Prof. Federigo Argentieri, Organizer
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
========================================================
5
. IS THERE A "SMOKING GUN"
FOR THE HOLODOMOR?
PRESENTATION: By Professor Roman
Serbyn
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
The Ukrainian Holodomor and
the Denial of Genocides
International Conference, Federigo Argentieri, Ph.D.,
Organizer
Guarini Institute, John Cabot University
Rome, Italy, Friday,
November 09, 2007
Published by the Action Ukraine Report #889, Article
5
Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, November 19, 2007
In his seminal
study on genocide, Leo Kuper observed that "governments
hardly declare and
document genocidal plans in the manner of the Nazis"
[1]. Nevertheless, since
modern states cannot function without large
bureaucracies and elaborate
communication systems, tell-tale records
inevitably survive.
When the
CPSU lost power and the Soviet empire fell apart, it was revealed
that an
elaborate paper trail of the 1932-33 famine and the Soviet
authorities'
involvement in it had been preserved in party and state
archives. These
documents are being slowly declassified, examined and
published[2].
Historians can now give us a fairly accurate account of the
catastrophe and
ascertain the responsibility of Stalin and his
collaborators.
As a
result, scholars who previously hesitated to recognize the
genocidal
character of Stalin's forced starvation of Ukrainian farmers,
have
reexamined the question and readjusted their interpretations. In his
latest
book, Nicolas Werth comes to the conclusion that thanks to recent
studies
based on the new documents, it is now "legitimate to qualify as
genocide the
cluster of actions undertaken by the Stalinist regime to punish
the
Ukrainian peasantry by famine and terror"[3].
In this paper I
analyze some of the main documents that provide smoking-gun
evidence of
genocide, in line with the definition of the crime given in the
UN Convention
of 1948: "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a
national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such".
The key criteria
in the Convention are proof of "intent" and identification
eligible "groups".
Soviet documents corroborate the accusation against
Stalin and his closest
collaborators for deliberately exterminating millions
of Ukrainian farmers,
and show that the perpetrators targeted them
as
Ukrainians.
Furthermore these and other documents reveal that the
genocide was not just
against Ukrainian farmers, the focus of the attack was
the Ukrainian nation
in all its component parts and on all its territories
within the Soviet
Union.
The locus of this crime was thus the
Ukrainian SSR, the predominantly
Ukrainian Kuban, and the other regions of
the RSFSR with sizeable Ukrainian
populations. The simultaneous decimation of
Ukrainian national elites,
especially academic, cultural and political
leaders, was an integral part of
the destruction of the Ukrainian
nation.
Stalin did not intend to kill all Ukrainians (nor is such an
intent required
by the Convention); his motive was to break the backbone of
the nation by
executing a sizeable percentage of the people and reducing the
rest to
servile obedience, to transform them into manageable cogs of the
state
mechanism. Stalin's means of destruction were varied: famine,
shootings,
exhausting forced labor.
The UN Convention does not require
the establishment of motives for
genocide, but determining the reasons for
the act gives an insight into the
rationale which led to crime and thus help
us comprehend the perpetrator's
intent. Stalin's measures against the
Ukrainians were predicated on his
political ambitions, two of which provided
the motives for the eventual
genocide[4].
The first was to extend
socialism beyond the borders of the USSR. He
realized that the Bolsheviks'
initial attempt to export their revolution
into Europe failed primarily
because of the weakness of the Red Army. To
resume Lenin's unfinished task,
Stalin needed a powerful armed force, backed
by modern heavy industry.
Industrialization had to be financed by exporting
natural resources,
especially grain, which had to be extorted from the
farmers at the lowest
cost to the state.
War communism had shown that door-to-door requisition
was costly,
inefficient and politically dangerous. After the revolution, poor
farmers
appropriated and divided up the land of rich landlords. As a result,
farmers
lived better, ate more but sold less to the state. Marketable grain
(sold
outside the village) in tsarist times was provided by the large farms
owned
by landlords and kulaks. Now new large estates had to be set up in the
form
of sovkhozy and kolkhozy. These would give the state easy access to
grain,
produced by the newly enslaved peasants.
The immediate goal was
not the increase of grain production (which could be
expected to fall as a
result of peasant opposition), but of the "marketable
grain" to be delivered
to the state. Since the main producers of grain were
Ukrainians farmers, who
had no tradition of the Russian semi-communal
obshchina organization, they
could be expected to offer stiff resistance to
forced collectivization and
confiscation of the fruits of their labor.
Stalin's second ambition was
to bring a permanent solution to the national
question, especially its
crucial Ukrainian component. The 1926 census pegged
the Ukrainian population
at 31 million, of the Union's 147 million: 23
million in Ukraine, and 8
million in the rest of the USSR, mainly along the
Ukrainian
border.
Ukrainian national revival triggered by the Russian revolution
forced Lenin
to give the reconquered republic nominal autonomy in the form of
a
"sovereign" republic within a Potemkin-style Soviet federation.
Subsequent
policy of Ukrainization, or the local application of a general
principle of
korenizatsiia (nativization), allowed Ukrainians to add real
national
content to the pretentiously misleading form of "soviet
republic"[5].
The Ukrainization of education, communications and
administration, not only
in Ukraine but also in the Ukrainian regions of the
RSFSR, the
de-Russification of urban centers by the influx of Ukrainian
farmers, the
demands on Moscow to transfer to the republic adjacent
territories with
Ukrainian population, the shifting of cultural orientation
from Moscow and
to the West - all these pressures on the imperial centre
could not be
ignored by the Kremlin.
Stalin, Lenin's
"magnificent Georgian" and foremost expert on the
nationalities question,
understood the dangers of active nation-building in
Ukraine, in the best of
times. Collectivization would only aggravate the
situation. Over 85 % of
ethnic Ukrainians were farmers and their sudden
disenfranchisement could
throw the countryside into such turmoil that not
only grain production would
be catastrophically reduced, but also farmers
could gain the support of the
national elites in a united rebellion of the
whole republic to the spoliation
of their country by Moscow.
