Holodomor denial

Holodomor denial refers to the action of saying that the Holodomor did not happen, or was not as bad as it was. 



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  The Holodomor was a man-made famine caused by Joseph Stalin's policies, in which around 7,000,000 people died. Jurij Dobczansky, a senior Library of Congress cataloging specialist, said:


Examples

Since the 1930s, many Western scholars have denied the Holodomor for different reasons. The denial is typically associated with communist sympathies, which prevent them from recognizing Ukrainians as equal humans. Holodomor denial is considered racist and dehumanizing. 







Soviet Union

The Soviet Union's regime is said to have denied the Holodomor throughout its existence. Catherine Merridale, "The 1937 Census and the Limits of Stalinist Rule" Historical Journal 39, 1996.
 Boriak, Hennadii (Fall 2001). "The publication of sources on the history of the 1932-1933 famine-genocide: history, current state, and prospects". Harvard Ukrainian Studies 25 (3-4): 167–186.


  It is also said to have never commemorated the Holocaust.

Walter Duranty

In the 1930s, while millions of Ukrainians starved to death, a Moscow-based New York Times journalist named Walter Duranty wrote a series of articles denying the Holodomor and praising Stalin. The articles ironically won Duranty the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, which caused controversies in the following decades. In 2003, the New York Times and Pulitzer Prize board reviewed Duranty's articles separately, yet declined to withdraw his prize. 

Oksana Piaseckyj, a Ukrainian-American activist who fled to the United States as a child in 1950, referred to Walter Duranty as "the personification of evil in journalism." The controversy about Duranty is the biggest scandal in the history of the New York Times. 





Responses

Ukraine

Ukraine passed the  in 2006 to ban Holodomor denial. This law recognized Holodomor denial as an insult to the victims' memories and a humiliation of Ukrainians' dignity.

Germany

In November 2022, Germany recognized the Holodomor as a genocide. It also banned the approval, denial, and "gross trivialization" of genocides or war crimes. They added this law in the new paragraph 5 of section 130 of the German Penal Code ‒ the Strafgesetzbuch.

Related pages

 Holocaust denial
 Rwandan genocide denial
 Armenian genocide denial
 Cambodian genocide denial
 Soviet persecution of Poles during World War II

Footnotes

References

Category:Racism
Category:Academia
Category:Holodomor
Category:Genocide denial
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:Soviet crimes against humanity