Holodomor in modern politics

Part of a series on the
Holodomor
Historical background
Famines in Russia and USSR Soviet famine of 1932–33 Famine in Kazakhstan of 1932–33
Soviet government
Institutions All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union) Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Government of the Soviet Union Secret police (OGPU) Policies First five-year plan (Soviet Union) Collectivization Dekulakization Law of Spikelets Reversal of Ukrainization policies Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Responsible parties
Soviet Union Joseph Stalin Vyacheslav Molotov Lazar Kaganovich Pavel Postyshev Stanislav Kosior Vlas Chubar NKVD
Investigation and comprehension
1984 International Commission 1985 USA Commission Causes of the Holodomor Denial Genocide question Holodomor in modern politics

The Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор, literal translation Death by hunger) was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR and adjacent Cossack territories between 1932 and 1933 that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians due to starvation.^[1] The famine is formally considered by the modern Ukrainian government to be an act of genocide on the part of the Soviet government; others in the international community, as well as the United Nations, also recognize it as such. Some, such as the United States and Europe, recognize that the Holodomor was an attack on the Ukrainian people, but do not recognize it as a genocide. The Russian Federation denies officially that it was an act of genocide, but rather claims that the famine caused suffering among many in the Soviet Union, regardless of nationality.

Background

According to the US Government Commission on the Ukrainian Famine,^[2] the seizure of the 1932 crop by the Soviet authorities was the main reason for the famine. The US commission stated that "while famine took place during the 1932-1933 agricultural year in the Volga Basin and the North Caucasus Territory as a whole, the invasiveness of Stalin's interventions of both the Fall of 1932 and January 1933 in Ukraine are paralleled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus".

Scholars have documented that the Soviet famine of 1932-33 affected other nationalities. The 2004 book The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 by R.W. Davies and S.G. Wheatcroft gives an estimate of around 5.5 to 6.5 million deaths in the 1932–1933 famine throughout the Soviet Union.^[3] Still, the Holodomor remains a politically charged topic.

One view claims that the famine primarily affected the rural population of Ukraine. However, in 1932, 75% to 85% of the Ukrainian population resided in villages.^[4]

Ukrainian declaration of genocide

On May 15, 2003, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) of Ukraine also passed a resolution declaring the famine of 1932–1933 an act of genocide, deliberately organized by the Soviet government against the Ukrainian nation. On November 28, 2006 the Ukrainian Parliament approved a law to define Holodomor 1932-1933 as genocide against the Ukrainian people.^[5] In 2007 president Viktor Yushchenko proposed a law that would criminalize denial of Holodomor. However, the law was never voted by the parliament.

International recognition

Countries which officially recognize the Holodomor as genocide

The originator of the term "genocide", Raphael Lemkin, was a featured speaker at the manifestation of Ukrainian-Americans in September, 1953 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine.^[6] A number of the heads of state, governments or parliaments of countries including Ukraine, Andorra,^[7] Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic,^[8] Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Spain, United States, and Vatican City, consider the 1932–1933 famine as an act of genocide.

At the international conference of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which was held in October 2003 at the Institute of Social and Religious History of Vicenza, 28 conference participants that included well-respected historians like James Mace, Hubert Laszkiewicz, Andrea Graziosi, Yuriy Shapoval, Gerhard Simon, Orest Subtelny, and Mauro Martini - endorsed a resolution addressed to the Italian government and the European Parliament with a request to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.^[9][10]

Governments and parliaments of several of other countries have also officially recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide.^{[2][11][12][13][14]}

United Nations

The final report of the "International Commission of Inquiry Into the 1932–33 Famine in Ukraine", delivered to the UN Under-Secretary for Human Rights in Geneva on May 9, 1990, concluded that the famine in Ukraine was, in fact, genocide.^[15] At same time the commission majority (5 of 6) deems it plausible that the constituent elements of genocide were in existence at the time of the famine.^[16] Commission is unable to affirm the existence of a preconceived plan to organize a famine in Ukraine, in order to ensure the success of Moscow policies.^[17]

A significant step in the world recognition of Holodomor was the Joint declaration at the United Nations in connection with 70th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933 (10 November 2003),^[18] evaluating the Holodomor as a great tragedy. According to Valery Kuchinsky, the chief Ukrainian representative at the United Nations the declaration was a compromise between the positions of Great Britain, United States and Russia denying that Holodomor was a genocide and the position of Ukraine that insisted on recognition of Holodomor as a form of genocide.^[19]

United States

At the conference on "Recognition and Denial of Genocide and Mass Killing in the 20th Century," held at City University of New York on 13 November 1987, it was stated that Soviet Ukraine suffered a man-made famine in 1932–1933, during which millions died. The United States Government Commission concluded this was part of the central governments's attack on Ukrainian nationality and culture. The United States Government received numerous contemporary intelligence reports on the famine from its European embassies, but chose not to acknowledge the famine publicly. Similarly, leading members of the American press corps in the Soviet Union willfully covered up the famine in their dispatches. In both cases, political considerations relating to the establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. seem to have been critical factors in this cover-up.^[20]

