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1. COMMEMORATION EVENTS FOR THE
75TH ANNIVERSARY OF
HOLODOMOR 1932-1933 TO BE HELD IN KYIV, UKRAINE, ON
THE
OFFICIAL DAY OF MEMORY, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24,
2007
Action Ukraine Report #890, Article 1
Kyiv,
Ukraine, Friday, November 23, 2007
KYIV - The following
commemoration events for the 75th anniversary
of the Holodomor 1932-1933
[induced starvation, death for millions,
genocide] will be held in Kyiv,
Ukraine, Saturday, November 24,
2007 led by the President of Ukraine Viktor
Yushchenko and the
First Lady Mrs. Kateryna Yushchenko.
9.00 - 9.35
a.m. Service at Saint Sophia Cathedral (Volodymyrska St.,
Saint Sophia
Cathedral).
10.00 -10.30 a.m. Guelder-rose trees planting (Dniprovskyi
uzviz).
15.15 - 16.10 p.m. Memorial events on Sofiyvska Square and
Mykhaylivska Square:
Thousands will march in a mournful
procession to The Monument
"To Victims of
Holodomor 1932-1933 " from Sofiyvska Square to
Mykhaylivska
Square
Lighting of thousands of candles near The Monument
"To Victims
of Holodomor 1932-1933" in Mykhaylivska
Square
Address of The President of Ukraine Viktor
Yushchenko
National and
International Moment of Silence
All Ukrainian and
International Act: "Light A Candle"
18.00 - 19.05 p.m. Requiem-Concert
"Black Tillage Is Ploughed Up"
(Shevchenko National Opera
Theater)
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2
. ADDRESS TO ALL UKRAINIANS ON
75TH COMMEMORATION
OF THE 1932-1933 HOLODOMOR BY PRESIDENT
YUSHCHENKO
President of Ukraine Viktor
Yushchenko
Presidential Administration, Kyiv, Ukraine, November 2007
Dear Ukrainians!
Brothers and sisters!
These days Ukraine
begins to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the
1932-1933
Holodomor.
The Holodomor is one of the most horrendous humanitarian
catastrophes in
human history. Millions of Ukrainians were destroyed as a
result of a
well-planned and deliberate policy of the totalitarian communist
regime.
The appalling death rate of the Holodomor even exceeded the
casualties the
Ukrainians suffered in WWII. We are still exposed to the
consequences of
this merciless terror targeted to destroy the Ukrainian
nation.
The crimes of the totalitarian regime demand condemnation by the
world.
Ukrainian diplomats and diaspora Ukrainians have taken great efforts
to
convince the world community and international institutions to recognize
the
Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. Such work must be
continued steadfastly and unwaveringly in order to bring the truth about
the
past tragedy to the world.
In all lands where Ukrainians live the
memory of Holodomor must be properly
preserved and its innocent victims
commemorated. I call on you to actively
cooperate in the creation of
information centers, educational programs and
exhibitions about the tragic
events of 1932-1933.
My special call goes to young Ukrainians worldwide.
I ask you to actively
respond to my appeal and back the efforts, sincerely
and ardently, to open
the truth about the Holodomor to the world
community.
With due respect, I call on all Ukrainians and all people of
goodwill
regardless of their backgrounds to light on November 24 the candles
of
memory of the Holodomor victims on all our planet.
Bring the
flames of truth to every nation and every country. All your
candles will
help form a single candle which we will light in November 2008.
This
candle will become an eternal and ever burning symbol of our grief for
the
millions of starved brother and sisters, of our unity and our faith in
the
unconquerable strength of the Ukrainian people.
Our duty is to unite the
efforts and make everything possible to ensure that
these tragic pages of
history will be never forgotten.
Ukraine to Remember! The World to
Recognize!
Viktor
Yushchenko
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3
. UKRAINE: WE
REMEMBER
EDITORIAL: Kyiv Post, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday,
November 21, 2007
At 4 p.m. this Saturday, Ukrainians will honor the
memories of millions of
victims of three Soviet-engineered terror-famines,
the most devastating of
which began 75 years ago with the Great Famine of
1932-33.
The government is urging Ukrainians to light a candle in honor
of the
victims of Soviet repressions and place it on their windowsills as a
sign of
solidarity. Memorial services will be held nationwide and around the
world.
Ukraine's political and religious elites have largely recognized
the
Holodomor as genocide. Even the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
-
Moscow Patriarchate, Volodymyr Sabodan, did not mince words when
he
wrote in an encyclical last year that "this genocide was an attempt
to
destroy the very soul of the people, to spiritually enslave the
people."
He used words like "hell, diabolic, anti-Christ" to describe
Soviet rule.
Thus, all four major Ukrainian Christian prelates agree that the
Holodomor
was genocide - a rare instance of ecumenical consensus among church
leaders.
All three of Ukraine's presidents since independence agree that
the
Holodomor was genocide. President Leonid Kravchuk drove the final nail
into
the coffin of the Kremlin-sponsored "bad weather and harvest"
disinformation
campaign regarding the Holodomor in his autobiography.
Kravchuk, who as a
Communist ideologue was responsible for denying the
Holodomor in the 1980s,
proved that rainfall levels were normal in
1932-33.
President Leonid Kuchma was the first to ask the world to
recognize the
Holodomor as genocide in 2003. The declassification of State
Security
Service archives began in the last years of Kuchma's rule, a process
that is
continuing by leaps and bounds under President Viktor Yushchenko
today.
Since 2003, Ukraine's parliament has twice voted on condemning
the
Holodomor as genocide. Both times the votes passed with slim
majorities
with the support of the Socialist Party, which was hesitant, but
whose ties
to the countryside made it impossible to deny the
truth.
The Communists aside, the only hold-out on the genocide issue is
the Party
of Regions, led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. If Ukraine's
efforts to
secure international recognition are to be successful, then this
political
force must add its voice to the condemnation. We hope to see this
party's
leaders standing with the president and other national leaders on
St.
Michael's Square Saturday to honor the victims.
As for Moscow's
recognition of the genocide, while Ukraine has made
significant progress in
dealing with its Soviet past, Russian leaders are
still in a state of denial,
or defensive paranoia. No one is blaming
Russia's current leadership or the
Russian people for the Holodomor.
Rather, it is the Kremlin's former
rapacious leaders who are to blame. Yet,
the Kremlin's current leadership has
stubbornly opposed recognizing the
genocide, labeling it as fear-mongering
with Kyiv roots.
Last week's attack on a Holodomor exhibit in Moscow and
the Russian
Foreign Ministry's subsequent accusations that political forces
are
"speculating" on the famine, are signs that the Kremlin still prefers
to
look at its record through rose-colored glasses. In fact, the Kremlin's
record is blood-colored, and the sooner Russian society recognizes that
fact, the better.
The Kremlin's claim that Ukraine is somehow trying
to monopolize the Soviet
terror-famine is essentially recognizing that
Ukraine has done a far better
job in shedding light on the darkest episodes
of Soviet rule.
Instead of criticizing Ukraine, Russian President
Vladimir Putin should open
up Russian Federation archives on the terror
years.
There is no denying that the Soviets forced famines in other
regions of
Eurasia in the 1930s, including areas of modern-day Russia and
Kazakhstan.
But the campaign within the closed borders of Ukraine was
ruthless in its
efficiency and organization and targeted the rural population
that was
primarily Ukrainian.
The histories of all Soviet forced
famines need to be addressed the same
way the Holodomor has been handled in
Ukraine. From Russia, Kuban to
Kazakhstan, the bitter truth deserves to be
known.
Ultimately, promoting awareness of the crimes of Communism is in
the
national interests of Ukraine and Russia. Given Russia's current
denial,
Yushchenko has rightfully appealed to other countries to recognize
the
famine as genocide, one that Kremlin spin doctors and powerbrokers
can't
deny.
We call upon the world's leaders to recognize the
genocidal nature of the
famine and, in doing so, help break the information
blockade isolating the
Russian
people.
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LINK:
http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/editorial/27842/
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4
. CANADA: UKRAINE FAMINE
REMEMBERED
By Julie Horbal, Sun Media
Winnipeg,
Manitoba, Canada, Thursday, November 22, 2007
Anna Shewel was four years
old when her family was pushed out of its home
in Ukraine onto impoverished
streets and into social exile as a result of
government-forced
famine.
When the Holodomor famine ended, having killed an estimated eight
million
people, she was seven. But the atrocity of Stalin's politically
driven
starvation plan will live forever in her mind.
"I still
remember how it was punishment for the people," Shewel, now 81,
said
yesterday. "We were looking for whatever was possible to eat. Whatever
we
could swallow."
Today through Sunday, Shewel's memories will be showcased
as part of the
75th anniversary of the 1932-33 Holodomor tragedy.
DOCUMENTARY ABOUT
SURVIVORS
Winnipeg's events include information sessions and
church services at
various locations across the city, and also the premiere
of Vichny Iy
Pamyat -- a Canad Inns-produced documentary about the 40-or-so
survivors
living in the city.
Organizer Eugene Hyworon of St. Mary the
Protectress Church said the
survivor experiences epitomize why people should
care about the often
forgotten genocide. "The agony and the sorrow, when you
watch that, it
really brings tears to your eyes," he said.
RAISE AWARENESSShewel said she hopes telling
her heart-wrenching story to filmmakers will
help raise awareness.
"We
don't want this to happen to no other people, to no other nations, to
no
other countries," she said. "There's not anybody who should go through
what
we went through."
Growing up, Shewel and her family ate whatever
they could scrape together,
including pancakes made from tree bark, leaves
and handfuls of borrowed
flour. The "most delicious thing," she said,
was Scotch pine.
"The needles were very soft and the shoots were very
sweet," she said. "It's
hard to believe that was our dessert."
Shewel
said one of her most horrific memories is when her grandmother
severely
burned her chest trying to hide a loaf of bread for the children
to
eat.
Her sister Nadia Dowhayko, 79, said she'll never forget having
to beg for
food. "I asked my grandma all the time about something to eat,"
said Dowhayko,
who was too young at the time to recall much else. "She told
me we don't
have nothing. Then I asked my mom, she said 'We don't have
nothing.'"
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LINK:
http://winnipegsun.com/News/Winnipeg/2007/11/22/4675964-sun.html------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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5
. YUSHCHENKO BELIEVES
POWER STRUCTURE PAYING
INSUFFICIENT ATTENTION TO 1932-1933
GREAT FAMINE
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, November 22,
2007
KYIV - President Viktor Yuschenko considers that the power does not
pay
enough attention to Great Famine of 1932-1933.
He disclosed this in a statement opening documental-art exhibition
entitled
"Ukraine Remembers 1932-1933 Famine, Genocide of Ukrainian People"
in Kyiv.
"1932-1933 events are forgotten in Ukraine... The nation
has not yet got
enough skills to be adequate to 1932-1933 tragedy. That is
the reproach for
the power and the reproach for itself," Yuschenko
said. He marked that the
Holocaust of 1932-1933 is the problem of
nowadays.
The Great Famine is not the problem of 1932-1933, that is the
problem of
nowadays. It touches upon our morality, spirituality and
patriotism,"
Yuschenko said. Besides, the President said that the Holocaust
is the
tragedy of the humankind and the crime against humanity.
