Holodomor

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор, 'Морити голодом', literal translation Killing by hunger) was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine",^[1][2][3] millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.^[4]

Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly; anywhere from 1.8^[5] to 12 million^[6] ethnic Ukrainians were said to have been killed as a result of the famine. Recent research has since narrowed the estimates to between 2.4^[7] and 7.5^[8] million. The exact number of deaths is hard to determine, due to a lack of records,^[9][10] but the number increases significantly when the deaths inside heavily Ukrainian-populated Kuban are included.^[11] The demographic deficit caused by unborn or unrecorded births is said to be as high as 6 million.^[9] Older estimates are still often cited in political commentary.^[12]

Scholars disagree on the relative importance of natural factors and bad economic policies as causes of the famine and the degree to which the destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry was premeditated on the part of Joseph Stalin.^{[4][13][14][15]} Scholars and politicians using the word Holodomor emphasize the man-made aspects of the famine, arguing that it was genocide; some consider the resultant loss of life comparable to the Holocaust.^[16] They argue that the Soviet policies were an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and therefore fall under the legal definition of genocide.^{[17][18][19][20][21]} Other scholars argue that the Holodomor was a consequence of the economic problems associated with radical economic changes implemented during the period of Soviet industrialization.^{[18][19][22][23]}

Legal recognition

As of March 2008, several governments^[24] have recognized the actions of the Soviet government as an act of genocide. The joint statement at the United Nations in 2003 has defined the famine as the result of actions and policies of the totalitarian regime that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and other nationalities in the USSR.^[25] On 28 November 2006, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) narrowly passed a law defining the Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide and made public denial illegal.^[26][27] Even though in April 2010 newly elected president Yanukovych reversed Yushchenko's policy on the Holodomor famine,^[28] the law has not been repealed and remains in force.^[29] On 23 October 2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution^[30] that recognized the Holodomor as a crime against humanity.^[31]

On 12 January 2010, the court of appeals in Kiev opened hearings into the "fact of genocide-famine Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-33". In May 2009 the Security Service of Ukraine started a criminal case "in relation to the genocide in Ukraine in 1932-33".^[32] In a ruling on 13 January 2010 the court found Joseph Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders guilty of genocide against the Ukrainians. The court dropped criminal proceedings against the leaders, Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, Pavel Postyshev and others, who had all died years before.^[33] This decision became effective on 21 January 2010.^[34]

On 27 April 2010, a draft Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution declared the famine was caused by the "cruel and deliberate actions and policies of the Soviet regime" and was responsible for the deaths of "millions of innocent people" in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Russia.^[28] Even though PACE found Stalin guilty of causing the famine, they rejected several amendments to the resolution, which proposed the Holodomor be recognized as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.^[35]

Etymology

The word "Holodomor" literally translated from Ukrainian means "death by hunger," or "to kill by hunger, to starve to death."^[36][37] The word was used in print as early as 1978 by Ukrainian immigrant organizations in the United States and Canada.^[38][39][40] An early public usage of the term in the Soviet Union was in February 1988, in a speech by Oleksiy Musiyenko, Deputy Secretary for ideological matters of the party organization of the Kiev branch of the Union of Soviet Writers in Ukraine,^[41][42] and may have first appeared in print in the Soviet Union on 18 July 1988, in his article on the topic.^[43]

In Ukrainian the word holod means "hunger", and mor means "plague". The expression moryty holodom means "to inflict death by hunger." The Ukrainian verb "moryty" (морити) means "to poison somebody, drive to exhaustion or to torment somebody". The perfective form of the verb "moryty" is "zamoryty"  — "kill or drive to death by hunger, exhausting work".

The word “Holodomor” is given in the modern, two-volume dictionary of the Ukrainian language as "artificial hunger, organised in vast scale by the criminal regime against the country's population."^[44] Sometimes the expression is translated into English as "murder by hunger or starvation."^[45]

History

Scope and duration

The famine affected the Ukrainian SSR as well as the Moldavian ASSR (a part of the Ukrainian S.S.R. at the time) in the spring of 1932^[46] and from February to July 1933,^[47] with the greatest number of victims recorded in the spring of 1933. The population in every part of the territory did not suffer from the Holodomor for the whole period.

