Between 1932 and 1933, between three and five million people died of starvation at the hands of the Soviet regime, according to Ukrainian historians. The European Parliamentarians agreed on October 22 to describe it as “an appalling crime against the Ukrainian people, and against humanity.”
Macabre stories circulate in Ukraine of the Great Famine that hit the country in the early 1930s: families decimated in a matter of days, peasants fleeing to the cities, killed at close range by the Red Army ... That happened in the early years of the forced collectivization of the Soviet countryside when crops were poor and the available wheat was requisitioned by Soviet authorities. Throughout the USSR, farmers by millions died of hunger.
In Ukraine, the death toll reached monstrous proportions. Holodomor (famine-genocide in Ukrainian), a planned massacre of hunger, killed between three and five million people in less than two years. For contemporary Ukrainians, this is nothing less than a genocide cleverly organized and initiated by Stalin and his satraps to quell Ukrainian peasants’ nationalism and rebellion against Soviet power. For Stanislav Kulchitsky, a reputed Ukrainian historian and leading expert on the Holodomor, the events of 1932-1933 are “only the tip of the iceberg of Stalin’s actions to weaken the Ukrainian nation and force it to adopt the Soviet lifestyle.” Indeed, ten years earlier Soviet authorities took upon themselves the cynical and cruel task of liquidating the Ukrainian intelligentsia, at that time struggling for independence, by dint of massive deportations.
Russian historians reject this analysis. They recall that apart from the Ukrainians, millions of Caucasians, Kazakhs and Russians themselves died of hunger in other regions of former Soviet territory. The Russian Government, which declines to use the term “genocide” to characterize the 1930s incidents, however, agrees that Ukraine was the main victim of the collectivization drive, but neither more nor less than other Soviet nations. “It is true that the Ukrainian famine is similar to other famines in Russia or Kazakhstan during the same period,” admits Kulchitsky. “But in Ukraine, the policy went much further and it became a very covert and specific operation of terror by bringing famine to the people.” The Ukrainian historian claims that official documents point to Stalin’s premeditated attempt at quickly bringing to a halt Ukrainian disobedience in the winter of 1932. Archives reveal that Stalin signed a special law for Ukraine, which ordered the systematic requisition of foodstuffs in nearly all Ukrainian towns and villages. Not only wheat was requisitioned, as in previous years, but a long list of fruits and vegetables… And all the foodstuffs that remained.
Since the downfall of the Soviet regime, a large segment of the Ukrainian intelligentsia fights for recognition by the international community of the 1932-33 famine as a deliberate act of genocide and an anti-Ukrainian policy. “The problem is that very quickly Holodomor has been politicized by the Ukrainian authorities,” argues Stanislav Kulchitsky. “At the time of the USSR, the accusation of genocide against the Soviet Union was made by the Ukrainian diaspora in North America. Today things have changed and it is contemporary and independent Ukraine which wants to settle accounts with Russia.” Ukrainians and Russians are currently engaged in a real war of archives. “There is still a lot of work to do since many people are still not convinced that a genocide was perpetuated in 1932-3,” admits Kulchitsky. “Half of the Ukrainian population itself does not accept the internationally-recognized definition of genocide.”
However, the large collections of testimonies of survivors, the translation of some archival documents in English and, in particular, Ukrainians’ hooted activism, President Viktor Yushchenko taking the lead, have tipped the balance. A month ago, the US House of Representatives passed resolution H.R. 562 to “authorize the Government of Ukraine to establish a memorial on Federal land in the District of Columbia to honor the victims of the manmade famine that occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933.” However, it stopped short of calling the famine a genocide. No doubt, many American legislators must have been influenced in their vote by the August Georgia-Russia war.
The European Parliament, after much procrastination, has also voted for a resolution on October 22 on the commemoration of the Holodomor, the artificial famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933, which describes that tragedy as “cynically and cruelly planned by Stalin’s regime in order to force through the Soviet Union’s policy of collectivization of agriculture against the will of the rural population in Ukraine.” While one Ukrainian news headline called the resolution the “late triumph of the Holodomor’s victims,” Russian newspapers underlined that the word genocide does not appear in the text of resolution, judged too controversial by European deputies. This is one of the many “soft powers” that has the EU in its resistance to Russia’s resurgence and new assertiveness…
The European Parliament’s resolution on the Holodomor begs the question of whether Russia has come to terms with its bloody and inglorious past. If the answer is no, it could dramatically affect Russia’s future.
In the cases of Japan, Germany and Italy in World War II, by their defeat they were compelled to face directly their national complicity in bringing such tragedy to the world. The United States has gone through the process many times, as it is the nature of a free society, with free and varied sources of information, to be more openly introspective and self-critical. Slavery and the genocide of the natives are America’s greatest sins. Without facing and admitting these wrongs, America could not reaffirm its moral goals.
In Russia’s case, many changes under President Putin’s administration, a strong opponent of any form of acknowledgement, conspire against such an introspective return to the 20th century. As things are in Putin’s Russia, there are still dominant forces at the very core of political institutions that resist any attempt to see the truth in the mirror.
Maybe Russia’s greatest misfortune during the period of Communist decay under Gorbachev was not to be conquered. For it would not have been a conquest of the Russian people, but the elimination, root and branch, of the brutal Soviet Russian oppression. With such a conquest, Russians would have had no choice but to face their past, as Germany did after the fall of the Nazi regime. Russian intellectuals know that truth. But the masses do not, and the leadership draws its power from that ignorance. Has Russia come to terms with its past? The answer to this heavy question is clearly ‘no.’
Unless Russia counters the judgment of history, there is a strong probability it will find itself last among nations for another century. It will find the true greatness of its people only after it is freed from its past. The time of introspection and grief is still before the Russian people, and this passage holds the key to a moral future. As long as the Russian Government and society suppress the truth, an approach that only recognizes lies will harm Russia in its relations with its Western neighbours and the European Union and damage relations within the CIS.
Richard Rousseau is Assistant Professor and Director of the Masters Programme in International Relations (richardr@kimep.kz) at the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics & Strategic Research (KIMEP)