"The
Holocaust is for sure the tragedy of my nation. That is the tragedy of
the
mankind and crime against humanity," Yuschenko said. Yuschenko said
Ukraine had yet to build a monument appropriate for the scale of the tragedy
of the Holodomor famine.
"Why is this country not having a worthy
monument to the victims of the
Holodomor? Why is there no worthy film? Why
are we not having a national
museum? Why are we having the Institute of
National Memory, which is
financed by 50%? Is it a question of money? No!
This is somebody's policy
to get us to live without memory," Yuschenko said.
The President
called on every Ukrainian citizen to study the history of
Ukraine.
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6
. PRESIDENT INSISTS ON CREATING
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEMORY OF 1932-1933 HOLODOMOR VICTIMS
ASAP
UKRINFORM, Kyiv, Ukraine, Wed, Nov 21,
2007
KYIV - President Viktor Yushchenko, who took part in "Ukraine
remembers!
Holodomor 1932-1933 - Genocide of the Ukrainian nation"
exhibition opening,
urged on Ukrainians to visit such expositions which
opened around Ukraine
and honor the memory of Holodomor and repression
victims.
President is reassured that today's Ukraine, its authorities and
people are
obliged to make everything possible to bring up to light
tragedy's scale.
However V. Yushchenko is distressed by a fact that
researchers speak often
of the victims' numbers rather than of the
importance of the tragedy itself.
"For me it is a tragedy regardless of the
deceased numbers whether it is one
million, hundred thousands or ten
million", he added.
V. Yushchenko thinks it is very important that
present generation gives
deserving honor to those who died during the Great
Famine. "Why don't we
have a worthy monument dedicated to victims of
Holodomor or worthy film
in this country? Why there's no national museum?", he said.
V.
Yushchenko thanked the exhibition's [four main] organizers - the Ukrainian
Institute of National Heritage [Memory], Security Service of Ukraine,
International Charitable Foundation "Ukraine 3000", [the Holodomor: Through
the Eyes of Ukrainian Artists Collection] and other governmental and public
organizations as well as researchers of Holodomor and activists, who were
helping to arrange the exhibition.
According to Director of the
Institute of National Memory Ihor Yukhnovsky,
the main task of the
exhibition is to show the consecution of deliberate
action by the Bolshevist
regime, which had been stepping up since 1928 and
resulted in the tragedy of
Holodomor of 1932-1933.
The exhibition consists of several expositions
presenting documents of GPU,
NKVD and archives of the Security Service of
Ukraine dubbed "Declassified
Memory", paintings and posters from the
"Holodomor: Through The Eyes of
Ukrainian Artists Collection," Morgan
Williams, Trustee.
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FOOTNOTE: The
Holodomor exhibition that opened in Kyiv, Ukraine
this week at the Ukrainian House is the largest and more historically
comprehensive Holodomor exhibition ever held. There are over 300
panels/posters (with documents, testimonies, information, historical data,
maps, photographs, etc.) and Holodomor artworks by Ukrainian artists
on display. The exhibition will be open through Thursday, December
6th.
Most of the items on display in Kyiv will soon be available on
disks that can
be used to provide information and to print out materials
for Holodomor
exhibitions worldwide. Some displays will be available in multiple
languages
in early 2008.
If you would like information about such items as they become
available
please write to Morgan Williams, Chairman, Exhibition Subcommittee,
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7
. LEADERS OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
EXPRESS SOLIDARITY WITH UKRAINIANS ON OCCASION OF 75TH ANNIVERSARY
OF
HOLODOMOR
1932-1933
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, November
22, 2007
KYIV - The leaders of the European Parliament have expressed
solidarity with
the Ukrainian people on the occasion of the 75th
anniversary of the
Holodomor Famine of 1932-1933.
Speaking during a
ceremony in Brussels to commemorate the Holodomor victims,
Vice President of
the European Parliament Marek Siwiec said that people must
know their
history in order to live on into future.
The Holodomor, in which millions
of people died and which was attributed to
natural circumstances for
many years, was in fact masterminded by the Soviet
Communist deathly regime,
Mr. Siwiec said. On behalf of the European
Parliament he urged the nations
across the globe to recognize the Holodomor
as genocide.
"We are here
to honor the victims and well as to prevent similar things from
happening in
the future," the Vice President of the European Parliament
said.
President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering also
made a
statement on the occasion of the 1932-1933 Holodomor in
Ukraine.
"Today we know that the famine which has come to be known as the
'Holodomor' was in reality an appalling crime against humanity. The famine
was cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin's regime in order to force
through the Soviet Unions policy of collectivization of agriculture
against
the will of the rural population of Ukraine.
"It was only in 1991,
when Ukraine regained its independence, that it became
possible for people
there to discover the background to this tragic period
of their history. All
of us should be prompted by this day of remembrance to
engrave the
'Holodomor' in our memories", Mr. Hans-Gert Poettering's
statement
reads.
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NOTE: Send in a letter-to-the-editor
today. Let us hear from you.
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8
. ROBERT CONQUEST'S
BOOK "THE HARVEST OF SORROW" REPUBLISHED IN THE
UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE
U.S. Ambassador Taylor says U.S. Congress
has still not approved
a resolution that would define the Holodomor as an act
of genocide
against the Ukrainian people.
By Mykola
SIRUK, The Day Weekly Digest
Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, November 20,
2007
The book by the well-known Western historian Robert Conquest, "The
Harvest
of Sorrow," was recently republished in the Ukrainian language. This
key
book on the Holodomor was published in English in 1986 but was
translated
into Ukrainian only in 1993.
The launch of the second
Ukrainian edition took place at the US ambassador's
residence in Kyiv, a move
explained by the fact that with the assistance of
the Department of Press,
Education and Culture of the US Embassy to Ukraine.
"The Harvest of
Sorrow" was published by the Volyn-based Teren Art Agency
within the
framework of the program "Lessons of History: the Holodomor of
1932-33,"
which is part of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund.
"Thanks
to this book many people throughout the world became aware of the
Holodomor.
The author showed and described the horror of the Holodomor.
Some people who
visited Ukraine in 1932-33 could not even write about the
things they had
seen.
"As Robert Conquest admits in the foreword to his book, Boris
Pasternak
visited Ukraine during that period and said afterwards: 'It is
impossible to
recount what I saw there.
"There was such inhumane,
incredible distress and sorrow that everything
began to look unreal and my
mind could not grasp all the horror. I became
ill. I could not write for a
year,'" US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor
quoted the writer as
saying.
Ambassador Taylor also noted that unlike Pasternak, Conquest
succeeded in
describing all this horror and did this in such a way - through
painstaking
effort - that both the personal sufferings of a single person and
the
suffering of the entire society were shown.
According to the
ambassador, the historian reached the conclusion that the
ascertained facts
and Stalin's motives prove his involvement in this
catastrophe. Thus, there
can only be one verdict of history: this was a
crime for which responsibility
must be taken.
On her part, Kateryna Yushchenko, the head of the
Supervisory Board of
the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, stressed
that 75 years after
these tragic events Ukrainians have a great
responsibility to let the world
know about the Holodomor.
According to
the Ukrainian president's wife, people both in Ukraine and
abroad are now
coming to the real understanding of the scale of this crime:
how many people
were dying and how the regime did this in a systemic,
cynical, and massive
way.
According to Ukraine's First Lady, the main program of the Ukraine
3000
International Charitable Fund is to elucidate the question of the
Holodomor.
"We are gathering evidence, making films, and helping to organize
the Light
a Candle Action.
(This action was the brainchild of the late
James Mace, who first broached
this subject in his column "A candle in the
window" in The Day on Feb. 18,
2003. Together with Conquest, he also spoke at
the US Congressional
Hearings on the Holodomor - Author).
This action
has to be expanded throughout Ukraine, so that everyone in every
house will
remember their ancestors, their grandfathers and grandmothers,
who perished
during the Holodomor. Many countries have recognized the
Holodomor. UNESCO
did so two weeks ago, and the United Nations
recognizes the Holodomor. They
will not immediately say that this was
genocide.
"But we must prove
this to them. Everyone used to say that there was no
famine. Today it has
been acknowledged that there was a Holodomor, but not
genocide. But with the
help of facts, research, orders, and decrees we will
prove that the Holodomor
was an act of genocide," she stressed.
The initiator of the second
edition of the book, the writer and former
dissident Yevhen Sverstiuk
considers "The Harvest of Sorrow" the best
book on the history of
20th-century Ukraine.
"This book was written by a person of great talent
and intelligence, whom I
would place alongside Orwell. Our history books did
not take into account
inaccessible materials. Information written abroad
about life in Ukraine and
the USSR was broader, more objective, and more
analytical.
This is a book that was written by a free man, who thinks in
a free way and
has a huge amount of material to work with. Yesterday's slaves
cannot
contemplate the facts about their life deeply," he noted.
In
Sverstiuk's opinion, the genocide in Ukraine and the Nazi genocide
are
linked. "If one could engineer the Holodomor genocide in a large country
in
peacetime and conceal this from the world, why can one not secretly
execute
a numerically small nation in wartime? It is known that the Fuhrer
learned
from the Leader," Sverstiuk emphasized.
"After directing
attention to the importance of the nature of the assessment
given to this
historical phenomenon, he noted that we often err in the
everyday assessment,
whereas the sense of this phenomenon is defined by
the word
"genocide."
INTERVIEW WITH U.S. AMBASSADOR
TAYLORWilliam TAYLOR: "A judiciary analysis is crucial to
recognizing that the
Holodomor was an act of genocide" What is being done in
the US in order to
recognize the Holodomor of 1932-33, and does the United
States recognize
that the Holodomor was an act of genocide against the
Ukrainian nation?
These and other questions are raised in The Day's blitz
interview with US
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ukraine
William TAYLOR.
The American Senate and the House of Representatives have
approved a law
that has been signed by the president. This law provides for
the
construction of a memorial dedicated to the Holodomor in Washington,
the
US capital. The Ukrainian government is financing its
construction.
[The Day] When will this memorial be
built?
[Ambassador Taylor] I don't know. I hope very soon. There is a
large and
well-known monument to Taras Shevchenko in Washington. A monument
to
enslaved nations was built in the US in the 1950s. And this new
memorial
will be another great Ukrainian monument.
[The Day] What
about the resolution on recognizing the Holodomor as an act
of genocide
against the Ukrainian people? Will such a decision be made by
the two
chambers of the American Congress?
[Ambassador Taylor] The resolution in
this form was not approved by the two
chambers. What was actually approved
was the decision to build a memorial.
We have to carry out a judiciary
analysis in order to recognize the
Holodomor as genocide. But the American
government has not done this yet.
[The Day] But there is a book by Robert
Conquest, about which you spoken
today and whose author addressed Congress at
one time and gave evidence.
[Ambassador Taylor] True, there is much
evidence. And Conquest's books
are an indisputable part of it. Congress also
considered this issue, but it
has still not approved a resolution that would
define the Holodomor as an
act of genocide against the Ukrainian
people.
