Holodomor

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[[File:Refugees on train roof.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Refugees on a roof of a train in Ukrainian SSR during the famine period in the Soviet Union of 1932-1933]]
{{communism}}
{{denialismSide}}
{{cquote|The Soviet system never commemorated the Holocaust. One reason for this is that once you define and identify one genocide, you can recognize other genocidal crimes. The Soviet empire didn’t want us to learn our history. Decades of Soviet education and [[censorship]] ensured that even after the USSR collapsed, many in Lviv{{efn|Lviv is now part of Ukraine; it was formerly part of Poland.}} failed to realise the striking proximity of the Holocaust.|||Victoria Amelina<ref>[https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/nothing-bad-has-ever-happened-a-tale-of-two-genocides-the-holocaust-and-the-holodomor-1.4879627 Nothing bad has ever happened: a tale of two genocides, the Holocaust and the Holodomor] by Victoria Amelina (May 19 2022 - 06:03) ''The Irish Times''.</ref>}}
The '''Holodomor'''{{efn|Means '(Mass) death from starvation', from Ukrainian holod (голод) 'hunger, famine, starvation' and mor (мор) 'mass death'}}  (Ukrainian: Голодомор) was a massive man-made<ref>Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust pp xv By Miron Dolot Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 1985 ISBN 0-393-30416-7, ISBN 978-0-393-30416-9</ref> famine in the [[Ukraine|Ukrainian]] Soviet Socialist Republic, a constituent union [[republic]] of the [[Soviet Union]], that took the lives of between 2 and 10 million people from 1932-1933.<ref>[http://www.danskukrainsk.dk/16-28%20nov.%202003.htm#Ukraine%20issues%20joint%20declaration%20at%20UN Ukraine issues joint declaration at the UN in connection with the 70<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-1933], US-Ukraine Foundation</ref> In 2008, the [[European Union|European Parliament]] recognized the Holodomor as a [[crime against humanity]], citing the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.<ref>[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2008-0523+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN Resolution of 23 October 2008 on the commemoration of the Holodomor], European Parliament.</ref>

Some [[Tankies|groups]], such as the [[Swedish]] Communist Party,<ref name="SwedishReds">[http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.skp.se%2Flevande_historia%2Fukraina.htm&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0= "Crisis in Ukraine 1932-1933"] (Translated, clumsily, from Swedish.)</ref> [[Denialism|still deny]] that it ever happened. Some [[neo-Nazis]], like [[The Daily Stormer]] website, take the opposite route and refer to it as the [[Holocaust denial|Holocaust that actually ''did'' happen]]. However, other neo-Nazis, such as [[Richard Spencer]], deny that the Holodomor was a [[genocide]].<ref>Logan Yershov, [https://c4ss.org/content/49082 Understanding Richard Spencer’s Holodomor Denial.] Center for a Stateless Society, 18 May 2017.</ref> 

==Background==
After the [[October Revolution of 1917]] brought a [[communist]] [[government]] to power in [[Russia]], and the fighting of the [[Russian Civil War]] had stopped, [[Vladimir Lenin]] had a tough decision to make. During the Civil War he had followed a form of governance that introduced ''exciting'' new labor laws, such as the decree that anyone going out on [[strike]] would be shot, but this had been {{wpl|War_communism|rather bad for the economy.}}

Realizing the economic situation after the war was shit, Lenin introduced the {{wpl|New Economic Policy}} in which [[capitalism]] and private property was allowed on a small scale while the government kept control of the larger industries. Specifically, the farmers of the USSR, from the peasants working small holdings to the ''kulaks'' who held larger farms, were able to keep their farms running as usual.

In came [[Stalin]], who was a little less willing in that regard. He decided to scrap the New Economic Policy and forcibly collectivize the peasantry. This was in opposition to Lenin's thoughts on the matter, which encouraged ''voluntary'' collectivization, and was also opposed by the Left Opposition embodied by [[Trotsky]].<ref>"[https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-2/20.htm The NEP and World Revolution]" by Trotsky (1922)</ref>

==Famine==
Many Ukrainian peasants had owned their own land for some time.  The more successful peasants ended up purchasing more land, more than their families could farm alone, and hired others to help grow the food.  These peasants were known as the "Kulaks", and of course, as they were "exploiting" poorer workers, they were not exactly looked up to by Communists.

Stalin's zealous, forced collectivization efforts naturally led to disaster.  As part of "de-Kulakization", Soviet authorities not only seized much of the farmland for collectivization, but harshly penalized any of the Kulaks who grew too much food, and the term "Kulak" shifted from "wealthy peasant who hired workers" to "any peasant with land".  Many proletarian workers from the city who were inexperienced in dealing with agriculture were brought in to work the farms in place of the Kulaks. Note again that this was in opposition to Lenin's thoughts on the matter; he had encouraged ''voluntary'' collectivization as opposed to coerced collectivization of the rural peasantry. The resulting shortage of grain led to famine in the Ukraine, as well as other places in the USSR, but the Ukraine SSR was the most hard-hit by the disaster.

==Blunder or murder?==
Rather than the fact of the famine or the numbers who died, what is in serious dispute is whether it was the result of [[Ideology|ideologically]]-induced grand stupidity or [[genocide|genocidal]] design. As with an extreme [[Holocaust#Functionalism vs Intentionalism|functionalist]] view of the [[Holocaust]] or the {{wpl|Great Leap Forward||,}} the claim that the Soviet leaders were not responsible gives them a convenient "out" to deny responsibility.

It could be that Stalin just made an [[Hanlon's razor|economic blunder]]. But there have been some nastier motives suggested. Ukrainian [[nationalism]] was something of a subversive political force at that time, and some maintain that he cunningly engineered the entire famine to punish the intelligentsia.  The country remains to this day the "breadbasket of [[Europe]]" — historians are suspicious as to why the agricultural engine of the USSR was the hardest hit in the context of broader food shortages from the Caucasus region to Siberia.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20140111005721/http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center-study-genocide-conflict-resolution-and-human-rights/ukrainian-famine Ukrainian famine, 1932-1933], Rutgers University</ref> At any rate, even if it ''was'' an economic fuckup, it still makes the [[Great Depression]] look like a minor soft-landing in comparison. 

This is the view taken by the Ukrainian parliament, which has classified the Holodomor as a genocide. The [[United Nations]] declared their agreement with this in 2003, and the [[European Union]] followed in 2008.

A third, compromise point of view is that it '''was''' indeed genocide, but not an ethnic one (i.e. more akin to {{wpl|democide}}). Proponents of this school of thought point out that some other USSR regions were also affected by famine. In their view, Stalin engineered the disaster not to specifically target the Ukrainian nation, but rather to purge intelligentsia and peasantry in general (i.e. the most potentially dissident/conservative social groups).

The historian {{wpl|Robert Conquest||,}} an arch anti-communist who at one point was paid to produce anti-Soviet "counter [[propaganda]]" by the British Government, held the view that the famine was not intentionally inflicted by Stalin, but "with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put 'Soviet interest' other than feeding the starving first — thus consciously abetting it."<ref name="hunger">R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft, ''The Years Of Hunger.'' New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.</ref>{{rp|441 note 145}} He did not believe that the famine could properly be termed a genocide.<ref name="hunger" />{{rp|xvi note 12}}

According to the Canadian historian {{wpl|Robert Gellately}}, while the idea of an intentional mass murderer is indeed plausible, no documents have been found to substantiate the claim. What we do know for sure is that the policies pursued by the Soviet Union under Stalin during the 1930s proved to extremely inefficient and completely out of touch with reality, and terror failed to create economic incentives to expand the production.<ref>Gellately, Robert, 1943-. Stalin's curse : battling for communism in war and Cold War. Pp.-26-30. ISBN 978-0-19-966805-2. OCLC 956763659.</ref>

==Legacy==
The Holodomor is often regarded as Stalin and the Soviet’s very own Holocaust (and for good reason).

