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[[Category:Famines]]
[[Category:Famines]]
[[Category:Genocide]]
[[Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia]]
[[Category:History of the Soviet Union and Soviet Russia]]
[[Category:History of Ukraine]]
[[Category:History of Ukraine]]

Revision as of 05:25, 22 May 2006

File:Holodomor2.jpg
Child victim of the Holodomor

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор) was a famine on the territory of Soviet Ukraine in the years 1932–1933. It was the largest national catastrophe of the Ukrainian nation in modern history, with loss of human life in the range of millions (estimates vary); the famine was caused by the deliberate policies of the government of the Soviet Union.

The famine in Ukraine was a part of a wider famine that also affected other regions of the USSR, the term Holodomor is specifically applied to the events that took place in territories populated by the ethnic Ukrainians. As such, the Holodomor is sometimes referred to as the Ukrainian Genocide [2] [3] [4] [5] , or even the Ukrainian Holocaust, implying that the Holodomor was engineered by the Soviets to specifically target the Ukrainian people in order to destroy the Ukrainian nation as a political factor and social entity,[6]. While historians continue to disagree whether the policies that led to Holodomor fall under the legal definition of Genocide, numerous governments have officially recognized the Holodomor as such (see section Was the Holodomor genocide?).

The term Holodomor is derived from the Ukrainian expression moryty holodom (Морити голодом), which means "to inflict death by hunger". The fourth Saturday of November is the official day of commemoration of the Holodomor victims in Ukraine.

Causes and outcomes

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.

In the early 1920s, when the Soviet Union needed to win the sympathy of other nations for the newly born communist state, Ukraine enjoyed a short period of revival of its national culture under the policy of Korenizatsiya. This was, however, ended and replaced with the a policy of effective Russification, as soon as the Soviet regime firmly took root, thereby causing significant social, cultural, and political conflict in the Ukrainian populated territories.

Simultaneously, a policy of collectivization of agriculture was introduced. Agriculture in Ukraine was affected more strongly by this than most other agricultural areas, as Ukraine has had a long tradition of individually owned farms, while most farms in Russia, for example, had been communal (not collective) property.

Unexpectedly, from the Bolshevik point of view, Collectivization proved highly unpopular with the rural population. When collectivization was still voluntary, very few peasants joined collective farms. The regime therefore began to increasingly put pressure on peasants to join collective farms, and to speed up the process of collectivization, tens of thousands of officials were sent into the countryside in 1929–1930.

At the same time, the "Twenty-Five Thousanders", industrial workers, mostly devoted Bolsheviks, were sent to help run the farms. In addition, they were to fight the increasing passive and active resistance to collectivisation 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 — and sending whole 'kulak' families into concentration camps and Siberia. In fact, most of the so-called 'kulaks' were no more well off than other peasants. Effectively, the term 'kulak' was applied to anybody resisting collectivization. It is estimated that around 2 million[citation needed] Ukrainians became victims of these repressions in 1929-1932.

Collectivization proved to negatively affect agricultural output everywhere, but since Ukraine was the most productive area (over 50% of Imperial Russian wheat originated from Ukraine in the beginning of 20th century), the effects here were particularly dramatic.

File:Holodomor1.jpg
Passers-by no longer pay attention to the corpses of starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933.

Despite the decrease in agricultural output, Soviet authorities soon drastically increased Ukraine's crop production quotas (by 44% in 1932). The targets were unrealistic and many historians believe that this was intentional. On August 7, 1932, the Moscow government imposed death penalty in Ukraine for any theft of public property [7] [8] [9]. The scope of this law was very wide, and included even the smallest appropriation of grain by peasants for personal use. As a result, hundreds of peasants were executed each month under the new law. Still, until October 25, Moscow received only 39% of the demanded grain supplies. 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 "Petluravites".

A special commission headed by Vyacheslav Molotov was sent to Ukraine in order to execute the grain contingent.[10] On November 9, a secret decree urged Bolshevik police and repression forces 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: 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.[11] Measures were undertaken to persecute upon the withholding or bargaining of grain. This was done frequently with the aid of 'shock brigades', 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. These, combined with the ban on travel and armed quarantines by the NKVD troops along the borders of Ukraine, turned the Ukrainian countryside into a gigantic death camp.

