Holodomor

File:Holodomor2.jpg

Child victim of the Holodomor

The Ukrainian famine (1932-1933), or Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор), was one of the largest national catastrophes of the Ukrainian nation in modern history with direct loss of human life in the range of millions (estimates vary). While the famine in Ukraine was a part of a wider famine that also affected other regions of the USSR, the name Holodomor is specifically applied to the events that took place in territories populated by ethnic Ukrainians. The word comes from the Ukrainian words holod, ‘hunger’, and mor, ‘plague’, possibly from the expression moryty holodom, ‘to inflict death by hunger’.

The famine mostly affected the rural population and in comparison to the previous famine in the USSR during 1921–22, which was caused by drought, and the next one in 1947, the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine was caused not by infrastructure breakdown, or war, but by deliberate political and administrative decisions. The result was disastrous. Within a few months, the Ukrainian countryside, one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world, was the scene of a general famine.

Most modern historians agree that the famine was caused by the policies of the government of the Soviet Union under Stalin, rather than by natural causes, and the Holodomor is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide, implying that the famine was engineered by the Soviets, specifically targeting the Ukrainian people to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity. However, some scholars note that natural causes (weather and inadequate harvest) and insufficient traction power were also among the reasons that contributed to the origins of famine and its severity.

While historians continue to disagree whether the policies which led to the famine fall under the legal definition of genocide, the governments of some countries, including Ukraine, consider the famine to be such.

Causes and outcomes

Cover of the Soviet magazine Kolhospnytsia Ukrayiny ("Collective Farm Woman of Ukraine") dated December 1932

While complex, it is possible to group the causes of the Holodomor. They have to be understood in the larger context of the social revolution 'from above' that took place in the Soviet Union at the time.

Reversal of Ukrainization

In the 1920s, government ethnic policies were widely implemented which promoted the representatives of the various titular nations of the Soviet republics and national minorities in all levels of administrative and public life (see Korenization). In the territory of Soviet Ukraine as well as parts of the Russian SFSR where the influence of Ukrainian culture was deemed significant, Ukrainization became a local implementation of the Korenization policies. Under such conditions the Ukrainians in the USSR enjoyed a decade of revival of their national culture, resulting in the increase of national self-consciousness and rapid development of indigenous cultural and a social elite. By the early 1930s this development had become increasingly alarming to the Soviet regime, which saw a danger in the loyalties of increasingly nationally conscious Ukrainians being aligned with the Ukrainian nation rather than with the Communist ideology or the Soviet state. In the early 1930s, Ukrainization policies were abruptly reversed and replaced with a policy of effective Russification thereby causing significant social, cultural, and political conflict in the Ukrainian populated territories.

Policy of collectivization

Simultaneously, a policy of collectivization of agriculture was introduced and by early 1932, 69% of households were collectivized. Even though several other regions in the USSR were collectivized to a greater extent, the effect of the collectivization on the Ukrainian agriculture was very substantial. The collectivization campaign proved highly unpopular with the rural population: when collectivization was still voluntary, very few peasants joined collective farms. For this reason, the regime increasingly pressured peasants to join collective farms. To expedite the process of collectivization, tens of thousands of Soviet officials were sent into the countryside in 1929–1930.

At the same time, the "Twenty-Five Thousanders" (industrial workers and mostly devoted Bolsheviks) were sent to help run the collective farms. In addition, they were expected to quash the increasing passive and active resistance to collectivization by engaging in what was euphemistically referred to as "dekulakization": the arresting of 'kulaks' — allegedly "well-to-do" farmers who opposed the regime and withheld grain from the state collection — and transferring kulak families to the Urals and Central Asia, where they were to be placed in others sectors of the economy such as timber. Effectively, the term 'kulak' was applied to anybody resisting collectivization and many of the so-called 'kulaks' were no more well off than other peasants. According to the declassified data, around 300,000 Ukrainians out of a population of about 30 million were subject to these policies in 1930-31 and Ukrainians composed 15% of the total 1.8 million 'kulaks' relocated Soviet-wide.

