyny (“September 1, 1939-May 9, 1945: the 50th Anniversary of the Defeat of Fascist Germany in the Context of the Beginning of the War”),
edited by I.V. Pavlova and V. L. Doroshenko (Novosibirsk Memorial, 1995).
Strauss lists (pages 102-105) the major findings and conclusions of Russian revisionist historians, derived mostly from the two major works cited above:
-Stalin wanted a general European war of exhaustion in which the USSR would intervene at the politically and militarily most expedient moment. Stalin’s main intention is seen in his speech to the Politburo of August 19, 1939.
-To ignite this, Stalin used the [August 1939] Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, which: a) provoked Hitler’s attack against Poland, and b) evoked the declarations of war [against Germany] by Britain and France.
-In the event Germany was defeated quickly [by Britain and France], Stalin planned to “Sovietize” Germany and establish a “Communist government” there, but with the danger that the victorious capitalist powers would never permit a Communist Germany.
-In the event France was defeated quickly [by Germany], Stalin planned the “Sovietization” of France. “A Communist revolution would seem inevitable, and we could take advantage of this for our own purposes by rushing to aid France and making her our ally. As a result of this, all the nations under the ‘protection’ of a victorious Germany would become our allies.”
-From the outset Stalin reckoned on a war with Germany, and the [Soviet] conquest of Germany. To this end, Stalin concentrated on the western border of the USSR operational offensive forces, which were five- to six-times stronger than the Wehrmacht with respect to tanks, aircraft and artillery.
-With respect to a war of aggression, on May 15, 1941, the Red Army’s Main Political Directorate instructed troop commanders that every war the USSR engaged in, whether defensive or offensive, would have the character of a “just war.”
-Troop contingents were to be brought up to full strength in all the
western military districts; airfields and supply bases to support a forward-strategy were to be built directly behind the border; an attack force of 60 divisions was to be set up in the Ukraine and mountain divisions and a parachute corps were to be established for attack operations.
The 16th, 19th, 21st, 22nd and 25th Soviet Armies were transferred from the interior to the western border, and deployed at take-off points for the planned offensive.
In his speech of May 5, 1941, to graduate officers of the academies, Stalin said that war with Germany was inevitable, and characterized
it as a war not only of a defensive nature but rather of an offensive nature.
Stalin intended to attack in July 1941, although Russian historians disagree about the precise date. Suvorov cites July 6, [Valeri] Danilov
[a retired Soviet Colonel] gives July 2, while Melitiukhov writes:
“The Red Army could not have carried out an attack before July 15.”
The Suvorov school and certain German military analysts speculate that Stalin’s failure to attack before the German onslaught of June 22,
1941, was probably because his own forces had not yet fully deployed for the offensive.
Sergeyev, on the other hand, suggests that the attack plan prepared by Zhukov was faulty.
Meltiukhov, associated with the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Documentation and Archival Science, author of ‘Upushchennyy shans Stalina’ (“Stalin’s Lost Opportunity”).
Meltiukhov speculates that Stalin delayed the date for the attack when he learned, on May 12, of Rudolf Hess’ flight to Scotland.
Stalin feared that if the Hess peace mission succeeded, and the British withdrew from the war, the Red Army would be left to stand alone against
the Germans. When it became clear that the Hess mission had failed, Stalin set July 15 as the date for Operation Thunderstorm.
Posted by: Luca K | May 2 2015 20:49 utc | 104
Some more:
The Zhukov Plan of May 15, 1941, continues to be the focus of analysis and discussion.
Vladimir Sergeyev described and published excerpts from the Zhukov document, which was discovered in the Archives of the President of
the Russian Federation some years ago. For ultimate security, the original twelve-page text had been handwritten by then Major General,
later Marshal, A. M. Vasilevski, and addressed to the chairman of the USSR Council of Peoples Commissars, Joseph Stalin.
The document, marked “Top Secret! Of Great Importance! Stalin’s Eyes Only! One Copy Only!,” was authorized and approved by People’s Defense
Minister S. K. Timoshenko and Zhukov, then chief of the Red Army general staff.
A key passage in the war plan not previously cited in these pages reads:
“In order to prevent a surprise German attack and to destroy the German Army, I consider it essential that under no circumstances should the initiative for freedom of action be given to the German High Command[. I consider it essential] to preempt enemy deployment, to attack the German Army when it is still in the stage of deployment and has not yet had time to organize his front and the interaction between his service arms.
[The word for “preempt” was underlined twice in the original document).
Thus did Zhukov propose to Stalin precisely what the German Army would do to his forces a month later.
