From a reader in response to my Caplan post below:
Robert Conquest’s seminal book on the effects of dekulakization, collectivization and famine in the Ukraine took a lot of its first hand testimony from a 2 volume work by Canadian Ukranian expats titled: “The Black Deeds of the Kremlin, A White Book.” Now and again, copies come available on alibris.com. What is most amazing is that these books were released in 1952 and 1954. Basically after WWII, with the migration of Ukranians out of Europe made possible by all the wartime churn, the real story of what happened in the Soviet Union between 1929-1933 was available for all to see. There is such an abundance of literature starting in the 1930′s that it was almost disheartening to watch the response garnered by The Black Book of Communism. It was a VERY worthy compilation, but frankly late to the party. Vasili Grossman and Lev Kopelev spoke decades earlier on behalf of Eastern Europe’s left. I suppose value came from the timing of The Black Book’s release, apparantly at a time when Western Europe’s left was ready to receive the information. (They were quick to condemn their fellow leftist’s who collaborated on “The God That Failed.”)
Just a couple years ago, debate raged over whether or not to call what happened in Ukraine a genocide or a holocaust. Conservatives were the only ones to really bring the academic debate into out into the open.
Left of center academics were happy enough not to speak publically about the issue. They were, by and large, also quick to dismiss the Ukrainian claims, in effect saying that while tragic, the famine in the Ukraine (also in the Kuban and Don regions) were nothing special.
FWIW I believe you can call the terror/famine a genocide. It is perfectly valid to extend the criteria of genocide to include the targeting of specific socio-economic classes for destruction.
Thanks for the piece in The Corner, it’s a good thing to remind the world of the past fruits of those wacky uncles of todays progressives.
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