Collectivization had an adverse effect on agricultural output everywhere, but since Ukraine was the most agriculturally productive area (over 50% of wheat produced in the Russian Empire originated from Ukraine in the beginning of 20th century), the effects here were particularly dramatic. As projections for agricultural production declined, so did collections by the state. For the 1932 harvest, it was planned that there would be 29.5 million tons in state collections of grain out of 90.7 million tons in production. But the actual result was a disastrous 55-60 million tons in production. The state ended up collecting only 18.5 million tons in grain. The collections by the state were virtually the same in 1930 and 1931 at about 22.8 million tons. For 1932, they had significantly been reduced to 18.5 million tons. These were the total estimated outcomes of the grain harvests:

USSR Grain production and collections, 1930-33 (million tons)

Year	Production	Collections	Remainder	Collections as % of production
1930	73-77	22.1	51-55	30.2-28.7
1931	57-65	22.8	34-43	40-35.1
1932	55-60	18.5	36.5-41.5	33.6-30.8
1933	70-77	22.7	47.3-54.3	32.4-29.5

Criminal prosecution for withholding or bargaining of grain

On August 7, 1932, the Soviet government passed a law "on the safekeeping of Socialist property" that imposed from a ten year prison sentence to the death penalty for any theft of public property. Stalin personally appended the stipulation: "People who encroach on socialist property should be considered enemies of the people." Additionally, the age limit for the death penalty was reduced to 12 years old: children were shot for gathering ears of corn left in the field after harvest. Within the first five months of passage of the law, 54,645 individuals had been sentenced under it and 2,110 sentenced to death. Acts as minor as bartering tobacco for bread were documented as punished by 5 years in prison.

The scope of this law, colloquially dubbed the "law of the wheat ears," included even the smallest appropriation of grain by peasants for personal use. In little over a month the law was revised, as Politburo protocols reveal that secret decisions had later modified the original decree. On September 16, 1932, the Politburo approved a measure that specifically exempted small-scale theft of socialist property from the death penalty. It declared that "organizations and groupings destroying state, social, and co-operate property in an organized way by fires, explosions and mass destruction of property shall be sentenced to execution without weakening", and listed a number of cases in which "kulaks, former traders and other socially-alien persons" should be subject to the death penalty. So-called "kulaks", whether members of a kolkhoz or not, who "organize or take part in the theft of kolkhoz property and grain", should also be sentenced "to the death penalty without weakening." But "working individual peasants and collective farmers" who stole kolkhoz property and grain should be sentenced to ten years; the death penalty should be imposed only for "systematic theft of grain, sugar beet, animals, etc."

When it became clear that the 1932 grain deliveries were not going to meet the expectations of the government, the decreased agricultural output was blamed on the "kulaks", "nationalists", and "Petlurovites". According to a report of the head of the Supreme Court, by January, 15, 1933 as many as 103,000 people had been sentenced under the provisions of the August 7 decree. Of the 79,000 whose sentences were known to the Supreme Court, 4,880 had been sentenced to death, 26,086 to ten years' imprisonment and 48,094 to other sentences. Those sentenced to death were categorised primarily as kulaks; many of those sentenced to ten years were individual peasants who were not kulaks.

A special commission headed by Vyacheslav Molotov was sent to Ukraine in order to execute the grain contingent. On November 9, a secret decree urged the Soviet security agencies to increase their "effectiveness". Molotov also ordered that if no grain remained in Ukrainian villages, all beets, potatoes, vegetables and any other food were to be confiscated.

On December 6, a new regulation was issued that imposed the following sanctions on Ukrainian villages that were considered "underperforming" in the grain collection procurement: ban on supply of any goods or food to the villages, requisition of any food or grain found on site, ban of any trade, and, lastly, the confiscation of all financial resources. Measures were undertaken to persecute upon the withholding or bargaining of grain. This was done frequently with the aid of requisition detachments, which raided farms to collect grain. This was done regardless of whether the peasants retained enough grain to feed themselves, or whether they had enough seed left to plant the next harvest.

Restrictions on the freedom of movement

Special barricades were set up by the GPU troops throughout the USSR to prevent exodus of peasants from the hunger-stricken regions. During only one month of 1933 219,460 people were intercepted and escorted back or arrested and sentenced.. The government introduced new identity papers and obligatory registration for citizens in December 1932.

