In Ukraine, they remember the victims of the great famine - known as the famine or the Holodomor - during 1932 and 1933, from the consequences of which at least 3,9 million people died.
The total number of victims in the former USSR is approximately seven million.
According to the opinion of most historians, the cause of the famine that lasted from 1932 to 1933 was the coercive and repressive policy of the communist authorities towards the peasants.
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1. Genocide or crime against humanity
The Supreme Assembly of Ukraine in 2006 declared the famine an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people, and public denial of the great famine in Ukraine is considered an illegal act - but no punishment is provided for such an act.
However, there is no agreement among historians and politicians about whether the famine can be considered genocide in the legal sense of the word, which is found in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
At the same time, the "father of the Convention on Genocide", doctor Rafael Lemkin, who actually coined the term, said in 1953 that the "destruction of the Ukrainian nation" was a "classic example of genocide".
From 2019 16 countries have recognized famine as genocide against Ukrainians: Australia, Georgia, Ecuador, Estonia, Canada, Colombia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, USA, Hungary, Portugal, and also the Vatican as a country in itself.
Another eight countries condemned the famine as an act against humanity and paid tribute to the memory of the millions of Ukrainians killed by hunger, namely: Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Chile.
After winning the presidential elections, Viktor Yanukovych declared in April 2010 that the mass famine that occurred in 1930 should not be considered a genocide against Ukrainians, since it was a common tragedy of the people of the USSR.
In Russia, they also do not consider the famine to be genocide, claiming that people died of hunger in different parts of the USSR.
Russia announced that the cause of the famine was forced collectivization, however, it affected many regions of the USSR and the famine was not directed exclusively against Ukrainians.
"This tragedy does not and cannot have internationally defined signs of genocide, and should not be the subject of contemporary political speculation," the Russian State Duma said in a statement.
The word "genocide" does not exist in the documents of the UN, UNESCO and PSSE related to the famine.
In the resolution of the European Parliament from 2008, the famine was called "a terrible crime against the people of Ukraine and humanity".
The document also refers to the UN Convention on Genocide.
In 2010, the Appellate Court of the city of Kyiv characterized the famine as genocide in its decision and pointed to the intention of the leadership of the USSR, represented by Stalin, Molotov, Kachaganov, Postishev, Chubarya, Hatayevich and Kosiora, to destroy part of the Ukrainian nation.
According to last year's survey by the Ukrainian sociological group "Rating", 82 percent of Ukrainians believe that the mass famine of 1932 and 1933 was genocide against the Ukrainian people.
- How did the word genocide come about?
2. Number of victims
To this day, researchers do not agree on the exact number of victims of the famine.
Institute for Demography and Social Research he developed the methodology for the assessment of Ukraine's losses as a result of the mass famine during 1932 and 1933 based on statistical data and modern methods of demographic analysis.
Scientists have reconstructed the basic annual parameters of the population dynamics of Ukraine between 1926 and 1939.
Based on these estimates, the Institute for Demography estimated the losses from the famine at 3,9 million people.
This number is considered the most scientifically based.
Scientists also claim that Ukraine lost 600.000 newborns due to the drop in birth rates during the famine.
Some historians claim that the actual numbers are much higher, and the Institute of National Remembrance suggests that around seven million perished in Ukraine.
In the decision of the Appellate Court in Kyiv from 2010, the number of 3,9 million was stated on the perpetrators of the famine.
Ukraine also leads Unique register of Holodomor victims.
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3. Geography of hunger
Scientists still debate the number of victims of the mass famine that lasted in the USSR during 1932 and 1933.
Some foreign historians put the figure at 5,5 to XNUMX million, claiming that more than half were Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Institute of Demography gave its estimate of demographic losses from the famine of 1932 and 1933 throughout the USSR and the former republics.
Losses due to the huge death rate as a result of famine during that period in the USSR amounted to 8,7 million people.
Among the republics of the former USSR, Ukraine ranks first in terms of absolute volume of losses, and Kazakhstan has the highest rate of losses in relation to the population.
Ukrainian scientists have determined that the relative losses due to the enormous death rate in Ukraine between 1932 and 1934 were four times greater than in Russia.
Mass starvation was also present in 1932 and 1933 in Volgograd, and Kuban (where many ethnic Ukrainians lived), in Belarus, in the southern Urals, in Western Siberia, and in Kazakhstan.
The Institute of Demography claims that in Russia, regions with large losses due to mass starvation account for six percent of the rural population and one percent of the territory, while in Ukraine, it is 41 percent of the population and 34 percent of the territory.
