Holodomor: "I am categorically against bringing this topic
into the dimension of ethnocide."
The Russians and the Holodomor, their hard ideological line
and distorted historical realities.
24
. WHY THEY [THE
RUSSIANS] DO NOT WANT TO SEE US,
OR
HISTORY ON THE SERVICE OF AN IMPERIAL POLICY
The
Russians and the Holodomor, their hard ideological line and
distorted historical realities.
By Volodymyr Serhiichuk, Professor and Doctor of
History
The Day Weekly Digest in English, Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, December 16,
2008
Once Empress Catherine II felt she was sitting firmly on the Russian
throne, she immediately instructed Prince Viazemsky to take a number of
certain steps to force Ukrainians “to get Russified in a delicate way”
as soon as possible. Just a hundred years later Russia’s interior
minister Valuyev considered it necessary to persuade the entire world
that “there were not, are not and cannot be” any Ukrainians.
I recalled this when I read the book "The 1932-1933 Famine: a Tragedy
of the Russian Countryside" by the Penza-based professor of history
Viktor Kondrashin, which was recently published in Moscow.
This author, who decided to study the 1932-1933 famine in
the Volga, Don and Kuban regions, failed to see there the Ukrainians
who were the main grain-growing trail-blazers at least in the two last
areas: “The Russians, Mordvins, Tatars, Ingushes, and other peoples
lived then and are living now in the above-mentioned regions of Russia.
At the same time, this study puts emphasis on the Russian
population of the Volga, Don and Kuban areas because, historically, it
was they who were involved in grain production and, therefore, became
the primary object of Stalin’s forced collectivization” (p. 51 in
Russian).
Why Kondrashin wants to convince the readers that there were no
Ukrainians in these regions from the very beginning of cultivation and
farming and does not consider them “historically involved in grain
production” becomes clear from the panegyric that the author dedicates
to himself in his own book: “V. V. Kondrashin actively opposes in the
media and scholarly publications, including foreign ones, the idea of
Ukrainian historians and politicians about ‘genocide of the Ukrainian
people by the 1932-1933 Holodomor.’ He concludes in his publication son
this matter that the 1932-1933 famine is a common tragedy of all the
USSR peoples and this tragedy should unite, not disunite, the peoples”
(p. 29, Russ.).
Given this self-assessment of the author, it is small wonder why he did
not consider it necessary to mention Ukrainians among the main
agricultural ethnoses in the Volga, Don and Kuban regions. But they
really lived there. According to the 1926 census, Ukrainians prevailed,
for example, in all the 40 Kuban villages (stanitsas) founded by the
first Zaporozhian Cossack resettlers in the late 18th century:
Baturynska (5,034 Ukrainians out of the total 7,086 residents),
Berezanska (9,297 and 10,443, respectively), Briukhovetska (9,698 and
12,466), Vasiurynska (9,142 and 10,443), Vyshestebliivska (2,400 and
3,251), Dinska (10, 316 and 12,525), Diadkivska (6,665 and 7,324),
Ivanivska (12,983 and 14,209), Irkliivska (5,884 and 6,473), Kanivska
(13,878 and 17,248), Kalnibolotska (8,606 and 10,998), Katerynynska
(11,824 and 13,391), Kisliakivska (11, 416 and 13, 112), Konelivska
(7,824 and 8,7121), Korenivska (9,313 and 15,548), Krylivska (8,146 and
9,427), Kushchivska (9,364 and 11,865), Medvedivska (15,222 and
18,146), Nezamaivska (10,150 and 12,133), Pashkivska (14,166 and
18,000), Pereyaslavska (7,552 and 8,781), Plastunivska (10,528 and
12,375), Platnyrivska (11,628 and 13,925), Poltavska (10,985 and
14,306), Popovychivska (7,762 and 10,715), Rogivska (10,806 and
12,475), Sergiivska (4,127 and 4,714), Starodereviankivska (6,529
and 7,230), Starodzhereliivska (5,158 and 5,413), Starokorsunska
(10,477 and 12,273), Staroleushkivska (5,857 and 6,521), Staromenska
(19,736 and 22,604), Staromyshastivska (8,171 and 9,826),
Staronyzhchestebliivska (11,356 and 12,273), Starotytarivska (8,552
and 9,536), Staroshcherbynivska (14,453 and 17,001), Tymashevska
(8,961 and 12,112), Umanska (17,008 and 20,727), and Shkurynska (8,864
and 9,749).
