Was the Holodomor Genocide?

[Ranetka]

 
Bashkirs were deported during forced collectivization.  James Olson has written about this.
 

Do you know what area in Siiberia they were relocated to and from?


I mean on a grade scale of things it's probably not that important but what was the reason for relocation? They were not collaborating with Germans for example or against the Soviet rule as majority of cossacks. Are you sure it was not Bashkirs relocated as kulaks? I mean kulaks were relocated regardless of ethnicity, could be some Bashkirs there as well.

[Boethius]

No.
Bashkirs, like Ukrainians, were forcibly collectivized, and that is when they were deported.  Ukrainians were deported to Siberia during collectivization as well.  However, that policy changed when Stalin determined there were too many Ukrainians to deport them all.

[Ranetka]

I edited my question. I really can not find any mentioning of their relocation anywhere.

[Boethius]

I will look for some materials when I have time.
 

They were not collaborating with Germans for example or against the Soviet rule as majority of cossacks.

Cossacks were killed beginning in the 1920's, and they, like Ukrainians, were starved to death when they refused to be collectivized.

[SANDRO43]

A little known case of some 40,000 Cossacks resettled in 1944 by the Germans to a remote valley in NE Italy: http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=4458.msg83544#msg83544. Ended tragically after WWII ended.

[Boethius]

The artificial resettlements and forced assimilation of Russians and Belarusians on Ukrainian lands begin immediately after the Holodomor of 1932-33.

The most active segment of the Ukrainian population had been wiped out, but the land needed tending and new residents, explains historian Nina Lapchynska, the head of the museum’s research department.

In 1939 the All-Union census recorded the changed ethnic population in Ukraine. Much later, the new “locals” in eastern Ukraine would tell Holodomor researchers that “there was no famine.” Lapchynska believes this mind-set, as well as separatist attitudes in modern Donbas, are the results of the population resettlements. Russians were brought to the Kharkiv Oblast in Ukraine from the Chernozem Oblast in Russia (which today is divided into the Kursk, Chernozem and Tambov oblasts). There were altogether 329 waves of migrants, representing close to 23,000 families. According to the Central Committee of the Soviet Union, the local government was responsible for welcoming the new arrivals.

“Ukrainian peasants had to clean and whitewash the houses, repair the yards (since the yards of the deceased were dismantled for wood), and remove the corpses,” Lapchynska explains. “They were ordered to prepare the housing and the farm implements so that the migrants could begin to work immediately. They (migrants) were also given incentives: exemption from agricultural and meat taxes for two years, etc.,” she says.

Russian settlers given grain seized from Ukrainians.  According to Lapchynska, not only families but entire collectives were resettled. When a collective farm moved, it had to hand over grain and then upon presentation of a receipt was given the same amount of grain in the new location — the same amount that had been taken from Ukrainian peasants during the Holodomor.

Conflicts arose between the locals and the settlers since the locals received no benefits. “In one of the documents there is even testimony that the local collective farms had to purchase phonographs for the new settlers,” she says. Special Russian-language classes were organized for the Russians, and Russian language newspapers and books were brought in.

Additionally, the Ukrainians who had left during the Holodomor and who succeeded in returning discovered that their homes had been occupied and that handing back property to the original owners was prohibited.

This exhibition is a logical continuation of previous projects of the Holodomor Memorial Museum, explains Yana Hrynko, a researcher at the museum.

“We have launched a series of exhibitions called The crimes of Soviet totalitarianism. This exhibition was preceded by an exhibition dedicated to the liberation struggle in the 1920s. After the first famine in the country there were about 4,000 uprisings. And the response to opposition was genocide.

The Holodomor of 1932-33 was a powerful blow to Ukrainian independence. Here were are talking about a violent assimilation policy: to wipe out a part of the Ukrainian population and replace it with people presenting no threatening national concept,” Hrynko says.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/05/17/holodomor-and-separatism-in-the-donbas/

[Slumba]

It is interesting to reflect on the use of Russians to displace Ukrainians, and contrast it with the unchecked illegal immigration into the USA, along with the deliberate importing of Somalis and other Muslims.  It is almost like the USA elites are following the same playbook.

[Boethius]

I don't think that is an accurate comparison.  There really is none, but probably the closest would be the Irish famine.  Although the Irish were not removed from their lands, English became the predominant language there, a consequence of the famine which was exacerbated by policy.

[SANDRO43]

There really is none, but probably the closest would be the Irish famine.

Not much I'd say, the Irish famine was caused by a potato blight, not by the confiscation of crops and/or deportation .

[Anotherkiwi]

Not much I'd say, the Irish famine was caused by a potato blight, not by the confiscation of crops and/or deportation .

I would have thought that the Highland clearances in Scotland were more similar, in that the peasants living on the land were forcibly evicted to make way for sheep.  Although it wasn't genocide as such, it probably felt like it to the victims (even though there was no such term at the time).

[Ed S.]

Not much I'd say, the Irish famine was caused by a potato blight, not by the confiscation of crops and/or deportation .

Famines are man-made disasters, so the blight was only part of the problem. The British government's lack of a response to the disruption in food supply is what caused the famine to occur. Food supply chains are disrupted quite often, but usually governments are capable of dealing with the surprise event by providing relief, distributing surplus food to the affected area, etc. Whether or not you want to say British antipathy towards Ireland was equal to that of Stalin's antipathy towards Ukraine, that's up for debate.

As for the Holodomor, I only say it is not genocide because the Soviets intentionally manipulated the internationally defined definition to not cover such atrocities they committed. However, the democratic peace theorist R.J. Rummel coined the concept of democide to cover such cases, and it has gained acceptance in academia at least. Here's a link of his definition:

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM

[BillyB]

As for the Holodomor, I only say it is not genocide because the Soviets intentionally manipulated the internationally defined definition to not cover such atrocities they committed.

