Содержание

Ukraine – Freedom Frontier

Background of the Holodomor

Consequences of the Genocide

The struggle for the truth

Condemned crime

Ukraine – Freedom Frontier

Almost a century ago, the Bolsheviks could not secure their victory and retain power over the vast Russian Empire without controlling Ukraine, which used to be the resource base of the entire region. The Communists consolidated overwhelming forces to destroy the newly independent Ukrainian People’s Republic that emerged in 1918. Ukraine lost this battle, yet the fight for freedom continued. The sole fact that Ukrainian territories were not annexed and incorporated into Russia, but assembled as a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic demonstrated that the war exhausted both sides. However, this status quo was short-lived.

In late 1920s, Joseph Stalin became the supreme authority in the Kremlin and embarked on an ambitious program to build up a totalitarian state. The people across the Soviet Union were outraged, protesting and rioting against Stalin’s new policies. The revolutionary promise “Land to the farmers and factories to the workers” became a farce as the state prohibited even small private enterprises. Slavery was returned to the lands, revealing itself through the confiscation of property, inventory and restrictions on the freedom of movement. On the other hand, rural uprisings threatened Stalin’s plans. Over half of these protests took place in Ukraine. The Communist dictator designed a ruthless response, creating a man-made famine.

In 1922-1933, several million Ukrainians perished after being besieged by Soviet troops who confiscated not only bread, but anything edible from the Ukrainian households. In June of 1933 about 24 Ukrainians were dying every minute.

Stalin’s design went much farther than simply suppressing protest movements. Ukrainians had finally experienced the taste of freedom after centuries of Russian colonialism; hence their protests acquired not only economic dimension. The national liberation movement was not completely eliminated despite the Soviet occupation. Illustratively, even Ukrainian Communists lobbied their own programs of development that emphasized the sovereignty of Ukraine, which was so different from Moscow’s policies. Ukrainian cultural renaissance of the 1920s spread ideas of freedom even within the Soviet framework. Such a small island of relative free thinking on the western border of the Soviet Union was a chief obstacle toward a construction of a totalitarian society. The Bolsheviks’ plans of global dominance were doomed to fail without it. Those who envisaged a new world order could not tolerate any different vision of any individual, let alone a whole republic.

Ukraine was turned into a testing ground of the Soviet empire where the mechanics of occupation and totalitarian build-up were tried first. The Communists used these practices later in other states of Central and Eastern Europe conquered in the course of World War II.

The genocide by man-made famine led to irreversible demographic, cultural and mental casualties. Nevertheless, the fact that Stalin failed to bring all Ukrainians to submission prevented the dictator from changing the configuration of the whole free world at his personal whim. The Communists were exhausted after the World War II and waves of military struggle with insurgents in western Ukraine, as well as the rebellions in Gulag labour camps. They still managed to instal the puppet pro-Moscow governments in half of Europe, but there was no resources to conduct genocide similar to the Holodomor, or mass purges such as the Great Terror of 1937-1938.

Soviet dissidents, among which are Vasyl Stus and Yevhen Sverstyuk, told the world what was going on behind the Iron Curtain. These people were the few who averted complete loss of freedom in these lands.

They were not the first ones, nor the last ones. Even during the Holodomor, British journalists Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones wrote reports about atrocities of the man-made famine in Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians who escaped from the Soviet Union after World War II, tirelessly told the people in Europe, the United States, Australia, African and Asian states about the unknown genocide – the Holodomor. A plethora of brave historians, honest journalists and responsible politicians came to their aid. Ultimately, the Soviet Union was forced to acknowledge the fact of famine even before the Communist empire collapsed.

The truth, which could not be hidden despite information blockade and could not be killed despite millions of claimed lives, became a step toward freedom. It is likely that without it repressions, tortures, kidnappings and extreme oppression of the freedom of speech might have continued to this day.

Ukraine restored independence in 1991 and is still taking a twisted road toward democracy, overcoming the clampdowns on human rights, corruption and power abuse. However, Ukrainians remain a strong and reliable foothold of European freedom. Totalitarianism is gradually recovering further to the East. The war with it is all-embracing. It claimed a hundred of lives during the Euromaidan in Kyiv, and thousands of Ukrainians in a war with expansionist Russia.

Ukraine believes the world will not abandon the brave and committed people, it will not stay silent about Russian crimes against a free country. Our message to the world is freedom. We shall stand for it and defend it.

Volodymyr Viatrovych

Historian, Director of Ukrainian

Institute of National Remembrance

Background of the Holodomor

What?

