Information AboutHolodomor |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT HOLODOMOR | |
| famines in the soviet union | |
| history of the soviet union and soviet russia | |
| history of ukraine | |
| democides | |
| agriculture in the soviet union | |
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The Holodomor () was a famine on the territory of Soviet Ukraine in the years 1932 – 1933 . It was the largest national catastrophe of the Ukrainian Nation in modern history, with loss of human life in the range of millions (estimates vary); the famine was caused by the deliberate policies of the government of the Soviet Union . The famine in , numerous governments have officially recognized the Holodomor as such (see section '' Was The Holodomor Genocide? ''). The term Holodomor is derived from the Ukrainian expression ''moryty holodom'' (Морити голодом), which means "to inflict death by hunger". The fourth Saturday of November is the official day of commemoration of the Holodomor victims in Ukraine. CAUSES AND OUTCOMES While complex, it is possible to group the causes of the Holodomor. They have to be understood in the larger context of the social revolution 'from above' that took place in the Soviet Union at the time. In the early 1920s , when Soviet Russia needed to win the sympathy of other nations for the newly born communist state, Ukraine enjoyed a short period of revival of its national culture under the policy of Korenizatsiya . This was, however, ended and replaced with the a policy of effective Russification , as soon as the Soviet regime firmly took root, thereby causing significant social, cultural, and political conflict in the Ukrainian populated territories. Simultaneously, a policy of Collectivization of agriculture was introduced. Agriculture in Ukraine was affected more strongly by this than most other agricultural areas, as Ukraine has had a long tradition of individually owned farms, while most farms in Russia, for example, had been communal (not collective) property. Unexpectedly, from the Bolshevik point of view, Collectivization proved highly unpopular with the rural population. When collectivization was still voluntary, very few peasants joined collective farms. The regime therefore began to increasingly put pressure on peasants to join collective farms, and to speed up the process of collectivization, tens of thousands of officials were sent into the countryside in 1929–1930. At the same time, the "s' — allegedly well to do farmers who opposed the regime and withheld grain — and sending whole 'kulak' families into Concentration Camps and Siberia. In fact, most of the so-called 'kulaks' were no more well off than other peasants. Effectively, the term 'kulak' was applied to anybody resisting collectivization. It is estimated that around 2 million Ukrainians became victims of these repressions in 1929-1932. Collectivization proved to negatively affect agricultural output everywhere, but since Ukraine was the most productive area (over 50% of Imperial Russia n wheat originated from Ukraine in the beginning of 20th century), the effects here were particularly dramatic. Despite the decrease in agricultural output, Soviet authorities soon drastically increased Ukraine's crop production quotas (by 44% in 1932). The targets were unrealistic and many historians believe that this was intentional. On August 7 , 1932 , the Moscow government imposed death penalty in Ukraine for any theft of public property . The scope of this law was very wide, and included even the smallest appropriation of grain by peasants for personal use. As a result, hundreds of peasants were executed each month under the new law. Still, until October 25, Moscow received only 39% of the demanded grain supplies. When it became clear that the 1932 grain deliveries were not going to meet the expectations of the government, the decreased agricultural output was blamed on the " Kulak s", "nationalists", and " Petlura vites". A special commission headed by Vyacheslav Molotov was sent to Ukraine in order to execute the grain contingent. On November 9 , a secret decree urged Bolshevik police and repression forces to increase their "effectiveness". Molotov also ordered that if no grain remained in Ukrainian villages, all beets, potatoes, vegetables and any other food were to be confiscated. On December 6, a new regulation was issued that imposed the following sanctions on Ukrainian villages: ban on supply of any goods or food to the villages, requisition of any food or grain found on site, ban of any trade, and, lastly, the confiscation of all financial resources. Measures were undertaken to persecute upon the withholding or bargaining of grain. This was done frequently with the aid of 'shock brigades', which raided farms to collect grain. This was done regardless of whether the peasants retained enough grain to feed themselves, or whether they had enough seed left to plant the next harvest. These, combined with the ban on travel and armed quarantines by the NKVD troops along the borders of Ukraine, turned the Ukrainian countryside into a gigantic death camp. The famine mostly affected the rural population. In comparison to the previous Famine in the USSR during 1921–22, which was caused by Drought , and the next one in 1947 , the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine was caused not by Infrastructure breakdown, or War , but by deliberate political and administrative decisions (e.g., see {Link without Title} ). The result was disastrous. Within a few months, the Ukrainian countryside, one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world, was the scene of a general famine. The Soviet government denied initial reports of the famine, and prevented foreign journalists from traveling in the region. Some authors claim that "the Politburo and regional Party committees insisted that immediate and decisive action be taken in response to the famine such that 'conscientious farmers' not suffer, while district Party committees were instructed to supply every child with milk and decreed that those who failed to mobilize resources to feed the hungry or denied hospitalization to famine victims be prosecuted." The reality was different according to thousands of eyewitness accounts. The masses of children fleeing the countryside were arrested by the Soviet authorities and were deported to "collectors" and orphanages, where they soon died of malnutrition. Here is a typical description: "The government converted this building into a so-called "collector" for homeless children caught on the streets, and who, after sanitary inspection, were sent to orphanages. When leaving my home, I would often see how trucks would pull up there and the police would take out the filthy, bedraggled children who had been caught on the streets. A guard stood at the entrance and no one was permitted inside. During the winter of 1932-33, I often saw, five or six times, how in the early morning they took out of the building the bodies of half-naked children, covered them with filthy tarpaulins, and piled them onto trucks." {Link without Title} To further prevent the spread of information about the famine, travel from the Don, Ukraine, North Caucasus , and Kuban was forbidden by directives of January 22 1933 (signed by Molotov and Stalin) and of January 23 1933 (joint directive VKP(b) Central Committee and Sovnarkom ). The directives stated that the travels "for bread" from these areas were organized by enemies of the Soviet power with the purpose of agitation in northern areas of the USSR against kolkhozes. Therefore railway tickets were to be sold only by '' Ispolkom '' permits, and those who managed to travel northwards should be arrested. This travel ban aggravated the disaster. Meanwhile, Stalin was also centralizing political power over Ukraine. In January 1933, in response to CP(b)U complaints about the disastrous effects of forced collectivization, Stalin sent Pavel Postyshev to Ukraine as Second Secretary in Ukraine, along with thousands of Russian officials. Postyshev Purge d Ukrainian officials who opposed collectivization or had supported Ukrainization in the 1920s, although some survived, including Stanislav Kosior and Vlas Chubar . He took control over the collectivization effort, and organized the confiscation of grain. Seed grain stocks as a result of limited famine relief were low for the 1933 planting, but due to normalized climactic conditions for 1933, the 1932-33 harvest proved adequate to avoid famine. In the spring of 1933, grain requisitions were stepped up even more, since the supply of grain to the cities had become precariously low. At the same time, grain exports continued as well, albeit at lower levels. Exports were seen as necessary by the Soviet government to provide hard currency for continued industrialization. The population responded to the situation with intense political resistance. However, this resistance never became organized on a wide scale owing to the scattered, low-density nature of the Ukrainian rural population. Furthermore, the Soviet authorities responded harshly to signs of dissent, often breaking up and deporting whole communities. ESTIMATION OF THE LOSS OF LIFE By the end of 1933, between five and ten million people had starved to death or had otherwise died unnaturally in Russia and Ukraine. The exact number of the victims remains unknown; the Soviet Union long denied that the famine had ever existed, and the NKVD (and later KGB ) archives on the Holodomor period have never been fully disclosed. While the course of the events as well as their underlying reasons are still a matter of debate, even the official Soviet statistics show a decrease of roughly four million people in the population of Ukraine between 1927 and 1932. ( {Link without Title} ). Taking an estimate of natural population growth of one to two percent, the calculated loss of population in Ukraine was over ten million during these years. When considering this number, one must also take into account the numbers involved in migration (including Forced Resettlement ) and the Purges of 1933, factors difficult to quantify. The premeditation of the mass murder can also be judged from the official Soviet figures of grain exports. The USSR exported 1.70 million tons of grain in 1932 and 1.84 million tons in 1933 ( {Link without Title} ), almost a quarter of a ton in each year per each dead in the Holodomor. The Soviet authorities made sure to prevent the starving Ukrainians from traveling to areas where food was more available. It is estimated that about 81.3% of the victims were ethnic Ukrainians, 4.5% Russians, 1.4% Jews and 1.1% were Poles. Altogether, Ukraine lost 25-50% of its rural population. Since the peasantry constituted the foundation of the national identity of Ukraine, the tragedy deeply affected all the Ukrainian nation beyond recovery for many forthcoming years. ELIMINATION OF UKRAINIAN CULTURAL ELITE The artificial famine of 1932-33 fit well into the politics of assault on Ukrainian national culture. The events of 1932-33 in Ukraine were seen by the Soviet Communist leaders as an instrument against possible Ukrainian self-determination. At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party Of Ukraine , Moscow's plenipotentiary Postyshev declared that "1933 was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian nationalist counter-revolution." This "defeat" encompassed not just physical extermination of a significant portion of Ukrainian peasantry, but also virtual elimination of Ukrainian clergy, mass imprisonment and executions of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers and artists. By the end of 1930s, approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite had been "eliminated". Some, like Ukrainian writer Mykola Khvylovy , committed suicide. One of the leaders of the Ukrainian Bolsheviks, Mykola Skrypnyk, witnessing the results of his cooperation with Moscow, shot himself in the summer of 1933. The Communist Party of Ukraine, under the guidance of state officials like Kaganovich , Kosior , and Postyshev, boasted in early 1934 of the elimination of "counter-revolutionaries, nationalists, spies and class enemies". Whole academic organizations, such as the Bahaliy Institute of History and Culture, were shut down following the arrests. In the 1920s, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church had gained a significant following amongst the Ukrainian peasants. Mass arrests of the hierarchy and clergy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church culminated in the liquidation of the church in 1930. Thousands of priests were tortured, executed and sent to Labor Camps in Siberia and the Far North. WAS THE HOLODOMOR GENOCIDE? The inventor of the term "genocide", , Argentina , Australia , Canada , Estonia , Hungary , Lithuania , United States , and Vatican City . Still the Holodomor remains a politically charged topic. Most historians (including , but as Democide . --> |
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