There are reports that famine stopped directly at the border between Ukraine and the Russian (and Belarusian) republics.^[48] Between 1926 and 1939, the Ukrainian population increased by 6.6%, whereas Russia and Belarus grew by 16.9% and 11.7%, respectively.^[49][50]

From the 1932 harvest Soviet authorities were able to procure only 4.3 million tons as compared with 7.2 million tons obtained from the 1931 harvest.^[51] Rations in town were drastically cut back, and in the winter of 1932-33 and spring of 1933 many urban areas were starved.^[52]

The urban workers were supplied by a rationing system (and therefore could occasionally assist their starving relatives of the countryside), but rations were gradually cut and by the spring of 1933, the urban residents also faced starvation. At the same time, workers were shown agitprop movies, where all peasants were portrayed as counterrevolutionaries hiding grain and potatoes at the time when workers, who are constructing the “bright future” of socialism, were starving.^[53] The first reports of mass malnutrition and deaths from starvation emerged from two urban areas of Uman, reported in January 1933 by the Vinnytsya and Kiev oblasts. By mid-January 1933 there were reports about mass “difficulties” with food in urban areas, which had been undersupplied through the rationing system, and deaths from starvation among people who were withdrawn from the rationing supply. This was to comply with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Decree December 1932. By the beginning of February 1933, according to reports from local authorities and Ukrainian GPU, the most affected area was Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, which also suffered from epidemics of typhus and malaria. Odessa and Kiev oblasts were second and third, respectively. By mid-March, most reports originated from Kiev Oblast.

By mid-April 1933, the Kharkiv Oblast reached the top of the most affected list, while Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Odessa, Vinnytsya, Donetsk oblasts and Moldavian SSR followed it. Reports about mass deaths from starvation, dated mid-May through the beginning of June 1933, originated from raions in Kiev and Kharkiv oblasts. The “less affected” list noted the Chernihiv Oblast and northern parts of Kiev and Vinnytsya oblasts. The Central Committee of the CP(b) of Ukraine Decree of 8 February 1933, said no hunger cases should have remained untreated. Local authorities had to submit reports about the numbers suffering from hunger, the reasons for hunger, number of deaths from hunger, food aid provided from local sources, and centrally provided food aid required. The GPU managed parallel reporting and food assistance in the Ukrainian SSR. (Many regional reports and most of the central summary reports are available from present-day central and regional Ukrainian archives.)^[54]

Evidence of widespread cannibalism was documented during the Holodomor.^[55] The Soviet regime printed posters declaring: "To eat your own children is a barbarian act."^[56] More than 2500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the Holodomor.^[57]

The Ukrainian Weekly, which was tracking the situation in 1933, reported the difficulties in communications and appalling situation in the Ukraine. In addition, on 1 December 1933 the newspaper reported a mass protest planned to take place in Syracuse, New York.

The special nature of famine in Ukraine

Although famine, caused by collectivization, raged in many parts of the Soviet Union in 1932, special and particularly lethal policies, described by Yale historian Timothy Snyder in his book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (2010), were adopted in and largely limited to Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933.^[58] Snyder lists seven crucial policies that applied only, or mainly, to Soviet Ukraine. He states: "Each of them may seem like an anodyne administrative measure, and each of them was certainly presented as such at the time, and yet each had to kill":^[58]

1. From 18 November 1932 peasants from Ukraine were required to return extra grain they had previously earned for meeting their targets. State police and party brigades were sent into these regions to root out any food they could find.
2. Two days later, a law was passed forcing peasants who could not meet their grain quotas to surrender any livestock they had.
3. Eight days later, collective farms that failed to meet their quotas were placed on "blacklists" in which they were forced to surrender 15 times their quota. These farms were picked apart for any possible food by party activists. Blacklisted communes had no right to trade or to receive deliveries of any kind, and became death zones.
4. On 5 December 1932, Stalin's security chief presented the justification for terrorizing Ukrainian party officials to collect the grain. It was considered treason if anyone refused to do their part in grain requisitions for the state.
5. In November 1932 Ukraine was required to provide 1/3 of the grain collection of the entire Soviet Union. As Lazar Kaganovich put it, the Soviet state would fight "ferociously" to fulfill the plan.
6. In January 1933 Ukraine's borders were sealed in order to prevent Ukrainian peasants from fleeing to other republics. By the end of February 1933 approximately 190,000 Ukrainian peasants had been caught trying to flee Ukraine and were forced to return to their villages to starve.
7. The collection of grain continued even after the annual requisition target for 1932 was met in late January 1933.^[58]

Causes

The reasons for the famine are a subject of scholarly and political debate. Some scholars suggest that the famine was a consequence of the economic problems associated with economic changes implemented during the period of Soviet industrialization.^{[18][19][22][23][45]} However, it has been suggested by other historians that the Soviet leadership used the famine to attack Ukrainian nationalism and thus may fall under the legal definition of genocide.^{[17][18][19][20][21]}