Similar, if smaller, unrest could be expected
in the Kuban' and other
ethnically Ukrainian regions of the RSFSR. In the
mid-1920s Stalin had
written that the peasant question was "the basis, the
quintessence, of the
national question", that "the peasantry constitutes the
main army of the
national movement" and that "there is no powerful national
movement without
the peasant army"[6]. The stability and even the integrity
of the Soviet
empire would be threatened.
Genocide does not happen
spontaneously. The targeted group is first
identified, vilified and
intimidated, then it is discredited in the eyes of
the rest of the
population, and only when it has been sufficiently isolated,
is it submitted
to total or partial extermination. In the summer of 1929 the
GPU (political
police) "uncovered" a nationalist conspiracy, headed by
prominent Ukrainian
intellectuals and conducting anti-Soviet work in
villages and regional
centers.
Over 700 people were arrested for, among other things,
"anti-Soviet activity
in the villages and district centers" and a show trial
was held in March
1930, appropriately staged in a Kharkiv theatre. 45 members
of this mythical
Association for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU) were
sentenced to death or
long prison terms.
Arrests and trials of other
mostly fictitious groups followed: Ukrainian
National Center, Ukrainian
Military Organization, etc.[7] The condemned were
former members of the
former Ukrainian national governments, Ukrainian
armed forces, Ukrainian
political parties, and prominent people in fields of
education, culture and
the arts.
The purpose was to terrorize the Ukrainian elites into
submission and
lethargy, and thus deprive the peasants of leadership on the
national level.
It should be noted that, in connection with the less severe
famine in
Russia, no parallel attack took place against Russian national
elites or the
Russian culture.
Stalin's war against the peasants began
in earnest towards the end of 1929.
In a two-pronged attack he ordered to
"eliminate the dekulakization as a
class" and to collectivize the middle and
poor peasants. Divided into three
categories, the kulaks were dispossessed
and the most dangerous were shot.
The others were deported to the
wilds of northern RSFSR, transferred to
distant regions in Ukraine, or given
strips of poor land outside the kolkhoz
near which they lived. The intention
was not only to provide kolkhozes with
the confiscated land, cattle and
machinery, but also to deprive the peasants
of the more qualified leadership
for their opposition to the authorities.
During the winter of 1929-1930,
90 thousand Ukrainian households were
dekulakized, and a smaller wave more or
less finished the job a year later.
In 1934 Kossior, party boss of Ukraine,
reported that 200 thousand farms had
been dekulakized in Ukraine. Out of this
number of about one million (5
members per family), several thousand were
deported to the northern parts of
the RSFSR and lost to the Ukrainian
nation.
Collectivization went in unison with dekulakization: a major push
was given
in early 1930. By 10 March 1930 Ukrainian kolhosps integrated 64.4%
of
farmsteads with 70.9% of arable land. The operation was accomplished
with
the help of some 50,000 activists, sent from Russian and Ukrainian
urban
centers, with special powers to organize, punish, and
terrorize.
Many poor peasants, paid for the service with confiscated
goods,
participated in expropriating their richer neighbors, but many
others
sympathized with the victims. Peasant rebellion swept Ukraine:
in
January-March 1930, 3,190 uprisings with over 950 thousand
participants
confronted the authorities.[8]
Hundreds of fliers were
picked up by the authorities with such slogans as
"Free Ukraine from Moscow
rule", "Time to rise against Moscow yoke" and
others. National and peasant
factors were coming together. Stalin sounded a
temporary retreat and in
October of that year collectivization was down to
29 % of households and 34 %
of arable land. But the reprieve was brief and a
year later (October 1931)
the figures rose to 68 % (for households) and 72 %
for arable land, with a
much higher percentage in the grain-producing steppe
regions.
The
effect of Stalin's revolution on the countryside was disastrous,
especially
in Ukraine and the Kuban. From 1929 to 1932 the evolution can be
summarized
in these four curt phrases: production down; state procurement
up; grain
export up; peasant food consumption down.
Farmers' opposition to
collectivization, mismanagement of collective farms
by incompetent
administrators, neglect and slaughter of farm animals
seriously hindered
farming and brought down its production. Yet, enforced
obligatory state
procurement increased, and in 1931, 42 % of Ukraine's grain
harvest was
turned over to the state.[9]
Kolhosps delayed or completely failed to pay
out stipends for "workday"
(trudodni), and the their members had to rely on
their meager and
insufficient individual plots of land and a few domestic
animals for
subsistence. Undernourishment became generalized. But Stalin had
reached
his goal.
Grain exports rose from below one million tons in
1929, to: 5,832,000 tons
in 1930/31 and 4,786,000 tons in 1931/32. It should
be kept in mind that one
million tons could feed four to five million people
for one year. After two
years of resistance and unequal struggle with the
Communist authorities, the
Ukrainian elites were cowed and most of the
collective and independent farms
despoiled of all their reserves. The
republic was on the brink of a major
catastrophe.
On 26 April 1932,
Stanislav Kossior, the General secretary of the Communist
Party of Ukraine,
informed Stalin about "individual
Cases and even individual villages that are
starving" but blamed it on
"local bungling, errors, particularly in the case
of kolkhozes." And, lest
he displease his Kremlin masters, their lieutenant
in Ukraine dismissed the
tragedy with the affirmation that "all talk of
famine must be categorically
discarded."[10]
Yet famine there was and
on 10 June H. Petrovsky, the head of the Ukrainian
state and V. Chubar, the
head of the Ukrainian government, sent separate
letters to notify Molotov
and Stalin of the appalling conditions in the Ukrainian
countryside, and to
ask for help.
Chubar admitted that cases of starvation among independent
and collective
farmers had already been signaled in December and January and
that by
"March-April there were dozens and hundreds of malnourished,
starving, and
swollen people and people starving to death accumulate in every
village;
children and orphans abandoned by their parents
appeared".
Raions and oblasts organized aid from internal resources, but
were obliged
to do this "under conditions of acute food shortage, especially
bread".[11]
Noteworthy additional remark: "Petliurite and other anti-Soviet
moods
increased."
