Misplaced skepticism

The recently-appointed head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Valerii Soldatenko, made some interesting comments on his vision of the Holodomor issue in an interview with Kommersant-Ukraina. According to Mr. Soldatenko, the Holodomor is “a tragedy, the result of the criminal activities of Stalin and his inner circle.” In his words, nobody is going to justify the criminal methods of collectivization and grain procurement, which led to such consequences, but one should take into account the geopolitical situation in which the country was at the time. At first glance, it is a very appropriate remark and a reasonable way of thinking. But, unfortunately, Mr. Soldatenko then deviated from professional standards and resorted to tendentious comments, which we endlessly hear from politicians but which, however, do not befit such a respected historian. “We, the Ukraine of today, succumbed, at a certain stage of our state’s formation, to a temptation to say that we have bad neighbors who took us by force, punished, and starved us to death. This claim has no documentary evidence. Ukraine is just a victim, so let us weep all together,” the director of the Institute of National Memory said. Yes, Ukraine is a victim due to many circumstances, including geopolitical ones. But skepticism is out of place here.

The professional work of historians, including those in the Institute of National Memory, consists in investigating these circumstances and participating in the formation of national historical memory by carefully furnishing evidence and conclusions — not in just “weeping together.”

We asked Prof. Stanislav KULCHYTSKY, a well-known Holodomor researcher, whose viewpoints on these complicated issues, as he writes in his book Why He Was Destroying Us, considerably changed as he studied facts and documents, to comment on Soldatenko’s opinion.

“There is ample evidence about the Holodomor, but it should be properly interpreted. I am convinced that the previously dominant concept of the Ukrainian Holocaust, i.e. ethnic famine, is absolutely erroneous because it links us to the genocide of Jews. And Jewish genocide is ethnic cleansing. In reality, it made no difference to Stalin. By means of famine, he was simultaneously trying to solve different problems, such as combating the national movement and turning peasants into collective farmers. That was terror by famine. At a certain stage, peasants were robbed of absolutely all food, not only bread.

“In Ukraine, Kuban, and the Lower Volga region alike, peasants were ‘relieved’ of any food. Therefore, there was no ethnic element in the Holodomor in a sense that both Russians and Ukrainians suffered from this terrorist act. But stressing the ethnic element would mean that only the Ukrainians suffered.

“A situation was created artificially — in fact, when Kuchma was the president — when the Holodomor began to be regarded as genocide of Ukrainians only. The root cause is that it is the Ukrainian diaspora that began to hype up the Holodomor problem, for it is ethnically linked with Ukraine. So the Russians have a wrong impression that when the Ukrainians say they suffered from famine, they are putting the blame on the Russians. But the Holodomor problem should be addressed by a joint effort of the Ukrainians, Russians, and Western academics. And, incidentally, the first version of PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu’s report on the Ukrainian Holodomor took into account what I had suggested, i.e., forming a joint commission of academics from different countries, who could tackle this problem. But, I think on the insistence of Russia, this item was taken off the agenda. A resolution with the word ‘genocide’ will be possible only if we put the question in a different light — based on a national, not ethnic, element. Although Stalin would wipe out the Russians, too, they cannot claim having suffered from genocide because they were a state-forming nation. Actually, they are not interested in this because it is about a government that ‘sat’ in Moscow, and it is difficult to admit that the government was exterminating its own people (although we must admit that Ukrainians were also in power at the time).”

You have the experience of the evolution of your own attitudes. Do you think Valerii Soldatenko may still revise his current viewpoint in the future, with due account of irrefutable facts?

“There are documents and irrefutable facts. The point is how you approach these documents. If your approach is based on a predetermined concept, there will be no chances. If a concept is being drawn up in the course of document study, it is quite a different thing. Back in 2006, Soldatenko published an article in Dzerkalo tyzhnia from the Stalinist angle: grain requisitions were necessary for replenishing hard-currency reserves because we had to build factories — otherwise we would not have won in 1945. In my current approach to the Holodomor problem as genocide, I totally exclude grain procurement. ‘The formula of genocide’ comprises three components: peasants were robbed of absolutely all foodstuffs, isolated in their villages, and forbidden to talk about famine. Incidentally, last April, during a PACE debate, [rapporteur] Paul Rowen suggested adding the following formula to the resolution: creating conditions incompatible with physical survival. This amendment was turned down.”