Holodomor Articles

The topic of my research paper is the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933. This catastrophic famine-genocide was the creation of communist leader Joseph Stalin against the Ukrainian nation. This subject hits close to home for me in that I am of Ukrainian descent and have been learning about the Holodomor extensively year after year in Ukrainian Saturday school up until my graduation after completing 11^th grade.

As I researched and wrote my paper, I sought to expose the Holodomor on a relatively basic level. Many people are unaware of this genocide despite the fact that it was of at least the same, if not greater, magnitude as the Holocaust in terms of the death toll. I began by providing a brief account of the history of the famine, following up with details about various aspects including the politics, Stalin's role, the population changes during those years, and the efforts of people today to raise awareness about the Holodomor.

I believe that the annotated bibliographies promoted my better understanding of the research materials I used. Had I not been assigned these annotated bibliographies as part of the final portfolio, I honestly probably wouldn't have read all of the sources all the way through. I certainly benefitted from reading the sources in their entireties; my final research paper would have undoubtedly been lacking in one way or another had I not read, considered, analyzed, and referenced as much as I did. I think the annotated bibliographies are great because they are pretty short yet highly helpful. In a way, they're efficient in that I learned a lot without feeling a burden to write a certain – sometimes seemingly unattainable – length. With the annotated bibliographies, the pressure was off. The source critiques, however, were a different story. I did not find those to be beneficial to my overall writing process. I will admit that the source critiques did benefit me in that they, like the annotated bibliographies, required me to read the entire source. However, I found the writing of the source critiques to be somewhat tedious. The required structure of the source critiques seemed to have restricted my writing and analysis in that I was constantly conscious of the format and style requirements.

I do not think the source critiques and annotated bibliographies really reflect the evolution of my research topic because I did not write them all before starting my research paper. Even when I started my paper, I was not sure of where exactly it would go; I just knew I wanted to write about the Holodomor. Luckily for me, the paper just started flowing very nicely once I began writing. There are a few spots where I had some trouble integrating quotes into my own text of my essay, but I think I did pretty well in succeeding to do so.

Also, I found the in-class peer reviews to be helpful. I think that reading my own paper aloud to the other students in my group allowed me to better hear and recognize the flow (or lack thereof) of my writing. Having another set of eyes and ears to read and listen to, respectively, my paper was very beneficial.

I think my formal writing has evolved nicely through the process of compiling this final portfolio. This reflection essay aside, I believe my writing to be of a higher caliber than that displayed in my midterm portfolio. As this course progressed, my vocabulary expanded even more so than my usual day-to-day learning typically sees, and the flow of my writing is nearly seamless in many places. Overall, I am very proud of my final portfolio as well as all other work I have completed this quarter because I know I have given my best efforts to produce a product of utmost quality personal to me. Despite my humongous setback with my crashed hard drive, I think I pulled my portfolio together well.

There is no argument that the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 is one of the greatest atrocities ever faced by a nation, and thus it is a shame that the members of the general international community are unaware of this devastating, man-made famine that took the lives of millions of Ukrainians. Literally translated, “Holodomor” is a Ukrainian term meaning “murder by starvation.” During these years of the famine, every other nation of the Soviet Union experienced population growth whileUkrainelost millions of lives. This evidence most basically points to the policy of collectivization and the consequent famine as a maneuver of genocide against the Ukrainian nation as opposed to having been established for economic reasons. Today, the efforts to raise awareness of this tragic genocide against the Ukrainian nation are stronger than ever, and hopefully the entire international community will soon recognize the cruel injustice that was the Holodomor.

A brief examination of the history of the time preceding the famine is necessary in order to wholly understand the causes of the Holodomor. Before achieving independence in 1991, the Ukrainian people had always been under foreign rule. In the late nineteenth century, the Russian Empire dominated the Ukrainian territory – the breadbasket ofEurope– with oppressive policies banning any educational or Ukrainian cultural expression. However, after noticing that these policies agitated the Ukrainian people even further rather than forced them into submission, the government lifted them. Ukrainian political parties soon emerged, “and the form in which Ukrainian political aspirations gained majority support during the revolution of 1917 was through the agrarian socialism of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist Revolutionaries” (Mace, “Chapter Three” 79). After the Soviet regime took hold ofUkrainefollowing the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin imposed the New Economic Policy to end forced procurement by the state and open up the agricultural market in an effort to appease Ukrainians. With this also came a policy of indigenization to further gain favor with the nations under the regime. However, with the new political parties, the peasantry found a voice to stand up for itself. With this newly asserted sense of nationalism and strength in numbers, the peasants began to seek freedom and independence from their oppressors, deciding that they would no longer remain idle as the government continued to demand its right to procure a portion of their personally harvested crops.

When Joseph Stalin assumed command as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Unionafter Lenin passed away, he implemented a Marxist-friendly policy to force the collectivization of farms in order to increase the overall efficiency and productivity of farms. These collective farms were called kolkhozes and were completely owned by the government; the farmers themselves were not able to reap any fruits of their labor, and they received a pittance of a pay. From the establishment of kolkhozes, these farms were destined to fail – the majority of the farmers on the collectives were inexperienced youth. Additionally, the bitter, oppressed peasants held no stock in the collectives and therefore had no reason to properly attend to the livestock or maintain the equipment. According to foreign relations expert James Perloff, “This illustrated the conflict between Marxist ideology and the reality of human nature” (32). The inevitable happened – the kolkhozes were unsuccessful – and Stalin sought a scapegoat on which to blame this failure.

The Communist regime placed the blame for the failure of the kolkhozes on the few relatively wealthier peasants that had subverted collectivization, which the party labeled “kulaks.” Perloff claims that “In reality, however,Ukraine had never had a distinct social class of kulaks – this concept was a Marxist invention” (33). The Stalinist regime sought to liquidate this contrived social class, and “Ironically, this process killed off the most productive farmers, guaranteeing a smaller harvest and a more impoverishedSoviet Union” (33). Stalin's disappointment in and frustration with the inefficiency and shortcomings of the collectives catalyzed his rage, and he ordered for the severe punishment of any peasants who allegedly let their efforts to maximize productivity slip. Peasants who were unjustly labeled kulaks or seemed to be slacking off were either executed, sent to remote slave labor camps inRussia, or assigned to local labor assignments. Joseph Stalin and his cronies essentially used the collectives and their impending failure as an indirect disguise for the vicious punishment of Ukrainian nationalists who opposed Russification and organized uprisings against the regime. Since the opening of the KGB archives, it has been confirmed that close to 300 major uprisings occurred in the southeastern provinces ofUkraine in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These protestors acted in spite of the Soviet Regime and its forced procurement. In response, the regime closed the borders to foreign aid, migration, and pursuit of food in other areas of theUSSR.