Soviet mobilization and deployment in the period January-June 1941 took place in three stages:
first stage, January-March, the call-up of about a million reservists, industry ordered to step up production of T-34 and KV tanks, first echelon troops brought up to strength;
second stage, April-June, second echelon forces moved up to the western border, Far Eastern troops moved west;
third stage, June 1-June 22, Stalin agrees to open mobilization and to advancing second echelon armies to the front. All these operations were to be carried out in secrecy, without the enemy taking note. Once mobilized and in position, the Soviet forces were to launch a sudden, decisive offensive against Germany and her allies.
According to Meltiukhov, the correlation of forces along the front from Ostroleka (Poland) to the Carpathians at the time of the planned Zhukov offensive was as shown in the table below.
Red Army Wehrmacht Ratio
Divisions 128 55 2.3:1
Troop strength 3,400,000 1,400,000 2.1:1
Field guns 38,500 16,300 2.4:1
Tanks 7,500 900 8.7:1
Aircraft 6,200 1,400 4.4:1
The attack was to begin in typical blitzkrieg fashion — without warning, with air raids on enemy airfields, and with heavy artillery bombardment of front-line enemy forces. The USSR would thus have had the clear advantage of superior forces and the benefits of the first strike.
In “Stalin’s Lost Opportunity,” Meltiukhov establishes, with meticulous
documentation, that in the years 1938-40 the Soviet Union had carried out a massive build-up of military muscle that made it the superpower of the day, far exceeding the might of any enemy.
Meltiukhov writes on Stalin’s intent:
“The content of the Soviet operational plans, the ideological guidelines and the military propaganda, combined with information
on the immediate military preparations of the Red Army for an offensive, attest unambiguously to the intention of the Soviet government to attack Germany in the summer of 1941.”
He concludes that at first the opening strike against Germany (Operation Groza [Thunderstorm]) was scheduled for June 12, 1941,
but that the Kremlin later fatefully shifted the date to July 15.
Following the publication of Stalin’s speech in Novy Mir, historians at Novosibirsk University undertook a major revisionist study of the immediate prewar situation. The results of this scholarly seminar were published in April 1995. Russian historian I. V. Pavlova,
stated bluntly in her seminar contribution that for decades Communist Party historians worked to bury the background, origins and development of the Second World War, including Stalin’s August 1939 speech, under a mountain of lies.
Another of the participating scholars, V. L. Doroshenko, said that the new evidence shows that “Stalin provoked and unleashed the Second World War.” Suggesting that Stalin and his regime should have been on trial at Nuremberg, Doroshenko went on explain:
… Not just because Stalin helped Hitler but because it was in Stalin’s own interests that the war begin. First, because of his general goal of seizing power in Europe, and, second, because of the immediate advantage of destroying Poland and taking over Galicia. But Stalin’s most important motive was the war itself … The collapse of the European order would have made it possible for him to establish his dictatorship [over all of Europe].
To this end, Stalin wanted for the time being to stay out of the war, but only with the intention of entering it at the most favorable moment. In other words, the nonaggression pact freed Hitler’s hands and encouraged Germany to unleash a war [in Poland]. As Stalin signed the Pact, he was already determined to break it. Right from the outset he did not intend to stay out of the conflict but, to the contrary, to enter the war directly at the most advantageous moment.
Posted by: Luca K | May 2 2015 20:52 utc | 105
Luka,
“Two Russian anthologies, both issued in 1995, were examined by Strauss: “Did Stalin Make Preparations for an Offensive War Against Hitler?,” and “September 1, 1939-May 9, 1945:
50th Anniversary of the Defeat of Fascist Germany.”[Gotovil li Stalin nastupatel’nuyu voynu protiv Gitlera (“Did Stalin Make Preparations for an Offensive War Against Hitler?,” by Grigoriy Bordyugov and Vladimir Nevezhin (Moscow: AIRO XX, 1995), and, 1 sentyabrya 1939-9 maya 1945:
Pyatidesyatiletiye razgroma fashistkoy Germanii v Kontekste Nachala Vtoroy Mirovoy Voyny (“September 1, 1939-May 9, 1945: the 50th Anniversary of the Defeat of Fascist Germany in the Context of the Beginning of the War”),
edited by I.V. Pavlova and V. L. Doroshenko (Novosibirsk Memorial, 1995).”
You do know that the Soviet 1941 war plan was counteroffensive, don’t you? It would be a bit idiotic to just sit there and take German blows, and General-Major Vasilevsky was no idiot. Explicit in the plan was that the front-line rifle divisions and the Fortified Regions were to absorb and shape the German blows, and then the Mechanized Corps would counterattack into the flanks of the German penetrations. Like Clausewitz said, “The sudden powerful transition to the attack, the flashing sword of vengeance, is the highest moment for the defense.”
