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CONCERNING THE UKRAINE FAMINE IN 1932-1933
(Background Note)
Of the 1932-1933 famine almost nothing was said in the USSR for a long time. In Soviet historiography, if it was mentioned, then only casually – in the context of the “grain procurement difficulties” and “irregularities in food supply” of that period. Openly this theme in our country sounded out in the 1980s, when it began to be raised in the West for anti-Soviet purposes. Further, our opponents were spreading the famine theme in respect of Ukraine only and presenting it so as though in the 1930s “the Moscow government purposefully used the famine to destroy Ukrainians.”
Following purely historical authenticity, it would be wrong to speak of the death of people from famine in the Ukrainian SSR, while abstracting oneself from the catastrophic food situation in other republics and regions of the unified state – the USSR. The archives of the Russian Foreign Ministry also attest to this: to single out Ukraine when examining the question of the 1932-1933 famine is very difficult, because the entire Soviet Union usually figures in the documents on this theme.
It is well known that the famine engulfed not only the USSR, but also other areas of the Soviet Union, in particular, the Volga area, the Central Black Earth Region, the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban, the North Caucasus, North Kazakhstan, the South Ural and Western Siberia. One should add that people were then starving also in Western Ukraine, then part of Poland1. Although no statistics were conducted for the famine toll in those years, comparison of the 1926 and 1937 census results shows that over this period the number of inhabitants in the Ukrainian SSR fell by 1.9%, in the Voronezh Region by 2.1%, in the North Caucasus by 4.1%, in the Kuibyshev Region by 7.8%, in the Kursk Region by 14.3%, in the Saratov Region by 23%.
In Ukraine, if we are to judge by the settlement of the deserted villages with collective farmers in 1933, Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa Regions suffered most; that is, areas with a preeminently Russian population. It was precisely there that settlers were directed from a whole series of regions, of both the Ukrainian SSR itself and the Byelorussian SSR and RSFSR. Furthermore, the large-scale intra-Ukraine resettlement into the aforesaid eastern areas of Ukraine was done from the republic’s western regions, inhabited mostly by the Little Russians, who suffered from the famine to a lesser degree2.
The scale of the disaster in the USSR was such that it could not remain unnoticed in the West. In 1933 there appeared in the foreign press numerous articles on this theme describing the suffering of Soviet people. Foreign newspapers were larded with the headlines: “Famine in a Land of Grain,” “Famine in Moscow,” Famine and Cannibalism in Russia”3. It is indicative that then the foreign media, with the exception of Ukrainian émigré publications, did not raise the question of the Ukraine famine separately from the tragedy of the whole Soviet state.
International organizations at the time also examined the famine problem as applied to the USSR as a whole. In 1933, the question of the famine in the Soviet state was submitted to the League of Nations, but, at the League’s unofficial meeting, it was decided to refer it to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)4 for consideration. Earlier, the national Red Cross organizations of Austria and Switzerland had approached the ICRC with initiatives to organize assistance to starving people in the Soviet Union, but those proposals had been turned down citing the negative reaction of the Soviet authorities5.
The Council of the League of Nations asked the ICRC to study the situation with the famine, which had broken out “in a number of areas of the USSR and, in particular, in Ukraine and in the North Caucasus.” ICRC Chairman Max Huber sent an inquiry to Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Alliance of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies of the USSR A. Enukidze6. But the Soviet leadership refused to discuss this theme, calling the information about the famine in the Soviet Union “untrue, tendentious and totally baseless rumors”7.
Nevertheless, the western public was noticeably agitated. Germany, having grounds to be anxious about its compatriots in the USSR, showed particular concern. There followed a number of diplomatic demarches by the German side then. In its notes verbale Germany asked to “take action” to end the “needs of the Germans in the USSR”8. In Germany itself a broad campaign was launched to organize assistance to those starving.
Along with the sincere desire of ordinary Germans to help their compatriots, the leadership of Germany used the famine in the USSR for propaganda purposes to stir up a wide-scale anti-Soviet campaign. Carried in a number of foreign publications, the report on the famine in the Soviet Union by agricultural attaché of the German embassy in Moscow Schiller was taken as a factological basis. This document was intensively circulated by the German media and by the Brussels Anti-Soviet Center. In Germany the exhibitions were being organized of letters from Germans living in the Soviet Union pleading for help; protest demonstrations and rallies were being held against “the organized dooming of Germans to death by starvation in the USSR” as well as other actions9.
