It isn't Genocide When You're Killing a Class of People

Jonah Goldberg comments on the Russian Duma's defense of the mass starvation of Russian farmers in the Ukraine in 1932-33. They deny claims of genocide by saying that the millions who died were of all ethnic classes.

"There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country," the Russian State Duma resolution said.

Liberals would and do agree.

In America and the West generally, vast numbers of leftist intellectuals forgave Stalin, Mao and others for murdering people who stood in the way of Progress — and historians continue to do so today. Indeed, "modernization" was one of the great excuses and rationalizations for murder, theft and, yes, genocide in the 20th century and, I fear, people will be going back to this intellectual well for a good long time.

The AP article notes that ...

Renowned writer and Soviet-era dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn backed the Kremlin line on the divisive issue, dismissing Ukrainian claims that the famine was genocide as a "fable."

If true, this distresses me because I view Solzhenitsyn as a hero of mine. I cannot believe that he has a benign view of the murder of millions by starvation.