Talk:Holodomor denial

Article lead is blatant OR and Synth

The article lead states "Denial of the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Заперечення Голодомору, Russian: Отрицание Голодомора) is the false claim that the Holodomor, a large-scale, man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932–1933 did not occur". There were 5 sources used in that sentence, yet none of them say what this sentence states and try to define the phrase "Denial of the Holodomor", which I'm going to show.

• Reference #1 : The Hidden Holocaust By Miron Dolot

The famine of 1932-33 in the Soviet Union has been an entirely ignored, neglected, misinterpreted, and distorted event. To this day even though Soviet dignitaries themselves matter-of-factly discuss it, some "experts" on the Soviet Union ("Sovietologists") here in the United States persistently adhere to the original Soviet denial of its existence. This probably explains why no thorough study of this famine has ever been made in the USA. Americans have had difficulty in accepting a story so unbelievably inhuman.

• Reference #2 : The Black Book of Communism by Stéphane Courtois etc

Unlike the famine of 1921-22, which the Soviet authorities acknowledged and even sought to redress with help from the international community, the famine of 1932-33 was always denied by the regime. The few voices abroad that attempted to draw attention to the tragedy were silenced by Soviet propaganda. The Soviet authorities were assisted by statements such as that made by Edouard Herriot, the French senator and leader of the Radical Party, who traveled through Ukraine in 1933. Upon his return he told the world that Ukraine was full of "admirably irrigated and cultivated fields and collective farms" resulting in "magnificent harvests."...

• Reference #3 : Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime by Richard Pipes

Duranty had the good fortune to choose Stalin early as Lenin’s most likely successor (he later boasted that he had picked “the right horse on which to bet in the Russian race”247), which greatly helped his career after Lenin’s death. His eulogies of Stalin became ever more exorbitant and his mendaciousness ever more brazen. In the 1930s he praised collectivization and in 1932–34 denied the Ukrainian famine. To lure investments to Soviet Russia, he spread false stories about the great profits allegedly made by American businessmen there, especially his friend Armand Hammer.

• Reference #4 : Stalin: The First In-depth Biography by Edvard Radzinsky

He had achieved the impossible: he had silenced all talk of hunger. Any mention of “famine in the countryside” he condemned as “counterrevolutionary agitation.”

-Note: This source doesn't even once mention the "Holodomor". As far as I can see, "denial" or "deny" isn't mentioned either.

• Reference #5 : Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest

It was already an offense carrying five years in labor camp to refer to the famine in any way, even in the villages affected: while to blame it on the authorities led to a death sentence. An American congressman's queries, passed to the Soviet Foreign Commissariat, were answered by the claim that talk of famine was "lies circulated by counterrevolutionary organisations"; while Soviet President Mikhail Kalinin responded to offers of food from the West by saying that "only the most decadent classes are capable of producing such cynical elements." After the economic disaster of collectivization there were two possibilities: to admit failure and change policy, even to relinquish total power; or to pretend that success had been achieved. The latter course was chosen. In fact, the idea, contradicted by reality, coped with reality by denying it. As a result, for the whole of the rest of the Soviet epoch the country lived a double existence — an official world of fantasy, of happiness, grand achievements, wonderful statistics, liberty and democracy, and a reality of gloom, suffering, terror, denunciation and apparatchik degeneration.

-Note: I'm not seeing the word "Holodomor" in this book either, although maybe I'm missing it.

Where is "Denial of the Holodomor" defined anywhere in these texts? The word "deny" or "denial" was literally once in sentences, but a formal "denial of the Holodomor" was never given a definition.Stix1776 (talk) 06:23, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

"Holodomor" is a part of the Soviet Famine of 1932-33, and different sources use these two terms interchangeably, so the absence of that word is not a big problem.