By the summer of 1932, most of the kulaks had perished, but the remaining peasants managed to keep their spirits of resistance to communism and collectivization despite the fact that they were on the brink of a mass starvation. Stalin increased the total grain production quota by 44 percent, a goal that would definitely be impossible to attain, especially without the population's best farmers and the willing cooperation of the peasants. “That year, not a single village was able to meet the impossible quota, which far exceededUkraine's best output in the pre-collective years” (Perloff 34).

However, the collectives did reach and slightly exceeded the export quota, a component of of total grain production. As the collectives did not meet the production quotas because they exceeded the export quotas, the Stalinist regime sought to make up for this difference by confiscating all remaining grain reserves, resulting in their possession of 1,500,000 tons of grain in state reserves. “A million tons being sufficient to feed five million mouths during a whole year, the Soviet authorities had sufficient means to feed an additional fifteen million mouths, more than enough to prevent starvation during the worst years. Collective farms became the means by which the totalitarian regime gave itself control . . . and the weapon of food in its war on farmers” (Serbyn 6).

The pressure to increase the grain exports to foreign countries resulted in Stalin's order for the regime to confiscate all remaining grain reserves should the collectives fail to meet the declared productivity output quotas. The government considered any collective or household grain that peasants refused to surrender to be stolen state property, and the Communist Party of the USSRdecreed that theft of “social property” was punishable by execution. “Thousands of peasants were shot for attempting to take a handful of grain or a few beets from the kolkhozes” (Perloff 35). At the famine's height, the daily death toll reached 25,000 people, and in 1933, the life expectancies for men and women hit an all time low of 7.3 years old and 10.8 years old, respectively.

Starvation drove the Ukrainian peasants insane. People turned to anything they could find that remotely resembled food – “weeds, leaves, tree bark, and insects. The luckiest were able to survive secretly on small woodland animals” (Perloff 35). While visitingUkraineduring the time of the famine, American journalist Thomas Walker noted:

About twenty miles south ofKiev(Kyiv), I came upon a village that was practically extinct by starvation. There had been fifteen houses in this village and a population of forty-odd persons. Every dog and cat had been eaten. The horses and oxen had all been appropriated by the Bolsheviks to stock the collective farms. In one hut they were cooking a mess that defied analysis. There were bones, big-weed, skin, and what looked like a boot top in this pot. The way the remaining half dozen inhabitants eagerly watched this slimy mess showed the state of their hunger (35).

The conditions the starving peasants faced were absolutely horrifying and unimaginable. Some even turned to cannibalism. The extent of the pain experienced by the Ukrainian people is indescribable and will forever haunt not only the few survivors still alive, but also every Ukrainian generation from then on forward.

“After millions of Ukrainians died in their own native land, the authorities resettled tens of thousands of families fromRussia,Belarus, and other parts of theUSSRto the depopulated lands of Soviet Ukraine. By the end of 1933 over 117,000 people were resettled inUkraine, at a 105% fulfillment rate” (“Holodomor” 13). In addition to this tactic to cover up the huge population losses, the communist regime also altered official documents and produced propaganda to prevent word about the Holodomor from spreading. “On Stalin's orders, those who conducted the 1937 population census, which revealed a sharp decrease in the Ukrainian population as a result of the Holodomor, were shot, while the census results were suppressed” (11). The censorship and propaganda of the Stalinist regime proved to be relatively successful in suppressing publicity of the famine-genocide up until 2004. When President Yuschenko was inaugurated, he authorized the opening of the KGB archives which contained documented proof of the 259 uprisings against the Soviet regime. It was these uprisings that angered Stalin and triggered his violent genocidal campaign against the Ukrainian people.

As 7 to 10 million men, women, and children alike perished from starvation, the world kept silent. “The American government had ample and timely information about the Famine but failed to take any steps which might have ameliorated the situation. Instead, the Administration extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet government in November 1933, immediately after the famine” (Mace, Report viii). Today, the efforts to silence talk of the Holodomor are in the process of being counteracted. Although belated, the Commission on the Ukrainian Famine has recently exonerated the American government through its report to Congress. Contemporary, independentUkraine still strives for international recognition of the tragedy its people endured, and there is no sign that people will give up their awareness-raising efforts anytime soon.

Mace, James E. "Chapter Three: Soviet Man-Made Famine in Ukraine." Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. Ed. Samuel Totten,William S. Parsons, andIsrael W. Charny.New York:Garland Publishing, 1997. 78-112. Print.

Mace, Staff Director James E. Report to Congress: Commission on the Ukraine Famine.Washington, D.C.:United States Government Printing Office, 1988. Print.

Perloff, James. "Holodomor: The Secret Holocaust." New American (08856540) 25.4 (2009): 31-37. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.

Serbyn, Roman. "Holodomor - The Ukrainian Genocide." Holodomor Studies 1.2 (2009): 4-9. Print.

Holodomor: Ukrainian Genocide in the Early 1930s. Kyiv:Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, 2008. Print.

Bilinsky, Yaroslav. "Was The Ukrainian Famine Of 1932-1933 Genocide?" Journal Of Genocide Research 1.2 (1999): 147. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Borisow, Peter. "1933. Genocide. Ten Million. Holodomor." Canadian-American Slavic Studies 37.3 (2003). Print.

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Print.

Fedorak, Bohdan. Statement. Holodomor: A Symposium on the 1932 to 1933 Ukrainian Famine- Genocide.University of Windsor,Ontario,Canada. 30 October 2003.

Kondrashin, Viktor. "Hunger in 1932-1933 - A Tragedy of the Peoples of the USSR." Holodomor Studies 1.2 (2009): 16-21. Print.

Motyl, Alexander J. "Deleting the Holodomor: UkraineUnmakes Itself." World Affairs (2010). World Affairs. Sept.-Oct. 2010. Web. 6 Oct. 2010. .

Paluch, Peter. "'Spiking The Ukrainian Famine, Again." National Review 38.6 (1986): 33-38. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Mar. 2012.

Serhii Pyrozhkov, et al. "A New Estimate Of Ukrainian Population Losses During The Crises Of The 1930S And 1940S." Population Studies 56.3 (2002): 249-264. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.

Serhijchuk, Volodymyr. "The 1932-1933 Holodomor in the Kuban: Evidence of the Ukrainian Genocide." Holodomor Studies 1.2 (2009): 28-45. Print.

"Ukraine." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. .

Wheatcroft, S. G. "Towards Explaining Soviet Famine Of 1931–3: Political And Natural Factors In Perspective." Food & Foodways: History & Culture Of Human Nourishment 12.2/3 (2004): 107-136. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.

In his article “Was the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933 genocide?” Yaroslav Bilinksky explores various scholars’ literature to identify their reasons for classifying or refraining from classifying the Ukrainian famine of 1932 to 1933 as an act of genocide. Bilinksky first refers to a book edited by Roman Serbyn and Bohdan Krawchenko that concludes that the artificial starvation of the Ukrainian people was not of a genocidal nature. However, various other scholars including James E. Mace and Vasyl Hryshko classify the hunger as an act of genocide. Bilinksky considers the disagreement between these and hundreds of other historians, political analysts, and sociologists, blaming the argument on the lack of a universally acknowledged definition of the word “genocide.” The author of this article ends with a restatement of his argument that “both logic and political usage inUkrainepoint in one direction, that of the terror-famine being genocidal” (Bilinksky 154).

