HOLODOMOR Famine Genocide in Ukraine 1932 1933 Prepared

Focus Question: How does a government create an environment that can lead to genocide?

Ukraine • Largest country located entirely in Europe • Capital: Kyiv • Population: approximately

Breadbasket of Europe Fertile black soil in Ukraine provided grain to most of Europe.

In 1922, Ukraine was forcibly incorporated into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.

Is Communism comparable to Nazism? • Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were

Two Genocides: the Holodomor and the Holocaust • The Holodomor was a precursor of

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide, ” states that the Holodomor is “a

Soviet Genocide in Ukraine What are the four prongs of Stalin’s attack against the

Timeline 1922 Ukraine is forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union 1924 Lenin dies and

Joseph Stalin – Dictator of U. S. S. R. from 1929 -1953 https: //upload.

“If we do not begin correcting the situation in Ukraine immediately, we could lose

Stalin’s Genocide • To destroy the Ukrainian nation, which resisted Soviet repressive policies and

Collectivization • Collective farms replaced individual farms. Farmers had to surrender their land, tools,

Stalin targeted the rural population villages inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians who preserved the Ukrainian

“Five stalks of grain law” August 7, 1932 Death penalty or 10 years’ imprisonment

“Food is a weapon” Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, 1921 • Grain

Borders of Ukraine Sealed • Ukraine was the only Soviet republic whose borders were

Areas affected by the Holodomor © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Quote from The Harvest of Sorrow by British historian Robert Conquest (1986) “A quarter

In June 1933, at the height of the famine, people in Ukraine were dying

Children and the Holodomor • 31% of those who starved to death were children

Population Losses 1926 1939 Ukrainians in USSR 31, 195, 000 28, 111, 000 -10%

Exact Number of Victims Not Known • Doctors were not allowed to put starvation

Soviet Propaganda • Moscow denied the famine in Ukraine and refused offers of food

The Tale of Two Journalists “There is no actual starvation or death from starvation,

Turning a Blind Eye to Murder “… (Our reporting) served Moscow’s purpose of smearing

Witness Testimonies • “Where did all bread disappear. The authorities have confiscated it, removed

Holodomor Monument in Washington, D. C. , 2015 Holodomor from holod (starvation) and moryty

Food as a Political Weapon Imitators of Stalin China – Communist regime of Mao

Focus Question How did the government of the Soviet Union create an environment that

Monument to the Holodomor Genocide in Kyiv, capital of Ukraine “Bitter Memories of Childhood”

Resources • https: //education. holodomor. ca • https: //ukrainegenocide. com • www. holodomorct. org

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Focus Question: How does a government create an environment that can lead to genocide? Objectives To examine: • the Holodomor in the context of 20 th century genocides • Stalin’s motives for the Holodomor and his policies leading to it • the nature and consequences of the Holodomor • the cover-up and denial of the Holodomor • the lack of response in the West to the Holodomor © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Ukraine • Largest country located entirely in Europe • Capital: Kyiv • Population: approximately 46 million (as of 2020) © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych Can you name five countries that border Ukraine? Between what two totalitarian governments of the 20 th century is Ukraine located?

Is Communism comparable to Nazism? • Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian regimes that abused human rights and were responsible for millions of lives lost. • For the first two years of World War II, they were allies. (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939) • Russia is trying to hide this fact by stating that World War II started in 1941, referring to it as the Great Patriotic War. “Communism and Nazism are, and always were, morally indistinguishable. ” © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych Stephane Courtois, French historian, The Black Book of Communism, 1997

