I’m finally making the switch from Reddit. The Voyager app seems like a pretty seamless transition, but I’d love to hear any tips about using this platform, or what quirks distinguish it from Reddit as a whole.
I’m finally making the switch from Reddit. The Voyager app seems like a pretty seamless transition, but I’d love to hear any tips about using this platform, or what quirks distinguish it from Reddit as a whole.
Overall positive.
I’ve heard that he supported the development of India. As an Indian, positive view here.
After joining lemmy, seeing arguments about him, got to know that he faced personal losses too, with his son, a soldier in the WW2, dying in a Nazi concentration camp as a PoW.
Have read that there were purges of officials and repression in fear of Nazi and other spies and that excesses did happen under his govt.
But considering how they were able to reduce poverty and were able to industrialise their nation, making them able to fight the Nazis, I see them overall positively.
Have heard about the famine too. But not sure if it was purposeful like how Churchill took away foodgrains from Bengal. So negative view on it, but not sure how to see it. Whether it is intentional or natural cause or inefficiency.
How do you feel about Hitler?
Thurston and J Arch Getty have good books on Stalin. They’re both pretty well respected historians, so you can read stuff about the famine from their books. It’s not a pretty picture. Also, which part of India, if you don’t mind?
Famines are never going to be pretty, right?
I have seen pictures online of the Bengal and Mangalore famines that India suffered under British rule.
My doubt on it is how much of it is natural and how much is intentional.
What do those historians say about that?
I have seen people arguing and discussing about it online, with everything ranging from intentional punishment to bureaucratic inefficiency to feudal farmlords burning their produce and animals during the famine to how famines were common in the region until the 1950’s and also mentions of grain export
Southern India
Are you Indian too? Which part?
Dude, I know. I am an Indian too, and a socialist. Getty and Thurston definitely aren’t cold war propagandists. It is Robert Conquest, Anne Applebaum and more recently, Timothy Snyder who portray the famine as an intentional genocide done by evil Soviets. Getty and Thurston, especially Thurston was actually notorious for taking a more pro-Soviet stance. Wheatcroft and Davies did important work showing that the famine was caused by a combination of bad harvest and poor planning. As far as I am aware, the popular genocide/deliberate starvation line is not the historical consensus and has not been for some time after the opening of Soviet archives. Even liberal historians like Fitzpatrick and Krotkin debunk the many capitalist lies about the famine. People discussing it online generally have a very strange assortment of sources - from Snyder’s terrible book ‘Bloodlands’ to obsolete books like Tottle’s ‘Fraud, Famine and Fascism’ which was written before the opening of Soviet archives. r/AskHistorians is a good source for finding both Marxist and liberal sources, and it generally avoids neoconservatives like Conquest.
I am from the South too but am Marathi.
Aah. Sorry.
I was a bit wary since I got banned in a .world community when I shared similar pov’s. I think there are some who equate Stalin to Hitler, so was trying to avoid needless fights on that.
I’m in the KL state.
Understandable. .world is generally Eurocentric or US-centric. I stay away from most political comms there for my own sanity.
Lucky you. I live in southern Sanghiland, Karnataka.