Holodomor:
The forgotten genocide
Kyle Mcculloch
This essay will argue that the events known as Holodomor were in fact part of genocide perpetrated by the Soviet Kremlin against the Ukrainian people. “In Ukrainian, the literal definition of the word ‘Holodomor’ is ‘death by forced starvation.” The hunger-plague devastated the Ukrainian people during the 1930’s, but went largely ignored on the international stage until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The events of Holodomor began as early as 1928, when Josef Stalin introduced agricultural collectivisation to the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin’s plan for Soviet industrialization required a massive increase in agricultural production, and kurkuls (kulaks in Russian) who resisted this program were targeted by Soviets, and were either executed or deported to concentration camps in the far reaches of Siberia. Beginning in 1930, Ukrainian farmers became subjected to ever increasing quotas; a part of Stalin’s Five Year Plan for industrialization for the Soviet Union. The increase on quotas of agricultural production ensured that Soviet industrialization would continue, and ethnic opposition to Bolshevism would be eliminated. The opening of sealed Soviet records has revealed the careful planning and organization undertaken to ostracize the Ukrainian people from the Russian people, in order to eliminate the Ukrainian people and repopulate their homeland with ethic Russians. In Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Adam Jones places the events of Holodomor upon ‘a backdrop of persecution, mass execution, and incarceration clearly aimed at undermining the Ukrainians as a national group. Genocide of mass proportions was perpetrated by the Red Army, on behalf of the Kremlin, upon Ukrainians living within Soviet Ukraine in the early years of Stalin’s industrialization of Russia.
Josef Stalin assumed control of the Soviet Union in 1924, shortly after the death of the beloved Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Prior to his death, Lenin had become aware of Stalin’s excessive ambitions for power and his brutal character. In what would later become known as Lenin’s Testament, Lenin went so far as to recommend Stalin’s dismissal from his position as General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party’s Central Committee. Josef Stalin was made aware of the contents of Lenin’s Testament, and at the 12th Party Congress in April 1923 he used his influence within the Soviet Union’s Central Committee to ensure that Lenin’s documentation was not made public. Leon Trotsky, founder and leader of the Red Army, had a friendship with Lenin that went beyond politics, which is where the relationship between Stalin and Lenin began and ended. Lenin admired Trotsky, and in his last testament he made his clear that Trotsky was ‘perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee.’ Stalin envied the relationship Trotsky had with Lenin, as it increased the likelihood that Lenin would name Trotsky his successor upon his death. When Vladimir Lenin died on January 21st, 1924, Stalin again moved to consolidate his power. During the Thirteenth Party Congress in May, 1924 Stalin again used his influence to ensure that Lenin’s Testament was not made public. Instead, the testament was read aloud to members of provincial delegations. Trotsky should have seized this opportunity to demand the dismissal of Stalin from the Communist Party, but he did not want to appear divisive in the wake of Lenin’s death. As a friend to Lenin, Trotsky understood how important the Communist Party was to him, and tearing the party apart would have destroyed everything Lenin and the Bolsheviks had worked to achieve. Josef Stalin’s reign of terror could have been stopped before it began, but Trotsky reacted in a human manner, while Stalin was incapable of such a thing.
The Fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party occurred from December 18-31st, 1925, resulting in the election of the fourteenth Central Committee. This congress would become known in history as an industrial conference, a result of the Communist Party’s introduction of a plan to industrialize, and transform the Soviet Union “from a country importing machines and equipment to a country producing them.” Josef Stalin would also openly turn on Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev during the congress. These two Bolsheviks had aided Stalin in preventing the publication of Lenin’s Testament. Kamenev and Zinoviev’s short-term troika with Stalin was due to their common hatred for Leon Trotsky, and throughout 1924 the trio worked to marginalize Leon Trotsky within the Communist Party. On January 6th, 1925 poor health and a rapidly deteriorating reputation led Trotsky to resign as People’s Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Stalin’s betrayal of Kamenev and Zinoviev resulted in both men forming a United Opposition with Trotsky, which Stalin promptly crushed and forced each man to submit to him. Stalin continued to consolidate his power within the Communist Party, gaining increasing control over all functions of the Soviet Union. In late 1927 Stalin expelled Zinoviev, and later Kamenev from the Party. With all major opposition to Stalin now expelled from the Party, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Stalin cemented his domination of the Politburo, and was now able to rapidly increase agricultural collectivization to bolster industrialization of the Soviet Union.