To further prevent the spread of information about the famine, travel from Ukraine and some Don regions was specifically forbidden by directives of January 22, 1933 (signed by Molotov and Stalin) and of January 23 1933 (joint directive VKP(b) Central Committee and Sovnarkom). The directives stated that the travels "for bread" from these areas were organized by enemies of the Soviet power with the purpose of agitation in northern areas of the USSR against kolkhozes. Therefore railway tickets were to be sold only by ispolkom permits, and those who managed to travel northwards should be arrested.

Information blockade

The Soviet government denied initial reports of the famine, and prevented foreign journalists from travelling in the region. Scholars who have conducted research in declassified archives have reported "the Politburo and regional Party committees insisted that immediate and decisive action be taken in response to the famine such that 'conscientious farmers' not suffer, while district Party committees were instructed to supply every child with milk and decreed that those who failed to mobilize resources to feed the hungry or denied hospitalization to famine victims be prosecuted."

Insufficient assistance

However, aid to famine-stricken regions had only a limited impact on the famine. Between February and July 1933 at least thirty-five Politburo decisions and Sovnarkom decrees selectively authorized issue of a total of only 320,000 tons of grain for food for 30 million people. Documentary evidence confirms the cases when the Soviet leadership expressed even personal interest in ensuring the aid distribution.

Documents from the Soviet archives suggest, however, that the aid distribution was made selectively and the goal of the relief effort was limited to sustaining the agricultural workforce. A special resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine ordered dividing peasants hospitalized and diagnosed with dystrophy into ailing and recovering patients. The resolution ordered improving the nutrition of the latter within the limits of available resources so that they could be sent out into the fields to sow the new crop as soon as possible. The food was dispensed according to the special resolutions from the government bodies and was given in the field where the laborers worked.

Export of grain

Also, the grain exports during 1932-1933 continued, even though on a significantly lower level than in previous years. In 1930/31 there had been 5,832,000 tons of grains exported. In 1931/32, grain exports declined to 4,786,000 tons. In 1932/1933, grain exports were just 1,607,000 tons and in 1933/34, this further declined to 1,441,000 tons.

Natural reasons

Some scholars also claim that the weather conditions played a substantial role in the famine. Russia and parts of Ukraine suffered from fairly regular droughts, which significantly reduced crop yields. The fluctuations in the annual level of temperature and rainfall on the territory of the USSR are greater than in major grain-producing areas elsewhere in the world. The weather pattern is highly continental, and is complicated by the frequent and irregular dry winds which blow from Central Asia across the Volga region, North Caucuses, and Ukraine in the growing months of late spring and early summer. Moreover, the critical insufficiency of humidity makes a large territory particularly susceptible to drought, resulting in high temperatures and low rainfall. The weather was largely responsible for the above-average yield over the whole five years 1909-13. In 1925-29 the weather was only slightly worse than average. But in 1930-34 the weather was poorer than usual over the five years, with particularly bad conditions in 1931 and 1932. This was a factor over which the Soviet government had no immediate control.

In 1925-29, the weather was favourable; the only break in the years of fine weather came in 1927. Then weather in 1930 was excellent but in 1931 the conditions changed. The spring weather was much colder than usual; June was warmer, and July much hotter than usual. The cold spring and hot July were a deadly combination. The cold spring delayed the sowing and hence the whole development of grain. The grain reached its vulnerable flowering stage later than normal, coinciding with the hot July weather. And from June the south-east suffered from what is known as a sukhovei (literally, dry wind). In May-July, the normal weather pattern in the Volga and Ukraine was that the warm, dry, south-easterly winds from Kazakhstan gave way to colder and wetter winds from the north-west. About once in every ten or twelve years the south-easterlies predominated throughout these months, the winds became scorching, no rain fell, and the earth became parched. At these times, grain yields fell significantly and there was a risk of famine if reserve stocks of grain were not available. These dry winds brought famine in 1891 and 1921. In 1906, massive government assistance largely alleviated the problem. The drought, which had begun in West Siberia in May, spread to the Volga regions in June and July. A huge deficit in rainfall was accompanied by temperatures much higher than average in these regions as well as Ukraine.