The highest mortality from starvation was recorded in the central forest-steppe parts of Ukraine, which did not play a key role in grain production, and in Russia in the main grain-producing regions.
Most Ukrainians died in the present districts of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Chernihiv and Odesa.
They were then part of the Ukrainian SSR.
The Institute of Demography believes that the number of deaths in the Ukrainian regions is from 10 percent to 20 percent of the total losses.
About 81 percent of those who died of starvation in Ukraine were Ukrainians, 4,5 percent Russians, 1,4 percent Jews, and 1,1 percent Poles.
Many Belarusians, Bulgarians and Hungarians were among the victims.
The researchers note that the ethnic distribution of famine victims corresponds to the national distribution of Ukraine's rural population.
Watch the video: There is food for everyone in the world - why are millions hungry?
4. Where there was no Glahomeland
According to Ukrainian historian Stanislav Kulchicky, in the fall of 1932 there were almost 25.000 kolkhozes (collective cooperative agricultural farms in the former USSR) in Ukraine, to which the government presented overstated plans for centralized grain production.
Despite this, 1.500 collective farms were able to fulfill these plans and did not come under criminal sanctions, so that there were no deaths due to hunger in their territories.
In the 20s and XNUMXs, newspapers regularly published lists of districts, villages, kolkhozes, enterprises, or even individuals that failed to meet their product storage plans.
Various fines and sanctions were applied to debtors who would end up on the "black lists" (as opposed to the "red lists", which were honorary lists), and even direct repression of entire work collectives.
In the years of famine, if a village were to be put on the "black list", it would mean judgment for its inhabitants.
Regional representative offices of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine had the right to add villages and collectives to such a list, based on the proposals of regional and village units. In other words, it was formally an initiative from below.
The system of "black lists", apart from Ukraine, also functioned in the Kuban region, Volgograd, on the Don, in Kazakhstan, territories where many Ukrainians lived.
You can find a list of settlements that were on the "black lists" in 1932 and 1933 here.
The famine did not affect the Ukrainian states of Galicia, Volhynia, Western Podolje, which were part of Poland in 1932 and 1933, as well as the then Romanian Bukovina and Czechoslovakian Transcarpathia.
Also, Crimea, which belonged to the RSFSR at the time, did not suffer either.
5. Durante and the first mention in the press
One of the first to write about the famine in the USSR was the English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, in December 1933, writes researcher Stanislav Kulchicki.
In three articles in the Manchester Guardian newspaper, the journalist described depressing impressions from his travels in Ukraine and Cuba, talking about hunger among the peasants.
Muggeridge presented the mass death of peasants, although he did not give specific figures.
After his first article, the Soviet government banned foreign journalists from traveling in famine-stricken territories.
In March 1933, 27-year-old British journalist Gareth Jones traveled to the USSR to interview Stalin.
During the trip, he visited Ukraine and recorded the horrors that happened there.
In late March 1933, Jones published the article "No Bread" about the famine in Ukraine, which was republished by the Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post.
In 2019, Agnieszka Holland's film "The Price of Truth" about the tragic fate of Gareth Jones and hunger was released.
In 1934, a special debate on Gladomor was held in the British Parliament.
Mageridge's sensational revelations were tried to be refuted by Walter Djuranti, a correspondent from Moscow.
His note read "Russians are starving but not starving."
When other American newspapers began to write about this problem, Djuranti confirmed the fact of mass deaths due to starvation.
Djuranti is also famous for being the only foreign journalist who managed to interview Stalin.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles and short stories about the first Stalinist five-year plan.
In Ukraine, some activists demanded that the Pulitzer committee posthumously strip Djuranti of this prestigious award, but this did not happen.
6. Official recognition
The very word "famine" appeared for the first time in 1978 in the printed works of Ukrainian emigrants who lived in Canada and the USA. At that time, historians in the USSR were allowed to talk only about "difficulties with food", but not about hunger.
The word "famine" was first heard from the mouth of a party official in December 1987.
Then the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Vladimir Šerbitsky, giving speeches at the celebrations on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the existence of the USSR, acknowledged the fact of the existence of a great famine in 1932 and 1933.
When increasingly open discussions on the subject began, in 1990 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine approved the publication of the book "The famine of 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine: through the eyes of historians, in the language of documentsto".
According to historian Stanislav Kulčitski, the actual circulation of the edition was only 2,5 thousand copies and it became a library rarity.
The first professional literary work about hunger was "The Yellow Prince" by Vasyl Barka, which was published by the Ukrainian diaspora in 1962.
In 1981, the memoirs of the Ukrainian dissident and Soviet general Petro Grigorenko were published in the USA, in which he described in great detail the horrors of famine and the mechanisms of its implementation in the Kherson region and throughout Ukraine.
