ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR
An International Newsletter, The Latest, Up-To-Date
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis and Commentary

Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion, Economics,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World       
 
GENOCIDE AGAINST THE UKRAINIANS
The genocide was against the Ukrainians as a national/ethnic group
living within the whole Soviet empire over a period of years 1929-1938
 
Ukraine Remembers -The World Acknowledges 
2008 - 75th Commemoration Of The Holodomor 1932-1933
"Induced Starvation, Death for Millions, Genocide"
 
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR - Number 909
Mr. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor, SigmaBleyzer
Founder/Trustee, "Holodomor: Through the Eyes of Ukrainian Artists"
WASHINGTON, D.C., SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008
 
INDEX OF ARTICLES  ------
Clicking on the title of any article takes you directly to the article.               
Return to Index by clicking on Return to Index at the end of each article

1.  HISTORIANS, SURVIVORS HOPE TO DRAW ATTENTION TO UKRAINIAN FAMINE
Ukraine government says Soviet Union orchestrated shortage
By Russell Working, Reporter, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Sat, Sep 20, 2008
 
2 DRAFT RESOLUTION ON HOLODOMOR FAMINE IN UKRAINE TO BE
DISCUSSED AT UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, September 18, 2008
 
3RUSSIA THINKS UKRAINE’S ATTEMPTS TO PROMOTE HOLODOMOR ISSUE IN UN GA ARE INCORRECT
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, September 19, 2008
 
4COMMUNIST REGIME FOUGHT AGAINST HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE WITH RESOLUTIONS
UNIAN, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, September 15, 2008
 
5HEAD OF UKRAINIAN INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL MEMORY BLAMES RUSSIA
FOR BIASED PUBLICATION OF DOCUMENTS ON HUNGER IN EARLY 30'S 
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, September 18, 2008
 
6HOLODOMOR EXHIBIT OPENS AT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Presentation: David J. Kramer, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
U.S. Department of State, Holodomor Exhibit Opening
Ralph J. Bunche Library, Washington, DC, Tuesday, September 16, 2008
 
7 HOLOCAUST BY HUNGER: THE TRUTH BEHIND STALIN'S GREAT FAMINE
The Ukrainians call it the Holodomor - the Hunger.
By Simon Sebag Montefiore, award winning author of "Young Stalin"
The Mail on Sunday, London, United Kingdom, July 26, 2008
 
8ROMAN SERBYN: MONTEFIORE ON HOLODOMOR AND MY COMMENT 
Commentary: By Professsor Roman Serbyn, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Sunday, July 27, 2008
 
9OSCE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY (PA) RECOGNIZED HOLODOMOR OF 1932-1933
The Day Weekly Digest #21, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 8 July 2008 
 
10REGARDING THE RESOLUTION OF OSCE ON THE HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE
Commentary: Professor Roman Serbyn, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Thursday, July 3, 2008
 
11EX-SOVIET LEADER CRITICIZES UKRAINE FOR CALLING FAMINE GENOCIDE 
Interfax, Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, June 4, 2008

12 UKRAINE IRKS RUSSIA WITH PUSH TO MARK STALIN FAMINE AS GENOCIDE
By Daryna Krasnolutska & Halia Pavliva, Bloomberg, Kyiv, Ukraine, New York, NY, Fri, Jan 4, 2008 
 
13 RUSSIA: 1930'S FAMINE MAINLY IN SOVIET UKRAINE WAS NOT GENOCIDE 
By Steve Gutterman, Associated Press Writer, AP, Moscow, Russia, April 2, 2008
 
14VLAD AND THE SPINMEISTER: THE ABC'S OF HOLODOMOR DENIAL 
Analysis & Commentary: By Peter Borisow
Kyiv Post newspaper, Kyiv, Ukraine, July 16, 2008
The Ukrainian Weekly newspaper, Parsippany, NJ, Sunday, August 17, 2008
 
15HOLODOMOR: REFLECTIONS ON THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1932-1933 IN SOVIET UKRAINE
New book edited by Lubomyr Luciuk: A series of essays by leading scholars and
journalists on the causes and consequences of the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine.
By Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor, Action Ukraine Report (AUR)
Washington, D.C., Sunday, September 21, 2008
 
16.  HOLODOMOR: THE UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE 1932-1933
New issue of the Canadian American Slavic Studies Journal, Fall 2008
By Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor, Action Ukraine Report (AUR)
Washington, D.C., Sunday, September 21, 2008

17.  UKRAINE: NEW BOOK BY THE LATE NOTED HISTORIAN JAMES MACE 
Collection of scholarly and journalistic works entitled "Your Dead Choose Me"
By Olha Risheltylova, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tue, Sep 16, 2008

18LAW OF UKRAINE No.376-V "ON HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE IN 1932-1933"
Parliament of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada, November 28, 2006, Kyiv, Ukraine
English translation by Action Ukraine Report (AUR), Washington D.C., Sun, Sep 21, 2008
 
19THE UKRAINIAN 'GENOCIDE BY STARVATION'
An orphan in Kiev in 1934. Her parents had died of starvation and she survived on charity from a neighbour
Tony Halpin in Kiev, The Times, London, UK, Sunday, June 22, 2008

20 75 YEARS LATER, HORROR STAYS FRESH, 1930'S FAMINE IN UKRAINE MARKED
Melissa Dunne, The Windsor Star, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Saturday, May 24, 2008
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1
HISTORIANS, SURVIVORS HOPE TO DRAW ATTENTION TO UKRAINIAN FAMINE
Ukraine government says Soviet Union orchestrated shortage

By Russell Working, Reporter, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Sat, Sep 20, 2008
 
CHICAGO - Behind Neonila Scherstiuk Lychyk's school in the Ukraine of her childhood, there was a cemetery and, sometimes during recess, horse carts arrived loaded with corpses.  At first, Lychyk said, the teacher would shoo the children indoors. In time, she didn't bother.

The entire Ukraine was experiencing the horror anyway: the corpses in the streets, the villages emptied of people, the little ones who disappeared—rumored to have been kidnapped by cannibals.

This fall, Chicago-area Ukrainians like Lychyk of River Forest are commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, or death by hunger, which the Ukrainian government says was a Soviet-engineered famine that killed as many as 10 million people in 1932-33.

Anniversary events include seminars, an exhibition, memorials and requiem masses. Organizers and survivors said their efforts to spread the word are urgent. Like those who lived through the Holocaust, survivors of what has been called the "genocide famine" are growing fewer by the day.

Unlike the Holocaust, which was exposed and recorded by conquering armies, the Holodomor was hidden for at least two generations by a communist regime that had no qualms about using food as a weapon but didn't want the world to know, historians said.

Historians and the Ukrainian government say the famine was engineered by the Kremlin, which sent communist thugs door to door to steal food out of pantries and off of tables. Meanwhile, the government exported Ukrainian grain to the West throughout the famine.

This summer, the Ukrainian government released historical documents it says prove the Holodomor was an intentionally manufactured genocide. Moscow has resisted the label of "genocide," saying Russians and others in the Soviet Union—not just Ukrainians—suffered under Stalin's iron rule.

Taras Hunczak, a Ukrainian-born history professor emeritus at Rutgers University, has studied original documents related to the famine. Estimates of deaths have ranged widely and are difficult to prove, but Hunczak said he believes 7 million to 10 million people probably died.

The Chicago-based Ukrainian Genocide Famine Foundation USA annually memorializes the victims of the Holodomor through talks in schools and a memorial service. But this year the foundation is making an extra push to remind the world, foundation president Nicholas Mischenko said.

Mischenko was born in Ukraine a year after the Holodomor. He never met two older siblings who starved to death. "They took away our farm. Took away everything that we had: cows, horses, chickens—everything. And after that they took away all the foodstuffs."

During World War II, his family fled Ukraine, spending three years traveling across central Europe before gaining refugee status in Austria and emigrating.

Anatole Kolomayets, a Chicago artist who was born in 1927 and survived the famine with his younger brother, George, said his family lived on a farm in a devastated rural area. His father fled out the back door as the police arrived to arrest him. Kolomayets' father soon found a job at a Poltava railroad station, where he received a bread ration and the family rejoined him.

Lychyk's family survived because her father was a state employee and received a food ration. But every day as a 7-year-old, she saw the fate of families who couldn't feed their children.

For years, Lychyk didn't tell her children about what she had survived. But recently, she wrote down her memories for them.

"This is something that is very hard to discuss, because you just don't want to take the joy of life from young generations," she said. "But I think that's wrong. We should tell our children and grandchildren so this doesn't happen again." [[email protected]]
 
LINK: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-ukranian-famine-both-20sep20,0,7185123.story
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2. DRAFT RESOLUTION ON HOLODOMOR FAMINE IN UKRAINE
TO BE DISCUSSED AT UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
 
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, September 18, 2008

KYIV - A draft resolution on the Holodomor Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 will be discussed at the next sitting of the General Committee of the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly, the press service of Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported on Thursday.

The Foreign Ministry said the draft resolution "contains an appeal to honor the memory of the victims of the Holodomor famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933, which took the lives of millions of Ukrainians, and people of other nationalities who lived in Ukraine during that time."

The draft resolution also calls on UN member states "to include information on the Holodomor famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 in their educational programs aimed as preventing future generations from [repeating] a sorrowful lesson from a tragic page in global history."
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3.  RUSSIA THINKS UKRAINE’S ATTEMPTS TO PROMOTE HOLODOMOR ISSUE IN UN GA ARE INCORRECT
 
Interfax Ukraine News, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, September 19, 2008

MOSCOW - Moscow thinks that Ukraine's attempts to promote the so-called Holodomor in the UN General Assembly is incorrect and flawed.

The General Committee made a decision "to postpone the inclusion of the Holodomor issue on the agenda [of the UN General Assembly], which is actively promoted by the Ukrainian delegation" at the UN headquarters in New York a day earlier, a spokesman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Andrei Nesterenko told a news conference on Friday.

"Russian representatives in the General Committee told that the attempt of the Ukrainian side to usurp tragic pages of common history of many USSR nations are incorrect and are flawed from a moral point of view," Nesterenko said.
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4.  COMMUNIST REGIME FOUGHT AGAINST HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE WITH RESOLUTIONS
 
UNIAN, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, September 15, 2008

KYIV - Russia declassified some documents about the hunger in USSR in 1930-1940ies, which took place because of the collectivization of farms and industrialization, in particular, in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ural. Copies of the declassified documents were posted at the official web site of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry.
 
The declassified documents indicate that, beginning from May of 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKP(b)) received information about hunger, deficit of grain and bread from Senior Political Departments of Soviet Union republics.
 
On the basis of the received information, the Political Bureau of VKP(b) issued resolutions on aid to suffering regions almost every day. Thus, as for Ukraine, they made decisions to give help with seeds, to lift reservation on rye flour and to buy additional grain from eastern regions, etc..

