ACTION UKRAINE REPORT
(AUR)
An International
Newsletter, The Latest,
Up-To-Date, Number 957
In-Depth Ukrainian
News, Analysis and Commentary
Ukrainian
History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion, Economics,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around
the World
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Holodomor: Induced Starvation,
Death for Millions, Genocide
Once
again I was in Kyiv on the fourth Saturday of November for the annual
commemoration
of the Holodomor. Saturday was a typical cool
November day and in
the late afternoon the wind came up with a little mist about the time
the
commemoration service began. As the day turned into
night the event
at the new Holodomor Memorial was very moving, filled with emotion,
haunting music, important, historic, and
tragic words
and poems, prayers, tears that suddenly appeared and
the lighting of
thousands of candles. The annual commemoration of the
Holodomor is
critically important for Ukraine and the world. Now is no
time to forget
the horrible tragedy the people Ukraine suffered in 1932-1933 and the
many
other major tragedies Ukraine has experienced over far too
long a
time.
I
then visited a most amazing exhibition entitled
"National Commemoration Exhibit
of Ritual Breads at the National Folk Culture centre "Ivan Honchar
Museum. This event is dedicated to the commemoration of those
who died
during Holodomor in 1932-33. If you are in Kyiv do not miss this
exhibition
(read the story of bread below.) Another year has gone by. It
has now
been seventy-eight long years since 1933. It will soon
be twenty
years since the people of Ukraine, over 90%, voted for Independence on
December
1, 1991. The struggle for freedom in
Ukraine goes on.
TWO ARTICLES:
1. WHY
THE DEADLY FAMINE OCCURRED, OR
COMPREHENDING THE UKRAINIAN HOLODOMOR
"As before, I am
convinced that it should be called
genocide."
By Stanislav
KULCHYTSKY, Doctor of Sciences (History)
The Day Weekly
Digest in English, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday,
November 24, 2011
2. RITUAL
BREADS FROM A HUNDRED VILLAGES
OF UKRAINE
By Alisa ANTONENKO,
The Day Weekly Digest in English
Kyiv, Ukraine,
Thursday, November 24, 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. WHY THE
DEADLY FAMINE OCCURRED, OR
COMPREHENDING THE UKRAINIAN HOLODOMOR
"As before, I am
convinced that it should be
called genocide."
The
Day Weekly Digest in English, Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Historiography
plays the key role in comprehending the Holodomor. If the former
manages to
answer the Holodomor-related crucial questions on the basis of
undoubtedly
authentic sources, politicians will choose another field for the
debates that
will help them remain in the public spotlight. But scholars are only at
the
beginning of the road that will lead them to the absolute truth in this
subject.
I
have already lost count of my articles on the Holodomor in The Day.
This
article has some repetitions about the Holodomor’s mechanism, which is
indispensable. But I offer here for consideration and criticism some
conclusions that result from a deeper look into the nature of this
tragedy. As
before, I am convinced that it should be called genocide. I hope,
though, that
if these conclusions draw support form historiographers, they will ease
public
tension caused by this interpretation.
Researchers
at the Institute of the History of Ukraine have made a sizable
contribution to
the historiography of this problem. In 2006, when the Verkhovna Rada
was
discussing the Holodomor law, every MP was given a volume of historical
evidence prepared by academics, from which it followed that the famine
organized by the Stalinist leadership in the Ukrainian SSR and Kuban
had all
the signs of genocide. The parliament garnered enough votes to pass the
law,
the first article of which provided legal coverage for this scholarly
conclusion.
Heated
debates on the assessment of the Holodomor began at the first
international conference
“The 1932-33 Manmade Famine in Ukraine: Causes and Effects” organized
by the
Institute of the History of Ukraine on September 9-10, 1993. The
conference’s
proceedings, published by the institute, have long been a library
rarity, but
the arguments of various sides are being repeated in other publications
that
come out in many countries. The Ukrainian Holodomor has long been a
problem
that draws the attention of international historiography.
