Douglas Tottle

[Johann]

Not quite sure this is the right place but...

I recently finished reading Tottle's book on the Ukrainian famine. Its really the first thing that i have seriously read on the issue so i was wondering whether anyone else had read it, what they thought about it, how accurate it is and so on.

I mean i agree with the criticism on how the number of deaths were calculated. But in other parts of the book Tottle presents a fair amount evidence against the idea that it was genocide, and I can't help thinking that surely people who believe it was aren't basing their argument on evidence that is so weak and transparent. So i thought i would take the cautious approach and get another opinion.

I am a little confused and this probably wasn't a good place to start so is there anything else worth reading, i was thinking of "The Years of Hunger" by Davies and Wheatcroft mentioned in the wikipedia article on the famine?

[Intelligitimate]

For the best scholarly material there is on the subject, I suggest the work of professor Mark Tauger. Most of his articles can be found online at his website:

http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/soviet.htm

Tauger goes above and beyond Tottle in refuting the Ukrainian genocide myth. Davies and Wheatcroft (both excellent scholars) reference Tauger's work a lot. In short, the famine was not the result of Kulak resistence, inefficient collectivization methods, or a terror campaign. The primary responsible lies with the weather. Nature caused the famines, not man.

This idea of the genocide-famine has been so thorougly trashed not even Robert Conquest, author of the work Tottle so thoroughly refutes, maintains the thesis anymore. This much Conquest has admitted in an exchange with Davies and Wheatcroft ("Debate: Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33: A Reply to Ellman" Europe-Asia Studies_, vol. 58, No. 4, June 2006, pp.629).

Those still upholding the idea are the Ukrainian Nationalist community, and assorted anti-communists whose hatred of the USSR makes it impossible to let go of a favorite weapon to bash socialism with.

[Johann]

Cheers :D
The book came up on the list you posted in the Stalin's crimes thread, Intelligitimate, where Tottle is described as communist so I wondered if he could just be dismissed because of it.


Why not? That's the hallmark of anti-communism!

Aye, you’re right there. Its just I normally expected this kind of thing from rabid right wing types who make comments like:
"National Socialist German Workers Party, ZOMG!!1!"
But sometimes it comes from reasonable, intelligent people (although from the impression I got we aren't in danger of finding many of them among the Ukrainian nationalists) and it can't help but think that maybe there is something to it.