Professor Synder vividly describes the heart-wrenching story of how up-to-4,000,000 Ukrainians were starved to death to seize their wheat to pay for the importation of industrial goods for the Five Year Industrial Plan.
This was portrayed in the documentary HARVEST OF DESPAIR: THE UNKNOWN HOLOCAUST (Canada, 1984).
Before diplomatic relations were established with the Soviet Union in 1933, Washington depended heavily on journalist reports from Moscow. Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter in Moscow, won the Pulitzer Prize award in 1932 for his reporting.
Later it was revealed that Duranty had totally ignored the Ukrainian famine (although he did acknowledge to a British diplomat that he was aware of this dreadful calumny). Years later there was an effort to revoke his Pulitzer Prize. (Duranty’s false reporting was described in excruciating detail in S. J. Taylor’s STALIN’S APOLOGIST). The NYT reviewed the facts and ultimately decided not to request a revocation of Duranty’s false reporting.
This is an extraordinary example of how Washington’s over dependence on daily journalist reporting can have a dreadful impact on our understanding of foreign situations.
As a Foreign Service Officer, during the Congo crisis of 1964, one of my responsibilities was to provide The Secretary and others with a ‘factual correction’ of stories that they read in the New York Times and Washington Post, as they came in limos to their offices.
On occasion, my ‘corrections’ were minor. At times they were major. Young journalists were reporting from Congo. Often their judgment and knowledge were scanty.
I applaud the few journalists who, in Vietnam and elsewhere, got their boots muddy as they ferreted out insights as to what really was happening. This seldom occurred in Africa in the 1960s.
Regarding Vietnam, anyone who read Bernard Fall’s and Robert Shaplen’s books knew that there was no ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and that nationalism was the dominant aspect in this war. As a Foreign Service Officer with a distinguished record for my ‘rambunctious’ activities in the Congo, at times with a M 16 and .45, I was a prime candidate for LBJ’s Vietnam War.
Twice, in 1965 and 1967, our ambassador in Saigon ‘asked’ me two join him. Twice I refused.
Regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, I surmise that some ‘boots on the ground’ journalists witnessed early that we were on a ‘fool’s errand.’ Only in retrospect did this become obvious to folks in Washington and elsewhere.
I urge caution when we read journalist reports on foreign affairs. Professor Snyder and other experts provide timely insights that often are ignored in daily reporting (from journalists and from our embassies). Solid information is available if one seeks it from ‘boots on the ground’ reporters and from scholars/practitioners who understand the soul and substance of their areas of expertise.
I’m sorry if this upsets anyone here, but I prefer reading to listening to podcasts and audio files. The last time I made a comment like this I was told by admiring fans of Mr. Snyder that he is such a busy man. I’m truly glad he is busy and I look forward to his next book, which will probably be on Ukraine, judging by what he’s been presenting here for the past year+. But I didn’t pay two years of subscription in order to wait to read the next book. I’m sorry for my negativism and I’m sure I’ll be hushed by one or more admirers, but I really, really do prefer to read. I’m just expressing myself and my frustration, sorry.
This is a truly helpful lecture for me. I'm now at the very end of my 3rd year of reading history, and can now isolate 3 distinct phases:
1. confusion. The problem here is an inability to incorporate facts I read into a wider context because at this early stage, there is no context, so there is no place to put the facts.
2. gradually learning more facts, meaning slowly being able to put facts I learned earlier into a context. The more you read, the wider the context, the better you understand.
3. starting to ask questions about one of my main interests, foreign policy. I'm now about 2/3 of the way through H.A. Winker's "The Age of Catastrophe," and something you said in this lecture beginning at 33:32 is exactly what I've been struggling with lately (with Winkler's book in mind): "It's not everyday reality which drives policies, right? It's, and this is true in any system, it's the elite interpretation that's going to drive policies." On the one hand, this is glaringly obvious. But on the other, it is precisely what makes foreign policy so complicated. During the late '20s and '30s all of the powers involved had their own interests. They all had domestic problems, most of which were the result of the seemingly unmanageable consequences of the 1929 stock market crash. If we concentrate on Germany alone, we miss all of the complex interrelationships between the foreign and domestic problems and policies of all the powers involved, including the way domestic problems and policies--the internal--spill over into foreign relations--the external (to borrow from Jörn Leonhard).
And so lately my questions have been, "How much did elites in these governments know about the policies of other governments?" "How limited was their knowledge?" (I do know there were intelligence operations.) There were so many different details that had to be taken into consideration before making decisions, oftentimes in chaos, with people shouting at each other in disagreement while sometimes trying to destroy the reputations of enemies. This all seems exceedingly complex to me. At this stage in my reading I simply can't understand how historians are able to sort it out.
‘Red Famine’ Stalin’s war on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum 📖 a masterpiece of scholarship, a ground-breaking history, and a heart-wrenching story—turns to the horrors of Soviet policy in Ukraine, specifically Stalin’s mass starvation of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. Such was the famine’s devastation that Ukrainian émigré publications coined a new word to describe its barbarity: “Holodomor,” a combination of the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor). #ProtectDemocracy 🌻
Professor Synder vividly describes the heart-wrenching story of how up-to-4,000,000 Ukrainians were starved to death to seize their wheat to pay for the importation of industrial goods for the Five Year Industrial Plan.
