(UE). - There is no argument that the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 is one of the greatest atrocities ever faced by a nation, and thus it is a shame that the members of the general international community are unaware of this devastating, man-made famine that took the lives of millions of Ukrainians. Literally translated, “Holodomor” is a Ukrainian term meaning “murder by starvation.” During these years of the famine, every other nation of the Soviet Union experienced population growth while Ukraine lost millions of lives. This evidence most basically points to the policy of collectivization and the consequent famine as a maneuver of genocide against the Ukrainian nation as opposed to having been established for economic reasons. Today, the efforts to raise awareness of this tragic genocide against the Ukrainian nation are stronger than ever, and hopefully the entire international community will soon recognize the cruel injustice that was the Holodomor.
A brief examination of the history of the time preceding the famine is necessary in order to wholly understand the causes of the Holodomor. Before achieving independence in 1991, the Ukrainian people had always been under foreign rule. In the late nineteenth century, the Russian Empire dominated the Ukrainian territory – the breadbasket of Europe – with oppressive policies banning any educational or Ukrainian cultural expression. However, after noticing that these policies agitated the Ukrainian people even further rather than forced them into submission, the government lifted them. Ukrainian political parties soon emerged, “and the form in which Ukrainian political aspirations gained majority support during the revolution of 1917 was through the agrarian socialism of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries” (Mace, “Chapter Three” 79). After the Soviet regime took hold of Ukraine following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin imposed the New Economic Policy to end forced procurement by the state and open up the agricultural market in an effort to appease Ukrainians. With this also came a policy of indigenization to further gain favor with the nations under the regime. However, with the new political parties, the peasantry found a voice to stand up for itself. With this newly asserted sense of nationalism and strength in numbers, the peasants began to seek freedom and independence from their oppressors, deciding that they would no longer remain idle as the government continued to demand its right to procure a portion of their personally harvested crops.
When Joseph Stalin assumed command as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after Lenin passed away, he implemented a Marxist-friendly policy to force the collectivization of farms in order to increase the overall efficiency and productivity of farms. These collective farms were called kolkhozes and were completely owned by the government; the farmers themselves were not able to reap any fruits of their labor, and they received a pittance of a pay. From the establishment of kolkhozes, these farms were destined to fail – the majority of the farmers on the collectives were inexperienced youth. Additionally, the bitter, oppressed peasants held no stock in the collectives and therefore had no reason to properly attend to the livestock or maintain the equipment. According to foreign relations expert James Perloff, “This illustrated the conflict between Marxist ideology and the reality of human nature” (32). The inevitable happened – the kolkhozes were unsuccessful – and Stalin sought a scapegoat on which to blame this failure.
The Communist regime placed the blame for the failure of the kolkhozes on the few relatively wealthier peasants that had subverted collectivization, which the party labeled “kulaks.” Perloff claims that “In reality, however, Ukraine had never had a distinct social class of kulaks – this concept was a Marxist invention” (33). The Stalinist regime sought to liquidate this contrived social class, and “Ironically, this process killed off the most productive farmers, guaranteeing a smaller harvest and a more impoverished Soviet Union” (33). Stalin's disappointment in and frustration with the inefficiency and shortcomings of the collectives catalyzed his rage, and he ordered for the severe punishment of any peasants who allegedly let their efforts to maximize productivity slip. Peasants who were unjustly labeled kulaks or seemed to be slacking off were either executed, sent to remote slave labor camps in Russia, or assigned to local labor assignments. Joseph Stalin and his cronies essentially used the collectives and their impending failure as an indirect disguise for the vicious punishment of Ukrainian nationalists who opposed Russification and organized uprisings against the regime. Since the opening of the KGB archives, it has been confirmed that close to 300 major uprisings occurred in the southeastern provinces of Ukraine in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These protestors acted in spite of the Soviet Regime and its forced procurement. In response, the regime closed the borders to foreign aid, migration, and pursuit of food in other areas of the USSR.
By the summer of 1932, most of the kulaks had perished, but the remaining peasants managed to keep their spirits of resistance to communism and collectivization despite the fact that they were on the brink of a mass starvation. Stalin increased the total grain production quota by 44 percent, a goal that would definitely be impossible to attain, especially without the population's best farmers and the willing cooperation of the peasants. “That year, not a single village was able to meet the impossible quota, which far exceeded Ukraine's best output in the pre-collective years” (Perloff 34).