However, I agree that, unless additional quotes will be provided from the same source, it is not possible to use it to support the current version of the lead. They support the claim that the fact that Holodomor occurred is/was denied by some authors and/or state officials, or its scale was understated. That is the only statement that we can make per WP:NOR. Paul Siebert (talk) 08:02, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The definition issue is something I pointed out above, and the first source proved Siebert's statement of it being Holocaust obfuscation correct, then at least other three sources are from the anti-communist side of historiography (Conquest, Courtois, and Pipes). It does not mean they cannot be used but why not actually cite experts like Ellman, Rosefielde, Snyder, Suny, Wheatcroft, and the like? I'd prefer citing the most neutral sources, so that they cannot be considered to be anti-communist by those who are in fact pro-Communist, and they are by no means pro-Communist either; they are just, if not more, as reliable, are more neutral, and some of those are even better reliable sources in regards to the Holodomor. I have to confirm my agreement with Siebert's earlier comment that this article tries to mirror Holocaust denial but in practice the body has more to do with Soviet and other authors denial of the famine in the 1930s and during the Cold War, so which is the main topic? Davide King (talk) 10:21, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm OK with letting famine and holodomor be used interchangeably if other editors think it's ok. No I needn't be strict about their use. I'm also very happy to use more scholarly, less political authors. I'm seeing books like Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong... and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History used as sources, which are clearly hard-right polemics.

As I mentioned in another thread, I'm not seeing really any scholarly work treat "Holodomor Denial" as its own topic. I'm unsure where to go from here. Does this get a tag? A rewrite? A deletion request? Honestly I'm a newish editor and I humbly ask for the insights of experienced editors here. Stix1776 (talk) 13:45, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

More on sources

Anticipating a possible accusation of a bias, I would like to explain that the below post is based on a very brief research that took literally 10 minutes. That can be easily checked by repeating all my actions that are totally uncontroversial and are based on some very trivial assumptions. First, to check my previous assertion that this article is trying to mimic the Holocaust denial topic, I decided to do a simple test.

• I performed this search, which yielded a number of sources, and the second source in the list (Yehuda Bauer's article), contains a definition of the Holocaust denial (by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance), which is pretty close to what Wikipedia says. Therefore, everything is ok with the Holocaust denial article. In addition, it is clear from those sources that the Holocaust denial is a crime in many countries, and that is not a surptize its definition is clear and unequivocal.
• Similar search made for Holodomor yielded the following results. None of the sources at the top of the list provided a clear definition of the Holodomor denial. Interestingly, one of the sources makes the following statement.

"Sometimes the formula “Holodomor and/versus Holocaust”manifests itself in an attempt to “balance”these two events. For instance, the 2008 student competition called “Lessons of the War and Holocaust –Lessons of Tolerance,”which was initiated by Tkuma and judged by the officials of the Ministry of Education and Sciences several times. Initially, it spoke about the “lessons of the Holocaust,”whilst the subsequent draft envisioned the “study of the history of the Holocaust and holodomors, ”and the final version noted a “support for the study of Ukrainian history: the holodomors in Ukraine, the events of the Second World War, and the Holocaust.”

Perhaps the most telling example of the copying of commemorative practices of the Holocaust is the criminalization of “Holodomor denial.”All thirteen attempts to introduce civil or criminal responsibility for denial of Holodomor as such or as a genocide referred to the “Western”practices of the persecution of the “Holocaust denial.”As in many other cases, the experience of commemorating the Holocaust was used primarily to promote the genocidal version of Holodomor."

The author clearly says that issue is a part of political games:

"The Holodomor-Holocaust pair re-emerged in the political games of 2014. MPs from the nationalist “Svoboda” party submitted a draft law proposing the introduction of criminal sanctions “for the denial of the Holodomor as a fact of genocide of the Ukrainian people and the Holocaust as a fact of genocide of the Jewish people. ”The Holocaust rhetoric was routinely used as a stand-in for the idea of criminalizing the “denial of the Holodomor”(this use of the Holocaust by the members of a party with notoriously anti-Semitic leadership was like a bad joke). Notably, the “denial of Holocaust as a fact of genocide” disappeared from the next submissions of the same draft law, then devoted to the criminalization of the denial of Holodomor as a genocide ratified by Svoboda in November 2017 and September 2020. Poroshenko also did not avoid the temptation of using the Holodomor-Holocaust formula. In a speech devoted to the anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932–33 he stated, that “not recognizing Holodomor is as immoral as not recognizing Holocaust” and proposed sanctions for Holodomor and Holocaust denial.

After 2014, the Ukrainian ruling class have also become more consistent in following the Eastern European model of memory in equating Communism and Nazism (within the “double victim”model of historical memory). This has added a new nuance to the comparison of the Holodomor and Holocaust and it is now possible to hear media outlets professing the ethnocentric narrative that Stalin destroyed millions of Ukrainians just as Hitler exterminated millions of Jews."