Holodomor is a Ukrainian term meaning killing by starvation. This is the name given to the national catastrophe of 1932 - 1933, which claimed millions of lives. The famine did not emerge as a result of natural disasters such as drought or crop failure. This was part of a deliberate policy of the Communist regime aimed at physical elimination of the Ukrainians. According to the UN Convention on Genocide Prevention and Punishment of 1948, this policy was a crime against humanity.

Ukrainian State in 1919.

Why?

After the October Revolution of 1917, the Communists managed to seize power in most areas of the former Russian Empire. In particular, they occupied the newly independent Ukrainian People’s Republic after a brutal struggle that lasted for several years. The Communists secured control over Ukraine by making some concessions to the Ukrainian national movement in the area of culture, as well as set up a Communist puppet regime, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Ukrainians took advantage of this cultural autonomy. In the 1920s, Ukraine experienced a rapid development of European-focused modern culture; Ukrainians created a national education system based on the idea of Ukraine as an independent economic actor.

From the late 1920s, the Communist authorities consolidated their power and launched an offensive against the Ukrainian cultural uprising. Stalin embarked on a program of rapid industrialization. The paramount goal was to create a powerful military-industrial complex and technically equipped army so that the Communist state could dominate the international scene. Stalin eliminated any kind of opposition to his authority through a powerful repressive apparatus.

Although Ukraine enjoyed only a brief period of independence in 1917-1921, there was fierce resistance against Communism. There was a Ukraine-oriented educated elite as well as economically independent peasantry with strong national consciousness. The Stalinist regime perceived the Ukrainian question as an existential threat to the Soviet Union, opting for a horrifying tactic – death by starvation.

Mykola Khvylovy, a Ukrainian writer, came out with a slogan Away From Moscow! in the 1920s. In 1933, he committed suicide in protest against the Stalinist policies of oppression.

How?

The origins of the Holodomor were initiated by Moscow Communists led by Stalin back in the 1920s.

In January 1928, the Communists introduced compulsory grain procurements. The state took most (or even all) of grain harvests from farmers at much reduced prices. At the same time, the regime started a campaign against a class of wealthy peasants known as the kulaks. The so-called dekulakization envisaged confiscation of property, land and forceful eviction of peasants. Most of them had been deported to Siberia.

Over 352 thousand households were eliminated in Ukraine, terrorizing around 1.5 million people.

Expelling the kulaks from their houses in Donetsk region, early 1930s.

“On Sunday evening she gave birth to two girls. On Thursday, they were driven out of the house, and the babies were taken and thrown on snow. They said we had no right to take anything from the house. And she cries, the little one is standing beside her, and where should she put those two? Then she was told to take the pillows. So she brought the pillows out, they helped her do it. And they put the pillows on the snow, and she put the children. They said to their village council, there is no right to let anybody into the house”.

Eyewitness testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview SW73

In 1929 the Communists started a drive toward wholesale collectivization. Independent private farms were forced to unite in state collective farms also known as the kolkhoz. Members of collective farms were forbidden to benefit from the products of their work.

Forced collectivization caused mass protests and uprisings all over Soviet Ukraine. Throughout 1930 there were more than 4,000 mass anti-state demonstrations in Ukraine. According to historians, about 1.2 million peasants took part in protests. Resistance was brutally suppressed. By October 1931, 68% of farms and 72% of arable land had been collectivized and became state-owned.

Confiscation of livestock for a kolkhoz, Donetsk region, early 1930s.

“When I was arrested, they held me in prison for almost a year ... They claimed I was a member of the [anti-Communist] UVO (Ukrainian Military Organization), then the [anti-Communist] POV (Polish Military Organization). All because I taught at the Ukrainian Institute and the Polish one was nearby. Then they said that I was an officer. I said I could not be an officer, as my year of birth shows I was a young boy at the time”.

Eyewitness testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview LH 57

Collective and individual farms were devastated after grain procurements in 1931. In the spring of 1932, over 100 thousand Ukrainians died from starvation. Massive loss of life could have been avoided. It was crucial to reconsider excessive grain procurements, declare the famine-affected regions as areas of humanitarian disaster, and launch a large-scale relief program.

By contrast, the Communists tactic became even more ruthless that led to genocide.

July 1932 – Soviet authorities impose deliberately unrealistic plans for grain procurements on Ukrainian households.

KGB agents with confiscated grain, Kherson, 1932.

August 7, 1932 – The resolution on “protection of socialist property” is adopted. It acquired notoriety under a common name of the law of five spikelets because it was used to imprison people who collected as little as a handful of grain left after the entire harvest was counted.