The most effective and most blatant rhetorical device Yaroslav Bilinksky employs in this article is an appeal to the audience’s sense of logos. On the most basic level, the evidence of this is the author’s abundant use of references to credible works by greatly respected, intelligent, and accurate historians and political analysts including James E. Mace, Robert Conquest, and many others. The article is full of quotes from these sources; Bilinksky inserts excerpts from James E. Mace on page 147, Vasyl Hryshko on pages 149 to 150, and Robert Conquest on page 150, among various other authors. For instance, the reader regards Bilinksky's argument to be logical because he exudes confidence in statements such as “I believe that the famine clearly fits the somewhat loose UN Genocide Convention” (152). The combination of asserted assurance and proceeding evidence makes for a solid argument. The research that went into both the works which Bilinksky cites and Bilinksky’s work of his own appeal to readers’ sense of logic in that the readers rightfully trust and consider the facts of the matter at hand, the Holodomor, and the author’s own conclusions.

Yaroslav Bilinksky develops his points very well in this article, and thus his argument is clear, logical, and effective. Through the use of appeal to logic, Bilinksky convinces readers to understand the facts and conclusions from his point of view. The abundance of references to scholarly works also greatly contributes to the effectiveness of his argument. Additionally, Bilinksky’s approach to the debated, controversial argument – whether or not the Holodomor was an act of genocide – from each side builds the author’s credibility. For example, Bilinksky considers that “On the other hand the famine is evaluated differently – as genocide – in the small 1983 volume by the Ukrainian scholar and publicist Vasyl Hryshko . . . Robert Conquest . . . and the publications of the US Commission on the Ukraine Famine” (149). By exploring numerous sources for the two main sides of the argument at hand, Bilinksky solidifies the credibility of his work. A reader may not accuse the author of having an ignorant or one-sided approach to the topic because he addresses his opponents’ claims and is, in fact, able to provide rational arguments to dispute them.

In his article “Harvesting Despair: Spiking the Ukrainian Famine, Again,” Peter Paluch reports on Walter Duranty’s made-for-television documentary Harvest of Despair and the response it received by the international community. Paluch first mentions the awards that the film won at the 28th International Film and TV Festival ofNew York in 1985, which include the gold medal in the TV Documentaries category as well as the Grand Award Trophy Bowl. However, despite the high acclaim for the documentary by film critics and historians everywhere, there was a disappointing lack of viewers in theUnited States. Paluch continues by giving a brief background of the Holodomor, its implications, and its lack of publicity due to Soviet propaganda and Western vendibility and ignorance.

Peter Paluch’s use of touching, passionate diction creates an air of eloquence of the text, which successfully grasps the audience’s attention. For example, the author chooses specific words to construct phrases such as “cataclysm,” (Paluch 33) “pervasiveness of the very political bias,” and “of burning concern” (38). These words convey a sense of passion and injustice, which subtly call for the agitation of the reader and, consequently, his or her support in bringing attention to and acknowledgement of the tragedy that was the Holodomor. The author takes advantage of the subdued appeal to the audience's pathos that comes hand in hand with the vehement diction, effectively drawing in the audience.

The author develops his point very clearly in this article: he recognizes the failure of the international community to recognize Harvest of Despair and its message and calls for the public to support worldwide recognition of the film and what it stands for. Paluch makes numerous references to historians and their accounts on the Holodomor, thus building credibility. For instance, Paluch states that “The true extent of the human cataclysm is perhaps more accurately suggested by Dr. W. Horsley Gantt, a British physician who was in the Soviet Union at the time and who relayed private estimates by Soviet officials of as many as 15 million killed, fully half the Ukrainian nation, and equal to the population of all of Central America today” (33). The author strengthens his argument with references such as this one. Bringing in outside sources to support one's argument is the most significant way to improve said argument, and Paluch successfully executes this fortifying maneuver.

James E. Mace recounts a brief history of the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 in “Chapter Three: Soviet Man-Made Famine in Ukraine,” which is found in Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. This chapter written by Mace explores the political issues, struggles, and inconsistencies that arose in response to the Stalinist regime's aggressive, totalitarian hold on the Ukrainian nation. The author explains specific actions taken by Stalin to suppress the peasants – for example, his involvement with the Ukrainian Communist party conference in July of 1932 as well as his calling the 1932 committee of the All-Union Communist Party Central Committee and USSR Council of Peoples Commissars on Grain Procurements inUkraine, theNorth Caucasus, and Western District. He concludes his portion of the chapter by reporting on the long-range impact the Holodomor has on Ukrainians to this day. The second portion of the chapter includes three eyewitness accounts of survivors' experiences during the famine.

The frank diction found in James E. Mace's chapter allows for his concise, forthright discourse about the Holodomor. Mace does not sugarcoat nor overdramatize the subject, but rather tells it like it is. This allows readers of all levels of intellect to understand his message clearly because the author is not concerned with especially eloquent language. Through the employment of words such as “social development,” (Mace 79) “ideology,” (82) and “autonomy,” (83) the author is able to convey his points clearly without compromising the intensiveness of the historical and political material he presents in this chapter.

James E. Mace's argument is strengthened by the facts he presents regarding the Holodomor. His extensive list of works referenced found in the back of the book names numerous credible sources written by his fellow specialists in the field of Eastern European history and genocide research. As do all other logical authors, Mace supports his argument with outside research. For example, when discussing the total losses experienced by the Ukrainian people, Mace references Soviet historian Michael Ellman: “. . . demographers in the formerSoviet Unionhave calculated that . . . during the year 1933 the population decreased by 5.9 million. Their figures further suggest that the number of victims of the famine in 1933 was between 7.2 and 8.1 million” (87-88). By paraphrasing and crediting scholarly works, Mace builds the reliability and legitimacy of his own arguments.

In his speech presented at Holodomor: A Symposium on the 1932 to 1933 Ukrainian Famine-Genocide hosted by theUniversityofWindsor, Bohdan Fedorak reports on today's attempts to bring light to the famine. He focuses on two events with which he was directly associated: the US Congress' Commission on the Ukraine Famine, established in 1984, and the Kyiv Memorial Society's exposition titled "Not To Be Forgotten" - A Chronicle of the Communist Inquisition in Ukraine 1917-1991, established in 2003. The speech outlines the achievements of the Commission on the Famine as well as the exposition. Some of these achievements include international recognition of the facts of the Holodomor such as the famine was not related to drought, in the fall of 1932 Stalin used the “procurement crisis” in Ukraine as an excuse to tighten his control on Ukraine and to intensify grain seizures further, and during the famine, certain members of the American press corps cooperated with the Soviet government to deny the existence of the Ukrainian Famine.