For 1931, the spring sowing was considerably delayed. Virtually no sowing took place in March and in April it was delayed by nearly three weeks. The delay in Ukraine and Lower Volga was caused primarily by the unusually cold weather. In other areas, excessive rain also added to the problems and made it difficult to catch up. A report from the Lower Volga noted: "After a short improvement another rainy spell has begun. Mass sowing in the southern districts of the region is taking place in a struggle with the weather. Literally every hour and every day have to be grabbed for sowing." The people's commissar for agriculture stated that the delay of two-three weeks had been caused by the "very difficult meteorological and climatic conditions of the spring".

Natural calamities had descended on regions particularly the Central and Lower Volga in 1931. In August, the agricultural newspaper published numerous references to the exceptionally rainy weather which had delayed harvesting and damaged harvested grain which had not been stacked. It was later reported that in the Central Volga the burning of the ripening grain by the hot drought had been followed during the weeks of harvesting by enough rain for three harvests. On the right bank of the Volga, large quantities of wet grain had been spoiled. There were reports that warm, dry weather had set in from Mid-May 1931 and that exceptionally high temperatures were recorded in many parts of Ukraine, North Caucuses, Lower Volga, and Kazakhstan. For the USSR as a whole they were higher than average."

In Ukraine, the temperature was considerably lower during the whole of March 1932 than in the previous year. At the end of May and in early June temperatures were even higher than in 1931. Then there was a sudden change: high rainfall was experienced in most of the USSR, especially in the Kiev region. Temperatures were less severe than in 1931, but the combination of high temperatures in the initial flowering stage and great humidity during early flowering greatly increased the vulnerability of the crop.

Primitive agriculture

Another factor in the decline of the harvests were the shortage of draught power for ploughing and reaping was even more acute in 1932 than in the previous year. The number of working horses declined from 19.5 million on July 1, 1931 to 16.2 million on July 1, 1932. The desperate efforts to replace horses by tractors failed to compensate for this loss. In 1931, the total supply of tractors to agriculture amounted to 964,000 h.p., 393,000 produced at home, and 578,000 imported. But in 1932, because of the foreign trade crisis, no tractors at all were imported. In the whole of 1932, only 679,000 tractor horse-power was supplied to agriculture, considerably less than in 1931. Only about half became available in time for the harvest, and even less in time for the spring sowing. Animal draught power deteriorated in quality. Horses were fed and maintained even more inadequately than in the previous year. The acute shortage of horses led to the notorious decision to employ cows as working animals. On February 23, the Lower Volga party bureau decided to use 200,000 cows for special field work. The following shows the number of horses in the USSR:

Horses in USSR

Year	All Horses(thousands)
1930	30237
1931	26247
1932	19368
1933	16579
1934	15664

Estimation of the loss of life

File:Holodomor Famine map.jpg

Rate of population decline in Ukraine and South Russia. 1929-1932

While the course of the events as well as their underlying reasons are still a matter of debate, the fact that 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, is undisputed.

The Soviet Union long denied that the famine had ever existed, and the NKVD (and later KGB) archives on the Holodomor period opened very slowly. The exact number of the victims remains unknown and probably impossible to find out even within a margin of error of a hundred thousand.

The estimates for the number of deaths due to famine in Ukraine (excluding other repressions) vary by several millions and numbers as high as 10 million are sometimes cited. Even the results based on scientific methods also vary widely but the range is somewhat more narrow: between 2.5 million (Volodymyr Kubiyovych) and 4.8 million (Vasyl Hryshko).

One modern calculation that uses demographic data including that available from formerly closed Soviet archives narrows the losses to about 3.2 million or, allowing for the lack of the data precision, 3 to 3.5 million.

