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In regards to these policies against the Ukrainian nationalist movement, Dolot believes the Kremlin committed genocide against the Ukrainian people. James Mace, a leading famine researcher from Harvard University, strongly advocates the genocide case, and asserts that the famine was a “final solution on the most pressing nationality problem in the Soviet Union… which constitutes an act of genocide.” 6 On the other hand, some historians do not conclude the famine was an act of genocide and question its national character. Professor of History at the West Virginia University, Mike Tauger and Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, Steven Wheatcroft, argue that the famine was not a result of a deliberate policy against the Ukrainians, by contending that starvation was due to misguided economic policies, to drought conditions, and to a much smaller harvest than originally believed. 7 Others, such as Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn are uncomfortable about using the word genocide to describe the famine since the intent of Stalin to destroy the Ukrainian nation is not apparent to them. They prefer to use the term mass extermination or one-sided mass killing. 8 Still others, such as Canadian trade union activist, Douglas Tottle, argue along traditional Communist lines, that reports of the famine and its impact on Ukraine have been exaggerated and are simply part of western propaganda campaigns directed against the Soviet Union. 9 However, with investigation, it is clear that the famine was artificial and politically motivated to break the Ukrainian people as a national force. The most convincing interpretation is that the culminating actions of the 1932-33 Ukrainian Famine- those actions against the peasantry, who were the army of Ukrainian nationalism and those actions against the political authorities and intelligentsia, who were the leaders of the nationalist movement- fulfill the United Nations criteria for genocide, in which Ukrainians are regarded as a national group. (See Appendix A).
The famine was predominantly an attack on the Ukrainian peasantry through economic means. The economic measures instituted by the Soviet government neatly fulfill the UN genocide definition. The Kremlin created living conditions impossible for life and new births in Ukraine, and these led to mass death by starvation of millions of Ukrainians. The process began with the government demand for a drastically larger amount of cereal from the republics, especially the fertile Ukrainian SSR. In 1930 Stalin raised the grain target in Ukraine by 115%, exacting 7.7 million tonnes of the 23.1 million total harvest. 10 In 1931 the 7.7 million quota remained the same, even though the total harvest fell to 18.3 million, of which 30-40% was lost in harvesting. Ukraine was only able to extract 7 million. Speaking in Edmonton at a recent seminar on the famine, historian Iurii Shapoval of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, observed that after the grain quota in Ukraine and the Kuban were raised, the peasants had less food left for themselves and 150,000 people perished. 11 This showed Stalin that it was possible to use food as a method of breaking the peasantry and teaching obedience to the state. By the spring of 1932 famine had already begun, and the harvest that year fell to 14.6 million tonnes with 40-50% of this lost during harvest. 4.7 million was procured. 12 The 1933 harvest would be even worse. When Stalin announced in July that the same 7.7 million tonne quota would again be imposed, it became “…obvious to the Ukrainian leaders that the proposed levels of requisition were not merely excessive, but quite impossible.” 13 There was much opposition from the Ukrainian Communist Party, who feared an impending catastrophe. 14 Although the quota was reduced to 6.6 million tonnes, this was “still far beyond the feasible” 15 and on October 22, 1932, a special commission headed by V. Molotov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, was created to implement the procurement policy in Ukraine and to ensure enforcement “with the utmost rigour.” 16 As Stalin expert Robert Conquest writes, “on Stalin’s insistence, a decree went out, which, if enforced, could only lead to starvation of the Ukrainian peasantry.” 17 The conditions that Stalin was beginning to inflict satisfy the UN genocide definition.
Payment of grain to the collective farmers was halted until the quota was met.