Petrovsky's letter was even more to the point.
Having just returned from an
inspection of the countryside, he realized the
catastrophic situation of the
farming population. He visited many villages
and everywhere saw multitudes
of people, mainly poor and middle peasants,
starving, subsisting on
surrogates.
Peasants scolded him, posed
embarrassing question, reproached him, saying
"why did you create an
artificial famine, [...] why did you take away the
seed material - this did
not happen even under the old regime, why is it
necessary for
Ukrainians to travel for bread [...] to non-grain
producing
territories?".
Echoing Chubar, Petrovsky reported that
"because of the famine, mass thefts
are taking place in the villages."
Pointing out that grain harvest is still
six week off, and famine will only
intensify, Petrovsky ask: "shouldn't
assistance be rendered to the Ukrainian
countryside in the amount of two or,
at the very least, one and a half
million poods of grain?" And he predicted
that if help is not given
starvation would drive peasants to pick unripe
grain and destroy much of
it.
Petrovsky's letter paints a bleak picture of the forthcoming harvest.
Since
the better grain had been seized by the state, seeds of poorer quality
were
sown and scattered mores thinly. The young crops are good and the
fields
well weeded but the grain is sparse. Petrovsky was also struck by the
large
amount of unsown land. Aware of all these problems, the farmers
complained
to Petrovsky that the new grain procurements would be even more
difficult to
meet than last year's. "And this may very well be so", agrees
Petrovsky.
Finally Petrovsky draws attention to the exodus of Ukrainian
farmers. They
are forced to seek food beyond the republic's borders, at "the
Dno station,
in the Central-Black Earth Oblast', in Belarus, and in Northern
Caucasus",
where grain is more readily available, and at much lower
prices.
When Petrovsky suggested that farmers band together for these
purchases, he
learned that the Commissariat of Transport has drastically
reduced the sale
of train tickets to peasants. Bewildered Ukrainian peasants
needled
Petrovsky: "Why are they banning trips for grain?"
If the two
Ukrainian leaders believed their pleas and warnings of turmoil in
the
Ukrainian countryside would soften Moscow's position, they were
mistaken.
Their effect on Stalin, Kaganovich and Molotov was just the
opposite. Writing
from Moscow to Sochi, where Stalin was vacationing,
Kaganovich criticized
both Ukrainian leaders, even though he admitted that
some aid would have to
be given to Ukraine, and asked Stalin to decide on
the amount. Stalin's
response was more brutal and more ominous of things to
come.
He
condemned the hypocrisy of the two leaders, who only wanted to get
"new
millions of poods[12] of grain from Moscow" and "a reduction in the plan
for
grain procurement". Ukrainians must mobilize their own forces and
resources
for already "Ukraine has been given more than she should
get".[13]
Nevertheless, on 16 June the Politburo considered Ukraine's plea
and granted
about 8,500 tons[14], a paltry amount in comparison with the
million and a
half poods requested by Petrovsky.
Politburo's niggardly
"largesse" must have provoked Stalin's ire, for in a
letter to Kaganovich,
Molotov and the Politburo he came back with harsh
criticism of past errors
and new instructions for the coming harvest. The
Gensec blamed "mechanical
equalization", which did not take into account the
ability of the kolkhozes
to deliver grain, and as a result of which,
"fertile districts in Ukraine
found themselves in a state of impoverishment
and famine, despite a fairly
good harvest."[15]
This is the only known acknowledgement of the
Ukrainian famine by Stalin. He
blamed regional authorities for being out of
touch with the countryside and
allowing kolkhozniks to travel around the
entire European part of the USSR
demoralize "our farms with their complaints
and whining."[16]
Stalin proposed the calling of a top level conference
on the organization of
grain procurement and its unconditional fulfillment,
and insisted that
personal responsibility for grain procurement be delegated
to the first
secretaries of the Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, and the other
grain
producing regions. "Personal responsibility" for "unconditional
fulfillment"
imposed from the top along the administrative vertikal became
the watchwords
of the 1932/33 grain procurement campaign, which would result
in the
genocidal famine.
On 21 June a telegram signed by Stalin and
Molotov instructed Kharkiv to
carry out "at any cost" the July-September plan
for grain delivery. Two days
later, Moscow answered Ukrainian Politburo's
plea for 600,000 poods of grain
with a terse resolution: "bar any additional
grain deliveries to
Ukraine."[17]
The III Conference of KP(b)U (6-10
July 1932) was devoted to the upcoming
harvest and grain procurement. Stalin
sent Molotov and Kaganovich to the
meeting "to ensure genuinely
Bolshevik decisions". Molotov informed the
audience that Moscow had lowered
Ukraine's quota but was adamant that the
plan be carried out in
full.[18]
Declarations from regional leaders that the farmers were
starving, that much
land lay fallow, and that 100 to 200 m.poods of grain
would be lost during
harvesting did not bend the resolve of Moscow's
envoys.[19] The conference
adopted a resolution to carry out the plan of
grain delivery "in full and
unconditionally".[20]
It was largely in
response to the tense situation in Ukraine[21], and in
anticipation of new
troubles in that republic that Stalin came up with his
infamous decree,
dubbed by the farmers "the 5 ears of corn law". Writing on
20 July to
Kaganovich and Molotov, the Gensec complains of widespread theft
by
"dekulakized kulaks" and others, and proposes to write a law, which
would
make theft of property belonging to collective farms equal to similar
crimes
against state property, and "punishable by a minimum of ten
years'
imprisonment, and as a rule, by death".