Bohdan Fedorak effectively uses a strong-willed tone to deliver his argument in a manner which promotes the audience to consider the facts of the matter at hand. Fedorak's assertive tone is evident in statements such as, “That seminal decision [to establish the Commission on the Ukraine Famine] was the consequence of a number of factors coming together at the same time that created the necessary critical mass for such an unprecedented action by the US Congress.” Coupled with the logic and legitimacy of his argument, the speaker's tone contributes to the overall success of his speech as moving and convincing.

The argument present in the speech is irrefutable because of the solid evidence and facts provided by Fedorak. There is no doubt in the legitimacy of Fedorak's outline of achievements of the Commission on the Famine, as it is a collection of agreed-upon facts. The logic behind the speaker's argument is clear and reasonable, and he supports it well. Bohdan Fedorak's first hand experience with the work conducted by the Preparatory Committee for the Observance of the 1933 Famine, to which he was appointed by then-president-of-Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, solidifies his credibility as a knowledgeable source of information on today's efforts to raise awareness of the famine. Additionally, Fedorak supports his argument regarding the extensive efforts Ukrainians have displayed by informing the audience that “Congress appropriated $400,000 for the commission from the fiscal year 1985 onwards. Some research funds also came from Ukrainian Diaspora organizations and private individuals.” With this statement, Fedorak emphasizes the extent of various awareness activists and promoters efforts to generate funding, thus emphasizing their persistency and dedication to bringing light to the Holodomor.

This article describes two tragically fatal periods in twentieth-centuryUkraineunder the Soviet regime: the Holodomor of 1932-1933 and World War II. Serhii Pyrozhkov and his colleagues sought to filter the demographic fluctuations ofUkraineduring these periods, categorizing the population losses by cause: birth deficits, migration flows, and excess mortality rates. From there, they were able to estimate “the changes in Ukrainian mortality rates by sex and age during the years 1926 to 1959” (249). The authors provide charts, graphs, and other empirical data, which allow readers to better understand and comprehend the magnitude of the destruction experienced by the Ukrainian population during these times. The birth, mortality, fertility, and migration rates reflect the changes in the demographics of the population during the artificial hunger as well as the war. This source is relevant to my research project because the numbers and trends reported by Pyrozhkov and his co-authors will provide credible evidence that may be referenced in discussion of the immediate effects of the Holodomor on the demographics of the Ukrainian population. For example, I will definitely cite the reported life expectancies for 1933: 7.3 years for males and 10.8 years for females. These numbers which indicate a drastic fall in life expectancies will aid in emphasizing the severity of the skyrocketing mortality rates of that time.

In this article, S. G. Wheatcroft explores a plethora of factors that are argued to have contributed to the cause of the famine. Wheatcroft outlines four basic approaches to understanding the famine, the fourth being his own set of conclusions from his point of view. The author claims that the great famine of 1931-1933 shared a few characteristics with previous famines in the same general area. Wheatcroft asserts that natural factors had a great deal of influence on the Holodomor, implying that Stalin’s policy was not the only cause. The content of this article will prove to be helpful in explaining the background, causes, and context of the Holodomor. Before reading this article, I had not really considered the possibility that factors such as natural causes may have had a significant impact on the causation of the famine. This article will prove to have prevented my own ignorance from being reflected in my research project. However, knowing for a fact thatUkrainehas always been known as the breadbasket ofEuropeand having come across no other academic material which so strongly claims the significance of unsavory natural factors in the causation of the famine, I am not relying completely on the supposed accuracy of this text. I will look into the other works referenced by Wheatcroft to confirm the legitimacy of his claims.

Perloff, James. "Holodomor: The Secret Holocaust." New American (08856540) 25.4 (2009): 31-37. Academic Search Complete. Web. 21 Feb. 2012.

James Perloff wrote this article aboutUkraine’s struggle for freedom from oppression by theSoviet Union, specifically during the time of the Holodomor. Perloff provides a historical background of the tension leading up to Stalin’s implementation of the artificial famine, explaining the irony of the famine occurring in the region which had been known for centuries as the breadbasket ofEurope. The article explains the collective farms which the Soviet regime forced Ukrainian peasants into and reveals the horrid conditions and tragedies Ukrainians faced on a daily basis. He dives into the catalytic chain of events which drove Stalin's animosity toward the Ukrainian nation, leading him to react viciously. The back-and-forth struggle between the Ukrainian peasant majority and the oppressive Stalinist regime went on for a couple of years during the time of the hunger and proved to be catastrophically destructive – Perloff conveys the magnitude of this destruction with illustrative, bone-chilling eyewitness accounts of survivors. The author reports on the ways the West hid the holocaust as well as the ways Ukrainians across the world today try to promote awareness of the Holodomor. Perloff’s article is highly relevant to my research topic and will certainly prove to benefit my explanation of the policies and procedures Stalin implemented to create the famine. His detailed descriptions of the conditions peasants faced during the famine are shocking and horrifying and will contribute to my presentation of the Holodomor. This source is one of the most beneficial articles I have come across. The clarity and length of this article are what make it so helpful to my research. Paluch concisely covers a little bit of everything about the Holodomor. I find his article helpful in that I may use it as a basic framework to refer back to whenever I get caught up in the long-winded discussions found in other sources.

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.New York: Oxford UP, 1986. Print.

Robert Conquest is one of the most highly regarded historians to study the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932 to 1933. His book The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine is a testament to the extensiveness of his research and work in the field of Eastern European history. This book consists of three parts: Part I, “The Protagonists: Party, Peasants, and Nation,” Part II, “To Crush the Peasantry,” and Part III, “The Terror-Famine.” The text chronologically recounts the Holodomor in extraordinary detail. Conquest explores the tragic famine-genocide from all angles, compiling the fruits of his lifelong research into his book, the first full history of the Holodomor. This source is highly relevant to my research topic in the most clear of ways. What will prove to be beneficial to my writing process is the outline of the text on the contents page. The headings will allow me to find which sections I should visit to find the necessary information I need.

"Ukraine." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2012. .

The Encyclopædia Britannica entry for Ukraine includes the typical, ridiculously extensive information about the entire country. For the purpose of my research, I focused on the “Soviet Ukraine” section, and, more specifically, the section concerned with the famine of 1932 to 1933. The encyclopedia entry gives a brief history of the Holodomor, stating that “The famine was a direct assault on the Ukrainian peasantry, which had stubbornly continued to resist collectivization . . . Its deliberate nature is underscored by the fact that no physical basis for famine existed in Ukraine” (“Ukraine”). The fact that this unbiased source coincides with the information of other texts by Ukrainian authors supports the legitimacy of said other texts. This encyclopedia entry is simple and easy to understand and will certainly help me keep the basics straight, similar to James Perloff's article. Also, I will use this to double check the facts I find in other articles. For example, this encyclopedia entry confirms that “the Soviet Union exported more than a million tons of grain to the West during this period” as well as the claim that “Soviet authorities flatly denied the existence of the famine both at the time it was raging and after it was over” (“Ukraine”).