[The Day] But this is a contradiction. The House Committee on
Foreign
Affairs had recommended the resolution on recognizing the
Armenian
genocide.
[Ambassador Taylor] And you see what kind of
problem it has caused.
[The Day] But in the Ukrainian case there should
not be any problems because
the totalitarian regime that existed at that time
is blamed for the genocide
against the Ukrainian people, not another
nation.
[Ambassador Taylor] Yes, that's true. I don't think that there
will be any
problem with Ukraine. But a problem linked to other tragedies can
arise.
Again, a judiciary analysis must be completed in order to approve such
a
resolution, and this has not been done yet. If this is done for Ukraine,
a
similar analysis will have to be conducted with respect to other
tragedies,
and this will be quite complicated.
[The Day] Does this
mean that in approving the draft resolution on
recognizing the Armenian
genocide the Democrats in the House Committee
on Foreign Affairs did not
think it through?
[Ambassador Taylor] Yes. It's true. But the draft law
approved by the
committee has not been submitted to the House of
Representatives.
[The Day] I'd like to return to the topic of the
judiciary analysis. Is the
American government afraid of conducting this
analysis and recognizing that
the Holodomor was genocide? After all, many
countries, including those
located on the American continent, have recognized
that the Holodomor
was an act of genocide that was perpetrated by a
totalitarian regime?
[Ambassador Taylor] Yes, that's true. One can say
the same thing about
Turkey in 1915. The current government did not exist at
that time, and there
was no current Constitution of Turkey; the Ottoman
Empire existed then.
Thus, it was a completely different regime.
In
general, the issue is quite complicated. We are very glad that the US
has
approved a law that has come into force and according to which a
monument
to the Holodomor will be constructed in
Washington.
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LINK:
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9
. DECLARATION: “UKRAINE TO
REMEMBER - THE WORLD TO
RECOGNIZE"
Upcoming International Events to Commemorate
75th Anniversary
of 1932-1933 Holodomor Genocide of the Ukrainian
Nation
World Ukrainian Congress (WUC)
International Holodomor
Committee (IHC) (in Ukrainian)
Toronto, New York, Melbourne, Saturday,
November 17, 2007
Action Ukraine Report #890, Article 9 (in English)
Kyiv,
Ukraine, Friday, November 23, 2007
The International Holodomor Committee
(IHC) at the World Ukrainian Congress
(WUC) in close cooperation with the
Secretariat of the President of Ukraine
and the Ukrainian Institute of the
National Memory has scheduled major
events for 75th Commemoration of the
Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933 to be held
under the dynamic slogan “Ukraine To
Remember – The World To Recognize!”
Ahead of commemorative events in
Ukraine and the countries where Ukrainians
live we would like to offer
several proposals for consideration.
The 1932-1933 Holodomor is one of
those horrendous acts which Moscow
perpetrated in a bid to conquer the
Ukrainians, notably, the linguocide
(attempts to wipe out the Ukrainian
language); distortion of the historical
truth about the Kievan Rus’; the
denial of the distinctive status of the
Ukrainian nation that in fact
brought European culture and science to the
early Russian state; and,
finally, the terrible crime of a deliberate famine
that was a true genocide
of the unsubdued Ukrainian nation.
Ukraine’s tragic experience is a
unique episode in the world’s history. The
world must be informed about it
to ward off similar perils ever emerging
from totalitarian and imperial
regimes.
A lot of new light must be thrown on the Holodomor by studying
the archives
of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and other sources,
notably, the
archives of NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB) in
Moscow.
It is not too late to record eye-witness accounts of the
Holodomor. We must
establish the true motives for the Holodomor and name
those who unleashed
the genocide against the Ukrainian nation.
It
would be good to borrow an Irish tradition (The Irish people also
suffered
from a catastrophic famine and had to scatter all over the world):
the Irish
carve on the monuments the names of all their dead with the dates
of their
deaths and location of their graves. In so doing, they preserve the
memory
about their ancestors.
All information about the 1932-1933 Holodomor in
various forms – brochures,
exhibitions of photographs, fiction books and
documents, requiem masses and
remembrance services for the innocent victims
– must serve two ends.
[1] On the one hand, the slogan calls to establish
the truth about and
remember millions of Ukrainians deliberately starved to
death.
[2] On the other, we must get the governments of all countries and
reputable
international organizations to denounce the Holodomor as a
genocide directed
against the Ukrainian nation that stood up against brutal
domination of
Ukraine by Moscow bolsheviks.
Versatile events have
been planned, information, artistic and political, to
help recognize the
Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people by the
world governments as
well as such influential international organizations as
PACE, EU Parliament,
and UN General Assembly. Information booklets,
research reports and other printed matter will be published.
We
realize that the recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide of Ukrainians
has met with strong resistance and that it will take many years of joint
information and diplomatic efforts of Ukrainians living in Ukraine and in
the diaspora as well as our numerous friends worldwide.
The key role
in this campaign should be played by Ukraine statesmen. After
75 years, we
can no longer tolerate simplification or distortion of history,
or any
compromises hatched by those who acted against Ukraine and its
national and
state interests.
The President and Government of Ukraine must accept
historical and political
responsibility for informing the Ukrainian people
and the world about this
tragic page of our history.
The first part
of the slogan is “Ukraine to Remember.” Therefore, how much
Ukraine and its
people will remember about the Holodomor will serve as a
yardstick of
Ukraine’s leaders dedication and commitment to spreading the
truth about the
Famine.
Simultaneously, Ukrainian diplomats abroad bear responsibility,
predominantly as spokespersons for the state, for the second part of the
slogan “The World To Recognize!”
The Ukrainian diaspora as a civil
and lobbying factor has long proved its
complete readiness and commitment to
cooperate with the state for the sake
of the common Homeland.
The
role of ambassadors and other members of the Ukrainian diplomatic
service in
the Ukrainian diaspora countries is rather to initiate public
campaigns and
not merely to join them.
Ukrainian diplomats should not only be the link
between public organizations
and world parliaments – they should head the
campaign, initiate actions and
lobby them most effectively.
Such are
the instructions given by the President of Ukraine in his decrees.
The
enforcement of these instructions should be checked by the public: are
they
enforced at all and at which level?
The 1932-1933 Holodomor is a crime
against the Ukrainian people, engineered
and perpetrated by representatives
of the Stalin communist regime that
continued Moscow’s imperialistic policy
in a different form.
Although the goal of the White and Red Moscow was
the same, the means of
attaining it were different, much more horrendous and
murderous this time.
No one can hide from the truth or deny it or hush it
up.
The truth is confirmed by the documents found in recently
declassified SBU
archives and published in the “Declassified Memory”
collection.
We are aware of our responsibility to tell the world the
truth on behalf of
millions of children, women and men killed by the famine
that struck a
deadly blow to the genetic and spiritual foundations of
Ukrainians. Only by
exposing and denouncing the crime can we ensure that it
will never be
repeated.
It is now important that the Ukrainian youth
realize its role in spreading
the truth and prepare itself for the roles of
the “ambassadors of truth”!
The first stage of our campaign has started.
However, we must realize that
the campaign for the recognition of the
Holodomor as a genocide cannot be
limited to the annual event.
It
must be our steady and consistent effort until the world recognizes the
great truth about this grave crime, until every person in Ukraine knows
about this tragic page in the history of Ukraine.
The International
Committee at the World Ukrainian Congress wishes the
Ukrainian state
leaders, public organizations in Ukraine and the Diaspora a
lot of
endurance, commitment and success in their efforts.
Eternal memory to the
victims of the dreadful Holodomor!
Let the memory about them pass from
generation to generation!
Toronto - New York - Melbourne, November 17,
2007
For the World Ukrainian Congress
Askold Lozynsky,
President
Stephan Romaniw, Head, IHC WUC
Viktor Pedenko, General
Secretary
Irena Mytsak, Secretary, IHC
WUC
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10
. "EXECUTED BY FAMINE: THE
UNKNOWN GENOCIDE OF THE UKRAINIANS" EXHIBITION UNVEILED AT THE
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND MUNICIPAL
LIBRARY
International Charitable Fund 3000, Kyiv,
Ukraine, Fri, Nov 9, 2007
KYIV - On November 7, 2007, the "Executed by
Famine: Unknown
Genocide of the Ukrainians" exhibition was unveiled at the
Geneva
Municipal Library [in Switzerland].
The exhibition was prepared
by the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable
Fund as part of its History
Lessons: Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 program.
The co-organizers of the
exhibition are the Ukraine 3000 Fund, Geneva City
Council, and Ukraine's
Permanent Representation at the UN and other
international organizations in
Geneva.
Among the participants of the unveiling ceremony were Head of
the
Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund
Kateryna
Yushchenko, Mayor of Geneva Mr. Patrice Mugny, Permanent
Representative of
Ukraine at the UN and other international organizations in
Geneva Mr. Yevhen
Bersheda, members of the Government of Geneva, members of
public
organizations and the media.
Addressing the audience, Mrs.
Yushchenko tendered her thanks to all the
exhibition organizers. "By creating
this exhibition we wanted to familiarize
the European audience with this
tragic page of Ukraine's history," she said.
"Today, the issue of the Manmade
Famine has evoked a wide response from
the global community."
Mrs.
Yushchenko mentioned that the US, Canada, Australia, Estonia,
Italy,
Lithuania, Georgia, Poland, Hungary, Argentina, Spain, Peru, and
Ecuador had
recognized the Manmade Famine in Ukraine as genocide on the state
level.
A few days before, a resolution on recognizing the manmade
famine in
Ukraine was passed by the UNESCO General Assembly. "We hope that
the
next step will be recognition of the Ukrainian national tragedy by
other
countries and most influential international bodies, like the United
Nations
Organization," Mrs. Yushchenko said.
"I am certain that if the
global community had displayed an adequate
reaction to the Holodomor famine
75 years back, the humanity would have
been able to prevent later genocides
and massacres taking a heavy toll of
many a million human lives in all
continents," Mrs. Kateryna said.
This event is continuing a series of
educational exhibitions at the capitals
of the leading countries, carried out
as part of a joint program by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and
Ukraine 3000 Fund.
The program's goal is revealing the truth about
Holodomor to the global
community, seeking its recognition as genocide
against the Ukrainian
people on the international level.
The Executed
by Famine: Unknown Genocide of the Ukrainians exhibition
is based upon
documentary archive sources corroborated by eyewitness
accounts of the famine
survivors.
The exhibition has already been displayed in Brussels and
Berlin and
demonstrated to the diplomatic corps in Kyiv. In the near future
it will
travel to New York, Vienna, Copenhagen, Strasbourg, Paris,
Bratislava,
Budapest, etc.
During one year, electronic versions of the
display will be given to all
Ukraine's diplomatic representations abroad and
also to the Ukrainian
Diaspora organizations and Ukrainian
communities.
The exhibition will stay in Geneva till November 21, 2007. A
public
discussion on the Manmade Famine of 1932-1933 will be held
November
22, 2007, at the Geneva Ethnographic
Museum.
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LINK:
http://ukraine3000.org.ua/eng/yesterday/yesnews/6154.html
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11
. LETTERS
FROM KHARKIV
The truth about the Holodomor through the eyes
of Italian diplomats
By Yurii Shapoval, Professor and Doctor of
Sciences (History).