The
most clearly outlined face-off is between the Ukrainian and Russian
historians
and, hence, politicians. The one who set the trend was the first
president of
Ukraine, who took part in the above-mentioned scholarly conference. “I
fully
agree,” Leonid Kravchuk said, characterizing the Holodomor, “that it
was a
preplanned action, an act of genocide against our people. But I would
not put a
full stop here – those who acted against their own people were doing so
on a
directive from another center.”
This sacramental word combination, “another center,” only added fuel to the ever-smoldering fire of Ukrainian-Russian disputes. The president of a young state must have been outraged at the arrogance of the Russian functionaries who are even now full of imperial haughtiness. It did not occur to him that in 1993 the words “another center” could be interpreted any way you like: the Kremlin, Moscow, Russia.
At
the same time he did not take into account that in 1933 there was only
one
political center for all the Soviet republics, which, by force of
objective
historical circumstances, had narrowed to just one figure – Joseph
Stalin.
It
is also true that the institutions of power and their functionaries
could have,
depending on the place of location, been doing some “ad-libbing” while
implementing Stain’s will. To fully exclude this possibility during the
punitive campaign that resulted in the Holodomor, Stalin used the
services of
people from his inner circle.
Chairman
of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars Viacheslav Molotov and
VKP(b) CC
Secretary Lazar Kaganovich were sent to Ukraine and Kuban on temporary
duty,
while Pavel Postyshev was appointed full-time Second Secretary of the
KP(b)U
Central Committee and continued to hold the office of a VKP(b) CC
Secretary.
After
that scholarly conference, the emotionally acute issue of the Holodomor
as
genocide entered Ukrainian sociopolitical life and Ukrainian-Russian
interstate
relations as a catalyst of discord and hatred. In 2010, when the Party
of
Regions won a majority in parliament, MP Vasyl Kyseliov hastened to
move an
amendment to the Law on the Holodomor, which would delete the juridical
interpretation of this tragedy as genocide. The Day published ten a
series of
articles on this matter, following which the Regionnaire’s initiative
bogged
down in the parliamentary quagmire.
Yet
there still are MPs inclined to kowtow to the Russian leadership
irrespective
of the essence of the laws being passed. Suffice it to recall Mykhailo
Chechetov who called the routine clock-resetting “a stab in the back”
of the
Russian president, when the latter decided to refrain from introducing
winter
time.
The
interference of MPs into historical science is more dangerous than
legislative
innovations in the field of astronomy. It is easier to imagine yourself
an
expert in history than in the exact sciences.
Kyseliov’s
amendment may well be resuscitated. So experts in this field of
national
history should try to convince society that recognizing the Holodomor
as
genocide will assign the blame to just a clearly-defined circle of
concrete
persons who acted on the 1930s political stage – and nobody else. To
prove
this, one must take a new look at the nature of Soviet power and the
policies
it pursued at the time.
2. THE OBJECT OF
TERROR: UKRAINIANS OR PEASANTS?
Relying
on the evidence of the people who had lived through the Holodomor and
emigrated
to North America after the war, Robert Conquest claimed in his classic
work on
the 1932-33 Great Famine that the state had spearheaded its terror at
ethnic
Ukrainians. Holodomor eyewitnesses could feel heart and soul that they
were to
be exterminated. When people saw grain being seized, they might as well
think
that the state intended to keep cities well-fed or to earn hard
currency for
purchasing the machinery.
But
when, after confiscating grain, the authorities began to seize all
kinds of
food, imposing at the same time the physical and informational blockade
on the
thus plundered locality, it became doubtless that the state was
creating
conditions under which peasants just could not survive. This is why the
emigrants coined the term “Ukrainian Holocaust.” The Holocaust of Jews
(Shoah)
is a “well-hyped” term that is equated with genocide. Therefore, the
word
combination “Ukrainian Holocaust” unobtrusively prompted one to equate
the Holodomor
with genocide, without taking pains to find some weightier arguments.