Mace, Staff Director James E. Report to Congress: Commission on the Ukraine Famine. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1988. Print.

This book is the Report to Congress prepared by the Congress-appointed Commission on the Ukraine Famine. The United States Congress appropriated $400,000 of funding to the Commission to investigate the famine-genocide. This Report to Congress is a thorough account of the Holodomor written by a team of historians, diplomats, professors, and policymakers. They conducted extensive research and compiled the report in an effort to expand the American public'sknowledge of the famine. The exposé on the Soviet regime's role was meant to open the government's as well as the public's eyes to the atrocity of the famine. This source is relevant to my research in that it concerns the truth about the Holodomor as opposed to the propaganda the general public was subjected to at the time of the famine. The report is perhaps the most extensively well-researched publication on the topic of the famine and is therefore possibly the greatest work I could ever consult for information to supplement my research paper.

1930s JOURNALIST GARETH JONES TO HAVE STORY RETOLD
Correspondent who exposed Soviet Ukraine's manmade famine focus of new documentary

Mark Brown, Arts Correspondent, Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Friday 13 November 2009

LONDON - In death he has become known as "the man who knew too much" – a fearless young British reporter who walked from one desperate, godforsaken village to another exposing the true horror of a famine that was killing millions.

Gareth Jones's accounts of what was happening in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33 were different from other western accounts. Not only did he reveal the true extent of starvation, he reported on the Stalin regime's failure to deliver aid while exporting grain to the west. The tragedy is now known as the Holodomar
and regarded by Ukrainians as genocide.

Two years after the articles Jones was killed by Chinese bandits in Inner Mongolia – murdered, according to his family, in a Moscow plot as punishment.

The remarkable story of Jones is being told afresh by his old university, Cambridge, which is putting on public display for the first time Jones's handwritten diaries from his time in Ukraine.

They will go on display at the Wren Library alongside items relating to rather better known Trinity old boys such as Newton, Wittgenstein and AA Milne, coinciding with a new documentary about Jones and the famine – "The Living" – which gets its British premiere this evening.

The story of Jones, a devout, non-comformist teetotaller from Barry, often has elements of Indiana Jones and Zelig.

Rory Finnan, a lecturer in Ukrainian studies at Cambridge, called him "a true hero"."He is a remarkable historical figure and it is also remarkable that he is not well known. Jones was the only journalist who risked his name and reputation to expose the Holodomor to the world."

Jones became interested in Ukraine and learned Russian because of his mother who worked as a governess for the family of John Hughes, a Merthyr Tydfil engineer who founded a town in southern Ukraine called Hughesovka – now called Donetsk.

After graduating, Jones was introduced to David Lloyd George and quickly became his foreign adviser, visiting the USSR for the first time as the former prime minister's eyes and ears.

It was in 1932-33 though that Jones would make his name, walking alone along a railway line visiting villages during a terrible famine that killed millions.

He sent moving stories of survivors to British, American and German newspapers but they were rubbished by the Stalin regime – and derided by Moscow-based western journalists, men like the New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty, who wrote: "There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be," and dismissed Jones' eyewitness accounts as a "big scare story".

The only other reporter writing about the extent of the famine was Malcolm Muggeridge in the Manchester Guardian, although his three articles were heavily cut and not bylined.

In the Ukraine, Jones is something of a national hero and last year both he and Muggeridge were awarded the highest honour Ukraine gives to non-citizens, the order of freedom, for their reporting during 1932-33.

But there is more to Jones's story and a Zelig-like quality to his life. For example, he was once on a 16-seat aircraft with the new German chancellor, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Goebbels, on their way to a rally in Frankfurt. Jones wrote for the Western Mail that if the plane had crashed the history of western Europe history would have changed forever.

Another time, outside the gates of the White House, he saw the one-time American president Herbert Hoover preparing to have his photograph taken with schoolchildren. Soon enough, somehow, Jones is in the photograph.

After his Ukraine articles Jones was banned from the USSR and, in many eyes, discredited. The only work he could get was in Cardiff on the Western Mail covering "arts, crafts and coracles", according to his great-nephew Nigel Linsan Colley. But again his life changed.

He managed to get an interview with a local castle owner: William Randolph Hearst who owned St Donat's Castle near Cardiff. The newspaper magnate was obviously taken by Jones's accounts of what had happened in Ukraine and invited the reporter to the US.

Jones dutifully arrived at Hearst's private station – as Chico Marx was leaving the estate – and wrote three articles for Hearst and used, for the first time, the phrase "manmade famine".

Again the articles were damned and wrongly discredited. Banned from the USSR, Jones decided he wanted to explore what was going on in the far east and, in particular, what Japan's intentions were. The day before his 30th birthday Jones was kidnapped and killed by Chinese bandits. Jones's descendants believe it happened with the complicity of Moscow. "There is no direct proof," said Colley, "but plenty of indirect proof."

Colley is pleased that his great-uncle is getting the recognition he believes is deserved and the family is clearly proud. "I don't know whether he was brave or stupid. He knew the risks he was taking, I think, but because he was a British citizen he thought he was indestructible."

LINK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/13/gareth-jones-story-retold-documentary

DIARY THAT HELPED EXPOSE STALIN'S FAMINE DISPLAYED
Welsh journalist Gareth Jones snuck into Ukraine in March of 1933

By Raphael G. Satter, The Associated Press (AP)
London, United Kingdom, Thursday, November 12, 2009
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Friday, November 13, 2009
The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, November 13, 2009

FoxNews11AZ, Tucson, Arizona, Thursday, November 12, 2009

LONDON -- The diaries of a British reporter who risked his reputation to expose the horrors of Stalin's murderous famine in Ukraine are to go on display on Friday.

Welsh journalist Gareth Jones snuck into Ukraine in March of 1933, at the height of an artificial famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin as part of his campaign to force peasants into collective farms. Millions were starving to death as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock.

Jones' reporting was one of first attempts to bring the disaster to the world's attention.

"Famine Grips Russia - Millions Dying" read the front page of the New York Evening Post on March 29, 1933. "Famine on a colossal scale, impending death of millions from hunger, murderous terror ... this is the summary of Mr. Jones's firsthand observations," the paper said.

As starvation and cannibalism spread across Ukraine, Soviet authorities exported more than a million tons of grain to the West, using the money to build factories and arm its military.

Historians say that between 4 million and 5 million people perished in 1932-1933 in what Ukrainians called the Great Famine.

Walking from village to village, Jones recorded desperate Ukrainians scrambling for food, scribbling brief interviews in pencil on lined notebooks.

"They all had the same story: 'There is no bread - we haven't had bread for two months - a lot are dying,'" Jones wrote in one entry.

"We are the living dead," he quoted one peasant as saying.