The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, November
20, 2007
In a few days, the Kharkiv-based Folio Publishers is expected to
issue an
extremely interesting and important book called "Letters from
Kharkiv."
These letters are in fact reports from Italian diplomats who were
posted in
the USSR in 1930-34, in which they describe the famine
situation.
The book is being published through the efforts of the
Institute of Italian
Culture in Kyiv. This academic institution invited me to
take part in this
interesting project as a scholarly editor and the author of
a brief
afterword.
I agreed with pleasure, not in the least because it
was Prof. Andrea
Graziosi, a colleague and a good friend of mine, who
discovered the Italian
diplomats' letters, which he found in 1987 at Italy's
Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.
"These documents lead one to reckon with
one of the 20th-century's biggest
European tragedies," Prof. Graziosi writes
in the foreword to the book.
"They radically changed my idea of Soviet
history and my overall vision of
the last century. This is why their
publication in Ukraine fills me with
joy."
What is also important is
that these documents were found even earlier by
Basilian monks, who handed
them over to the US Commission that researched
the famine in the mid-1980s.
The Italian diplomats' accounts were attached
to the commission's Report to
Congress.
So this evidence is of paramount importance for understanding
the causes and
consequences of the Holodomor. Published in Italy, France, and
the US, these
documents are finally appearing in print in the very place
where these
tragic events took place, fortunately long ago.
As Prof.
Nicola Franco Balloni, director of the Institute of Italian Culture
in Kyiv,
rightly states in his foreword to Letters from Kharkiv,
the
Ukrainian-language edition is the most complete documentary evidence of
the
1930s famine in the USSR, gathered by members of Italy's diplomatic
mission.
"The evidence of Italian diplomats," Prof. Balloni emphasizes,
"who were
forced to work in the difficult conditions of the Stalin and
Mussolini
regimes, but were able to remain impartial witnesses of these
infernal
events, was in fact of no use to Il Duce. For certain reasons, he
wanted to
maintain good relations with the USSR.
However, the times of
dictators are ending, but documents remain and, aimed
at the descendants of
the victims of tyranny, they teach them to remember
the tragic past for the
sake of the future."
In the early 1930s, Italy had an embassy in Moscow,
as well as a
well-ramified network of consular agencies, including consulates
in
Leningrad, Odesa, and Tbilisi, and vice-consulates in Kharkiv, Batumi,
and
Novorossiisk.
It is the reports from the three latter consular
offices and the Moscow-
based embassy that were included in Letters from
Kharkiv. The people who
headed the consular agencies in Kharkiv, Batumi, and
Novorossiisk were not
professional diplomats but former army officers, who
had served well during
World War One.
Most of the documents cited in
the book were prepared by Sergio Gradenigo
(1886- 1966), who had worked in
Ukraine in 1931-34. He headed the Kharkiv
vice-consulate (later elevated to a
Royal Consulate) and, at the end of his
mission, the newly-formed Consulate
General in Kyiv, where the capital of
Soviet Ukraine moved in 1934, and,
later, a consular representation in
Italy.
After finishing his term in
Ukraine, he served as a volunteer in the Tevere
Division in the
Italian-Ethiopian War of 1935-36. In 1948 Gradenigo
immigrated to Argentina,
where he taught and wrote until his death.
What were these reports by the
Italian diplomats? They contain very specific
information as well as
reflections - sometimes merciless, sometimes
sympathetic - of foreigners,
which were by and large correct assessments
and analyses of governmental
actions and human behavior.
But let me make a general remark before going
into greater detail. Ukraine
and the Northern Caucasus had been supplying
more than half of all the grain
produced in the USSR.
Speaking of
Ukraine, Stalin noted in 1931that "a number of granaries are in
a state of
devastation and famine." Yet the Kremlin believed that Ukraine
had enormous
reserves of grain that the collective farms and independent
farmers were
allegedly hiding.
This is why the government resorted to brutal measures
to procure grain.
More than 150,000 people died in 1931 alone. In March and
April 1932 there
were large numbers of starving people in Ukrainian villages,
and cities were
full of children who had been abandoned by their
parents.
This was a distress signal that did not, however, stop the
authorities. On
July 7, 1932, the Central Committee of the All- Union
Communist Party
(Bolsheviks) passed a resolution on the state grain
deliveries. The main
idea of the resolution was to fulfill the plan at any
cost.
The Stalinist leadership clearly saw two genuine enemies:
[1]
firstly, the peasants, who were unwilling to work on collective farms
and die
in the name of industrialization (seeking to avoid the famine caused
by
meeting the compulsory grain procurement targets, peasants began
withdrawing
en masse from collective farms); and
[2] secondly, the not-so-reliable
political-state leadership of Ukraine,
which to a certain degree was pursuing
a "flexible" line in its dealings
with the Kremlin's demands and tragic local
realities.
This is why Stalin sent his trusted lieutenants to Ukraine and
applied tough
sanctions against the peasants, which turned into
genocide.
In late October 1932, in pursuance of the CC AUCP(b) Politburo
resolution
of Oct. 22, 1932, an extraordinary commission headed by
Viacheslav
Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the
USSR,
began to work in Ukraine.
As early as Oct. 29 Molotov cabled to
Stalin, "We had to severely criticize
the Ukrainian organization, especially
the party's Central Committee, for
failure to launch full- scale
requisitioning." Sharing Stalin's mistrust of
the local authorities, Molotov
also demanded that Moscow officials be sent
to the Ukrainian SSR to achieve
the desirable effect.
Molotov gave a powerful impetus to the repressions.
The Politburo of the CC
AUCP(b) resolved on Nov. 5, 1932, to increase
coercion in the state grain
delivery campaign, in particular to boost the
role of law-enforcement
bodies.
A number of measures were drafted,
such as immediate trials of cases
connected to the state grain deliveries,
the organization of circuit court
proceedings and the creation of additional
courts in every region, and
meting out severe punishments. All cases were to
be spotlighted in the
national and local press.
"The famine continues
to take a heavy toll of human lives on such an
enormous scale that it is
absolutely unclear how the world can remain
indifferent to this catastrophe.
Through merciless requisitions (which I
have repeatedly reported), the Moscow
government allowed not just a famine,
for this is not quite the precise word,
but the complete absence of any
means of existence," a stunned Gradenigo
pointed out in his communication
dated May 31, 1933.
A little earlier,
in February 1932, Gradenigo sent a piece of bread, the
kind that was being
consumed in Kharkiv at the time, to Italy's ambassador
Bernardo Attolico in
Moscow.
In one of his messages to Rome the ambassador wrote about the
shortage
of bread: "It is difficult to imagine that the quality of the food
item, so
important to the dietary regime in the USSR, should be so bad, as
this
little piece of bread shows. The truth...is hidden in the real
conditions of
the decline into which collectivization has thrown Russian
agriculture,
which is too patriarchal to endure without disastrous
consequences an
injection of modernization in the shape of
collectivization."
Peasants were fleeing Ukraine to save themselves from
the famine. The
authorities blocked their departure, captured them, and sent
them back.
The report of the Italian consulate in Batumi, dated Jan. 20,
1933, provides
a detailed description of the way the authorities pushed out
the Ukrainian
peasants who were fleeing from the famine to Transcaucasia:
"The expellees
are herded into customs warehouses, where they wait for a
steamship.
Those who can pay for the passage are separated from those who
cannot.
The latter are gathered a few hours before departure and escorted
by police
to a free market, where they can sell what they have with them in
order to
raise money for a ticket. The police keep curious onlookers away
from them
and only let in those who are really going to buy something - a
coat, a pair
of boots, etc.
Clearly, lack of time robs these wretched
people of the opportunity to
bargain, which is advantageous to buyers. All
this occurs in complete
orderliness and silence, which does not diminish the
sad impression of this
scene, which turns a marketplace into something like a
slave market for a
few hours."
The organs of repression and punishment
vested with the exclusive right to
record deaths, block information on the
famine, and carry out punitive
actions were a mighty force. The diplomats'
letters cite some influential
secret police officers describing the tragic
situation in quite a realistic
way.
For example, Gradenigo writes in
May 1933, "Comrade Frenkel, a member
of the OGPU Collegium, admitted to an
acquaintance of ours that about 250
corpses of those who starved to death are
picked up on the streets of
Kharkiv every night. On my part, I can confirm
that I saw trucks carrying
10- 15 corpses past the consulate at midnight.
"Since there are
three large neighborhoods under construction next to the
consulate, one of
the trucks halted by the fence, and two operatives
wielding pitchforks got
off to search for corpses. I saw 7 people, i.e., two
men, one woman, and four
children, being picked up with these pitchforks.
Other people woke up and
vanished as if they were shadows. One of the
operatives doing this job said
to me, 'You don't have this in your country,
do you?'"
Incidentally,
when I was writing the commentaries, I kept in mind the
aforesaid "Comrade
Frenkel," about whom I will write more in detail some
other time.
This
Mikhail Frenkel (1888-1938) held top administrative positions in the
GPU of
the Ukrainian SSR and was later the chief billeting official at
the
Administrative and Economic Directorate of the NKVD of the Ukrainian
SSR.
In 1924 he had been prosecuted for smuggling, but the case was
dismissed.
In February 1938 he was arrested and accused of spying for
Poland and
"wrecking" (creating "poor" living conditions for the
highest-ranking NKVD
officers). He died on March 8, 1938, as a result of
savage beatings that
were administered to him in the inner prison of the
Directorate of State
Security of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR.
On
March 20, 1933, Italy's Ambassador Attolico, wrote to Rome: "The
impression
is that the only strong link, the real backbone of the entire
Soviet system,
is the GPU, which is usually able to achieve, through its
typically fast and
violent methods, what even the best propaganda cannot."
Meanwhile, we
find in these diplomatic documents evidence of what communist
propaganda was
doing. Leone Sircana, the vice- consul in Novorossiisk,
reported the
following to the Italian Embassy in Moscow on April 8, 1933:
"It is like
mocking the beastly condition to which millions of people have
been reduced
to claim that the Soviets have launched the world's most
powerful radio
transmitter, which is supposed to overwhelm perhaps all the
other voices on
the airways and beam to the oppressed peoples of Europe
and Asia Moscow's
revelations about 'the incredible achievements of the
Bolshevik
miracle'.
"Or we read that the workers of Novorossiisk are donating one
percent of
their starvation wages (in paper rubles) to the cause of combating
fascist
terror, and so on. This typical revolutionary fervor catches your eye
in
banner slogans, newspaper headlines, the hidebound and mindless
phrases
of articles and speeches, but it never finds any
response.
"Countering these purely bureaucratic onslaughts on capitalism,
fascism, and
kulaks and the no less bureaucratic glorification of Bolshevik
successes is
the huge, patient, callous, and indifferent mass (or herd?) of
these hapless
people, who listen without hearing and look without seeing and
whose mind,
now even more stupefied than ever, has only one vision: a small
piece of
brown bread, underbaked and mixed with the most incredible and most
varied
ingredients, to which they are still entitled and which they must
share with
their large family, old and infirm relatives, not to mention those
who do
not have even this right, or the painful and bitter despair from the
fact
that Moscow requisitions everything that the earth offers and, as
the
peasant deceives himself, is supposed to belong to him."