To enforce this new resolution or “robbery”, 24 112,000 Communist members, the majority non-Ukrainian, from different cities around the Soviet Union, were sent to rural Ukraine. 25 On December 6, 1932, a “Black List Decree” further targeted Ukrainian peasants deemed to be counter-revolutionary. (See Appendix B) This decree, creating a “hunger blockade” 26 affecting 86 regions of Ukraine, shows how bread was used as an instrument of starvation against the Ukrainian people. “This meant that the peasant population deprived of locally produced food supplies, had no chance whatsoever of obtaining such [basic] supplies as fish, sugar, salt, etc…” 27 If the above mentioned decrees were not enough to prevent the Ukrainian peasantry from obtaining food to feed themselves, other brutal measures were taken to assert Stalinist control of the Ukrainian countryside. For example, in the Communists’ exhaustive search for the practically non-existent hidden grain taken by so-called “saboteurs”, special brigades of lower rank and file activists, called Buksyr brigades (whom Conquest, describes as simply thugs 28), were created to probe the individual homes of the starving peasants in Ukraine, taking from them every last morsel of food. The brigades used iron crow-bars to probe the houses and barns in their entirety; floorboards, attics, gardens and straw piles, for example, where trampled and searched. 29 In 1931 small amounts of hidden grain were uncovered, but in 1932, there was nothing left to take. 30 Conquest’s description can be applied throughout Ukraine. While these brigades were being sent out to impoverished peasant homes, Party and state officials in the village had plenty to eat and did not suffer from the famine. 31 Moreover, the grain that was not exported or sent to the cities or the army, was held in “State reserves”. As Conquest explains, “These were for emergencies such as war: the famine itself was not a sufficient occasion for their release.” 32 Although food was close at hand, the starving were denied. The surplus grain even rotted, unused as state property, guarded away from the people. 33 As Wasyl Hryshko puts it, “That everything was being done to kill the peasants with famine is indicated by the Draconian laws that were issued then by the Soviet government, laws whose aim was to kill as many peasants as possible.” 34 The final policy that crushed any hope of the Ukrainian peasants escaping these conditions, was the Passportization System established on December 27, 1932 by the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and the Council of Peoples’ Commissars. 35 The re-introduction of the internal passport prevented the starving peasants from leaving their villages to search for food either in the cities or beyond the Ukrainian border, to Russia or Belarus. 36 This effectively tied peasantry to the land, condemning them to death by starvation.
In this way, the UN genocide definition, actions “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” 45 applies to the Ukrainian Famine. Those such as Tauger and Wheatcroft, who attribute the starvation of the Ukrainian people to ecological factors such as drought and poor harvest, have failed to take into account the sheer brutality of the enforcement policies implemented by the government that could only lead to conditions impossible to life for the peasantry. Further, the US Commission on the famine and other historians, have found the claim of drought to be false; 46 and Stalin himself asserted on January 11, 1933 that the grain procurement problems of 1932 were “by no means due to the bad state of harvest.” 47 Furthermore, such historians as Tauger, Wheatcroft, Jonassohn, Chalk and Tottle, who do not recognize Stalin’s intent during the famine, fail to acknowledge the simultaneous destruction of the educated Ukrainian class.
In addition to the genocidal qualities of the economic actions directed against the Ukrainian peasantry, Stalin’s genocidal intent can be seen through the political actions in Ukraine. A recently discovered private letter that Stalin sent to Kaganovich on September 11, 1932, indicated that he had every intent of targeting Ukraine and her people. He aimed to crush his opposition, the resistant peasantry, as well as the patriotic and deviating Ukrainian leadership, in order to secure the fertile and resource rich republic solidly under the grasp of the Soviet Union.
In reviewing the evidence, it can be determined that to reassert his control in fertile Ukraine, Josef Stalin went after both the Ukrainian farmers, and the intellectual and political leaders. It is evident that the combination of brutal economic policies directed at the Ukrainian peasantry, the bulwark of nationalism, and the political measures aimed at the educated and political Ukrainian class, the leaders of the nationalist movement, confirm that the 1932-33 Ukrainian Famine was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people as a national group in the Soviet Union. Under Stalin’s leadership, conditions impossible to life and birth were created in Ukraine and up to ten million Ukrainians were killed. The terms “mass extermination” and “one-sided mass killing” do not do justice to the Ukrainian Famine, for this event clearly fits the United Nations definition of genocide. The Russian government did not officially acknowledge that the famine took place, until near the collapse of the USSR, when President Mikhail Gorbachev finally admitted its existence in 1987. Since then, with the slow release of Soviet documents, the historical debate of the famine has changed to the question of its genocidal nature. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Ukrainian Famine was indeed genocide, with recently opening Soviet Archives yielding new evidence, such as Stalin’s letter to Kaganovich. On the 70 th anniversary of this great famine, the international community has become increasingly aware of the Ukrainian Famine and is beginning to acknowledge it as genocide. At the United Nations, on November 10, 2003, Ukraine issued a joint declaration with twenty-six other countries, recognizing the Holodomor, which means murder by hunger. Further, the Ukrainian government has officially recognized the Ukrainian Famine as genocide, along with Canada and Australia, while the United States government is in the same process. Although the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 remains a complex event, it has become increasingly clear for scholars and the international community alike, that not only was this a man-made famine, but also an act of genocide.
From: The Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Relations. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990, 328.
1. The immediate closing of state and cooperative stores, and the removal of all goods in them from the village.
2. A complete ban on all trade (including trade in essential commodities such as bread) by collective farms, collective farmers and individual farmers.
4. A thoroughgoing purge of local collective farm, cooperative, and state apparatuses.
From: Mace, James E. “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine.” Problems of Communism 33, no. 3 (May-June 1984): 45.
