Soviet and Western Denial
Holodomor denials are the assertions that the 1932–1933 famine in Soviet Ukraine either did not occur or did occur but was not a premidated act. Denying the existence of the famine was the Soviet state's position, and reflected in both Soviet propaganda and the work of some Western journalists and intellectuals including Walter Duranty and Louis Fischer. Denial of the famine by Soviet authorities was immediate and continued well into the 1980s. The denial of the famine was a well orchestrated and highly successful disinformation campaign by the Soviet government. Stalin "had achieved the impossible: he had silenced all the talk of hunger... Millions were dying, but the nation hymned the praises of collectivization", wrote Edvard Radzinsky. This was the first major instance of Soviet authorities adopting Hitler's Big Lie propaganda technique to sway world opinion according to Robert Conquest.
Read more about this topic: Holodomor
Famous quotes containing the words soviet, western and/or denial:
“So they lived. They didn’t sleep together, but they had children.”
—Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)
“We hold on to hopes for next year every year in western Dakota: hoping that droughts will end; hoping that our crops won’t be hailed out in the few rainstorms that come; hoping that it won’t be too windy on the day we harvest, blowing away five bushels an acre; hoping ... that if we get a fair crop, we’ll be able to get a fair price for it. Sometimes survival is the only blessing that the terrifying angel of the Plains bestows.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)
“The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed “the white slaves of the North,” for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)