The famine mostly affected the rural population. 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 (e.g., see [12]).

File:Holodomor3.jpg
Victim of the Holodomor

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. The Soviet government denied initial reports of the famine, and prevented foreign journalists from traveling in the region. Some authors claim[13] that "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."

The reality was different according to thousands of eyewitness accounts. The masses of children fleeing the countryside were arrested by the Soviet authorities and were deported to "collectors" and orphanages, where they soon died of malnutrition. Here is a typical description: "The government converted this building into a so-called "collector" for homeless children caught on the streets, and who, after sanitary inspection, were sent to orphanages. When leaving my home, I would often see how trucks would pull up there and the police would take out the filthy, bedraggled children who had been caught on the streets. A guard stood at the entrance and no one was permitted inside. During the winter of 1932-33, I often saw, five or six times, how in the early morning they took out of the building the bodies of half-naked children, covered them with filthy tarpaulins, and piled them onto trucks."[14]

File:Holodomor4.jpg
Victims of the Holodomor

To further prevent the spread of information about the famine, travel from the Don, Ukraine, North Caucasus, and Kuban was 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. This travel ban aggravated the disaster.

Meanwhile, Stalin was also centralizing political power over Ukraine. In January 1933, in response to CP(b)U complaints about the disastrous effects of forced collectivization, Stalin sent Pavel Postyshev to Ukraine as Second Secretary in Ukraine, along with thousands of Russian officials. Postyshev purged Ukrainian officials who opposed collectivization or had supported Ukrainization in the 1920s, although some survived, including Stanislav Kosior and Vlas Chubar. He took control over the collectivization effort, and organized the confiscation of grain.

Seed grain stocks as a result of limited famine relief were low for the 1933 planting, but due to normalized climactic conditions for 1933, the 1932-33 harvest proved adequate to avoid famine.

In the spring of 1933, grain requisitions were stepped up even more, since the supply of grain to the cities had become precariously low. At the same time, grain exports continued as well, albeit at lower levels. Exports were seen as necessary by the Soviet government to provide hard currency for continued industrialization. The population responded to the situation with intense political resistance. However, this resistance never became organized on a wide scale owing to the scattered, low-density nature of the Ukrainian rural population. Furthermore, the Soviet authorities responded harshly to signs of dissent, often breaking up and deporting whole communities.

Estimation of the loss of life

File:Holodomor Famine map.jpg
Rate of population decline in Ukraine and some regions of the USSR. 1929-1932

By the end of 1933, between five and ten million people had starved to death or had otherwise died unnaturally in Russia and Ukraine. The exact number of the victims remains unknown; the Soviet Union long denied that the famine had ever existed, and the NKVD (and later KGB) archives on the Holodomor period have never been fully disclosed. While the course of the events as well as their underlying reasons are still a matter of debate, even the official Soviet statistics show a decrease of roughly four million people in the population of Ukraine between 1927 and 1932. ([15]).

Taking an estimate of natural population growth of one to two percent, the calculated loss of population in Ukraine was over ten million during these years. When considering this number, one must also take into account the numbers involved in migration (including forced resettlement) and the purges of 1933, factors difficult to quantify. The premeditation of the mass murder can also be judged from the official Soviet figures of grain exports. The USSR exported 1.70 million tons of grain in 1932 and 1.84 million tons in 1933 ([16]), almost a quarter of a ton in each year per each dead in the Holodomor. The Soviet authorities made sure to prevent the starving Ukrainians from traveling to areas where food was more available. It is estimated that about 81.3% of the victims were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5% Russians, 1.4% Jews and 1.1% were Poles.[17] Altogether, Ukraine lost 25-50% of its rural population. Since the peasantry constituted the foundation of the national identity of Ukraine,[18] the tragedy deeply affected all the Ukrainian nation beyond recovery for many forthcoming years.

Elimination of Ukrainian cultural elite

The artificial famine of 1932-33 fit well into the politics of assault on Ukrainian national culture. The events of 1932-33 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's plenipotentiary Postyshev declared that "1933 was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian nationalist counter-revolution."[19] This "defeat" encompassed not just physical extermination of a significant portion of Ukrainian peasantry, but also virtual elimination of Ukrainian clergy, mass imprisonment and executions of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers and artists.