On the other hand, the official web site of the Russian Foreign Ministry posted materials showing inactivity of the Ukrainian party leadership in solving the food crisis in the republic.
 
In particular, M.Zhyvanov [his position is not specified - UNIAN], wrote in his letter to Stanislav Kosior, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Ukraine: “Open your eyes to the reality. What are you doing with your policy, you, silent slaves of Moscow? You have ruined Ukraine and its agriculture within two years: you turned the Ukrainian party organization into a flock of parrots, who have learnt that it’s forbidden to say “unreal”, it’s opportunism.
 
"Last year these parrots left the Ukrainian economy without any slice of bread, without potato, without corn. At least, calculate, how many children and aged people have died from hunger here. At least you could show courage and calculate those victims, and familiarize Moscow with the results of our carefree and irresponsible “struggle for socialism”.

At the same time, a report from Mendel Khatayevych, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, sent to the VKP(b), reads about a rise of epidemics in Ukraine, as of January 2, 1933:

“A rise of epidemics, in particular, typhus, has been recorded in Ukraine. The total number of cases for the whole year 1931 made up 8 thousand 384, during January-November of 1932 -15 thousand 458”, M.Khatayevych wrote.
 
As early as on March 17, 1933, the secret political department of the United State Political Directorate prepared a special report about hunger in the Ukrainian SSR, with indicating cases of mass death and cannibalism.
 
“Volodarskiy district of the Kyiv Oblast. In Rude village, a mother left her three children home alone. Having absolutely nothing to eat, a 9-year old boy, together his elder sister, killed their 3-year old younger sister. The children cut off her head and began to eat the raw meat of the dead body”, the special report informs. Very many such cases were listed in numerous reports from different regions of Ukraine.

The Russian Foreign Ministry informs that the publicized digital copies of original documents were received from funds of Russian federal archives. “These are just a part of a huge documental array about the hunger in USSR”, reads the preface to the declassified materials.
 
LINK:  http://www.unian.net/eng/news/news-272942.html
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Promoting U.S.-Ukraine business relations & investment since 1995.
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5.  HEAD OF UKRAINIAN INSTITUTE OF NATIONAL MEMORY BLAMES RUSSIA
FOR BIASED PUBLICATION OF DOCUMENTS ON HUNGER IN EARLY 30'S 
 
Ukrinform, Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, September 18, 2008

KYIV - X-file documents on the hunger of early 1930s in the USSR, recently put on the Russian foreign ministry website, were selected tendentiously, as among them there are no resolutions and directives most brightly proving the deliberate character of the Great Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine, Academician Ihor Yukhnovskyi, acting head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, told a press conference Thursday.

“We are greatly pleased that the Russian party, particularly its foreign ministry, showed interest in the issues of hungers in the Soviet Union and published the documents. We were glad to use some of them that we did not have before. Yet, I insist with authority that the set of documents is biased,” he said.

The Russian MFA website published 200 documents, saying it was just a small part of the mass of information about the hunger in the USSR in early 30s.
Ukrainian historians say the publication bears secondary papers and lacks principal ones, on the real nature of famine in Ukraine that was struck most of all.
Yukhnovskyi said his Institute would send to the Russian ministry documents from Ukrainian archives attesting to masterminded hunger in Ukraine. “It is up on to them whether to put those documents on the web or not,” the Academician noted.
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6.  HOLODOMOR EXHIBIT OPENS AT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Presentation: David J. Kramer, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
U.S. Department of State, Holodomor Exhibit Opening
Ralph J. Bunche Library, Washington, DC, Tuesday, September 16, 2008
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ambassador Shamshur, honored guests: Thank you for the opportunity to take part in the opening of this exhibition to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor tragedy.

Seventy-five years ago, the world witnessed a horrific episode of human suffering and deprivation in Ukraine. The Holodomor is an extraordinarily sad chapter in human history, all the more tragic because it was man-made.  It is necessary that we honor the memory of the lives lost as a result of this communist oppression. I join with you and people everywhere in remembering the victims of this terrible tragedy, one that never should have happened.

A year ago, we co-sponsored a resolution on the Remembrance of Victims of the Great Famine in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, to call for promoting awareness of the Great Famine through educational and research programs.

We are also committed to permanently recognizing the victims in the United States. In October 2006, President Bush signed legislation authorizing a Holodomor memorial in Washington, D.C. This memorial will stand as a tribute to all people who suffered from the injustices of totalitarian regimes.

President and Mrs. Bush visited the Holodomor monument in Kyiv during their trip earlier this year, and Vice President Cheney earlier this month paid his respects as well. 
 
In the words of President Bush, during the Holodomor, “… millions died because they resisted Stalin’s brutal regime. We honor their memory and pledge to never forget their suffering. As we remember their struggle, we also condemn all authoritarian governments who have terrorized their people in the past and who continue to do so, thus continuing the fight for freedom and safety of all people."

Since those dark days, Ukraine has regained its status as an independent nation and today is marked by political freedom and economic growth. The political situation is never dull but very importantly has remained peaceful. The United States strongly supports Ukraine’s efforts to strengthen democracy, rule of law, and good governance in order to better bring the fruits of representational government to the Ukrainian people.

The opening of this exhibition is a time for remembrance, and a time for moving forward. As we reflect on this tragic event in history, we should also celebrate Ukraine’s progress and look to the future with hope and confidence. Thank you.  [AUR Footnote: Your editor attended the Holodomor Exhibition event at the U.S. Department of State.]

LINK: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/rm/2008/109839.htm
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7.  HOLOCAUST BY HUNGER: THE TRUTH BEHIND STALIN'S GREAT FAMINE
The Ukrainians call it the Holodomor - the Hunger.
 
By Simon Sebag Montefiore, award winning author of "Young Stalin"
The Mail on Sunday, London, United Kingdom, July 26, 2008
 
The demented Roman Emperor Caligula once mused that if all the people of Rome had one neck he would cut it just to be rid of his troublesome people.
The trouble was there were simply too many Romans to kill them all.

Many centuries later, the brutal Soviet dictator Josef Stalin reflected that he would have liked to deport the entire Ukrainian nation, but 20 million were too many to move even for him.
 
So he found another solution: starvation.
 
Now, 75 years after one of the great forgotten crimes of modern times, Stalin's man-made famine of 1932/3, the former Soviet republic of Ukraine is asking the world to classify it as a genocide.

The Ukrainians call it the Holodomor - the Hunger.
 
Millions starved as Soviet troops and secret policemen raided their villages, stole the harvest and all the food in villagers' homes. They dropped dead in the streets, lay dying and rotting in their houses, and some women became so desperate for food that they ate their own children. If they managed to fend off starvation, they were deported and shot in their hundreds of thousands.
 
So terrible was the famine that Igor Yukhnovsky, director of the Institute of National Memory, the Ukrainian institution researching the Holodomor, believes as many as nine million may have died.
 
For decades the disaster remained a state secret, denied by Stalin and his Soviet government and concealed from the outside world with the help of the 'useful idiots' - as Lenin called Soviet sympathisers in the West.
 
RUSSIA IS FURIOUS THAT UKRAINE HAS RAISED THE ISSUE OF THE FAMINE
Russia is furious that Ukraine has raised the issue of the famine: the swaggering 21st-century state of Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev see this as nationalist chicanery designed to promote Ukraine, which may soon join Nato and the EU. They see it as an anti-Russian manoeuvre more to do with modern politics than history. And they refuse to recognise this old crime as a genocide.

They argue that because the famine not only killed Ukrainians but huge numbers of Russians, Cossacks, Kazakhs and many others as well, it can't be termed genocide - defined as the deliberate killing of large numbers of a particular ethnic group. It may be a strange defence, but it is historically correct.

So what is the truth about the Holodomor? And why is Ukraine provoking Russia's wrath by demanding public recognition now?

The Ukraine was the bread basket of Russia, but the Great Famine of 1932/3 was not just aimed at the Ukrainians as a nation - it was a deliberate policy aimed at the entire Soviet peasant population - Russian, Ukrainian and Kazakh - especially better-off, small-time farmers.

It was a class war designed to 'break the back of the peasantry', a war of the cities against the countryside and, unlike the Holocaust, it was not designed to eradicate an ethnic people, but to shatter their independent spirit.
 
RANKS AS ONE OF THE MOST TERRIBLE CRIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
So while it may not be a formal case of genocide, it does, indeed, rank as one of the most terrible crimes of the 20th century.

To understand the origins of the famine, we have to go back to the October 1917 Revolution when the Bolsheviks, led by a ruthless clique of Marxist revolutionaries including Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, seized power in the name of the workers and peasants of the Russian Empire to create a Marxist paradise, using terror, murder and repression.

The Russian Empire was made of many peoples, including the Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Georgians, but the great majority of them, especially in the vast arable lands of Ukraine, southern Russia, the northern Caucasus, and Siberia, were peasants, who dreamed only of owning their own land and farming it.

Initially, they were thrilled with the Revolution, which meant the breakup of the large landed estates into small parcels which they could farm.
But the peasants had no interest in the Marxist utopian ideologies that obsessed Lenin and Stalin.

Once they had seized their plots of land, they were no longer interested in esoteric absurdities such as Marx's stages in the creation of a classless society.
The fact is they were essentially conservative and wanted to pass what little wealth they had to their children.

This infuriated Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who believed that the peasantry, especially the ones who owned some land and a few cows, were a huge threat to a collectivist Soviet Russia.
 
LENIN'S HATRED OF THE PEASANTRY BECAME CLEAR
Lenin's hatred of the peasantry became clear when a famine occurred in Ukraine and southern Russia in 1921, the inevitable result of the chaos and upheaval of the Revolution. With his bloodthirsty loathing for all enemies of the Revolution, he said 'Let the peasants starve', and wrote ranting notes ordering the better-off peasants to be hanged in their thousands and their bodies displayed by the roadsides.

Yet this was an emotional outburst and, ever the ruthless pragmatist, he realised the country was so poor and weak in the immediate aftermath of its revolutionary civil war that the peasants were vital to its survival. So instead, he embraced what he called a New Economic Policy, in effect a temporary retreat from Marxism, that allowed the peasants to grow crops and sell them for profit.

It was always planned by Lenin and his fellow radicals that this New Economic Policy should be a stopgap measure which would soon be abandoned in the Marxist cause. But before this could happen, Lenin died in 1924 and Stalin defeated all his rivals for the Soviet leadership.

Then, three years later, grain supplies dropped radically. It had been a poor crop, made worse by the fact that many peasant farmers had shifted from grain into more lucrative cotton production.

Stalin travelled across Russia to inspect supplies and ordered forcible seizures of grain from the peasantry. Thousands of young urban Communists were drafted into the countryside to help seize grain as Stalin determined that the old policies had failed.

Backed by the young, tough Communists of his party, he devised what he called the Great Turn: he would seize the land, force the peasants into collective farms and sell the excess grain abroad to force through a Five Year Plan of furious industrialisation to make Soviet Russia a military super power.