There is another parallel of the Holodomor with the Holocaust: widespread denial of the Holodomor among tankies and other Marxist-Leninists. Examples:

*The Soviet Union always denied the famine had ever taken place.<ref>[http://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/walking_tour.htm "In a train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung into the spittoon a crust of bread I had been eating from my own supply. The peasant, my fellow-passenger, fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw orange peel into the spittoon. The peasant again grabbed and devoured it. The Communist subsided."] - ''Manchester Guardian'', 1933</ref>
*Walter Duranty, of the ''[[New York Times]]'', wrote frantic denials of the event, [[Godwin's Law|denounced anyone who reported on it as a fascist]] and (simply because enough correspondents weren't there to challenge his record of the events) won a Pulitzer Prize. Today's ''Times'' editors still facepalm at the thing.<ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/2003/oct/25/entertainment/et-rutten25 Stalin's Pulitzer winner], ''Los Angeles Times''</ref>
*When in the latter months of 1933 Ukrainian-[[American]]s scheduled protests of the ongoing famine, the [[Communist Party USA|U.S. Communist Party]] sent out thugs to disrupt their marches in [[Chicago]] and [[New York]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20031018161502/http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/500_reds.htm 8,000 Ukrainians in New York City Protest Famine in Ukraine], ''The New York Times''</ref>
*[[Canadian]] [[trade union]] activist Douglas Tottle put forth a [[conspiracy theory]] claiming that [[Nazi Germany]] and people at the Hearst Corporation made up the entire story about the Holodomor.<ref>[http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/tottlefraud.pdf Tottle's book on the subject]</ref> His work inspired a number of other writers to say the same thing, and the Swedish Communists believe him.<ref name="SwedishReds"/>

A lot ''more'' communists denied the Holodomor before 1956, when Stalin's successor [[Nikita Khrushchev]] caused a mass exodus from communist parties all over the world by giving his {{wpl|On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences|"Secret Speech"|,}} essentially screaming in people's faces, "''Wake up and smell the corpses, Stalin was a liar!''"

In the mid-2000s, Ukraine wanted to make it illegal to deny the Holodomor, along with the Holocaust.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20140804160205/https://carnegieendowment.org/2014/07/28/crying-genocide-use-and-abuse-of-political-rhetoric-in-russia-and-ukraine Crying Genocide: Use of Political Rhetoric in Russia and Ukraine], Carnegie Endowment for International Peace</ref>

===As an excuse for antisemitism===
{{main|Antisemitism}}
{{cquote|So, my question to you is: Why have you never heard of {{wpl|Genrikh Yagoda|Yagoda?}} And why do you never hear about the Communist Holocaust, that killed twice the number of Russian and Ukrainian [[Christians]] than alleged number of Jewish victims [killed by Hitler]? Why don't you see pictures of the victims, and the pictures of their murderers? My new book, 
''The Mad Ravings of a Neo-Nazi''
 ''The Secret Behind Communism'' will answer those questions with documents, and the statements of leading Jews and Gentiles 
[[Quote mining|taken out of context and warped into my fantasy world]]
 during that period, and in modern times. It quotes leading Jewish authorities, boasting of the worldwide Jewish support for the Bolshevik revolution and for the Red Army against the [[Tsar]] and the people.|||[[David Duke]]. Notice use of the word "alleged". [[Dog whistle politics|The dog whistle is on a low frequency]] with this guy.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130731034610/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFpFCy_b2SM Israeli Media Reveals The Secret Behind Communism] by [[David Duke]], [[Youtube]].</ref>}}
Certain [[bigot]]s such as neo-Nazis and [[Holocaust deniers]] have accused [[Jews]] of deliberately not giving the Holodomor (as well as other genocides) enough attention in the [[media]] (as they [[International Jewish conspiracy|supposedly run it]]) in order to focus solely on the Holocaust.{{efn|Google Holocaust + Holodomor, you'll see.}} This didn't exactly come out of nowhere: Stalin had stacked the [[Secret police#Communist Russia and later|NKVD]] with Jews (consisting of over 30% of the force at its highest) to create a convenient [[scapegoat]] during the {{wpl|Great Purge||,}}<ref>[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/grappling-with-holodomor/282816/ Grappling With Holodomor], ''The Atlantic''</ref> and, [[blowback|inadvertently]], it seems to have been a factor (alongside e.g. other antisemitic canards and hatred of Polish people) as to why some Ukrainians later collaborated with the [[SS]] in [[World War II]] (which was pretty ironic since the Nazis were anti-Slavic).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WjoiVWGQ9HYC&pg=PT223 |title=The Third Reich at War: 1939-1945 |date=2009-03-19 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-1-101-02230-6 |pages=223 |language=en}}</ref>

