Talk:Kazakh famine of 1930–1933

Naming
Because "Kazakh catastrophe" appears to be more common and specific name. My very best wishes (talk) 15:28, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I am sorry, but unlike "Kazakh catastrophe" (not "Kazakh katastrophe"), current title produces exactly zero direct hits in Google books: . Yes, this is an OK descriptive title, but it goes against WP:Common name. This famine has specific name in the literature. My very best wishes (talk) 17:31, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * This subject is virtually unknown in English world, therefore I doubt the applicability of WP:COMMON. "Catastrophe" is an unspecific and very confusing description of the event; Unlike, say, holodomor, shoah, porajmos, ets., it has no strong association. In native (Kazakh) literature it is called simply "The Famine" (Aшаршылық) or "Goloshchekin genocide". Therefore IMO it is better to have a clear descriptive title. - üser:Altenmann >t 18:23, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * BTW google books has quite a few hits for "kazakhstan famine" or "kazakh famine". I added the years into the title in order do disambiguate from the even less known Kazakh famine of 1920s (I've just created a small stub). In fact, "Kazakh catastrophe" is the consequence of two similar events. The term being applied only to  1930s is only of insufficient knowledge of the times/territory. - üser:Altenmann >t 18:29, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed, simply Kazakh famine rather than "Kazakhstan famine" could be another title . This term is specifically applied to famine of 1932-1933. As about the earlier one, I saw only one source so far and nothing in English. My very best wishes (talk) 21:00, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I find the version with the years included to be more helpful to the readers. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:17, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, "Kazakh famine of..." would be better, for uniformity. Yes, earlier is still largely unknown ("who cares about these wild dirty nomads") In general, Sovietization of "uncivilized" peoples (hunters and nomads) of former Russian Empire is an underdeveloped subject. For example, Soviet "sedentation" (or whatever the proper English term for "denomadization") of nomads of Central Asia and Far North had very similar features, stemming from both Bolshevik dogma and ethnoeconomic ignorance. - üser:Altenmann >t 21:37, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

"Kazakh katastrophe"?
Is this perhaps a typo in the current version of the article? The only search result that comes up for "Kazakh katastrophe" is this article. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:24, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It goes as "catastrophe" (through "c") - see links in section above. My very best wishes (talk) 21:33, 30 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Opening sentence currently reads: "The Kazakhstan famine of 1932-1933, described as Kazakh katastrophe by Robert Conquest, was part of the Soviet famine of 1932–33. "


 * K.e.coffman (talk) 21:35, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry it was my typo. Fixed. I am kinda dyslexic. Of course Conquest was writing proper English :-) - üser:Altenmann >t 21:38, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

жуть
I've been told by Kazakhs it's called жуть (horror) in Kazakh. There is a current play about the famine with that title.Kdammers (talk) 05:44, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It is written by Олжас Жанайдаров.Kdammers (talk) 15:12, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The Russian Wik article on the auhtor gives the title as "

Джут."  (The performance I saw had no playbill.) Kdammers (talk) 15:24, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No, this is wrong and I want to clear up this confusion. Nobody calls these events жуть (which means horror in Russian). These events are sometimes referred to as джут, which is simply a Russian transliteration of the Kazakh word жұт (which means famine in Kazakh). Selerian (talk) 07:06, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

man-made
Let's not have an edit war about including "man-made" or not. Could the two editors present their views here on why the term should or should not be included? Kdammers (talk) 08:41, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by two editors? Per WP:BRD it should be only one editor. I merely restore the consensus version.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:49, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

"Major Ethnic Groups in Kazakhstan" graph
In this article, there is a graph which displays the major ethnic groups of kazakhstan and their populations rise/decline in the duration of the kazakh famine taking place. Under it it states the source is "Government Census Data". What exact government census data are we talking about? Is it American, Kazakh, Soviet data?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.201.30.158 (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Recent Changes
I changed Assessment to 'Assessment, Legality, and Censorship' to fully encompass everything included. Notably, I added context about debate from the standpoint of legality, since many scholars within the section deny it as a genocide on the basis of the UN Convention. I've added multiple citations and quotes from scholars Anne Applebaum, Anton Weiss-Wendt, and James Richter to incorporate full context of the definition. More importantly, how it was conceived with consideration of these events, and the Soviet intent to exclude them.

