The Unwomanly Face of War - Vol. 4 Ch. 19 - Cap 19

[SuperOniichan]

holodomor still very remembered in kazakh. it made them very paranoia for anything soviet and russia. they were compliance at the surface while seek safety measure. it made them minority in their own country while large chunk of northern part of country flooded by immigrant from the rest of uni soviet (mostly russian). there is reason after russian 2022 invasion of ukraine, kazakh immedietly seek security guarantor with china and sold most of it mineral exploration rights to chinese state companies. they also give unrestrictive visas to chinese nationals. some of northern city in kazakh especially in resource rich area now has sizeable chinese immigrant. it's put russia and china at odds and kazakh use it to extract concession at maximum. hence they can ditch russian language and cyrilic writing as official with no problem.

Holodomor is the name of the famine in Ukraine, it is not used to name the famine outside of Ukraine. Secondly, you speak as if the Russians lay claim to the territory of Kazaskhatan. Especially considering that, unlike the South-East of Ukraine, none of these regions were historically populated by Russians and Russian-speaking people. Even taking into account the not always comfortable Russian-Kazakh relations. This not only ignores one of the reasons for the protracted Russian-Ukrainian conflict, but also actually looks like an accusation of a desire to occupy Kazakhstan, which exists exclusively in the minds of Kazakh ultra-nationalists. Not to mention that in this context the Sinicization of the region described by you looks like a very questionable decision.

By the way, you are again making bold conclusions about the region without being familiar with it. Kazakhstan simply cannot "give up the Russian language without problems" because there are so many Russian speakers in the country that it is even widely parodied in Kazakh cinema, when a character in Almaty can tell a granny that "she left life because of the use of Kazakh." This of course does not mean that all Kazakhs should forget their language and become Russian-speaking even without being connected to Russians, but it is clearly not worth talking about it so frivolously. Given the current level of relations between the countries and the size of the Russian-speaking Kazakhs I mentioned, it would be very bold to talk about paranoia. Especially trying in this way to draw extremely problematic parallels with Russians and Ukrainians, who are united by a centuries-old common history and a common ancestor. Hell, Russian-speakers and Ukrainian-speakers are even able to understand each other without a translator, which you will never be able to do with a Kazakh-speaker.

 

[SpeedyAussie]

@SuperOniichan
Where is your profile picture from?
I feel like I've seen it before but I can't remember where.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@SuperOniichan
Where is your profile picture from?
I feel like I've seen it before but I can't remember where.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosuga_no_Sora

 

[kunyka]

The problem with the Holodomor is that the issue was so terribly politicized that years later no one cares about its victims as such and the matter is purely political. If you look at the Wikipedia article about it, you will see that 90% of the countries that recognized it as genocide did so during the war in Ukraine, which immediately speaks to the true intentions of it. And now it will obviously be difficult for you to reconsider this, because even if you try to be neutral, it will be expected to be regarded as Ukrainophobia. The point is also that the Ukrainian economy of those years was entirely based on agriculture and we even called it the "all-Union granary". That is why these problems manifested themselves so strongly here.

But if you like to look for hidden meaning in this, trying to connect the general famine as a whole and Stalin's actions later, then you should also know that the Holodomor, like any historical event, was the result of a whole collection of facts. Starting from the horribly poor harvest years and ending with the absolutely delirious Soviet agricultural policy of those years. This can be compared with Chernobyl years later, also in Ukraine by the way, when ignoring an unusual defect in Soviet reactor technology and the desire to conduct an experiment at any cost led to another catastrophe. You can always expect dire consequences when important decisions are made by fanatics with blind faith in their own knowledge and decisions, even if they have no original bad intentions.


Terror or repression will always lead to such situations, because people tend to adapt even to the most terrible things. For example, during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, many of the people killed were never actually Protestants, but were simply declared so by their enemies and rivals to resolve a conflict with them under the guise of massacring the Huguenots. I'm not even talking about the original example of this with the ancient Roman proscriptions, when you could add people to your enemies' lists for money to get the bonus you "deserved" for killing them.

STOP HATE UKRAINE, WTF HPU HATE UKRAINE SO FUCKING BADLY?!
WHY DO YOU ALL WISH OUR PEOPLE DEATH?!

 

[Thjgthgt]

I don’t think anyone sane can explain away the crime against humanity of exporting food during a famine.

 

[SuperOniichan]

I don’t think anyone sane can explain away the crime against humanity of exporting food during a famine.

The USSR economy was in a terrible state after the revolution and civil war, and the government was desperately trying to solve many conflicting problems at once. Which for a certain time only worsened the situation both because of the complexity of the situation and because of the crooked hands of officials. For example, many wealthy farmers saw how important grain was becoming and so they deliberately withheld it, increasing the problems. Which in turn increased the paranoia of the communists and made them see agricultural company violations in every second (for example, my great-grandfather was declared a kulak and deprived of his property because he had a llittle mill with his sons working at it). Chaos breeds chaos. If you don't know, after the end of World War II there was also famine and economic problems, but people understood their causes better and therefore the country's recovery was much faster.

 

[Ditte]

Oh, if you liked that one, there's several other jokes along the same lines, my favorite of which goes something like this:

A traveller on a long trip books into a shared room to get some sleep. Unfortunately for him, his roommates are a group of inebriated men who are telling political jokes and loudly carrying on. Annoyed, the traveller surreptitiously sneaks out and goes to the housekeeper. "Here are twenty kopek", he says, "In fifteen minutes, please bring a glass of tea to the room." He then returns to the room unnoticed by the other men. He waits about ten minutes before calmly walking over to the table the other men are sitting at, reaching up for the light fixture over it, and holding it so as to speak into the light bulb, he says "Comrade Major, please have a glass of tea sent to the room." He then returns to his bed as the men stare at him. Sure enough, five minutes later, there is a knock at the door and the housekeeper presents him with the requested glass of tea. The merry-making ends immediately and the traveller finally gets his sleep.

He awakens the next morning to find himself alone, the door smashed in, and the room in complete disarray. He rushes downstairs to the housekeeper and asks "What happened? It looks like a disaster in there!" She is as surprised as he is: "You slept through all of that? The KGB were here! They took those other men away. They said to tell you not to worry, though - Comrade Major was greatly amused by your prank!"

MD forum's notifications betrayed me. Nice one. Wkwkwk.