He expected the peasants to resist and decreed anyone who did so was a kulak - a better-off peasant who could afford to withhold grain - and who was now to be treated as a class enemy.

DESTRUCTION OF THE KULAKS AS A CLASS
By 1930, it was clear the collectivisation campaign was in difficulties. There was less grain than before it had been introduced, the peasants were still resisting and the Soviet Union seemed to be tottering. Stalin, along with his henchman Vyacheslav Molotov and others, wrote a ruthless memorandum ordering the 'destruction of the kulaks as a class'.

They divided huge numbers of peasants into three categories.

[1] The first was to be eliminated immediately; the
[2] second to be imprisoned in camps; the
[3] third, consisting of 150,000 households - almost a million innocent people - was to be deported to wildernesses in Siberia or Asia.

Stalin himself did not really understand how to identify a kulak or how to improve grain production, but this was beside the point. What mattered was that sufficient numbers of peasants would be killed or deported for all resistance to his collectivisation programme to be smashed.

In letters written by many Soviet leaders, including Stalin and Molotov, which I have read in the archives, they repeatedly used the expression: 'We must break the back of the peasantry.' And they meant it.

In 1930/1, millions of peasants were deported, mainly to Siberia. But 800,000 people rebelled in small uprisings, often murdering local commissars who tried to take their grain. So Stalin's top henchmen led armed expeditions of secret policemen to crush 'the wreckers', shooting thousands.

The peasants replied by destroying their crops and slaughtering 26 million cattle and 15 million horses to stop the Bolsheviks (and the cities they came from) getting their food. Their mistake was to think they were dealing with ordinary politicians.

But the Bolsheviks were far more sinister than that: if many millions of peasants wished to fight to the death, then the Bolsheviks were not afraid of killing them. It was war - and the struggle was most vicious not only in the Ukraine but in the north Caucasus, the Volga, southern Russia and central Asia.

The strain of the slaughter affected even the bull-nerved Stalin, who sensed opposition to these brutal policies by the more moderate Bolsheviks, including his wife Nadya.
 
STALIN KEPT SELLING GRAIN ABROAD
He knew Soviet power was suddenly precarious, yet Stalin kept selling the grain abroad while a shortage turned into a famine. More than a million peasants were deported to Siberia: hundreds of thousands were arrested or shot. Like a village shopkeeper doing his accounts, Stalin totted up the numbers of executed peasants and the tonnes of grains he had collected.

By December 1931, famine was sweeping the Ukraine and north Caucasus. 'The peasants ate dogs, horses, rotten potatoes, the bark of trees, anything they could find,' wrote one witness Fedor Bleov.
 
By summer 1932, Fred Beal, an American radical and rare outside witness, visited a village near Kharkov in Ukraine, where he found all the inhabitants dead in their houses or on the streets, except one insane woman. Rats feasted on the bodies. Beal found messages next to the bodies such as: 'My son, I couldn't wait. God be with you.'

One young communist, Lev Kopolev, wrote at the time of 'women and children with distended bellies turning blue, with vacant lifeless eyes. 'And corpses. Corpses in ragged sheepskin coats and cheap felt boots; corpses in peasant huts in the melting snow of Vologda [in Russia] and Kharkov [in Ukraine].'

Cannibalism was rife and some women offered sexual favours in return for food.  There are horrific eye-witness accounts of mothers eating their own children.

In the Ukrainian city of Poltava, Andriy Melezhyk recalled that neighbours found a pot containing a boiled liver, heart and lungs in the home of one mother who had died. Under a barrel in the cellar they discovered a small hole in which a child's head, feet and hands were buried. It was the remains of the woman's little daughter, Vaska.

A boy named Miron Dolot [pen name] described the countryside as 'like a battlefield after a war. 'Littering the fields were bodies of starving farmers who'd been combing the potato fields in the hope of finding a fragment of a potato. 'Some frozen corpses had been lying out there for months.'

On June 6, 1932, Stalin and Molotov ordered 'no deviation regarding amounts or deadlines of grain deliveries are to be permitted'. A week later, even the Ukrainian Bolshevik leaders were begging for food, but Stalin turned on his own comrades, accusing them of being wreckers. 'The Ukraine has been given more than it should,' he stated.

When a comrade at a Politburo meeting told the truth about the horrors, Stalin, who knew what was happening perfectly well, retorted: 'Wouldn't it be better for you to leave your post and become a writer so you can concoct more fables!' In the same week, a train pulled into Kiev from the Ukrainian villages 'loaded with corpses of people who had starved to death', according to one report.

Such tragic sights had no effect on the Soviet leadership.

When the American Beal complained to the Bolshevik Ukrainian boss, Petrovsky, he replied: 'We know millions are dying. That is unfortunate, but the glorious future of the Soviet Union will justify it.'
 
Stalin was not alone in his crazed determination to push through his plan. The archives reveal one young communist admitting: 'I saw people dying from hunger, but I firmly believed the ends justified the means.'

Though Stalin was admittedly in a frenzy of nervous tension, it was at this point in 1932 when under another leader the Soviet Union might have simply fallen apart and history would have been different.
 
Embattled on all sides, criticised by his own comrades, faced with chaos and civil war and mass starvation in the countryside, he pushed on ruthlessly - even when, in 1932, his wife Nadya committed suicide, in part as a protest against the famine.

'It seems in some regions of Ukraine, Soviet power has ceased to exist,' he wrote. 'Check the problem and take measures.' That meant the destruction of any resistance. Stalin created a draconian law that any hungry peasant who stole even a husk of grain was to be shot - the notorious Misappropriation of Socialist Property law.
 
"IF WE DON'T MAKE AN EFFORT, WE MIGHT LOSE UKRAINE"
'If we don't make an effort, we might lose Ukraine,' Stalin said, almost in panic. He dispatched ferocious punitive expeditions led by his henchmen, who engaged in mass murders and executions.

Not just Ukraine was targeted - Molotov, for example, headed to the Urals, the Lower Volga and Siberia. Lazar Kaganovich, a close associate of Stalin, crushed the Kuban and Siberia regions where famine was also rife.

Train tickets were restricted and internal passports were introduced so that it became impossible for peasants to flee the famine areas. Stalin called the peasants 'saboteurs' and declared it 'a fight to the death! These people deliberately tried to sabotage the Soviet stage'.
 
BETWEEN FOUR AND FIVE MILLION DIED IN UKRAINE
Between four and five million died in Ukraine, a million died in Kazakhstan and another million in the north Caucasus and the Volga. By 1933, 5.7 million households - somewhere between ten million and 15 million people - had vanished. They had been deported, shot or died of starvation. As for Stalin, he emerged more ruthless, more paranoid, more isolated than before.
 
Stalin later told Winston Churchill that this was the most difficult time of his entire life, harder even than Hitler's invasion. 'It was a terrible struggle' in which he had 'to destroy ten million. It was fearful. Four years it lasted - but it was absolutely necessary'. Only in the mind of a brutal dictator could the mass murder of his own people be considered 'necessary'.

Whether it was genocide or not, perhaps now the true nature of one of the worst crimes in history will finally be acknowledged.

AUR FOOTNOTE: Simon Sebag Montefiore is the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of the bestselling books "Young Stalin", "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar" and "Catherine the Great & Potemkin." "Sashenka," a novel of love, family, death and betrayal in 20th century Russia, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, is out now. [http://www.simonsebagmontefiore.com/]

LINK: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1038774/Holocaust-hunger-The-truth-Stalins-Great-Famine.html
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8.  ROMAN SERBYN: MONTEFIORE ON HOLODOMOR AND MY COMMENT 
 
COMMENTARY: By Professor Roman Serbyn, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Sun, Jul 27, 2008

From: "Roman Serbyn" [email protected]
To: "aaus" [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 7:14 PM
Subject: [aaus-list] Montefiore on Holodomor & my comment

MONTREAL: There is an article by Simon Sebag Montefiore "Holocaust by hunger: The truth behind Stalin's Great Famine."  
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1038774/Holocaust-hunger-The-truth-Stalins-Great-Famine.html.

I wrote a comment on the online publication, but I don't know if it will appear, so I am joining it here, in case someone would care to read it.

This is a welcome addition to popular literature on the Great Famine. The author is right to stress the ruthlessness of Stalin, his henchmen and the
Bolsheviks, who were not afraid to kill people by the million.
 
The author accurately identifies the goals of collectivization: “to break the backbone of the peasantry”, “to shatter their independent spirit” and with the stolen grain from the starving peasants to industrialize and “make Soviet Russia a military super power”.

Montefiore’s description of “the Great Turn” - the destruction of the peasantry, the horrors of the famine, with dekulakization, deportation, starvation, cannibalism, and so forth - can be appreciated.

There are, however, errors in his historical narrative that should be pointed out, and unwarranted assertions that must be challenged. Stalin’s musings about deporting Ukrainians revealed by Khrushchev refer to the post WW II period and not to the time of the famine. Ukrainians, according the 1926 census numbered  28.5 million (as citizens of Ukr. SSR) and 31 million (as an ethnic minority in USSR). If anything, the figures would be a million or so higher in 1932.

NEP was introduced in the beginning of 1921 because agriculture was collapsing, and not in response to the famine, which began only towards the end of that summer and continued until 1923. The first famine (1921-1923) was, to a large extent, due to the requisitions practiced by the Red Army during the Russian civil war (and wars of reconquest of the seceding republics like Ukraine); peasants’ delight over the Bolshevik seizure of power was rather short-lived.

Some of the author’s descriptions and claims lack precision or completeness. The author fails to take into account that while “the Cossacks” formed a more or less homogenous social group, they belonged to two different nationalities.
 
MOST KUBAN COSSACK WERE OF UKRAINIAN BACKGROUND
Most of the Kuban Cossack were of Ukrainian background and in the deportation of the Kuban Cossack stanytsias (settlements) the national factor played a decisive role. At the beginning of the famine there were some 8,000,000 ethnic Ukrainians living in RSFSR, mostly along the Ukrainian border: the Kuban was 62% Ukrainian, the Don about 40 %.

The rise of Ukrainian national consciousness, and the “infiltration” of the party and state institutions in these regions by “Ukrainian nationalists” was blamed for the problems in grain procurement (read confiscations).
 
As a result, on 14 December 1932, the Ukrainian language was banned in all schools, local administration, mass media throughout the RSFSR. This and other national factors in 1932-1933 tragedy are ignored by the author, thus giving the whole presentation a rather lopsided interpretation.

Montefiore states that train tickets were restricted and internal passports were introduced so that it became impossible for peasants to flee the famine areas.
 
Here he confuses two different issues:

1) passport system whose purpose was to the main urban centres from growing and which came into effect towards the end of the main period of the famine, and

2) a Stalin/Molotov directive of 22 January 1933 closing cordoning off Ukrainian SSR and the North Caucasus Territory (chiefly aimed at the Kuban) from the rest of the Soviet Union to any peasant movement. This directive had a specifically anti-Ukrainian factor which is completely ignored by the author.
 