Jones' eyewitness account had little effect on world opinion at the time. Stalin's totalitarian regime tightly controlled the flow of information out of the U.S.S.R., and many Moscow-based foreign correspondents - some of whom had pro-Soviet sympathies - refused to believe Jones' reporting.

The New York Times' Walter Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, dismissed his article as a scare story.
"Conditions are bad, but there is no famine," Duranty wrote a few days after Jones' story was published. Other correspondents chimed in with public denials.

With his colleagues against him, Jones was discredited.

Eugene Lyons, an American wire agency reporter who gradually went from communist sympathizer to fierce critic of the Soviet regime, later acknowledged the role that fellow journalists had played in trying to destroy Jones' career.

"Jones must have been the most surprised human being alive when the facts he so painstakingly garnered from our mouths were snowed under by our denials," Lyons wrote in his 1937 autobiography, "Assignment in Utopia."

Lyons' admission came too late for Jones, who was killed under murky circumstances while covering Japan's expansion into China in the run-up to World War II.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, whom Jones had once served as an aide, said shortly after his death in 1935 that the intrepid journalist might have been killed because he "knew too much of what was going on."

"I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many."

Jones' handwritten diaries are on display at the Wren Library at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he was a student, until mid-December.

On the Net: Trinity College: http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/

Web site devoted to Gareth Jones: http://www.garethjones.org/

LINK: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/12/AR2009111210298.html

LINK: http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/11/12/diary_that_helped_expose_stalins_famine_displayed/

LINK: http://www.fox11az.com/news/world/69872487.html

LEMKIN ON THE UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE
'Soviet Genocide in Ukraine'

Introductory Note: by Roman Serbyn, Professor of History, Universite du Quebec a Montreal

Raphael Lemkin's essay, ‘Soviet Genocide in Ukraine’, is one of the earliest writings on the subject by a non-Ukrainian scholar. A note ‘Begin here’, scribbled in before the second paragraph, which begins with the words ‘What I want to speak about’, suggests that the text was originally composed for Lemkin's address at the 1953 Ukrainian Famine commemoration in New York.

Later Lemkin added it to the material he was gathering for his elaborate History of Genocide which was never published. (1) Lemkin's views on the Ukrainian tragedy are virtually unknown and hardly ever figure in scholarly exchanges on the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933, or on genocides in general. (2) Yet his holistic approach to the Soviet regime's gradual destruction of the Ukrainian nation is enlightening and makes a valuable, if belated, addition to scholarly literature.

R. Lemkin was born in 1900 to a Jewish farming family in the village of Bezwodne, near the medieval Rus’ town of Volkovysk, now part of the Grodno region of Belarus. Before World War I the territory belonged to Russia, but after the break up of the Tsarist Empire it was incorporated into Poland. (3) Lemkin studied philology and law at the University of Lviv, where he became interested in the Turkish massacres of the Armenians during World War I.

After studying on a scholarship in Germany, France and Italy, he returned to Poland and pursued a career in the Polish courts of law, mainly in Warsaw. He continued his preoccupation with the problem of legal sanctions against perpetrators of mass exterminations and developed his ideas, which he later presented at various international conferences.

In 1930, Lemkin was appointed assistant prosecutor at the District Court of Berezhany, Tarnopil Province of Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) where he must have become aware of the collectivization, ‘dekulakization’ and the eventual Great Famine then devastating Soviet Ukraine. Some time later he obtained a similar position in Warsaw, where he also practised law and continued his writings on international law.

After the invasion of Poland by German and Soviet troops in 1939, Lemkin fled to Vilnius and then to Sweden where he lectured at the University of Stockholm. In early 1941, he managed to obtain a visa to the USSR, but then via Japan and Canada went to the United States. In April 1941, he was appointed ‘special lecturer’ at Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina. In 1944 he published "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe," which he had started writing in Sweden. (4) The study is a thoroughly documented exposé on German crimes in Europe.

The book contains the first mention of the term ‘genocide’, which has become a generic name not only for the Nazi atrocities but for all mass destructions. The author's relentless lobbying, backed by the prestige of the book, finally succeeded in swaying the United Nations Organization to adopt the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, whose fitting 60th anniversary we are commemorating this year.

After World War II, Lemkin devoted his life to the further development of legal concepts and norms for containing mass destructions and punishing their perpetrators. After the fall of Nazism, Lemkin saw the main threat in Communism, which had overrun his native Poland. Towards the end of his life, he had close relations with the Ukrainian and Baltic communities in the United States. In 1953, he took part in the commemoration of the Great Famine by the New York Ukrainian community.

His essay on the Ukrainian genocide shows his empathy for the plight of Ukrainian victims of Communism and Russian imperialism, not only of the Great Famine of the early thirties but also of the periods that precede and followed this tragic event. Lemkin's essay, based on personal observations and supplemented with emotionally charged testimony provided by the Ukrainian community, may appear sketchy and naïve today.

Yet his comments offer an insight that is often lacking in the work of recent authors who can benefit from the documentation unavailable to Lemkin. He rightly extends the discussion of Ukrainian genocide beyond the peasants starving in 1932–1933, and speaks about the destruction of the intelligentsia and the Church, the ‘brain’ and the ‘soul’ of the nation. He puts emphasis on the preservation and development of culture, beliefs and common ideas, which make Ukraine ‘a nation rather than a mass of people’.

Lemkin's essay is being reproduced here with minor updating of terminology (Ukraine instead of ‘the Ukraine’, Romanian instead of ‘Rumanian’ and Tsarist instead of ‘Czarist’) and the transliteration of Ukrainian names from Ukrainian.

"SOVIET GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE"
By Rafael Lemkin (5)

‘Love Ukraine’
You cannot love other peoples
Unless you love Ukraine. (6)
Sosyura

The mass murder of peoples and of nations that has characterized the advance of the Soviet Union into Europe is not a new feature of their policy of expansionism, it is not an innovation devised simply to bring uniformity out of the diversity of Poles, Hungarians, Balts, Romanians — presently disappearing into the fringes of their empire. Instead, it has been a long-term characteristic even of the internal policy of the Kremlin — one which the present masters had ample precedent for in the operations of Tsarist Russia. It is indeed an indispensable step in the process of ‘union’ that the Soviet leaders fondly hope will produce the ‘Soviet Man’, the ‘Soviet Nation’ and to achieve that goal, that unified nation, the leaders of the Kremlin will gladly destroy the nations and the cultures that have long inhabited Eastern Europe.

What I want to speak about is perhaps the classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation. This is, as I have said, only the logical successor of such Tsarist crimes as the drowning of 10,000 Crimean Tatars by order of Catherine the Great, the mass murders of Ivan the Terrible's ‘SS troops’ — the Oprichnina; the extermination of National Polish leaders and Ukrainian Catholics by Nicholas I; and the series of Jewish pogroms that have stained Russian history periodically. And it has had its matches within the Soviet Union in the annihilation of the Ingerian nation, the Don and Kuban Cossacks, the Crimean Tatar Republics, the Baltic Nations of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Each is a case in the long-term policy of liquidation of non-Russian peoples by the removal of select parts.