The formerly closed Soviet archives show that excess deaths in Ukraine in 1932-1933 numbered 1.54 million. In 1932-1933, there were a combined 1.2 million cases of typhus and 500 thousand cases of typhoid fever. Deaths resulted primarily from manifold diseases due to lowered resistance and disease in general rather than actual starvation. All major types of disease, apart from cancer, tend to increase during famine as a result of undernourishment resulting in lower resistance to disease, and of unsanitary conditions. In the years 1932-34, the largest rate of increase was recorded for typhus. Typhus is spread by lice. In conditions of harvest failure and increased poverty, the number of lice is likely to increase, and the herding of refugees at railway stations, on trains and elsewhere facilitates their spread. In 1933, the number of recorded cases was twenty times the 1929 level. The number of cases per head of population recorded in Ukraine in 1933 was naturally considerably higher than in the USSR as a whole. But by June of 1933, incidence in Ukraine had increased to nearly ten times the January level and was higher than in the rest of the USSR taken as a whole.

Incidence of Disease in Russian Empire and USSR

Year	Typhus	Typhoid Fever	Relapsing Fever	Smallpox	Malaria
1913	120	424	30	67	3600
1918-22	1300	293	639	106	2940 (average)
1929	40	170	6	8	3000
1930	60	190	5	10	2700
1931	80	260	4	30	3200
1932	220	300	12	80	4500
1933	800	210	12	38	6500
1934	410	200	10	16	9477
1935	120	140	6	4	9924
1936	100	120	3	.5	6500

However, it is important to note that the number of the recorded excess deaths extracted from the birth/death statistics from the Soviet archives is self-contradictory and cannot be fully relied upon because the data fails to add up to the differences between the 1927 and 1937 Soviet census results.

The following calculation is presented by Stanislav Kulchytsky. The declassified Soviet statistics show a decrease of 538 thousand 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 is:

Year	Births	Deaths	Natural change
1927	1184	523	661
1928	1139	496	643
1929	1081	539	542
1930	1023	536	487
1931	975	515	460
1932	982	668	314
1933	471	1850	-1379
1934	571	483	88
1935	759	342	417
1936	895	361	534

According to the correction for officially non-accounted child mortality in 1933 by 150 thousand calculated by Sergei Maksudov, the number of births for 1933 should be increased from 471 thousand to 621 thousand. Assuming the natural mortality rates in 1933 to be equal to the average annual mortality rate in 1927-1930 (524 thousand per year) a natural population growth for 1933 would have been 97 thousand, which is five times less than this number in the past years (1927-1930). From the corrected birth rate and the estimated natural death rate for 1933 as well as from the official data for other years the natural population growth from 1927 to 1936 gives 4,043 thousand while the census data showed a decrease of 538 thousand. The sum of the two numbers gives an estimated total demographic loss of 4,581 thousand people. A major hurdle in estimating the human losses due to famine is the needed to take into account the numbers involved in migration (including forced resettlement). According to the Soviet statistics, the migration balance for the population in Ukraine for 1927 - 1936 period was a loss of 1,343 thousand people. Even at the time when the data was taken, the Soviet statistical institutions acknowledged that its precision was worse than the data for the natural population change. Still, with the correction for this number, the total number of death in Ukraine due to unnatural causes for the given ten years was 3,238 thousand, and taking into account the lack of precision, especially of the migration estimate, the human toll is estimated between 3 million and 3.5 million.

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 thousand, while in 1933 it was 97 thousand, in 1934 it was 88 thousand. The combination of direct and indirect losses from Holodomor gives 4,469 thousand, of which 3,238 thousand (or more realistically 3 to 3.5 million) is the number of the direct deaths.

A more recent study by Vallin et al utilizing similar primary sources to Kulchytsky, but performing a more sophisticated demographic analysis with forward projection of expected growth from the 1926 census and backward projection from the 1939 census found that the total Ukrainian population shortfall from the expected value between 1926 and 1939 amounted to 4566 thousand. Of this number, 1057 thousand is attributed to birth deficit, 930 thousand to forced out-migration, and 2582 thousand to excess mortality and voluntary out-migration. Therefore, direct deaths as the result of the 1932-33 famine were somewhere below 2.5 million.

According to estimates about 81.3% of the victims were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5% Russians, 1.4% Jews and 1.1% were Poles. Many Belarusians, Hungarians, Volga Germans and Crimean Tatars 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, the tragedy deeply affected the Ukrainians for many years.

