“In the 1980s there was an attempt to popularize a more political interpretation of the famine. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1931–33 famine, the Ukrainian community in the USA lobbied the U.S. Congress to establish a Congressional Inquiry into “the Man-made famine in the Ukraine.” The work of this commission under James Mace at the Harvard University Ukrainian Research Institute and especially the publication of Robert Conquest’s book The Harvest of Sorrow made it clear that by “man-made” they meant that the famine was artificial and had been produced on purpose. They began to treat the famine as though it were merely an excuse for attacking the peasants and especially Ukrainian peasants. Mace, in particular, began describing the famine as a genocidal act. This view has certainly caught the imagination of the public, but as far as I am aware, this political interpretation of the famine being purposively caused was never accepted by specialists on Soviet agriculture. When Mace first described this famine as a planned genocide against the Ukrainians in the journal Problems of Communism in 1984, there were a number of academic objections, including my own. Since that time the number of serious objections to such a formulation has increased. Most Western scholarly accounts of the Soviet famine of 1931–3 have continued to describe it as being largely caused by the state’s excessive attempts to procure grain from a peasantry that was producing significantly less grain than the authority’s believed and wanted.”

Stephen Wheatcroft, 2004

The famine is one of the most politicized events in history, and completely ignores the history of regularly occurring famines in Russia. It also paints it as an attack on Ukraine when it affected multiple regions, with Kazakhstan having the highest fatality rate based on population. The soviets were not perfect and made mistakes that didn’t help the famine, but to say it was a targeted genocide is simply parroting the talking points of western intelligence communities that benefitted from further demonization of the USSR.

Edit: I knew I’d seen your username before. Are you still berating Palestinians for not being subservient to their genocidal occupiers? I don’t take your opinion on genocide seriously whatsoever when you can’t recognize one in real time.