[C.J. Griffin]

Ukraine Marks 73rd Anniversary of Famine

By MARA D. BELLABY
The Associated Press
Saturday, November 25, 2006; 4:24 PM

KIEV, Ukraine -- Holding candles and standing silent, thousands massed on a fog-shrouded square Saturday to mourn 10 million Ukrainians killed by a famine orchestrated by Soviet leader Josef Stalin _ an ordeal many insisted must be recognized as genocide.

Some 33,000 people died every day during the 1932-33 famine, wiping out a third of Ukraine's population in a calamity known here as Holodomor _ Death by Hunger. Cases of cannibalism were widespread as desperation deepened. Those who resisted were shot or sent to Siberia.


Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, left, is seen during a commemorative ceremony dedicated to the victims of the Soviet-era famine in the village of Sehiyvka, in the Chernihivsky region of Ukraine, Friday, Nov. 24, 2006. On Saturday Ukraine will mark the 73rd anniversary of the Great Famine, a tragedy orchestrated by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that continues to haunt and divide the nation of 47 million. Yushchenko wants the deaths of an estimated 10 million recognized as genocide, but Russia has warned Kiev against taking that step. (AP Photo/Presidential Press Service, Mykola Lazarenko, Pool) (Mykola Lazarenko - AP)

"I do not ask _ I demand that the Ukrainian parliament recognize Holodomor as genocide," President Viktor Yushchenko told the crowd on Mykhaylivska Square in a short address followed by a minute of silence and the tolling of bells.

Stalin provoked the famine to coerce peasants into giving up their private farms and joining agriculture collectives being formed across the Soviet Union.

Villages were ordered to provide the state with set amounts of grain, but the demands typically exceeded crop yields. As village after village failed to meet their quotas, officials seized all food and residents were barred from leaving _ condemning them to starve.

Farmers in Ukraine, which was the breadbasket of the U.S.S.R., fiercely resisted and bore the brunt of the man-made disaster.

Russia's government has warned the leaders of this former Soviet republic against using the term genocide, saying the event should not be "politicized." Some Ukrainian lawmakers agreed, proposing it be termed a "tragedy" instead.

The Kremlin argues Stalin's campaign did not specifically target Ukrainians and also affected Russians and Kazakhs. But historians say the overwhelming majority of victims were Ukrainian, and the famine coincided with Stalin's effort to crush growing Ukrainian nationalism.

Yushchenko appealed to Russia to "stand by our side" and recognize the mass starvation as genocide. "With this high example, demonstrate the human empathy that is inherent to the Russian people," he said.

"How can it be called anything but genocide," said Kateryna Kryvenko, 78, who recalled crying at the feet of Soviet officials as they ransacked her family's village home, carting off what little food her family had managed to hide under a floorboard. She said authorities took everything, and her father and three brothers and sisters died.

During the Soviet era, the mass starvation was a closely guarded state secret, but information trickled out over the years.

Ten nations, including the United States, recognize the famine as genocide, a crime under international law defined as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group.

Ukraine's parliament speaker, Oleksandr Moroz, said Saturday that he supports recognizing the mass starvation as genocide and said the president's bill calling for that designation would come before parliament this week.

Some lawmakers from Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's Russia-leaning Party of Regions suggested adopting a more moderate term, but party member Taras Chornovil predicted the president's version would pass.

Yanukovych joined Yushchenko in Saturday's commemoration, which included a silent procession by people carrying white banners representing every Ukrainian region. Black ribbons hung from the banners.

"The tragedy is of such a scale that it is hard to even imagine," said Oksana Yatsyuk, 18.

Source

[Minsk]

It is rather difficulat to imagine. Stalin I guess could find no other way to bring the Ukrainian farmers under control. I think he could have at least tried a little harder.

[Lost Angel]

Yeah, Soviets messed things up horribly there.

[Kiroff]

Someone help me translate this.

"V.Yuschenko participated in the mourning procession over victims of Golodomor" or something.

But hey, the grain was sold overseas to buy heavy machinery for factories.

What would you do in Stalin's place?

[Lost Angel]

Someone help me translate this.

It is as you translated - he went over (in the meaning of stepped on them) victims, according to the quote.

But hey, the grain was sold overseas to buy heavy machinery for factories.

I'd rather not be in the starvation zone even knowing that there is a factory built somewhere with my life worth food.

What would you do in Stalin's place?

Panem et circenses.

[Kiroff]

I'd rather not be in the starvation zone even knowing that there is a factory built somewhere with my life worth food.

So you would rather be annihilated several years later?

It's a different mentality there. Even people who were sent to GULags knew that it was for the greater good of the nation. The USSR was behind what - 50, 100 years? Everything that was developed was stolen or destroyed in the civil war. That's why the first five-year plans were made alongside with statistical comparisons of 1913 - the highest point of the Russian Empire's development.

That and the refusal of the kulaks to collaborate(they killed half of the USSR's horses and cattle and 2/3 of the sheep and goats in protest of collectivisation) demanded a very strict measure.

Panem et circenses.

Elaborate.

[Lost Angel]

So you would rather be annihilated several years later?

I'd rather not be dead even if it'd mean living in a suckier/other country.

That and the refusal of the kulaks to collaborate(they killed half of the USSR's horses and cattle and 2/3 of the sheep and goats in protest of collectivisation) demanded a very strict measure.

you mean their own horses and sheep probably? They could have simply gone for the market economy.

[Kiroff]

I'd rather not be dead even if it'd mean living in a suckier/other country.

Or dying in concentration camps/slave plantations...

you mean their own horses and sheep probably? They could have simply gone for the market economy.

What soes this have to do with collectivization?