PRESENTS ARGUMENT HEARD FROM RUSSIAN DENIERS
The author presents the argument often heard from Russian political and academic deniers of the Ukrainian genocide, namely that, “because the famine not only killed Ukrainians but huge numbers of Russians, Cossacks, Kazakhs and many others as well, it can’t be termed genocide — defined as deliberate
killing of large numbers of a particular ethnic group.” What is surprising, is that the author then defends this illogical position: “It may be a strange defence, but it is historically correct.”

Well, I beg to differ: it is not correct, either logically or historically. Logically, the question of the Ukrainian genocide has to be decided on its own merit.
 
Whether Russians and Kazakhs (ethnically the Cossacks were either Russians or Ukrainians – there was no Cossack nationality) were victims of genocide has no bearing on Ukrainian genocide, any more than the destruction of Gypsies and Poles had any influence on the recognition of the genocide of the Jews.
Each case has to be decided on its own merit. Bringing Russians and Kazakhs into the discussion of Ukrainian genocide is to confuse the issue.
 
Historically, the Russians’ argument is incorrect for the simple reason that the famine was not the sums total of the genocidal atrocities and the Ukrainian peasantry was not the sum total of the Ukrainian victims of the genocide. The genocide was against the Ukrainians as a national/ethnic group living within the whole Soviet empire.
 
MONTEFIORE LEAVES OUT MILLIONS OF UKRAINIANS
Montefiore leaves out not only the 8 million Ukrainians in the RSFSR but also the other segments of the Ukrainian population (national elites, professional class etc,) that were also part of the overall target of Stalin’s genocidal policies.
 
We cannot go into detail here, and I shall make just two short comments.

[1] First, concurrently with the destruction of the village elites in 1929-1930 (“dekulakization”) the regime began the elimination of the  national elites with the roundup of hundreds of intellectuals accused of organizing a Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (Soiuz Vyzvolennia Ukrainy). One of their “crimes” was organizing cells in the countryside. There was no corresponding witch-hunt of Russian elites accused of Russian nationalism.

[2] Second example. Montefiore (mis)quotes Stalin’s letter to Kaganovich (whose role in Ukraine Montefiore underestimates, in favor of Molotov),
"Unless we begin to straighten out the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine” and leaves it dangling because two paragraphs further he insists that “not just Ukraine was targeted – Molotov … headed to the Urals, … Kaganovich … crushed the Kuban”.
 
It is what Montefiore leaves out that gives sense to the Stalin’s reference to Ukraine. “Keep in mind that the Ukrainian Communist Party (500,000 members, ha-ha) has quite a lot (yes, quite a lot!) of rotten elements, conscious and unconscious Petliura adherents … As soon as things get worse, these elements will waste no time opening a front inside (and outside) the party, against the party.”
 
The sequence to this declaration was the second series of elimination of Ukrainian elites, this time from the faithful party cadres, suspected of siding with the Ukrainian peasantry “as soon as things get worse” (no better indication that Stalin was anticipating widespread starvation). The national factor always present in Stalin’s genocidal policies in the 1930s. It behooves the commentators on those years to present the full picture of events.
 
AUR FOOTNOTE: Roman Serbyn, is a leading and well known Canadian professor, scholar, researcher, author (Universite du Quebec a Montreal).  He is one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of Soviet Ukraine from 1920 through 1939. He is the editor with Bohdan Krawchenko of a book entitled "Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933" published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1986.  He is the author of the book "The Famine of 1921-1923 [Ukraine] and the Canadian Press in Canada."  The book was published in Ukrainian by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, Toronto, 1995. 
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9. OSCE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY (PA) RECOGNIZED HOLODOMOR OF 1932-1933
 
The Day Weekly Digest #21, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, 8 July 2008 

KYIV - The 17th session of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Parliamentary Assembly (PA) passed a resolution on the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine last Sunday in Astana.
 
OSCE PA “pays tribute to the innocent lives of millions of Ukrainians who perished during the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933 as a result of the mass starvation brought about by the cruel deliberate actions and policies of totalitarian Stalinist regime”, “welcomes the recognition of the Holodomor in the United Nations, by the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization and by the national parliaments of a number of the OSCE participating States,” “endorses the Joint Statement of 31 OSCE participating States on the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, delivered at the 15th Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council,” the resolution says in particular.
 
Besides, OSCE PA “supports the initiative of Ukraine to reveal the full truth of this tragedy of Ukrainian people, in particular, through raising public awareness of the Holodomor at international and national levels, organizing the commemorations of the Holodomor as well as academic, expert and civil events aimed at discussing this issue.”
 
OSCE PA “invites the parliamentarians of the OSCE Member States to participate in the events, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine” and “strongly encourages all parliaments to adopt acts regarding recognition of the Holodomor.”

COMMENTARY --
Stanislav KULCHYTSKY , Deputy Director, Institute of the History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences):

“For the world community to recognize the 1932-1933 Holodomor as genocide, we should cooperate more with unbiased foreign historians. As it has already been reported, the book "Why Was He Destroying Us? Stalin and the Holodomor in Ukraine" of The Day Library series was recently launched in Bucharest.
 
Speaking at this ceremony, member of the Rumanian Academy of Sciences Florin Constantinium noted that it is strange that the polemics, which has lasted for 20 years now since the publication of Robert Conquest’s Harvest of Sorrow , is inadequately based on the findings of Ukrainian historians.
 
As is known, in this polemics the Ukrainian side does not deny the fact of an all-USSR famine in 1932-1933, but it speaks about something entirely different - the Holodomor in Ukraine, and it has enough facts to differentiate between the two phenomena. As for the attitude of Russia to this subject, we should react to the way it treats this ticklish question by way of third countries’ mediation.”

LINK: http://www.day.kiev.ua/203967/

The OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Parliamentary Assembly [PA]
Seventeenth Annual Session, Astana, Kazakhstan, June 29 - July 3, 2008
 
RESOLUTION ON THE HOLODOMOR OF 1932-1933 IN UKRAINE

1. Reiterating the crucial role of the OSCE in the promotion of human rights and values,

2. Reminding that parliamentary institutions play a decisive role in defining humanitarian policies and legislation and represent the will of the people of relevant countries,

3. Emphasizing that raising public awareness of humanitarian tragedies of our history is an important tool of restoring the dignity of victims through acknowledgment of their suffering and preventing similar catastrophes in the future,

4. Reminding the OSCE participating States of their commitment to "clearly and unequivocally condemn totalitarianism" (1990 Copenhagen Document),

5. Recalling that the rule of the totalitarian Stalinist regime in the former USSR had let to tremendous human rights violations depriving millions of people of their right to live,

6. Recalling also that crimes of the Stalinist regime have been already revealed and condemned and some still require both national and international recognition and unequivocal condemnation,

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly:

7. Pays tribute to the innocent lives of millions of Ukrainians who perished during the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933 as a result of the mass starvation brought about by the cruel deliberate actions and policies of totalitarian Stalinist regime;

8. Welcomes the recognition of the Holodomor in the United Nations, by the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization and by the national parliaments of a number of the OSCE participating States;

9. Endorses the Joint Statement of 31 OSCE participating States on the 75th anniversary of Holodomor of 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, delivered at the 15th Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council;

10. Supports the initiative of Ukraine to reveal the full truth of this tragedy of Ukrainian people, in particular, through raising public awareness of the Holodomor at international and national levels, organizing the commemorations of the Holodomor as well as academic, expert and civil events aimed at discussing this issue;

11. Invites the parliamentarians of the OSCE Member States to participate in the events, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine;

12. Strongly encourages all parliaments to adopt acts regarding recognition of the Holodomor.
 
LINK: http://www.oscepa.org/Activities/Annual%20Sessions
Click on Read More then click on 2008 Astana Declaration available here in English
Go to page 45 and you will get the RESOLUTION ON THE HOLODOMOR OF 1932-1933 IN UKRAINE
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10. SERBYN: REGARDING RESOLUTION OF OSCE ON THE HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE

Commentary: Professor Roman Serbyn, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Thursday, July 3, 2008

From: Roman Serbyn
To: Orysia Tracz; Stefan Romaniw & Members of the International Holodomor Committee (IHC)
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 1:28 PM
Subject: Re: OSCE Resolution

MONTREAL - OSCE RESOLUTION: This is not the full recognition of genocide that the Ukrainians want to hear. However it can be a step in the right direction if properly pursued. The substitution of Holodomor for Famine in the declaration is of great significance. The notion of “Famine” (even if called the Great Famine or man-made famine) was too limitative, the Holodomor is more open-ended.
 
GENOCIDE AGAINST THE UKRAINIANS
However, it should NOT be treated as only a more monstrous Holod, but a more encompassing catastrophe of which HOLOD was the main part in terms of human lives lost but not the only component of the GENOCIDE AGAINST THE UKRAINIANS.
 
In this sense, THE HOLODOMOR must be seen in the same way that THE HOLOCAUST is conceived: a genocide against a ethno/national group, in one case the Jews and in the other case the Ukrainians. This means treating as part of the genocidaires’ target and as part of the genocide victims.

[1] ALL the Ukrainians that were killed during the genocide not only by forced starvation but by other means (execution, exposure, etc) from among the other sectors of Ukrainian population (intellectuals, liberal professions, workers).

[2] Secondly, the whole Ukrainian population under the rule of Stalin’s communist regime (including the 8 million ethnic Ukrainians in Kuban’ and elsewhere in the RSFSR) must be included in this notion of victims of Holodomor. 

Until Ukrainian scholars, Ukrainian politicians and the Ukrainian community in general begins to view and speak about the Holodomor in these terms (which then fit into the UN Convention and its definition of genocide), we shall not be able to convince the world academic community and the politicians on the highest echelons of power that Ukraine had been victim of a genocide.

Ukraine must start speaking about the Ukrainians in the RSFSR, who were 8 million according to the census of 1926 but were reduced to 4 million by the census of 1937.

In this sense, the most interesting articles of this OSCE resolution are points 9 to 12:

10. Supports the initiative of Ukraine to reveal the full truth of this tragedy of Ukrainian people, in particular, through raising public awareness of the Holodomor at international and national levels, organizing the commemorations of the Holodomor as well as academic, expert and civil events aimed at discussing this issue;

The Ukrainian people in 1932-1933 included the 8 million Ukrainians in the RSFSR, and the whole truth cannot be revealed by leaving them out of the tragic picture.
 
WE MUST RECONCEPTUALIZE THE CONCEPT OF THE HOLODOMOR

Ukrainian academics must RECONCEPTUALIZE the Holodomor to include:
 
a) Ukrainian victims of the RSFSR, and
 
b) the other sectors of the Ukrainian society of those years who became victims of the Soviet  regime  by other means of destruction than starvation.