On the whole, there were 915,450 Ukrainians in Kuban and 3,106,852 in
the Northern Caucasus. So we find it difficult to understand the
famine in these villages as a tragedy of “the Russian countryside”
alone. All the more so that Kondrashin names such Kuban districts as
Yeysky, Kanovsky, Kjorenivskt, Krasnodarsky, Staromensky and
Kursavsky in the Stavropol region as ones that make part of the
“especially affected” areas of the Northern Caucasus.
Of course, this is also presented as a tragedy of the Russian
countryside. However, the 1926 census recorded 74,037 Ukrainians and
23,568 Russians in Yesky district; 45,451 and 8,130, respectively, in
Kanivsky; 76,422 and 36,939 in Korenivsky; 103,8312 and 18,086 in
Kraskodarsky; 65,488 and 9,583 in Staromensky; and 57,665 and 8,767 in
Kursavsky district.
After all, we are also not indifferent to the destiny of the
35,115 Ukrainians in the Kondrashin-quoted Armavisrsky district and the
11,514 in Kurganinsky district, where the Russians numerically
prevailed at the time.
Similar facts of ethnic Ukrainian enclaves during the 1932-1933
Holodomor can also be traced in the Don and Volga regions. In the
latter, there were 49 percent of our ethnos in Kapustin Yar district,
51.9 in Yelansky, 69.3 in Kotovsky, 72.4 in Kranoyarsky, 74.9 in
Pokrovsky, 79.3 in Samiylivsky, 81 in Mykolayivsky, and almost 90 in
Vladirirsky district.
According to the 1926 census, the Lower Volga region alone
was populated by 600,000 people who continued to identify themselves as
Ukrainians. Some of them did not even speak Russian, which is proved by
the following fact: failure to meet the planned targets of grain
harvest in 1929 in Dubynsky district was explained by the fact that
“Ukrainian slogans on grain procurement were apprehended in the
district executive committee, and Russian-language placards were sent
to the Ukrainians.”
As for the Ukrainian population in the Don region, there was also a
large number of areas, where our people made up the absolute majority.
This was especially the case in some Taganrog districts. And the
1932-1933 Holodomor took a heavy toll of all these Ukrainians.
But we should admit that the Kuban Ukrainians were the first to suffer
from this horror. And we cannot help recalling the village of Poltavska
whose population favored the development of their native culture and
where there was the first All-Russian Ukrainian Teacher-Training
School. Its population was the first to be deported to the north, its
houses were given to Red Army Cossack veterans, and it was renamed
Krasnoarmeyska so that nothing betrayed its Ukrainian origin.
The second Ukrainian village in Kuban that suffered the same
tragedy was Umanska. After the deportation, it was renamed
Leningradska.
Incidentally, we could not find similar Kremlin instructions with
respect to Russia’s non-black-soil area which also failed to meet the
grain procurement targets.
Indeed, this did not repeat on a mass scale in Soviet Ukraine because
in many cases there was nobody to deport: entire villages had died out.
There are documents that prove that a great number of Russians and
Belarusians were brought to hundreds of the famine-ravaged Ukrainian
villages.
As for the “black boards,” they were introduced not only in Kuban, Don,
the Central Black Soil Region, the Volga basin and the Ukrainian SSR
but also in Northern Kazakhstan on the republican leadership’s
initiative. But if we look at the list of the villages that suffered
this kind of punishment, we will see at once that they were
predominantly populated with Ukrainian peasants.
For example, such villages in Ust-Kamenogorsk or
Fedorivsky districts were mostly Ukrainian because the Ukrainians
were the principal grain producers in this region. For instance, the
1926 census showed that out of the 28,302 residents of the Fedorivsky
district 25,408 were Ukrainians.