Under President Viktor Yushchenko, in 2006, the Security Service of Ukraine declassified more than 5.000 pages of state archives on the famine.
Later, a large museum and memorial complex was built in Kiev in memory of the victims of the mass famine.
Paying tribute to the memory of the victims of the famine is also part of the official program during the visits of foreign delegations to Ukraine.
7. Punishment in provisions
Peasants, who did not fit into the grain provision plan and who owed the state grain, were deprived of other food.
It was not counted as debt repayment and was only a punitive measure.
The policy of punishing the peasants in kind was supposed to force the peasants to hand over to the state allegedly hidden grains, which actually did not exist.
At first, the authorities who implemented the measures and were in charge of punishment were allowed to take only meat, bacon and potatoes, but later they confiscated other foodstuffs that could be stored for a long time.
Fyodor Kovalenko from the village of Lyutenka, Gadjach District, Poltava Region, said: "In November and December 1932, they took all the grain, potatoes, everything, even the beans, and everything that was in the attic." So there were small dried pears, apples, cherries and they took them all."
Nina Karpenko from the village of Mackovci, Lubenski district, Poltava region, says that some villagers in the village still remember people who, on behalf of the authorities, took food from their neighbors.
Special squads used metal tools to search even peasants' gardens in search of buried food.
In December 1932, the second general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Stanislav Kosior, reported to Stalin: "The greatest result is the application of punishing the peasants by confiscating provisions." Now both the kolkhoznik and the independent farmer hold fast to the cow and the pig.
In Volgograd and the North Caucasus, collection in kind was applied sporadically.
8. Law of "five classes"
In August 1932, under the pretext that unruly peasants and "other anti-social elements" were stealing goods from freight trains and collective farm and cooperative property, Stalin proposed a new repressive law on the protection of state property.
For such offenses, the law provided for shooting with confiscation of property, and under mitigating circumstances, ten years in prison.
The convicted could not be amnestied.
The repressive documents were popularly called the "law of five ears", because practically anyone who took a few ears of wheat from the kolkhoz field without permission was guilty of stealing state property.
During the first year of the new law, 150.000 people were convicted on the basis of it.
The law was in force until 1947, but the peak of its application was precisely in 1932 and 1933.
9. Cannibalism
Witnesses of the famine tell of cases when desperate peasants ate the bodies of their own or deceased neighbors' children.
"Cannibalism took a hit when the Soviet government [...] started printing posters with this warning: 'Eating your own children is a barbaric act,'" write Hungarian researchers Agnes Vardi and Stephen Vardi of Duquesne University.
According to some data, more than 2.500 people were convicted of cannibalism during the mass famine in Ukraine.
According to Doctor of Historical Sciences Vasiliy Maročko, in the first half of 1932, individual cases of cannibalism were isolated, and in the second half of 1933, it became a mass phenomenon in all regions of Ukraine, where famine was raging.
"Cannibalism was most often resorted to by women, possibly because they wanted to save the family, when the youngest child was sacrificed so that the older ones could survive. This happened especially often in the spring," says Maročko.
Often the victims of cannibalism were homeless children who wandered the villages in search of food.
Several million dogs and cats were also eaten during those years.
10. Moving from Russia
After the famine, they tried to bring peasants from other regions of the Soviet Union to abandoned villages.
This was done in accordance with the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated October 25, 1933 "On the relocation of 21 thousand families of collective farmers to Ukraine."
According to archival documents, kolkhozniks from Russia were to be relocated to Donetsk Oblast (then it extended over the territory of the present Luhansk Oblast), Dnipropetrovsk (which partially included today's Zaporizhia Oblast), and Kharkiv Oblast, and to Odesa (which then extended to territories of the current Nikolaev and Kherson regions) collective farmers from Belarus and Russia.
By the end of 1933, 109 corps with people and their belongings were sent from the western region of the RSFSR to Dnipropetrovsk, 80 corps from the Central Black Sea region of Russia to Kharkiv region, and 44 corps from Ivanovo to Donetsk region.
From the Byelorussian SSR, 61 corps were sent to Odesa region, and 35 corps with people from the Gorky region.
However, scientists point out that a large part of the resettled did not settle in the new place.
"However, the numbers of migrants from Russia and Belarus are not too large. "Thousands of farms in such large regions as Donbas and Slobožanščina are not very impressive," says historian Stanislav Kuljčicki.
According to him, according to the research of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, more than half of those who moved from Russia to the territory of Ukraine from 1933 to 1934 returned back to Russia.
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