11. Invites the parliamentarians of the OSCE Member States to participate in the events, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine;

In these commemorations Holodomor must be presented as an all encompassing genocide. If Ukraine cannot speak openly about the all encompassing Holodomor on its own turf, then where can it do so?

12. Strongly encourages all parliaments to adopt acts regarding recognition of the Holodomor.

The lobbying of parliaments to adopt such acts is an excellent opportunity to educate, first of all the Ukrainian community (most people have very vague knowledge about the famine, and almost none about the rest of the genocide. The Act passed by the Canadian Parliament can serve as a model, but it can be improved upon.

The door has been opened just a little more, will we be able to take advantage of this opportunity to push it still wider?
 
AUR FOOTNOTE: Roman Serbyn, is a leading and well known Canadian professor, scholar, researcher, author (Universite du Quebec a Montreal).  He is one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of Soviet Ukraine from 1920 through 1939. He is the editor with Bohdan Krawchenko of a book entitled "Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933" published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 1986.  He is the author of the book "The Famine of 1921-1923 [Ukraine] and the Canadian Press in Canada."  The book was published in Ukrainian by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre, Toronto, 1995. 
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11.  EX-SOVIET LEADER CRITICIZES UKRAINE FOR CALLING FAMINE GENOCIDE 

Interfax, Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, June 4, 2008

MOSCOW - The former Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, has said that the attempts of Ukrainian politicians to qualify the famine of the 1930s as the genocide of Ukrainian people are politically motivated.

"I think there are certain political accents here," Gorbachev said today at a news conference held at the Interfax news agency. In particular, he emphasized that the famine affected not only Ukraine but other Soviet regions, too.

"What was the famine of the 1930s? It was on the south of Russia. I will tell you that 40 per cent of population in my native village of Privolnoye (Stavropol Territory) perished. Three of six children of my paternal grandfather died of hunger," Gorbachev said. He said that the famine was caused by severe draught and collectivization.

The head of the Memorial society, Arseniy Roginskiy, held a similar opinion. "Memorial's position is very simple. It was a series of terrible crimes. But the concept of genocide seems to us somewhat inaccurate," Roginskiy said.
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12.  UKRAINE IRKS RUSSIA WITH PUSH TO MARK STALIN FAMINE AS GENOCIDE

By Daryna Krasnolutska & Halia Pavliva, Bloomberg, Kyiv, Ukraine, New York, NY, Fri, Jan 4, 2008 

Maksym Kravets remembers watching hunger kill his father, then his mother.

Kravets, who was 14 when famine struck Ukraine in 1932, says he survived by eating a dog. About a third of the 1,000 people in his village, Lozova, perished as Soviet leader Josef Stalin cut off food supplies to force peasants onto collective farms.

"A special group of people was in the village taking away all the food we had,'' says Kravets, now 89, sitting in his kitchen in Kamyanets-Podilsky, 300 kilometers (186 miles) from where he almost starved to death. "There were cases when people ate their dead children and parents.''

The yearlong famine, which killed at least 7 million people, is now the focus of books, exhibitions and documentaries marking the 75th anniversary.
 
Ukraine's government is asking the United Nations to recognize the disaster as an act of genocide, worsening already frosty relations with Russia, which says the famine resulted from drought.
 
Russian nationalists vandalized an exhibit at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow in November. While the Russian government didn't condone the attack, it called Ukraine's depiction of the famine a "one-sided falsification of history.''

"It's completely impossible to treat it as genocide,'' says Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin. "What happened there happened not only in Ukraine but in many parts of the former Soviet Union.''

STATE OF DENIAL 
Ukraine's famine was kept out of official history until 1991, when the country of 47 million won independence. It is recognized as genocide by countries including the U.S.

"Russian society is, broadly speaking, still in a state of denial about the crimes of the communist past,'' says Robin Shepherd, a senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London. Putin and his government see the drive to label the famine genocide as ``an insult to Russian pride.''

Ukraine didn't do much to put the famine on the historical map until the pro-European Union President Viktor Yushchenko took power in the 2004 Orange Revolution. Ukraine commemorated the victims for the first time two years ago.

Yushchenko now plans to make it an offence to deny the famine was an act of genocide. Violators would be subject to as much as two years in jail and a fine of 5,100 hryvnia ($1,020). The move would mirror Germany, where it's a crime to deny the Holocaust.

POLITICAL BATTLE 
Communist Party leader Petro Simonenko says Yuschenko is "stirring up hatred'' as Ukrainian and ethnic Russian politicians battle for control of the government.

Putin openly supported the pro-Russian candidate in the 2004 presidential election before the result was overturned as rigged by a Ukrainian court. Russia is opposed to the policies of the Orange coalition now in government, which is seeking closer ties to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the EU.
The anniversary events started Nov. 24, when thousands of people gathered in Kiev and on the main squares of other cities.

"The main killer was the totalitarian communist regime,'' Yushchenko told the crowd in the capital. "Fear is at the root of today's political and social problems.''

In 1929, Stalin decreed that all agricultural workers had to join collective farms, bringing with them their livestock and tools. They were to plant and harvest together, so that the state could ship food to industrial areas. Some farmers resisted leaving their land, and many were sent to labor camps. Those who remained risked death from starvation.

GRAIN SEIZED 
Across the Soviet Union, more than 10 million people died from hunger during the collectivization drive, according to research by historian Robert Conquest. The majority of the deaths were in Ukraine, the second most populous republic in the Soviet Union and the largest grain producer after Russia.

Stalin wrote in August 1932 to one of his politburo members expressing concern that Ukraine wasn't complying and must be forced into submission. "If we don't fix the situation in Ukraine immediately, we may lose Ukraine,'' he wrote. The letter was published by Russia's Nezavisimaya Gazeta in 2000.

While the harvest was poor because of drought, as much as half of the grain was shipped out, says Vasyl Marochko, head of the Center for Ukrainian Genocide Studies in Kiev.

"The 1932 harvest was swept away completely,'' says Halyna Mendzyak, who was 9 and lived in Mynkivtsi, western Ukraine. "When they put it in rail wagons, an orchestra was playing with slogans like `Let's give all grain to our state!'''

Kravets says peasants in his area refused five orders to collectivize their farms in the years before the famine began. His parents finally went to work on a state farm in 1932, leaving him alone in their house.

When two aunts came to his parents' home to check for survivors, they found only his emaciated body. Kravets recalls hearing them say he wouldn't last the night before they walked away, leaving the door ajar.

"A dog then entered and started to lick me, so I got up very slowly, tied him to a bed with a towel and then took an axe and killed him,'' he says. "I still can't understand where I got the energy. I was eating that dog for several days.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at [email protected]; ; Halia Pavliva in New York at [email protected]
 
LINK: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=akRdu1cuBPKg&refer=europe
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13.  RUSSIA: 1930'S FAMINE MAINLY IN SOVIET UKRAINE WAS NOT GENOCIDE 

By Steve Gutterman, Associated Press Writer, AP, Moscow, Russia, April 2, 2008
 
MOSCOW - The 1930s famine that killed millions of peasants, mainly in Soviet Ukraine, should not be considered genocide, Russia's lawmakers said in a resolution Wednesday.

Renowned writer and Soviet-era dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn backed the Kremlin line on the divisive issue, dismissing Ukrainian claims that the famine was genocide as a "fable."

The 370-56 vote in Russia's lower parliament house and the rare comment from the 89-year-old Solzhenitsyn were a pointed rejection of claims by Ukrainian leaders that the Soviet authorities engineered the famine to target Ukrainians.

They came amid Russian anger over the pro-Western Ukrainian leadership's drive to join NATO, which will decide at a summit this week whether to grant the nation a road map for membership.

Russia has opposed the Western alliance's eastward expansion and is particularly concerned about potential membership for Ukraine, a large country with far closer cultural and historical ties to Russia than any other that has joined NATO.

Historians agree that the 1932-33 famine was engineered by Soviet authorities under dictator Josef Stalin to force peasants to give up their private plots of land and join collective farms.

Ukraine, with its rich farmlands, suffered the most. Authorities confiscated grain from village after village and prohibited residents from leaving, effectively condemning them to starvation.

Some are convinced the famine targeted Ukrainians as an ethnic group. Others argue authorities set out to eradicate private landowners as a social class and say the Soviet Union sought to pay for its rapid industrialization with grain exports at the expense of starving millions of its own people.

"There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country," the Russian State Duma resolution said.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko is leading a bid to gain international recognition of the famine as an act of genocide.

Solzhenitsyn criticized that effort in a front-page comment in the daily Izvestia, writing that the famine also affected Russia's neighboring Kuban region.
"This provocateur's cry of 'genocide' began to germinate decades later -- first secretly, in the moldy minds of chauvinists maliciously set against (Russia), and now elevated to government circles of today's Ukraine," he wrote.

Solzhenitsyn suggested the Ukrainian appeal might be supported by Western governments for geopolitical purposes. "They have never understood our history, all they need is a ready fable, even if it is an insane one," he wrote.

In Ukraine on Tuesday to stress U.S. support for its leaders' NATO aspirations, President Bush visited a memorial honoring famine victims along with Yushchenko and their wives.

A document signed during Bush's visit said that "Ukraine and the United States will closely cooperate to promote remembrance and increase public awareness of the 1932-33 man-made Great Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine, including within the framework of the international organizations." Holodomor, or death by hunger, is what Ukrainians call the famine.

The Duma warned the West to stay away from the issue. "This tragedy does not have -- and cannot have -- any internationally recognized indications of genocide and should not be used as a tool for modern political speculation," it said.

President Vladimir Putin's government has clashed with former Soviet bloc nations over interpretations of 20th century events, accusing them of seeking to rewrite history and cast Moscow as a culprit.

Yushchenko has said up to 10 million Ukrainians died of hunger in 1932 and 1933. Stanislav Kulchitsky, a respected Ukrainian historian, believes the number is closer to 3.5 million.

Under Stalin, who ruled from 1922 until his death in 1953, some 20 million people are estimated to have been executed, imprisoned or deported to other parts of the former Soviet Union under Stalin, and more than 10 million of those are believed to have died. [Associated Press writer Mike Eckel contributed to this report.]
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14.  VLAD AND THE SPINMEISTER: THE ABC'S OF HOLODOMOR DENIAL 
 
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY: By Peter Borisow
Kyiv Post newspaper, Kyiv, Ukraine, July 16, 2008
The Ukrainian Weekly newspaper, Parsippany, NJ, Sunday, August 17, 2008
 
By 2003 the movement for Holodomor recognition has gathered enough steam to draw serious attention from non-Ukrainian quarters.  Walter Duranty's Pulitzer was a major issue: Important exhibits and major conferences were held from Columbia to UCLA. 
 
Ukrainians were beginning to gain momentum and ambitions plans were laid for 2008, the Holodomor's 75th anniversary.  With few exceptions, the big bang everyone expected for 2008 has turned out to be a whimper. The torch came and went without notice; the conferences have been at significantly lesser venues; there is no memorial in Kyiv or anywhere else.  What happened?
 