"All active agitators
against the new collective-farm system" and
"profiteers and resellers of
goods" writes Stalin, should be removed and
sent to concentration camps.[22]
He also wants stricter controls over the
limited kolkhoz trade allowed by a 6
May 1932 law (kolkhozes allowed sell
their surplus after 15 January 1933,
after fulfilling the state procurement
plan), made more liberal on 20 May
1932.[23]
A follow-up letter provides ideological explanation: in the
same way that
capitalism could not triumph without first making "private
property sacred
property", socialism will not finish off capitalism "unless
it declares
public property (belonging to cooperatives, collective farms or
the state)
to be sacred and inviolable".[24]
Returning to the topic on
26 July, Stalin insists on formal legality of the
proposed operations: "we
must act on the basis of law ('the peasant loves
legality'), and not merely
in accordance with the practice of the OGPU,
although it is clear that the
OGPU's role here will not only not diminish
but, on the contrary, will be
strengthened and 'ennobled' (the OGPU agencies
will operate 'on a lawful
basis' rather than 'high-handedly')".[25]
The joint Party-State decree
"On the Protection of the Property of State
Enterprises, Collective Farms and
Cooperatives, and on the Consolidation of
Public (Socialist) Property" was
issued on 7 August 1932. It became the main
legal instrument used by the
Soviet authorities to condemn millions of
farmers to slow death by
starvation. It repeated Stalin's declarations that
all public property is
"sacred and inviolable" and that individuals
attempting to take possession of
public property should be considered
"enemies of the people".[26]
All
collective farm property, whether in the field or in storage was
decreed
equal to that of state property and theft was made punishable by
execution,
which could be reduced to 10-year imprisonment only under
mitigating
circumstances. Advocating withdrawal from the kolkhoz became
tantamount to
treason and was punished with three to five years imprisonment
in
concentration camps. No amnesty could be applied in any of these
cases.
The decree on State property was applicable on the whole Soviet
territory
but, as Stalin's letter to Kaganovich shows, it was primarily meant
for
Ukraine. Stalin thought the law was "good" and would "soon have an
impact",
and ordered a draft of directives from the C.C to the party,
judicial and
punitive organizations.[27] The Gensec then addressed the
Ukrainian problem.
The passage is highly revealing:
"The most
important thing right now is Ukraine. Ukrainian affairs have hit
rock bottom.
Things are bad with regard to the party. There is talk that in
two regions of
Ukraine (it seems in the Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk regions)
about 50 raion
party committees have spoken out against the
grain-procurements plan, deeming
it unrealistic. It is said that the
situation in other raion party committees
is no better. [...] This is not a
party but a parliament,
[...]
Instead of leading the raions, Kossior kept maneuvering between
the
directives of the CC VKP and the demands of the raion party committees
[...]
Things are bad with the soviets. Chubar is no leader. Things are bad
with
the GPU. Redens is not up to leading the fight against the
counterrevolution
[...]. [underlined and doubly underlined in original -
R.S.]"
Then Stalin brandishes the specter of Ukrainian separatism: "If we
don't
undertake at once to straighten out the situation in Ukraine, we may
lose
Ukraine." He reminds Kaganovich that Pilsudski and his agents
are
underestimated by Redens, and Kossior. He expressed utter contempt for
the
whole KP(b)U, composed of 500,000 members ("ha-ha", snickers
Stalin),
harboring Pilsudski's agents and "quite a lot (yes a lot!) of
rotten
elements, conscious and unconscious Petliurists".
Thinking
undoubtedly of Ukraine's negative reaction to the destructive
impact the
just-passed property laws will have, Stalin warns: "The moment
things get
worse, these [party] elements will waste no time opening a front
inside
(and outside) the party, against the party."
Frustrated by the fact that
"the Ukrainian leadership does not see these
dangers", Stalin proposes to
replace Kossior with Kaganovich and Redens with
Balitsky, and eventually
Chubar with Kaganovich. In this way Stalin intends
to transform "Ukraine as
quickly as possible into a real fortress of the
USSR, a genuinely exemplary
republic."
The task is urgent and calls for immediate action, for without
"these and
similar measures (the economic and political strengthening of
Ukraine, above
all its border raions, etc.), I repeat, we may lose
Ukraine."[28] Kaganovich
agrees, of course, and accuses Ukrainian party of
creating a certain
solidarity and "a rotten sense of mutual responsibility",
not only in the
middle echelons of the party, but also among its
leadership.[29]
Stalin's exchange of letters with Kaganovich reveals the
ambiance in which
the policy of starvation will be implemented. The overall
objective was to
maintain a high level of grain procurement. To assure this,
all challenge
outside and inside the republic had to be eliminated,
regardless of the
cost. Stalin's raising of the specter of Pilsudski and
Petliura agents
running loose in Ukraine and infiltrating the Soviet party
and state
machinery was nothing more than a scare tactic and a rallying
call.
He was well aware that by the summer of 1932, the weak Polish
network and
the few local collaborators had been rounded up by the GPU, which
also
arrested real and imaginary followers of Petliura whom Stalin had
eliminated
by assassination in 1926. Poland may have had some illusions about
a
Ukrainian insurrection in 1929-1930, but by 1932, the Poles realized
that
the starving population was in no shape to revolt.
The
Soviet-Polish nonaggression treaty signed on 25 July 1932 was ample
proof of
the changing relations between the two neighbors.[30] The
Pilsudski-Petliura
scarecrow will continue to enjoy popularity in Soviet
propaganda. While there
was no serious threat from the Poles or the
Ukrainian nationalists, a
national insurrection could become a reality if
the expected famine (implied
in Stalin's phrase "the moment things get
worse") could bind together the
threatened middle cadres of the KP(b)U with
the surviving peasantry. To
prevent this eventuality the KP(b)U had to be
purged and kept under close
Moscow surveillance.
Stalin maintained that the 1932 harvest was good;
historians today are more
skeptical but consider it adequate to cover Soviet
Union's internal needs.
With the state reserves from previous year, there
were enough supplies to
feed every citizen of the Soviet Union.
Famine
was brought about by the exorbitant amount of grain and other
agricultural
products taken from the Ukrainian peasants, and the way they
were extracted.
Ukraine's plan was excessive, and in spite of the protests
from Kharkiv and
three successive reductions, it remained so to the end.