Ukraine constitutes a slice of Southeastern USSR equal in area to France and Italy, and inhabited by some 30 million people.7 Itself the Russian bread basket, geography has made it a strategic key to the oil of the Caucasus and Iran, and to the entire Arab world. In the north, it borders Russia proper. As long as Ukraine retains its national unity, as long as its people continue to think of themselves as Ukrainians and to seek independence, so long Ukraine poses a serious threat to the very heart of Sovietism. It is no wonder that the Communist leaders have attached the greatest importance to the Russification of this independent[-minded] member of their ‘Union of Republics’, have determined to remake it to fit their pattern of one Russian nation. For the Ukrainian is not and has never been, a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion — all are different. At the side door to Moscow, he has refused to be collectivized, accepting deportation, even death. And so it is peculiarly important that the Ukrainian be fitted into the Procrustean pattern of the ideal Soviet man.

Ukraine is highly susceptible to racial murder by select parts and so the Communist tactics there have not followed the pattern taken by the German attacks against the Jews. The nation is too populous to be exterminated completely with any efficiency. However, its leadership, religious, intellectual, political, its select and determining parts, are quite small and therefore easily eliminated, and so it is upon these groups particularly that the full force of the Soviet axe has fallen, with its familiar tools of mass murder, deportation and forced labour, exile and starvation.

The attack has manifested a systematic pattern, with the whole process repeated again and again to meet fresh outbursts of national spirit. [1] The first blow is aimed at the intelligentsia, the national brain, so as to paralyse the rest of the body. In 1920, 1926 and again in 1930–1933, teachers, writers, artists, thinkers, political leaders, were liquidated, imprisoned or deported. According to the Ukrainian Quarterly of Autumn 1948, 51,713 intellectuals were sent to Siberia in 1931 alone. At least 114 major poets, writers and artists, the most prominent cultural leaders of the nation, have met the same fate. It is conservatively estimated that at least 75% of the Ukrainian intellectuals and professional men in Western Ukraine, Carpatho–Ukraine and Bukovina have been brutally exterminated by the Russians (ibid., Summer 1949).

[2] Going along with this attack on the intelligentsia was an offensive against the churches, priests and hierarchy, the ‘soul’ of Ukraine. Between 1926 and 1932, the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church, its Metropolitan (Lypkivsky) and 10,000 clergy were liquidated. In 1945, when the Soviets established themselves in Western Ukraine, a similar fate was meted out to the Ukrainian Catholic Church. That Russification was the only issue involved is clearly demonstrated by the fact that before its liquidation, the Church was offered the opportunity to join the Russian Patriarch[ate] at Moscow, the Kremlin's political tool.

Only two weeks before the San Francisco conference, on 11 April 1945, a detachment of NKVD troops surrounded the St George Cathedral in Lviv and arrested Metropolitan Slipyj, two bishops, two prelates and several priests. (8) All the students in the city's theological seminary were driven from the school, while their professors were told that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church had ceased to exist, that its Metropolitan was arrested and his place was to be taken by a Soviet-appointed bishop. These acts were repeated all over Western Ukraine and across the Curzon Line in Poland. (9) At least seven bishops were arrested or were never heard from again. There is no Bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church still free in the area. Five hundred clergy who met to protest the action of the Soviets, were shot or arrested.

Throughout the entire region, clergy and laity were killed by hundreds, while the number sent to forced labour camps ran into the thousands. Whole villages were depopulated. In the deportation, families were deliberately separated, fathers to Siberia, mothers to the brickworks of Turkestan and the children to Communist homes to be ‘educated’. For the crime of being Ukrainian, the Church itself was declared a society detrimental to the welfare of the Soviet state, its members were marked down in the Soviet police files as potential ‘enemies of the people’. As a matter of fact, with the exception of 150,000 members in Slovakia, the Ukrainian Catholic Church has been officially liquidated, its hierarchy imprisoned, its clergy dispersed and deported.

These attacks on the Soul have also had and will continue to have a serious effect on the Brain of Ukraine, for it is the families of the clergy that have traditionally supplied a large part of the intellectuals, while the priests themselves have been the leaders of the villages, their wives the heads of the charitable organizations. The religious orders ran schools, and took care of much of the organized charities.

[3] The third prong of the Soviet plan was aimed at the farmers, the large mass of independent peasants who are the repository of the tradition, folklore and music, the national language and literature, the national spirit, of Ukraine. The weapon used against this body is perhaps the most terrible of all — starvation. Between 1932 and 1933, 5,000,000 Ukrainians starved to death, an inhumanity which the 73rd Congress decried on 28 May 1934. (10)

There has been an attempt to dismiss this highpoint of Soviet cruelty as an economic policy connected with the collectivization of the wheat-lands, and the elimination of the kulaks, the independent farmers, was therefore necessary. The fact is, however, that large-scale farmers in Ukraine were few and far-between. As a Soviet politician Kosior (11) declared in Izvestiia on 2 December 1933, ‘Ukrainian nationalism is our chief danger’, and it was to eliminate that nationalism, to establish the horrifying uniformity of the Soviet state that the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed.

The method used in this part of the plan was not at all restricted to any particular group. All suffered — men, women and children. The crop that year was ample to feed the people and livestock of Ukraine, though it had fallen off somewhat from the previous year, a decrease probably due in large measure to the struggle over collectivization. But a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order, by plan, through an unusually high grain allotment to the state as taxes. To add to this, thousands of acres of wheat were never harvested, and left to rot in the fields. The rest was sent to government granaries to be stored there until the authorities had decided how to allocate it. Much of this crop, so vital to the lives of the Ukrainian people, ended up as exports for the creation of credits abroad.

In the face of famine on the farms, thousands abandoned the rural areas and moved into the towns to beg food. Caught there and sent back to the country, they abandoned their children in the hope that they at least might survive. In this way, 18,000 children were abandoned in Kharkiv alone. Villages of a thousand had a surviving population of a hundred; in others, half the populace was gone, and deaths in these towns ranged from 20 to 30 per day. Cannibalism became commonplace.

As C. [read instead W.] Henry Chamberlain, the Moscow correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, wrote in 1933: The Communists saw in this apathy and discouragement, sabotage and counter-revolution, and, with the ruthlessness peculiar to self-righteous idealists, they decided to let the famine run its course with the idea that it would teach the peasants a lesson.

Relief was doled out to the collective farms, but on an inadequate scale and so late that many lives had already been lost. The individual peasants were left to shift for themselves; and much higher mortality rate among the individual peasants proved a most potent argument in favor of joining collective farms.