When you read the Penza historian Kondrashin’s book, you can see
clearly that he tries, above all, to serve the current political
interests of Russia, which consist in the refusal to recognize the
1932-1933 Holodomor as genocide of the Ukrainian people: “We do not
support the opinion of Ukrainian politicians and historians about the
national genocide in Ukraine by means of the 1932-1933 famine.
Nor do we agree with their definition of ‘holodomor’ as an
action organized by the Stalinist regime inn order to exterminate
millions of Ukrainian residents... We do not share the Ukrainian side’s
position because no documents have been found, which would say that
Stalin’s regime intended to eliminate the Ukrainian people.”
This raises a question to Kondrashin: and what about the directive
documents on stopping the Ukrainization in the areas densely populated
by Ukrainians (nothing of the kind was done against other nations in
1932-1933)? Do they not prove that Stalin’s regime aimed to
exterminate, at least spiritually, millions of Ukrainians?
And the fact that the 1939 census showed that the Ukrainian
population of what is now Krasnodar Territory had diminished by
1,437,151 people in comparison to 1926? Does it not make the historian
Kondrashin think that there was a carefully-orchestrated strike against
the Ukrainian nation?
And the VKP Central Committee and USSR Council of People’s Commissars
resolution of January 22, 1933, on forbidding only Ukrainian and Kuban
peasants to go to other regions in search of bread? Does this not prove
that Ukrainians were deliberately left to starve to death? Then how
should we interpret the following comment of Kondrashin: “What can be
called direct organization of the famine are draconian directives of
Stalin-Molotov on the prevention of spontaneous migration of peasants,
which kept them locked in the starving villages and doomed them to
death by starvation. It is for this reason that the 1932-1933 famine
can be considered a manmade famine, and this famine is one of the
gravest crimes of Stalin” (p. 376, Russ.).
In our opinion, only after reading a large number of documents that
prove the genocide of Ukrainians could Kondrashin write, perhaps
subconsciously, the following: “The famine helped Stalin liquidate what
he considered a potential opposition to his regime in Ukraine, which
could become political, rather than cultural, and rely on the
peasantry. There are some facts that prove this, including those in the
third volume of the documentary collection Tragedy of the Soviet
Countryside devoted to the holodomor, which describes the activities of
GPU organs in the Ukrainian countryside” (p. 242, Russ.).
Pressing the argument of the absence of concrete documents on
pre-planned extermination of Ukrainians, Kondrashin refers us to the
International Commission of Jurists which allegedly concluded that “it
is not in a position to confirm the existence of a premeditated plan to
organize famine in Ukraine in order to ensure the success of Moscow’s
policies” (p. 18, Russ.).
Unfortunately, Kondrashin did not quote the next lines of this
documents, which say: “However, most of the commission members
believe that even if the Soviet authorities did not actually plan the
famine, they apparently took advantage of this famine to force [the
populace] to accept the policy they resisted.”
Besides, the International Commission of Jurists with the Swedish
professor Jacob Sundberg at the head (and without a single Ukrainian,
incidentally) also made this conclusion: “Although there is no direct
evidence that the 1932-1933 famine was systemically masterminded to
break the Ukrainian nation once and for all, most of the commission
members believe that Soviet officials deliberately used this famine to
pursue their policy of denationalizing Ukraine.”
It should be stressed that Prof. Kondrashin hushes up the fact that the
Soviet government furnished no archival documents to this commission
and refused altogether to cooperate with it, organizing protest letters
against its activities on the part of communist historians. Nor does
the monograph’s author cites the commission’s findings that show, on
the basis of open censuses in 1926 and 1939, certain demographic
changes in the USSR population.
The truth is that while the population increased by 16 percent in the
USSR, by 28 percent in the Russian Federation, by 11.2 percent in
Belarus over the aforesaid period, it dropped by 9.9 percent in the
Ukrainian SSR. This provided ample grounds for well-known jurists in
various countries to recognize the 1932-1933 Holodomor as a deliberate
strike on Ukrainians.
We cannot bypass one more cardinal question that Kondrashin touched
upon in his book. Admitting that “the mindless collectivization and
excessive state procurement targets ruined Kazakh animal and land
husbanders, caused a mass-scale migration to China and the
famine-related death of hundreds of thousands of Kazakhstan residents,”
this author claims: “at the same time, Kazakh academics did not follow
in the footsteps of their Ukrainian colleagues and are treating the
1932-1933 tragedy in line with the approaches of Russian researchers”
(p. 27, Russ.).
