🧵Thread with pages from Soviet magazine "Перець" ('Pepper') from 1930s. This is one of the most blatant propaganda papers that was extremely popular in Ukrainian SSR and was published in Ukrainian. Another example how russians used national languages. #RussianColonialism /1
1932. Holodomor. Millions of Ukrainians are starving to death as a result of man made famine. Meanwhile, the article tells us about food riots in Hindenburg (now Zabrze, Poland) and how police arrest hungry people there. /2
1933. Holodomor. Millions of Ukrainians are starving to death as a result of man made famine. The cover shows the dialogue of two peasants:
- Why are there so many people in the field?
- As the proverb says: Hard work brings plenty of food to kolkhoz. /3
1934. 5-8 millions of Ukrainians died because of Holodomor. Meanwhile on the cover we see a man surrounded with many bags of wheat (I think so). He counts his bags and complains: "Well I don't know what I can give to the state...I don't have even an extra grain" /4
1934. 5-8 millions of Ukrainians died because of Holodomor. On the cover a dialogue between a tourist (is this W. Duranty?) and kolkhoz worker:
Tourist - What's your farming system?
Worker - Well, all you can see it's ours. Our system. /5
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🧵Let's talk about language. This point is valid but the problem is that russians heavily weaponized the russian language. They treat the russian language as some sort of culturally-anthropological DNA (absurd, yes). Hence, per russian logic anyone who speaks russian = russian 1/
'Speak russian or die' written on 🇷🇺soldier's vest reflects a longstanding state policy. Throughout history russia's consistently enforced this directive. Russian language remains a pivotal tool in justifying their invasion of Ukraine serving as a key propaganda narrative /2
russian empire and USSR extensively enforced Russification in occupied countries varying in degrees of success. Ukraine bore a heavy brunt, as russians has been deliberately trying to obliterate its culture, language, and identity over centuries. /3
Let me tell you one fact about such nuanced policies carried by Stalin. It may be not so known as other crimes. Did you know that Stalin introduced a tax for fruit trees? Yes, you read it right: if you owned a good orchard then you had pay enormous taxes. 1/
After the war the Soviet economy (if we can call it so) and welfare (LOL) went down to an even worse shithole than in 1930s. Soviets introduced a bunch of new policies to improve agriculture and tried to bring Kolkhoz (collective farms) to new levels. 2/
Soviets promised an unprecedented system of incentives. They even introduced payment in money instead natural products (food) as it was before. But in reality most of the villagers never got money or received much less than promised. 3/
Another problem that I see now with all this recent drama is that NAFO is being largely discredited in the eyes of Ukrainians by NAFO themselves. More and more Ukrainians raise questions about what's going as at the beginning NAFO was a breath of fresh air. Will see how it goes.
When I found NAFO on May/June oh god it was so great and needed at that time. So many great people with a simple and clear goal. It had been so great for a couple of months. But now recently my feed is full of bickering between everybody. Where are good old days?
Previously I could talk to any fella and felt confident in them but not now. Right now I just have several old school fellas back from may/summer I interact with.
The world should have acted when this happened. Ichkeria, almost 30 years ago. It was ignored. Then again. Then Georgia. Then Ukraine and Syria. And here we are. And the world is still looking for good russians and ways to save putin's face.
And it was mainly ignored in Ukraine as well due to a fucking massive russian propaganda. I remember growing up and my parents were consuming russian point of view on these wars specifically via russian TV channels. Fucked up as hell.
I started to realize what was going on only in high school when I began learning history on my own.
I won't dive into the details to debunk this bullshit but I'll show just one simple piece of stats for your own conclusions. Life length expectancy in the USA and USSR. Note that 1970-1980s are considered a successful period in the USSR history.
The thing that tankies don't understand is that we, Ukrainians, don't deny Asharshylyk and other man made famines in the USSR and don't treat our tragedy as something special. All we do - WE SPEAK OUT about this crime on national/international level and tankies hate it.
The main reason why Holodomor is recognized as genocide is that Ukraine raised this point on a official level decades ago and still is pushing this on a international level unlike Kazakhstan where the officials are influenced by russia and are not really allowed to speak up. 1/
Asharshylyk (Holodomor in Kazakhstan) is genocide caused by the same policies as it's done in Ukraine and in other republics of USSR. But to be recognized as genocide the affected country needs to recognize it at the first place. 2/
If you want to know more about Asharshylyk, please read this amazing thread by @MuKappa. He also describes the reasons why Asharshylyk is not recognized as genocide yet. 3/