However, Western academics could not understand why the Ukrainians,
whom they
usually could not distinguish from the Russians, were chosen as
victims. On the
other hand, former Soviet Ukrainians could complain about, say,
Russification.
But they knew that in the Soviet Union they had not been hunted down
the way
the Jews were in Nazi Germany only because of their ethnic origin. The
concept
of the Ukrainian Holocaust has played a mean joke on all those who
aspired for
international recognition of the Holodomor as genocide.
Polemicizing
with Conquest, the British expert in the economic history of the USSR,
Alec
Nove, said in 1989 that Stalin had aimed his blow at the peasants,
among whom
there were many Ukrainians, rather than against the Ukrainians, among
whom
there were a lot of peasants. But Nove’s aphoristic dilemma is equally
fruitless in both parts. The Soviet government did not wage an
extermination
war against peasants only because they did agricultural work. It
remains to be
admitted that killing millions of people with famine can only be
explained in
the light of the concrete circumstances of place and time.
3. POLITICIZATION OF
ETHNICITY: WHAT IS THIS?
It
was no coincidence that Stalin’s victims were sure that they were
terrorized
for ethnic reasons. In the everyday life of Soviet society, the
principle of
the politicization of ethnicity played an extremely important role.
This
principle shaped the three basic elements of the nationalities policy:
the
concept of titular nation, the indigenization campaign in non-Russian
republics, and the entry of an individual’s ethnicity into all kinds of
questionnaires (also in internal passports from December 1932) not at
one’s own
wish but on the basis of documentarily proved ethnic origin.
Historiography
always considers these elements piecemeal, although only an integrated
approach
can bring out the importance of politicizing ethnicity.
The
concept of titular nation was put into academic circulation in late
19th
century by the nationalist-minded French novelist Maurice Barres and
was later
enshrined in Constitutional Law. The term was applied to the ethnic
group
that
determined the name of a state. There also are synonymous definitions,
such as
the state-forming nation that features in the name of a state and the
dominant
nation in a multiethnic state.
But
the meaning of this notion drastically changed in the Soviet Union. In
an
attempt to position themselves as proponents of the most radical
solution of
the nationalities question, Bolshevik leaders declared that all the
peoples
that made up the majority of the population in a certain
administrative-territorial unit were titular nations. This resulted in
a
hierarchy of ethnic groups according to the politico-administrative
partition.
On
top of the pyramid were the Russians who were pronounced titular nation
of the
entire USSR. The union republics, autonomous republics, national
territories,
and national districts formed the titular nations of the second, third,
fourth,
and fifth order, respectively. Representatives of the titular nations
that
lived outside their administrative-territorial units or people of the
nationalities
that had no such units in the USSR were considered national minorities.
The most privileged status belonged to the titular nations of the union
republics because, under the Constitution, they enjoyed wide-ranging
political
rights, including secession from the Union. However, the Soviet Union
combined
the principle of the politicization of ethnicity with that of
“democratic
centralism,” when the lower strata of any organizational structures
were fully
and always subordinated to the higher ones. So the position of titular
nations
cannot be assessed in separation from their real power, which was not
described
in the Constitution.
The government used to transmit its impulses from the very top down to
every
individual by means of vertical “drive belts”: a millions-strong “outer
party,”
the communist-controlled leagues of young people and children, trade
unions,
and a host of civic organizations. The horizontal people-to-people
ties, which
form a civil society free of state control, were almost entirely
eliminated.
The
ones that had remained (family, religious communities) were permeated
with a
million-strong army of KGB-controlled whistleblowers. The Soviet
authorities
quite aptly said that they represented “workers and peasants.” An
atomized
society, with “drive belts all around,” was in fact a continuation of
the
state.