[Lost Angel]

Or dying in concentration camps/slave plantations...

For what reason would I have been there?

What soes this have to do with collectivization?

I am implying collectivization was a shitty idea to begin with, which led to the owners destroying their property and getting killed instead of producing the goods which the country required.

[kami321]

So you would rather be annihilated several years later?

I don't think we are entitled to make this kind of far-reaching assumptions. At the very least we have to admit that other countries have been able to achieve even more rapid development with way fewer human casualties, in the countries where collectivization wasn't part of the development programme, yet somehow Stalin though that mandatory collectivization was an absolute must for progress, and here are the results. Agricultural production was so damaged by this that the total agricultural output did not return to pre-collectivization levels until sometime in 1960s.

[Maxim Litvinov]

But hey, the grain was sold overseas to buy heavy machinery for factories.

This is oversimplifying it a bit. The only way that the Soviet Union could develop its economy quickly was through use of modern equipment and their technology was fifty years behind the times in 1923. To buy modern equipment and expertise, foreign currency was needed - which meant that something needed to be sold to foreign governments. For the Soviet Union, the obvious thing to sell was grain, seeing as they had no great manufactured goods to offload (which was part of the problem in the first place).

So the USSR had some long-running contracts with Western governments - particularly the UK - to provide a certain amount of grain per year in exchange for cash. If they defaulted on these contracts then they would be up for massive loss of income/assets/support, which couldn't be afforded. It's clear from internal British telegrams that the British were well and truly wanting to enforce the contract, and the USSR complied - though the last shipments, from memory, occurred before the 'famine' set in at a time where the USSR did not foresee such an agricultural crisis on the doorstep. The fact that such a crisis was not foreseen can be to a large part explained by poor channels of reliable communication between countryside and Central Committee, together with a natural suspicion of the peasantry that had grown up in the late 1920s especially.

At the very least we have to admit that other countries have been able to achieve even more rapid industrializations with much fewer human casualties.

Have they? In terms of the rapid growth rate in the heavy industry sector and the lack of international support, I can't think of 'other countries' who did better. As for casualties - well, this was to *some* extent a necessary problem of forced collectivization, but to a greater extent unnecessary repression and adverse climactic conditions caused deaths throughout the Soviet Union - not some 'Ukrainian genocide'.

[kami321]

In terms of the rapid growth rate in the heavy industry sector and the lack of international support

If by "lack of international support" here you mean trade, well as far as I can remember the Entente states already lifted the blockade of and established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union by mid 1920s so I don't see much of a problem there. The Soviet Union could trade with Entente states as well as Germany, for instance, but it was Stalin's idea to make Soviet Union completely self-sufficient for "socialism in one country".

[Maxim Litvinov]

The "lack of international support" part is probably most important here, but as far as I can remember the Entente states already lifted the blockade of and established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union by 1930s so I don't see much of a problem there

I can't remember when the USSR was diplomatically recognised in France, but with the Ramsay Macdonald government and Rapallo she certainly had 'links' with the West. These links were not of the nature of investment in developing economies now, nor of the nature of pouring money into economies for ideological reasons - like post-war Japan or Germany - though.

I don't know what countries you're saying had more rapid growth, but I simply suspected that in many if not all cases this growth was in part a result of the sort of outside investment that wasn't about to happen in the 1930s Soviet Union: and not just because of 'Socialism in One Country'.

[kami321]

China had years of very rapid development, and so did Japan. Other states had as well, mostly during their transition to market economies. I'm not sure if it is appropriate to say that they had "foreign support". Foreign investment, perhaps somewhat. But Soviet Union had that too actually - the American foreign aid during the depression being the primary example, although that came already after the famine years.

[Maxim Litvinov]

China when? China these days has a whole lot of foreign direct investment and millions of workers who are very much producing manufactured goods for the world economies... And Japan - well, that was one of the countries I wanted to 'rule out' because of the assistance it got from the West: although it also had a very different social structure and set of demographics to Russia anyway...

[kami321]

You are right about the lack of foreign investment in USSR. Still, do you thing compulsory collectivization was an absolute must?

[Maxim Litvinov]

Not at all. I think it was a shitty idea. I certainly don't think the policy direction or even institutions of the USSR were great - I just want to suggest that in terms of development of heavy industry, they were effective.

[alyster]

OMG Jacob are you seriously trying to tell us that the number was 1,5 million?!?? Registred deaths!?!? Best part of stalinism is that they didn't keep up their paper work, so the numbers you bring out are absurd.
"The Harvest of Sorrow" gives the number somewhere between 7-15 million. 7-9 million were starved and rest died in some other sort of a way linked to goverment action. The number is gained by looking at Ukrainian population figure at different years in the first half of 1930s.

What would you do in Stalin's place?

I wouldn't have the army surround the cities, railways, take away the food from farmers etc


Too bad you don't speak estonian or I would give you an essey to read by Ardo Aasmäe, who writes about the class strugel as it was like nazi idea of race struggel. Holodomor was a huge part of the class struggel in Ukrain, which like Stalin said to Churchill: had to be done.

[Maxim Litvinov]

The Harvest of Sorrow is just plain outdated. 1.5 million or so deaths in Ukraine plus another 1.5 million deaths in other areas of the USSR is more accurate.

[alyster]

So in next five years the number is going to shrink to 1,2million?
And when Putin gets bored then it's the other way around: ukrainian pesants murdered 15million russians?
Göring denied holocaust, it's only natural that Russia will try to deny or minimumise the holodomor's effect. But the hook is in historography: you must learn to see which documents you can trust, which you can not. For example:Pravda you can not trust, altough it ought to mean truth