Already then in the West attempts were being made to use the 1932-1933 famine to ruin the unified allied state. This process was to have been commenced by tearing away the Ukrainian SSR from the USSR. On October 9, 1933, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov wrote to Secretary of the CC of the VKP(b) Lazar Kaganovich that abroad “furious anti-Soviet agitation is being conducted and ever more intensifying around the ‘Ukrainian question’ and an imaginary famine in Ukraine…”10. An explanation of such Western actions was given in the letter of S. I. Brodovsky, the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs representative to the Government of the Ukrainian SSR, to N. N. Krestinsky: “A very important factor of the enhancement of the interest for Ukraine on the part of capitalist states,” he wrote, “has been the failure of the indigenous Russian counterrevolution designs… Therefore a plan of struggle against Soviet power by tearing away individual parts of the Union, primarily Ukraine, under the guise of its ‘liberation’ from ‘Moscow rule’ has become prevalent among the interventionists.”11
Along with political aims, the anti-Soviet campaign also had an economic aspect – to oust the USSR from the world grain market12. The foreign press was sharply protesting against grain purchases from the Soviet Union in connection with the fact that “famine reigns inside the country” and “millions of people are dying” there13 .
The extensive anti-Soviet campaign was actively supported by Warsaw. The Polish government directly financed one of its chief propaganda weapons – Polish-Ukrainian News Bulletin14. Ukrainian White émigré organizations then based in Poland “poured oil on the flames.” These organizations with the help of the committees they set up in West European countries to provide assistance to “the starving brothers under Moscow Bolshevik rule” conducted vigorous activities for broadening the anti-Soviet “famine” campaign. The Ukrainian separatists were directly calling on the West to intervene in the USSR and tear away Soviet Ukraine from it by armed force.
Individual publications of White Ukrainian emigre organizations already then endeavored to implant in the consciousness of the foreign public the thought that the 1932-1933 famine had been “planned by Moscow” in order to “wipe the Ukrainian nation off the face of the earth”15. But with the end of the famine in the Soviet country at the end of 1933 this campaign gradually petered out.
With the beginning of the Cold War the Americans took up the thesis of the Ukraine famine as an “action planned by Moscow.” They turned it into a serious ideological weapon against the USSR, which was being used in both its social and economic aspects (“totalitarian state” with “inefficient economy”), as well as its national aspect (“Russian imperialism oppresses and exterminates the enslaved freedom-loving peoples,” where by an “enslaved people” was meant, in particular, the population of Ukraine). In the 1950s-1970s works of different authors were periodically published in the West in such a vein.
In the 1980s Washington began promoting a concept of “the Moscow government’s use of famine to exterminate Ukrainians” on a large-scale in connection with the new spiral of the Cold War.
The question of the early 1930s famine in Ukraine began to be widely used by the Americans to foment strife among the peoples inhabiting the Soviet Union. In the West, mostly in the English-speaking countries, noisy campaigns were being conducted, with wide coverage in the media. Numerous films about “Holodomor” were being shown on television. Monuments were being erected to the victims of “famine-genocide in Ukraine,” organized by “the Soviet government in Moscow.” Various anti-Soviet materials dedicated to the “Ukraine famine” (books, pamphlets, collections of articles, etc.)16 were being published and popularized in every way. The Americans even included this theme in the program for their schoolchildren17.
A number of resolutions on the Holodomor were introduced in the US Congress. In 1983 a photographic exhibition was on display in the Congress building on this theme. US administration and Congress representatives took a direct part in the anti-Soviet “famine” demonstrations that they themselves had inspired, in which they came up with hostile statements against the USSR. The congratulatory messages of US President Ronald Reagan, containing rude anti-Soviet attacks, were being read out at such events. By concurrence of Congress, Reagan even proclaimed November 4, 1984, a “Day of Remembrance for the 1932-1933 Ukraine Famine Victims.” A broad anti-Soviet campaign was launched in the media18.
The Americans endeavored to give an appropriate “scientific” basis for the Holodomor concept. In 1981 leading American tertiary education institutions: Harvard University and the Hoover Institution launched a program of Ukraine famine research. “Academic” conferences were held in the US and Canada on this theme. A number of tendentious studies appeared with “proofs” of the Soviet leadership’s plans to use the famine to “exterminate the Ukrainian people.” In 1984 the US Congress set up a special commission to investigate the “causes and effects of the 1932-1933 Ukraine famine,” allegedly “specially caused by the Soviet government”19. The final report of the commission (1988) declared the artificial character of the famine and its anti-peasant thrust, and the famine itself was said to be an act of genocide policy against the Ukrainian people.
During the Perestroika, the concept, now well developed abroad, began to be actively introduced in Ukraine. In the 1990s it was already firmly established within the circles of Ukraine’s political establishment and academic science, the Ukrainian mass media and in the system of secondary and higher education. In November 2006 a legal basis was provided for the concept: the Verkhovnaya Rada adopted a Law on the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine. This law proclaimed the 1932-1933 famine an act of “genocide against the Ukrainian people.” Any public denial of the Holodomor was to be recognized as “desecration of memory of millions of victims and humiliation of dignity of the Ukrainian people”20.