The entire assessment section seems very carefully designed to exclude any consideration that it was genocide, to the point of stating it definitively was not, despite recent scholarship. Sarah Cameron is also quoted as saying there's no evidence for genocide, when she explicitly states that it fits into an expanded definition of one. As such, changed citation 13 to properly encompass her stance. Her saying that Stalin didn't intend to genocide Kazakhs is not equivalent to denial, as the culpability is placed on Filipp Goloshchyokin and Levon Mirzoyan.

Also, establishing an immediate dichotomy between Kazakh and western scholarship is irresponsible. Saying outright they 'have no evidence' is both incorrect and heavily dependent on Ohayon's conclusion, which is based off of the convention and has been expanded on by other scholars.

Manash Kozybayev's official work for the parliment of Kazakhstan was also excluded, and remains incredibly important to the discussion. I added it in, alongside multiple citations and his concluding quotes. Difficult to find in English, but everything I put in was verified and published by Cambridge University Press.

Added more historians and sources for the arguments of negligence (Wheatcroft), all nomads being targeted (Ohayon), and low level Kazakhs serving as cadres (Kindler) +  testimony from Vladimir Burtsev about Goloshchyokin's views on Kazakhs. I also added more context surrounding Indigenous groups in Russia and their perception, the continuing connection between Kazakhstan and the Russian gov, censorship, and more information about Nursultan Nazarbayev's stance.

I also checked the Newton citation for Kazakhs starving because of lack of meat, but having enough grain. The page didn't reference food supply, and the idea that they starved with grain available refutes its own point. Minor wording with the cannibalism section was changed as well, in order to make it more empathetic. Sabol's citation is also over used and unrelated at times. + took out Wheatcroft's commentary from overview, as it fits in line with assessment and is repeated. I also added more of Kindler's views on the famines in both Ukraine and Kazakhstan, namely that he feels they, rather than the Soviet Union, "were responsible for [the] catastrophes". Using the ethnic group you're targeting as low level reporters and turning them against each other is a common genocide tactic (as we can see with recent news that Anne Frank was likely reported by another Jewish person in exchange for their own safety), and I wanted to see why he'd note it as contrasting information. I believe his perspective is very off, but I disagree with deleting information for readers and instead added the quote so that they could fully understand his position.

Last time I added additional information it was immediately removed, despite being relevant and cited. I'm a bit concerned with the edit history and some repeated reversals when it comes to quotes of any scholar labelling genocide. I took the time to do all this because I don't want this article to be cherrypicked to the point of being ahistoric, which the assessment section was. Taking the time to look at the actual testimonies and recent research on the subject very much highlighted how the article as is doesn't allow for readers to understand the events, and instead seems to reinforce a very specific agenda. In short, don't take out information out because you disagree with it politically. I added just over 30 new citations for everything I've put in, including journal articles, books, and archives. Dsrlisan85 (talk) 02:33, 8 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Also quick note: many contributors to this page seem very dedicated to historical accuracy and have done fantastic work so far! Don't mean to sound overly confrontational, I'm just a bit concerned about how the assessment section was going. Dsrlisan85 (talk) 02:35, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Why is the Kazakh Cyrillic "Ашаршылық" being translated here as "Aşarşylyq" rather than "Asharshylyk"?
Can anyone explain why it is that one of the two main names for this event is being translated from the Kazakh Cyrillic "Ашаршылық" to "Aşarşylyq"? The article has no trouble with translating the other term for it -- "олощёкин геноциді" into the (fairly) readily-pronounced "Goloshchyokin Genocide". This WP article is in English, so when dealing with proper nouns in a non-Latin text, such words should be translated into the Latin alphabet for intelligibility. Instead it is rendered in the heavily diacritic "Aşarşylyq", which Google Translate identifies as being Azerbaijani / Azeri Turkic -- a language neither native to Kazakhstan nor common amongst Anglophones, most of whom will have no idea how to pronounce sounds like "ş" (is it an Ș|s-comma, or is it an "s" with a cedilla?) The term should be rendered in phonetic Latin text, which would be "Asharshylyk". Indeed, Wiktionary, The Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, and the UNESCO partner the International Center for the Promotion of Human Rights (CIPDH-UNESCO) all render the word as "Asharshylyk". Consequently, I am going to change the use of "Aşarşylyq" into "Asharshylyk" here. Bricology (talk) 22:20, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