Implementation and abuse

On 7 August 1932 a law came into force that stipulated that all food was state property and that mere possession of food was evidence of a crime. Among the most enthusiastic enforcers of the law were urban members of youth organizations, educated under the Soviet system, who fanned out into the countryside in order to prevent the "theft" of state property. They constructed and staffed watchtowers (over 700 in the Odessa region alone) to ensure that no peasants took food home from the fields. The youth brigades lived off the land, eating what they confiscated from the peasants. They often humiliated the starving peasants by forcing them to box each other for sport, or forcing them to crawl and bark like dogs. Under the pretext of grain confiscation, the brigades routinely raped women living alone.^[59]

Several thousand Ukrainian peasants managed to cross the river Dniester into Romania, and received asylum there. Many were killed during the crossing by Soviet border-guards.^[60]

Death toll

By the end of 1933, millions of people had starved to death or had otherwise died unnaturally in Ukraine, as well as in other Soviet republics. The total estimate of the famine victims Soviet-wide is given as 6-7 million^[22] or 6-8 million.^[4] The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had taken place. The NKVD (and later KGB) archives on the Holodomor period made records available very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains unknown and is probably impossible to estimate, even within a margin of error of a hundred thousand.^[61] The media sometimes report historians' estimates of fatalities as high as seven to ten million.^[62][63][64] and a number as high as ten.^[65] Some historians consider Holodomor to be just a part of a bigger genocide that took place against Ukrainians during the existence of the USSR, writing that up to twenty million were killed during the duration of the USSR.^[66] The former President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have issued public statements giving the death toll at about 10 million.^[12][67] The use of this figure has been criticized by historians Timothy Snyder and Stephen G. Wheatcroft. Snyder wrote: "President Viktor Yushchenko does his country a grave disservice by claiming ten million deaths, thus exaggerating the number of Ukrainians killed by a factor of three; but it is true that the famine in Ukraine of 1932-1933 was a result of purposeful political decisions, and killed about three million people."^[67] In an email to Postmedia News, Wheatcroft wrote: "I find it regrettable that Stephen Harper and other leading Western politicians are continuing to use such exaggerated figures for Ukrainian famine mortality" and "There is absolutely no basis for accepting a figure of 10 million Ukrainians dying as a result of the famine of 1932-33."^[12]

Some estimates are based on the people who died within the 1933 borders of Ukraine; while others are based on deaths within current borders of Ukraine. Other estimates are based on deaths of Ukrainians in the Soviet Union. Some estimates use a simple methodology: based on the percentage of deaths reported in one area, they apply the percentage to the entire country. Others use more sophisticated techniques, including analyzing the demographic statistics based on various archival data. Some historians question the accuracy of Soviet censuses, since they may have been doctored to support Soviet propaganda. Other estimates come from recorded discussion between world leaders like Churchill and Stalin. In an August 1942 conversation, Stalin gave Churchill his estimates of the number of "kulaks" who were repressed for resisting collectivization as 10 million, in all of the Soviet Union, rather than only in Ukraine. When using this number, Stalin implied that it included not only those who lost their lives, but also forcibly deported.^[68][69]

Additional variations were due to some estimates including the death toll from political repression: e.g., those who died in the Gulag labor camps, while others estimated only those who starved to death. In addition, many of the estimates are based on different time periods. Thus, a definitive number of deaths continues to be a source of great debate.

The estimates prior to the opening of former Soviet archives also varied widely but the range was narrower: for example, 2.5 million (Volodymyr Kubiyovych),^[69] 4.8 million (Vasyl Hryshko)^[69] and 5 million (Robert Conquest).^[71]

One modern calculation that uses demographic data, including that recently available from Soviet archives, narrows the losses to about 3.2 million or, allowing for the lack of precise data, 3 million to 3.5 million.^[69][72][73]

The Soviet archives show that excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932-1933 numbered a minimum of 1.8 million (2.7 including birth losses). It should be noted that this source further states "Depending upon the estimations made concerning unregistered mortality and natality, these figures could be increased to a level of 2.8 million to a maximum of 4.8 million excess deaths and to 3.7 million to a maximum of 6.7 million population losses (including birth losses)".^[5] In 1932-1933, there were a combined 1.2 million cases of typhus and 500,000 cases of typhoid fever. All major types of disease, apart from cancer, tend to increase during famine as a result of undernourishment lowering resistance, as well as unsanitary conditions from populations too weak to care for themselves, or migrating to refugee camps; thus, these deaths resulted primarily from disease rather than starvation per se.^[74] In the years 1932–34, the largest rate of increase was recorded for typhus, which is spread by lice. In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, lice are likely to increase. Gathering numerous refugees at railway stations, on trains and elsewhere facilitates the spread. In 1933, the number of recorded cases was 20 times the 1929 level. The number of cases per head of population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was already considerably higher than in the USSR as a whole. By June 1933, incidence in Ukraine had increased to nearly 10 times the January level, and it was much higher than in the rest of the USSR.^[75]

The number of the recorded excess deaths extracted from the birth/death statistics from the Soviet archives is contradictory. The data fails to add up to the differences between the results of the 1927 Census and the 1937 Census.^[69]

Kulchytsky summarized the natural population change.^[69] The declassified Soviet statistics show a decrease of 538,000 people in the population of Soviet Ukraine between 1926 census (28,925,976) and 1937 census (28,388,000). The number of births and deaths (in thousands) according to the declassified records are given in the table (right).

