The Holodomor,[a] also known as the Great Ukrainian Famine,[b] was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union.
Holocaust:
The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland.
The opening paragraphs from the respective articles.
It’s man-made because the severity of the famine was undeniably affected by policy. I don’t think there’s anything biased about that. What it means, and the extent to which it was deliberate, if at all, should be expanded upon in the article proper.
The usage of “Holodomor” is so common that it’s perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to use it. It’s the article title most people are going to be looking for, after all. But it’s worth noting that the very first section (etymology) has a paragraph about how Holodomor is different from the Holocaust due to no evidence of intentional extermination.
Yeah policy exacerbating the problems of the famine through mismanagement still shouldn’t be described simply as man-made. At best you could call it a mismanaged famine. Man-made ascribes something deliberate to it.
It would be like calling the deaths by covid in America man-made. Which is sort of true, the US government engaged in negligence and let a million people die. But if I said “covid is man-made” that would be a poor way of framing it, right? It would sound like someone deliberately designed the disease.
wikipedia could have Holodomor redirect to Soviet Famine but they don’t.
Holodomor is different from the Holocaust due to no evidence of intentional extermination.
why call it man-made then? sure you can argue that man-made doesn’t mean ‘deliberate’ but thats not how most people would interpret it. ‘famine’ is the clear neutral term.
Bengal’s economy had been predominantly agrarian, with between half and three-quarters of the rural poor subsisting in a “semi-starved condition”. Stagnant agricultural productivity and a stable land base were unable to cope with a rapidly increasing population, resulting in both long-term decline in per capita availability of rice and growing numbers of the land-poor and landless labourers. A high proportion laboured beneath a chronic and spiralling cycle of debt that ended in debt bondage and the loss of their landholdings due to land grabbing.
why call it man-made then? sure you can argue that man-made doesn’t mean ‘deliberate’ but thats not how most people would interpret it. ‘famine’ is the clear neutral term.
If you only read the first paragraph and ignore the rest of the article you deserve to not understand anything.
I don’t think it’s misleading. Distinguishing between famines caused solely by external factors, and famines caused in part or in whole by policy, seems entirely reasonable. I was responding to your assertion that someone might misunderstand the meaning of “man-made”.
The biases of Wikipedia reflect the biases of its editors (there are Wikipedia articles about that). It could be a great tool for radicalization, but I suppose it’s easier to just complain about it.
There is no such thing as a famine “caused solely by external factors”. The wording is misleading because it implies there is such a thing as a famine that isn’t man made and therefore the one that occurred in the Soviet Union being called “man-made” is already a deliberate attempt at drawing a distinction between it another famines. It is a fact that in all famines there is a human factor necessary to compound on environmental factors in order to cause a famine. You don’t get famines that occur due to nature alone. The problem with this article is that by starting out with such language the myth is reinforced that there was something exceptionally malicious about this famine.
I felt the same way until I started trying to correct errors in my professional field of research and they stubbornly refused to fix the errors despite a wealth of primary literature showing that the current scientific consensus contradicts what was written on Wikipedia.
As useful as it is for science, it has serious issues. I wish I could say I haven’t found many similar errors or poor/outright contradictory sourcing over the last decade. They need to seriously examine their own biases and restructure their editing process. Wikipedia is one of my favorite human projects, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore its flaws.
Please stop forcing me to defend Wikipedia. 🥺
Btw,
Holodomor:
Holocaust:
The opening paragraphs from the respective articles.
Spot the difference.
more neutral wording would have been just ‘famine’. there was nothing deliberate about it and the famine killed not just Ukrainians but Russians too.
and ‘holodomor’ itself is a term which makes people think its like holocaust. ‘Communism as bad or worse than Nazism’ is historical revisionism.
It’s man-made because the severity of the famine was undeniably affected by policy. I don’t think there’s anything biased about that. What it means, and the extent to which it was deliberate, if at all, should be expanded upon in the article proper.
The usage of “Holodomor” is so common that it’s perfectly reasonable for an encyclopedia to use it. It’s the article title most people are going to be looking for, after all. But it’s worth noting that the very first section (etymology) has a paragraph about how Holodomor is different from the Holocaust due to no evidence of intentional extermination.
Yeah policy exacerbating the problems of the famine through mismanagement still shouldn’t be described simply as man-made. At best you could call it a mismanaged famine. Man-made ascribes something deliberate to it.
It would be like calling the deaths by covid in America man-made. Which is sort of true, the US government engaged in negligence and let a million people die. But if I said “covid is man-made” that would be a poor way of framing it, right? It would sound like someone deliberately designed the disease.
wikipedia could have Holodomor redirect to Soviet Famine but they don’t.
why call it man-made then? sure you can argue that man-made doesn’t mean ‘deliberate’ but thats not how most people would interpret it. ‘famine’ is the clear neutral term.
where is mention of ‘man-made’ in Bengal Famine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
where is the criticism is British policy?
If you only read the first paragraph and ignore the rest of the article you deserve to not understand anything.
Feel free to add it. I’ll support the change
misleading people is good, got it.
First, the page is protected, also good luck getting that past mayo ass mods.
I don’t think it’s misleading. Distinguishing between famines caused solely by external factors, and famines caused in part or in whole by policy, seems entirely reasonable. I was responding to your assertion that someone might misunderstand the meaning of “man-made”.
The biases of Wikipedia reflect the biases of its editors (there are Wikipedia articles about that). It could be a great tool for radicalization, but I suppose it’s easier to just complain about it.
There is no such thing as a famine “caused solely by external factors”. The wording is misleading because it implies there is such a thing as a famine that isn’t man made and therefore the one that occurred in the Soviet Union being called “man-made” is already a deliberate attempt at drawing a distinction between it another famines. It is a fact that in all famines there is a human factor necessary to compound on environmental factors in order to cause a famine. You don’t get famines that occur due to nature alone. The problem with this article is that by starting out with such language the myth is reinforced that there was something exceptionally malicious about this famine.
I felt the same way until I started trying to correct errors in my professional field of research and they stubbornly refused to fix the errors despite a wealth of primary literature showing that the current scientific consensus contradicts what was written on Wikipedia.
As useful as it is for science, it has serious issues. I wish I could say I haven’t found many similar errors or poor/outright contradictory sourcing over the last decade. They need to seriously examine their own biases and restructure their editing process. Wikipedia is one of my favorite human projects, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore its flaws.