[4] The fourth step in the process consisted in the fragmentation of the Ukrainian people at once by the addition to the Ukraine of foreign peoples and by the dispersion of the Ukrainians throughout Eastern Europe. In this way, ethnic unity would be destroyed and nationalities mixed. Between 1920 and 1939, the population of Ukraine changed from 80% Ukrainian to only 63%.12 In the face of famine and deportation, the Ukrainian population had declined absolutely from 23.2 million to 19.6 million, while the non-Ukrainian population had increased by 5.6 million. When we consider that Ukraine once had the highest rate of population increase in Europe, around 800,000 per year, it is easy to see that the Russian policy has been accomplished.

These have been the chief steps in the systematic destruction of the Ukrainian nation, in its progressive absorption within the new Soviet nation. Notably, there have been no attempts at complete annihilation, such as was the method of the German attack on the Jews. And yet, if the Soviet programme succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priests and the peasants can be eliminated, Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation rather than a mass of people.

The mass, indiscriminate murders have not, however, been lacking — they have simply not been integral parts of the plan, but only chance variations. Thousands have been executed, untold thousands have disappeared into the certain death of Siberian labour camps.

The city of Vinnitsa might well be called the Ukrainian Dachau. In 91 graves there lie the bodies of 9,432 victims of Soviet tyranny, shot by the NKVD in about 1937 or 1938. Among the gravestones of real cemeteries, in woods, with awful irony, under a dance floor, the bodies lay from 1937 until their discovery by the Germans in 1943. Many of the victims had been reported by the Soviets as exiled to Siberia.

Ukraine has its Lidice too, in the town of Zavadka, destroyed by the Polish satellites of the Kremlin in 1946. (13) Three times, troops of the Polish Second Division attacked the town, killing men, women and children, burning houses and stealing farm animals. During the second raid, the Red commander told what was left of the town's populace: ‘The same fate will be met by everyone who refuses to go to Ukraine. I therefore order that within three days the village be vacated; otherwise, I shall execute every one of you.’ (14)

When the town was finally evacuated by force, there remained only 4 men among the 78 survivors. During March of the same year, nine other Ukrainian towns were attacked by the same Red unit and received more or less similar treatment.

What we have seen here is not confined to Ukraine. The plan that the Soviets used there has been and is being repeated. It is an essential part of the Soviet programme for expansion, for it offers the quick way of bringing unity out of the diversity of cultures and nations that constitute the Soviet Empire. That this method brings with it indescribable suffering for millions of people has not turned them from their path. If for no other reason than this human suffering, we would have to condemn this road to unity as criminal. But there is more to it than that.

This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation. If it were possible to do this even without suffering we would still be driven to condemn it, for the family of minds, the unity of ideas, of language and of customs that form what we call a nation that constitutes one of the most important of all our means of civilization and progress.

It is true that nations blend together and form new nations — we have an example of this process in our own country — but this blending consists in the pooling of benefits of superiorities that each culture possesses. (15) And it is in this way that the world advances. What then, apart from the very important question of human suffering and human rights that we find wrong with Soviet plans is the criminal waste of civilization and of culture. For the Soviet national unity is being created, not by any union of ideas and of cultures, but by the complete destruction of all cultures and of all ideas save one — the Soviet.

NOTES:
(1) Raphael Lemkin Papers, The New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation, Raphael Lemkin ZL-273. Reel 3. The paper by Lemkin reproduced here has been published in L.Y. Luciuk (ed.), "Holodomor - Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine" (Kingston, Ontario: The Kashtan Press, 2008), Appendix A, and will be republished in a new Journal: "Holodomor Studies (2009)."

(2) A notable exception is J.L. Panné, ‘Rafaël Lemkin ou le pouvoir d’un sans-pouvoir’, in R. Lemkin (ed.), "Qu’est-ce qu’un génocide? Présentation par Jean-Louis Panné" (Monaco: Édition du Rocher, 2008) 7–66.

(3) Bibliographical data gathered from R. Szawlowski, ‘Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) The Polish Lawyer Who Created the Concept of "Genocide" ’, 2 "Polish International Affairs" (2005) 98–133; Panné, supra note 2.

(4) R. Lemkin, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress" (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), xii–xiii.

(5) If no indication to the contrary is given, footnotes are by Prof. Serbyn.

(6) Verse by Volodymyr Sosyura added in pencil. Sosiura wrote the patriotic poem in 1944, during the German–Soviet war. At first it was praised by the authorities, but in 1948 it was condemned for Ukrainian nationalism. The two verses in the Ukrainian original: [would not reproduce here]

(7) According to the 1959 census there were then a little over 40 million people.

(8) The Charter creating the United Nations was signed by the delegates of 50 countries, including the USSR and the Ukrainian SSR, at the Conference held on 25–26 April 1945.

(9) The Curzon Line proposed by the British as a border between Poland and the Soviet state after the First World War eventually served as the basis for the post-World War II border between Poland and the USSR. The border left a large Ukrainian minority in the Polish state.

(10) On 28 May 1934, Congressman Hamilton Fish of New York introduced a Resolution (H. Res. 309) in the House of Representatives, in Washington. The document stipulated that ‘several millions of the population of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic died of starvation during 1932 and 1933’. The resolution further proposed:

that the House of Representatives express its sympathy for all those who suffered from the great famine in Ukraine which has brought misery,
affliction, and death to millions of peaceful and law-abiding Ukrainians;

‘that ... the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ... take active steps to alleviate the terrible consequences arising from this famine,

‘that ... the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Government ... place no obstacles in the way of American citizens seeking to send aid in form of
money, foodstuffs, and necessities to the famine-stricken regions of Ukraine.

The Resolution was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations (Resolution reproduced in "The Ukrainian Quarterly" (1978) 416–417).

(11) Erroneously identified by Lemkin as ‘Soviet writer Kossies’, Stanislav Kosior was the First Secretary of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CP(b)U). In a speech delivered at the Joint session of the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee of the CP(b)U, on 27 November 1933, Kosior stated that ‘at the present moment, local Ukrainian nationalism poses the main danger’.

(12) There was no census in 1920. The official figures from the 1926 and 1939 census are somewhat different from Lemkin's. In 1926, there were 22.9 million ethnic Ukrainians in Ukrainian SSR and the falsified 1939 figure showed 23.3 million, or an increase of 435,000 ethnic Ukrainians. However, the rise in over-all population of Ukrainian SSR by 3.3 million reduced the ethnically Ukrainian portion from 80% to 73%.

(13) On 10 June 1942, 172 males over the age of 16 years were liquidated, the women and children deported and the village of Lidice razed to the ground in reprisal for the assassination of the Nazi dictator of Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich. Zavadka Morokhivs’ka, Sianits’kyi povit, Lemkivshchyna, now Zawadka-Morochowska, in Poland.

(14) From W. Dushnyck, "Death and Devastation on the Curzon Line" (note by R.L.).

(15) Lemkin had in mind the United States.
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NOTE: The Journal of International Criminal Justice aims to promote a profound collective reflection on the new problems facing international law.
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