By the end of 1930s, approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite had been "eliminated".[20] Some, like Ukrainian writer Mykola Khvylovy, committed suicide. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, Mykola Skrypnyk, witnessing the results of his cooperation with Moscow, shot himself in the summer of 1933. 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 significant following amongst the Ukrainian peasants. Mass arrests of the hierarchy and clergy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930. Thousands of priests were tortured, executed and sent to labor camps in Siberia and the Far North.

Was the Holodomor genocide?

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

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.[21] Today, the governments or parliaments of 26 countries recognized the 1932-1933 famine as an act of genocide. Among them Ukraine, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, United States, and Vatican City. Still the Holodomor remains a politically charged topic.

Most historians (including Robert Conquest) agree 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. 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.[22] 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[23].

In controversy, the term democide, introduced by R.J. Rummel is "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder".[24]. Moreover, arguments that the rural population (in 1932 75% to 85% of Ukrainians resided in villages) does not represent the whole nation, also what terminology to use for the designation of an event that led to the extermination of roughly one quarter of the population of the former Soviet republic of the Ukraine in 1932-1933, as well as the dispute to what extent the Soviet government deliberately aggravated the famine is rather unreasonable and often used for confrontation and politicization of the tragedy.[1]

Although the famine went outside Ukraine's borders into the Volga Basin and the Don and Kuban steppes of Russia, yet the full extensiveness of Stalin's intervention in crop seizure was seen only in Ukraine and Kuban - a region in Russia whose significant rural population was Kuban Cossacks - 18th century descendants from the Zaporozhian Host, and thus with potentially significant Ukrainian lineage.

According to the US Government Commission on the Ukrainian Famine ([25]) which investigated over 200 witnesses as well as documented data, the Holodomor was caused by the seizure of the 1932 crop by the Soviet authorities. The commission testified 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" (also [26], [27]). This was also confirmed by foreign observers in 1933.[28] 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 other countries such as Argentina, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, United States, and the Vatican have also officially recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide [29] [30] [31] [32].

Politicization of the Holodomor

The Holodomor remains a politically charged topic for many parties, especially in Russia and hence heated debates are likely to continue for a long time. Until around 1990, the debates largely were between Stalin apologists, who denied the Holodomor either in toto or claimed that it was unintentional, historians, who accepted the reality of the Holodomor but denied that it was intentional, and those who claim that it was intentional. Many Russian authors continue claiming that the Holodomor was not an act of genocide but a "mere famine".[33] Some scholars denied the existence of the famine, attributed it to Nazi propaganda, poor weather conditions, post-traumatic stress [34] or "military needs". While generally rejected, these claims are still being disputed in some academic circles.[35]

Nowadays, 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 vested interest in advancing the interpretation that the Holodomor was a genocide, perpertrated 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.

Some criticize Ukrainian communities for using the term Holodomor, or sometimes 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.[1]

One of the biggest arguments is that the famine was preceded by the onslaught on the Ukrainian national culture, a common historical detail preceding all known mass killings.

Nationwide the political repressions of 1937 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. [36].

While the famine was well documented at the time, its reality has been disputed by some for reasons of ideology, such as the Soviet government and its spokespeople (as well as apologists of 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 work did not receive any serious attention in the historiography of the subject.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Potocki, p. 320.
  2. ^ ibid, p. 321.
  3. ^ Serczyk, p. 311.
  4. ^ E.g. Encyclopedia Britannica, "History of Ukraine" article.
  5. ^ Rajca, p. 77.
  6. ^ Davies, Wheatcroft, pp. 424-5
  7. ^ Tauger 1991 [37] and the acrimonious exchange between Tauger and Conquest [38] [39].