The cumulative effect of the combination of the principles of
“democratic
centralism” and politicization of ethnicity turned the Soviet Union
from a
federation of equal republics into an empire-type country with the
highest
centralization of power in the history of humankind. The oligarchic
political
regime depended neither on the communist party, which it brought under
complete
control, nor on the society which could do nothing but obediently elect
candidates from the “bloc of communists and non-party people” to the
Soviet
bodies of power.
Nor
did it depend in the Stalinist era on the nomenklatura which it
constantly
shook up with rotations or repressions to prevent it from striking
roots in
society and trying to gain at least a fraction of independence from the
higher
echelons of power.
The
large number of titular nations did not undermine the privileged
position
of the Russians who never considered themselves an ethnic minority in
any
region of the USSR. Still, one should not overestimate privileges of
the
Russians in an atomized -- both in social and ethnic terms -- society.
The
oligarchic center reflected, first of all, the Russian national
interests.
Suffice
it to recall the unsuccessful attempts of Soviet Ukraine’s government
to
enlarge the republic’s territory at the expense of the neighboring
areas
densely populated by the Ukrainians. On the other hand, the Russian
Federation
was not allowed to build a party and government center in Moscow,
similar to
those in the union republics.
The
presence of several titular nations in every union republic hindered
the
natural process of the formation of a civil nation. Even now, two
decades after
Ukraine gained independence, a lot of the Russians consider themselves,
by
sheer inertia, a first-order titular nation rather than an ethnic
minority in a
country, where ethnicities are not differentiated.
The inherent Soviet concept of titular nation demanded carrying out an indigenization (“korenizatsia,” a derivative of koren, “root”) campaign which was supposed to allow a nation to develop within the limits of its own administrative-territorial unit. The slogan of indigenization (Ukrainization in Ukraine) was proclaimed by the 12th Congress of RKP(b) immediately after the formation of the USSR. First of all, indigenization meant that Soviet power was to take roots and be reinforced with functionaries of a given ethnicity.
This
also meant developing the ethnic mass media because the government was
to apply
not only coercive (including terrorist) but also propagandistic
methods.
Indigenization also foresaw replacing Russian with the local languages
as
medium of instruction in schools. In addition to terror and propaganda,
the
state also relied on upbringing as a crucial component of governmental
impact
on society. Finally, indigenization envisioned the development of
culture,
without which no ethic community can exist.
Admittedly,
the indigenization campaign promoted the cultural development of
titular
nations, even though the state was, above all, striving to strengthen
its power
in society. This project succeeded. Soviet power, which had been
established in
Ukraine three times in 1917-19, lost an occupational nature because it
managed
to find a common language with local political forces well before the
official
course towards Ukrainization was announced.
Indigenization
had certain limits, which was most convincingly proved by the practice
of
Ukrainization. The VKP(b) CC resolution “On Grain Procurement in
Ukraine, North
Caucasus, and the Western Region” of December 14, 1932, which put an
end to
Ukrainization in Kuban, introduced two new terms into political
circulation:
Bolshevik and Petluraite Ukrainizations. While the Bolshevik
Ukrainization
reinforced the regime, the Petluraite one was its undesirable side
effect which
promoted national renaissance – in other words it ran counter to the
regime’s
intention to reduce the nation to an ethnos.
The
attempts of the Ukrainian leadership to append to the Ukrainian SSR the
adjacent areas of the Central Black Earth Region and the North Caucasus
Territory, mostly populated, as the 1926 all-Union census showed, by
the
Ukrainians, caused resentment and suspicion among the party bosses.
They
reacted in the same way to the successful Ukrainization of almost half
the
North Caucasus Territory districts and the aspiration of the Kuban
Ukrainians
to win the rights of a titular nation by being reunited with the
Ukrainian SSR.
The
Kremlin was especially afraid that separatist tendencies would increase
in
Ukraine, a republic that bordered on Europe and had a strong tradition
of
liberation struggle as well as powerful economic and human resources.