James E. Mace, “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine,” Problems of Communism 33, no. 3 (May-June 1984): 37.
For a good source of Ukrainian history, see Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, rev. ed, Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1994.
Miron Dolot, Who Killed Them and Why? In remembrance of those killed in the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1984), 12.
See Mark B. Tauger, “The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933,” Slavic Review 50 (Spring 1991):170-189, and R. W. Davies, M. B. Tauger, and S. G. Wheatcroft, “Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933,” Slavic Review 54 (Fall 1995): 642-657, and Mark B. Tauger, “Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1506, June 2001.
See Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, “Conceptualizations of Genocide and Ethnocide,” in Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933, eds. Roman Serbyn, and Bohdan Krawchenko, Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1986.
See Douglas Tottle, Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard, Toronto: Progress Books, 1987.
These and the following figures are cited in V. Holubnychy, “Collectivization,” Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1984 ed.
Iurii Shapoval, “The Ukrainian SSR’s Political Leadership and the Kremlin: Co-authors of the 1932-33 Famine,” Lecture, The Ukrainian Youth Unity Centre, Edmonton, 16 November 2003.
Wasyl Hryshko, The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933 (Toronto: Bahriany Foundation; Suzhero; Dobrus, 1983), 84.
Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (Edmonton: University of Alberta-Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1987), 222.
David Marples, Motherland: Russia in the Twentieth Century (Great Britain: Pearson Education Limited, 2002), 108.
S.O. Pidhainy, et al., Black Deeds of the Kremlin A White Book, vol.2, The Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932- 1933 (Detroit: DOBRUS Democratic Organization of Ukrainians Formerly Persecuted by the Soviet Regime in U.S.A., 1955), 453.
Simon Hartfree, “The Tragedy of Collectivization: Was collectivization an economic necessity or an act of brutality designed to break the peasantry?”, Modern History Review 9, no.4 (April, 1998): 29.
See J.V. Stalin, “Work in the Countryside: Speech Delivered on January 11, 1933,” in J. Stalin: Works, vol. 13, July 1930- January 1934, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955.
Commission on the Ukrainain Famine, Report to Congress: Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933 (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1988), ix.
Yar Slavutych, interview by Christina Maslo, tape recording, Edmonton, Alberta, 21 November 2003.
Michael Mischenko, “Hunger as a Method of Terror and Rule in the Soviet Union,” Ukrainian Quarterly 5, no. 2 (Summer 1949): 225.
Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Relations (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990), 328.
Commission on the Ukrainain Famine, x. Also see Miron Dolot, Who Killed Them and Why? In remembrance of those killed in the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1984, and Anna Bolubash, “The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933: An Instrument of Russian Nationalities Policy,” Ukrainian Review (London, England) 26, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 11-23, and continued in 27, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 31-59.
From Valerii Vasyli’iev, and Iurii Shapoval, eds., Komandyry velykoho holodu: Poyizku V. Molotova i L. Kahanovycha v Ukrayinu ta na Pivnichnyi Kavkaz, 1932-1933 r [Commanders of the great famine: V. Molotov’s and L. Kaganovich’s Trips to Ukraine and the North Caucasus during the Years 1932-1933], Kyiv: Geneza, 2001, as cited by Mace, James E. “Is the Ukrainian Genocide a Myth?” In Canadian-American Slavic Studies: Special Issue: Holodomor-The Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933 37, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 47-48.
Anna Bolubash, “The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933: An Instrument of Russian Nationalities Policy,” Ukrainian Review (London, England) 27, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 43.
Hryhory Kostiuk, Stalinist Rule in the Ukraine: A Study of the Decade of Mass Terror (1929-1939) ( Munich, Germany: Institute for the Study of the USSR, 1960), 41.
K. Hohol, and B. Krawchenko, “Postyshev, Pavel,” Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1984 ed., 167.
Markus, V., “Famine,” Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1984 ed., 854.
Mace, “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine,” 48.
Dzyuba, I., “Russification,” Encyclopedia of Ukraine, 1993 ed., 471.
Mace, “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine,” 49.
Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Relations, 328.
Mace, “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine,” 40.
James E. Mace, “The Man-Made Famine of 1933 in Soviet Ukraine,” in Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933, eds. Roman Serbyn, and Bohdan Krawchenko (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1986): 10.
See Peter Borisow, “1933. Genocide. Ten Million. Holodomor,” (Foreword), Canadian-American Slavic Studies: Special Issue: Holodomor-The Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933 37, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 1-6.
Bolubash, Anna. “The Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933: An Instrument of Russian Nationalities Policy.” Ukrainian Review (London, England) 26, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 11-23, and continued in 27, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 31-59.