This was portrayed in the documentary HARVEST OF DESPAIR: THE UNKNOWN HOLOCAUST (Canada, 1984).
Before diplomatic relations were established with the Soviet Union in 1933, Washington depended heavily on journalist reports from Moscow. Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter in Moscow, won the Pulitzer Prize award in 1932 for his reporting.
Later it was revealed that Duranty had totally ignored the Ukrainian famine (although he did acknowledge to a British diplomat that he was aware of this dreadful calumny). Years later there was an effort to revoke his Pulitzer Prize. (Duranty’s false reporting was described in excruciating detail in S. J. Taylor’s STALIN’S APOLOGIST). The NYT reviewed the facts and ultimately decided not to request a revocation of Duranty’s false reporting.
This is an extraordinary example of how Washington’s over dependence on daily journalist reporting can have a dreadful impact on our understanding of foreign situations.
As a Foreign Service Officer, during the Congo crisis of 1964, one of my responsibilities was to provide The Secretary and others with a ‘factual correction’ of stories that they read in the New York Times and Washington Post, as they came in limos to their offices.
On occasion, my ‘corrections’ were minor. At times they were major. Young journalists were reporting from Congo. Often their judgment and knowledge were scanty.
I applaud the few journalists who, in Vietnam and elsewhere, got their boots muddy as they ferreted out insights as to what really was happening. This seldom occurred in Africa in the 1960s.
Regarding Vietnam, anyone who read Bernard Fall’s and Robert Shaplen’s books knew that there was no ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ and that nationalism was the dominant aspect in this war. As a Foreign Service Officer with a distinguished record for my ‘rambunctious’ activities in the Congo, at times with a M 16 and .45, I was a prime candidate for LBJ’s Vietnam War.
Twice, in 1965 and 1967, our ambassador in Saigon ‘asked’ me two join him. Twice I refused.
Regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, I surmise that some ‘boots on the ground’ journalists witnessed early that we were on a ‘fool’s errand.’ Only in retrospect did this become obvious to folks in Washington and elsewhere.
I urge caution when we read journalist reports on foreign affairs. Professor Snyder and other experts provide timely insights that often are ignored in daily reporting (from journalists and from our embassies). Solid information is available if one seeks it from ‘boots on the ground’ reporters and from scholars/practitioners who understand the soul and substance of their areas of expertise.
I’m sorry if this upsets anyone here, but I prefer reading to listening to podcasts and audio files. The last time I made a comment like this I was told by admiring fans of Mr. Snyder that he is such a busy man. I’m truly glad he is busy and I look forward to his next book, which will probably be on Ukraine, judging by what he’s been presenting here for the past year+. But I didn’t pay two years of subscription in order to wait to read the next book. I’m sorry for my negativism and I’m sure I’ll be hushed by one or more admirers, but I really, really do prefer to read. I’m just expressing myself and my frustration, sorry.
Today, I am finally starting on "Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine" by Anne Applebaum.
By the way, I like to listen to books, but I like to read articles like this.
I am less inclined to listen to podcast - who knows why, because I love my audio books.
Thank you for all your work, I appreciate your expertise, activism and generosity.
This is a truly helpful lecture for me. I'm now at the very end of my 3rd year of reading history, and can now isolate 3 distinct phases:
1. confusion. The problem here is an inability to incorporate facts I read into a wider context because at this early stage, there is no context, so there is no place to put the facts.
2. gradually learning more facts, meaning slowly being able to put facts I learned earlier into a context. The more you read, the wider the context, the better you understand.
3. starting to ask questions about one of my main interests, foreign policy. I'm now about 2/3 of the way through H.A. Winker's "The Age of Catastrophe," and something you said in this lecture beginning at 33:32 is exactly what I've been struggling with lately (with Winkler's book in mind): "It's not everyday reality which drives policies, right? It's, and this is true in any system, it's the elite interpretation that's going to drive policies." On the one hand, this is glaringly obvious. But on the other, it is precisely what makes foreign policy so complicated. During the late '20s and '30s all of the powers involved had their own interests. They all had domestic problems, most of which were the result of the seemingly unmanageable consequences of the 1929 stock market crash. If we concentrate on Germany alone, we miss all of the complex interrelationships between the foreign and domestic problems and policies of all the powers involved, including the way domestic problems and policies--the internal--spill over into foreign relations--the external (to borrow from Jörn Leonhard).
And so lately my questions have been, "How much did elites in these governments know about the policies of other governments?" "How limited was their knowledge?" (I do know there were intelligence operations.) There were so many different details that had to be taken into consideration before making decisions, oftentimes in chaos, with people shouting at each other in disagreement while sometimes trying to destroy the reputations of enemies. This all seems exceedingly complex to me. At this stage in my reading I simply can't understand how historians are able to sort it out.
‘Red Famine’ Stalin’s war on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum 📖 a masterpiece of scholarship, a ground-breaking history, and a heart-wrenching story—turns to the horrors of Soviet policy in Ukraine, specifically Stalin’s mass starvation of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933. Such was the famine’s devastation that Ukrainian émigré publications coined a new word to describe its barbarity: “Holodomor,” a combination of the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor). #ProtectDemocracy 🌻
I highly recommend Anne Applebaum's Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine.
I highly recommend Anne Applebaum's book, Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine.