>it is not at all a consensus that the Holodomor was deliberate from the beginning, that’s an active debate with prominent experts on both sides.
Either you're being deliberately dishonest or haven't read enough of the details. Yes, there is debate on what percentage of that gargantuan human tragedy was started by tyrannical incompetence and how much of it was done through deliberate vengefulness by the Stalin government, further moved forward by local initiative, but virtually all experts agree that at least deliberate indifference allowed things to grow monstrously and prolonged them too.
The leaders in Moscow (especially Stalin) and local commissars could soon clearly see that the collectivization policy was practically extinguishing all human life in the Ukrainian countryside, yet they continued to pursue it and even block all avenues of escape, while at the same time exporting grain they'd confiscated from people who were by then dying in their millions.
Either you're being deliberately dishonest or haven't read enough of the details. Yes, there is debate on what percentage of that gargantuan human tragedy was started by tyrannical incompetence and how much of it was done through deliberate vengefulness by the Stalin government, further moved forward by local initiative, but virtually all experts agree that at least deliberate indifference allowed things to grow monstrously and prolonged them too.
The leaders in Moscow (especially Stalin) and local commissars could soon clearly see that the collectivization policy was practically extinguishing all human life in the Ukrainian countryside, yet they continued to pursue it and even block all avenues of escape, while at the same time exporting grain they'd confiscated from people who were by then dying in their millions.