I am not too interested in that topic, and I am not pretending to be an expert in it. However, I am surprized that my initial assertion appeared to be so easy to confirm by means of a totally neutral search procedure. Interestingly, the author (who seems to be affiliated with Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) goes even further in his conclusions, and clearly says that implicit equating of Holodomor with the Holocaust is the part of the agenda of right Ukrainian nationalists, and equating of Nazism and Communism is the part of the modern Eastern European political model.

I think all said above is a serious argument in favour of a major rewriting of the article.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:41, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I do agree with your conclusion that "Holodomor Denial" isn't treated very seriously in the sources. Can you suggest a path? I'm still a newbie with Wikipedia.Stix1776 (talk) 08:57, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Probably, merge this article with Holodomor in modern politics. I think a discussion of Holodomor denial (which is really occurs in some countries) should be placed in a proper context, and "Holodomor in modern politics" creates that context. Paul Siebert (talk) 01:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

That's a good idea, and I'll definitely get the ball rolling with that. I did want some response from the *other side* of this debate, so at least I can see that I'm not misquoting or misreading those sources. I added that tag to get more feedback. If you two (or another uninvolved editor) disagrees, than I can take the tag down.Stix1776 (talk) 11:05, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Stix1776: Sorry for delay, I support it. Next time, if you need my feedback, please, ping me. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:59, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry @Paul Siebert:, I just finished a big project at work. Now I have a bit of time to look at this.Stix1776 (talk) 14:00, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I have reproduced your fully objective and transparent methodology by, as you suggested, "repeating your actions". Surprisingly, I have found the following definitions, which must have obviously missed in a completely random slip of keyboard as they clearly appear not only in the search results of your fully objective and transparent search query, but, incidentally, even in the same documents you quoted!

The Great Famine of 1932–33 (called Holodomor or “murder by hunger”) and the Holocaust both occurred on the territory of contemporary Ukraine in the 1930s–40s. Both events were objects of deliberate or even forced amnesia and became suppressed memories in Soviet times. (...) On 28 March 2007, Yushchenko submitted a draft law “On Introducing Modifications into the Ukrainian Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure (On Responsibility for Denial of Holodomor of 1932–33 as a Genocide of Ukrainian People and Denial of Holocaust as a Fact of Genocide).” He proposed the introduction of criminal responsibility for “the denial of the Holodomor of 1932–33 as the genocide of the Ukrainian people and the Holocaust as the genocide of Jewish people.”[1]

Above we have the first definition of "Holodomor denial": the legal one as proposed in Ukrainian legislation. Another article by Joey Meyer, interestingly published as part of a historians conference in Russia (!) in 2012:

Soviet revisionist history and the general veil of secrecy surrounding official policies kept the Holodomor out of the international spotlight until the fall of the USSR in 1991. (...) There has been a relatively large Holodomor denial movement ever since the Great Famine, initially launched by Soviet authorities and then carried on my Soviet sympathizers across the world. The modern Russian government has refused to recognize the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people, stating that there is “no historical evidence that he famine was organized on ethnic grounds” (Russian Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department, 2008) The government instead chose to point out that Stalin’s regime committed crimes against all peoples of the Soviet Union; qualifying more as democide or politicide.[2]

We have three further definitions of "Holodomor denial": first, the Soviet denial of any state responsibility, the Soviet ban on any debate on that subject, and Holodomor denial plus justifications, as practicised by Soviet fellow travellers.

We have more or less covered the 70 years of Holodomor denial, let's now move to the modern history:

In the past five years, the issue of the Holodomor, that is, the man-made Famine of 1932-33, has occupied a much more prominent position in Ukrainian politics and society than it was ever accorded during the 1990s, let alone in the previous decades when the issue was effectively silenced by the Soviet authorities, and any references to Holodomor were criminalized. (...) The main divide, however, shifted from a rather crude ideological controversy over Holodomor recognition versus Holodomor denial towards a more sophisticated controversy over interpretations of the Holodomor as either genocide against Ukrainian people or a Stalinist crime against humanity, which targeted both Ukrainian and Russian, Kazakh and other Soviet peasants.[3]

What the above source confirms is one hardly deniable fact: Holodomor denial in its most outright form, denial of it happening and ban on any discussion on the state responsibility, existed for over 70 years in the Soviet Union. And it was only after USSR collapsed when the topic became subject of open academic research, academic and political debate, and yes, unavoidably political games. Yet, it is wrong and unacceptable to frame the whole 70 years of hard Soviet denial to just the last element.