The Five Year Plan called for the creation of collective farms to greatly increase the agricultural production of the Soviet Union, enabling the country to feed its urban workers and export surplus grain to support its industrialization. The people most affected by agricultural collectivization were the kulaks, a class of wealthy farmers in Ukraine, where they are known as kurkuls. In most cases, these farmers were in fact not wealthy, but were labelled so because they owned more land or livestock than their neighbours. Government officials targeted those labelled as kurkuls, and forced them to move to collective farms; this adhered to Soviet policy. Stalin opposed Soviet policy on the kurkuls, and violently so. In Robert Service’s biography of Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator is said to have stated:
Josef Stalin assumed control of the Soviet Union in 1924, shortly after the death of the beloved Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Prior to his death, Lenin had become aware of Stalin’s excessive ambitions for power and his brutal character. In what would later become known as Lenin’s Testament, Lenin went so far as to recommend Stalin’s dismissal from his position as General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party’s Central Committee. Josef Stalin was made aware of the contents of Lenin’s Testament, and at the 12th Party Congress in April 1923 he used his influence within the Soviet Union’s Central Committee to ensure that Lenin’s documentation was not made public. Leon Trotsky, founder and leader of the Red Army, had a friendship with Lenin that went beyond politics, which is where the relationship between Stalin and Lenin began and ended. Lenin admired Trotsky, and in his last testament he made his clear that Trotsky was ‘perhaps the most capable man in the present Central Committee.’ Stalin envied the relationship Trotsky had with Lenin, as it increased the likelihood that Lenin would name Trotsky his successor upon his death. When Vladimir Lenin died on January 21st, 1924, Stalin again moved to consolidate his power. During the Thirteenth Party Congress in May, 1924 Stalin again used his influence to ensure that Lenin’s Testament was not made public. Instead, the testament was read aloud to members of provincial delegations. Trotsky should have seized this opportunity to demand the dismissal of Stalin from the Communist Party, but he did not want to appear divisive in the wake of Lenin’s death. As a friend to Lenin, Trotsky understood how important the Communist Party was to him, and tearing the party apart would have destroyed everything Lenin and the Bolsheviks had worked to achieve. Josef Stalin’s reign of terror could have been stopped before it began, but Trotsky reacted in a human manner, while Stalin was incapable of such a thing.
The Fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party occurred from December 18-31st, 1925, resulting in the election of the fourteenth Central Committee. This congress would become known in history as an industrial conference, a result of the Communist Party’s introduction of a plan to industrialize, and transform the Soviet Union “from a country importing machines and equipment to a country producing them.” Josef Stalin would also openly turn on Lev Kamenev and Gregory Zinoviev during the congress. These two Bolsheviks had aided Stalin in preventing the publication of Lenin’s Testament. Kamenev and Zinoviev’s short-term troika with Stalin was due to their common hatred for Leon Trotsky, and throughout 1924 the trio worked to marginalize Leon Trotsky within the Communist Party. On January 6th, 1925 poor health and a rapidly deteriorating reputation led Trotsky to resign as People’s Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Stalin’s betrayal of Kamenev and Zinoviev resulted in both men forming a United Opposition with Trotsky, which Stalin promptly crushed and forced each man to submit to him. Stalin continued to consolidate his power within the Communist Party, gaining increasing control over all functions of the Soviet Union. In late 1927 Stalin expelled Zinoviev, and later Kamenev from the Party. With all major opposition to Stalin now expelled from the Party, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Stalin cemented his domination of the Politburo, and was now able to rapidly increase agricultural collectivization to bolster industrialization of the Soviet Union.
The Five Year Plan called for the creation of collective farms to greatly increase the agricultural production of the Soviet Union, enabling the country to feed its urban workers and export surplus grain to support its industrialization. The people most affected by agricultural collectivization were the kulaks, a class of wealthy farmers in Ukraine, where they are known as kurkuls. In most cases, these farmers were in fact not wealthy, but were labelled so because they owned more land or livestock than their neighbours. Government officials targeted those labelled as kurkuls, and forced them to move to collective farms; this adhered to Soviet policy. Stalin opposed Soviet policy on the kurkuls, and violently so. In Robert Service’s biography of Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator is said to have stated:
“Now we have the opportunity to carry out a resolute offensive against the kulaks, break their resistance, eliminate
them as a class and replace their production with the production of kolkhozes and sovkhozes (collective farms).”
Kurkuls who resisted the program of collectivization were murdered, others were sent to the gulags, while still more were deported to the far reaches of Siberia. Peasants who remained in Soviet Ukraine faced extreme food shortages, and the population was stricken with widespread starvation. In 1932, grain production decreased by 32% from the previous year, and procurement of agricultural resources increased by 44%. This ensured that the Ukrainian people would face increased food shortages, but instead of sending aid to Soviet Ukraine, Stalin worked to increase the devastation of the oncoming famine.
The Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 was premeditated by Josef Stalin, and carried out by agents of the Soviet Union. The famine oppressed the Ukrainian people by denying them the ‘basic vital essentials,’ and served to undermine the Ukrainians as a people. In Ukraine, the famine is known as Holodomor, which translates into ‘death by forced starvation.’ Holodomor is an amazing word, as it accurately captures both the events of the famine, and the sentiment felt by Ukrainians experiencing this genocide. Stalin had ordered the kurkuls ‘to be liquidated as a class,’ and a famine ensured all would suffer slow, horrible deaths. The extermination of the Ukrainian people can be clearly identified as an act of genocide, and this ethnic cleansing was a personal goal of Josef Stalin. In January 1933, action was taken to close borders of Soviet Ukraine to prevent Ukrainians from fleeing to other soviet republics; peasants caught fleeing were killed on site, or forced to return to their village and starve. In Soviet Ukraine, a passport system was implemented to prevent Ukrainians from travelling freely within the republic, thus ensuring peasants could not travel to find food or work. Some regions of the Ukrainian republic were placed under commercial blockades, which were guarded by the Red Army, and restricted the transport of food and other resources into starving regions. Any food supplies that could be found in Soviet Ukraine were removed, and sold as surplus to foreign markets.
The Western World first became aware of Holodomor in March 1933, when Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist, reported on what he saw while visiting Soviet Ukraine. This was not Jones’ first visit to the Ukraine; he had travelled there in 1930 while working as a Foreign Affairs Advisor to David Lloyd George, and again in 1931 to accompany Jack Heinz II on his tour of the Soviet Union. In 1930, Jones published his findings in a variety of newspapers once he had returned to Britain, but his findings did not include documentation on food shortages in Ukraine. On Gareth Jones’ journey to Soviet Ukraine in August 1931 he kept a well-detailed journal, which was published anonymously in early 1932 with the help Jack Heinz II (heir to the Heinz empire). In his journal, Jones documented the struggles of Ukrainian peasants, and noted that increased agricultural collectivization had worsened conditions in rural Ukraine. In October 1932, Jones published a series of articles in The Western Mail titled: “Will There Be Soup?” which announced to the world that millions of Ukrainians faced starvation in the oncoming winter. Gareth Jones travelled to Ukraine in March 1933, prepared to expose the Soviet Union’s forced starvation of the Ukrainian people. On March 31st, 1933 Jones’ article Famine Rules Russia was published in the London Evening Standard; his eyewitness accounts were chilling and conveyed the horrors in the Ukraine to an international audience.
The Soviet Kremlin responded immediately, and denied reports of a famine in Soviet Ukraine. Surprisingly, Western media also refuted claims that peasants of the Ukraine were starving. On March 31st, Pulitzer Prize winning author Walter Duranty published a column in the New York Times titled: “Russians Hungry but not Starving,” which refuted Gareth Jones’ claims Ukrainians were being forced into starvation. Sources for Duranty’s article came from within the Kremlin, which provides evidence that the United States desired amicable relations with the Soviet Union during the Great Depression. Further evidence of the United States desire to improve relations with the Soviet Union came on November 16th, 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt ended sixteen years of non-recognition of the Soviet Union. The United States, the only nation with the military and economic capacity to stand up to the Soviet Union, had recognised Stalin’s government as being official. The United States government hoped to engage in lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union, agreements they did not want to risk losing by inserting themselves in the Soviet Union’s internal affairs. With the United States media praising the economic benefits of trade with the Soviet Union, and the people of the Western World consumed by the Great Depression, little more attention would be given to the suffering of Ukrainian people. Holodomor disappeared from the media, and less than a decade later, the terror of the famine was overshadowed by the onset of World War Two.
Holodomor remained largely ignored until the 1980’s, when the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine (1984) and the United States Commission on the Ukraine Famine (1985) both conducted studies on the forced starvation in Ukraine. These commissions were deemed a success, but little progress was made towards uncovering cause of the famine. This changed in 1991, when previously sealed documents were declassified after the collapse of the Soviet Union, shortly after Ukraine had gained independence. Some of the declassified documents revealed the Kremlin’s organization and operation of the famine in Ukraine, and that the Soviet Union’s increased agricultural collectivization had actually been an extension of a larger plan to liquidate Ukrainian kurkuls as a class. The events of Holodomor were now validated by official government documents, which sparked a new era of academic debate about whether or not the events of Holodomor were in fact acts of genocide. Academic research on Holodomor since the collapse of the Soviet Union has proven much more fruitful in it’s findings. On November 28th, 2006, the Parliament of Ukraine passed a decree declaring Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide. Russia continues to deny claims that Holodomor was in fact genocide, but as of today twelve nations have elected to support Ukraine’s decree, and more nations are sure to follow.
The Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 was premeditated by Josef Stalin, and carried out by agents of the Soviet Union. The famine oppressed the Ukrainian people by denying them the ‘basic vital essentials,’ and served to undermine the Ukrainians as a people. In Ukraine, the famine is known as Holodomor, which translates into ‘death by forced starvation.’ Holodomor is an amazing word, as it accurately captures both the events of the famine, and the sentiment felt by Ukrainians experiencing this genocide. Stalin had ordered the kurkuls ‘to be liquidated as a class,’ and a famine ensured all would suffer slow, horrible deaths. The extermination of the Ukrainian people can be clearly identified as an act of genocide, and this ethnic cleansing was a personal goal of Josef Stalin. In January 1933, action was taken to close borders of Soviet Ukraine to prevent Ukrainians from fleeing to other soviet republics; peasants caught fleeing were killed on site, or forced to return to their village and starve. In Soviet Ukraine, a passport system was implemented to prevent Ukrainians from travelling freely within the republic, thus ensuring peasants could not travel to find food or work. Some regions of the Ukrainian republic were placed under commercial blockades, which were guarded by the Red Army, and restricted the transport of food and other resources into starving regions. Any food supplies that could be found in Soviet Ukraine were removed, and sold as surplus to foreign markets.
The Western World first became aware of Holodomor in March 1933, when Gareth Jones, a young Welsh journalist, reported on what he saw while visiting Soviet Ukraine. This was not Jones’ first visit to the Ukraine; he had travelled there in 1930 while working as a Foreign Affairs Advisor to David Lloyd George, and again in 1931 to accompany Jack Heinz II on his tour of the Soviet Union. In 1930, Jones published his findings in a variety of newspapers once he had returned to Britain, but his findings did not include documentation on food shortages in Ukraine. On Gareth Jones’ journey to Soviet Ukraine in August 1931 he kept a well-detailed journal, which was published anonymously in early 1932 with the help Jack Heinz II (heir to the Heinz empire). In his journal, Jones documented the struggles of Ukrainian peasants, and noted that increased agricultural collectivization had worsened conditions in rural Ukraine. In October 1932, Jones published a series of articles in The Western Mail titled: “Will There Be Soup?” which announced to the world that millions of Ukrainians faced starvation in the oncoming winter. Gareth Jones travelled to Ukraine in March 1933, prepared to expose the Soviet Union’s forced starvation of the Ukrainian people. On March 31st, 1933 Jones’ article Famine Rules Russia was published in the London Evening Standard; his eyewitness accounts were chilling and conveyed the horrors in the Ukraine to an international audience.
The Soviet Kremlin responded immediately, and denied reports of a famine in Soviet Ukraine. Surprisingly, Western media also refuted claims that peasants of the Ukraine were starving. On March 31st, Pulitzer Prize winning author Walter Duranty published a column in the New York Times titled: “Russians Hungry but not Starving,” which refuted Gareth Jones’ claims Ukrainians were being forced into starvation. Sources for Duranty’s article came from within the Kremlin, which provides evidence that the United States desired amicable relations with the Soviet Union during the Great Depression. Further evidence of the United States desire to improve relations with the Soviet Union came on November 16th, 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt ended sixteen years of non-recognition of the Soviet Union. The United States, the only nation with the military and economic capacity to stand up to the Soviet Union, had recognised Stalin’s government as being official. The United States government hoped to engage in lucrative trade agreements with the Soviet Union, agreements they did not want to risk losing by inserting themselves in the Soviet Union’s internal affairs. With the United States media praising the economic benefits of trade with the Soviet Union, and the people of the Western World consumed by the Great Depression, little more attention would be given to the suffering of Ukrainian people. Holodomor disappeared from the media, and less than a decade later, the terror of the famine was overshadowed by the onset of World War Two.
Holodomor remained largely ignored until the 1980’s, when the International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine (1984) and the United States Commission on the Ukraine Famine (1985) both conducted studies on the forced starvation in Ukraine. These commissions were deemed a success, but little progress was made towards uncovering cause of the famine. This changed in 1991, when previously sealed documents were declassified after the collapse of the Soviet Union, shortly after Ukraine had gained independence. Some of the declassified documents revealed the Kremlin’s organization and operation of the famine in Ukraine, and that the Soviet Union’s increased agricultural collectivization had actually been an extension of a larger plan to liquidate Ukrainian kurkuls as a class. The events of Holodomor were now validated by official government documents, which sparked a new era of academic debate about whether or not the events of Holodomor were in fact acts of genocide. Academic research on Holodomor since the collapse of the Soviet Union has proven much more fruitful in it’s findings. On November 28th, 2006, the Parliament of Ukraine passed a decree declaring Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide. Russia continues to deny claims that Holodomor was in fact genocide, but as of today twelve nations have elected to support Ukraine’s decree, and more nations are sure to follow.