According to the correction for officially non-accounted child mortality in 1933^[76] by 150,000 calculated by Sergei Maksudov, the number of births for 1933 should be increased from 471,000 to 621,000. Assuming the natural mortality rates in 1933 to be equal to the average annual mortality rate in 1927-1930 (524,000 per year), a natural population growth for 1933 would have been 97,000. This was five times less than the growth in the previous three years (1927–1930). The natural population growth from 1927 to 1936 should have been 4.043 million, while the census data showed a decrease of 538,000. The sum of the two numbers gives an estimated total demographic loss of 4.581 million people.

Estimates of the human losses due to famine must account for the numbers involved in migration (including forced resettlement). According to Soviet statistics, the migration balance for the population in Ukraine for 1927 - 1936 period was a loss of 1.343 million people. Even when the data was collected, the Soviet statistical institutions acknowledged that the precision was less than for the data of the natural population change. The total number of death in Ukraine due to unnatural causes for the given ten years was 3.238 million; accounting for the lack of precision, estimates of the human toll range from 2.2 million to 3.5 million deaths.

In addition to the direct losses from unnatural deaths, the indirect losses due to the decrease of the birth rate should be taken into account in consideration in estimating of the demographic consequences of the Famine for Ukraine. For instance, the natural population growth in 1927 was 662,000, while in 1933 it was 97,000, [this does not fit with the table, it had to be a decline of 1.379 thousand, i.e., approx. 1.4 million] in 1934 it was 88,000. The combination of direct and indirect losses from Holodomor gives 4.469 million, of which 3.238 million (or more realistically 3 to 3.5 million) is the number of the direct deaths according to this estimate.

A 2002 study by Vallin et al.^[77][78][79] utilizing some similar primary sources to Kulchytsky, and performing an analysis with more sophisticated demographic tools with forward projection of expected growth from the 1926 census and backward projection from the 1939 census estimate the amount of direct deaths for 1933 as 2.582 million. This number of deaths does not reflect the total demographic loss for Ukraine from these events as the fall of the birth rate during crisis and the out-migration contribute to the latter as well. The total population shortfall from the expected value between 1926 and 1939 estimated by Vallin amounted to 4.566 million. Of this number, 1.057 million is attributed to birth deficit, 930,000 to forced out-migration, and 2.582 million to the combination of excess mortality and voluntary out-migration. With the latter assumed to be negligible this estimate gives the number of deaths as the result of the 1933 famine about 2.2 million. According to this study the life expectancy for those born in 1933 sharply fell to 10.8 years for females and to 7.3 years for males and remained abnormally low for 1934 but, as commonly expected for the post-crisis peaked in 1935–36.^[79]

According to historian Timothy Snyder, the recorded figure of excess deaths was 2.4 million. However, Snyder claims that this figure is "substantially low" due to many deaths going unrecorded. Snyder states that demographic calculations carried out by the Ukrainian government provide a figure of 3.89 million dead, and opined that the actual figure is likely between these two figures, approximately 3.3 million deaths to starvation and disease related to the starvation in Ukraine from 1932-1933. Snyder also estimates that of the million people who died in Soviet Russia from famine at the same time, approximately 200,000 were ethnic Ukrainians due to Ukrainian-inhabited regions being particularly hard hit in Russia.^[58]

According to estimates^[76] about 81.3% of the famine victims in Ukrainian SRR were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5% Russians, 1.4% Jews and 1.1% were Poles. Many Belarusians, Hungarians, Volga Germans and other nationalities became victims as well. The Ukrainian rural population was the hardest hit by the Holodomor. Since the peasantry constituted a demographic backbone of the Ukrainian nation,^[80] the tragedy deeply affected the Ukrainians for many years.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the overall number of Ukrainians who died from 1932-1933 famine is estimated as about four to five million out of six to eight million people who died in the Soviet Union as a whole.^[4]

Genocide question

Robert Conquest, the author of the "Harvest of Sorrow", initially believed that the famine of 1932–33 was a deliberate act of mass murder, if not genocide committed as part of Joseph Stalin's collectivization program in the Soviet Union. In criticism of his work, Mark Tauger claims that Conquest's book on the famine is replete with errors and inconsistencies and that it deserves to be considered an example of Cold War lack of objectivity.^[81]

R.W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft have interacted with Conquest and note that he no longer considers "that Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine." They quoted the Conquest words where he argued "that with resulting famine imminent, he [Stalin] could have prevented it, but put 'Soviet interest' other than feeding the starving first - thus consciously abetting it."^[82] Conquest—and, by extension, Davies and Wheatcroft—believe that, had industrialization been abandoned, the famine would have been "prevented" (Conquest),^[83] or at least significantly alleviated:

"[W]e regard the policy of rapid industrialization as an underlying cause of the agricultural troubles of the early 1930s, and we do not believe that the Chinese or NEP versions of industrialization were viable in Soviet national and international circumstances."^[84]

They see the leadership under Stalin as making significant errors in planning for the industrialization of agriculture.