And in another article published in the UK by a British academic we even have a comparison of Holodomor and Holocaust denials, including their justification (I highlight it, as some of us are obsessed with an idea that this is only done by Eastern Europeans for their nefarious purposes):

Holodomor denial, much like denial of the Holocaust, is almost universally justified by specious or invalid evidence which exists only to obstruct what has been deemed to be an event of historical truth. Indeed, much of the denial of the Holodomor centres on the supposed complete lack of evidence of Stalin outright stating his plan to attack Ukraine and its inhabitants, but it should be noted that explicit statements of plans to attack are rarely made.[4]

A digression, this fragment would also make a great source for Mass killings under communist regimes:

The Holodomor serves as a reminder that governments can be responsible for millions of deaths without actively exterminating their populations. Although the Holodomor was not an attempt to exterminate the Ukrainian people, it was a crime against humanity and a result of unrealistic industrialization policy goals.[5]

Hope this helps. I do encourage everyone to "trust but verify" the sources and especially quotes supplied by people participating in the discussion because, as you can see, even the most objective source search can miss key fragments. Cloud200 (talk) 09:40, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: First, I would be grateful if next time you pinged me when you discussing my posts, otherwise I may not notice your response.

Second, I am not sure what point you try to debunk.

Let me explain that one more time.

• The fact that Holodomor was denied in the past by Soviet authorities is absolutely indosputable.
• The fact that some modern politicians and writers, mostly marginal ones, deny Holodomor is also totally obvious.
• However, there is no commonly accepted definition of the term "Holodomor denial", similar to "The Holocaust denial". One important reason is that these two events are of different nature: the Holocaust is universally recognized as genocide, the number of its victims is pretty well known, and there is nearly a universal consensus about it. Therefore, even a discussion of the number of victims ("not 5.5. millions, but only 4 millions") or a claim that some local nationalists did not killed Jews is tantamount to the Holocaust denial. In contrast, Holodomor is currently a subject of debates: there is even no agreement on whether it was genocide or not. If some definition of "Holodomor denial" will be proposed (similar to the Holocaust denial), neutral scholars who study Holodomor may be accused of denial (which would be ridiculous).
• Finally, some politicians who are pushing the idea of "Holodomor denial" are in reality political successors of Nazi collaborators who actively participated in the Holocaust (UPA). And it is hardly our goal to help them play Holodomor card.

In connection to that, I see not much contradiction between my point of view and the sources presented by you.

With regard to your last source, yes, Holodomor was a man-made famine. As well as all other XX century famines, per Amartya Sen. And, therefore, your source correctly says that Holodomor is a reminder about governments (not "Communist governments") may be responsible for for millions of deaths, but that does not refer specifically to Communism.

By the way one of your sources perfectly demonstrates my point. It says " Although the Holodomor was not an attempt to exterminate the Ukrainian people...", and you must agree that that is a good, reliable and respectable source. Can you imagine a source saying " Although the Holocaust was not an attempt to exterminate Jews..."? Obviously, a very discussion of the question if the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate Jews is denialism (which is criminalised in many countries). And the attempts to create the concept of Holodomor denial that mimics the Holocaust denial is, de facto, a kind of the Holocaust trivialisation.

Finally, as you can see from my previous posts, I am almost always provide links to my sources, thereby encouraging other users to "trust, but verify" my words. Therefore, your last statement is somewhat offencive, because it implies that I am a liar or cheater. You should to stop that. It is disruptive.