Still, Ukraine
delivered about a quarter of a billion poods of grain, or
over 90% of its
procurement quota. [31] In addition it handed over large
quantities of meat,
vegetables and other produce. Stalin insisted that state
procurement have
absolute priority. Following a CC VKP(b) directive, a
KP(b)U resolution of 18
November reminded that "complete fulfillment of the
procurement plan by
collective farms and the MTS constitutes their primary
obligation [...], to
which all the other duties of the collective farm must
be subordinated,
including the duty to set up all sorts of funds: seed fund,
forage and food
supplies".[32]
Stalin was satisfied that he was achieving his goal. At a
high-level party
meeting, held on 27 November 1932, he gloated: "The party
has succeeded in
replacing the 500-600 million poods of marketable grain,
procured during the
period of individual peasant holdings by our present
ability to collect
1,200-1,400 m.p. of grain. It is hardly necessary to prove
that without this
leap forward the country would have a famine [sic-RS], we
would not be able
to support our industry, we would not be able to feed the
workers and the
Red Army."[33]
The allusion to the famine, or rather
to freedom from one, was an obvious
lie, and the reference to the feeding of
the workers and the Red Army - an
overstatement; but then, Stalin's concern
was not the feeding his subjects
but the financing of Soviet
industrialization with grain exports.
Obedience to Moscow's orders was
assured in two ways: a) frequently repeated
delegations to Ukraine and the
North Caucasus Territory of Molotov
Kaganovich and other high-ranking leaders
to supervise the local
authorities, and b) party discipline enforced from
Moscow down the
administrative structure. At the end of October 1932, two
commissions were
sent, one to Ukraine headed by Molotov, and the other to
North Caucasus
Territory headed by Kaganovich.
Stalin's emissaries
supervised party meetings and forced them to pass
resolutions on grain
procurements, party discipline, stricter application of
the 7 August property
laws, the establishment of "black lists" of collective
farms in arrears with
grain deliveries, imposition of fines, etc. They also
instigated purges in
party organizations and administrative structures.
Kuban' was particularly
hit with the expulsion of 43 % of the 25,000 party
members, including 358 out
of 716 party secretaries.[34]
In Ukraine, during November and first five
days of December, the OGPU
arrested 1,230 people, including 340 heads of
kolhospy while 327 Communists
were brought before the courts for sabotaging
state procurements.[35] In the
18 November resolution quoted above, the
Ukrainian CC reminded the directors
of sovkhoz of their "personal
responsibility as party members and civil
servants for the fulfillment of the
grain procurement".
"Personal responsibility" for the execution of
instructions was a constant
refrain in messages coming from above and became
an important means for
forcing recalcitrant cadres to carry out the Ukrainian
genocide.
Dekulakization and deportation continued, on a smaller scale
and were mostly
of political and punitive nature. Arrests, beatings, and
cruelty of all
sorts abounded as before, only now the victims were weaker and
less capable
of resistance. Kolkhozes, villages and individual farmers in
arrears on
state procurement were put on "black lists", lost access to
state-run
stores, and could not buy such essentials as matches, kerosene,
salt.
Fines amounted to a year and a quarter's worth of meat tax, without
freeing
the debtor from the unfulfilled grain procurement. "Activists" - the
city
workers and their komnezam helpers searched farmers' houses and
yards,
looking for the hidden grain.
There is no way of knowing what
portion of the hidden grain was found by the
flying brigades of activists,
but official reports state that in Kuban they
found 345,000 poods of grain in
November, while searches in Ukraine from 1
December 1932 to 25 January 1933
yielded 1.7 million poods, in 17,000 hiding
places.[36] What grain was found,
was confiscated; if nothing was
discovered, they took whatever edibles were
seen, leaving the family to
starve.
Peasants who could find some old
religious medals or other mementos made
of precious metals could trek to the
city and exchange them at the torgsins
(stores for foreigners) for vouchers,
and then exchange them for food.
Hardier peasants would flee their
villages and seek salvation in urban
centers or in neighboring Belarus and
RSFSR, where food was available.
Accounts of Ukrainian peasants overloading
trains, filling stations and
wandering about Russian and Belarusian towns and
countryside abound.
National and peasant questions became inextricably
intertwined in Stalin's
decree of 14 December 1932, issued under the banal
title "On Grain
Procurement in Ukraine, Northern Caucasus and the Western
Oblast"[37].
Ukrainization was blamed for problems in grain deliveries
and exemplary
punishment was prescribed for sabotage in grain procurement:
5-10 years of
concentration camp for a number of "party traitors" arrested in
the Orikhiv
raion of Dnipropetrovs'k oblast of Ukraine, and deportation to
the North of
the Poltavska stanytsia of Kuban in the RSFSR.
The decree
made the party and government chiefs in the three grain producing
areas
personally responsible for the completion of grain procurement by
January
1933. Ukrainianization presently is carried out in Ukraine,
"without
meticulous selection of the Bolshevik cadre", had
allowed
bourgeois-nationalists and Petliurites to join party and state
institutions
and set up their cells and organizations.
Absence of
"revolutionary vigilance" by local party organizations
let
"counterrevolutionary elements" become directors, accountants,
storekeepers,
foremen in collective farms, members of village soviets.
Similar accusation
was brought against Northern Caucasus, with supporters of
the Kuban' Rada
figuring in place of Petliurites. This gave nationalists the
opportunity to
sabotage harvest and sowing campaigns and organize
other
counterrevolutionary activities.
Party and Soviet authorities in
Ukraine and Northern Caucasus were ordered
to extirpate these
counterrevolutionary elements, execute them or deport
them to concentration
camps, including "saboteurs with party membership
cards in their
pockets".
The verdict against Ukrainization came in two parts. In Ukraine
it was not
formally prohibited, but Stalin insisted that it resume its
primary
vocation, that of promoting "correct Bolshevik implementation of
Lenin's
national policy", which in fact meant integration and
assimilation.
