What is the Holodomor genocide?
In the Ukrainian language, Holodomor/Голодомор is composed of the words “holod”(Голод) that means hunger, and “mor”(Mор) as a shortened version of the verb “moryty”, translated as to exhaust. As a historical event, Holodomor is referred to as a deliberate and politically engineered catastrophe that took place in Ukraine and in Northern Caucasus (Southern Russia bordering Georgia and Azerbaijan) in 1932-33.
A brutal man-made famine that killed around 7-11 million people in Ukraine under Stalin’s command. The records are inconsistent since bodies used to be buried in mass graves. Regardless of numbers, the genocide left traumas in Ukraine. Most Ukrainians have at least one relative who died during the famine and/or one who survived.
A crime whose parallel is the Holocaust and one of the best examples of the totalitarian essence of the Soviet regime. Communism kills and if you’re communist, stop to read this post here!
The Ukrainian genocidal Great famine was not accepted as a reality and remained unknown as a historical fact for decades. Testimonies were rejected and ridiculed, accused of anti-Soviet propaganda. During USSR, talks about Holodomor were banned and portrayed as a falsification of history. The famine was treated as a secret state until the end of the Soviet regime. Only in the 1980s, the Holodomor came to the public opinion by the first signs of a crisis of the Soviet socialist regime.
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How did Holodomor begin?
By 1928, Stalin had introduced the collectivization program for agriculture forcing farmers to give up their private lands and livestock to join the state-owned collective farms. In the broadest sense, the Ukrainian genocide began in 1929 with massive deportation of the most successful Ukrainian farmers; followed by the execution of religious, intellectual, and cultural leaders.
Important to remember that Ukrainian soils are fertile and the country has been a breadbasket of Europe for centuries. What could explain famine in the biggest producer of grains in Europe? As many Ukrainian farmers refused to join the collective farms, Stalin ordered attacks on the successful farmers (kulaks in Russian) by brutal enforcement. Any opposition was treated as a Soviet enemy.
During the collectivization, 1,5 million Ukrainians were dragged from their homes and shipped to remote areas such as Siberia without shelter and food (even in the winter). As slave laborers, the resistant arrested in Siberia used to produce raw materials to be exported for the West.
By 1932-33, the Soviet government increases the quotas for Ukrainian production so much they couldn’t be met. Why? Starvation just widespread as a decree authorized to arrest and execution for any citizen caught with food from the collective farm.
Military blockades were erected around Ukrainian villages and discriminatory vouchers were implemented to prevent the transport of food to the villages. Brigades of the Communist Party had taken everything that was edible out of the villages. And Ukrainian borders were closed to avoid any chance to escape.
At that time, Ukraine was a rural country (80% of the population) and such restrictions affected harshly the farmers. By attacking the backbone of Ukrainian society, Stalin’s insane mind applied the “teach a lesson” approach for the resistance towards the collectivization of lands.
1933 was the height of the famine, 7 million deaths in Ukraine, nearly a third were children under 10 years old. About 4 million deaths are attributed to starvation; not including deaths from related causes, executions, and deportations.
At the same time, Stalin denied the famine, and tons of grain were exported from the Soviet Union (see graphic below). His 5-year plans to modernize the USSR depended on trade agreements with Western nations, including the grains from Ukraine in exchange for manufactured products. That is what explains the passive attitude of the West towards the famine.
The grains were, if not the only, one of the few exportable resources in the USSR. By Stalin’s insane logic, collectivization was a key factor to control production and increase productivity for higher exports.
And the Ukrainian farmers were labeled as a troublesome group for Stalin. The collectivization was a practical solution to break the small and medium farmers, as well as any resistance coming from them. The famine didn’t happen only in Ukraine, but it was there where proportions of deaths and executions took massive impacts. Where else in USSR something similar happened? If there is, we also need to know.
A place to visit in Kyiv
National Museum Holodomor Victims Memorial
A museum in Kyiv to promote awareness and transfer information about Holodomor, through exhibitions, research, movies, and events. Their website contains a few archives of movies, photos, and documents. Open daily from 10:00h until 18:00h. Tours are available in Ukrainian, English, and Russian. Located at Lavrska St. 3, next to metro station Arsenalna (Арсенальна).
Contents about Holodomor
Just a few examples of contents about the Holodomor. Most of the contents are still available only in the Ukrainian language.
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Robert Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
In this book, Robert Conquest examines the cost of human lives out of the collectivization pushed by Stalin and out of the grain policies, despite the lack of data for a deeper analysis.
Harvest of Despair
This documentary based on the book Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest. Includes interviews with survivors, former Soviet authorities and journalists, diplomats, professors who experienced the tragedies of Holodomor.
Soviet Story
Movie by Edvins Snore, who aims to show the close connections – political, philosophical, and organizational – between Soviet and Nazi systems.
Bitter Harvest
A Canadian movie, the first about Holodomor in English, based on a love story on the background of the fight for survival.
Lady and Bread
The story of Lydia, telling how she had survived during the famine.
Holodomor: The Forgotten Genocide
A French documentary about the famine interviewing survivors living in France.
Socialism and Nazism, what do they share?
Before WWII, the Soviet government was already killing millions of people, as shown in the Holodomor. Only to Stalin, 20 million deaths are attributed. Nobody knows exactly how many died.
While Nazi symbols were labeled as bad, Communism remains alive and well accepted around the world, including large segments of media and academia. Soviet symbols are not labeled as bad, despite all the deaths caused by Communist regimes.
Although the Soviet Union had officially declared anti-fascist, Communism and Nazism share a couple of common ideas, starting by the utopia of reach a “new world” that would come true after certain social segments or classes – whoever is defined as social trash – be eliminated to start a revolution.
Behind the idea of equality, harmony, revolution, and any utopic promise; Communism and Nazism involved social engineering at a large scale to destruct the fabrics of society by attacking influent social segments. Both were criminal enterprises, killing millions of lives in industrial-scale; attacking through ridiculing the victims, humiliating and killing them.
By social engineering, a new man, a new society, a new world, etc. that works and think differently would emerge to correct human nature, if the right term to use. Both ideologies aim to create a new society by disagreeing with human nature as it is. Both have the ambition to rely on a scientific basis. Is it a coincidence?
As described by Françoise Thom: “Nazism was based on false biology, Marxism was based on false sociology.” The Soviets murdered on the notion of class, while the Nazis on the notion of race. But mass murder is a mass murder, as well said in the documentary Soviet Story.
Hitler got out of Marxist steps from the moment he decided to target Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah witnesses, homosexuals; instead of a particular class. But we can’t ignore how Goebbels (who led the Nazi propaganda) used to compare Lenin and Hitler as great personalities at the beginning of the Nazi regime.
It’s also interesting to observe how both regimes used similar tactics of propaganda to promote their “new world”, where everyone is happy, smiling, blond without Jews and anyone else defined as “social trash”.
After WWII, deportations, tortures, and concentration camps remained routine all over the Soviet Union. And the concentration camps, gulags, continued to receive opponents of the Soviet regime. Meanwhile, no opposition from public opinion.
Originally posted 2018-01-07 20:11:34.
