|
06.19.2009
'Holodomor' - the Ukrainian term, coming from the words 'holod', 'hunger' and 'mor', 'plague', refers to the winter of 1932/33, when there was a famine in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine as well as the Soviet territory where ethnic Ukrainians where settled. While the Ukrainian president, Victor Yushenko, is pushing for international recognition of the 'Holodomor' as an acto of genocide, others contest this fact, up to some denying that there was a famine at all. The debate, which often ranges along Ukrainian/Russian nationalist lines, is heated, and all too often simple accusations replace facts. In the end, there are three questions as part of this debate that need to be answered.
The undeniable famine
The first is whether there was a famine during that time, and only extreme Russian nationalists and Soviet apologists deny this anymore. To all others it is clear that millions died from hunger during that winter. Survivors tell shocking tales of being afraid of leaving their farm yards for fear of being eaten. Others, from the cities, recount people dropping dead in the street and nobody left with the energy to care. Some villages were almost wiped out during this winter. The precise number of dead is the subject of ongoing research, with estimates varying wildly depending on the time frame that is considered, ranging from a minimum of 2.2 million to the tens of millions if consequences to current population numbers are taken into consideration. In a way the effects of this winter can still be felt in Ukraine, which would be a more populous country if not for it.
The guilt of Soviet authorities
The second question is already more difficult: was this famine man-made. The famine falls into a period of huge changes in the agricultural sector. Farms were collectivized and there were attempts at modernizing farming. Both of these caused difficulties, and some claim that these, together with bad weather conditions, caused the famine. Yet there is conclusive evidence that the hardships created by this were severly exacerbated by rigorous enforcement of delivery quotas that were illusory in the face of the actual harvest. In November and December of 1932, in some territories of Ukraine this enforcement extended to seizing everything edible from farmers. Grain exports continued all through the famine, and throughout the winter food help was denied to most of the Ukrainian territory, which was considered to still be dominated by the 'kulak' class, well-off famers who resisted collectivization (also 'kurkul' - in Ukraine, editor). People in badly afflicted areas were even kept from seeking aid elsewhere. In the end, conscious decisions by the Soviet leadership in full knowledge of the effects these were having were what turned hardships into a catastrohe.
Was it genocide?
Knowledge of why these decisions were made is what is needed to answer the third question: Was it genocide? According to the current international legal definition of the term, genocide means the 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. To fall under this definition, the actions of the Soviet leadership that caused the famine would have had to be directed at the Ukrainian people, a national and ethnic group, as a whole. Some people assert that Stalin wanted to subdue the Ukrainian nation which he saw as a threat to his power, while others counter that the famine of this year was equally bad in some parts of neighboring Soviet republics. Others argue that if there was a specific target of the measures it was an effort to break the resistance against collectivization in these areas, entirely or mostly unconnected to nationality or ethnicity. It was directed at a class of people, not a people. The debate here is heated, with the president championing the opinion that it was genocide, and pusing for resolutions to that effect on his foreign state visits.
Most Ukrainians, however, seem to think that there are more pressing matters at hand that the president should focus on. The Ukrainian population has almost universally accepted the fact that there was a famine, and the vast majority sees this as the result of actions of the inhuman Soviet regime. In the end, what difference does a legal label to these facts make then? It is the facts that we should remember, the victims, not the intentions of the criminals who killed them.
|