 Paul Siebert (talk) 17:48, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: "The fact that Holodomor was denied in the past by Soviet authorities is absolutely indosputable." - excellent, so finally we have at least one definition of Holocaust denial that we agree on! That was precisely my point. Nobody can't argue "there is no definition of Holodomor denial" if its denial by Soviet authorities for 70 years is, as you said, "indisputable". Cloud200 (talk) 14:40, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: "Holodomor is currently a subject of debates" - have you ever wondered why exactly it's subject of debates currently, in 2000's, rather than in 1940's? Well, to me it's kind of obvious, and it's supported by "indisputable" sources, that the only reason why it's a hot topic today is that Soviet Union denied it and prevented research or debate for 70 years (opening of Ukrainian NKVD archives only happened after 2014, after it became truly independent of Russia), and Soviet Union never had its Nurnberg trial. Cloud200 (talk) 14:40, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: "it is hardly our goal to help them play Holodomor card" - our goal is neither to help or prevent anyone from playing any card, our job is to objectively report on the facts. The fact of Holodomor denial for 70 years is "indisputable". The fact that Soviet policies intentionally and artificially turned a lower-than-average harvest into a famine is an "indisputable" fact". Whether it was genocide or democide, is disputed. Whether there were 5 or 6 millions victims is disputed, because the perpetrator efficiently covered his tracks. That there were a few millions of victims is indisputable. Our job here is to document both the indisputable facts, and the presence and causes for the dispute on the disputable ones. Cloud200 (talk) 14:40, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: I am not sure how that helps us with a definition. Denial of Holodomor by Soviet authorities is a fact, but does any definition follow from that?

For example, if I somebody claims that I, Paul Siebert deny the fact that little green men exist, is it sufficient for proposing a definition of some "Denial of LGM"?

Please, understand me correctly, this article may have a right to exist or it must be merged with its mother article - I have no strong opinion on that. However, I object to presenting "Denial of Holodomor" as some phenomenon that has some specific definition. This article tells about separate instances of denial of Holodomor by some officials, but that is not something that is universally seen as a phenomenon with a concrete definition.

WRT, "The fact that Soviet policies intentionally and artificially turned a lower-than-average harvest into a famine is an "indisputable" fact"" No. Different sources have different opinia. You should read more on this topic. Holodomor was a part of greater Soviet famine, which was not created intentionally. It was more a result of strategic blunders. I find more convincing the views of some scholars like M Ellman, who concluded that Holodomor (but not the Soviet famine as a whole), during some concrete period of time and in some concrete region had some traits of intentionality and there were some genocidal intents. However, Ellman concluded that it never was planned, and the decision to use famine as a weapon against some category of peasants in some regions of Ukraine and North Caucasus was made by "team Stalin" ad hoc, when the famine already started.

WRT "genocide vs democide", you misunderstand that. "Democide" sounds scary, but it means nothing: it means any death that is linked, directly or indirectly to some state's act of commission or omission. When literally everything is democide, nothing is democide. In contrast, "genocide" is a legal category (a crime). Paul Siebert (talk) 19:54, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200:, posting unpublished articles titled "HOLODOMOR ESSAY PRIZE 2021: SECOND PLACE"[6] isn't really helpful.Can we please stop the use of unreliable sources or changing the obvious meaning of sources. The rest of your sources don't go into much detail on "Holodomor Denial" or give it much space. So why should Wikipedia?Stix1776 (talk) 13:57, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Stix1776: Please direct your complaints to Paul Siebert because this source was found using his ultimately "objectively and transparent methodology", which he has been using since September to push his POV under the guise of NPOV. As noted above, I merely reproduced his steps on Google Scholar and got this source on first page of results. So either the source must be trusted, or his "objective and transparent" methodology is rubbish (which I and other people has been explaining for the last 4 months). Cloud200 (talk)

@Cloud200: Keep in mind WP:CIR. Before claiming that you used my procedure, you must provide evidences. The evidence includes a link to you search (we need to see what keywords you used, the position of your source in the search results list, and the number of citations). Second, I never claimed that every source in the google.scholar search list is good: sometimes, it returns master theses or similar questionable sources. I never claimed we may treat every source found via google.scholar as 100% reliable. If you don't understand that, then you need to learn more how to use my approach. Please, ask me, and I'll explain.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:56, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: You (or I, or anybody else) cannot just claim "I found this source using a transparent and neutral procedure". A correct claim is like this:

• "I selected these keywords "Holodomor denial" and performed a google scholar search. The first source in the list obtained is the article by M Riabchuk from Colimbia University web site. The article was cited 23 times, mostly by peer-reviewed publications, and it seems there was no serious criticism of author's statements. Therefore, I found this source reliable and relevant to the topic"
• If I (or somebody else) wanted to check you, we can always do the same operations as you did, and we either confirm, that yes, Cloud200's search is reproducible and non biased, or we may see that our results are different. In the former case, everything is ok, in the latter case, after some brief consultations, we may jointly do the search that will resolve misunderstanding, and, again, everything will be ok. That is what I call a transparent procedure: everybody can see how you obtained your source, and if your procedure has no mistakes or flaws, every good faith user must agree with your decision to use this concrete source.
• However, some user may disagree with your choice of keywords, or they may argue that your source was insufficiently cited, or that its publisher is not reputable, or that the author is not an expert, etc. All of that is verifiable and falsifiable, so, after a brief discussion you and that user will inevitably come to some consensus.

That is how my procedure works.

I believe there should be no misunderstanding on that account among us, but if something is still unclear, or you believe my procedure has some flaws, please, let me know. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:42, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: @Stix1776: Let me also add that I'm interpreting you quietly ignoring my comments from 20 December, rather than providing a five-page-long polemic, as a general agreement with these comments and admission that at least the 70-years-long Soviet denial of Holodomor is an indisputable fact that justifies the presence of the article regardless of any post-1990 debates. Cloud200 (talk) 07:35, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Please, don't forget to ping me next time if you want me to respond to your posts.

With regard to the rest, let me explain my position again.

• The fact that Holodomor was denied by Soviet authorities is indisputable.
• Does it warrant a separate article, or that fact should be discussed in a separate section of Holodomor is a subject of discussion. Per WP:NPOV, All facts and significant points of view on a given subject should be treated in one article except in the case of a spinoff sub-article, and we need a separate discussion if creation of this article meets WP:SPINOFF criteria (I have no opinion yet, maybe yes, maybe no).
• The attempt to create a topic in the same style as Holocaust denial is unacceptable, because these two events, and our degree of knowledge about them are incomparable. In addition, the attempt to present "Holodomor denial" in the same style as Holocaust denial is a political game played by some Ukrainian nationalists who, at the same time, are engaged in the Holocaust obfuscation and denial.

Is my position clear to you now? Paul Siebert (talk) 18:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Last time you complained there's no "widely accepted definition of the denial", so hopefully you have now acknowledged its existence. I read the fact that you've now moved to a much weaker argument "out of the 70 years of Holodomor denial a few marginal politicians used it for their purposes so let's not give them ammunition" as such acknowledgement. And I of course don't agree with it. The weight of the Soviet and Western pro-Soviet left denial is so overwhelming that it certainly justifies presence of such article. Cloud200 (talk) 19:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: See my post below. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:12, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: I did not provide a link to the search because I just clicked your search links and quite precisely described location of the results ("first page"). Cloud200 (talk) 07:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Good. That means your agreed that my search was not tendentious. That is good. In future, if you believe my keyword choice was not adequate or biased, feel free to provide your own search results. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Your choice of keywords was fine, only your choice of sources and quotes was not. Cloud200 (talk) 19:32, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Can you please elaborate what exactly was wrong? Paul Siebert (talk) 19:37, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: Maybe if you spent more effort on reading other peoples' comments rather than writing your monologues that discussion would be more fruitful. So once again, repeating what I already wrote above: you made a far-fetching statement that "none of the sources at the top of the list provided a clear definition of the Holodomor denial" that you "proved" using an "objective" methodology. Your statement was trivially debunked using not only your own search query, but actually the same sources (Kasianov) which you quoted as allegedly not containing such definition. I can only attribute such omission to either extreme sloppiness or subconscious bias. Cloud200 (talk) 19:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: Ok, now I see what you mean. The sources that you quoted are Kasyanov and Belgorod University Proceedings, right? If that is what you mean, then the second source is hardly serious: it contains the articles authored by undergrads and grad students from some local Russian university. I am not sure this is really a RS.

Kasyanov is more serious source, and I saw it. However, this author proposes no definition of "Holodomor denial". He discusses a legal definituiion proposed by Ukrainian authorities. These are totally different things. This definition is suitable for the article about that Ukrainian law, not about the denial as a phenomenon.

In contrast, I didn't get an impression that the author (Kasyanov) shares the point of view of Ukrainian authorities. It seems that the whole article is not about denial of Holodomor, but about political games around that issue.

Therefore, my conclusion remains in force, and your arguments are unconvincing.

That does not mean no definition of "denial of Holodomor" exists, but we can tell for sure that our search so far failed to provide such a definition. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Cloud200: For comparison, that a look at this. In two clicks I find the article that is specifically devoted to the Holocaust denial topic, and that speaks about the Holocaust denial movement, that has concrete goals and theses:

"There are two general rhetorical trends in the Holocaust denial movement: (1) the Negationists who claim that the Holocaust never occurred; and (2) the Revisionists who admit that something like the historical Holocaust occurred but make revisionist arguments about the scope of the crime, challenging things such as the official number of Jews murdered and whether gas chambers were used to carry out mass murder."

Can you find anything of that kind about "Holodomor denial"? Note, I found this source literally in one click.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:51, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Stix1776: "rest of your sources don't go into much detail on "Holodomor Denial" - are you seriously claiming that there are no sources that "go into much" detail about Soviet denial of Holodomor for 70 years? Cloud200 (talk) 14:40, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Indisputably man-made?

I don’t know enough about the subject to make an overall judgement, but it seems the only source cited to declare affirmatively it was an intentional and man-made crisis is one book from 1985? Happy to be corrected if wrong, but seems to be quite a problem, if not NPOV, then seriously under-cited 2600:1008:B14E:B0DE:3170:2558:F4A5:94BF (talk) 05:20, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

"Man-made" and intentional are two totally different things. Amartya Sen claims that virtually all XX century famines were man-made, so Holodomor is more a rule than an exception. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:53, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

That’s not true. Although the Soviets did politicize famine relief in other famines, the Holodomor was not the same as any others. See Andriewsky 2015 pp 26–27, the sixteen points quoted from Mace 1988, plus the fact that the Soviets attempted to completely deny the famine then explain it away for the next 55 years.

There has been significant debate over the last decades about whether it met the legal definition of genocide. But there is no academic debate over its artificiality, even among opponents of the genocide view. Andriewsky p 37:

“What is significant here—and a measure of how much the understanding of the Holodomor has changed—is the very narrowness of the debate that Soldatenko describes. Even the opponents of the concept of the Holodomor as genocide accept the basic outlines of what happened. Among historians, there is no significant argument over the number of people who died.There is a general agreement that they died as a result of the policies implemented by the Party leadership, the introduction of unrealistically high grain quotas, and the confiscation of grain resources and food. Historians of Ukraine are no longer debating whether the Famine was the result of natural causes. The academic debate appears to come down to the issue of intentions, to whether the special measures undertaken in Ukraine in the winter of 1932–33 that intensified starvation were aimed at Ukrainians as such. For Soldatenko, however, the debate is really about the significance of what happened—no small issue, by any means. For him and others, the Holodomor was the tragic price—a terribly steep but ultimately justifiable price—that was paid for ‘modernization.’”

 —Michael Z. 04:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Please, read carefully what I wrote, and take it literally: I said that the words "man-made" do not imply anything, for all XX century famines were man-made. That doesn't mean Holodomor was just an average famine, but it doesn't make it a usual famine either. "Man-made" means nothing specific.

My words referred to "mad-made" not to Holodomor. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think you get it, and you’ve ignored my references. The debate about intentionality is the question of whether there was an intention to commit genocide against Ukrainians. There is no debate that mass famine deaths resulted from intentional acts. Mass deaths were intentionally caused, not only by natural causes or accident, nor only by “man-made” necessity or incompetence, as some Holodomor deniers claim. Intentional actions were taken in the knowledge that mass deaths would result, and that determined who was to die. —Michael Z. 21:44, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

And I don't think you get what I say. I never denied the fact that Holodomor is a subject of debates. Yes, a significant fraction of authors emphasise intentionaity. I am not discussing that at all. I am just saying that it was "man-made" without any reservation, because ALL XX century famines were man-made. And that is why teh words "man-made" hardly carry any additional information about Holodomor. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:03, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

