Im being real not taking a shot. I know the history well most people dont. Its an ugly past and was pretty bad back in WW2. Ukraine pretty much sided with the Nazi's when they invaded Russia....
And there were plenty of good reasons for that. 100% understandable, in my book how many living in ukraine woudl have thought the Germans as liberators, or certainly no worse than Stalin.
PER AI:
Prior to World War II, Joseph Stalin oversaw a series of catastrophic policies and targeted repressions in Ukraine that resulted in millions of deaths and the systematic suppression of Ukrainian national identity. The most significant of these was the
Holodomor, a man-made famine that many historians and nations now recognize as a genocide.
1. The Holodomor (1932–1933)
The Holodomor ("death by hunger") was a famine engineered by the Soviet government to break Ukrainian resistance to agricultural
collectivization and suppress the growing Ukrainian national liberation movement.
- Death Toll: An estimated 3.5 million to 7 million Ukrainians died of starvation. At the height of the famine in June 1933, people were dying at a rate of approximately 28,000 per day.
- Forced Grain Requisition: Stalin imposed unachievable grain quotas on Ukraine. When these were not met, "activist brigades" and secret police were sent to villages to seize every scrap of food, including personal stores and seed grain for the next year.
- Sealed Borders: To prevent people from escaping the famine, Stalin issued decrees in early 1933 that effectively sealed Ukraine's borders, preventing starving peasants from fleeing to cities or other republics in search of food.
- Internal Passports: A system of internal passports was introduced to restrict the movement of farmers, trapping them in starving rural areas.
- "Law of Five Stalks of Grain": Enacted in 1932, this law allowed for the execution or 10-year imprisonment of anyone, including children, caught taking even a handful of grain from a collective field.
2. Dekulakization and Deportations
Starting in 1929, Stalin targeted successful and independent farmers, labeled as
"kulaks", as enemies of the state.
- Elimination as a Class: Millions of families were stripped of their property, homes, and livestock.
- Mass Deportations: At least 50,000 Ukrainian farm families were forcibly deported to the remote, harsh environments of Siberia and the Urals. Many died during the journey or shortly after arrival due to exposure and a lack of resources.
3. Suppression of Culture and "The Great Terror"
Beyond physical starvation, Stalin launched a systematic attack on the pillars of Ukrainian society to force integration into a "Soviet identity".
- Liquidation of the Intellectual Elite: During the 1930s, particularly during the Great Purge (1937–1938), Stalin arrested and executed tens of thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, teachers, and scientists.
- Religious Persecution: The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was destroyed, its clergy arrested or executed, and many churches were closed or demolished.
- Language Suppression: Policies originally promoting the Ukrainian language were reversed. Officials were ordered to stop using Ukrainian, and Ukrainian-language books were removed from schools and libraries.
4. Resettlement Policies
Following the mass death of Ukrainians in the famine, Stalin's regime resettled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians from other parts of the Soviet Union into the depleted Ukrainian villages to provide labor for the collective farms. This significantly altered the demographic makeup of several regions in eastern and southern Ukraine.