Holodomor

Holodomor
Голодомор
Starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933
CountrySoviet Union
LocationCentral and Eastern Ukraine
Period1932–1933
Total deaths7.5 million - 13 million.
Observations
ReliefForeign relief rejected by the Soviet state under Joseph Stalin. Respectively 176,200 and 325,000 tons of grains provided by the Soviet state as food and seed aids between February and July 1933.[1]

The Holodomor[a] was a man-made famine[2] that happened in Ukraine in 1932 and in 1933. It is also known as the Terror-Famine or Great Famine. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union back then. Around 7,000,000 people died under the policies of Joseph Stalin.[2][3]

History

Joseph Stalin was the leader and dictator of the Soviet Union, which was a communist country. He made farmers in the Soviet Union change the way they farmed; then he tried to make the farmers work harder for the government-owned farms, for less money.[4] Many people in Ukraine did not want to go along with this.

When Ukraine had a famine, Stalin refused to help the people there. Instead, the government took food away from people. It became illegal (against the law) to pick up food from the ground of fields.[5] The government also tried to stop people from moving around the country to look for food.

Legacy

Scholars and politicians using Holodomor say the famine was a genocide because it was man-made.[6] Some compare it to the Holocaust because millions of people died.[6] They argue that the Soviet policies were an attack on the rise of Ukrainian nationalism and therefore is a genocide.[7][8]

Other scholars say that the Holodomor was an unexpected consequence of the rapid and massive industrialization started by Stalin, which brought radical economic changes to the farmers and the country, and which was not done on purpose.[8][9]

Denial

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union's regime is said to have denied the Holodomor throughout its existence.[10] It is also said to have never commemorated the Holocaust.

“ The Soviet system never commemorated the Holocaust. One reason for this is that once you define and identify one genocide, you can recognize other genocidal crimes. The Soviet empire didn’t want us to learn our history. Decades of Soviet education and censorship ensured that even after the USSR collapsed, many in Lviv[b] failed to realise the striking proximity of the Holocaust. ”

—Victoria Amelina[11]

Communist Party USA

News of the Holodomor reached the US in 1933.[12] The Yiddish Jewish Daily Forward was one of the media that reported the Holodomor.[12] Shortly after, it was accused by the Soviet-funded[13] Communist Party USA (CPUSA) of "spreading Nazi-inspired lies",[12] despite the magazine being run by Jewish Americans.[12]

Walter Duranty

Walter Duranty, a Moscow-based New York Times journalist in the 1930s, wrote a series of articles denying the Holodomor and praising Joseph Stalin, while millions of Ukrainians starved to death. The articles ironically won Duranty the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, which caused controversies in the following decades. In 2003, the New York Times and Pulitzer Prize board reviewed Duranty's articles separately, yet declined to withdraw his prize.[14][15]

Oksana Piaseckyj, a Ukrainian-American activist who fled to the United States as a child in 1950, referred to Walter Duranty as "the personification of evil in journalism."[16] This case has become the biggest scandal in the history of the New York Times.[17]

Responses

Ukraine

Ukraine passed the Law On the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine in 2006 to ban Holodomor denial, recognizing it as an insult to the memory of victims and humiliation of the dignity of Ukrainians.[18]

Germany

In November 2022, Germany recognized the Holodomor as a genocide,[19] while changing a law to ban the approval, denial, and "gross trivialization" of genocides or war crimes in the new paragraph 5 of section 130 of the German Penal Code, the Strafgesetzbuch.[20][21]

  • Passers-by ignore the corpse of a starved man on a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 1932.
  • Passers-by ignore corpses of starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 1933.
  • Children are digging up frozen potatoes in the field of a collective farm in Udachne village, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 1933.
  • Chicago's American front page depicting Holodomor's starvation to death of six million Ukrainians.
  • Daily Express pictures on Holodomor genocide by forced starvation of six million Ukrainian peasants.
  • Photo by Thomas Walker in Chicago American, reporting people eating cats and dogs to survive in Soviet Ukraine, 1935.
  • "1933. 15th anniversary. 8.000.000 victims of hunger in Ukraine". A postcard printed in Germany by Ukrainian Youth Association for the 15th anniversary of Holodomor.
  • Stamp of Ukraine of the year 1993.
  • "Light the candle" event at a Holodomor memorial in Kyiv, Ukraine.
  • Memorial at the Andrushivka village cemetery, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine.
  • Memorial in Poltava Oblast, Ukraine.
  • Holodomor Memorial in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.


