An unquenchable candle

On April 28, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution paying homage to the victims of the Great Famine (Holodomor) in the former Soviet Union. The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory appreciates this document as an important step toward the re-establishment of historical truth and memory of all those millions of victims of the Stalinist totalitarian regime.

PACE admitted that the Great Famine in the USSR was caused by “the cruel policies pursued by the Stalinist regime” and that it was a crime against humanity. The European parliamentarians did not reject Ukraine’s assessment of Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. The resolution reads: “In Ukraine, which suffered the most… These tragic events are referred to as Holodomor (politically-motivated famine) and are recognized by Ukrainian law as an act of genocide against Ukrainians.”

The Ukrainian Institute of National Memory welcomes PACE’s appeal to the governments of all former USSR republics [currently independent states], asking them to make their archives open and accessible. UINM supports PACE’s message to historians, urging them to conduct joint independent research programs in order to establish the full, unbiased and unpoliticized truth about this human tragedy. UINM is prepared and willing to assist this research in every way.

Ukraine has traveled a long way in its effort to restore the national memory of this troubling event in its history. Our assessment of the 1932-33 Holodomor in Ukraine as an act of genocide is rooted in a large number of scholarly studies, hundreds of thousands of eyewitness accounts. Today, however, certain political circles in Ukraine and abroad are attempting to re-assess this tragedy to suit their interests. To this end, UINM deems it necessary to once again bring to public attention the historical and legal findings concerning the Holodomor of 1932-33.

Ukraine, even in the Ukrainian SSR format, was always on top of the Kremlin’s blacklist. Moscow regarded Ukraine’s powerful national elite and economically independent, nationally conscious peasantry as a clear and present danger threatening the very existence of the Soviet Union. Likewise, they regarded the Ukrainian intelligentsia as hostile by definition.

Economically independent peasants were a problem for Soviet political leadership. Control over the distribution of foodstuffs occupied a special place in the Bolshevist regime rooted in political control and coercion. “The grain monopoly and bread rationing… These means of control and of compelling people to work will be more potent than the laws of the Convention and its guillotine,” Lenin wrote in his magazine article entitled “Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?” (This article appeared a month before the October coup d’etat in St. Petersburg.)

For the Bolsheviks, famine was the tool with which they could keep the populace under control. But there was one big obstacle: peasants, particularly the wealthier ones, all those who kept the cities supplied with their farm products, thus reducing Bolshevik control over the distribution of foodstuffs practically to nil. That was why both Lenin and Stalin stuck to their policy of annihilating the economically independent peasants “as a class.”

Therefore, the regime in Ukraine had two objectives:

— destruction of all, even potential, manifestations of the national liberation movement;

— annihilation of the peasantry as a class.

These objectives became one, considering that the 1926 census read that the peasants made up 80.8 percent of Ukraine’s population. Among the Ukrainians, they constituted 84 percent. For decades the peasants remained the nucleus of the Ukrainian nation. The regime set course to obliterate the people’s national identity and curb their economic self-sufficiency.

At the turn of the 1930s, massive arrests swept through the Ukrainian intellectual elite, including the fabricated cases of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine, Ukrainian National Center, Ukrainian Military Organization, etc. In 1930, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church stopped functioning. In the countryside, the Soviet Bolshevist policy was carried out in the form of dekulakization and deportation of well-to-do peasants while stepping up the nationwide collectivization and instituting compulsory grain delivery quotas. All this combined to destroy the farming tradition and resulted in a catastrophic decline in productivity of labor and deprived the peasants of grain reserves required for an adequate living. In 1931, the food situation worsened significantly, culminating in a famine in the spring of 1932.

In the summer of 1932, Ukraine was assigned unrealistic grain delivery quotas. Toward the end of October that same year, an extraordinary grain delivery commission was dispatched from Moscow, presided over by Vyacheslav Molotov, chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars [i.e., Prime Minister] of the USSR. Searches for concealed grain in the rural areas rose to an incredible scope. The repressive machine had been set in motion at full speed. In November 1932, fines in kind were instituted. Populated areas failing to fulfill the grain delivery quotas were blacklisted. Other forms of repression were applied on a broad scale. “Special representatives” and “tow teams” were appointed from among communists, Komsomol and other “activists” tasked with confiscating grain and foodstuffs. In December 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) — or VKP(B) — sent Lazar Kaganovich and Pavel Postyshev to Ukraine to boost grain deliveries (Postyshev was appointed as second secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Bolsheviks) — or KP(B)U — in February 1933 and was actually in command of Ukraine. In December 1932, CC VKP(B) ordered the Ukrainian leadership to clear the countryside of all grain — even seed grain — reserves. This was done.