On Mark Tauger
Citations for Mark Tauger being a controversial and unreliable source, and contradicting Raphael Lemkin in his name:

From The Holodomor, 90 Years Later:

"In the postwar era, Ukrainian exiles tried to keep the memory of the Holodomor alive. Their efforts won the support of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish-born Jewish attorney and Yale University scholar who coined the concept of genocide and served as a consultant to U.S. prosecutors during the Nuremberg trials; in September 1953, Lemkin spoke about the Holodomor as “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine” at a Ukrainian-American rally in New York. (A typescript of his speech was preserved and discovered at the New York Public Library in 1982, but was only published in Kyiv in 2009.) Some Soviet dissident writers, notably Vasily Grossman in Everything Flows (1970), also wrote searingly about the famine. But it was with the publication of British historian Robert Conquest’s The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine in 1986 that the Holodomor truly gained mainstream recognition in the West. It was followed by the 1987 documentary Harvest of Despair: The Unknown Holocaust, which aired on U.S. and Canadian television.

The Great Famine certainly affected regions outside Ukraine, particularly the republic of Kazakhstan and the southern Russian region of Kuban (which, it should be noted, had a large ethnic Ukrainian population). According to generally accepted estimates, Ukrainians accounted for about 4 million of the 10 million Soviet famine deaths in 1932-33. Proportionately, it was Kazakhstan where collectivization-related famine took the highest and most staggering toll, killing about a third of the population and making ethnic Kazakhs a minority in their own lands for decades after. Russian historian Viktor Kondrashin of Penza State University has also argued that common estimates of the famine’s toll have lowballed the numbers for the Russian countryside in the Volga regions. Whether or not this is correct, the survivor accounts Kondrashin has collected in Russian villages are certainly harrowing. The Lithuanian writer Tomas Venclova has coined the term “stratocide” to refer to the destruction or attempted destruction of a social class; perhaps it applies here.

There are some dissenters such as West Virginia University historian Mark Tauger, who places most of the blame on an unforeseen bad harvest due to poor weather—though agreeing that the Soviet regime’s actions exacerbated the damage—and argues that the view of the famine as deliberately engineered mass murder is rooted in ideological biases. However, Tauger’s key points have serious logical flaws. He suggests that since the Soviet regime moved to provide relief in response to other, far smaller famines in the same region in the 1920s, it makes no sense that it would try to starve the same population in the early 1930s. But this claim overlooks a key development: the end of the New Economic Policy that accommodated markets and the turn to full-scale agricultural collectivization after 1929. (To put it bluntly: In 1932-33, the Soviets had far stronger reasons to want to suppress peasant resistance than in 1928.) Tauger’s argument that the Soviets’ provision of relief to starving regions during the great famine likewise contradicts the “man-made famine” thesis also ignores important nuances—namely, that relief itself could be an effective means of control if it was distributed as a reward for compliance."

Article about Tauger and the opposition he's faced.

Article about Tauger as explicitly a controversial scholar:

"Taugers findings, which are controversial in academic circles".

His work has been pretty well disputed, and his assertion of what Lemkin would think goes directly against what Lemkin said he thought, so the source is useless. Dsrlisan85 (talk) 19:52, 25 October 2023 (UTC)