I submit that this year's failure to meet many Ukrainians' expectations and promises is neither the result of Ukrainian incompetence nor the result of the world's general lack of interest.  I submit it is the result of a campaign by those behind the Holodomor in the first place to dull, divert, diminish and extinguish Ukrainian efforts. 
 
I suggest the anti-Holodomor efforts may have been hatched in discussions such as an exchange of fictional letters along the following lines.  And, of course, as they say, any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.  However, if the shoe fits......... [Peter Borisow]
----------------------------------------
December, 2004

My Dear Dr. Spinmeister,

Last year we had a close call with this Holodomor business. These pesky Ukrainians have started to get some serious attention and almost got our beloved Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize revoked. We must make sure this momentum does not bring serious consequences in 2008 when they will try to push even harder on their 75th “Anniversary.”

Can you imagine what would happen if these Ukrainians actually managed to convince the world the Holodomor was Genocide? Even if it is all blamed on the USSR and the Party, we are still the Successor State. When the USSR fell apart, we took all the assets. Someone is bound to say we should take the liabilities as well. And, look at me – I’m KGB, successor to the NKVD that did the dirty work! Can you imagine Nuremburg trials for senior Party members?

We could even be held accountable in some crazy civilian court in the USA or Europe! I’ll be damned if I’m going to send my petrodollars to some Ukrainian Victims and Survivors’ Fund! We need to bring Ukraine back into the Russian Empire, not finance its independence! Without Ukraine there is no Empire anyway! What can we do to make sure this Holodomor stuff doesn’t mess up all our futures?

Yours faithfully,

Vladimyr Volodymirovich
-------------------------------
Moscow
January, 2005

My Dear Vladimyr Volodymirovich,

We need not fret too much. This is a rather straightforward matter which we can handle with existing resources. After all – History is written by the Victors – and we, or I should say, our dear Comrade Stalin, did win the Great War! If Hitler had won the war, who would have ever heard of the Holocaust? The advantage is ours. Here’s what we need to do:

A frontal assault denying the genocide will NOT work. It may, in fact, backfire as the core sentimentality of the public will always bond with the image of starving babies. Rather than challenge that sentimentality, we must redirect it – away from Ukrainians. This is best done by first diluting the issues with small steps – like water constantly dripping on a rock; it will eventually wear a hole in the rock and allow us to crack it. It will be death to the Holodomor by a thousand little cuts.

Holodomor Dilution is prerequisite to Holodomor Denial. It starts with questioning the basic facts. When enough doubts are raised about the details, we can put it all to rest.

1) Challenge the numbers. Let them count the sculls! It’s a fool’s errand as the numbers can not be proven mathematically for any genocide. The nature of the beast is such that it destroys its own evidence. We’ve had 75 years to “correct” the records. We can debate any number! Whatever the number, we will water it down. The more times we water it down, the less credibility they will have. For us, this is a perfect debate.

2) Challenge the victims. We must claim this was at a time of great social upheaval. We were making history’s greatest omelet! Of course, we broke eggs! And, we suffered as much as these Ukrainians did, maybe more! Talk about Kuban – lots of victims there and it’s in Russia!! Who will know they were almost all Ukrainians? And, if the Ukrainians say that, deny, deny, deny!
 
Insist this was Russia and they were Russians! Remember, after we killed off the Ukrainians, we repopulated entire regions of Eastern and Central Ukraine with our own loyal Russians. Point to the children of these Russian brothers still living in Ukraine. Proclaim loudly "they are the real Ukrainians!" Complain how they suffer to this day under Ukrainian rule!

3) Challenge the “genocide.” Demand they prove it technically beyond a shadow of a doubt. Debate the details of that UN definition. The more we debate the details, the more we can wrap them up in their own underwear! Keep talking about collectivization. Keep talking about tragic errors by bureaucrats, incompetent administrators, bad commissars – anything but the “G” word.

4) Always talk about the “Famine” – Even better, the “Great Famine.” Keep talking about Russian and Soviet victims of a whole series of “famines.” Talk about “famine” in Kazakhstan (who will care it was a year later and 5,000 miles away?)
 
Surround Holodomor with other “famines,” other “human tragedies.” When people hear the word “famine,” they think of drought and locust, not genocide. They think Ethiopia, not Auschwitz. For us, “artificial famine” and “famine genocide” are wonderfully confusing terms. Leave it to the Ukrainians to give us some of our best weapons against them!

5) Join in, cosponsor, co-opt resolutions at the United Nations and other international bodies, civic organizations, etc., to remember the events in Ukraine as a “tragedy,” always insisting on watering down with other nationalities. Always make sure the “G” word is never used. We all know once a mealy mouthed resolution is passed, it is virtually impossible to change it later. No one likes to redo old business. Once it’s done, it’s done. The Ukrainians will be so eager to get something, even anything, done they will go along. Later, we will ram it down their throats.

6) We have considerable weight in international forums, even in the U.S. Congress, especially with the lobbyists we’ve hired with our newly found oil wealth. We must use this to make sure no one offends the Great Russian People. Having suffered themselves in the Great War and the “Great Famine Tragedy,” the Great Russian People are sympathetic to All its victims. Let’s get that sympathy working for us.

7) Invite (or challenge) them to “scholarly” and “scientific” conferences of “experts.” We still have lots of our old fellow travelers (or their progeny) in influential places, especially in Western universities and “think tanks” (see, I told you that would be a good investment!) They will keep these Ukrainians debating how many devils can dance on the head of a pin until doomsday! We don’t need to prove anything. As long as we keep them debating, they have proven nothing!

8) These Ukrainians are such polite little lambs, like wide-eyed little children, so eager to prove their case. Let’s just hope no one tells them some things are simply not debatable. The Jewish community would never allow Alfred R. Butz or exNazis to speak about the Holocaust! But Ukrainians will allow any Communist or Ukrainian hating Holodomor denier a forum – Even Us!

9) Co-opt some of their “experts” and “scholars.” This is a lot easier than most people think. Start now by building relationships, especially with those in second tier universities out in the provinces. Tell them they are underappreciated geniuses. Invite them to speak at conferences.
 
They all have unpublished manuscripts. Tell them you will get their books published; you will get them tenure; even that coveted Chairman of the Department position. You will get the world to finally appreciate their real genius!

Then, here’s the pitch – “Gee, there’s just one problem. It’s this Holodomor bit. You’re just too radical on it and people aren’t comfortable with radical scholars. Yet, your work is such genius – maybe if you’d just tone down that Holodomor stuff a little – maybe use a more ‘realistic’ number? And, at the end of the day, are you that absolutely positive it was genocide? I mean, were you there? It was so long ago, who can really prove it?”

Before you know it they’ll be meow-meowing any tune you suggest. And, others will follow. And, here’s the best part – once they’re done, you’ll never have to publish any of their crap anyway!

10) Waste their resources on little things while blocking serious efforts. In Kyiv, there must be No Holodomor Memorial complex by 2008. Let them talk about monuments, but remember to make sure nothing ever stands taller than our Titanium Queen.

There must be no major Ukrainian movie on Holodomor. You never know, it might just catch on. Look what Anne Frank did for the Holocaust! We can’t have anything like that! There must be Nothing that can really catch the imagination of the world.

We have enough agents of influence in Ukraine and in the Diaspora to channel this. In Ukraine, make sure there’s no State funding and keep reminding their Oligarchs that WE are their business partners. Keep them busy chasing their own tails within their own little circles.
 
In the Diaspora, let them waste their time and money on chasing monuments no one will see anyway. Let them sing in the showers! Never let them near a stage. Make sure nothing happens that can impact on the real world.

11) Use our influence on media in Ukraine to block out news and programs about the Holodomor. Counterprogram — put Holodomor stuff on little watched channels, at odd times in the middle of the night, etc.
 
Start complaining this Holodomor stuff is getting wearisome, that it’s anti-Russian propaganda by fascists, traitors, enemies, etc. “Enough already with this Holodomor stuff – this is starting to sound like a broken record! It’s all nonsense anyway!”

12) Use our influence on media in the West to block out news and programs about the Holodomor. Counterprogram with stuff on other genocides. Call for more programming on the Holocaust – a “real” genocide! Pressure the television and news executives that this Holodomor stuff is not proven, that it’s anti-Russian propaganda, hate mongering legends.
 
Promote stories of anti-Semitism in Ukraine instead. Most U.S television is owned by corporations. Remind them of Russian wealth and influence, the importance of the Russian market for their programs and movies. Do they really want to insult all these innocent people, offend this huge emerging market?

13) Drag out those documents we forged in the 50s with the East Germans about collaboration between Ukrainians and Germans during the war – the stories we invented about how they turned our Jewish friends over to the Nazis. Keep talking about Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, over and over. We’ve been telling those lies for so long now that even I am starting to believe them!
 
No one will know the opposite is true, that the Ukrainians issued orders to protect Jewish people from the Nazi! Even if the Ukrainians figure out our documents are forged lies, by the time they get their act together to tell the world about it, the debate will be over. What a brilliant idea that was! What a great way to shift blame from the perpetrators to the victims!

14) Remember that kid’s finger your grandfather cut off and tossed into the sausage machine? It became more ubiquitous than Kilroy! Remember the photographs of “cannibals” they staged for the press? Always talk about cannibalism. How can cannibals be “victims” of anything? Who would ever feel sorry for a cannibal? The more we talk about cannibalism, the less sympathy they get from all those dead babies. Always attack the victims, make them the guilty ones!

15) Let’s find some naive Ukrainian pups (or some of our own) out there to promote a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” on Holodomor. This will channel Ukrainian energies into a dead end. They will talk their hearts out into a void no one will remember. We will control the “genocide” bit and focus on little individual tragedies.
 
The world doesn’t really want to deal with genocide any more. After Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, the sticker shock of genocide is gone. This will put it all into an easy little box no one will have to look into anymore. For us, it will be contained, harmless and over. The world will never miss it.

Look at South Africa – all “Truth and Reconciliation” did was white wash the guilty in exchange for “confessions.” Can you imagine if Nuremburg had been a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”? Why, we’d be having drinks on the terrace with old Adolf at his villa in Versailles! I can live with that!!

So, here we have it – It wasn’t that many; we all suffered; it wasn’t genocide; no one is really sure what happened – they can’t even agree among themselves! Waste their time and resources. Frustrate their best efforts. They’re such bad people any way, maybe they even did it to themselves!
 
If need be, let’s embrace them to help them “find the truth.” We suffered too! Let’s work together, let’s reconcile and all live together happily ever after. Let’s put a positive future on all this. Enough of the negative past!!

We have the best propaganda machine in the world. We sold “Communism” to half the planet! Only that damned Coca-Cola has done better! Ukrainians aren’t like Jews or Armenians. Those people will never forget and will never let anyone else forget. In time, Ukrainians will get over it. They don’t really like these unpleasant things anyway.
 