Elimination of Ukrainian cultural elite

The famine of 1932-1933 coincided with the assault on Ukrainian national culture. The events of 1932-1933 in Ukraine were seen by the Soviet Communist leaders as an instrument against possible Ukrainian self-determination. At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Moscow-appointed leader Postyshev declared that "1933 was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian nationalist counter-revolution." This "defeat" encompassed not just the physical extermination of a significant portion of the Ukrainian peasantry, but also the virtual elimination of the Ukrainian clergy and the mass imprisonment or execution of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers and artists.

By the end of the 1930s, approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite had been "eliminated". Some, like Ukrainian writer Mykola Khvylovy, committed suicide. One of the leading Ukrainian Bolsheviks, Mykola Skrypnyk, who was in charge of the decade-long Ukrainization program that had been decisively brought to an end, shot himself in the summer of 1933 at the height of the terrifying purge of the CP(b)U. The Communist Party of Ukraine, under the guidance of state officials like Kaganovich, Kosior, and Postyshev, boasted in early 1934 of the elimination of "counter-revolutionaries, nationalists, spies and class enemies". Whole academic organizations, such as the Bahaliy Institute of History and Culture, were shut down following the arrests.

In the 1920s, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church had gained a following amongst the Ukrainian peasants due to the Soviet policy of weakening the position of the Russian Orthodox Church (see History of Christianity in Ukraine). Nonetheless in the late 1920s the Soviet authorities went after the Ukrainian Church as well, were thousands of parishes were closed and clergy repressed. By 1930 the church was taken off the Soviet Registry and the Secret Police made sure that it did not exist unofficially. At the same time the widespread action against the surviving Russian Orthodox Church parishes was dramatically reduced.

However, this repression of the intelligentsia occurred in virtually all parts of the USSR. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence that the repression of the Ukrainian elite was accompanied by restrictions of cultural expression. In 1935-36, 83% of all school children in the Ukrainian SSR were taught in Ukrainian even though Ukrainians were about 80% of the population.

Was the Holodomor genocide?

The inventor of the term "genocide", Raphael Lemkin, was a featured speaker at the manifestation of Ukrainian-Americans in September 1953 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the famine. Today, the heads of state, governments or parliaments of 26 countries, consider the 1932-1933 famine as an act of genocide. Among these countries are Ukraine, Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Peru, Poland, Spain, United States, and Vatican City. In addition, scholars have documented that the famine affected other nationalities. The 2004 book The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 by R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft gives a best estimate of around 5.5 to 6.5 million deaths in the Soviet-wide 1932-1933 famine. Still, the Holodomor remains a politically-charged topic not settled even within the mainstream scholarship.

Robert Conquest, the author of one of the most important Western studies published prior to the declassifying of the Soviet archives, concluded that the famine of 1932–33 was artificial—that is a deliberate mass murder, if not genocide committed as part of Joseph Stalin's collectivization program under the Soviet Union and many historians agree. In 2006, the SBU declassified more than 5 thousand pages of Holodomor archives. These documents show that Moscow singled out Ukraine, while regions outside it were allowed to receive humanitarian aid. Some historians maintain, however, 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. The 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. They argue that since the Holodomor did not affect cities, and was limited to rural areas of Ukraine, it is not plausible to argue that the government tried to destroy the Ukrainian people as such. It has been suggested that the Holodomor be classified not as genocide, but as democide.

In controversy, the term democide, introduced by the academic R.J. Rummel, is "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder". That the rural population (in 1932 75% to 85% of Ukrainians resided in villages) does not represent the whole nation, what terminology to use for the designation of an event that led to the death of a significant share of the population of Soviet Ukraine in 1932-1933, as well as the dispute to what extent the Soviet government deliberately aggravated the famine are the arguments that are often used for confrontation and politicization of the tragedy.

According to the US Government Commission on the Ukrainian Famine,[21] the seizure of the 1932 crop by the Soviet authorities was the main reason for the famine. The US commission stated that "while famine took place during the 1932-1933 agricultural year in the Volga Basin and the North Caucasus Territory as a whole, the invasiveness of Stalin's interventions of both the Fall of 1932 and January 1933 in Ukraine are paralleled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus". However, it is also notable that 20% of Ukraine's population at the time consisted of nationalities other than Ukrainian.