And Col-General Kirponos, commander of the Kiev Special Military District, did this pretty well, as did Colonel-General Kuznetsov, commander of the Baltic Special Military District. Pavlov, commanding the Western Special Military District, didn’t do so well.
The sources you cite assume without argument or evidence that the very existence of any offensive capability in Soviet forces near the border as irrefutable proof of Soviet offensive intent. ‘Tain’t necessarily so.
“Strauss lists (pages 102-105) the major findings and conclusions of Russian revisionist historians, derived mostly from the two major works cited above:”
Oh, so if some Russians ‘admit’ it, it makes it automatically true. (rolls eyes)
“-Stalin wanted a general European war of exhaustion in which the USSR would intervene at the politically and militarily most expedient moment. “
Then why did he make an alliance with France and Czechoslovakia in 1935? That alliance had Hitler in a box, not daring to move a muscle, as he explained to Chamberlain at Munich. And Neville helped him out of that box.
“Stalin’s main intention is seen in his speech to the Politburo of August 19, 1939.”
Text please.
”-To ignite this, Stalin used the [August 1939] Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, which: a) provoked Hitler’s attack against Poland, ”
Equine feces. Hitler was determined to attack Poland for reasons of his own, which had nothing to do with Stalin.
“and b) evoked the declarations of war [against Germany] by Britain and France.”
Which Britain and France did nothing whatsoever to wage until 10 May 1940.
And if all this was so, why was there an Anglo-French military delegation in Moscow discussing how to assist Poland in August 1939?
“-In the event Germany was defeated quickly [by Britain and France], Stalin planned to “Sovietize” Germany and establish a “Communist government” there, but with the danger that the victorious capitalist powers would never permit a Communist Germany.”
That would be a bit hard, since in that case the Anglo-French would be occupying Germany, making sure that the KPD was still in concentration camps given how anticommunist the Anglo-French governments of the time were.
“-In the event France was defeated quickly [by Germany], Stalin planned the “Sovietization” of France. “A Communist revolution would seem inevitable, and we could take advantage of this for our own purposes by rushing to aid France and making her our ally. As a result of this, all the nations under the ‘protection’ of a victorious Germany would become our allies.””
One minor problem. Adolf had the KPD in concentration camps and would ensure that the Communist parties of the countries conquered by Germany would join them there. He was something of an anticommunist, you know.
“-From the outset Stalin reckoned on a war with Germany, and the [Soviet] conquest of Germany. To this end, Stalin concentrated on the western border of the USSR operational offensive forces, which were five- to six-times stronger than the Wehrmacht with respect to tanks, aircraft and artillery.”
And the status of these Soviet forces have been examined in David Glantz’ “Stumbling Collossus”, finding that most were badly obsolete and required major overhauls of their automotive systems. In other words, most of those tanks were fit only to be buried up to the turret ring and used as fixed defensive emplacements.
“-With respect to a war of aggression, on May 15, 1941, the Red Army’s Main Political Directorate instructed troop commanders that every war the USSR engaged in, whether defensive or offensive, would have the character of a “just war.”
That’s what George W. said about Iraq in 2002…
“-Troop contingents were to be brought up to full strength in all the western military districts; airfields and supply bases to support a forward-strategy were to be built directly behind the border; an attack force of 60 divisions was to be set up in the Ukraine and mountain divisions and a parachute corps were to be established for attack operations.”
Here’s the thing. Hitler’s Directive #18 for Barbarossa specified a start date of 15 May 1941. It was postponed because the 162 full-strength Axis divisions in Finland, East Prussia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania were waiting for trucks and other material from France, which could arrive at any time, and Barbarossa was launched practically the instant it arrived. Hitler signed it on 18 December 1940, and Soviet intelligence had the text within a week. So if Stalin was straining and massing forces to attack those 162 Axis divisions (at about 1-1 odds numerically), why were Soviet divisions at skeleton strength (because reservists in the USSR’s western military districts had not been mobilized) and in their peacetime barracks instead of their wartime battle positions when the Germans attacked?
“The 16th, 19th, 21st, 22nd and 25th Soviet Armies were transferred from the interior to the western border, and deployed at take-off points for the planned offensive.”
Untrue. They formed a strategic reserve along the Dneipr, hundreds of miles from the border. Timoshenko used them for his counteroffensive when the Germans first approached the Dneipr. Which ain’t on the 1941 Soviet border, lol!
Posted by: rkka | May 3 2015 12:02 utc | 121
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