1n 1933 Stalin starved to death 4-7 million people in Ukraine.

Thank you both.
I’m just limiting myself to a bit of the Today program and The World At One; and maybe a tiny bit of LBC.
James OBrien totally lost it about Priti Patel yesterday; it was really difficult listening, he was clearly overwhelmed himself.

I agree Fanny. There's a big difference between being aware and being overcome.

Yes, you are right

Jane I stopped watching TV news over 20 years ago, so I haven’t seen any footage at all.
I don’t even look at the papers at the moment.

I think that it might be a good idea for you to not watch the news.
It isn’t helpful or natural to take on others suffering to the extent that we are able to do these days.

For anyone interested, I'd highly recommend two books;
Savage Continent by Keith Lowe
Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder

Both are heartbreaking in content and look at that part of Europe both before and in the aftermath of WW11.

The footage of the elderly people trying to leave was heartbreaking. I don't think I can watch the telly any more

It was The Food Program: ‘Ukraine, War in the Breadbasket of the World’

It was discussed on Radio 4 yesterday.
I will try to find the program

growstuff Support for the nazis in wartime is enabling Putin to make his claim that the current government are 'neonazis' (with a Jewish President?)

Grammaretto

Ilovecheese

I knew this already about Stalin, but I don't think we should be using it to demonise Russia. The Russian people are just like us, they didn't want this invasion any more than we did. This is down to one megalomaniac man and his cronies, not a whole nation.

i agree

There are protestors in Russia, yes but there are also those who are proudly wearing a Z or painting Z on their vehicles in support of the war.

www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/07/shocking-behaviour-russian-gymnast-shows-z-symbol-on-podium-next-to-ukrainian-winner
I hope he is stripped of his medal and banned.
Why was he allowed to compete anyway?

Worryingly, some people in Serbia have also been wearing a Z.
On Friday, thousands of Serbs waving Russian flags and carrying Z letters marched through Belgrade to the Russian embassy in a show of public support for Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine

I was just going to say that was then and this is now and the world has changed a great deal since then, Growstuff. It is certainly no excuse to Russia's current behavior towards Ikraine.

M0nica

Agree but there was a lto of support for the nazis in Ukraine.

I don't see why that's relevant today. For what it's worth, there was support for the Nazis in Poland and from some Russians who opposed the Communists. There's a much higher level of nationalism in most central European states than in the UK, which isn't surprising when you look at how many of them have been taken over by foreign empires over the centuries.

Sorry, but I don't get the point of dragging all this up. the Ukrainian nationalists weren't exactly angels themselves. They were antisemitic and discriminated against Jews, which partially explains the sympathy for Nazism.

Wow, thanks for that information MTM… absolutely horrific ?

??I have just read the following and at the risk,of repeating much of what M0nica told us, thought you might be interested

O?At the entrance to the memorial park in Kiev, there is a sculpture of an extremely thin girl with a very sad look holding a handful of wheat ears in her hands. Behind her back is the Candle of Remembrance, a monument with details reminiscent of authentic embroidery that can be found on traditional Ukrainian costumes. This is a monument that commemorates a historical event known as the Holodomor.

What is the Holodomor?

☭ After the end of the First World War, Ukraine was an independent state, but in 1919 the Soviet Union "sucked" it into the community of Soviet states. The Ukrainians, who even then considered themselves a Central European people like the Poles and not an Eastern European like the Russians, tried to restore Ukraine's independence.

? In 1932, not wanting to lose control of Europe's main granary, Stalin resorted to one of the most heinous forms of terror against one nation. In the process of nationalization, he took away the grain-producing land from the Ukrainian peasants, but also all its offerings, thus creating an artificial famine. The goal was to "teach Ukrainians to be smart" so that they would no longer oppose official Moscow. Thus the people who produced the most grain in Europe were left without a crumb of bread. The peak of the Holodomor was in the spring of 1933. In Ukraine at that time, 17 people died of hunger every minute, more than 1,000 every hour, and almost 24,500 every day! People were literally starving to death in the streets.

?? Stalin settled the Russian population in the emptied Ukrainian villages. During the next census, there was a large shortage of population. Therefore, the Soviet government annulled the census, destroyed the census documents, and the enumerators were shot or sent to the gulag, in order to completely hide the truth. world war. Their poison gas was hunger. Their Hitler was Stalin. Their Holocaust was the Holodomor. For them, fascist Berlin was Soviet Moscow, and their concentration camp was the Soviet Union. Today, 28 countries around the world present the Holodomor as genocide against Ukrainians, which you could not learn about in school, because almost all evidence was destroyed and victims were covered up for decades, survivors were forcibly silenced by not having the right to vote until recently.
The Holodomor at that time broke the Ukrainian resistance, but it made the desire for Ukraine's independence from Russia eternal.

Agree but there was a lto of support for the nazis in Ukraine.

The history of Ukraine is more complicated than that. Some fought on the German side, but others fought for the Soviet Union.

Then at least a million left for foreign lands,my own ancestors amongst them leaving their dead children buried in unmarked graves .

Whereupon they left for North America, South America, Canada, Australia and took over land thus displacing the native populations.

I must apologise as I very rarely shout.
On the rare occasions I do DH says I have gone into Rottweiler mode.

ilovecheese, I do not think anyone thinks when we talk about what Russia is doing, anyone thinks we are talking about individual Russians any more when we talk about the French attitude to something, what the British do or what the Americans do, we are talking about the people as a whole in those countries. We are always referring to the government of those countries. With Russia it is no different

I am completely in agreement marmardoit.

The past matters when what is happening in the present has been shaped or formed by what has happened in the immediate past or when it shows a pattern of behaviour.

What happened in 1933, is still, just, in living memory. Someone born in 1930, is now 92 and would have been 3 when the Famine happened. Anyone over 92 would have clearer memories. Many will have family history of what happened to them, just as many Jewish people have family stories about what happened to their families in the Holocaust.

The main reason Ukraine supported the Nazis in WW2 is because of what Stalin had done to them in the previous 10 years.

The map in the Wikipedia article shows how narrowly the famine was concentrated on Ukraine.

Moscow (government, not people) has always seen Ukraine as a place it has a right rule and control as if it were part of Russia. It isn't now and never will be.

Monica, I have found it interesting too. Thank you

My family, on all sides, even only 2 generations ago fled nations. It was quite normal for the poor?

Well anyway! someone I know some who had something really really bad done to her by a person from the Isle of Man, now she won't have anything to do with either MANS OR ISLES, but I said "you can't judge every Isle by they're inhabitants, if you can't face MANS why not try the Isle of DOGS "

If we accept that Russian people aren’t responsible for the actions of Stalin or Putin, can we give ‘the English” a bit of a break? As has already been pointed out, large numbers of us have mixed ancestry/ my dna is Swedish, English, French, Scottish and of course Irish.

Thanks Monica, your post informed me of history New to me

Phew! I need a glass of wine (not French) after that!!

WELL, PADDYANN, THE FRENCH WERE HORRIBLE TO MY ANCESTORS, REALLY, HORRID HORRID HENRIS, SO THEY FLED TO ENGLAND AND HERE I AM - LIVING IN WALES!!!