Recognition

Countries which officially recognize the Holodomor as genocide

 Andorra,  Argentina,  Australia,  Belgium,  Brazil,  Bulgaria,  Canada,  Colombia,  Czech Republic,  Ecuador,
 Estonia,  France,  Georgia,  Germany,  Hungary,  Iceland,  Ireland,  Italy,  Latvia,
 Lithuania,  Mexico,  Moldova,  Paraguay,  Peru,  Poland,  Portugal,  Romania,  Slovakia,  Spain,  Ukraine,  United Kingdom,  United States,   Vatican City

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ukrainian: Голодомор, "murder by hunger"
  2. ↑ Lviv is now part of Ukraine; it was formerly part of Poland.

References

  1. ↑
    • Davies, Robert W.; Tauger, Mark B.; Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (1995). "Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933". Slavic Review. 54 (3): 642–57. doi:10.2307/2501740. JSTOR 2501740. S2CID 163790684. Archived from the original on 25 December 2022. Retrieved 3 December 2022.
    • Davies, Robert W.; Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2002). "The Soviet Famine of 1932–33 and the Crisis in Agriculture" (PDF). In Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (ed.). Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-75461-0. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 May 2021. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
    • Davies, Robert; Wheatcroft, Stephen (2004). The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933. The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia. Vol. 5. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-27397-9. OCLC 1075104809.
    • Davies, Norman (2006). Europe East and West. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-06924-3. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved March 18, 2016 – via Google Books.
    • Davies, Robert; Wheatcroft, Stephen (2006). "Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–33: A Reply to Ellman" (PDF). Europe-Asia Studies. 58 (4): 625–633. doi:10.1080/09668130600652217. JSTOR 20451229. S2CID 145729808. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 June 2019. Retrieved 7 October 2018.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1
  3. ↑
  4. ↑ Young, Cathy (December 8, 2008). "Remember the Holodomor". The Weekly Standard. Archived from the original on January 5, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2010.
  5. ↑ "Thanks to US for Holdomor Memorial". Cyber Cossack. Archived from the original on January 17, 2011. Retrieved April 2, 2010.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Zisels, Josef; Kharaz, Halyna (11 November 2007). "Will Holodomor receive the same status as the Holocaust?". "Maidan" Alliance. Archived from the original on 28 June 2007. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Kulchytsky, Stanislav (6 March 2007). "Holodomor of 1932-33 as genocide: gaps in the evidential basis". Den. Retrieved 22 July 2012. Part 1 Archived 2007-10-20 at the Wayback Machine - Part 2 Archived 2009-10-15 at the Wayback Machine - Part 3 Archived 2012-10-25 at the Wayback Machine - Part 4 Archived 2012-10-25 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ 'Stalinism' was a collective responsibility. Kremlin papers, The News in Brief, University of Melbourne, 19 June 1998, Vol 7 No 22
  10. ↑
  11. ↑ Nothing bad has ever happened: a tale of two genocides, the Holocaust and the Holodomor by Victoria Amelina (May 19 2022 - 06:03) The Irish Times.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Prown, Henry H. (March 2, 2025). "'Every rotten slander': Holodomor denial and the origins of the American popular front". Politics, Religion & Ideology. doi:10.1080/21567689.2025.2470722. Retrieved March 16, 2025.
  13. ↑ Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism, Yale University Press (1998); ISBN 0300071507.
  14. ↑ "Statement on Walter Duranty's 1932 Prize". The Pulitzer Prizes. November 21, 2003. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
  15. ↑ "New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize Awarded to Walter Duranty". The New York Times. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
  16. ↑ "'The New York Times' can't shake the cloud over a 90-year-old Pulitzer Prize". NPR. May 8, 2022. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
  17. ↑
  18. ↑ Про Голодомор 1932-1933 років в Україні [On the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine]. Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  19. ↑ Sitnikova, Iryna (2022-11-30). Німеччина визнала Голодомор геноцидом українського народу [Germany recognized the Holodomor with the genocide of the Ukrainian people]. Hromadske. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  20. ↑ "Germany seeks to declare Ukraine's Holodomor a genocide". DW. 2022-11-25. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
  21. ↑ "Germany criminalizes denying war crimes, genocide". DW. 2022-11-25. Retrieved 2022-12-13.
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