Why isn't the Holodomor taught in schools? | Hacker News Reader

Why isn't the Holodomor taught in schools?

quora.com

33 pointstarakat15 comments

I guess because history is full of this kinda stuff, sadly. In Croatian school system (unless you study history, I assume?) half the curriculum is world history and European history (with like... only a few hours of international History jammed together) and the other half is our country or local regional history that affect Croatia in some way.

I can't fathom where'd they'd slot all the horrendous historical anecdotes amongst all the horrendous historical anecdotes Croatia has been a part of. There would need to be a lot more history.

Also, there was a period of "recent history" (but maybe that was in highschool) that was more political/nuanced from what I very vaguely remember

Fellow Croatian here, Holodomor was actually briefly mentioned in my high school history class 2 years ago.

History is full of any kind of event that may be taught, so that is a fully general answer: it can explain why anything isn't taught, and applies equally to things that are taught.

And the part of Andrew Tanner's Quora answer (top answer at submission time) that says it's because "it had relatively little impact on other historical events" is tautological - it would have had more impact if it was taught and publicized more.

So neither is a satisfying explanation.

Some famines are caused by misguided collectivization / socialism enforced by the state, such as Holodomor and this one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Others were caused by misguided protections of landlords / private property / capitalism enforced by the state, such as the Irish Potato Famine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)

Still others by State Capitalism / imperialism of some kind, such as the famines under the British Raj and East India company — the one in Bengal was more recent than Holodomor even:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

If you’re going to teach things, you need to find patterns and try to discern the root causes. Otherwise you’re just imparting biased propaganda to students.

How many people here knew about all these famines, not just Holodomor?

We learned about Irish Famine and Chinese Famine in school but not Holodomor or Bengal Famine. Holodomor is a special kind of famine that was politically and ethnically motivated. Ostensibly Ukrainian Don and Kuban Cossak territories to the south east were greatly affected. This needs to be seen in the context of Decossackization and Dekulakization.

> Holodomor is a special kind of famine that was politically and ethnically motivated.

This also applies to the Irish Potato Famine and that one is much more ethnically and culturally relevant for Americans, for example, so for the past century or so that was the one that was taught. Displacing its pedagogical role in US history education is just not going to happen.

The Irish potato famine is taught in American schools as something that just happened because the Irish depended on potatoes. No discussion of how British policy created these circumstances.

When socialism does it, we teach how the policy and ideology made it happen. When it happens anywhere else, it's how it was an unfortunate disaster caused by nature

Interesting that is what I was taught about the potato famine. I got some reading to do on it.

FWIW I guess it depends on how good of a history teacher you had. This was back in the 80s at a US public school in a part of the country with a very large Irish immigrant population, but I learned about why the Irish depended on potatoes (vis a vis caloric return for amount of effort in poor/rocky soil), the dangers of mono-cropping, the English system of landlords and tenant farming, and the long-term impacts of the Irish diaspora from this event upon other countries. As a comparison the Holodomor does not offer many useful lessons to students other than 'Stalin bad, top-down planning bad.'

> Some famines are caused by misguided collectivization / socialism enforced by the state

This looks deliberate, not misguided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Causes

regions with higher Ukrainian population shares were struck harder with centrally planned policies corresponding to famine, and Ukrainian populated areas were given lower amounts of tractors which were correlated to a reduction in famine mortality, ultimately concluding that 92% of famine deaths in Ukraine alone along with 77% of famine deaths in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus combined can be explained by systematic bias against Ukrainians

[..]

Under the collectivism policy, for example, farmers were not only deprived of their properties but a large swath of these were also exiled in Siberia with no means of survival. Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were ordered to be shot.

> If you’re going to teach things, you need to find patterns and try to discern the root causes. Otherwise you’re just imparting biased propaganda to students.

This implies that history currently is taught so as to find patterns and causes, and that teaching the Holodomor for some reason wouldn't entail patterns and causes. It is a fully general answer that could excuse any event from being taught. A non-answer.

And to answer your question, yes, I knew about all of them.

The Irish Potato Famine was not due to protection of capitalism. Perhaps the single biggest contributor to it was the anti-capitalist Corn Laws:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws

Is it not? I learned about the Holodomor in high school in Oklahoma of all places.

That page serves me this ad at the top, which is an obvious scam:

Ad by Best Gadget Advice Save on heating costs with this incredible mini heater! If you hate the cold but don't want to raise your heating bills, you need to get this! Learn More

It’s a socialist-policy induced famine.

Imagine a public school teacher having to explain this to a student without ideology getting in the way, their head would explode.

Very true. After all it was Upton Sinclair who said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com