“Two women went into the fields in the spring to pick up some blackened spikelets left under the snow. Those spikelets were blackened; they picked them up and then were stopped on their way and exiled to Siberia for 10 years”.

Testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview LH 36

October 1932 – Vyacheslav Molotov, Head of the Soviet government, arrived to Ukraine from Moscow with a special commission on grain procurement. His mission was to intensify repressions and increase grain expropriation from Ukrainian peasants.

November 18, 1932 - Fines are introduced in Ukraine. All food and cattle are confiscated from households that have “outstanding debts” because of unrealistic grain procurement plans.

“The ‘activists’ looked for bread. It was a Communist-organized team and all of them had sticks. They walked about the household, poked with a stick and stroke with a hammer, looking for hidden bread. Once they have found it, they immediately exile you for hiding the bread”.

Testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview LH52

In the same month, the Soviet authorities organized special teams to search and confiscate foodstuffs and cattle from private households. The campaign involved the entire personnel of police, security agencies and local members of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth.

A group of Communists with confiscated grain. Donetsk region, 1932.

“Over November and December 1932, they took all the grain, potatoes; everything, including beans and all that was in the attic like small dried pears, apples, and cherries”.

Eyewitness testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview LH63

A “blackboard regime” similar to the boards of infamy is introduced across Soviet Ukraine. If a village or a district were put on a blackboard, a militarized blockade was immediately introduced, which was often tantamount to a death sentence for its residents.

The confiscation of grain from peasants, Donetsk region, early 1930s.

Late November 1932 – Soviet security agencies designed a secret operation to neutralize anyone who might oppose bread requisitions. The operation covered 243 Ukrainian districts.

Early December, 1932 – The second stage of killing by starvation begins. The Communist regime accuses Ukrainians of sabotaging grain procurements and plotting an uprising. Senior Soviet functionaries, Lazar Kaganovich and Pavel Postyshev, arrive from Moscow to increase grain procurement.

A special squad led by the KGB searches for hidden reserves, Mykolayiv region, December 1932.

December 14, 1932 - The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of the People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union adopted a secret resolution “On grain procurement in Ukraine, North Caucasus and Western Region.” It allowed elimination of Ukrainian schools in the Russian Kuban region and mass persecution of Ukrainian intellectuals. The resolution, once again, confirms that the man-made famine focused on destroying Ukrainian national identity.

Late December 1932 – All grain stocks and even seeds were taken from Ukrainian villages.

“... These teams went to the collective farmers and individual owners; they took away everything they had. If they found a handful of millet, they would take it away. If they found a handful of pumpkins, they would take it away. And if there were cabbages, pickled beets, potatoes in cellars, they would take everything”.

Eyewitness testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview LH08

January 1, 1933 – the Central Committee of the Communist Party adopts a special resolution on applying the toughest repressions against anyone who does not hand over bread. Massive searches deprive farmers of the last remains of food, sealing their fate to slow death by starvation.

January 22, 1933 – Joseph Stalin issues a directive prohibiting farmers to flee the famine-stricken territories in Ukraine and Kuban to other areas of the Soviet Union. In the first six weeks of this directive over 186 thousand peasants were forcibly driven from their homes and doomed to die from starvation.

Streets of Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the spring 1933.

June 1933 – the death toll in Ukraine reached its climax. According to demographers, over 1 million people died from starvation  in June.

“Just as you leave Kharkiv where the Ukrainian border ends, people did not die from hunger at all. Our Ukrainians went there, and the KGB people were already waiting there, checking who you are and where from, and took people to Siberia. Alternatively, a fight would break out on the border because you are not allowed to cross it. You see, it seems we are living in one state but you are not allowed to leave”.

Eyewitness testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview SW10

August 1933 - the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party resolved to establish an All-Union Resettlement Committee in order to resettle collective farmers from Russia and Belarus to Ukrainian villages where everyone died from famine. By the end of 1933, over 100 thousand people were resettled.

“In Poltava region, near Kyiv, there were also villages, where everyone died; they have sent Russians to the place. They did not resettle Ukrainians from other places there, but real [ethnic] Russians”.

Eyewitness testimony to the United States Congressional Committee, interview SW01-SW02

A village in Kharkiv region in the summer 1933.

1933 – The Communist regime unleashed massive political repressions under of pretext of fighting against bourgeois Ukrainian nationalism. Their scope is commensurate with the scale of the Great Terror of 1937-1938. According to official data, over 124 thousand people were arrested in Ukraine in 1933, which is more than during political purges of 1938. Then the Communist Head of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Pavel Postyshev said that 1933 was “the year of when the nationalist counter-revolution was defeated.”