Ukrainian authorities were instructed to "expel Petliurite
and other
bourgeois-nationalist elements from party and government
organizations", and
"meticulously select and recruit Ukrainian Bolshevik
cadre". The signal was
thus given for rapid curtailment of Ukrainization and
return to a more
sophisticated policy of Russification.[38]
Ukrainians
of Northern Caucasus fared worse. "Non-Bolshevik
'Ukrainianization', which
affected nearly half of the raions in the Northern
Caucasus," and which was
declared to be "at variance with the cultural
interests of the population",
was totally discontinued and replaced with
Russification.
The use of
the Ukrainian language was banned in public offices of local
administration,
cooperative societies, and schools. The printing of
newspapers and magazines
in the Ukrainized raions of Northern Caucasus was
to switch immediately to
Russian, and preparation were to begin immediately
for the transfer in the
fall of all Ukrainian schools into Russian.
The whole Poltava stanytsia
was ordered to be deported and resettled with
demobilized Russian Red Army
soldiers, who would receive the abandoned land,
buildings, equipment, and
cattle. In fact, 2,158 families with 9,187 members
were sent out before 27
December[39] and resettled a month later with 1,826
demobilized
soldiers.[40]
Together with Medvedivs'ka and Umans'ka, the three Cossack
stanytsias saw
45,000 persons deported to the North. On 15 December, Molotov
and Stalin
signed a similar ban on Ukrainization, for the rest of the
previously
Ukrainized Soviet regions in the RSFSR.
Stalin's
anti-Ukrainization decree reveals the extent to which the dictator
was ready
to go, in sacrificing the Ukrainian nation on the altar of
great-power
ambitions. There is little doubt that the ban on Ukrainization
was a sop to
Russian chauvinism, especially in ethnically mixed regions
outside the
Ukrainian SSR. National and social repressions reinforced one
another, even
if neither was acknowledged openly.
For the next several months after the
condemnation of the abuses of
Ukrainization and the Ukrainian sabotage of
grain procurements, the
Ukrainian countryside passed through some of the
worst moments in its
history. The litany of repressive measures is endless.
82 raions were
deprived of manufactured goods for not fulfilling their quotas
of grain
deliveries.
On 19 December, Stalin orders Kaganovich and
Postishev back to Ukraine to
help Kosior, Chubar and Khataevich carry out the
procurement plan. On 24
December, collective farms are ordered to deliver all
grain in fulfillment
of the plan, including grain put aside for seed and
food. Direct orders to
increase repressive measures, arrests and deportations
increase. A real
reign of terror seizes the republic and the Kuban.
On
22 January 1933 Stalin struck another crippling blow against the
starving
Ukrainian grain growers. The new secret decree, drafted by the
Gensec
himself, is perhaps the best available proof of the dictator's
genocidal
intent against the Ukrainian nation. Sent to Ukraine, Belarus and
the
neighboring regions of RSFSR[41], the document calls attention to
the
unrestrained exodus of peasants from the Kuban' and Ukraine to the
near-by
regions of Russia and Belarus.
Central authorities are said to
have no doubt that these migrants, who
pretend to search for food, are, in
fact, Socialist-Revolutionaries and
agents of Poland, sent to agitate,
"through the peasants", in the northern
parts of the USSR, against the
kolkhoz system and the Soviet power.
Addressees are reminded that a similar
movement took place the previous
year, but the party, soviet and police
authorities of Ukraine did nothing to
stop it. It must not be allowed to
happen this year.
Stalin then orders the party, soviet and the repressive
organs of the
Northern Caucasus and Ukraine to prevent the exodus of their
peasants to
other regions of the USSR and directs them to close border
crossings
between Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus.
The GPU of the
Russian oblast's adjacent to the quarantined Ukrainian and
Northern Caucasus
regions, and the transport section of the OGPU, are
instructed to arrest all
peasants from Ukraine and North Caucasus, who
have managed to leave their
territory, and, after segregating the
counter-revolutionary elements, return
the others to their villages.
The next day, the Politburo of the CC
KP(b)U adopted a resolution to carry
out Moscow's orders and forwarded the
directive, along with addition
instructions, for implementation by the
appropriate Ukrainian
authorities.[42]
The Ukrainian branch of the
OGPU was ordered to instruct all railway
stations not to sell tickets to
peasants with destinations beyond the
Ukrainian
borders, without formal
travel permission from the raion executive committee
or a certificate of
employment from construction or industrial enterprises.
Oblasts were told
to take "resolute measures" to prevent massive departure
of their peasants,
carefully check the work of agents recruiting peasants
for work outside
Ukraine, and to urge kolhospnyky and individual farmers not
to depart without
permission for other raions because they would be arrested
there.
On
25 January, B. Sheboldaev, the party boss of the North Caucasus
Territory,
issued a similar order, adding instructions on the employment of
internal
forces and border troupes and the setting up of
filtration
points.[43]
Like the anti-Ukrainization decree of 14
December 1932, the 22 January 1933
directive, which closed the borders to the
famished Ukrainian peasants was
not the beginning but the culmination of
processes that had started many
moths before. Petrovsky had complained to
Stalin, back in June 1932, about
the ban on train ticket for Ukrainian
peasants who wanted to obtain
provisions in Russia.
Evdokimov's
telegram from Rostov-on-Don, which Iagoda prepared for Stalin's
attention on
23 January 1933, details the elaborate measures taken since
November to
prevent the flight of farmers from the Northern Caucasus
Territory. Among
these were roadblocks set up on the main arteries of
peasant
migration.
Transport authorities had arrested 11,774 persons and another
7,534 were
incarcerated by other organs. In the same dossier, Balitsky's
report from 22
January informed of massive exodus of peasants from Ukraine
since
December.[44]
Departures were registered in 74 raions, 721
villages and 228 kolhosps. In
all, 31,693 persons left: 20,129 from Kharkiv
oblast', 6,576 from the Kyiv
oblast, 3,447 from Odessa oblast, and 1,541 from
Chernihiv. Of these
migrants about one third were collective farmers and two
thirds individual
farmers; 128 were activists. A check at the railway
junction stations in the
Kharkiv oblast revealed a great demand for
long-distance tickets: in January
1933 16,500 such tickets were sold in
Lozova station and 15,000 - in Sumy.
