Mr. David Miliband
Foreign Secretary
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street
London SW1 2AH
England
[email protected]

Dear Mr. Miliband:

I have been informed that the British government has declined to recognize the Holodomor -- the Ukrainian famine-genocide of 1932/33 -- as a genocide perpetrated by Josef Stalin and his Bolshevik henchmen against the Ukrainian people.

At his website http://www.holodomor.org.uk/
Steve Komarnyckyj [email protected]
has reproduced two articles (dated 30Nov2006 and 01Dec2006) written by "Research Analysts, Foreign & Commonwealth Office" advising the British government not to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. I am appalled by the shallowness of their knowledge and their argumentation, which repeatedly emphasizes that other areas of the Soviet Union were also affected by the famine. They refuse to recognize that the spectre of "losing Ukraine" was a major reason for Stalin to deliberately impose the famine on Ukraine. Historical documents repeatedly quote Stalin referring to Petliurists and bourgeois nationalists as wreckers of his industrialization/collectivization plans.

My critique of their analysis is archived on the Holodomor page of my website at
/tp/holodomor/holodomor.html
or specifically at
/tp/holodomor/komarnyckyj20080412ePoshtaWZ.html
such that I will not repeat my comments here.

However, I will repeat my contention that all European governments, who had diplomatic missions located within the Soviet Union, were aware of the genocidal nature of the famine raging throughout Ukraine in 1932/33. For example, in his report from Kharkiv, dated 31 May 1933, the Italian consul general prognosticated on the devastation of the country: "The current disaster will bring about a preponderantly Russian colonization of Ukraine. In a future time, perhaps very soon, one will no longer be able to speak of a Ukraine, or of a Ukrainian people, and thus not even of a Ukrainian problem, because Ukraine will have become a de facto Russian region." (See article by Roman Serbyn archived at
/tp/holodomor/serbyn20071119Unian.html)

In 1933, the British government was complicit in denying the Holodomor, even though it knew that the eyewitness testimony of Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge was true. One would hope that in 2008 the British government will finally set things right.

Respectfully yours

William Zuzak
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
2008.05.07