The
famine in Ukraine turned into an instrument not only of terror but also
of
the "nationalities policy." This radically distinguished the situation
in
Ukraine from that in, say, Russia or Kazakhstan, where famine-related
losses
were also very high.
On Dec. 14, 1932, Stalin and Molotov
signed a resolution of the CC AUCP(b)
and the Council of People's Commissars
of the USSR, which demanded
"correct Ukrainization" in Ukraine and other
regions densely populated by
ethnic Ukrainians. The document also demanded a
struggle against Petliurites
and other 'counterrevolutionary" elements, who this time were accused
of
organizing the famine.
This not only meant the end of the policy of
"Ukrainization." This was the
decisive phase of the liquidation of the
"Ukraine-centered" potential that
was never supposed to revive, and the
brutally and carefully organized
punishment turned into
genocide.
"Since famine always begets a revolution (in this case, it
would be a
counterrevolution)," one of the documents says, "the greatest
burden of the
famine was placed on the Ukrainian peasants, who were
politically the most
dangerous and resisted the issue of collectivization as
much as they could.
No matter what kind of famine he is suffering from, the
peasant cannot
launch an offensive on the city and become dangerous to the
regime, above
all, for purely organizational reasons."
The Stalinist
regime used the Holodomor and false stories about those who
were responsible
for it as a concrete pretext for mass-scale repressive
campaigns, purges, and
the like.
On May 22, 1933, Gradenigo wrote in his regular message to the
Italian
Embassy in Moscow, "The current disaster will lead to the
colonization of
Ukraine, mostly by the Russian population. This will change
its ethnographic
nature.
In all probability, we will not have to speak
about Ukraine and the
Ukrainian people in the very near future and,
consequently, there will be no
Ukrainian problem because Ukraine will in fact
become part of Russia."
Contrary to this sad forecast, Letters from
Kharkiv is being published in
independent Ukraine, which remembers its
history and - I do believe! - is
ready to learn its
lessons.
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NOTE:
Yurii Shapoval is a professor and Doctor of Sciences (History).
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12
. AN APPEAL TO THE RUSSIAN
MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRSBy Halya Coynash, Kharkiv
Human Rights Protection Group, "Maidan" Alliance
Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday,
November 22, 2007
KHARKIV - On 24 November, people throughout the world
will be joining
Ukrainians in lighting candles. They are candles in memory
of the millions
who died in an artificially caused famine - Holodomor
1932-1933. The
Holodomor was not caused by blundering
incompetence.
A murderous regime took the grain away, surrounded villages
with armed units
and closed the borders. Given the lies and
denial for decades, the figures
range, however most believe at least 5 to 7
million people died.
There have been arguments for decades now over
whether this constitutes
genocide as understood in the 1948
Convention. There is no opportunity
here to discuss this, nor
would I wish to.
There was food, but it was taken away by force and
people were prevented
from saving themselves and their children from
starvation.
While there were famines throughout the USSR, it was in
Ukraine and in an
area predominantly populated by Ukrainians that starvation
was used as a
deliberate weapon.
If this does not constitute genocide
as defined in the UN Convention, I
would respectfully suggest that perhaps
the latter is not fulfilling its
role as a human rights document aimed at
acknowledging human rights crimes
and ensuring they never happen
again.
We have begun collecting signatures for an appeal to the Russian
Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. We are asking for their cooperation in opening
up all the
documents which they presently hold but which pertain to our
common fate
under the old totalitarian regime.
We ask also for Russia
to implement the recommendations in the recent
UNESCO Resolution which Russia signed.
We also call in our appeal
for Russia to join Ukraine and many other
countries in recognizing the
actions of the totalitarian regime of that time
to have been
genocide.
We wish to wrench this subject from the area of geopolitical
considerations
which make us cogs in some abstract machine on which we can
have no impact.
We are adamant that the subject of Holodomor must be viewed
in the context
of ethics and law.
Most of all we wish to separate
this vital question of justice, memory and
of safeguards for the future from
all extraneous issues and grievances.
In the last four days, our petition
has been signed by many people in
Ukraine, Russia and other counties of the
world. It is intended as a
uniting force, aimed at removing
artificially created obstacles and
geopolitical arguments.
We are
remembering the victims of a crime against the Ukrainian nation and
against
all humanity both with our candles and with our petition. We would
ask you to join us.
You can read (and sign!) our covering letter and
appeal (in three languages)
at:
http://maidanua.org/static/viol/1195265429.html.
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13
. THE POLITICS OF
GENOCIDE
Will Moscow ever recognize the Stalin-led forced
famine
in Ukraine 75 years ago as an act of genocide?
ANALYSIS
& COMMENTARY: By Lisa Shymko
The American Spectator, Arlington, Virginia,
Wed, Nov 14, 2007
TORONTO - This week, Ukraine's President, Viktor
Yushchenko, will travel
to Israel - a nation for whom the term "genocide" has
become an indelible
part
of its collective memory - where he is expected
to ask Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert to endorse a UN resolution put forth by
Ukraine recognizing the
Soviet-era forced famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine as an
act of genocide.
For Prime Minister Olmert and members of the Knesset, it
will not be an easy
decision to make, since Jewish leaders have long
maintained that the
Holocaust was unique and should not be equated with other
genocides.
Complicating the matter is the new political reality in the
Middle East.
Israelis have hesitated to endorse the Ukrainian position, for
fear of
straining Israel's delicate relations with Russia.
Olmert is
hoping to convince Russia to use its geopolitical influence in the
Caspian
basin to stave off a military confrontation with Tehran over its
nuclear
program. Yet so far, as Moscow undertakes a series of cozy deals
with Iran
and Syria, Vladimir Putin has done little to appease
Israeli
concerns.
Will Prime Minister Olmert hold off on backing
Ukraine's UN resolution in an
attempt to woo the Kremlin? Only time will
tell. One thing is clear, the
Russians do not want to see improved relations
between Israel and Ukraine.
Historically, Moscow has benefited from the
painful rifts of the past, and
the Kremlin is not happy to see Ukraine's
President Viktor Yushchenko
proposing a more dynamic Ukraine-Israel
relationship.
Recently, Ukraine's President announced the return of 1,000
Torah scrolls
previously confiscated from Ukraine's Jewish communities during
the
communist regime.
Historic synagogues in Ukraine have been
returned to Jewish communities and
President Yushchenko has ordered Ukraine's
Security Service to establish a
special department to combat hate crimes.
Yushchenko has also proposed
legislation to criminalize the denial of the
Holocaust.
So why is the Kremlin irritated over Ukraine's pursuit of the
genocide
issue? Because the current government in Moscow is still unwilling
to deal
with the ugly side of its Stalinist past.
THIS YEAR THE
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY will begin
commemorating the 75th anniversary of the
1932-33 state-sponsored famine
in Ukraine, masterminded by Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin. The premeditated
policy of forced grain seizures targeted
Ukraine's anti-Soviet rural
population and resulted in mass murder by
starvation.
The artificially induced famine, known as the Holodomor,
claimed the lives
of millions of victims. The genocide was the precursor to
the bloody Red
Terror that later swept the entire USSR.
Having
resisted Stalin's forced collectivization, Ukraine's
independent-minded rural
population faced sweeping food confiscations
enforced by the notorious
OGPU-NKVD secret police.
Starving Ukrainian peasants initially tried
surviving on hay, weeds, and
leaves, even stripping trees of their bark. As
conditions worsened, some, on
the verge of insanity, resorted to cannibalism,
feeding on the remains of
the recently deceased.
But few in the West
were aware of the genocide. While Ukrainians starved to
death, Moscow dumped
millions of tons of cheap grain on Western markets.
When Western
journalists like the Welsh reporter Gareth Jones, stationed in
the USSR in
the 1930s, secretly traveled to Ukraine, uncovering information
about the
decimation of entire rural towns and villages, pro-Soviet
apologists like
Walter Duranty of the New York Times published fabricated
stories of well-fed
peasants in an attempt to suppress the truth.
Those in Ukraine's
Communist Party who dared to speak out, were meticulously
purged by Stalin.
Ukraine's aspirations for independence were to be squashed
at all costs. Mass
executions of Ukraine's intellectual elite followed.
The result was a
campaign of ethnic cleansing on a vast scale. By 1933, as a
result of
Stalin's State Decree, all territories previously populated by
Ukrainians,
now de-populated by the forced famine, were systematically
settled by ethnic
Russians.
In 2006, after decades of denials and cover-ups, the Parliament
of Ukraine
shed its Soviet legacy and passed legislation recognizing the
1932-33
Ukrainian Forced Famine as an act of genocide.
In recent
years, an ever-growing number of countries, including the USA,
Australia,
Italy, Poland, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, to name just a few, have
officially
acknowledged this heinous crime to be genocide.
This year, Canada's
Parliament is expected to adopt a similar resolution in
the House of Commons,
mirroring a unanimous motion passed in the Senate in
2003.
Ironically,
as the international community prepares to vote on a UN General
Assembly
resolution introduced by Ukraine that would condemn Stalin's
actions in
Ukraine as nothing less than genocide, Russia -- the
self-appointed successor
state of the Soviet Union -- has vowed to oppose
the passage of such a
resolution.
THE KREMLIN HAS YET TO COME to terms with its genocidal past.
In a
recent article published by Russia's Novosti news service, the Russian
author, Andrei Marchukov, referred to the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine as
"propaganda" and called recent efforts to uncover previously censored
information on the tragedy "sensation whipped up over bygones."
Bygones indeed!
It is estimated that at least 7 million perished as
a result of Stalin's
induced famine in Ukraine. According to research
presented at a 2001
Population Conference in Brazil, historian Mark Tolts, of
the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem, stated that, up until recently, it had
been
difficult for historians to reach an exact figure on the number of
victims,
since Stalin personally falsified the Soviet Union's demographic
data after
the 1932-33 famine.
In fact, according to Tolts, three
successive heads of the Soviet Central
Statistical Administration were
executed by Stalin, while others were
arrested, in a deliberate attempt to
cover-up the shocking human losses.
Recently, Ukraine declassified over
100 documents pertaining to the 1932-33
Ukrainian Famine and repressions of
the 1930s from its Security Service
Archives.
The documents are
eye-opening because they show that international
humanitarian aid was
systematically denied to Ukraine's starving population.
But countless more
Soviet-era documents remain locked in Russian archives,
inaccessible to
Western historians.
The Kremlin's image is in need of a major makeover.
Allegations of
state-complicity in the assassinations of Alexander Litvinenko
in Great
Britain and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow
have done
little to enhance Russia's international image as a democratic,
peace-loving
nation.
More recently, the Kremlin has failed to crack
down on home-grown racist
youth gangs, responsible for a series of
cross-border attacks on Jews and
visible minorities in Russia and
Ukraine.
Last week, Russian politician Grigory Yavlinsky called on the
Russian
government to undertake "a de-Stalinization program" to remember
the
millions of victims of Soviet repression.
Russia's Memorial Human
Rights Society issued a statement asking the
Russian government "to
acknowledge past crimes and offer apologies to
the victims," including the
former Soviet Union's repressed ethnic groups.
It's time for Russia to
make peace with its past, by showing a willingness
to make peace with its
neighbors. Acknowledging Stalin's genocidal
complicity in the 1932-33
state-sponsored Famine in Ukraine would be an
important first
step.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa
Shymko is a Canadian political scientist and director of the
Canada-Ukraine
Parliamentary Center in Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine. The center
was established in
2000 by Canadian Friends of Ukraine and the Government
of Canada to enhance
legislative reform and open access to
information.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK:
http://www.Spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12306
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17
. RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SHOULD
READ MORE BOOKS
ABOUT HISTORY SAYS UKRAINE'S FOREIGN
MINISTRY
UNIAN News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, November 20,
2007
KYIV - The statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department
for
Information and Press about Holodomor is contrary to historical
facts.
According to an UNIAN correspondent, top deputy Foreign Minister
of
Ukraine Volodymyr Ohryzko said this to journalists today.
He turned
attention to the fact that the "statements, made today by the RF
Information
Department, are not true, and are contrary to the elementary
historical
knowledge".
V.Ohryzko pointed out that he has intent to summon the
councilor at the
Russian Embassy to Ukraine in order to give him a clear view
of the
situation concerning smashing up the exhibition, devoted to the
Ukrainian
Holodomor of 1932-33, in Moscow on 17 November.
In his turn,
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Andriy Deshchytsia
emphasized that "to
exchange statements about that-time events is absolutely
tactless, because we
humiliate ourselves by doing so".
He stressed that Ukraine has determined
its position concerning the
recognition of Holodomor of 1932-33 as an act of
genocide against the
Ukrainian nation. "Solely within the frameworks of a
friendly and partner
advice, I would like to advise our Russian colleagues,
including that of the
RF Foreign Ministry's Information Department, to read
books about history",
he added.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on November
17, 7 representatives of the Eurasian
Union of Youth (EUY) smashed up the
exhibition in memory of Holodomor
[Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932-33]
exhibition in the Ukrainian cultural
center in Moscow. EUY believes that the
exhibition stirred up hatred between
Russia and Ukraine.
The Ukrainian
Foreign Ministry assessed these actions as illegal,
provocative, and
anti-Ukrainian.
On 19 November the Department for Information and Press
of the Russian
Foreign Ministry disseminated a commentary, reading that the
announcement
of the famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine as an act of genocide "is a
one-sided
distortion of history in favor of modern market's
political-ideological
guidelines".
The Russian Foreign Ministry
emphasized that "the theme of hunger of 30ies
in the Soviet Union, the
victims of which were people of many nationalities,
in particular,
Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs, and other nations, more and
more becomes a
topic of different speculations by certain political circles
in
Ukraine".
The Russian MFA is confident that should the Ukrainian great
famine be
recognized as an act of genocide, it "will insult the memory of
victims of
other nationalities, who died because of hunger in the former
USSR", reads
the commentary of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Information
Department.
By different estimates, from 7 to 10 millions of Ukrainians
died during the
Great Famine of 1932-33, which was a result of Stalin's
policy against those
who resisted his plans (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.
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18
. FORMER MIN OF FOREIGN
AFFAIRS BORYS TARASIUK
CRITICIZED RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES FOR OBSTRUCTION
OF
HONORING MEMORY OF 1932-1933 FAMINE
VICTIMS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday,
November 20, 2007
KYIV - The chairman of the Narodnyi Rukh party and
parliamentary deputy
of the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense bloc, former
Minister of Foreign
Affairs Borys Tarasiuk is criticizing the Russian
authorities for
obstruction of honoring the memory of the 1932-1933 Great
Famine victims
in Ukraine.
This follows from the bloc's press service,
a copy of which was made
available to Ukrainian News.
According to the
message, Tarasiuk views as unfriendly the statement by the
Russian Ministry
of Foreign Affairs that the 1932-1933 Great Famine issue
has become a subject
of speculations by certain political circles in
Ukraine.
'Russian mass
media whip up hysteria within their own country every time
when another
anniversary of the Famine is approaching. The Foreign Ministry
of Russia is
not falling behind,' the press service cited Tarasiuk as
saying.
The
bloc representative also believes that the Russian officials,
particularly
the Foreign Ministry, workers of foreign establishments, are
attempting to
obstruct honoring the memory of the Famine victims in
Ukraine.
'...attempting to obstruct honoring the memory of the Famine
victims in
Ukraine by refusing to support the corresponding resolutions of
the UN
General Assembly, UNESCO,' Tarasiuk said.
The ex-foreign
minister is viewing these actions as an outbreak of
anti-Ukrainian campaign
from Russia due to the forthcoming elections to the
State Duma
(parliament).
'Unfortunately, Russian politicians are trying to play the
Ukrainian card.
These are dirty methods. It's manifestation of a dangerous
tendency, as well
as the recent attack of young people from the Eurasian
movement on the
Ukrainian exhibition in Moscow,' Tarasiuk said.
At the
same time, the bloc representative believes that the attempts to deny
the
famine are ungrounded, saying Russia may also raise the issue of
starvation
of Russian people.
'One should respect not only his own history, but also
the history of his
neighbors. If the Russian side wants to build relations
with Ukraine based
on equality and law, it should behave correspondingly,'
Tarasiuk noted.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Ukrainian
Ministry of Foreign
Affairs believes it is not correct to dispute with the
Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs on the Great Famine of 1932-33.
On
November 19, Ukraine demanded that Russia bring to justice the members
of the
Eurasian Youth Union that destroyed an exhibition honoring the
memories of
the victims of the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Ukraine at the
we are deprived of our history and future,' Yuschenko said.
Besides,
he reminded about efforts, which are undertaken by Ukraine to
inform local
and international community about the Famine as a national
tragedy.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Russian Foreign Affairs
Ministry is
calling the declaration of the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine the
act of
genocide of the Ukrainian nation as one-sided garbling of
history.
The Russian foreign ministry says such initiatives by Ukraine
abuse the
memory of other nationality victims of the 1932 - 1933 famine in
the Soviet
Union.
support among Ukrainian scholars.
Only Shapoval discussed Stalin's
borders directive at the Kyiv conference.
He made it clear that the decree
was to counter the flight of peasants
"beyond the limits of Ukraine."
Shapoval also quoted a Ukrainian translation
of the whole follow-up order
sent the next day from Kharkiv to the oblasts.
But the Ukrainian specificity
of the two documents are diminished by the
historian's discussion of the
matter in a section, which he aptly calls "the
second serfdom," namely the
tying down of all Soviet peasants to the land,
which began with the passport
decree. [51]
To complete this brief overview of the fate of Stalin's
border decree, three
more publications should be mentioned. For the 70th
anniversary of the 1933
famine, the Institute of History of the National
Academy of Sciences of
Ukraine published a voluminous collective study under
the title "Famine of
1932-1933 in Ukraine: Causes and
Consequences."
Significantly, neither "Holodomor" nor "Genocide" appear
in the book's
title, and of the 68 titles of sections and subsections in the
book, the
term "genocide" is used only once in a subtitle, and in reference
to
peasants, not Ukrainians: "The policy of total grain confiscation in
the
Ukrainian village: genocide against the peasants." [52]
Neither in
that section, nor anywhere else in the almost 900-page opus, is
there any
mention of the UN Convention on Genocide or an analysis of the
concept of
genocide. As for Stalin's border decree, there is only discussion
of its
application and its effect in the sections on how peasants tried to
save
themselves from the famine and in connection with the passport system.
[53]
The more popular terms used in the book are "holodomor" and "terror
by
famine."
Mention should be made of the 80 documents on the famine,
recently published
by Lubomyr Luciuk (Royal Military College in Kingston,
Canada) and Shapoval
(Political and Ethnic Studies Institute, Kyiv). As the
collection is
intended primarily for the academic public outside Ukraine,
Shapoval
included a succinct introduction, in English, showing the most
important
stages in the realization of Stalin's famine-genocide.
The
author briefly explains the border closing document and adds:
"appropriate
instructions were issued to the transport departments of the
OGPU USSR" (the
precursor of the better-known NKVD).[54] Notwithstanding
the sloppy
appearance of the book, it is a worthwhile addition to the
material on the
Ukrainian genocide.
Since many of the documents have already appeared in
the original language
(Russian), it would have been more useful to give an
English translation of
these documents. What is also baffling is the editor's
failure to include
the crucial Stalin-Molotov directive of 22 January 1933.
Instead, the
editors published the follow-up directive, sent the next day by
Kharkiv to
the Ukrainian regions, which does not have the same evidentiary
value in
proving Stalin's genocidal intent. [55]
Ukraine's most
prolific academic writer on the famine is Stanislav
Kulchytsky. His last
major essay on the subject was first serialized in the
Ukrainian, Russian and
English versions of the newspaper "Den," under the
title "Why was Stalin
Destroying Us."[56] Then the Ukrainian and Russian
versions were adapted for
a bilingual book published by the Institute of
History of the National
Academy of Sciences of Ukraine under the title
"Famine of 1932-1933 in
Ukraine as Genocide." [57]
Kulchytsky's conceptual paradigm is the notion
of "terror by famine,"
borrowed from Robert Conquest [58] and also popular
with many Western
and Ukrainian historians. Yet, as Egbert Jahn so cogently
argued, a terror
policy seeks to alarm and intimidate people, and to be
effective makes
available as much information as possible. This was not
characteristic of
the famine and so "one cannot characterize the core of the
Holodomor as
the use of hunger terror." [59] "Terror by famine" is a
misnomer.
Terror was employed to force the peasants into collective farms
and to
confiscate their harvest. It was effective and achieved its goal. It
also
caused some loss of life but did not result in mass extermination.
Famine
came after most of the collectivization was already accomplished and
the
peasants' foodstuffs confiscated. Terror was employed throughout the
whole
period towards party and state cadres to intimidate them into carrying
out
Stalin's genocidal policies toward the Ukrainian peasants, but
these
functionaries did not die from the terror.
Terry Martin provides
a good analysis of the measures taken to terrorize the
local communists in
the Kuban.[60] Ukrainian peasants succumbed to
starvation when there was no
need to scare them into the collective farms,
for most of them already were
there, and when there was no need to scare
them into giving up their produce,
because it had already been confiscated.
The peasants died from induced
hunger, not fear. The "terror by famine"
cannot be used as a synonym for
genocide, as Kulchytsky seems to imply by
his usage of the
terms.
Kulchytsky set for himself the task of discovering Stalin's
motives for
destroying Ukrainians. Establishing the motive for a criminal act
helps to
understand the criminal's intention to commit it, but it is not a
factor in
determining proof of genocide, according to the UN Convention. What
the
Convention demands is proof of the intent itself.
Contrary to
Kulchytsky's claim, I believe that the Ukrainian famine of
1932-1933 does fit
the UN definition of genocide. The two main concerns
of Article II - that the
victim population fit one of the four identified
groups and that proof be
given of the perpetrator's genocidal intent - can
be satisfied with the
available documents, the most revealing of which is
Stalin's border
decree.
