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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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he promoted many to positions of power in the Eastern Bloc after WW2

After WW2? Like Solomon Mikhoels?

Stalin's anti-Semitism aside, "Holocaust didn't happen, Hitler didn't kill millions of Jews, but Stalin did" is a weird position to take. Well, not weird ideologically, "we didn't do it, but you deserved it" is a common stance among midwit supporters of various atrocities, but I am surprised when people try this on the Motte.

After WW2? Like Solomon Mikhoels?

Jews were pretty common in the immediate postwar Romanian, Hungarian, Polish and even East German governments over which Stalin presided. Some like Pauker and Slansky (although in the latter case it’s questionable whether it was antisemitism) were purged I suppose, but many weren’t. In any case, the fact that they were allowed in power at all even from 1947-1952 suggests it’s unlikely that Stalin genocided Jews.

"Stalin killed millions, or at least over a million, Jews" is basically a necessary argument as a part of the great statistical rejigging operation that's required to be even in the ballpark of answering the "Where did the Jews go?" question. It's not a particularly good argument - it presumes a genocide that we basically have zero proof of in the form of witness statements, camps etc. whatever proof we have for the Holocaust - but the argument that Soviets that rapidly assimilated a huge number of Jews that aren't shown in their statistics runs into even more problems once aliayh from Soviet Union/Russia becomes possible and vast amounts of Jews (religous, ethnic, whatever) or people with any connection to Judaism start to migrate to Israel.

We have witness reports of UPA Ukrainians, Keelhauled White Russians and other such groups being shipped to GULag after the war. We don't have anything remotely similar about Jews.