This retraction by Conquest is also noted by Kulchytsky.^[21]

Dr. Michael Ellman of the University of Amsterdam argues that, in addition to deportations, internment in the Gulag and shootings (See: Law of Spikelets), there is some evidence that Stalin used starvation as a weapon in his war against the peasantry.^[85] He analyses the actions of the Soviet authorities, two of commission and one of omission: (i) exporting 1.8 million tonnes of grain during the mass starvation (enough to feed more than five million people for one year), (ii) preventing migration from famine afflicted areas (which may have cost an estimated 150,000 lives) and (iii) making no effort to secure grain assistance from abroad (which caused an estimated 1.5 million excess deaths), as well as the attitude of the Stalinist regime in 1932–33 (that many of those starving to death were "counterrevolutionaries", "idlers" or "thieves" who fully deserved their fate). Based on this analysis he concludes, however, that the actions of Stalin's authorities against Ukrainians do not meet the standards of specific intent required to proof genocide as defined by the UN convention (the notable exception is the case of Kuban Ukrainians).^[86] Ellman further concluded that if the relaxed definition of genocide is used, the actions of Stalin's authorities do fit such a definition of genocide.^[86] However, this more relaxed definition of genocide makes the latter the common historical event, according to Ellman.^[86]

Regarding the aforementioned actions taken by Stalin in the early 1930s, Ellman unambiguously states that, from the standpoint of contemporary international criminal law, Stalin is "clearly guilty" of "a series of crimes against humanity" and that, from the standpoint of national criminal law, the only way to defend Stalin from a charge of mass murder is "to argue he was ignorant of the consequences of his actions." He also rebukes Davies and Wheatcroft for, among other things, their "very narrow understanding" of intent. He states:

"According to them, only taking an action whose sole objective is to cause deaths among the peasantry counts as intent. Taking an action with some other goal (e.g. exporting grain to import machinery) but which the actor certainly knows will also cause peasants to starve does not count as intentionally starving the peasants. However, this is an interpretation of ‘intent’ which flies in the face of the general legal interpretation."^[86]

Genocide scholar Adam Jones stresses that, while controversial, some of the actions of the Soviet leadership during 1931-32 should be considered genocidal. Not only did the famine kill millions, it took place against "a backdrop of persecution, mass execution, and incarceration clearly aimed at undermining Ukrainians as a national group."^[87] Norman Naimark, a historian at Stanford University who specializes in modern East European history, genocide and ethnic cleansing, argues that some of the actions of Stalin's regime, not only those during the Holodomor but also Dekulakization and targeted campaigns against particular ethnic groups, can be looked at as genocidal.^[88] In 2006, the Security Service of Ukraine declassified more than 5 thousand pages of Holodomor archives.^[89] These documents suggest that the Soviet regime singled out Ukraine by not giving it the same humanitarian aid given to regions outside it.^[90]

Some historians maintain that the famine was an unintentional consequence of collectivization, and that the associated resistance to it by the Ukrainian peasantry exacerbated an already-poor harvest.^[91][92] Some researchers state that while the term Ukrainian Genocide is often used in application to the event, technically, the use of the term "genocide" is inapplicable.^[20]

The statistical distribution of famine's victims among the ethnicities closely reflects the ethnic distribution of the rural population of Ukraine^[93] Moldavian, Polish, German and Bulgarian population that mostly resided in the rural communities of Ukraine suffered in the same proportion as the rural Ukrainian population.^[93] While ethnic Russians in Ukraine lived mostly in urban areas and the cities were affected little by the famine, the rural Russian population was affected the same way as the rural population of any other ethnicity.^[93]

West Virginia University professor Dr Mark Tauger claims that any analysis that asserts that the harvests of 1931 and 1932 were not extraordinarily low and that the famine was a political measure intentionally imposed through excessive procurements is based on an insufficient source base and an uncritical approach to the official sources.^[91] Other scholars, such as Dr. David Marples, professor of history at the University of Alberta, have been critical of Tauger's claims.^[94] Wheatcroft states Tauger's view represents the opposite extreme in arguing the famine was totally accidental.^[95]