At the international conference of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which was held in October 2003 at the Institute of Social and Religious History of Vicenza, 28 conference participants that included the well-respected historians like James Mace, Hubert Laszkiewicz, Andrea Graziosi, Yuriy Shapoval, Gerhard Simon, Orest Subtelny, Mauro Martini, etc. - endorsed a resolution addressed to the Italian government and the European Parliament with a request to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.[22]

On May 15, 2003, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine passed a resolution declaring the famine of 1932–1933 an act of genocide, deliberately organized by the Soviet government against the Ukrainian nation. Governments and parliaments of several other countries have also officially recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide.

However, the Russian Federation officially denies that the Holodomor was an ethnic genocide. The Russian diplomat Mikhail Kamynin has stated that Russia is against the politicisation of the Holodomor, and this question is for historians, not politicians. At the same time, the vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma, Lyubov Sliska, when asked in Kiev when Russia (the successor of the USSR) would apologise for its repressions and famines in Ukraine, replied, "why always insist that Russia apologise for everything? The people whose policies brought suffering not only to Ukraine, but to Russia, Belarus, peoples of the Caucasus, and Crimean Tatars, remain only in history textbooks, secret documents and minutes of meetings." Ukrainian mass media censured Evgeny Guzeev, the Consul-General of the Russian Federation in Lviv, who stated that "the leaders of the period were sensible people, and it is impossible to imagine that this was planned."

A significant step in the world recognition of Holodomor was the Joint declaration at the United Nations in connection with 70th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933 (10 November 2003), evaluating Holodomor as a great tragedy. According to Valery Kuchinsky, the chief Ukrainian representative at the United Nations the declaration was a compromise between the positions of Great Britain, United States and Russia denying that Holodomor was a genocide and the position of Ukraine that insisted on recognition of Holodomor as a form of genocide.

Comprehending the famine

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 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, most scholars tend to 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 whether the Holodomor qualifies as the act of genocide since the fact that the famine itself took place or 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 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.

Still, the Holodomor issue is politicized within the framework of uneasy relations between Russia and Ukraine (and also between various regional and social groups within Ukraine). The anti-Russian factions in Ukraine have a vested interest in advancing the interpretation that the Holodomor was a genocide, perpetrated by Russia-centric interests within the Soviet government. Russian political interests and their supporters in Ukraine have reasons to deny the deliberate character of the disaster and play down its scale.

The Ukrainian communities are sometimes criticized for using the term Holodomor, Ukrainian Genocide, or even Ukrainian Holocaust, to appropriate the larger-scale tragedy of collectivization as their own national terror-famine, thus exploiting it for political purposes.

One of the biggest arguments is that the famine was preceded by the onslaught on the Ukrainian national culture, a common historical detail preceding many centralized actions directed against the nations as a whole. 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. .

While the famine was well documented at the time, its reality has been disputed due to 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 (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. Tottle is not a professional historian and his revisionist work did not receive any serious attention in the historiography of the subject.

Remembrance

To honor those who perished in the Holodomor, monuments have been dedicated and public events held annually in Ukraine and worldwide. The fourth Saturday in November is the official day of remembrance for people who died as a result of Holodomor and political repression.

In 2006, the Holodomor Remembrance Day took place on November 25. 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-mast as a sign of mourning. In addition, the decree directed that entertainment events are to be restricted and television and radio programming adjusted accordingly.

• A monument in the capital of Ukraine - Kiev
  A monument in the capital of Ukraine - Kiev
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  "Light the candle" event at a Holodomor memorial in Kiev, Ukraine
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  A memorial cross in Kharkiv, Ukraine
• A Holodomor memorial in Poltava Oblast, Ukraine
  A Holodomor memorial in Poltava Oblast, Ukraine
• A memorial cross in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine
  A memorial cross in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine
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  A memorial in Winnipeg, Canada
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  A Holodomor monument in Edmonton, Canada
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  A memorial in Windsor, Ontario, Canada
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  A Holodomor monument in Calgary, Canada

