International

Ukraine famine documents released

26.11.2009 17:57

Ukraine’s security services and the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) have released an English language collection of documents on the 1930s Great Famine in Ukraine.

The famine was deliberately caused by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who ordered the confiscation of grain to force Ukrainian farmers to join collective farms.

Up to 10 million people of Soviet Ukraine died during the 1932-1933 famine, which the Ukrainian parliament declared an act of genocide in 2006.

Russia denied it was an attempt to wipe out Ukrainians.

The publication contains Soviet and Polish documents selected for the English language version from a book published earlier in the Polish and Ukrainian language versions. The idea is to show how this tragedy was orchestrated. The book - Holodomor. The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933 - will be promoted in the United States, Canada and Western Europe in the first half of next year.

Speaking in Kiev, IPN head Janusz Kurtyka said Ukrainian security services will hand over to the Institute another batch of copied documents on Stalin’s repressions against Poles on territories the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, including the 1940 Katyn massacre. (kk/pg)

Comments: 9 Add new comment

Question

26/11/2009 20:52:50

Why don't Ukrainian security services also hand over the documents about OUN/UPA anti-Polish atrocities? Supposedly they are actively collecting OUN/UPA documents under Yuschenko's orders.

Karl Naylor

26/11/2009 21:26:39

'Up to 10 million people of Soviet Ukraine died during the 1932-1933 famine, which the Ukrainian parliament declared an act of genocide in 2006'

And people died in other parts of the Soviet Union such as Kazakhstan as well. There was no genocide as there was no explicit racial intention on behalf of the Soviet Union.

The reason Yushchenko is exploiting ethnic nationalism is to shore up his crumbling support base in the wake of the impact of his catastrophic neoliberal "reforms" and the crash of 2008.

The Ukrainian diaspora has a strong role in the promotion of the idea the Ukrainian Famine was a genocide because a large contigent amongst them are far right nationalists.

The people who view vigorous US support for Ukrainian entry into NATO as part of a proxy nationalist struggle against Russia and who like nationalists in the Baltic tend to venerate either UPA or the Nazis.

J Giedroyc

26/11/2009 23:44:34

It is revealing the mindset of Karl Naylor that his response to up to 10 million people dying from hunger in Soviet Ukraine is to write to Polish Radio External Service and link the famine to the political fortunes of Viktor Yushchenko.

Whether one accepts the famine as genocide or not, many millions of people perished the majority of them ethnic Ukrainians but including ethnic Poles, Germans, and many other nationalities. The dead should be honoured whatever their ethnicity.

At this time when the population of Soviet Ukraine were starving to death the communist authorities were actually exporting grain and hoarding foodstuffs in the cities whilst stripping the villages of what little food there was left.

Karl Naylor would do well to remember the dead. It is he that is linking this famine to political intrigues to prop up his own flagging doctrines. The dead do not care for any “isms”.

Somebody was responsible for this horror. There was food in the country. It was exported by the communists for money. This money was not used to feed the people. It seems that Karl Naylor has no sympathy for the dead and their families. His time and energy could be better spent on investigating the motives of the architects and shining a light on the perpetrators.

27/11/2009 09:27:55

J Giedroyc, it seems to me that Karl Naylor is actually for honoring the dead. He is also against using them as an argument in today's political games. Sadly Yuschenko has been shamelessly exploiting this tragedy for his agenda by re-writing the history.

Bob

27/11/2009 11:07:18

During Great Depression in USA from around 3.5 to 7 mln people died from hunger.USA govermant hides the truth about 1932-1933 population mass starvation organized by Wall Street mafia.

Why everyone focuses on starvation of people in Ukraine but completely ignores similar events in USA?

http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/105255-0/

"the researcher, Boris Borisov, in his article titled “The American Famine” estimated the victims of the financial crisis in the US at over seven million people. The researcher also directly compared the US events of 1932-1933 with Holodomor, or Famine, in the USSR during 1932-1933.

In the article, Borisov used the official data of the US Census Bureau. Having revised the number of the US population, birth and date rates, immigration and emigration, the researcher came to conclusion that the United States lost over seven million people during the famine of 1932-1933. "

Karl Naylor

27/11/2009 18:00:07

J Giedroyc,

You missed the point completely. Being against the politicisation of the Terror Famine does not mean not remembering the victims.

Nor does it mean exploiting and nurturing a victim mentality on ethnocentric grounds in order to advance contemporary power agendas.

A number of Polish people need to get beyond the Soviet Union was the Russian Empire writ large propaganda that is fanning revanchist nationalism.

The Terror Famine was imposed on a class basis by Communists for social engineering reasons and was designed to destroy the independent peasantry.

The destruction of "the Kulaks" was class warfare and not racial warfare as with the Nazis which makes it scarecely less inhuman.

The best word is not the overused one of 'genocide' but of 'democide', the acceptence of millions of dead as statistics because they opposed Soviet power.

But though the Terror Famine destroyed the potential popular base for Ukranian nationalism it was only con sidered a beneficial side effect.

The main reason was to crush 'the Kulak' whose independence lead him to gravitate against centralised direction.

But the massive destruction of life killed Kazakhs, large numbers of Russians and other ethnic groups too so to make it into a ethnocentric event is dangerous.

As astute critics of Communism and the Soviet Union such as Solszhenitsn have pointed out. Russia is not the Soviet Union. That's a propaganda myth.

Westerners support the Holomodor mythology because they want to fast track Ukraine into NATO and gain control of the pipelines and for other geostrategic reasons.

To pervert history to serve that agenda is vulgar and unbecoming of decent people. Which includes those like Yushchenko and some ideologues in Poland.

Leszek

28/11/2009 03:10:11

While I agree that the term "democide" is better in this situation, I think we must remember that the Ukrainians have not had decades to deal with these horrors; they were denied the opportunity to mourn due to soviet occupation. Imagine if a person is denied the chance to deal with such trauma. The psychological impact would be quite severe. Do we believe that a society being forced to ignore such a trauma would not suffer similarly? To simply say, "get over it and live int he now" would be a little difficult to swallow.

All of the former Soviet bloc has had little chance to get over the problems caused by ww2 and the subsequent soviet occupation. It's only been since 1989 that people have had any opportunity to deal with these things. That's 20 years after ww2 and the occupation. The rest of Euro dealt with ww2 adn then had to deal with that (and little else, apart from W Germany). The soviet bloc has had a further 45 years of lies to deal with. And we expect that to go away in 20 years and act as if they were just like west euro?

That's what those "ideologues" live with. True, some will go overboard but it is something that we, outside that region, cannot truly comprehend.

Steve

30/11/2009 12:24:51

I am always grateful when thenews gives an internet link. Thank you.

How can I get a job as a translator with IPN. Their English is appalling.

Stanislav

22/12/2009 08:39:22

Only in Ukraine in 1933 Red Army was engaged to block roads and stop refugees from the starving villages. Not in Kazachstan, nor in Southern Russia. Why?

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