Order 270 U.S.S.R. - Family of Red Army Captives Killed

[CCIP]

Originally Posted by Krauter

I think that this point can, as you say, be debated. During the collectivization, Stalin envisioned starving off the entire Ukrainian population to provide Living room to the people of Russian stock (ironically similar to Hitlers aspirations of Lebensraum...)

Personally I always considered this theory pretty ludicrous - although there certainly was some very shady things going on with Ukraine being 'punished' for being a hotbed for resistance to Bolsheviks, this was mostly before Stalin. Stalin was a) hardly of Russian stock, upbringing or culture himself; b) deeply suspicious of any manner of nationalism, but above all Russian. While he targeted a number of ethnic groups specifically to put down resistance, no other population or national identity took as much damage from him as the Russians. Arguably he completely destroyed Russian nationalism, something he did not succeed at in the Ukraine or in many other places. So I've always considered the "Ukrainian genocide" to be tragic and indeed to SOME extent targeted, but hardly something that was envisioned to benefit the Russians or something that could be blamed on anything but calculated political repression. If Stalin was afraid of anything most, it was probably Russian nationalism above all, so the idea of him feeding it is rather absurd.