Today is Holodomor Memorial Day in Ukraine

[Larry1]

I read that today, the fourth Saturday in November, is Holodomor Memorial Day. If you are interested in Ukrainian history and know nothing about this I recommend that you take a few minutes to read about it. Here is one place in English to do so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

In view of today's Russian regime's habit of defending all things Soviet I'm surprised that the Troll Factory in St. Petersburg hasn't got to this Wikipedia page yet and edited it heavily.

[JayH]

Holodomor: Stalin’s genocidal famine of 1932-1933

Holodomor (“death by hunger” in Ukrainian) refers to the starvation of at least four million Ukrainians in 1932–33 as a result of Soviet policies. The Holodomor can be seen as the culmination of an assault by the Communist Party and Soviet state on the Ukrainian peasantry, who resisted Soviet policies. This assault occurred in the context of a campaign of intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, artists, religious leaders, and political cadres, who were seen as a threat to Soviet ideological and state-building aspirations.

The Ukrainian peasants were given impossible high quotas of the amount of grain to submit to the Soviet state. Special teams were sent in to search homes and confiscate all produce to the last grain. A particularly brutal law called “5 ears of grain law” was passed, following which starving Ukrainians were shot on the spot for gathering grain that remained on the field after the harvest.

As a result, at least four million people starved to death in Ukraine. At the height of the Holodomor, 28,000 people were dying per day. This number does not include the ethnic Ukrainians outside the Ukrainians SSR who died, the half million people deported from Ukraine during collectivization or the thousands of religious, cultural and political leaders who were destroyed.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/09/15/holodomor-stalins-genocidal-famine-of-1932-1933/

[JayH]

Stalin’s genocidal Holodomor campaign of 1932-33. What we know vs the denialist lies

Mr. Duranty thinks it quite possible that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year.”
Duranty’s figure of 10 million is interesting because one can easily say that it represents a minimum estimate for the number of deaths in 1932-33 that have been confirmed by modern scholars. As I have mentioned before, 4-5 million at least did indeed die within the Ukrainian SSR and when you add in the number of Ukrainians who died outside of it (such as in the Kuban (North Caucasus) which was a majority Ukrainian area and where 1-2 million died), you are looking at a Holodomor total of 5-7 million. Add to that the figures from the Goloshchekin Genocide where at least 1.5 million Kazakhs died and you’re looking at 6.5-8.5 million deaths within a single year. Add in the victims of the famine in the Volga (of which the Volga Germans seemed to have been a main target) and other areas such as Crimea or the Bashkir ASSR it quickly adds up. Some Russians too were also caught up in the starvation during 1932-33 and they too must be counted among Stalin’s victims but Russians did not starve nowhere near in the same proportions as the Ukrainians, Kazakhs or a number of the ethnic minorities that inhabited Southern Russia. A major aim of the Holodomor and related famines was to change ethnographic compositions to suit Stalin’s whims, in effect Russification – something that the archival evidence explicitly admits. For Ukraine, the consequences of Stalin’s decision making is plaguing its eastern parts today.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/09/15/stalins-genocidal-holodomor-campaign-of-1932-33-what-we-know-vs-the-denialist-lies/

[Bounder]

Just because it is far less biased and more educational, here is some intelligent discussion about the famine/Holodomor:

Genocide or “A Vast Tragedy”?
University students in an Alberta classroom try to decide.
MYRNA KOSTASH

http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2009/12/genocide-or-a-vast-tragedy/

I found this excerpt instructive:

"On the last day of class, Himka called for a vote: “How many believe the famine was not genocide?” The question arose also from a parallel discussion: how do you measure genocide in the shadow of the Holocaust? Comparatively, only the Holocaust qualifies as the intent to exterminate an ethnic group; competitively, figures of 7 to 10 million dead in the Holodomor have been cited—“blithe claims,” in Himka’s words, “disrespectful to the dead, that people use … in a ploy to gain the moral capital of victimhood or to score points in interethnic rivalry in North America … The discussion of tragedies like these demands a certain moral probity.”"

Spoiler Alert:

"So a vote was held among the nine of us: who believes the famine was not a genocide? Five, including me. Who believes it was? No one. Who abstains: Four, including Himka."

[Anotherkiwi]

Just because it is far less biased and more educational, here is some intelligent discussion about the famine/Holodomor:

Genocide or “A Vast Tragedy”?
University students in an Alberta classroom try to decide.
MYRNA KOSTASH

http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2009/12/genocide-or-a-vast-tragedy/

I found this excerpt instructive:

"On the last day of class, Himka called for a vote: “How many believe the famine was not genocide?” The question arose also from a parallel discussion: how do you measure genocide in the shadow of the Holocaust? Comparatively, only the Holocaust qualifies as the intent to exterminate an ethnic group; competitively, figures of 7 to 10 million dead in the Holodomor have been cited—“blithe claims,” in Himka’s words, “disrespectful to the dead, that people use … in a ploy to gain the moral capital of victimhood or to score points in interethnic rivalry in North America … The discussion of tragedies like these demands a certain moral probity.”"

Spoiler Alert:

"So a vote was held among the nine of us: who believes the famine was not a genocide? Five, including me. Who believes it was? No one. Who abstains: Four, including Himka."

It's a very interesting article, but the problem for me is that it was written seven years ago.  Much more has come to light about the Holodomor since then, and I don't think I've seen anything referenced or published in that time which DOESN'T consider it to be genocide.  I don't know if you've been to Kyiv, Bounder, but if you talk to anyone standing in front of the memorial to the victims you won't find one person who considers it anything else.  It is the most depressing place I've ever been to, where it seemed that the atmosphere was almost literally pressing everyone down - and this on a beautiful spring day.  It is quite different from any war memorial I've visited.

What you also have to realise when considering the article is that, no matter how good the lecturer, and the material presented to them, you're reading the opinions of a group of Canadian university students - not necessarily people who've grown up with the stories of the Holodomor and how it directly affected their family.  The author is presumably part of the Ukrainian diaspora - some or all of her classmates may also have been.  That still is probably not enough for them to appreciate what happened.

I have absolutely no familial connection to Ukraine.  I have visited once, fell in love with the country (as I did with Russia), and have a couple of people I consider to be friends there, but that's it.  Yet even I, from this distance, feel more than just a frisson of foreboding whenever I see anything about this tragedy.  I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for those whose families were directly involved.

[JayH]

It's a very interesting article, but the problem for me is that it was written seven years ago.  Much more has come to light about the Holodomor since then, and I don't think I've seen anything referenced or published in that time which DOESN'T consider it to be genocide.

.

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=17720.msg451333;topicseen#msg451333

Ukraine releases KGB documents pertaining to famine in 1932-1933 known as Holodomor

http://www.uawire.org/news/ukraine-releases-kgb-documents-pertaining-to-famine-in-1932-1933-known-as-holodomor

[AnonMod]

Further discussion on the Holodomor as a genocide should be posted here -

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=8365.0

[Boethius]

My response is in the linked thread.


http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=8365.msg451349;topicseen#msg451349

[BillyB]

Genocide or not. Here we go again. Raphael Lemkin says Holodomor was genocide. He invented the word "genocide" and he told the UN Holodomor was a classic example of genocide. Are we going to accuse the guy who coined "genocide" of not understanding what it means? Regardless of what propaganda is out there to minimize the events, the truth is it's genocide.