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Comment by alwayslikethis | Hacker News Reader

I don't think "genocide" is the right term here. It is part of a wider man-made famine, which is an act of great evil perpetrated by the communist regime, but it affected all parts of the southern USSR, including areas with mainly ethnic Russian populations. For more information, you may want to read more about the policies that led to this event, such as "dekulakization"

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I am aware that genocide is a disputed term in this context. I lean towards it because the famine disproportionately affected Ukrainians (and Kazakhs) and was at least in part not mitigated intentionally to punish minorities with a stronger anti-Soviet sentiment.

> I am aware

Yet you use it.

> I lean towards

Maybe because you just want to use it? Just look at the map[0], read the legend. Explain who were the people in 18, 17, 11 regions?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_en_URSS_1933.jpg

Probably a lot of ethnic Ukrainians? Are you aware that Ukraine previously had more expansive borders? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Map_of_U...

That's 14 years before 1933, and the border was not there by then, but...

> Are you aware that Ukraine previously had more expansive borders

I would prefer a slighly more credible resource than a postcard made in times of great turmoil.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Evropays...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Su...

The second map separates big cities and the rest, could look misleading in some cases.

This particular map is the territory claimed by the then still newly-minted Ukrainian state. Basically the then-current Ukrainian equivalent of the likes of Greater Serbia, Greater Hungary etc.

There was no border in those territories for so long, anything they could have drawn wouldn't really have any meaningful historical connection. So IIRC they went by the Russian Imperial demographic maps and claimed most territories on those showed >25% "Malorossians". Ironically, this ended up pilfering some territories from Belarus, as well - note where Pinsk is on that map!

It's kinda amusing what these people are bashing current Russian maps with Kherson, yet they are fine with a postcard as the evidence of.. expansive borders.

There's an interesting question there whether the primary distinction for those "minorities with a stronger anti-Soviet sentiment" was ethnic or economic. It just so happens that your average Ukrainian (and, to a lesser extent, southern Russian) peasant was a fair bit more rich - partly because of better soil and climate, and partly because the brutal Russian take on serfdom wasn't practiced as long there as it had been in central Russia. And rich peasants were considered "economic enemies", which Soviets interpreted in very draconian terms (tainted the whole family).

But, of course, this possibility does not exclude the other. If this was the primary motivation, however, it neatly explains why some southern Russian regions were also severely affected despite not having any separatist tendencies.

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