Under the
Constitution, Ukraine enjoyed extensive political rights which were
illusory as
long as the party leadership’s dictatorship remained strong. But these
rights
could have been realized in case of a crisis of power in the center.
Soviet
power emphasized its internationalism but always differentiated between
people
on ethnic grounds. This trend was especially evident if applied to
someone
belonging to a titular nation. Harassed for “bourgeois nationalism” in
Ukraine,
the Ukrainians often found rescue in the Russian Federation, where they
were no
longer representatives of the titular nation, i.e., they were losing
their
political status.
Only
the Ukrainians as representatives of a titular nation were dangerous
for the
authorities. Although the state was trying to turn the country’s
populace into
an atomized mass by way of eliminating horizontal links, Soviet
Ukrainians
identified themselves as a political nation. The social explosion in
the first
six months of 1930 was spontaneous, but it still proclaimed the slogans
of the
Ukrainian Revolution. A new social explosion was imminent in 1931-32.
It
posed an incomparably graver threat to the government because the
country was
on the threshold of a famine that assumed the most acute nature in the
Ukrainian SSR. A mass-scale famine was supposed to forestall the
explosion.
Building
a multiethnic state on the principles of “democratic centralism” and
ethnocracy
required that the ethnicity of citizens be considered as a
state-forming
element. The Soviet-style titular nations were not to go off the limits
of
ethnic communities. They were to content themselves with cultural
ethnic
autonomy which was constitutionally gift-wrapped as statehood in order
to
neutralize the national liberation movement. Those who protested were
in for
repressions.
Tellingly,
whenever the central government resorted to repressions in Ukraine, it
hid
itself behind the veil of ostensible Ukrainophilia. Pavel Postyshev,
Stalin’s
“viceroy” in the Ukrainian SSR, wore an embroidered shirt, which did
not
preclude him from exterminating the national intelligentsia.
When
the local apparatchiks saw the repressions as the end to the
Ukrainization
campaign, he immediately stopped the attempts to restrict the rights of
the
titular nation. Another demonstration of hypocritical Ukrainophilia was
transfer of the republican bodies of government in 1934 from Kharkiv to
Kyiv,
the national capital of the Ukrainian people.
Could
the national intelligentsia regard the use of grain procurement as
repressions
that might eliminate the negative, from the government’s viewpoint,
consequence
of Ukrainization? They could do so even before the Holodomor, when
everything
became clear. Mykhailo Hrushevsky’s pupils duly explained the fact that
grain
procurement targets in Ukraine were higher than in other grain-growing
regions.
On
September 10, 1932, secret police operatives reported that the pupils
intended
to inform their teacher, who was in Moscow, about the famine in
Ukraine. They
believed that what caused the famine was “the governmental policy aimed
at
finally breaking the Ukrainian nation as a united national force
capable of
offering a stiff resistance.” (from the book Declassified Memory. The
1932-1933
Holodomor in Ukraine in GPU-NKVD Documents. – Kyiv, 2007. – p. 291).
The
young US Ukraine researcher James Mace arrived to the same conclusion
independently from Hrushevsky’s pupils. Six years before the Nove
dilemma, he
came up with an answer that has been confirmed lately in many
documentary publications
and monographs: the Stalinist terror in Ukraine was aimed not at people
of a
certain ethnicity or trade but at the citizens of the Ukrainian state
which had
emerged after the collapse of the Russian Empire and saw its own
demise, only
to be revived in the shape of a Soviet state.
The
formula on the extermination of Ukrainians as representatives of a
nation state
rather than an ethnic group (“to destroy them as political factor and
as a
social organism”) was in Mace’s report to the scholarly conference on
the
1932-33 famine in Ukraine held in Montreal in 1983.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Stripping
the society of political and economic freedom, the bunch of Politburo
members
assumed a heavy burden of having to maintain societal viability. Soviet
society
was paternalistic by definition, which suited millions, if not tens of
millions, of people. Twenty years on after the demise of that society,
these
millions are still looking, as before, on the state as a breadwinner
and allow
it to do whatever it pleases with them.
