Watching Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I made an observation about Putin.
For an East Asian man like me, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine was difficult to understand.😅
So, I looked at Putin's appearance. There is often a stereotype that people's appearance reveals their personality and life.
I compared Putin to the people I met at Hive. What is the difference between the people I followed and Putin?
I discovered that Putin doesn't laugh! 😯
There is a saying that laughter is the common language of mankind!
Perhaps I followed people who laugh well as friends.😄
Seeing Putin's appearance, I had many emotions and thoughts. Why isn't he smiling?
So I searched the historical relationship between Russia and Ukraine.
The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomor, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmɔr];[2] derived from морити голодом, moryty holodom, 'to kill by starvation'),[a][3][4][5] also known as the Terror-Famine[6][7][8] or the Great Famine,[9] was a famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. It was a large part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933. The term Holodomor emphasises the famine's man-made and allegedly intentional aspects such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs and restriction of population movement. As part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932–1933 which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.[10] Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine[11] and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.[12]
Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly.[13] A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7–10 million perished.[14] Current scholarship estimates a range of 4 to 7 million victims,[15] with more precise estimates ranging from 3.3[16] to 5 million.[17] According to the findings of the Court of Appeal of Kyiv in 2010, the demographic losses due to the famine amounted to 10 million, with 3.9 million direct famine deaths, and a further 6.1 million birth deficits.[18]
Whether the Holodomor was genocide is still the subject of academic debate, as are the causes of the famine and intentionality of the deaths.[19][20][21] Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.[10][22] Others suggest that the man-made famine was a consequence of Soviet industrialisation.[23][24][25]
I was shocked to see The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomor, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmɔr].😨
The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomor, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmɔr], which occurred 90 years ago when Russia looted Ukraine, was a hellish reality.
Millions of Ukrainians died of starvation because Russia looted food.
The harsh reality of the Ukrainians under Soviet rule was beyond my imagination.😰
The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) of the People's Republic of China (PRC) was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes. Mao decreed that efforts to multiply grain yields and bring industry to the countryside should be increased. Local officials were fearful of Anti-Rightist Campaigns and they competed to fulfill or over-fulfill quotas which were based on Mao's exaggerated claims, collecting non-existent "surpluses" and leaving farmers to starve. Higher officials did not dare to report the economic disaster which was being caused by these policies, and national officials, blaming bad weather for the decline in food output, took little or no action. Millions of people died in China during the Great Leap, with estimates ranging from 15 to 55 million, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest or second-largest[1] famine in human history.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
The major changes which occurred in the lives of rural Chinese people included the incremental introduction of mandatory agricultural collectivization. Private farming was prohibited, and those people who engaged in it were persecuted and labeled counter-revolutionaries. Restrictions on rural people were enforced with public struggle sessions and social pressure, and forced labor was also exacted from people.[9] Rural industrialization, while officially a priority of the campaign, saw "its development ... aborted by the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward".[10] The Great Leap was one of two periods between 1953 and 1976 in which China's economy shrank.[11] Economist Dwight Perkins argues that "enormous amounts of investment only produced modest increases in production or none at all. ... In short, the Great Leap was a very expensive disaster".[12]
In 1959, Mao Zedong ceded day-to-day leadership to pragmatic moderates like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping and the CCP studied the damage which was done at conferences which it held in 1960 and 1962, especially at the "Seven Thousand Cadres Conference". Mao did not retreat from his policies, instead, he blamed problems on bad implementation and "rightists" who opposed him. He initiated the Socialist Education Movement in 1963 and the Cultural Revolution in 1966 in order to remove opposition and re-consolidate his power. In addition, dozens of dams constructed in Zhumadian, Henan during the Great Leap Forward collapsed in 1975 (under the influence of Typhoon Nina) and resulted in the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure, with a death toll which ranged from tens of thousands to 240,000.[13][14]
I thought that China's The Great Leap Forward (Second Five Year Plan) would be the only disaster in human history that surpassed The Holodomor.😔
The devastation suffered by the people of the two communist empires, the Soviet Union and China, was beyond my imagination.😮
The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939.[2] The book won the National Book Award[3] and Pulitzer Prize[4] for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.[5]
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes, and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California along with thousands of other "Okies" seeking jobs, land, dignity, and a future.
The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy.[6][7] A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was released in 1940.
The famine and starvation of American farmers in The Grapes of Wrath felt like paradise compared to the conditions suffered by Ukrainian and Chinese farmers.😳
I could understand the resentment that the Ukrainians hold toward the Russians.😲
I wonder if Putin, the man who doesn't laugh, will become the new Stalin and Mao Zedong?
Ps: Please forgive me for my rude behavior in using Your Majesty's photos at my own discretion.🙏