The Ukrainian leadership embarked on a comprehensive effort to get the Holodomor recognized at the international level as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry began to actively push through this theme in the United Nations and other international organizations and to impose through its agencies abroad the Ukrainian point of view on the national parliaments of foreign states.
But as of now Ukraine has only got the adoption in 2003 by the Third Committee of the UNGA during its 58th session of the Joint Statement as an appendix to the letter of Ukraine’s Permanent Representative at the UN to the UN Secretary General. Thanks to the work done by the Russian side the statement has no mention of “genocide against Ukrainians.” Moreover, the document contains an appeal to pay tribute to the memory of the millions of Russians, Kazakhs and members of other nationalities who died of famine as a consequence of the Civil War and forced collectivization, not only in Ukraine, but also in Russia, Kazakhstan and other areas of the Soviet Union21.
The UNESCO General Conference, which in 2007 considered the question of the Great Famine at its 34th session, honored the memory of the millions of people who died in the famine irrespective of their nationalities, likewise refusing to recognize this tragedy as an act of “genocide against the Ukrainian people”22.
Resolutions on the Holodomor have been adopted by the parliaments of 16 states only.
At the same time Ukrainian official historiography, starting from the thesis that it is necessary to restore historical memory, keeps vigorously inculcating in public consciousness the idea of a responsibility of present-day Russia for the “Holodomor-genocide” against Ukrainians. The Ukrainian Cabinet is planning on approving a concept of a statewide national program of Holodomor research and the perpetuation of the memory of its victims for the period to 2012. Ukraine’s media are oriented towards the propaganda of this point of view. The Ukrainian side, however, has not presented a single authentic archival document on the nationality targeting prong of the policy of the then leadership of the USSR on this issue.
For purposes of objectivity it has to be noted that there also exists in Ukraine a more balanced approach to the 1932-1933 events. The opposition forces – the Party of Regions and the Communists – at their congress in Severodonetsk warned the authorities of responsibility for “presenting deliberately untruthful information, primarily in respect of the Holodomor problem.” Sensible reflections on the causes of the 1932-1933 famine are present in the articles of a number of leading Ukrainian historians and political scientists (A. Karevin, V. Kornilov, V. Malinkovich et al). However, considering the engaged stance of official Kyiv, a tendentious presentation of the Holodomor theme will, apparently, continue to predominate in the foreseeable future.
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1 – FUND 05, DESC. 13, FOLDER 90, FILE 14, SH. 6
2 – FUND 54, DESC. 2, FOLDER 21, FILE 129, Resolutions of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars No. 2318 of October 25 and No. 2665 of December 10, 1933
3 – FUND 0136, FOLDER 160, FILE 782, SH. 71
4 – FUND 05, DESC. 13, FOLDER 93, FILE 47, SH. 8-9
5 – FUND 054, DESC. 10, FOLDER 411, FILE 121, SH. 49
6 – FUND 054, DESC. 10, FOLDER 411, FILE 121, SH. 47-49
7 – FUND 054, DESC. 10, FOLDER 411, FILE 121, SH. 50
8 – FUND 0165, DESC. 13, FOLDER 154, FILE 361, SH. 323
9 – FUND 0165, DESC. 13, FOLDER 154, FILE 361, SH. 322
10 – FUND 05, DESC. 13, FOLDER 93, FILE 47, SH. 8
11 – FUND 010, DESC. 4, FOLDER 16, FILE 20, SH. 39
12 – FUND 010, DESC. 8, FOLDER 33, FILE 109, SH. 26
13 – FUND 05, DESC. 13, FOLDER 90, FILE 14, SH. 71
14 – FUND 05, DESC. 13, FOLDER 93, FILE 47, SH. 8-9
15 – FUND 010, DESC. 8, FOLDER 31, FILE 77, SH. 54
16 – FUND 129, DESC. 71, FOLDER 437, FILE 27, PG. 92, 93
17 – FUND 129, DESC. 70, FOLDER 428, FILE 52, PG. 187
18 – FUND 129, DESC. 71, FOLDER 437, FILE 27, PG. 87-89
19 – FUND 129, DESC. 70, FOLDER 428, FILE 52, PG. 280
20 – Text of Ukraine’s Law on the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine
21 – Documents of the 58th UNGA Session, A/C.3/58/9, 7.11.2003
22 – Documents of the 34th UNESCO General Conference, 34C, 8.10.2007
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