In the beginning of January 1933,
the GPU began to apprehend agitators and
organizers of these migrations and
arrested over 500 of them. [45] As a
direct result of Stalin's borders decree
of 22 January 1933, 219,460 persons
were arrested in the first six weeks of
its application; some were sent to
the Goulag, others punished in other ways,
while 186,588 were sent back to
their villages to face the
famine.[46]
In the middle of March 1933, Kosior wrote unperturbedly to
the Kremlin that
"the famine still hasn't taught many kolhospnyky a
lesson".[47] In his
report from Kharkiv, dated 31 May 1933, the Italian
consul general
prognosticated on the devastation of the country: "The current
disaster will
bring about a preponderantly Russian colonization of Ukraine.
In a future
time, perhaps very soon, one will no longer be able to speak of a
Ukraine,
or of a Ukrainian people, and thus not even of a Ukrainian problem,
because
Ukraine will have become a de facto Russian region."[48]
There
can be little doubt today that the famine was not only used by the
Communist
party for political purposes, but that it was actually created and
directed
by Stalin and his henchmen for that purpose. The regime's ultimate
objective
was to transform the backward empire into an industrial giant and
a military
superpower that could export socialism abroad.
To achieve this, Stalin
needed great quantities of marketable grain, which
was to be extracted from
the peasants "at any price" to the producers but at
minimal price to the
state. The most expedient way was to herd the peasants
into collective farms,
subject them to a direct control from the Kremlin,
and in this way ensure
maximum grain deliveries to the state.
The Kremlin knew that the peasants
would resist and that the imposition of
its will would result in the loss of
millions of human lives, but that was
of no concern for masters of a
well-populated empire. Stalin's project
required a homogenous and docile
population. Revived Ukrainian
particularism, taking advantage of the
indigenization program, reinforced
national unity at the expense of cohesion
of the new "fatherland of world
proletariat".
The two sources of
resistance to Stalin's plans (national and social) became
embodied in the
same group - the Ukrainian farmers. Stalin decided to
sacrifice a
considerable part of this group in order to eliminate the
opposition to his
projects and to frighten the rest of the Ukrainian nation
into accepting the
role of cogs (as he liked to call them) of the great
socialist
mechanism.
The Stalin-Kaganovich discussion of the Petrovsy and Chubar
letters
(June-July 1932), the "five ears of corn" law (7 August, 1932),
the
condemnation of Ukrainization (14 December 1932), and the closing
of
internal Soviet borders on starving Ukrainian peasants, each provide
smoking
gun revelations about the genocide against the Ukrainian nation. But
a
multitude of other documents now emerging from the secret archives help
us
get a rounded understanding of the gigantic crime and the
immeasurable
suffering of its
victims.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES:
[1]
Leo Kuper, Genocide. Its Politic Use in the Twentieth Century.
(Penguin,
1981), p. 35.
[2] Valerii Vasiliev & Yuri Shapoval (eds.),
Komandyry velykoho holodu.
Poizdky V. Molotova i L. Kahanovycha v Ukrainu i
na Pivnichnyi Kavkaz
1932-1933 rr. Kyiv, 2001; I. Zelenin et al (eds.),
Tragediia sovetskoi
derevni. Kollektivizatsiia i rasskulachivanie. Tom 3.
Moskva, 2001; Stalin i
Kaganovich Perepiska 1931-1936 gg. Moskva, 2001;
Rozsekrechena pam'iat':
Holodomor 1932-1933 rokiv v Ukraini v dokumentakh
GPU-NKVD. Kyiv, 2007;
Ruslan Pyrih (ed.), Holodomor 1932-1933 rokiv v
Ukraini: dokumenty i
materialy. Kyiv, 2007.
[3] Nicolas Werth, La terreur
et le désarroi: Staline et son système. Paris,
Perrin, 2007.
[4] Discussed
more fully in my article, "The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933
and the United
Nations Convention on Genocide", in Taras Hunczak & Roman
Serbyn. Famine
in Ukraine 1932-1933: Genocide by Other Means. (Forthcoming.)
[5] For a
thorough discussion of Ukrainization and its problems see James
Mace,
Communism and the dilemmas of national liberation: national communism
in
Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933. Cambride, Mass., 1983. See also Terry Martin,
The
Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet
Union,
1929-1939. Ithaca & London, 2001.
[6] J. V. Stalin, "Concerning
the National Question in Yugoslavia" Works.
Vol. 7. Moscow, 1954. Pp.
71-72.
[7] Rozsekrechena pam'iat'. Pp. 75-81.
[8] Valerii Vasil'ev &
Linn Viola. Kolektyvizatsiia i selians'kyi opir na
Ukraini (lystopad
1929-berezen' 1930). Vinnytsia, 1997. P. 91.
[9] Nicolas Werth, La terreur et
le désarroi: Staline et son système. Paris,
Perrin, 2007. P.
118.
[10] Holod 1932-1933 rokiv na Ukraini:ochyma istorykiv, movoiu
dokumentiv.
Kyiv, 1990. P. 148.
[11] All quotations and references to the
two letters are taken from
Komandyry velykoho holodu. Pp.206-215.
[12] One
pood = 16.36 kg; 1 ton - 61.36 poods.
[13] The Stalin-Kaganovich
Correspondence 1931-1936. New Haven& London,
2003. P. 136.
[14] For
the allocation of the food aid, see Holod 1932-1933 rokiv na
Ukraini. Kyiv,
1990. P. 183, 187-188.
[15] The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence. P. 138
(Underlined by Stalin).
[16] The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence. P.
138-139..
[17] Holod. 1990. P. 183 (doc. 63), P. 190 (doc. 68).
[18] The
original plan of 410 million poods (6.7 m.t.) was lowered twice to
356 and
274.8 million poods (5.8 m.t.; 4.5 m.t. ) but 16 November was raised
to 5.8
m.t. Rozsekrechena pam'iat'. p. 84.