They really will be happiest back in the Russian Empire. It’s always been their place. They need to feel the master’s hand on their leash as it tightens around their necks! And, if they’re obedient, we will reward them, just like in the old days!

Trust me. We can do this.

Your faithful servant,

Herman V. Spinmeister et al
New York, Londongrad and St. Leningrad
-----------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTE: Peter Borisow is president of the Hollywood Trident Foundation and a member of the board of directors of the Center for U.S. Ukrainian Relations. Borisow's business is film finance risk management. He travels frequently to Ukraine to advise the film sector as well as to support Ukrainian identify and independence.  His interest in Holodomor came from his parents, both of whom were Holodomor survivors.  He says his mantra is straightforward: "Holodomor - Genocide - 10 million killed."
 
LINKS: Kyiv Post: http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/29260; The Ukrainian Weekly, Ukrainian National Association, Parsippany, NY.  Editor-in-chief: Roma Hadzewycz.  The Ukrainian Weekly archive: www.ukrweekly.com
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15.  HOLODOMOR: REFLECTIONS ON THE GREAT FAMINE OF 1932-1933 IN SOVIET UKRAINE
New book edited by Lubomyr Luciuk: A series of essays by leading scholars and
journalists on the causes and consequences of the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine.

Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor, Action Ukraine Report (AUR)
Washington, D.C., Sunday, September 21, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Lubomyr Luciuk, a leading scholar, researcher, analyst, and author, who is professor of political geography at The Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, has edited a new book entitled "Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine." The book is a series of essays by leading scholars and journalists on the causes and consequences of the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine.
 
The anticipated publication date is October 31, 2008. Information about ordering the new book edited by Professor Luciuk:

Please send me ___ copy(ies) of "Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine" (Kashtan Press, 2008) at $45 per copy, plus $10 Shipping and Handling. The anticipated publication date is 31 October 2008. I enclose a cheque or money order made payable to "The Kashtan Press" in the amount of $_________.

Name (please print), Address, Street, City, State/Province, Country, Postal Code/Zip Code; Telephone Number. Please mail this completed form to: The Kashtan Press, 849 Wartman Avenue, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7M 2Y6. Thank you for your order.
 
AUR FOOTNOTE:  Lubomyr Luciuk is the editor of the book "Not Worthy, Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and The New York Times," published for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association by The Kashtan Press in 2004. 
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16.  HOLODOMOR: THE UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE 1932-1933
New issue of the Canadian American Slavic Studies Journal, Fall 2008
 
Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor, Action Ukraine Report (AUR)
Washington, D.C., Sunday, September 21, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Charles Schlacks, Jr., publisher, Canadian America Slavic Studies journal, is preparing a special new issue of the journal, Vol. 42, No. 3, Fall 2008, in honor of the 75th commemoration of the Ukrainian genocide of 1932-1933. The new edition is entitled "Holodomor: The Ukrainian Genocide, 1932-1933." 
 
The publication will contain articles and documents by scholars in Ukraine, Poland, Australia, Canada and the USA. The guest editor is Roman Serbyn, a leading and well known Canadian professor, scholar, researcher, author (Universite du Quebec a Montreal).  Publication date is scheduled for mid-October, 2008.
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS: CANADIAN AMERICAN SLAVIC STUDIES JOURNAL, FALL 2008
Yurij Shapoval. "Foreign Diplomats on the Famine in Ukraine";
Heorhii Papakin. "'Blacklists' as a Tool of the Soviet Genocide in Ukraine";
Hennadii Yefimenko. "The Soviet Nationalities Policy Change of 1933, or Why 'Ukrainian Nationalism' Became the Main Threat to Stalin in Ukraine";
Mykola Riabchuk. A review article about David Marples. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Ukraine (2007);
Rafael Lemkin. "Soviet Genocide in Ukraine" (with an introduction by Roman Serbyn);
Robert Kusnierz. "The Question of the Great Famine in Ukraine of 1932-1933 in Polish Diplomatic and Intelligence Reports";
Siriol Colley. "A Curtain of Silence: An Essay of Comparison";
Lesa Morgan. An article about Western Australian studies of memories of people in Ukraine in the 1930s;
Cheryl Madden. An article about disease in Ukraine in the 1930s;
Peter Borisow. Interviews of Ukrainians who lived in Ukraine in the 1930s, and stills from his documentary film about Kravchenko.
Morgan Williams. Holodomor: Through The Eyes Of Ukrainian Artists;
Some documents with translations of leaders' letters and orders of 1932-1933 (Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov).
Some of articles were translated by Marta Olynyk in Montreal.
The Guest Editor is Roman Serbyn, Universite du Quebec a Montreal.
 
TO ORDER THE NEW EDITION OF THE JOURNAL:
Copies of this special "Holodomor" edition of the Canadian American Slavic Studies Journal (Fall, 2008) are available for purchase by the general public.
Please send in your order as soon as possible as the number ordered in advance will determine the number to be published.
 
The price is $20.00 each plus $10 shipping and handling (U.S. dollars). Appropriate additional shipping costs should be added for multiple orders. Orders by post should be sent to Charles Schlacks, P.O. Box 1256, Idyllwild, CA 92549-1256, USA. Orders can be sent by e-mail.  They should be sent to Charles Schlacks at [email protected].  Journal will be available in mid-October, 2008.  If you have any questions please contact Charles Schlacks.
 
AUR FOOTNOTE:  The Fall 2003 edition of the Canadian American Slavic Studies, published by Charles Schlacks, was also a special edition entitled, "Holodmor, The Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933.
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17.  UKRAINE: NEW BOOK BY THE LATE NOTED HISTORIAN JAMES MACE 
Collection of scholarly and journalistic works entitled "Your Dead Choose Me"
 
By Olha Risheltylova, The Day Weekly Digest, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tue, Sep 16, 2008

LVIV - At the ceremony to launch the book James Mace: "Your Dead Chose Me," held during the 15th Lviv Forum of Publishers, the American scholar’s widow, Natalia Dziubenko-Mace, said her husband was eager to publish this book in Uk­raine.
 
“Unfortunately, I am the one who is launching it, and he is gone. But I think this is James’s second arrival in Ukraine – through these books, his work, his colleagues, through the fact that he has finally reached your hearts and minds.”

The Lviv launch is the first in a series taking place in many cities of Ukraine, timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the 1932-1933 Holodomor.
 
The Day has already reported that the 670-page book is the first collection of scholarly and journalistic works about the Holodomor and lingering sociopolitical issues by James Mace, the renowned US academic and researcher of the Ukrainian Holodomor. According to Mace’s widow, however, this is not a complete collection of the author’s immense legacy.

The Day is planning to have the book translated into several languages, and government agencies and NGOs in every region of Uk­raine have already placed orders for it.
 
During the launch it was correctly noted that publications about the Holodomor are no longer a novelty. The situation was different in the 1990s, when few people wanted to know about the Great Famine. In his articles for The Day, Mace was the first to blaze a trail with his research on this tragic page in Ukraine’s history.

Mace was well known in Lviv, the city where his widow was born and which the couple frequently visited. Many of Mace’s colleagues from this western Ukrainian city attended the launch.
 
Among them was Oleh Romanchuk, the writer and editor of the journal Universum, the well-known Lviv entrepreneur Oleksandr Dziubenko, the writers Yaroslav Pavliuk, Yurii Hurhula, and Vitalii Protsyk, who is researching the period of Soviet repressions.

Stanislav KULCHYTSKY, historian and author of the book:
“As an historian, James ap­proached research problems from a historical viewpoint. This was interesting and convincing. This book now contains his total legacy. The publication was funded by The Day, which sells these books but, more often than not, gives them away to interested organizations. I hope this book comes out in English.

“In his report on the Holodomor to the US Congress, Mace said, ‘The use of food as a political weapon by despotic regimes is not a thing of the past.’ When he was trying to persuade the world to recognize the Holodomor, he meant that this was a lesson for Ukraine. This lesson is also useful for Russia, Venezuela, and other countries.
 
Unfortunately, the 4th session of the UN General Assembly postponed the question of the Ukrainian Holodomor for one year. And although there will be no round date to time this question to, we will do our utmost to tell the world about what happened in Ukraine in the winter of 1932-1933. We will be able to do so thanks to this collection of political articles that James Mace contributed to The Day.”

Petro KRALIUK, professor and pro-rector, National University of Ostroh Academy:
“We have a lot of phony Heroes of Ukraine now, while the man who is truly a hero of Ukraine was not awarded this title, much to our regret. When we talk about James Mace, I remember the 1990s. Ukraine was in a deep crisis and nobody knew if we would ride it out. An American arrived in Ukraine, settled here, and began working for the benefit of our country. It is a shame that we failed to raise the problem of the Holodomor.
 
The first to study it was a person of non-Ukrainian parentage. Thanks to Mace, the subject of the Holodomor began to be discussed in the media and became a subject of research. To most Ukrainians at the time this was nonsense. The truth is that even today many of our compatriots do not accept the fact that the Holodomor took place. Ukraine was Mace’s life, and this book is our modest tribute to a true Hero of Ukraine.”

Oleksandr DZIUBENKO, close friend of James Mace:
“As long as the Soviet Union existed, the Americans were interested in studying the Holodomor. Once the USSR broke up, the US no longer needed Mace’s research. James was not a rich man; he came to Ukraine with very limited finances. But he brought his knowledge of the Holo­do­mor. To our bureaucrats, James was like a pesky fly. He persistently published articles on the Holodomor.
 
