this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
452 points (84.8% liked)
Memes
53548 readers
1359 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If the USSR was trying to kill their culture, they weren’t very good at it, because Ukrainians are still speaking Ukrainian to this day.
No shit. That’s the point of socialism: to expropriate bourgeois private property and redistribute it to the masses.
What a novel way to attempt to wipe out a language, publishing books in it.
Heh, novel way
What? I don't quite understand.
So, the Soviets decided to Russify Ukraine, what actions did they take?
Taking this argument in isolation, it's the same argument used today to say Israel isn't conducting a genocide. "If Israel wanted to genocide Palestinians, they aren't very good at it, cause only 70K killed."
Taken in isolation, THIS argument could be used to cast the Allied invasion of Italy in WW2 as a project of genocide. They did kill a number of Italians, after all.
Does Israel recognize the state of Palestine?
But did the allies attempt to destroy Italian culture, language, and identity, along with systematically killing Italian civilians?
Does it matter what Israel thinks?
What evidence do you have to justify your assertion that Ukrainian culture, language, and identity were targets of destruction?
In this case, yes??? If we're setting out to prove intent to commit genocide, both the actions and rhetoric of the accused are pretty important evidence. You don't really get one without the other, the rhetoric is necessary to justify the actions to the people who will ultimately have to commit them.
Recognizing statehood is a pretty base level of recognizing the humanity and sovereignty of those that occupy it, which the USSR would not have done for Ukraine if their intent was to wipe out the Ukrainian culture and national identity and replace it with Russian identity. As evidenced by Israel, genocidaires prefer their victims as defenseless and disorganized as possible. Colonizers don't recognize borders on land they seek to colonize. Israel has denied and undermined Palestinian statehood at every stop, literally rewriting history to support their narrative, because allowing Palestinians to have a state with any level of recognized sovereignty would be wholly counter-productive to Israel's colonial project.
So how do you explain Ukraine being granted statehood within the Soviet Union? If, by your account, the USSR went to all this trouble to brutally cleanse the land of Ukrainians and their culture by means of starvation, why did they then just leave the land to be looked after by a Ukrainian state? Why did they give up on this ambition for Russia to occupy Ukraine? Where else have you ever seen a colonizer just up and leave a colony, still mostly occupied by natives, and grant those natives full statehood in their union??? What you're claiming just makes no sense when put into greater context.
They did not, just like the Soviets didn't.
It matters what Israel does. Here is a state actually doing something you baselessly claim the USSR did, and surprise surprise, they're acting completely opposite to how the USSR acted.