THE 1932-1933 FAMINE AS GENOCIDE AGAINST
UKRAINIANS
Stalin's decree is directed against two groups of
peasants, those living in
the Ukrainian SSR and those in the Northern
Caucasus, especially the Kuban
region. Let us first examine the targeted
population in the Ukrainian
republic.
Stalin complains of a massive
flight of peasants from Ukraine to the near-by
regions of Russia and Belarus.
These people pretend to search for food but
in fact, he claims, are
social-revolutionaries and agents of Poland who
agitate in the northern parts
of the USSR against the "kolkhoz" system. The
same thing happened the year
before, but the party, state and police
authorities of Ukraine did nothing to
stop it. It must not be allowed to
happen this year.
Stalin then
orders the party, state and police authorities of Ukraine to
prevent peasants
from crossing the border between Ukraine and the rest of
the USSR.
Corresponding authorities in Belarus and the adjoining Russian
regions must
prevent peasants from Ukraine to enter their territories.
Peasants guilty of
disobeying the order must be arrested,
counter-revolutionary elements
segregated for punishment, and the others
returned to their
villages.
Stalin's decree concerned all peasants of Ukraine. But since
the UN
Convention only recognizes national and ethnic groups, the crucial
question
is whether they were targeted as peasants or Ukrainians?
We
have seen that the "national group" in the UN Convention's has
been
interpreted in the sense of "civic nation" and even a well-defined
region.
In this regard, all the peasants within the borders of the Ukrainian
SSR,
whatever their ethnic origin, were part of the Ukrainian nation.
According
to the 1926 census, ethnically Ukrainian peasants made up 88.5 % of
the
Republic's peasant population; the ethnic and civic character of
Ukrainian
peasantry overlapped.
Ethnically, Ukrainian peasants also
made up 89.0 % of the Republic's
ethnically Ukrainian population and 71.8 %
of the Republic's overall
population, and thus constituted the overwhelming
portion of the Republic's
population. It was this group that Stalin's border
decree singled out for
partial destruction, but did he see his enemies as
peasants or Ukrainians?
Two months earlier, Kaganovich boasted in
Rostov-on-Don that the Party had
definitively settled the question of who
would defeat whom in the struggle
between the régime and its opponents. [61]
Kaganovich was right regarding
the peasants: by then their opposition to
collectivization was broken, as
was their "sabotage" of state
procurement.
Ukrainian peasants - as peasants - were no more an obstacle
to the Party's
policies or a danger to its domination than were the Russian
peasants. There
was no more need to exterminate them, than to eliminate the
Russian
peasants. However, Ukrainian peasants presented a more formidable
threat to
Stalin's regime as Ukrainians.
In 1925, Stalin lectured the
Yugoslav comrades on the national question. He
told them that the peasant
question was "the basis, the quintessence of the
national question." "That
explains the fact," he affirmed, "that the
peasantry constitutes the main
army of the national movement, that there is
no powerful national movement
without the peasant army."
The social role of the peasantry is inexorably
connected with its national
needs, and because of the peasants' predominance
in agrarian societies, the
national question becomes in essence a peasant
question. And to be perfectly
clear, Stalin adds that the national question
is "not an agrarian but a
peasant question, for these are two different
things." [62]
Stalin's separation of the peasant's economic and social
functions is
noteworthy. Stalin criticized the Yugoslavs for underestimating
"the
inherent strength of the national movement," and warned them that the
lack
of understanding and underestimation of the national question
constituted a
grave danger.
Stalin's convictions did not change in
later years; he continued to be
vigilant lest the national movements endanger
the integrity of his
multinational empire, and he had no intention of
underestimating the
"profoundly popular and profoundly revolutionary
character of the national
movement" in Soviet Ukraine, engendered by the
Ukrainian national revival in
the 1920s and fanned by the Party-approved
Ukrainianization. By the end of
1932, Ukrainian peasants had been vanquished
as peasants; Stalin now
intended to eliminate a part of them - as
Ukrainians.
Revealing evidence of Stalin's concern for the national
question is provided
by Stalin's correspondence with Kaganovich in August
1932. The two agreed
that the Ukrainian party was dragging its feet on grain
procurement and that
Petlyurites and agents of Pilsudski infiltrated the
party.
Stalin raised the threat that unless proper measures were taken,
"we can
lose Ukraine"; Kaganovich agreed, adding: "The theory that we,
Ukrainians,
have unjustly suffered, fosters a solidarity and a rotten mutual
guarantee
not only among the middle level cadres, but also at the
top."[63]
Of course, both knew that there was little threat from
imaginary
"Petlyurites" or "Pilsudski agents," who supposedly infiltrated the
Party
(this was a directive for the Party on how to interpret these matters),
but
there was an eventual threat from the Ukrainian national revival,
whose
mainstay was the peasantry. Kremlin's 14 December 1932 analysis of
the
procurement difficulties in Ukraine and the North Caucasus was blamed
on
the Ukrainianization policy, and both were attacked with a
vengeance.
Moscow ordered Party and State authorities in Ukraine "to pay
serious
attention to the proper conduct of Ukrainianization, eliminate
its
application in a mechanical way, remove Petlyurite and
other
bourgeois-nationalist elements from Party and Soviet
organizations."
They were also ordered to "carefully pick and train
Ukrainian bolshevik
cadres, secure systematic party leadership and control
over the process of
Ukrainianization."[64] This was a blueprint for
ethnocide; it effectively
put an end to Ukrainianization in Ukraine, and even
more so in the RSFSR.
This document was more of a precursor for the genocidal
Stalin border
directive than the passport decree.
The other region
closed by Stalin's 22 January 1933 directive was the North
Caucasus
Territory, but the main target was its Kuban region. The directive
even
begins with the notification about peasant exodus from "Kuban and
Ukraine."
What did the two targeted areas - Ukraine, a union republic, and
Kuban, a
neighboring region of the RSFSR - have in common? They were
important
grain-producing regions.
That is true, but so was the Central-Black Earth
region, which was not
singled out. There was a more important consideration
at that time for
Stalin and Kaganovich: the Ukrainianization program was
transforming in a
dangerous way the overwhelmingly Ukrainian peasant
population of Ukraine
and Kuban into Ukrainians, conscious of their national
identity.
At that time, there were some eight million ethnic Ukrainians
living outside
the Ukrainian SSR, mostly in the regions of the RSFSR,
contiguous with
Ukraine. The North Caucasus had about three million
Ukrainians, and almost
half of them lived in the Kuban region, where it
constituted about two
thirds of the population.
Also significant was
the fact that about one-half million of the Kuban
Ukrainians were not of
traditional peasants stock but descendants of
Ukrainian Zaporozhian Kozaks,
people with a military history and democratic
traditions. It was in these
regions that most of the starvation outside
Ukraine took place. (Kazakhstan
is a separate case.)
The Ukrainianization of the Ukrainian "colonies" in
the RSFSR, and
especially of the Kuban, had already added fuel to what Martin
calls the
Piedmontist principle of border disputes between the Ukrainian SSR
and
Moscow. The peasant/Kozak population could prove to be a disruptive
force
in the future.
In its 14 December 1932 decision, Moscow took to
task the party and state
authorities of the North Caucasus Territory: "...
the flippancy in carrying
out unbolshevik 'Ukrainianization' of almost half
of the districts of North
Caucasus, which did not come from the cultural
interests of the population,
and which was carried out with a complete
absence of controls on the part of
regional organs over the Ukrainianization
of the schools and the press, gave
the enemies of the Soviet power legal
cover for organizing opposition by
kulaks, [former] officers, returning
Cossack emigrants, members of the Kuban
Rada [analogous to the Ukrainian
Central Rada of 1917-1918], etc." [65]
The prescribed punishment was
harsh: "Immediately change the clerical work
of the Soviet and cooperative
organs and all the newspapers and journals in
the 'Ukrainianized' districts
of North Caucasus from the Ukrainian language
to the Russian language, as the
more understandable to the Kuban population,
and also prepare the transfer of
teaching in schools into the Russian
language." The local authorities were
further warned to immediately verify
and improve the composition of school
personnel in the "Ukrainianized"
districts. [66]
The foregoing
examination of Stalin's twin targets should be sufficient to
show that their
common characteristic was their national or ethnic identity.
The nexus
joining the Ukrainian national group in the Ukrainian SSR (whether
taken in
its civic or ethnic sense) and the Ukrainian ethnic group in Kuban
was their
Ukrainianness.
The requirement of the UN Convention on Genocide is thus
satisfied:
Ukrainian peasants in Ukraine and in the RSFSR were being
destroyed in their
capacity as Ukrainians; their agrarian role was secondary.
Peasants were the
most numerous part of the Ukrainian national/ethnic group,
consisting also
of intellectuals, state and party functionaries, and workers;
and it was
this group that Stalin's régime decided, in the language of the
UN
Convention, "to destroy in part."
The non-peasant Ukrainians did
not die from starvation, but they were
definitely victims of the same
genocidal intent. The intent was not to
destroy the whole Ukrainian nation
(nor is total destruction of a specified
group a condition for the
recognition of genocide by the UN Convention).
The intention was to
destroy the élites and a sufficiently large portion of
the most dynamic
element of the Ukrainian national group so as to cripple
the Ukrainian nation
and reduce Ukrainians to what Stalin liked to call
"cogs" in the great state
mechanism.
Stalin's genocidal intent should be sufficiently clear from
the various
documents originated by him or signed by others on his orders or
in
anticipation of such. Schabas insists that the "genocidaire" must
have
knowledge of the consequences of his act. [67]
Stalin was privy
to all the important documentation of the Soviet state,
cognizant of, and
personally responsible for, all the policies, which
resulted in the death of
millions of innocent people. The régime's public
denial of the famine and its
rejection of foreign aid cannot be interpreted
in any other way than as a
flaunting admission of its intent to starve the
population to
death.
The most heinous crime of Stalin and his Communist régime is now
quite
well known, especially to the academic community, but various aspects
of
the catastrophe still need further research, systematization
and
conceptualization. This question of the Ukrainian genocide is a case
in
point. We need a breakdown by nationality of the population that died
from
the famine in the RSFSR to see how many of the victims were
ethnic
Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars and other
nationalities.
There is no systematic study to shows the forms and the
degree of
discriminatory practices of the Stalinist régime in its policies
towards
different localities and nationalities in the ethnically mixed
regions with
regards to the procurement quotas, the implementation of Moscow
orders.
The national composition of command structure and the cadres that
carried
out food confiscation and distribution must also be examined in a
more
systematic way. There was some internal aid to some of the
hungry
population, but the economic and other reasons behind the régime's
help
need a more thorough study.
While the very existence of the
famine was vehemently denied and foreign
efforts to organize famine relief
were rejected, some foreign aid did get
through to the German and Jewish
communities, but this aspect of the Soviet
policies is generally ignored in
the literature on the famine, possibly
because it has not been sufficiently
explored and documented. This
additional research will give us a more
complete knowledge and a better
understanding of the Ukrainian famine and
help establish its
genocidal
character.
-30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE:
Roman Serbyn is Professor of History at University of
Quebec and the author
of numerous articles on Ukrainian history and
nationalities problems in
Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries. He is
also the editor or
co-editor of a number of books, inclusing "Federalisme
et Nations" (1969) and
"Famine in Ukraine, 1932-1933" (1986). His
most recent book was "Za
yaku spadshchynu?"