[19] For a detailed account of the
deliberations see Komandyry velykoho
holodu. Pp. 152-164
[20] See part of
the resolution in Holod1932-1933 rokiv na Ukraini. Kyiv,
1990. P.
194-198
[21] A secret OGPU report from around 20 July 1932 stated that "as
for
anti-Soviet manifestations, Ukraine occupies first place". "From 1
January
to 1 July 1932, 118 counterrevolutionary kulak organizations
were
discovered, counting 2.479 members. In addition, along the lines of
national
counterrevolution we have unmasked 35 groups with 562 members."
Tragedia, p.
421. Another secret OGPU report, dated 5 August, contains a
section
"National counterrevolution (U[krainian]SSR)" which relates the
liquidation
of 8 nationalist groups, two of which consisted of former members
of the
outlawed UKP (Ukrainian Communist Party). These people are said to
have a
leftist program and conduct systematic activity among members of the
KP(b)U,
arguing that the Soviet authorities are suppressing the Ukrainian
culture.
In their platform, claims the report, they declare war on the Soviet
regime
and Polish fascism, while in fact keeping links abroad and carrying
out
directives of the Second Department of of the Polish General Staff
in
Ukraine. Ibid. p. 443.
[22] The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence.
P. 164-165.
[23] S. Kulchytsky, Tsina "Velykoho perelomu". Kyiv, 1990. P.
296. On 23
July Stalin sent a telegram to Kaganovich demanding the
restoration and
enforcement of last year's ban on transporting private bread
supplies by
rail or water. Tragedia, p. 428.
[24] The Stalin-Kaganovich
Correspondence. P. 166.
[25] The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence. P.
169.
[26] Tragedia, p. 453-454.
[27] Stalin i Kaganovich Perepiska. Pp.
273-275; The Stalin-Kaganovich
Correspondence. P. 179-181. A follow-up secret
"Instruction on the
Application of the TsIK and SNK SSSR of 7 August 1932
About the Safeguarding
of State Property", signed by the Chairman and the
Prosecutor of the Supreme
Court of the USSR and the Vice-Charman of the OGPU,
was sent out on 16
September to all republican and oblast authorities.
Tragedia. P. 477-479.
[28] On 12 August Stalin sends a note to Kaganovich
asking him to keep
secret for the moment the plan regarding Ukraine sent in
the preceding
letter. Tragedia. P. 276. To stiffen Kosior's resolve, in
January 1933,
Stalin sent him the more resolute Postyshev as his second in
commend; Redens
was replaced Balitsky in February 1933.
[29] Letter of 16
Augus 1932. Stalin i Kaganovich Perepiska. P. 283-284;
Stalin-Kaganovich
Correspondence. P. 183-184.
[30] Timoty Snyder, Sketches from a Secret War.
New Haven, Yale University
Press. P. 104.
[31] Kosior spoke of 255 m.p. at
the January plenum of the CC KP(b)U.
Holod1932-1933 rokiv na Ukraini. P. 352.
Davies and Wheatcroft give
3,584,000 tons, or 219 millon poods, P. 478. Other
authors give similar
figures.
[32] Holod 1932-1932 rokiv na Ukraini. P.
253.
[33] Tragedia. P. 559.
[34] Davies & Wheatcroft, The Years of
Hunger. P. 178.
[35] Komandyry velykoho holodu. P. 50.
[36] Komandyry
velykoho holodu. P. 49; Kulchytsky, Holod 1932-1933 v Ukraini
iak henotsyd.
Kyiv, 2005. P. 98
[37] Tragedia, Pp. 575-577; also in Holod 1932-1933 rokiv
na Ukraini. Pp
291-194.
[38] The Russification of Ukraine attracted the
attention of the Italian
consulate in Kharkiv. "In government offices the
Russian language is once
again being used, in correspondence as well as in
verbal dealings between
employees." See the "Italian Diplomatic and Consular
Dispatches", Report to
Congress. Commission on the Ukraine Famine.
Washington, 1988. P. 446.
[39] G.G. Iagoda report to Stalin, 29 December
1932. Lubianka. Stalin i
VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Moskva 2003. P. 386.
[40]
Nicolaas Werth, Le pouvoir soviétique et la paysannerie dans les
rapports de
la police politique (1930-1934). Rapport du 27 février
1933.
/http:/www.ihtp.cnrs.fr/dossier_soviet_paysans/sommaire.html/
[41]
Tragedia sovetskoi derevni. P. 634-635. The first English translation
of the
document appeared in Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire.
Nations and
Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca and London,
2001. P.p.
306-307.
[42] Volodymyr Serhiichuk. Iak nas moryly holodom. Kyiv, 2003. PP
156-158.
[43] Tragedia, p. 636-637.Sheboldaev added more precisions on the
filtration
points three days later. Ibid. P. 638.
[44] Lubianka. Stalin i
VChK-GPU-OGPU-NKVD. Moskva 2003.P. 394.
[45] Lubianka. P. 392-393.
[46]
N.A. Ivnitskii, Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie (nachala 30-kh
godov).
Moscow, 1994. P. 204.
[47] Tragedia. P. 657.
[48] "Italian Diplomatic and
Consular Dispatches. Op. cit. P. 427.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The others managed to get away.
The EYU considers that blaming
Russians for the Holodomor is propaganda
November 10 statement of the PSPU central committee presidium.
"The
presidium of the central committee of the Progressive Socialist Party
of
Ukraine is addressing the Ukrainian parliament with the proposal that it
amend Article 1 of the law on the 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine and cancel its
acknowledgment as genocide, because it goes in conflict with the
international law norms and the decision of the UNESCO organization," the
statement reads.
The PSPU is also calling on the Cabinet of Ministers
and local councils not
to follow President Viktor Yuschenko's decrees on the
measures devoted to
the famine anniversary.
As Ukrainian News
reported, President Viktor Yuschenko called 2008 the year
of memory of the
1933 - 1932 famine victims. In 2006 Verkhovna Rada called
the 1932 - 1933 famine the genocide against Ukrainian people.
As a
result of the 1932 - 1933 famine, according to different estimates,
from
three to seven million people perished. Apart from this, according to