This also overlooks the fact that unlike the Holodomor, the Holocaust had the benefit of the occupation of the Allies who made sure to scrupulously document, photograph, and [[Films|film]] as much of it as they could, as well as put as many perpetrators as they could find on the [[Nuremberg Trials]] (thus creating a lot more information to study). Plus, the Holodomor took place in Iron Curtain-esque secrecy (like [[Chernobyl]]) and it was nearly completely impossible for the [[West]] to see the true enormity of what was happening because of it, not to mention unlike the Nazis, the Soviets could hire [[journalist]]s and writers to cover up the Holodomor (as well as being on the winning side). Furthermore, it wasn't the only famine in the Soviet Union: a similar one occurred in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in the early 1930s and occurred as well among the kulaks. Kazakhstan considers this famine to also have been intentional, but it gets significantly less attention in the West 
because Ukrainians are white Europeans while Kazakhs are Turkic Asian
.

Furthermore, contrary to what David Duke and some neo-Nazis claim, the Holodomor was not Communist/Bolshevik Jews murdering White/Slavic/Russian/Ukrainian/European Christians—most of the leading architects of the Holodomor were not Jewish (with the exceptions of {{wpl|Lazar Kaganovich||}} and possibly {{wpl|Mendel Khateyvich}}). {{wpl|Grigory Petrovsky}} and {{wpl|Vlas Chubar}} were ethnic Ukrainians (also ironic, given that the Holodomor targeted Ukrainians), {{wpl|Pavel Postyshev}} and {{wpl|Vyacheslav Molotov}} were ethnic Russians, {{wpl|Stanislav Kosior}} was ethnic Polish, and of course the big man himself [[Joseph Stalin]] was of Georgian descent. All of these mentioned individuals would be charged for committing the Holodomor by a Ukrainian court in 2010.<ref>[https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/ukraine-politics/kyiv-court-accuses-stalin-leadership-of-organizing-56954.html Kyiv court accuses Stalin leadership of organizing famine]</ref><ref>[https://www.rferl.org/a/Yuschenko_Praises_Guilty_Verdict_Against_Soviet_Leaders_For_Famine/1929566.html Yuschenko Praises Guilty Verdict Against Soviet Leaders For Famine]</ref>

But who needs things like [[logic]] when you can just blame the Jews for everything?

==See also==
*[[Holocaust denial]]
*[[Great Bengal Famine of 1943]]
*[[Stalin apologetics]]
*[[Russian Civil War]]
==External links==
*[http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/russia-and-its-empires/alexander-babcock/ Holodomor – Famine in Ukraine, 1932-33], Boston University (List of essential Holodomor reading)
*[https://ukrainegenocide.com/resources/ More Holodomor resources]
*[https://youtu.be/7MG1-s9GyCM Conspiracy of Silence: a Holodomor Documentary made by the "Casual Historian"]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Crimes against humanity]]
[[Category:Denialism]]
[[Category:European history]]
[[Category:Genocide]]
[[Category:Genocide denial ]]
[[Category:History of communism]]
[[Category:Racism]]
[[Category:Russian history]]
[[Category:Ukraine]]

Categories: Crimes against humanity, Denialism, European history, Genocide, Genocide denial , History of communism, Racism, Russian history, Ukraine