Two Genocides: the Holodomor and the Holocaust • The Holodomor was a precursor of the Holocaust. • It served as a model for Nazi leaders. Some historians believe that without the Holodomor, which was committed with complete impunity, the Holocaust might not have happened. • Nazi leaders were tried and punished for the crimes they committed against humanity. Yet few Communist leaders have ever been brought to justice. • Soviet Union lasted 70 years, Nazi Germany 12 years. How might stopping Stalin’s genocidal policies have impacted Hitler? Do you think it would have made a difference? (c) 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide, ” states that the Holodomor is “a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but a culture and a nation. ” “The classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification – the destruction of the Ukrainian nation. ” How did the government policy of Russification contribute to genocide in Ukraine? Raphael Lemkin, the author of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations on December 9, 1948. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Soviet Genocide in Ukraine What are the four prongs of Stalin’s attack against the Ukrainian nation, according to Lemkin? First, he executed Ukraine’s leaders and intellectuals – the brain of Ukraine. Second, he liquidated the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the clergy – the soul of Ukraine. Third, he wiped out the Ukrainian farmers – the spirit and heart of Ukraine. Fourth, he changed the demographic composition of the population by resettling ethnic Russians into the areas depopulated by the famine. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Timeline 1922 Ukraine is forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union 1924 Lenin dies and Stalin becomes the leader of the Soviet Union 1925 New Economic Policy leads to a Ukrainian cultural renaissance 1928 Five-Year Plan - collectivization, liquidation of the “kulaks” 1929 Execution or deportation of Ukrainian intellectuals 1930 Destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church 1931 Collectivization of farms in Ukraine completed 1932 -1933 Millions of Ukrainians starve to death 1933 The United States gives diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. 1922 The Soviet Union collapses. Ukraine gains its independence. 2014 Russia invades Ukraine. Illegally annexes Crimea. Starts war in Donbas.

“If we do not begin correcting the situation in Ukraine immediately, we could lose Ukraine…The objective should be to transform Ukraine, in the shortest possible time into a veritable fortress of the USSR…Spare no money for that. ” Stalin’s August 1932 letter to Kaganovich, one of his henchmen responsible for the Holodomor © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Stalin’s Genocide • To destroy the Ukrainian nation, which resisted Soviet repressive policies and strived for independence • To terrorize the surviving Ukrainians into submission to the Soviet totalitarian regime • To bankroll Soviet industrial expansion from the sale of expropriated Ukrainian grain and other produce © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Collectivization • Collective farms replaced individual farms. Farmers had to surrender their land, tools, and livestock to collective farms. • By mid 1932 nearly 75 percent of the farms in Ukraine were forcibly collectivized. • Farmers who resisted were shot or exiled. • Almost two-thirds of deaths during the famine of 1932– 1933 occurred on collectivized farms. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Stalin targeted the rural population villages inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians who preserved the Ukrainian culture, language, and spirit of independence. A woman and her small child being evicted from their home in winter Photo: Marko Zheliziak © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

“Five stalks of grain law” August 7, 1932 Death penalty or 10 years’ imprisonment for theft of “socialist property” … for picking a few ears of grain from the fields that had previously belonged to them A soldier guards food taken from the farmers. Stockpiled grain often rotted because of the lack of transport. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych Photo: Central State Cine. Photo. Phono Archives (Ts. DKFFA) of Ukraine

“Food is a weapon” Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, 1921 • Grain quotas increased by 44% in 1932 over the previous year • Communist activists removed all foodstuffs from the homes of starving villagers • One third of all the villages in Ukraine were blacklisted Special brigades remove sacks of grain to be taken away to Moscow or shipped abroad. Photo: Central State Cine. Photo. Phono Archives (Ts. DKFFA) of Ukraine © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Borders of Ukraine Sealed • Ukraine was the only Soviet republic whose borders were sealed to prevent food aid from entering or people from fleeing. • Internal passports were issued to city dwellers, but not to villagers, denying them the right to move about. Photo: LUC Holodomor Exhibit in a Box © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych People attempt to board railway cars to get food in Russia.