Europe

On 3 July 2008 the Parliamentary Assembly of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe passed the resolution condemning the Ukrainian famine acknowledging the direct responsibility of the Soviet action. The resolution called upon all parliaments to take measures on recognition of the fact of Holodomor in Ukraine but fell short of recognizing it as an act of genocide as requested by the document prepared by the Ukrainian delegation.^[21][22]

On 23 October 2008, the European Parliament passed a resolution that called Holodomor "an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity" that was "cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin's regime in order to force through the Soviet Union's policy of collectivization of agriculture". The resolution, however, stopped short of calling the famine an act of genocide.^[23]

Russian Federation

The Russian Federation officially says that the Holodomor is not an ethnic genocide and the State Duma passed a resolution on the subject in 2008 saying it should not be considered genocide - "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country," the Russian State Duma resolution said.^[24] Russian politician Mikhail Kamynin has claimed that Russia is against the politicisation of the Holodomor, and this question is for historians, not politicians.^[25] Simultaneously the vice-speaker of the Russian State Duma, Lyubov Sliska, when asked in Kiev when Russia would apologize for its part in repressions and famines in Ukraine, replied, "why always insist that Russia apologize for everything? The people whose policies brought suffering not only to Ukraine, but to Russia, Belarus, peoples of the Caucasus, and Crimean Tatars, remain only in history textbooks, secret documents and minutes of meetings."^[25] Ukrainian mass media censured Evgeny Guzeev, the Consul-General of the Russian Federation in Lviv, who stated that "the leaders of the period were sensible people, and it is impossible to imagine that this was planned."^[19] Kyiv Post believes that Russia contests the recognition of the famine as a genocide is because "as the Soviet Union's legal successor, Russia is also concerned about the possibility of legal action or having to pay reparations."^[26]

On November 17, 2007 members from Aleksandr Dugin's radical Russian nationalist group the Eurasian Youth Union broke into the Ukrainian cultural center in Moscow and smashed an exhibition on the famine.^[27]

2008 "American Holodomor" controversy

In 2008 The Russia Today website published an article of Russian historian Boris Borisov about the condemnation of the Holodomor by the U.S. House of Representatives. Borisov argues that the United States has no morals to criticize Russia or support Ukrainian claims, since the Holodomor, according to him, was just as destructive as the Great Depression in the US in the same post-1929 era, and comparing the policies of presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt with the policies of Stalin and the New Deal Public Works Administration with the Communist Gulag.^[28] However, Borisov's article, basically intended as a satirical riposte against the American figures, was taken at face value by conspiracy theorists (particularly after a corresponding article on Wikipedia was deleted, which was seen as an "attempt to cover up the truth"^[29]) and neo-communists^[30] (particularly neo-Stalinists seeking to clear Josef Stalin of any wrongdoing^[31]).

Misuse of graphical materials

Some images related to the Russian and Ukrainian famine of 1921 or Great Depression in the United States have been presented as Holodomor-related images.^[32] According to American historian, Morgan E Williams: "Ninety-five percent of the photos that are represented as being of the Ukrainian famine are from Russia. That's a sore point with me. [The gaffes] are then used by people who say we exaggerate the extent of the famine. Or even worse, by people who deny [that the famine ever occurred]".^[33]

• 

  This image of the 1921 Soviet famine was taken in Volga Region near Samara by the Geneva based humanitarian group in 1921^[1][2] has been misused to represent the Holodomor^[3][4]

• 

  The above image pictured in a display on the Holodomor in front of the St. Michael's cathedral

1. ^ Ruslan V. Olkhovskiy. "Famine in the Soviet Union, 1921-1922 - Photographs and Postcards". artukraine.com. Retrieved 26 February 2016. 
2. ^ «La famine en Russie» Album Illustre, Livraison No. 1, Geneva, Comite Russe de Secours aux Affames en Russie, 1922
3. ^ "Photo". IPV news. Archived from the original on 13 September 2007. 
4. ^ Владимир Корнилов: "Рано или поздно мы с вами должны начать контрнаступление в защиту наших с вами важнейших гражданских прав" [Vladimir Kornilov: "Sooner or later we'll have to start a counter-offensive in defence of our most important civil rights"]. Ukrainian Party of Regions (in Russian). 1 February 2008. Archived from the original on 7 December 2008. 

References

	List of countries which officially recognize the Holodomor as genocide
Andorra,  Azerbaijan,  Argentina,  Australia,  Belgium,  Brazil,  Canada,  Colombia,  Czech Republic,  Ecuador,  Estonia,  Georgia,  Hungary,  Italy,  Latvia,  Lithuania,  Mexico,  Moldova,  Paraguay,  Peru,  Poland,  Slovakia,  Spain,  Ukraine,[a 1]  United States,   Vatican City

1. ↑ There seems to be a disagreement between branches of Ukrainian government over the issue. See Holodomor genocide question#Genocide debate: Ukrainian position for details