“The
commune state,” which blended with an enslaved society, was
multiethnic. How
did the Russians – the first-category titular nation in it – feel? They
were
the same bulwark of the regime as were nomenklatura functionaries or
poor
peasants in the countryside. But they were all in a subjugated
condition and
did not differ at all from other ethno-social communities.
All
the aforesaid outline the reality of the Soviet Union. But even after
Soviet
power had stripped its citizens of private property and enmeshed them
with
cobweb-type vertical links, they still remained human beings capable of
showing
their willpower or waiting for a suitable time to do so. In particular,
most of
the Ukrainians identified themselves with a community that shares
certain
traditions, values, and interests. In the situation that emerged, they
used to
rally into a nation without any organizational structures – just by way
of
their memory and awareness.
This
made them dangerous for the authorities personalized by Stalin. For
this
reason, they could be subjected to repressions to a higher extent than
representatives of other titular nations. Even the most horrible
repressions
were possible due to the maximum concentration of political and
economic power
in the hands of a bunch of oligarchs who had turned by then into the
weak-willed entourage of a sole dictator.
LINK:
http://www.day.kiev.ua/219509
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2. RITUAL BREADS FROM
A HUNDRED VILLAGES OF
UKRAINE
By
Alisa ANTONENKO, The Day Weekly Digest in English
Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, November 24, 2011
National Commemoration Exhibit of Ritual Breads “Pechu, pechu khlibchyk...” (I am baking bread) and the play Grinders will take place at the Ivan Honchar Museum on November 25 and 26. This event is dedicated to commemoration of those who died during Holodomor in 1932-33. Folk band Bozhychi and famous kobza and lyre player Taras Kompanychenko will perform as well.
Deputy director general of the National Folk Culture centre “Ivan Honchar Museum” Tetiana POSHYVAILO says: “While rocking the infant in the cradle, the mother hummed simple songs about bread and by this revealed the essence of Ukrainian grain growing nation starting from the first days of child’s life.
Through bread the child discovered deep code of bread-making ansectors and joined it. Starting from that moment, every important event, every holiday, every day of life will not occur without bread.
People spilled some rye into infant’s cradle, godparents-to-be took bread to the church, young men took it with them while they were going to propose, a young couple was blessed before their marriage with bread, people paid last tribute to the deceased ones with bread too.
Our nation knows and remembers a few hundreds of names and kinds of breads, that are different in every region. And each one of those kinds became a symbol of uniting of human being and the world at some point of time.
The very essence of Ukrainian nation is unseparatedly tied together with bread. By taking bread from Ukrainians, they did not just physically starved millions of people, but they destroyed the most important thing – their spiritual world. Ukraine could have been different today.” Almost 100 Ukrainian villages from various parts of Ukraine will bake ritual breads that will be represented at the National Commemoration Exhibit at the Ivan Honchar Museum in memory of millions of people, executed by Holodomor, those who were not mourned after, not buried, not prayed for.
In memory of lives that were not fully lived, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren that were not born... Museum workers urge Kyivites to come and commemorate relatives and compatriots, light a candle and discover the lost wealth of the bread-makers nation, see unique variety and beauty of ritual breads that passed that deadly line, remember and will tell those to come to remember too.
LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/219493
LINK: TO PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE COMMEMORATION TODAY IN KYIV: http://www.demotix.com/news/941169/ukraine-commemorates-victims-great-famine
==============================================
Mr. E. Morgan Williams, Director, Government Affairs,
Washington Office, SigmaBleyzer,
Emerging Markets Private Equity Investment Group;
President/CEO, U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC)
"A strong international voice for business in Ukraine"
1300 I Street, N.W., Suite 720W, Washington, D.C. 20005
Mobile in USA: 202 437 4707.
[email protected]; www.usubc.org