Author James Mace was one of the first to claim that the famine constituted genocide. But British economist Stephen Wheatcroft, who studied the famine, believed that Mace's work debased the field of Russian studies.^[96] However, Wheatcroft's characterization of the famine deaths as largely excusable, negligent homicide has been challenged by economist Steven Rosefielde, who states:

"Grain supplies were sufficient enough to sustain everyone if properly distributed. People died mostly from terror-starvation (excess grain exports, seizure of edibles from the starving, state refusal to provide emergency relief, bans on outmigration, and forced deportation to food-deficit locales), not poor harvests and routine administrative bungling."^[97]

Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, asserts that in 1933 "Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Ukraine" through a "heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe's era of mass killing."^[98] He argues the Soviets themselves "made sure that the term genocide, contrary to Lemkin's intentions, excluded political and economic groups." Thus the Ukrainian famine can be presented as "somehow less genocidal because it targeted a class, kulaks, as well as a nation, Ukraine."^[99]

In his 1953 speech the "father of the [UN] Genocide Convention," Dr Raphael Lemkin described "the destruction of the Ukrainian nation" as the "classic example of genocide," for "...the Ukrainian is not and never has been a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion, are all different...to eliminate (Ukrainian) nationalism...the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed...a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order...if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priest, and the peasant can be eliminated [then] Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation...This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of the destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation."^[100][101]

...the evidence of a large-scale famine was so overwhelming, was so unanimously confirmed by the peasants that the most "hard-boiled" local officials could say nothing in denial.

Mr.Chamberlin was a Moscow correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor for 10 years. In 1934 he was reassigned to the Far East. After he left the Soviet Union he wrote his account of the situation in Ukraine and North Caucasus (Poltava, Bila Tserkva, and Kropotkin). Chamberlin later published couple of books "Russia's Iron Age" and "The Ukraine: A Submerged Nation".^[103][104]

Soviet and Western denial

Holodomor denials are the assertions that the 1932-1933 famine in Soviet Ukraine did not occur.^[105][106] Denying the existence of the famine was the Soviet state's position, and reflected in both Soviet propaganda and the work of some Western journalists and intellectuals including Walter Duranty and Louis Fischer.^{[105][107][108][109][110]} Denial of the famine by Soviet authorities was immediate and continued into the 1980s. The denial of the famine was a well orchestrated and highly successful disinformation campaign by the Soviet government.^[105][107] Stalin "had achieved the impossible: he had silenced all the talk of hunger... Millions were dying, but the nation hymned the praises of collectivization", wrote Edvard Radzinsky.^[105] This was the first major instance of Soviet authorities adopting Hitler's Big Lie propaganda technique to sway world opinion according to Robert Conquest.^[71]

In modern politics

The famine remains a politically charged topic; hence, heated debates are likely to continue for a long time. Until around 1990, the debates were largely between the so called "denial camp" who refused to recognize the very existence of the famine or stated that it was caused by natural reasons (such as a poor harvest), scholars who accepted reports of famine but saw it as a policy blunder^[113] followed by the botched relief effort, and scholars who alleged that it was intentional and specifically anti-Ukrainian or even an act of genocide against the Ukrainians as a nation.

Nowadays, scholars agree that the famine affected millions. While it is also accepted that the famine affected other nationalities in addition to Ukrainians, the debate is still ongoing as to whether or not the Holodomor qualifies as an act of genocide, since the facts that the famine itself took place and that it was unnatural are not disputed. As far as the possible effect of the natural causes, the debate is restricted to whether the poor harvest^[92] or post-traumatic stress played any role at all and to what degree the Soviet actions were caused by the country's economic and military needs as viewed by the Soviet leadership.

In 2007, President Viktor Yushchenko declared he wants "a new law criminalising Holodomor denial," while Communist Party head Petro Symonenko said he "does not believe there was any deliberate starvation at all," and accused Yushchenko of "using the famine to stir up hatred."^[63] Few in Ukraine share Symonenko's interpretation of history and the number of Ukrainians who deny the famine or view it as caused by natural reasons is steadily falling.^[114]

On 10 November 2003 at the United Nations twenty-five countries including Russia, Ukraine and United States signed a joint statement on the seventieth anniversary of the Holodomor with the following preamble:

In the former Soviet Union millions of men, women and children fell victims to the cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime. The Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Holodomor), which took from 7 million to 10 million innocent lives and became a national tragedy for the Ukrainian people. In this regard we note activities in observance of the seventieth anniversary of this Famine, in particular organized by the Government of Ukraine.