Quote from The Harvest of Sorrow by British historian Robert Conquest (1986) “A quarter of the rural population, men, women, and children, lay dead or dying, the rest in various stages of debilitation with no strength to bury their families or neighbors. ” Photo: Wienerberger Mass graves in Soviet Ukraine © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

In June 1933, at the height of the famine, people in Ukraine were dying at the rate of • 19 per minute • 1, 167 per hour • 28, 000 per day Special police brigades arrive to carry away the dead. They were paid two slices of bread for each body and often carried those still alive to mass graves. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Children and the Holodomor • 31% of those who starved to death were children under the age of 10. • Starving mothers abandoned children in cities or at the doorsteps of orphanages. • In spring 1933, over 300, 000 children were recorded homeless in the Kyiv region. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych Photo: Wienerberger

Population Losses 1926 1939 Ukrainians in USSR 31, 195, 000 28, 111, 000 -10% Russians in USSR 77, 791, 000 99, 591, 000 +28% • The 1937 census revealed a sharp decrease in the Ukrainian population • Those who conducted the census were shot and the results of the census were suppressed © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Exact Number of Victims Not Known • Doctors were not allowed to put starvation as the cause of death • Any mention of the word “famine” was a crime against the state "I can't give an exact figure because no one was keeping count. All we knew was that people were dying in enormous numbers. " Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers Former Premier of the USSR © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Soviet Propaganda • Moscow denied the famine in Ukraine and refused offers of food aid from other countries and humanitarian organizations • Reports of famine were labeled as an anti-Soviet propaganda • “Potemkin villages” showcased well-fed villagers to foreign dignitaries • Foreign journalists were barred from Ukraine and North Caucasus (Kuban region) in 1933 Why is free press essential and what are the dangers of disinformation and propaganda? © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

The Tale of Two Journalists “There is no actual starvation or death from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition. ” “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” Walter Duranty, The New York Times March 31, 1933 Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist, secretly traveled to Ukraine in 1933 and was one of the few journalists who reported the truth about what he saw. Had the West believed him, millions of people would have been saved from a slow, painful death caused by Stalin’s man-made starvation, known as the Holodomor. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych A discredited journalist known as Stalin’s apologist What would you do if you were a journalist in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930’s?

Turning a Blind Eye to Murder “… (Our reporting) served Moscow’s purpose of smearing the facts out of recognition and declaring a situation which, had we reported simply and clearly, might have worked up enough public opinion abroad to force remedial measures. And every correspondent each in his own measure, was guilty of collaborating in this monstrous hoax on the world. ” Eugene Lyons, United Press correspondent, Moscow 1928– 1934, Assignment in Utopia (p. 573) Did the indifference of Western governments and policies of “non-interference” contribute to the genocide in Ukraine? © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Witness Testimonies • “Where did all bread disappear. The authorities have confiscated it, removed from the villages, loaded grain into the railway coaches and took it away someplace. They have searched the houses, taken away everything to the smallest thing. All the vegetable gardens, all the cellars were raked out and everything was taken away. ” Recollections of Olexandra Rafalska, Zhytomir • “More than a half of the village population perished as a result of the famine. It was terrifying to walk through the village: swollen people moaning and dying. The bodies of the dead were buried together, because there was no one to dig the graves. ” Memories of Galina Gubenko, Poltava region © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Holodomor Monument in Washington, D. C. , 2015 Holodomor from holod (starvation) and moryty (inflict death) means murder by starvation. In 2018, the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives passed resolutions recognizing the Holodomor in Ukraine as an act of genocide. © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Food as a Political Weapon Imitators of Stalin China – Communist regime of Mao Zedong – “Great Leap Forward” of 1958– 1962, in which 18 to 45 million died in the Great Chinese Famine Ethiopia – Communist regime in 1974 – 1 million people seeking independence starved to death as government spent millions of dollars on military armaments Cambodia – Communist Khmer Rouge in 1975 – government of Pol Pot caused the death of some 2 million through planned executions and forced starvation What do you notice that is common to these three? What type of government was in power? © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych

Resources • https: //education. holodomor. ca • https: //ukrainegenocide. com • www. holodomorct. org Contact Oksana Kulynych, NYC Department of Education (retired), okul 17@aol. com. U. S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor Genocide Awareness © 2020 Kiciuk, Kulynych