External links

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, April 19 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

• Marco Carynnyk, Lubomyr Luciuk and Bohdan S Kordan, eds, The Foreign Office and the Famine: British Documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932-1933, foreword by Michael Marrus (Kingston: Limestone Press, 1988)
• Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine Oxford University Press New York (1987) ISBN 0195051807
• Wasyl Hryshko, The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933, (Toronto: 1983, Bahriany Foundation)
• Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust (WW Norton & Company, 1985)
• Leonard Leshuk, ed, Days of Famine, Nights of Terror: Firsthand Accounts of Soviet Collectivization, 1928-1934 (Kingston: Kashtan Press, 1995)
• Lubomyr Luciuk, ed, Not Worthy: Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and The New York Times (Kingston: Kashtan Press, 2004)
• Douglas Tottle, Fraud, Famine, and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard (1987)

External links

• Template:Uk icon Template:Ru icon "The Harvest of Sorrow". Retrieved 2006-07-05. by Robert Conquest.
• "US House of Representatives Authorizes Construction of Ukrainian Genocide Monument". Retrieved 2006-07-05.
• "Statement by Pope John Paul II on the 70th anniversary of the Famine". Retrieved 2006-07-05.
• HR356 "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the man-made famine that occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933". Retrieved 2006-07-05. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help) U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., October 21, 2003
• "Gareth Jones' international exposure of the Holodomor, plus many related background articles". Retrieved 2006-07-05.
• video file of Ukraine's parliament overwhelmingly adopting a law reocgnising a 1932-1933 famine that killed up to 10 million people as a Soviet "genocide" against the Ukrainian people
• Template:Uk icon Famine in Ukraine 1932–1933 at the Central State Archive of Ukraine (photos, links)
• Template:Uk icon Lessons of History. Holodomor 1932-33
• 1932-34 Great Famine: documented view by Dr. Dana Dalrymple
• The Holodomor Memorial Website
• Testimony by Robert Conquest to the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine
• Famine Genocide Commemorative Committee Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Toronto Branch
• Template:Uk icon/Template:Hu icon Collection of analytical articles and photos
• video recording of Valery Kuchinsky, the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, addressing General Assembly at its plenary meeting on 1 November 2005 (the recording is of the whole session, Kuchinsky's address starts at 27 min)
• Carynnyk, Marco (1983). "The New York Times and the Great Famine". Ukraine Weekly. LI (37). {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Klid, Bohdan (2003). "Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies publicizes new research on Famine". Ukraine Weekly. LXXI (52). {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) A summary of Yuri Shapoval's lecture, 2003
• Yaroslav Bilinsky (1999). "Was the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 Genocide?". Journal of Genocide Research. 1 (2): 147–156.
• Web site of Mark Tauger, author of several of the references listed above

• Stanislav Kulchytsky, Italian Research on the Holodomor, October 2005.
• Template:En icon 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
• Template:Ru icon/Template:Uk icon Valeriy Soldatenko, "A starved 1933: subjectove thoughts on objective processes", Zerkalo Nedeli, June 28 - July 4 2003. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
• Template:Ru icon/Template:Uk icon Stanislav Kulchytsky's articles in Zerkalo Nedeli, Kiev, Ukraine"
  • "How many of us perish in Holodomor on 1933", November 23-29, 2002. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Reasons of the 1933 famine in Ukraine. Through the pages of one almost forgotten book" Augist 16-22, 2003. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Reasons of the 1933 famine in Ukraine-2", October 4-10, 2003. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Demographic lossed in Ukrainian in the twentieth century", October 2-8, 2004. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
  • "Holodomor-33: Why and how?" November 25 - December 1. Available online in Russian and in Ukrainian.
• UKRAINIAN FAMINE Revelations from the Russian Archives at the Library of Congress
• Ukrainian Holodomor on CBC's The Current radio program, 2006-12-07 (scroll down, requires RealAudio)
• Photos of Holodomor by Sergei Melnikoff
• Template:Pl icon Statement on Holodomor of Senate of the Republic of Poland
• Template:Pt icon Statement on Holodomor of Assembléia Legislativa do Estado do Paraná (Brazil)