At the same time, Kondrashin himself points out that Kazakhs were
allowed to settle and set up collective farms, say, in the Volga region
during the Holodomor. For example, there were 81 economic entities with
391 people in Sorochinsky district, Middle Volga region (p. 188,
Russ.).
In other words, Kazakhs were not forbidden to look for food outside
their republic. This is proved, incidentally, by dozens of archival
materials found in Kazakhstan. It is only with respect to the
famine-stricken Ukrainian population that the regime would issue
draconian, to quote Kondrashin, directives that deprived it of a
possibility to flee from death to the neighboring regions.
Prof. Kondrashin tries to persuade us several times that no concrete
documents have been found. But this is not a sound argument because
Moscow also tried to persuade us 20 years ago that there were no secret
supplements to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact on dividing the spheres of
influence in Europe, signed in the Kremlin on August 23, 1939. Then
these documents were found.
It is quite obvious that Nikita Khrushchev’s announcement at
the CPSU 20th Congress that Stalin intended to deport all Ukrainians to
Siberia will also find documentary proof some day. After all, why do
Kondrashin and other Russian historians not ascribe to this kind of
documents Stalin’s telegram to CK KP(b)U Mendel Khatayevich, dated
November 8, 1932, saying that “the Politburo is now considering the
question of how to bring the Ukrainian peasant down to his knees?”
Russian authors keep saying that the Holodomor tragedy should unite,
not disunite, peoples. But this will only occur when they abandon the
hard ideological line and admit historical realities.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[
return to index] [Action Ukraine
Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
===================================================
25
. HOLODOMOR IS UKRAINE'S NEVER-ENDING
TRAUMA
COMMENTARY &
ANALYSIS: By Irena Chalupa
Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty (RFE/RL) Prague, Czech Republic, Dec 09, 2008
In many ways, Kyiv is a city
of contrasts. On one boulevard you will encounter a rather
squat, red granite statue of Lenin, his right hand aloft pointing to
the proverbial better tomorrow that, thankfully, after 70 years finally
became yesterday. The authorities refuse to dismantle the statue,
claiming it has "historic" value. That's the communist touch.
Walk a few blocks down to a short, gray, treeless street called Passage
and you will be assaulted by ostentatious conspicuous consumption:
Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Bottega Veneta, Bally, Ferragamo. That's the
nouveau riche, oligarchic touch.
Up the hill from these two telling spots stands a small -- and until,
last week, the only -- monument to the victims of the 1932-33 famine in
Ukraine. It was erected in 1993.
Together these three points in Ukraine's capital create a kind of
historic Bermuda Triangle into which things disappear and people
forget. Lenin gave birth to the people who created the famine; luxury
goods should make everyone forget the deprivations of the Soviet past
and the pain of famine. But today almost 50 million Ukrainians somehow
remain held hostage by one, two, or all three of these points of
reference.
Ukraine's current president, Viktor Yushchenko, has made remembering
the famine a cornerstone of his presidency. In 2006, the parliament
passed a law recognizing the famine as an act of genocide against the
Ukrainian people. Yushchenko went to great lengths to ensure that this
year's 75th anniversary of the famine be commemorated on a national
level. Foreign leaders participated in the commemorations; conferences
were held; memorials unveiled, candles lit, and the names of the dead
remembered.
In a particularly moving sign of solemnity, the president and the prime
minister even suspended their endless bickering for a day to
participate in the unveiling of the new memorial complex in the capital.
DEATH OF A
NATIONAL IDENTITY
And yet large swathes of Ukraine remain
deeply ambivalent about the famine. Eastern and southeastern Ukraine --
where the famine took its greatest toll -- even today, when the facts
about the famine are widely publicized and accessible, has the fewest
memorials. The first attempts to commemorate the victims took place
very far away from Ukraine in fact; Canadian-Ukrainians erected the
first famine memorial in 1989 in Edmonton.
The late historian James Mace, who joined the famine project at the
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and collected material for Robert
Conquest's seminal work "The Harvest of Sorrow," called Ukraine a
post-genocidal society.
Becoming a famine expert in
his own right, Mace made Ukraine his adopted homeland. He believed that
what Ukrainians call Holodomor (murder by hunger), maimed Ukraine to
such an extent that it created a discontinuity in the normal
development of the Ukrainian people.
In the former Warsaw Pact countries, the collapse of communism brought
about a restoration of a previous independence. But in Ukraine, the
Ukrainian nation -- as a community possessing a clear sense of its
identity, history, and cultural values -- remained a national minority
in its own country even after independence.
The damage from the Soviet
legacy was such that Ukrainians lacked a broad consensus concerning
their future. All that remained were the surviving structures of Soviet
Ukraine. The country was no longer a Ukrainian Soviet republic, but it
was also not a Ukrainian Ukraine, in the sense in which Poland is
Polish or the Czech Republic is Czech.
The orchestrated famine wiped out millions of nationally conscious
Ukrainians. Whether or not one accepts that the famine was genocide,
there is little doubt that it was targeted against Ukrainian
nationalism, against Ukrainian-ness. Mykola Khvylovy, one of the most
popular and talented writers of the period and a committed communist,
shot himself in helpless protest.
The creative engine of a
people was destroyed, slowing down and distorting nation building for
decades. The Soviet regime prevented families and individuals from
processing both personal and national grief. For more than 50 years,
Ukraine could not address this trauma openly.
Ukrainian society, however, was soon to experience new shocks: the
purges of 1937-38, war, Nazi occupation and the Holocaust, Soviet
reconquest, and the 1946-47 famine. The scars of the Holodomor are
overlaid by those of these other tragedies. Yet, under the consequences
of these repeated blows, traces of the 1932-33 famine are unmistakable.
Without taking it into
account, for instance, it is impossible to account for the much weaker
-- compared to what happened in 1914-22 -- Ukrainian national movement
that arose in the great upheaval of World War II. Western Ukraine,
which in 1933 was not part of the USSR, is not surprisingly the
exception.
What does it mean to be Ukrainian today? What is Ukraine? What is the
Ukrainian idea? Former President Leonid Kuchma at one time created
quite an angry backlash by stating that the Ukrainian idea had not
worked in Ukraine.
If a country called Ukraine
endlessly convenes conferences on self-identity, if pundits pontificate
ad nauseum on "project Ukraine," if Ukrainians themselves can't define
their identity or their values, then one can safely admit that the
country has something of an identity crisis.
Is it important to have the world acknowledge the Ukrainian famine as
an act of genocide? For the Ukrainian state, yes. But will such
recognition help the country itself? Will it ease the effects of the
famine trauma? Will it steer Ukrainian society onto a path of
self-awareness?
Will it compel the eastern
Ukrainian citizen, who is descended from the ethnic Russians who were
resettled into the towns and villages emptied by the famine, feel a
connection to this country?
Will it give the inhabitants
of the more than 13,000 towns and villages that died in 1932-33 a voice
and a name? And, most importantly, will today's diverse Ukrainians, who
aren't particularly eager to listen to the stories of their painful
past, hear those voices?
It seems to me that James Mace was on to something. The famine is not
an only an event in Ukraine's past -- it is an event in its present and
its future.
NOTE: Irena Chalupa is the director of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service. The
views expressed in this commentary are the author's own and do not
necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[
return to index] [Action Ukraine
Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
===================================================
26
. UKRAINE, A
POST-GENOCIDAL SOCIETY
Ukraine's famine survivors still bear the emotional scars.
By Iryna Shtogrin, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Monday, December 08, 2008
Distrust of government and future uncertainty are just two
of the most conspicuous features of the post-genocidal syndrome that
psychologists have identified in modern Ukrainians some 75 years after
the famine of 1932-33.
On a more intimate level, famine survivors still value every
breadcrumb, and their descendants greet guests with tables overloaded
with a variety of dishes. In one form or another, Ukrainians will
universally impress on each other the importance of "having something
to eat."