However, the collectives did reach and slightly exceeded the export quota, a component of of total grain production. As the collectives did not meet the production quotas because they exceeded the export quotas, the Stalinist regime sought to make up for this difference by confiscating all remaining grain reserves, resulting in their possession of 1,500,000 tons of grain in state reserves. “A million tons being sufficient to feed five million mouths during a whole year, the Soviet authorities had sufficient means to feed an additional fifteen million mouths, more than enough to prevent starvation during the worst years. Collective farms became the means by which the totalitarian regime gave itself control . . . and the weapon of food in its war on farmers” (Serbyn 6).
The pressure to increase the grain exports to foreign countries resulted in Stalin's order for the regime to confiscate all remaining grain reserves should the collectives fail to meet the declared productivity output quotas. The government considered any collective or household grain that peasants refused to surrender to be stolen state property, and the Communist Party of the USSR decreed that theft of “social property” was punishable by execution. “Thousands of peasants were shot for attempting to take a handful of grain or a few beets from the kolkhozes” (Perloff 35). At the famine's height, the daily death toll reached 25,000 people, and in 1933, the life expectancies for men and women hit an all time low of 7.3 years old and 10.8 years old, respectively.
Starvation drove the Ukrainian peasants insane. People turned to anything they could find that remotely resembled food – “weeds, leaves, tree bark, and insects. The luckiest were able to survive secretly on small woodland animals” (Perloff 35). While visiting Ukraine during the time of the famine, American journalist Thomas Walker noted:
About twenty miles south of Kiev (Kyiv), I came upon a village that was practically extinct by starvation. There had been fifteen houses in this village and a population of forty-odd persons. Every dog and cat had been eaten. The horses and oxen had all been appropriated by the Bolsheviks to stock the collective farms. In one hut they were cooking a mess that defied analysis. There were bones, big-weed, skin, and what looked like a boot top in this pot. The way the remaining half dozen inhabitants eagerly watched this slimy mess showed the state of their hunger (35).
The conditions the starving peasants faced were absolutely horrifying and unimaginable. Some even turned to cannibalism. The extent of the pain experienced by the Ukrainian people is indescribable and will forever haunt not only the few survivors still alive, but also every Ukrainian generation from then on forward.
“After millions of Ukrainians died in their own native land, the authorities resettled tens of thousands of families from Russia, Belarus, and other parts of the USSR to the depopulated lands of Soviet Ukraine. By the end of 1933 over 117,000 people were resettled in Ukraine, at a 105% fulfillment rate” (“Holodomor” 13). In addition to this tactic to cover up the huge population losses, the communist regime also altered official documents and produced propaganda to prevent word about the Holodomor from spreading. “On Stalin's orders, those who conducted the 1937 population census, which revealed a sharp decrease in the Ukrainian population as a result of the Holodomor, were shot, while the census results were suppressed” (11). The censorship and propaganda of the Stalinist regime proved to be relatively successful in suppressing publicity of the famine-genocide up until 2004. When President Yuschenko was inaugurated, he authorized the opening of the KGB archives which contained documented proof of the 259 uprisings against the Soviet regime. It was these uprisings that angered Stalin and triggered his violent genocidal campaign against the Ukrainian people.
As 7 to 10 million men, women, and children alike perished from starvation, the world kept silent. “The American government had ample and timely information about the Famine but failed to take any steps which might have ameliorated the situation. Instead, the Administration extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet government in November 1933, immediately after the famine” (Mace, Report viii). Today, the efforts to silence talk of the Holodomor are in the process of being counteracted. Although belated, the Commission on the Ukrainian Famine has recently exonerated the American government through its report to Congress. Contemporary, independent Ukraine still strives for international recognition of the tragedy its people endured, and there is no sign that people will give up their awareness-raising efforts anytime soon.
Works Cited
Mace, James E. "Chapter Three: Soviet Man-Made Famine in Ukraine." Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. Ed. Samuel Totten,William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. 78-112. Print.
Mace, Staff Director James E. Report to Congress: Commission on the Ukraine Famine. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1988. Print.
Perloff, James. "Holodomor: The Secret Holocaust." New American (08856540) 25.4 (2009): 31-37. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.
Holodomor: Ukrainian Genocide in the Early 1930s. Kyiv: Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, 2008. Print.
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