(1986)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES:
[1]
See, for example, R. W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcraft, "The Years
of
Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933" (New York : Palgrave
Macmillan,
2004).
[2] Ukrainian Weekly, 16 November 2003.
[3] Kuchynsky
at the UN discussion of Holocaust Day, 1 November 2005.
[4] Ibid.
[5]
Stanislav V. Kulchytsky, "Holod 1932-1933 rr. v Ukrayini yak henotsyd"
(Kyiv,
2005), pp. 3, 21.
[6] This is the "Den" version (24 November 2005). In the
book version (p.
85), "not Ukrainians" was dropped.
[7] ICCEES VII World
Congress Abstracts, "Europe - Our Common Home?"
(Berlin, 25-30 July 2005),
pp. 247-248. The importance of the intent as
defined by the convention is
shown in Michael Ellman, "The Role of
Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in
the Soviet Famine of 1931-1934,"
"Europa-Asia Studies," vol. 57, no. 6
(September 2005), pp. 823-841.
(Emphasis added by author.)
[8] "Den," 8
November 2005.
[9] Raphael Lemkin, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of
Occupation -
Analysis of Government - Proposals for Redress" (Washington,
D.C.:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 80.
[10] "Les
actes constituant un danger général (interétatique) considérés
comme delites
du droit des gens," "Librarie de la cour d'appel et de l'order
des advocates"
(Paris, 1933).
[11] Lemkin, p. 80.; [12] Emphasis added by author.
[13]
William A. Schabas, "Genocide in International Law. The Crime of
Crimes"
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Chapter 3.
Groups protected by
the Convention.
[14] Ibid., p. 115.; [15] Ibid., p. 237.
[16] Leo Kuper,
"Genocide. Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century"
(Penguin, 1981), p.
35.
[17] On circumstantial evidence, see Ellman, pp. 829-830.
[18] Frank
Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, "The History and Sociology of
Genocide. Analyses
and Case Studies" (New Haven and London : Yale
University Press, 1990), p.
29.
[19] Schabas, p. 245.
[20] Most active in the field have been
Ukrainian historians: Stanislav
Kulchytsky, Yuri Shapoval, Valeriy Vasilev,
Volodymyr Serhiychuk and a few
others. See also "Holod 1932-1933 rokiv v
Ukraini: prychyny ta naslidky"
(Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 2003).
[21] V. P.
Danilov and I. E. Zelenin, "Orhanizovannyi golod: k
70-letiiu
obshchkrestianskoi trahedii," "Otechestvennaya istoriya," no. 5
(2004).
[22] Among the most recent publications: Vernichtung durch Hunger:
"Der
Holodomor in der Ukraine und der UdSSR." (A special issue of
Osteuropa).
December 2004; "La morte della terra: La grande "carestia" in
Ucraina nel
1932-1933. Atti del Convegno Vicenza, 16-188 ottobre 2003" (Roma
: Viella,
2004); Robert Conquest, "Raccolto di dolore" (Italian edition of
Harvest of
Sorrow) (Roma : Liberal edizioni, 2004).
[23] Ellman, p. 835.;
[24] Danilov and Zelenin, p. 107.
[25] "Dyskusiyi i obsuzhdeniya.
Kollektivizatsiya: uroki, sushchnost,
posledsviya," "Istoriya SSSR," no. 3
(1989), p. 46. The telegram is wrongly
dated here as 23 January instead
of of 22 January.
[26] E. H. Oskolkov, "Golod 1932/1933," in "Khlebozagotovki
i golod
1932-1933 goda v Severno-Kavkazkom krae (Rostov-na-Donu,
1991),"
pp. 75-76.
[27] "Kollektivizatsiia: istoky, sushchnosst,
posledstviia. Beseda za
'kruglym stolom'," "Istoriya SSSR," pp.
46-52.
[28] "Dyrektyvnyi lyst TsK KP(b0U ta Radnarkomu USRR vsim
obkomam
partii ta oblvykonkomam pro neprypustymist' masovykh vyizdiv
kolhospnykiv
ta odnoosibnykiv za mezhi Ukrainy," in "Holod 1932-1933 rokiv na
Ukraini:
ochyma istorykiv, movoiu dokumentiv" (Kyiv, 1990), pp.
341-342.
[29] "Holodomor 1932-1933 rr. v Ukraini: prychyny i naslidky.
Mizhnarodna
naukova konferentsiia." Kyiv, 9-10 veresnia 1993. Materialy.
(Kyiv, 1995),
p. 43.
[30] Ibid., p. 121.
[31] "O golode 1932-1933 godov
i eho otsenka na Ukraine," "Otechestvennaya
istoriya," no. 6. (1994), pp.
256-262. (Signed: I. E. Zelenin, N. A.
Ivnitskiy, V. V. Kondrashin, E. N.
Oskolkov.)
[32] N. A. Ivnitskiy, "Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachyvanie
(nachala 30-kh
godov)" (Moskva, 1994), p. 204. (Reedited in 1996.)
[33]
Nicolas Werth, "Un État contre son peuple. Violence, répression,
terreurs en
Union soviétique," in Stéphane Courtois et al. (eds.), Le livre
noir du
communisme. "Crimes, terreur, repression" (Paris: 1997), p. 183.
For
convenience, all references here are to the English edition: "The Black
Book
of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" (Cambridge,
Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1999).
[34] Ibid., p. 164.; [35]
Ibid., p. 168.
[36] "Le pouvoir soviétique et la paysannerie dans les
rapports de la police
politique (1930-1934)," "Bulletin de l'IHTP," nos.
81-82 (December 2003).
[37] Nikolia Vert, "Gosudarstvo protiv svoego naroda.
Nasilie, repressii i
terror v Sovetskom Soiuze," in Stefan Kurtua et al.,
"Chernaia kniga
komunizma. Prestupleniia terror i repressi." (Moskva: Tri
Veka Istoriyi,
1999), p. 170.
[38] Courtois, "Introduction. The Crimes of
Communism" in "The Black
Book," p. 9.
[39] Terry Martin, "The Affirmative
Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism
in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939"
(Ithaca and London, 2001). See Chapter 7:
"The National Interpretation of the
1933 Famine"; the translation is on pp.
306-307.
[40] Terry Martin, "The
1932-1933 Ukrainian Terror: New Documentation on
Surveillance and the Thought
Process of Stalin," in "Famine-Genocide in
Ukraine 1932-1933" (Toronto,
2003), p. 98. The Ukrainian version, Teri
Martyn, "Pro kozhnoho z nas dumaye
Stalin ... ," "Krytyka" (December
2003), contains a Ukrainian translation of
the document (pp. 17-18).
[41] D'Ann Penner, "The Agrarian Strike of
1932-1933" (Kennan Institute for
Advanced Russian Studies, Occasional Papers
#269) (March 1998), p. 23.
[42] Ibid., p. 32.; [43] Ibid. p. 28.
[44] M.
P. Kots (ed.), "Holod-henotsyd 1933 roku v Ukrayini:
istoryko-politychnyi
analiz sotsialno-demohrafichnyky ta
moralno-psykholohichnykh naslidkiv.
Mizhnarodna naukovo-teoretychna
konferentsiya. Kyiv, 28 lystopada 1998"
(Kyiv, 2000) ; see Ivnitskiy, p.
113; Serhiychuk, p. 125; Lukyanenko, pp.
240-247; Zdioruk, pp. 248-252.
[45] "Holodomory v Ukrayini 1921-1923,
1932-1933, 1946-1947: Zlochyny
protry narodu" (Kyiv, 2000), p. 104. [Emphasis
added by author.]
[46] Valeriy Vasilev, "Tsina holodnoho khliba: polityka
kerivnytstva SRSR i
USRR v 1932-1933 rr.," in "Komandyry velykoho holodu:
Poyizdky V.
Molotova i L. Kahanovycha v Ukrayinu ta na Pivnichnyi Kavkaz"
(Kyiv:
Heneza, 2001), p. 67.
[47] "Tragediya sovetskoi derevni.
Collectivizatsia i raskulachivanie.
Dokumenty i material," vol. 3 (Moskva:
ROSSPEN, 2001), pp. 634-635.
[48] "Stalin i Kaganovich Perepiska. 1931-1936"
(Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2001).
[49] "Ukrayina. Parlametski slukhannya shchodo
vshanuvannya pamyati zhertv
holodomoru 1932-1933 rokiv. 12 lyutoho 2003 roku"
(Kyiv, 2003); see
Tabachnyk, pp. 12-24; Kulchytsky, pp. 68-70.
[50] Rudolf
Ia. Myrsky, "Holodomor i Kholokost v Ukrayini yak
vseukrayinska trahediya
(filosofsko-politolohichni rozdumy," "Visnyk
natsionalnoho universytetu
'Lvivska politekhnika'", no. 493 (2003), p. 299.
[51] Yuri Shapoval, "Holod
1932-1933 rokiv: Kreml i politychne kerivnytstvo
USRR," in "Try holodomory v
Ukrayini v XXst.: pohlyad iz sohodennya.
Materialy mizhnarodnoyi naukovoyi
konferentsiyi" (Kyiv, 2003), pp. 43-45,
36.
[52] "Polityka totalnoho
vyluchennya khliba v ukrayinskomu seli: henotsyd
proty selyan," in II NANU.
Holod 1932-1933 rokiv v Ukrayini: prychyny ta
naslidky (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka,
2003), p. 440.
[53] Ibid., pp. 551, 632-633.
[54] Shapoval (ed.), "The
Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine."
(Kashtan Press, 2005), p.
9.
[55] Ibid., pp. 282-283.
[56] "Chomu Stalin nas nyshchyv," "Den" (25
October, 8 November and 22
November 2005) ; rendered into English as "Why Did
Stalin Exterminate
Ukrainians."
[57] Stanislav V. Kulchytsky, "Holod
1932-1933 rr. v Ukrayini yak henotsyd"
(Kyiv: II NANU, 2005). The book's
relation to the Den articles is not
mentioned, nor is the reader informed
that changes (some of them quite
important) had been made in the book
version.
[58] Conquest, "Harvest of Sorrow. Soviet Collectivization and the
Terror
Famine" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
[59] Egbert
Jahn, "On the Phenomonology of Mass Extermination in Europe.
A Comparative
Perspective on the Holodomor," in "Osteuropa. Sketches of
Europe: Old Lands,
New Worlds" (Bonn, 2005), p. 212.
[60] Martin, "The Affirmative Action
Empire," pp. 300-301.
[61] "Komandyry velykoho holodu," p. 49.
[62]
J. V. Stalin, "Concerning the National Question in Yugoslavia," in
"Works,"
vol. 7 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954),
pp. 71-72.
[63]
"Stalin i Kaganovich Perepiska"; see Stalin, p. 274; Kaganovich, p.
283. [64]
"Tragedia Sovetskoi Derevni,: T. 3., p. 577.
[65] "Tragediya sovetskoi
derevni," pp. 576-577.
[66] Ibid., p. 577.; [67] Schabas, p. 207.