Doctors describe a number of symptoms of post-genocidal syndrome that
are unconnected to the trauma directly, but which can still seriously
undermine the sufferer's health. Victims feel pain in places that are
not supposed to hurt and experience nightmares and hidden anxieties
that steal their ability to laugh and enjoy life.
Taras Vozniak, the editor of "Ji" magazine, has described the
experience as "such a trauma that for people who survived it is very
difficult to remember what happened." He compares it to the effects of
rape: "[Victims] don't want to testify, or to remember. They want to
erase the tragedy from their memory."
Having survived a famine that was brought about by the policies of the
Soviet government, Ukrainians now question the very notion of
government. They have -- if not fear -- then a feeling of permanent
uncertainty about the future. Under each shift in political direction
or change of political leaders, Ukrainians rush to buy the necessary
essentials. Just in case.
The memory of their ancestors -- who were robbed of food by their own
people on orders from the Kremlin -- forces many Ukrainians always to
keep something for a "black day" and never truly reveal themselves
fully, even to close acquaintances.
That same instinct compels Ukrainians to stockpile food, and to invite
anyone who stops by their home to sit down for a meal. Ukrainians tend
to rely on themselves, living by their wits and soothing themselves
with the eternal saying, "God willing."
Academician Myroslav Popovych survived the famine and believes that
other survivors can never really forget. He says, "conditions then were
such that all people who belong to that generation carry this taint."
But he also asserts that "personality always wins out in the end -- I
wouldn't say that I have become more obedient or completely focused on
earthly problems."
But the most important thing that Ukrainians carry from these terrible
times is a complete revulsion toward totalitarian regimes.
"Ukrainians still lack a political culture because of their history,
but we have a huge drive toward liberty," Popovych says. "I don't know
whether you can call this famine memory, but it is certainly a total
aversion to totalitarian mentality."
Ukrainian society is highly individualistic, partly because its history
has incorporated the terrible experience of death and survival of
famine. Old notions such as "my home is my castle" and "I'm my own
boss" have hampered the formation of civil society and a genuine
national elite in Ukraine.
At the same time, this attitude turns the average Ukrainian into a
libertarian. They view even the slightest attempt by politicians to
elevate themselves with sarcasm, and they sense the slightest false
note in officials' speeches about their "love of the people" and their
promises to solve the problems of average citizens.
One must remember that, aside from the natural psychological reaction
to survived horrors, Ukrainians for decades were not allowed to speak
about the famine -- it could have cost them not only their liberty but
also their lives.
Former dissident and political prisoner Yevhen Sverstiuk recalls seeing
fear in countrymen's eyes when he asked them about the 1932-33 famine
even after perestroika. People asked whether they would be executed.
Many said they still feared being punished for speaking out. That
despite the fact that they'd been invited by the village council to
speak on the subject, and the entire project soliciting their views had
been authorized by the regional government.
Philosopher Yevhen Sverstiuk believes that the time has come when
Ukrainians can cry over their painful experiences. They can process the
past by talking about the famine, identifying all the villages where
people died, naming all of the victims, and taking steps toward
closure.
After crying out their trauma, people should wipe their tears and get
to work, says Sverstiuk. Otherwise, they risk the danger of becoming
spiritual beggars. The world values the brave. By telling the truth,
and overcoming their fear, Ukrainians overcome their inferiority
complexes.
Writer Ivan Dziuba calls the famine a blow to Ukraine's future. And the
only way to fight back is to free oneself of this heavy burden of
genetic memory by revealing the entire truth.
The late American researcher James Mace began the process by defining
Ukraine as a post-genocidal society. Mace believed Ukraine would be
incapable of further development until the entire truth of the famine
was told.
That idea has been confirmed by the experiences of other nations that
suffered similar traumas, defeats, and the burden of penance. Society
returns to successful development through awareness, and acceptance of
its national memory and history.
The best that the current government in Kyiv can do to commemorate
those killed by famine is to create the conditions so that all
Ukrainians could feel certain and security. Little is required in order
to achieve this -- just respect for human rights, abiding by the rule
of law, and hard work.
NOTE: Iryna Shtogrin is a correspondent with RFE/RL's Ukrainian
Service. The views expressed in this commentary are the author's own
and do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[
return to index] [Action Ukraine
Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
========================================================