Honouring the seventieth anniversary of the Ukrainian tragedy, we also commemorate the memory of millions of Russians, Kazakhs and representatives of other nationalities who died of starvation in the Volga River region, Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan and in other parts of the former Soviet Union, as a result of civil war and forced collectivization, leaving deep scars in the consciousness of future generations.^[25]

Nation-wide, the political repression of 1937 (The Great Purge) under the guidance of Nikolay Yezhov were known for their ferocity and ruthlessness, but Lev Kopelev wrote, "In Ukraine 1937 began in 1933", referring to the comparatively early beginning of the Soviet crackdown in Ukraine.^[115]

While the famine was well documented at the time, its reality has been disputed for ideological reasons, for instance by the Soviet government and its spokespeople (as well as apologists for the Soviet regime), by others due to being deliberately misled by the Soviet government (such as George Bernard Shaw), and, in at least one case, Walter Duranty, for personal gain.

An example of a late-era Holodomor objector is Canadian journalist Douglas Tottle, author of Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard (published by Moscow-based Soviet publisher Progress Publishers in 1987). Tottle claims that while there were severe economic hardships in Ukraine, the idea of the Holodomor was fabricated as propaganda by Nazi Germany and William Randolph Hearst to justify a German invasion.

On 26 April 2010, newly elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, told Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe members that Holodomor was a common tragedy that struck Ukrainians and other Soviet peoples, and that it would be wrong to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against one nation. He stated that "The Holodomor was in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It was the result of Stalin's totalitarian regime. But it would be wrong and unfair to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against one nation."^[116] In response to Yanukovych's statements, the Our Ukraine Party alleged that Yanukovych directly violated Ukrainian law which defines the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people and makes public denial of the Holodomor unlawful. Our Ukraine Party also asserted that Yanukovych "ignored a ruling of 13 January 2010 by Kiev's Court of Appeal, which recognized the leaders of the totalitarian Bolshevik regime as those guilty of 'genocide against the Ukrainian national group in 1932-33 through the artificial creation of living conditions intended for its partial physical destruction.'"^[29]

Remembrance

To honour those who perished in the Holodomor, monuments have been dedicated and public events held annually in Ukraine and worldwide. The first public monument to the Holodomor was erected and dedicated outside City Hall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1983 to mark the 50th anniversary of the famine-genocide. Since then, the fourth Saturday in November has in many jurisdictions been marked as the official day of remembrance for people who died as a result of the 1932-33 Holodomor and political repression.^[117]

In 2006, the Holodomor Remembrance Day took place on 25 November. President Viktor Yushchenko directed, in decree No. 868/2006, that a minute of silence should be observed at 4 o'clock in the afternoon on that Saturday. The document specified that flags in Ukraine should fly at half-staff as a sign of mourning. In addition, the decree directed that entertainment events are to be restricted and television and radio programming adjusted accordingly.^[118]

In 2007, the 74th anniversary of the Holodomor was commemorated in Kiev for three days on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti. As part of the three day event, from November 23-25th, video testimonies of the communist regime's crimes in Ukraine, and documentaries by famous domestic and foreign film directors are being shown. Additionally, experts and scholars gave lectures on the topic.^[119] Additionally, on 23 November 2007, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a set of two commemorative coins remembering the Holodomor.^[120]

As of September 2009, Ukrainian schoolchildren will take a more extensive course of the history of the Holodomor and OUN and UPA fighters.^[121]

On 17 May 2010 President Viktor Yanukovych and President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev visited the Memorial to the Holodomor Victims in Kiev to commemorate the victims of the famine.^[122]

Remembrance outside Ukraine

Canada

On 22 November 2008, Ukrainian Canadians marked the beginning of National Holodomor Awareness Week. Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney attended a vigil in Kiev.^[123] In November 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the Holodomor memorial in Kiev, however, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did not join him. On 9 April 2009 the Province of Ontario unanimously passed bill 147 – The Holodomor Memorial Day Act, which calls for the fourth Saturday in November to be a day of remembrance. This was the first piece of legislation in the Province’s history to be introduced with Tri-Partisan sponsorship: Dave Levac, MPP for Brant (Liberal Party); Cheri DiNovo, MPP for Parkdale—High Park (NDP); and Frank Klees, MPP for Newmarket—Aurora (PC) were the joint initiators of the bill. MPP Levac was made a chevalier of Ukraine's Order of Merit.^[124]

On 2 June 2010 the Province of Quebec unanimously passed bill 390 - "Memorial Day Act on the great Ukrainian famine and genocide (the Holodomor)."^[125]

A permanent monument was erected in Edmonton in 1983.

A monument to the Holodomor has been erected on Calgary's Memorial Drive, itself originally designated to honour Canadian servicemen of the First World War. The monument is located near Ukrainian Pioneer Park in the district of Renfrew, which pays tribute to the contributions of Ukrainian immigrants to Canada.

