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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Well consider the extreme history absurdism going on here, that is being upvoted.

A very small contingent of US soldiers is involved in an allied invasion of Russia. Mostly those US soldiers do nothing, two hundred die (half from disease), they go home a very short time later having done almost nothing at all in terms of conflict. Then in this thread, that is being blamed for the forced Communist famine deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians.

It's the ultimate combination of Communism apologism (apologizing for the mass genocide and slaughter of millions of people under Lenin's policies), and blame America for everything'ism. And all of that is happening in the thread for an article that is about how Americans altruistically contributed historically vast quantities of food to keep millions of other people from starving to death.

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I suspect what you are seeing is a reaction, or over-reaction, to how Americans have long censored our own history. Once you figure out the official (accepted, schoolbook, popular) depiction of history edits out the nastiest bits in favor cheerleading, the presumption that anything "left out" should be taken in the worst possible light comes naturally. This is especially true when the information in question ("The US invaded Russia? And we just dont mention it?!) seems so potentially loaded and relevant to current world events.

>Then in this thread, that is being blamed for the forced Communist famine deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians.

That sounds more like the famine of 1932 rather than the famine of 1921 being discussed here. In 32, you can directly point to policies put in place responsible for the famine. In 21, much of it was due to civil war that the US participated in by providing troops and resources.

> due to civil war that the US participated in by providing troops and resources

US didn't provide any troops or resources to Russian Civil War. A few clashes with pro-Bolshevik bandits were from Japanese forces.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Bear_Expedition

So, the only verified facts are that US troops were securing the materials and defending against Bolshevik attackers.

That's not all the facts, that's proof of my claim they "provided troops and supplies."

They've provided troops and supplies to _guard the war materials_.

The war materials they were giving to the Whites to help them fight the civil war. This isn't controversial, the US openly backed the Whites in the war.

Did you read that Wiki article? War materials were given to support Tsarist Russia in WW1.

That was the original reason for sending supplies to Russia and it had been going on for years. This expedition was after the fall of the Tzarists government, after Russia had exited WWI, and started months before the armistice.

And again, this is not all the actions taken by America in the conflict.

What was the original reason? Sending supplies to Whites when there was no Whites?

Supplying Tzarists Russia started in like 1914. By the time being discussed, they were supplying the Whites.

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