Consequences of the Genocide

These terrible crimes and the deliberate policy of hiding their consequences made it impossible to estimate the exact number of innocent people who died from famine in 1932-1933. Research of the Mykhailo Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences estimated that Ukraine lost 4.5 million people because of the Holodomor. Specifically, 3.9 million people died and 600 thousand babies died prematurely.

TOTAL DIRECT FAMINE LOSSES OF POPULATION PER 1,000 BY RAION IN UKRAINE FOR 1933 (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE GREAT FAMINE PROJECT OF HARVARD UKRAINIAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE)

The most chilling feature of the Holodmor was the high death rates among children. In many Ukrainian regions, around two thirds of children did not arrive to schools in September 1933.

A Ukrainian child in 1933.

The Communists turned hunger into a weapon to kill Ukrainians on a large scale. This crippled natural demographics for many decades as well as led to moral and psychological changes in public consciousness. Hunger undermined the traditional Ukrainian way of life.

As a result of the Holodomor, Ukrainian society became, and has largely remained, traumatized, like other post-genocide societies. Tens of millions of survivors went through unbearable suffering and could not completely recover from their experiences. Their resistance was broken, and the fear that famine can return remained for decades, resulting in a loss of confidence and initiative. Famine trauma passed from parents to their children on a conscious and subconscious level.

Outskirts of Kharkiv, summer 1933.

However, the Communist regime was unable to completely transform the Ukrainians into homo sovieticus. Ukrainians’ struggle for freedom continued long after the 1932-1933 tragedy and finally, on August 24, 1991 Ukraine declared independence. Over 90 percent of Ukrainians supported the decision.

The struggle for the truth

From 1933, Stalin’s regime established an elaborate system of hiding the truth about its crimes and suppressing any information about the real situation in Ukraine. However, some Western journalists broke through the Iron Curtain and revealed the true facts about the Communist crimes to the whole world.

In March 1933, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge travelled to Ukraine and published articles about what was happening in The Manchester Guardian.

Gareth Jones: “In each village I received the same information – namely that many were dying of the famine and that about four-fifths of the cattle and the horses had perished. One phrase was repeated until it had a sad monotony in my mind, and that was: “Vse Pukhli” (all are swollen, i.e. from Hunger), and one word was drummed into my memory by every talk. That word was “golod” – i.e., “hunger” or “famine”. Nor shall I forget the swollen stomachs of the children in the cottages in which I slept.” (The Manchester Guardian, May 8th 1933. The Peasants in Russia. Exhausted Supplies).

Moreover, a Welsh journalist Gareth Jones published his reports about the Holodomor for British, American and German readers.

Malcolm Muggeridge: “Hunger” was the word I heard most. Peasants begged for a lift on the train from one station to another, sometimes their bodies swollen up — a disagreeable sight — from lack of food”. (THE SOVIET AND THE PEASANTRY An Observer’s Notes. II. HUNGER IN THE UKRAINE. Wretched Cultivators).

On September 29, 1933 Johan Ludwig Mowinckel, Norwegian Prime Minister and President of the League of Nations, initiated discussions about famine in Soviet Ukraine at a meeting of the Council of the League of Nations. The Council submitted the issue to the International Committee of the Red Cross. But Moscow rejected the proposed aid to the starving people.

Johan Ludwig Mowinckel

In October 1933, Archbishop Theodor Innitzer of Vienna established a famine relief committee designed to provide aid to the people of Soviet Ukraine.

Archbishop Theodor Innitzer: “To remain silent any longer would be to render a civilized world increasingly responsible for the mass starvation.  It means that we would be guilty of allowing starvation, infanticide and cannibalism of men and women in the Soviet Union when other areas in the world eliminate their grain and food surpluses”.

In 1934, Ukrainian writer Ulas Samchuk wrote his novel Maria – the first work of fiction about the Holodomor in Ukraine.

Ulas Samchuk: “Maria is standing over her child and thinking: ‘You will die, my little one. There is too little bread for you in the whole world... Too little bread...’”

After World War II, the first reminiscences, memoirs and research on the Holodomor were published in Europe and North America. Ukrainians with first-hand experience of the Holodomor who emigrated to the West afterwards started to publish their research and collections of evidence. It was a collective work of survivors and Western, particularly American, scholars, public and political figures aimed to commemmorate the Holodomor victims.

In 1953, American lawyer Raphael Lemkin, author of the term genocide, described the Holodomor as a “classic example of genocide”.