On 25 September 2010, a new Holodomor monument "Dzvin Pam'yati - Holodomor Genocide by Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933" (ДЗВІН ПАМ'ЯТІ - ПО 10 000 000 ЖЕРТВ ГОЛОДОМОР ҐЕНОЦИДУ В УКРАЇНІ) was unveiled at St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church, Mississauga, Canada.

United States

On 20 March 1982 the Ukrainian Weekly was reporting about a multi-ethnic community meeting that was held on 15 February on the North Shore Drive at the Ukrainian Village in Chicago to commemorate the famine which took lives of seven million Ukrainian lives. The Ukrainian Weekly also reported about another meeting taking place on 27 February 1982 in the parish center of the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Great Famine caused by the Soviet authorities. Other events in commemoration were held in other places around the United States as well.

On 2 December 2008, a groundbreaking ceremony was held in Washington, D.C. for the Holodomor Memorial.^[126] On 13 November 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama released a statement on the Ukrainian Holodomor Remembrance Day. In this he said that "remembering the victims of the man-made catastrophe of Holodomor provides us an opportunity to reflect upon the plight of all those who have suffered the consequences of extremism and tyranny around the world".^[127][128] NSC Spokesman Mike Hammer released a similar statement on 20 November 2010.^[129]

Also on 2 December 2008, St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City had a ceremony for the Holodomor.

On 29 May 2008, the city of Baltimore held a candlelight commemoration for the Holodomor at the War Memorial Plaza in front of City Hall. This ceremony was part of the larger international journey of the "International Holodomor Remembrance Torch", which began in Kiev and made its way though thirty-three countries. Twenty-two other US cities were also visited during the tour. Then-Mayor Sheila Dixon presided over the ceremony and declared 29 May to be “Ukrainian Genocide Remembrance Day in Baltimore”. She referred to the Holodomor “among the worst cases of man’s inhumanity towards man”.^[130]

Images of Holodomor Memorials

See also

• Bloodlands: Europe Between Stalin and Hitler
• Great Leap Forward
• Famine-33
• The Soviet Story

Notes and references

Further reading

Declarations and legal acts

• Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine, U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, Report to Congress. Adopted by the Commission, 19 April 1988
• Joint declaration at the United Nations in connection with 70th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933
• Address of the Verkhovna Rada to the Ukrainian nation on commemorating the victims of Holodomor 1932-1933 (in Ukrainian)

Books and articles

External links

• "Gareth Jones' international exposure of the Holodomor, plus many related background articles". http://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/. Retrieved 2006-07-05. 
• (Ukrainian) Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933 at the Central State Archive of Ukraine (photos, links)
• Yaroslav Bilinsky, Was the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 Genocide?, Journal of Genocide Research , 1(2), pages= 147–156 (June 1999), available at external site
• Stanislav Kulchytsky, Italian Research on the Holodomor, October 2005.
• (English) Stanislav Kulchytsky, "Why did Stalin exterminate the Ukrainians? Comprehending the Holodomor. The position of Soviet historians" - Six part series from Den: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6; Kulchytsky on Holodomor 1-6
• (Russian)/(Ukrainian) Valeriy Soldatenko, "A starved 1933: subjective thoughts on objective processes", Zerkalo Nedeli, 28 June - 4 July 2003. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
• (Russian)/(Ukrainian) Stanislav Kulchytsky's articles in Zerkalo Nedeli, Kiev, Ukraine"
  • "How many of us perish in Holodomor on 1933", 23 November 2002 – 29 November 2002. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Reasons of the 1933 famine in Ukraine. Through the pages of one almost forgotten book" August 16–22, 2003. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Reasons of the 1933 famine in Ukraine-2", 4 October 2003 – 10 October 2003. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Demographic losses in Ukraine in the twentieth century", 2 October 2004 – 8 October 2004. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Holodomor-33: Why and how?" 25 November - 1 December. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
• UKRAINIAN FAMINE Revelations from the Russian Archives at the Library of Congress
• Photos of Holodomor by Sergei Melnikoff
• The General Committee decided this afternoon not to recommend the inclusion of an item on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932-1933 in Ukraine.
• Case Study: The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 By Nicolas Werth / CNRS - France
• Holomodor - Famine in Soviet Ukraine 1932-1933
• Famine in the Soviet Union 1929-1934 - collection of archive materials
• Holodomor: The Secret Holocaust in Ukraine - official site of the Security Service of Ukraine
• CBC program about the Great Hunger
• Caryle Murphy (1 October 1983). "Ukrainian Americans Commemorate Famine in Homeland 50 Years Ago". The Washington Post. http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/wash_march2.htm. 
• People's war 1917-1932 by Kiev city organization "Memorial"