In other words, by the end of 1932, the Ukrainian countryside was left without grain reserves. The totalitarian regime took steps that should be classified as murder by famine. On Jan. 1, 1933, Stalin sent a resolution of the CC VKP(B) to Ukraine. In it he openly and brutally threatened to take “severe punitive measures” against all Ukrainian peasants who refused to surrender concealed grain of their “own free will.” This resolution actually sanctioned massive searches and impoundments of the remaining food reserves. When searching village homes even food in pots and pans was confiscated. On January 22, 1933, Stalin issued a directive prohibiting peasants to leave the Ukrainian SSR and the Kuban region for other areas of the Soviet Union in search for bread. Sale of railroad and riverboat tickets to peasants was suspended. The roads were blocked by GPU troops. Those who tried to leave were arrested and returned. Later, the roads to the cities were closed for the famished travelers.

It was thus massacre by famine that took place in Ukraine, with the death rate soaring in spring, reaching its peak in June 1933.

The logical question is: What did Stalin want to achieve by the CC VKP(B) directive of Jan. 1, 1933? There was no grain left in Ukraine, save for a miserable amount that could by no means secure replenishment of the state reserve. Therefore, this directive was a command to start killing Ukrainians by famine. In February 1933, almost 100,000 died of hunger, followed by over 400,000 in March, over a million in April, more than 700,000 in July, and some 300,000 in August. Findings of the Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences (NAN) of Ukraine read that 3,941,000 were killed by the Holodomor in Ukraine. An analysis of the ethnic composition of direct demographic losses shows that most victims of the engineered famine were ethnic Ukrainians: 3,597,000, or 91.2 percent of direct losses. Indirect losses (low birth rate) resulting from the Holodomor in Ukraine, in 1932-34, amount to 1,122,000. The total sum of demographic losses, including cumulative ones, is 10,063,000. Ukrainians, as an ethnos, suffered from a lethal wound. The year 1933 was a national catastrophe for Ukraine, the consequences of which are felt even today.

In 1932-33, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet government planned and perpetrated a deliberate mass murder of Ukrainians by famine. This policy of the Bolshevik regime was a crime against humanity that falls under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Holodomor of 1932-33 in Ukraine,” adopted by the Verkhovna Rada in 2006, defines the Holodomor as “[an act of] genocide against the Ukrainian people.”

On May 22, 2009, the Security Service of Ukraine commenced proceedings in the criminal case of genocide in Ukraine, in 1932-33, as per Section 1, Article 442 (genocide) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in order to ascertain the circumstances of mass murder by famine of Ukrainian peasants. This criminal investigation was assisted by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, central and regional government archives, local self-governments, scholars, public figures, NGOs, members of the Ukrainian Diaspora, etc. The investigating officers drew up 350 folders, interviewed 1,890 eyewitnesses, performed 24 forensic medical, psychological, demographic, and comprehensive historical and legal examinations and studies. The case contains 5,000 archival documents with 857 mass burial sites of genocidal victims located.

In January 2010, the Appellate Court of the City of Kyiv heard this criminal case and determined that an act of genocide had indeed been committed in Ukraine, in 1932-33.

In its ruling of Jan. 13, 2010, the AC found Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Pavel Postyshev, Stanislav Kosior, Vlas Chubar, and Mendel Khatayevich responsible for the organization of the crime of genocide. Considering that the said individuals are dead, the AC closed the criminal case as per Section 8, Part 1, Article 6 of the Procedural Criminal Code of Ukraine — in other words, under nonrehabilitative circumstances. This means that the pre-trial investigation and court hearings established that the above-mentioned persons deliberately organized an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

It should be stressed that singling out the Holodomor in Ukraine as a crime of genocide, relying on substantial factual evidence, by no means refutes the criminal nature of the communist regime that caused the death of a great many peasants of other ethnic origins in the RSFSR and other Soviet republics.

Ihor YUKHNOVSKY, Academician, NAN of Ukraine, is the acting head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory

Volodymyr TYLISHCHAK is the deputy director of the department, head of the section at the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory