cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3237566

I posted this on lemmygrad but also posted here for discussion. I’m sure this was discussed before but I still want to ask.

If you remember a while back there was a tweet from blinken about ussr and babyn yar. If you don’t remember, he asserts that “Ussr buried the atrocity and says ukraine is suffering now”.

Anyway afterwards there was a deluge of discussion all around about how disgusting the tweet was but also some people were loud about how he is actually right. And also refer to some wikipedia citation.

So I will list the points I saw at the time:

• Soviets downplayed holocaust and never mentioned jews being singled out in babyn yar.
• That broadly only mentioning as soviet citizens dying in atrocities done by fascists and refusal to acknowledge roma people.
• That originally the extraordinary commision mainly downplayed babyn yar.

This brings me to the actual stuff I want to talk. Mainly there is a narrative at least that only liberalization made it possible for the victims of holocaust heard in post ussr. And that the soviets were very antisemitic and downplayed romani or other oppressed people by branding them as counter revolutionary.

What are your thoughts on this? On the narrative that liberalisation made the victims of holocaust heard and before that Ussr was only trivializing holocaust by mentioning them as soviet citizens.