B.S. The phrase “man-made famine” is specifically used in books and in scholarly articles to denote aspects of the Holodomor, as well as of other specific events, that are different from other famines. —Michael Z. 20:22, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Google Scholar paints a different pictures than you claimed, and include the Bengal famine of 1943, and those in Sudan and Yemen, especially since 2017. Even your Google Books research should have alarmed you, as the first page is full of pre-1990s results and the second result was Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (2017). The Holodomor is perhaps the most famous man-made famine but it was not the only one, and I think Siebert was correct. I ask you that you apologize to Siebert and recuse your "B.S." claim. Davide King (talk) 00:12, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, the first page of Google scholar has 9 sources that explicitly use such term in the title or snippet. 7 of them are about the Holodomor. Five include it in the title. All of them are about the Holodomor.. This is a confirmation that the term is mostly (although not exclusively) applied to the Ukrainian famine, exactly as Mzajac said. My very best wishes (talk) 03:20, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, it was indisputably man-made, just as many other famines. Was it intentional? Well, with NKVD troops preventing movement of people from affected areas (which did happen as a matter of historical fact), that was basically an execution. My very best wishes (talk) 18:08, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 26 May 2022

Denial of the Holodomor → Holodomor denial –  

Better fulfils the WP:CRITERIA:

• Naturalness: it’s arguably less awkward.
• Concision: it’s shorter.
• Consistency: with titles Genocide denial and every other article and subcategory of Category:Genocide denial.

WP:COMMONNAME asks us to use the most widely used name in WP:RS’s and this is it. For example, the the LOC subject headings used worldwide in English-language bibliographic cataloguing are Holodomor denial and Holodomor denial literature,[7][8] and Google Books Ngram shows that this term appears in sources, while the current title is below its threshold for inclusion.[9]  —Michael Z. 16:25, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support per nomination. Naturalness, concision and WP:CONSISTENT with main title headers of other English Wikipedia articles that end with "denial", such as Armenian genocide denial, Bosnian genocide denial or Cambodian genocide denial, all as mentioned. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 18:06, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support per the above comments. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 09:50, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• Support for consistency. Capsulecap ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:38, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Deletion of Douglas Tottle And Modern politics Sections

Douglas Tottle SHOULD have is own section in the Holodomor genocide question page, but not in this one. On page 2, in the introduction of "Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitter to Harvard" Tottle states that:

"However, while historians accept that famine occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933

— as well as in other areas of the USSR — they are still debating the causes, extent and results.

My examination of the campaign and its charges of "Ukrainian genocide”

does not attempt to study the famine in any detailed way.

His book advocates the thesis that the narrative surrounding the holodomor originates in nazi and anti-communist propaganda, that framing it as a genocide is based on false and fabricated evidence. But it isnt a "claim that the Holodomor, a large-scale, man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932–1933, did not occur" - as stated in the opening of this page. Being there a page about the denial of the ucranian famine, and another about its status as an genocide, Tottle book pertains only to the latter O mutlei (talk) 05:24, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

The same aplies to the Modern politics sections. The Background section states that "the Holodomor has been a point of contention between Russia and Ukraine", and that "The Russian government does not recognize the famine as an act of genocide". So, again it pertains to the genocide question, not denial.

Same with Blinova articles in Sputnik News. She follows the same thesis as Tottle: although there was a famine, it was not a genocide and that the narrative around it was wildly exagerated propaganda. .

To Mironin is also not atributed a claim of denial: "Sigizmund Mironin's "Holodomor in the Rus" argued that the cause of the famine was not Stalin's policies, but rather the chaos engendered by the New Economic Policy". The same with Tkachenko and Mukhin. Yury Mukhin is a notorious supporter of conspiracy theories, but that seems insufficient to estabilish a issue of "Modern politics"

Every topic up until 2.2 Discusses the denial and cover up of the famine. Sections 2.3 and 3. do not.

If both of these belong in this article, "Denial of the Holodomor" should be better defined to encompass both topics. But since there are articles on the "genocide question" and "Holodomor in modern politics", the deletion of these topics (sections 2.3 to 3.2) Seems like thes best solution O mutlei (talk) 16:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

The book attributed to Tottle is not a source on the Holodomor. It is an example of genocide propaganda, and part of the subject of this article. So is the above-linked article on Russian state website Sputnik International.

An authoritative secondary source on bibliographic classification, the Library of Congress, uses Tottle as a definitive example for the subject heading “Holodomor denial literature,” which contains “works that diminish the scale and significance of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 or assert that it did not occur.” This is distinct from the subject of “Holodomor denial,” which is “the diminution of the scale and significance of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 or the assertion that it did not occur.” —Michael Z. 18:01, 2 June 2022 (UTC)