Raphael Lemkin says Holodomor was genocide. He better know the definition of "genocide", he coined it.

[Ed S.]

Raphael Lemkin says Holodomor was genocide. He better know the definition of "genocide", he coined it.

Well, I personally agree. However, the UN's declaration doesn't label political murder as genocide thanks to the USSR. Not that the United Nations seems capable of preventing genocide anyway, Rwanda proved that. I didn't intend to come off as being dismissive of the Holodomor.

[BillyB]

However, the UN's declaration doesn't label political murder as genocide thanks to the USSR.

UN is a group of nations with special interests. Between pissing Ukraine and Russia off, most prefer not to be on Russia's crap list. If there come a day Ukraine is a more valuable or dangerous nation than Russia, the majority of nations at the UN will change their mind on this issue.

[Boethius]

http://www.russianwomendiscussion.com/index.php?topic=21417.msg451339#msg451339

Myrna Kostash is a Ukrainian writer, now in her seventies.  She was probably auditing Himka's course.

The description of the Holodomor first came from Robert Conquest in his seminal work, The Harvest of Sorrow.  He is also the one who speculated on the seven million dead, extrapolating from previous Soviet censuses. 

Conquest was a giant in the field of Soviet studies.

A post graduate fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the late James Mace, was persuaded to work as a researcher on Dr. Conquest's book.  He later was the executive director of the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine.  Dr. Mace was an expert on Ukraine, and particularly on national communism, having written his thesis on the interplay of nationalist identity and NEP in Ukraine.

Dr. Mace was convinced the Holodomor was a genocide, linking it to destruction of Ukrainian intellectuals, Ukrainian language, the understanding of Ukrainian history, in short, the destruction of the people.  He makes a compelling case, although the destruction of intellectuals occurred in all Soviet republics, and was Bolshevik policy even before Stalinism -

I remain convinced that, for Stalin to have complete centralized power in his hands, he found it necessary to physically destroy the second largest Soviet republic, meaning the annihilation of the Ukrainian peasantry, Ukrainian intelligentsia, Ukrainian language, and history as understood by the people; to do away with Ukraine and things Ukrainian as such.

The calculation was very simple, very primitive: no people, therefore, no separate country, and thus no problem. Such a policy is GENOCIDE in the classic sense of the word.

Until the end of war communism in 1921, the Bolsheviks cultivated an almost pathological hatred of what they called bourgeois nationalism. The essence of Lenin's formula, "rapprochement and merger of nations," can itself be interpreted as progenocidal, since imposing a single national pattern was proclaimed "historically progressive."

During the first Soviet occupation of Kyiv, Bolshevik forces shot anyone they found in the streets speaking Ukrainian. The famine of 1921-23, killing millions in Ukraine, was obviously exacerbated by Moscow's economic policy with regard to Ukraine. Food was pumped out of that country in an openly discriminatory manner. In 1919 the head of the second Soviet Ukrainian government, Khristian Rakovsky, in 1919 formally branded Ukrainian a counterrevolutionary language.

In 1921, the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic (RFSSR) asked for help only for the starving populace in Volga Basin and the New Economic Policy (NEP) that ended the forced seizure of  foodstuffs delayed in Ukraine six months to prolong the prodrazverstka campaign of requisitioning farm produce. It was only with the start of NEP in 1921 that an attempt was made to have Soviet power coexist with non-Russian languages and cultures (resolution On the National Question of the Tenth RKP{b} Congress).

In the course of Ukrainization (or "indigenization" proclaimed by the Twelfth Party Congress), in 1923-32, Communists in Ukraine attempted to gain control of  the Ukrainian national cultural process by directly participating   in it. Halting this policy during the Holodomor of 1932-33 had all the hallmarks of genocide.

To enforce his direct rule in Ukraine, Stalin restored to terrible repression and, finally to famine. In late October 1932, the All-Union Communist Party (VKP{b}) took the grain procurements campaign under its direct control through Vyacheslav Molotov, Chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars, who was appointed chairman of the grain procurements commission in the Ukrainian SSR. (Lazar Kaganovich headed an analogous commission in what was then the South Caucasus Territory, including the heavily Ukrainian Kuban.)

On November 18 the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (KP{b}U) , presided over by Molotov, instituted a system of fines payable in kind. This was actually a directive aimed at making collective farmers return to the state grain received as advance payments on crops, and confiscating other foodstuffs in the absence of grain. All this could only be interpreted as a policy meant to cause a famine, the Holodomor.The CC VKP(b) Politburo resolution of December 14, 1932, signed by Stalin and Molotov, accusing the Ukrainian SSR government and leadership of the North Caucasus Territory of Ukrainian nationalism, this being allegedly the main reason for the unwillingness or inability of the local Communists to comply with the procurements quotas for mythical grain, along with a January 24, 1933 VKP(b) reprimand of the entire KP(b)U, were graphic evidence that the leadership in Moscow sought to end any independent activity by the KP(b)U and Soviet Ukrainian government.

The mass terror unleashed against Ukrainian culture in 1933 was additional evidence that Moscow wanted to destroy Ukrainian national identity as the basis of such independent activity.

http://www.ukemonde.com/genocide/jmace.htm


Dr. Mace fell in love with a Ukrainian woman, and moved to Kyiv after the Soviet collapse, where he was a professor and continued his research.  It was he who was the driving force behind the Holodomor memorial in Kyiv.

[Bounder]

Thanks for posting this, Boethius.  I read with interest.

[Boethius]

Interesting article by Ukrainian journalist Vitaliy Portnikov on the origins of the Holodomor -


http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/11/28/100099/