Borisow, Peter. “1933. Genocide. Ten Million. Holodomor.” (Foreword). Canadian-American Slavic Studies: Special Issue: Holodomor-The Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933 37, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 1-6.
Carynnyk, Marco, Lucuik, Lubomyr Y., and Kordan, Bohdan S., eds. The Foreign Office and the Famine: British Documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932-1933. Kingston, Ont.: Limestone Press, 1988.
Chalk, Frank and Jonassohn, Kurt. “Conceptualizations of Genocide and Ethnocide.” In Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933, eds. Serbyn, Roman and Krawchenko, Bohdan. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1986.
Commission on the Ukrainain Famine. Report to Congress: Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine 1932-1933. Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1988.
Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Edmonton: University of Alberta-Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1987.
Davies, R. W., Tauger, M. B., and Wheatcroft, S.G. “Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933.” Slavic Review 54, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 642-657.
Dmytryshyn, Basil. Moscow and the Ukraine. New York: Bookman Associates, 1956.
Dolot, Miron. Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. Markham, Ont.: Penguin Books Canada, 1985.
Dolot, Miron. Who Killed Them and Why? In remembrance of those killed in the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1984.
Duranty, Walter. “Russians Hungry But Not Starving.” New York Times, 31 March 1933, 13.
Dzyuba, I. “Russification.” Encyclopedia of Ukraine. 1993 ed.
Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Relations. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990.
Hartfree, Simon, “The Tragedy of Collectivization: Was collectivization an economic necessity or an act of brutality designed to break the peasantry?” Modern History Review 9, no.4 (April 1998): 27-29.
Hohol, K., and Krawchenko, B. “Postyshev, Pavel.” Encyclopedia of Ukraine. 1984 ed.
Holubnychy, V. “Collectivization.” Encyclopedia of Ukraine. 1984 ed.
Hryshko, Wasyl. The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933. Toronto: Bahriany Foundation; Suzhero; Dobrus, 1983.
Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1970.
Kostiuk, Hryhory. Stalinist Rule in the Ukraine: A Study of the Decade of Mass Terror (1929-1939). Munich, Germany: Institute for the Study of the USSR, 1960.
Kuz, Tony, ed. The Soviet Famine 1932-33: An Eyewitness Account of Conditions in the Spring and Summer of 1932 by Andrew Cairns. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1989.
Mace, James E. Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983.
Mace, James E. “Famine and Nationalism in Soviet Ukraine.” Problems of Communism 33, no. 3 (May-June 1984): 37-50.
Mace, James E. “Is the Ukrainian Genocide a Myth?” Canadian-American Slavic Studies: Special Issue: Holodomor-The Ukrainian Genocide 1932-1933 37, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 45-52.
Mace, James E. “The Man-Made Famine of 1933 in Soviet Ukraine.” In Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933, eds. Serbyn, Roman and Krawchenko, Bohdan. Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1986.
Markus, V. “Famine.” Encyclopedia of Ukraine. 1984 ed.
Marples, David. Motherland: Russia in the Twentieth Century. Great Britain: Pearson Education Limited, 2002.
Mischenko, Michael. “Hunger as a Method of Terror and Rule in the Soviet Union.” Ukrainian Quarterly 5, no. 2 (Summer 1949): 219-225.
Muggeridge, Malcolm. “The Soviet War on the Peasants.” Fortnightly Review (London), 1 May 1933, 18-26.
Testimonies. Translated by Alexander Orelersky (Gregorovich) and Olga Prychodko. Toronto: Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, 1953.
Pidhainy, S.O., et al. Black Deeds of the Kremlin A White Book.Vol.2, The Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932- 1933. Detroit: DOBRUS Democratic Organization of Ukrainians Formerly Persecuted by the Soviet Regime in U.S.A., 1955.
Stalin, J.V. “Work in the Countryside: Speech Delivered on January 11, 1933.” In J. Stalin: Works. Vol. 13, July 1930- January 1934. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955.
Subtelny, Orest. Ukraine: A History. Rev. ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1994.
Tauger Mark B. “Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1933.” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1506, June 2001.
Tauger, Mark B. “The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933.” Slavic Review 50 (Spring 1991):170-189.
Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard. Toronto: Progress Books, 1987.
Vasyli’iev, Valerii and Shapoval, Iurii, eds. Komandyry velykoho holodu: Poyizku V. Molotova i L. Kahanovycha v Ukrayinu ta na Pivnichnyi Kavkaz, 1932-1933 r. [Commanders of the great famine: V. Molotov’s and L. Kaganovich’s Trips to Ukraine and the North Caucasus during the Years 1932-1933]. Kyiv: Geneza, 2001.

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