References

inline
  1. ^ a b "I am not saying that the famine or the other components of the victimization narratives do not deserve historical research and reflection, nor that evil should be ignored, nor that the memory of the dead should not be held sacred. But I object to instrumentalizing this memory with the aim of generating political and moral capital, particularly when it is linked to an exclusion from historical research and reflection of events in which Ukrainians figured as perpetrators not victims, and when “our own” evil is kept invisible and the memory of the others’ dead is not held sacred."[1] Himka, John-Paul. "War Criminality: A Blank Spot in the Collective Memory of the Ukrainian Diaspora". Spaces of Identity. 5 (1): 5–24. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |month= (help); line feed character in |title= at position 62 (help)
  1. ^ US House of Representatives Authorizes Construction of Ukrainian Genocide Monument
  2. ^ Statement by Pope John Paul II on the 70th anniversary of the Famine
  3. ^ HR356 "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives regarding the man-made famine that occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933", U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., October 21, 2003
  4. ^ U.S. Congress Library Exhibit on Ukrainian Famine, "Resolution Of The Council Of People's Commissars Of The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic And Of The Central Committee Of The Communist Party (Bolshevik) Of Ukraine On Blacklisting Villages That Maliciously Sabotage The Collection Of Grain", December 6, 1932.
  5. ^ Dana G. Dalrymple, "The Soviet famine of 1932-1934" [40] in Soviet Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jan., 1964). Pages 250-284.
  6. ^ Robert Conquest, "The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine" (Chapter 16: "The Death Roll" [41]), University of Alberta Press, 1986.
  7. ^ Template:Ru icon Several articles from the Russian Единая Русь (Unified Rus') web site, e.g. [42], [43], [44].
  8. ^ Template:En icon Mark B. Tauger, "The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933" in Slavic Review 50 No 1, Spring 1991, pp. 70-89
  9. ^ Template:En icon Letters of Mark Tauger and Robert Conquest in Slavic Review 51 No 1, pp. 192-4
  10. ^ Template:En icon Letters of Mark Tauger and Robert Conquest in Slavic Review 53 No 1, pp. 318-9
  11. ^ Template:En icon David Marples, "Debating the undebatable? Ukraine Famine of 1932-1933" in Edmonton Journal, June 28, 2002.
  12. ^ Robert Potocki, "Polityka państwa polskiego wobec zagadnienia ukraińskiego w latach 1930-1939" (in Polish, English summary), Lublin 2003, ISBN 8391761541
  13. ^ Template:Pl icon Władysław A. Serczyk, "Historia Ukrainy", 3rd ed., Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, Wrocław 2001, ISBN 8304045303
  14. ^ Andrew Gregorovich, "Genocide in Ukraine 1933", part 4: "How Did Stalin Organize the Genocide?" [45], Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre, Toronto 1998.
  15. ^ U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine, "Findings of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine" [46], Report to Congress, Washington, D.C., April 19 1988
  16. ^ Dr. Otto Schiller, "Famine's Return to Russia, Death and Depopulation in Wide Areas of the Grain Country" [47], The Daily Telegraph, 25 August, 1933, as well as British Diplomatic Reports on the Ukrainian Famine.
  17. ^ "12th Congress of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine, Stenograph Record", Kharkiv 1934.
  18. ^ Miron Dolot, "Execution by Hunger. A Hidden Holocaust", New York 1985, ISBN 0393018865
  19. ^ Sergei Maksudov, "Losses Suffered by the Population of the USSR 1918–1958", in The Samizdat Register II, ed R. Medvedev (London–New York 1981)
  20. ^ R.W. Davies & Stephen G. Wheatcroft, "The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-33", Palgrave 2004.
  21. ^ Orest Subtelny, "Ukraine: A History", 1st edition, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1988 ISBN 0802083900
  22. ^ Czesław Rajca, "Głód na Ukrainie", Werset, Lublin/Toronto 2005, ISBN 8360133042
  23. ^ James Mace, "The Man-Made Famine of 1933 in Soviet Ukraine" in "Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933", p. 1-14, Edmonton 1986
  24. ^ Ярослав Грицак (Jarosław Hrycak), "Historia Ukrainy 1772-1999. Narodziny nowoczesnego narodu", Lublin 2000, ISBN 8385854509, available online in Ukrainian language
  25. ^ Yuri Shapoval, "The famine-genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine", Kashtan Press, Ontario 2005, ISBN 1896354386 (a collection of source documents)
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