The association "USSR = Russians" is part of the systematic attempt by the soviet regime at cultural (and sometimes literal) genocide. The 90th anniversary of the Holodomor was just two weeks ago.
Anything East of Berlin is "Eastern Europe" for instance.
Outside. Specifically, Volga Region, Kazakhstan, Urals and Siberia
This Wiki article describes it in details
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...
Yet you use it.
> I lean towards
Maybe because you just want to use it? Just look at the map[0], read the legend. Explain who were the people in 18, 17, 11 regions?
That's 14 years before 1933, and the border was not there by then, but...
I would prefer a slighly more credible resource than a postcard made in times of great turmoil.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Evropays...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Su...
There was no border in those territories for so long, anything they could have drawn wouldn't really have any meaningful historical connection. So IIRC they went by the Russian Imperial demographic maps and claimed most territories on those showed >25% "Malorossians". Ironically, this ended up pilfering some territories from Belarus, as well - note where Pinsk is on that map!
But, of course, this possibility does not exclude the other. If this was the primary motivation, however, it neatly explains why some southern Russian regions were also severely affected despite not having any separatist tendencies.
The discussion basically amounts to "are heavy-handed anti-crime policies targeting urban youths racist against Blacks or not?"
- "No they aren't, because they target all urban youths, including Hispanics and Whites, and not just Blacks" - "Yes they are, because they affect a disproportionate share of young Black people. The fact that they affect a disproportionate share of young Hispanics doesn't make it less racist"
If, of course, what you're telling is true.
Communists were internationalists and judged people based on their social class, not nationality. Many areas of the USSR, including in Russia proper, did experience precisely the same level of suffering and death from hunger.
Also, food requisitions in Ukraine which led to Holodomor were organised and conducted by native Ukrainians. It is easy to look up that most senior party and NKVD posts in 1932-33 in Ukrainian SSR were held by Ukrainians - how many posts in Gestapo were held by Jews? For some reason Hitler didn't put Jews in charge of the Holocaust.
It was not a systemic attempt also: if the USSR leaders wanted to kill of all Ukrainians, for some reason they didn't do it systematically at all, year after year. Maybe they didn't want to kill all Ukrainians, after all?
Holodomor, hunger in all other parts of the USSR, Stalin's terror were all the result of the Soviet rule, deeply rooted in class struggle ideology and complete disregard for human life. A lot of people died of hunger simply because Stalin needed to export food taken from them to pay for his Industrialization. No, nationality did not play a role in choosing whom to plunder. Food requisitioners took food from whoever they could find.
If you want a real genocide example perpetrated by the USSR, it is the Chechen expulsion. Systematic, not led by Chechens, ban on settlement remained for many decades. Holodomor was neither targeted only at Ukrainians, was led in Ukraine by Ukrainians, was not systemic, was never a policy of any kind.
Poke through the wikipedia article on the subject, it's well sourced, and I think anybody can see that though there was famine across the USSR at the time, the situation in Soviet Ukraine was unique for many reasons, including in terms of how hard they were hit by the famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Name one Jew on a senior leadership (~Gauleiter level) position in Nazi Germany. There were certainly tons of Ukrainians occupying positions on all levels of power in USSR. Hell, Ukrainian nationals held top position in the USSR far longer than Russians did. Imagine Nazi Germany headed by a Jew?
As for Wikipedia article, at this age the question is very political and Wikipedia reflects that. Some Ukraians want the first place in this victimhood olympics, and the current political situation favours them in the current political landscape, so they can bend history interpretation to their interests. But you know what, if we use very specific words like "fascism" or "genocide" to name different things we don't like, these words will eventually lose their meaning and become generic insults.
Was Holodomor a tragedy? Sure. Was it a genocide - a targeted systemic effort to kill people of one specific nation - not even close.
Btw, I too could take part in this victimhood olympics if I wanted: my grandparents have fled the Voronezh area (near the Volga river) in 1947 because of extreme famine [0] that killed a lot of people. Note the wording in English version:
"Regions that were especially affected included the Ukrainian SSR with 300,000 dead, and the Moldavian SSR with 100,000 dead. Other parts of the Soviet Union such as the Russian SFSR and the Byelorussian SSR were also affected with 500,000 deaths." - so "especially affected" areas lost fewer people than Russian SFSR which was "also" affected. Unfortunately, these tragedies that were a result of a Soviet rule are viewed through nationalistic lens today, and are being used in propaganda pieces.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946%E2%80%...
Using "Soviet" and "Russian" interchangeably was, in my opinion, mostly a Western phenomenon. I don't remember Soviet propaganda mixing the two. It always felt weird to me when in Cold War Hollywood movies they would refer to USSR as Russia, or Soviets as Russians. You wouldn't do it here. Usually they put emphasis on "Soviet man", not on particular ethnicities.
Putting an emphasis on the Soviet man who always speaks Russian language, I can understand how that could create an impression of everyone being Russian.
It's not true. For example: Andrey Kolmogorov (Soviet Union) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Kolmogorov
Nikolai Lobachevsky (Russian Empire) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Lobachevsky
Ivan Vinogradov (Russian Empire, USSR) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Vinogradov
And many others.
Do not spread propaganda. Be objective, please.