Raphael Lemkin: “And yet, if the Soviet programme succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priests and the peasants can be eliminated, Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation rather than a mass of people”.

In 1963, Zhovtyi Knyaz [The Yellow Prince] written by Vasyl Barka was published in New York. Today, this novel is the most famous work of fiction about the 1932-1933 Terror-Famine.

Vasyl Barka: “In the village of Klenotochi people died, as elsewhere in Ukraine. Their bread and all kinds of food are taken away, while they are left to face inevitable death. The state acted as the people’s arch-nemesis; it used force against them and took away, among other things, the opportunity to earn a living. The situation is even worse than during the plague”.

Events dedicated to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor became decisive in preserving the memory of the tragedy. They took place in 1983, primarily in the United States and Canada, garnering international attention. At that time the first monument to the victims of the 1932-1933 Holodomor was erected in the Canadian city of Edmonton.

The Broken Circle of Life Monument in Edmonton. The inscription reads: “In memory of the millions who died of starvation genocide organized in Ukraine by the Soviet regime”.

In 1984, the United States Congress established the Commission on the Ukraine Famine consisting of two senators and four members of the House of Representatives. The American historian James E. Mace became the executive director of the Commission. Based on eyewitness testimonies and staff research, the Commission reached the following conclusion: “Joseph Stalin and his associates committed a genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933.” The U.S. Congress approved the Commission Report in 1988.

In 1993, James Mace moved to Ukraine. He said about himself: “I was chosen by your dead. You cannot study the Holocaust without becoming partly Jewish and one cannot study the history of the Holodomor without becoming at least partly Ukrainian.” Mace died on May 3, 2004.

In 1986, the American historian Robert Conquest published his book The Harvest of Sorrow, which drew attention of Western academic community and the general public to the Holodomor.

U.S. President George W. Bush awards Robert Conquest with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2005.

In 1988, the World Congress of Free Ukrainians established the International Commission of Jurists to investigate evidence of the 1932-1933 Holodomor, its origins, consequences and organizers. The Commission included highly qualified lawyers, experts in international and criminal law from Sweden, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Belgium, France, the United States and Canada. Commission members concluded that the 1932-1933 Holodomor was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation.

All these revelations eventually pressurized the Soviet Union into admitting the fact of the 1932 – 1933 Terror-Famine. In 1988 – 1989, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first memorials to the Holodomor victims were set up in Kyiv region and Kharkiv.

In November 2015, a monument commemorating 1932-1933 Holodomor victims was opened in Washington D.C.

Condemned crime

After restoring Ukraine’s independence in 1991, Ukrainian scholars took the opportunity to study the Holodomor. In 1993, the Holodomor anniversary was commemorated at the national level for the first time, 60 years after the tragedy.

In 1998, the Decree of the President of Ukraine established the Holodomor Victims Day. It is observed every year on the fourth Saturday of November. On this day, as soon as it gets dark, Ukrainians light candles in their windows in memory of all those killed by famine.

In 2003, on the 70th Holodomor anniversary the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in its Resolution recognized this crime as genocide against the Ukrainian people. The same year, the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress issued a Resolution recognizing the Holodomor in Ukraine as an act of terror and mass killing targeted against the Ukrainian nation.

In 2006, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted a law recognizing the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people. In November 2008, the National museum «Holodomor victims memorial» was erected in Kyiv.

In 2009, Ukraine’s Security Service opened a criminal case on the famine in Ukraine based on the presence of the characteristic features of genocide. In January 2010, the Kyiv Court of Appeals recognized the events of 1932-33 as an act of genocide organized by Joseph Stalin and his entourage.

In 2015 the Ukrainian Parliament adopted a special act which condemned the Communist totalitarian regime, together with the regime of the Nazis. By its next law, the Parliament has opened full access to the archival documents of the Soviet punitive authorities in order to ensure that the past, like the history of the Holodomor, would never become a subject to censorship and manipulations.

Today, academic debates on the Holodomor continue both in Ukraine and in the United States. The list of notable universities and scholars engaged in Holodomor Studies include the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies of Alberta University; Andrea Graziosi (Italy), Nicolas

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM «HOLODOMOR VICTIMS MEMORIAL» BECAME THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE SYMBOL OF THE MEMORY OF THE COMMUNIST GENOCIDE AGAINST THE UKRAINIANS.

Werth and Stephane Courtois (France), Roman Serbyn (Canada), Norman Naimark, Mark von Hagen, Timothy Snyder, Alexander Motyl and Bohdan Klid (USA).

In November 2015, a monument commemorating 1932-1933 Holodomor victims was opened in Washington D.C.