I clearly remember how many parliamentarians became indignant about his articles. It is primarily his doing that the Holodomor has been recognized in Ukraine. Restoring our historical memory is what unites Ukrainians. Mace worked on this topic in the US and he continued to work on it in Ukraine. It was his life’s vocation.”
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18.  LAW OF UKRAINE No.376-V "ON HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE IN 1932-1933"
 
Parliament of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada, Nov 28, 2006, Kyiv, Ukraine
English translation by Action Ukraine Report (AUR), Washington D.C., Sep 21, 2008
 
THE LAW OF UKRAINE No.376-V "ON HOLODOMOR IN UKRAINE IN 1932-1933"
Verkhovna Rada rules:

- commemorating millions of Ukrainians who fell victims to the Holodomor in 1932-1933 and its consequences;

- commemorating the sufferings of people who survived this terrible tragedy in the history of the Ukrainian nation;

- being aware of the moral duty towards the past and future generations of Ukrainians and recognizing the need to restore historical justice and uproot
tolerance to any forms of violence;

- recognizing that the tragedy of the Holodomor in 1932-1933 in Ukraine has been officially denied by the Soviet authorities for many decades;

- condemning criminal deeds of the totalitarian regime in the USSR aimed at engineering the Holodomor and thereby killing millions of Ukrainians,
destroying the social base of the Ukrainian people, its age-long traditions, spiritual culture and ethnic identity;

- sympathizing with other peoples of the former USSR who suffered as the result of the Holodomor;

- highly appreciating the solidarity and support of the international community in denouncing the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine which has been
reflected in declarations made by the parliaments of Australia, Republic of Argentina, Republic of Georgia, Republic of Estonia, Republic of Italy, Canada, Republic of Lithuania, Republic of Poland, the United States of America, Republic of Hungary as well as in the Joint Declaration on the 70th anniversary of the Holodomor - the Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933 - which was released as an official document by the  58th session of the UN General Assembly and signed by Republic of Argentina, Republic of Azerbaijan, People's Republic of Bangladesh, Republic of Belarus, Republic of Benin, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Guatemala, Republic of Georgia, Arab Republic of Egypt, Islamic Republic of Iran, Republic of Kazakhstan, Canada, State of Qatar, Republic of Kirghizia, State of Kuwait, Republic of Macedonia, Mongolia, Republic of Nauru, Kingdom of Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Republic of Peru, South African Republic, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldavia, Russian Federation, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Syrian Arab Republic, United States of America, Republic of Sudan, Republic of Tadjikistan, Turkmenistan, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leshti, Republic of Uzbekistan, Ukraine, and Jamaica, as well as was supported by Australia, Israel, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro and by 25 member states of the European Union;

- proceeding from the recommendations taken in the wake of parliamentary debates on commemorating the Holodomor victims of 1932-1933 which were
approved by Verkhovna Rada resolution No. 607-IV of March 6, 2003 and the Appeal to the Ukrainian people by the participants of VR ad hoc session on
May 14, 2003 on commemorating the victims of the Holodomor which was endorsed by VR resolution No. 789-V of May 15, 2003 in which the Holodomor is recognized as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people deliberately engineered by the totalitarian repressive Stalinist regime and aimed at massive killings of a part of the Ukrainian people and other peoples of the former Soviet Union;

- recognizing the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, pursuant to the Dec. 9, 1948 Convention on preventing genocide and imposing punishment for it as a
deliberate act of the massive murdering of people, Verkhovna Rada passes this Law.

Article 1. The Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine is genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Article 2. Public denial of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine is an outrage upon the memory of millions of victims of Holodomor, abasement of the dignity of the Ukrainian people and is, thereby, against the law.Article 3. Central and local governments are obliged within the scope of their authority:

-  to participate in mapping out and implementing the state policy aimed at restoring and preserving the national memory of the Ukrainian people;

-  to promote consolidation and development of the Ukrainian nation, its historical consciousness and culture as well as raise awareness about the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine among the citizens of Ukraine and worldwide,

-  to ensure the study of the tragedy of the Holodomor in the educational institutions of Ukraine,

-  to take steps to keep alive the memory about Holodomor victims, specifically, to install monuments and commemoration plaques,

-  to ensure access to archive and other sources of information related to the Holodomor for research and public organizations, scholars, individuals who are involved in studying the Holodomor and its consequences.

Article 4. The Ukrainian government is to promote research and implementation of programs aimed at commemorating the victims of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 by launching an appropriate all-Ukrainian program for which funding must be earmarked in the state budget of Ukraine.

Article 5. Closing provisions.

1.  This Law comes into force on the day of publication.
 
2.  The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine is obliged:

1) to determine the status and functions of the Ukrainian Institute of the National Memory as an authorized central executive agency in the area of restoring and preserving the national memory of the Ukrainian people, and ensure its funding from the state budget;
 
2) within three months of this Law coming into force:

-  to submit to Verkhovna Rada proposals on harmonizing the Ukrainian legislation with this Law;

-  to ensure the revision and cancellation by the executive of the by-laws contradicting this Law;

3) jointly with the Kyiv city state administration to enact a resolution to erect a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor in Kyiv by the 75th anniversary of the Famine.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko
November 28, 2006
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19.  THE UKRAINIAN 'GENOCIDE BY STARVATION' '
An orphan in Kiev in 1934. Her parents had died of starvation and she survived on charity from a neighbour

Tony Halpin in Kiev, The Times, London, UK, Sunday, June 22, 2008

KIEV - Grigori Garaschenko remembers seeing his classmates starve slowly to death in a famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine. A neighbour driven mad by hunger killed her six-year-old daughter and began to eat her, he said, after Soviet soldiers confiscated all the food in their village during house-to-house searches.

Mr Garaschenko, 89, is one of the few remaining survivors of the famine of 1932-33. Now, 75 years on, Ukraine wants the world to recognise that what it calls the Holodomor was a deliberate act of genocide by Stalin's Soviet Union.

It is a campaign that infuriates modern Russia. Moscow argues that there was no such crime because Russians and other nationalities also starved under Stalin's policy of turning peasant farms into large state-run collectives. 
 
The Institute of National Memory, the Ukrainian body responsible for researching the Holodomor, calculates that three million people died in the months after Stalin punished the collective farms for failing to meet grain production targets in 1932. Soviet troops confiscated the harvest and all the food in villagers' homes.

Igor Yukhnovsky, the director of the institute, told The Times that as many as nine million may have died as a result of the famine and its aftermath. Stalin's intention, he said, was to break Ukraine's national identity.
 
“The land gives birth to the nation. During the Holodomor, the nation was destroyed, and this was the basic purpose,” Mr Yukhnovsky, 82, said. “Now that Ukraine has restored its statehood, the first thing we must do is restore our history.”
 
He said that preparations would begin next week for a judicial inquiry to establish who was guilty of implementing the Holodomor. He said the institute had received government approval to conduct the investigation, based in part on Soviet-era archives.

“We must know the names of the people in authority who were in charge of this criminal enterprise. They must be convicted. Of course, a lot of these people are already dead or too old, but they must have sentence passed so that their descendants can be freed from guilt,” Mr Yukhnovsky said.

The institute is also overseeing the construction of a memorial complex in Kiev as part of commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor in November.

Its campaign to name the guilty men is likely to exacerbate tensions with Russia, which does not deny that millions died, but insists that the famine was not a weapon aimed only at Ukrainians.

The Russian parliament, the Duma, passed a resolution in April rejecting claims that the famine “was organised along ethnic lines”, and warning Ukraine against using the tragedy as “a tool for modern political speculation”. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was equally vociferous, condemning the “provocateur's cry of ‘genocide'” in a newspaper article.

Discussion of the Holodomor was taboo in Soviet times. But the Ukrainian parliament backed a declaration put forward by President Yushchenko in 2006 that the famine was genocide, rejecting an attempt by pro-Russian deputies to characterise it simply as a “tragedy”.
 
Mr Garaschenko remembers helping to bury the dead and says that he survived only because a teacher managed to obtain tiny rations of bread for children who attended school. The teacher was later shot as an “enemy of the people”.

He adds that people over the border in Belarus, close to his village, did not starve. Mr Garaschenko said: “There were only Ukrainians in the villages. When they tell you it wasn't a genocide against the Ukrainian people, it's all lies. The Soviet soldiers went house to house taking away all our food. They left the people nothing to eat and left them to die.”

Katerina Kholivach, 80, another survivor, was only 4 when her family left her in an orphanage because she was too weak to travel as they fled the famine. When her mother returned to collect her later, Soviet officials told her that Katerina had died. Mrs Kholivach discovered that her brother and sister were alive only in 2002. She said: “The Holodomor was a huge crime and I was a victim of it. I have suffered the consequences all my life.”

THE GREAT HUNGER
At the height of the Ukrainian famine in 1933, an estimated 25,000 people died each day
By the end of 1933, almost 25 per cent of the Ukrainian population is thought to have perished
An estimated 80 per cent of Ukraine's population were small-scale farmers
By mid-1932 almost 75 per cent of farms had been seized by the state to force Ukrainian peasants into the Soviet system of land management
Grain exports were raised dramatically and agents were sent to villages to confiscate grain, bread and any other food they could find
The Soviet Union exported 1.7million tonnes of grain to the West during the famine. Nearly a fifth of a tonne of grain was exported for each person who died of starvation
Holodomor, the Ukrainian name for the famine, means murder by hunger

Sources: www.ukrainiangenocide.com; www.historyplace.com ; www.loc.gov
LINK: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article4193129.ece
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20.  75 YEARS LATER, HORROR STAYS FRESH, 1930'S FAMINE IN UKRAINE MARKED

Melissa Dunne, The Windsor Star, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Saturday, May 24, 2008

WINDSOR - If not for finding some buried dead horses and empty corn husks, Stefanie Korostil and most of her family may not have made it through the Ukrainian famine. Korostil was only 12 when her family had to survive on horse meat and ground-up husks, mixed with tree leaves.
 
EATING CORPSES
Many of her neighbours, near the Dnieper River about 321 kilometres south of Kiev in Ukraine, resorted to eating human corpses, pets, and grass to stay alive during the Ukrainian famine in the mid-1930s.

Eventually, Korostil would lose six relatives, including one of her two brothers, to the what they say was a genocide, also known as the Holodomor.
"There was no bread, no nothing," recalled Korostil after a ceremony in Jackson Park Friday, aimed at raising awareness of the Holodomor. "People were dying everywhere ... the bodies were everywhere."

This period in Soviet history was kept silent for decades. From 1932-33 approximately seven million Ukrainians were starved to death in what is called the breadbasket of Europe. Ukrainians say it was an act designed to undermine the social basis of Ukrainian national resistance.

Mainly peasants and farmers, like Korostil's family, were stripped of all of their food, animals, and most of their possessions. At the height of the famine, Ukrainian villagers were dying at the rate of 17 per minute, 1,000 per hour, 25,000 per day.
 
ONLY KNOWN SURVIVOR IN WINDSOR
Now, as the only known survivor of the famine living in Windsor, Korostil does her part to pressure the local, national, and international community to publicly acknowledge the Holodomor as an act of genocide, not a famine.

As part of this movement to raise awareness, an international remembrance flame is travelling across 33 countries leading up to the 75th anniversary of the famine this November.

When the flame came to Windsor Friday about 50 people, along with Brian Masse (NDP -- Windsor West) and Joe Comartin (NDP -- Windsor-Tecumseh), held a ceremony at the Holodomor Monument in Jackson Park, which was erected in 2005 to commemorate the 72nd anniversary.

In Canada a bill to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide and to designate an official annual day of remembrance is set to be approved just before the 75th anniversary this fall.

The Soviets denied the famine until 1989, when then-president Mikhail Gorbachev spoke publicly of the tragedy.

Despite everything, Korostil has built a rich life for herself in Windsor. With Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1942, Korostil was shipped to Bavaria to a slave labour camp. After the war, she married and immigrated first to the U.S., and later to Canada.
 
"PEOPLE EATING PEOPLE - YOU DON'T FORGET"
She went on to have three children with her husband, who died last month, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. But the events of her early life still haunt her. "I remember everything," said Korostil, now an octogenarian. "People eating people -- you don't forget."
 
LINK: http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/story.html?id=d77e4d96-4e5f-4ab3-8099-b594b482d523
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